Articles
Adobe releases Photoshop and Premiere Elements 11
Adobe has announced the release of version 11 of its Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements photo and video editing software. Both feature redesigned interfaces and additional integration with online sharing platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo. Photoshop Elements has the ability to organize images by people or places, a variety of new filters and a Guided Edits mode for specific editing effects. Premiere Elements also has a “guided” mode with FilmLooks and allows the addition of transitions, themes, titles, disc menus, and sound and video effects.
Photoshop Elements 11 and Premiere Elements 11 are available now from the Adobe website, priced at $149.99 as a bundle or at $99.99 individually.
Tonga Humpbacks 2012
Wetpixel member Jon Shaw of ginclearilm has crafted as stunning sequence of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), shot in Tonga over the past summer. The whales migrate there to breed and to rear their young, and the film has some amazing and moving footage of mother and calf interaction. It was all shot by Jon on a RED EPIC in a Gates Deep Epic Housing with Tokina 10-17mm lens. The music is by Hans Zimmer, and entitled “Time”.
Eric Cheng talks at Photographers@Google
Google are hosting a series of talks entitled Photographers@Google. A couple of months ago, Wetpixel Publisher, Eric Cheng was invited to give a presentation about underwater photography at Google HQ, and this has now been posted onto YouTube. Aside from his flashlight fish TEDx Berkeley talk, this is the only underwater photography talk that he has given that is currently available online.
Nauticam announces NA-650D housing
Nauticam has announced the release of their NA-65D housing for the Canon EOS 650D SLR. The company has created a new switch that avoids needing to push AV button and turn the aperture, by simply engaging the AV button. In addition, the size and shape of the command dial has been changed which should make the housing easier to use when diving with thick gloves. The command dial profile has also been raised, and the dial itself has a “knobbier” shape, with larger grooves. The NA-650D has a redesigned dial control with a pickup for the on-off-movie switch, with a small window for visually aligning the switch pickup.
The NA-650D will be available from 5 October at $2,400.
2013 Raja Ampat Entry Tag contest has a winner
Many congratulations to Nicholas Samaras of Greece who achieved the most votes in a very hotly contested result. His design will be worn on every diver’s BCD that visits Raja Ampat in 2013, and he can choose his prize of a minimum 8 day trip to Raja Ampat with one of the contest’s sponsors.
The contest was extremely close this year with less than 300 few votes between the first three ranked tags. In fact, all the shortlisted entries proved very popular with the public vote. Many congratulations to all the entrants, and especially of course to Nicholas.
Canon releases firmware update for EOS 7D
After the major firmware update released last month, Canon has announced a further update for the EOS 7D. Predictably, this aims to fix a number of issues with the V2.0 release including: A phenomenon in which the camera stops working when the auto power off setting takes effect, a bug in which the maximum number of images that can be captured in a burst may be less than the actual number displayed in the viewfinder and some errors in the message displayed on the LCD screen when saving RAW images developed in the camera.
The 2.0.3 update is available as a free download for EOS 7D owners.
Google acquires Nik Software
Nik Software has announced that it has been acquired by industry giant Google. The company, that makes a range of conventional image editing plug ins and software, also produces Snapseed, an iOS based image editing and sharing app that many see as a potential rival to Instagram. The latter has over 100 million users worldwide and Snapseed only 9 million however. Analysts have pointed out that this may also impact on the way images are shared via Google’s social media site, Google+.
Canon introduces Project 1709
Canon has introduced a new cloud-based image management platform. Quirkily entitled Project 1709, it is in a beta phase, and the company is currently encouraging people to register their interest. It aims to store “a lifetime of images”, allows for image tagging, EXIF viewing and has deep integration with Facebook. Accepted file formats, costs and the actual rollout schedule are still to be announced.