I know we're a little behind on this one, but I thought I'd give it a shot in the hopes that I'm not the only one: iStockphoto has re-released their screen saver for both Mac OS X and Windows in a 1.5 beta version. The screen saver displays previous Free Images of the Week, as well as the latest front page blog post.
The screen saver can be had from iStockphoto's downloads page, though on my Intel-based MacBook Pro I received an error from the Screen Saver Preference Pane stating that this screen saver couldn't be run - which leads me to wonder if it isn't Intel-ready yet.
Either way, it at least sounds like a handy screen saver to help quench your iStockphoto obsession; anyone have any thoughts on this new version?
Boy, these Adobe guys sure know
how to bait: check out the inaugural post at Nonprofit @ Adobe. It
sounds like the company has put together a Nonprofit Team that will be offering eSeminars, a nonprofit pricing program
and the obligatory software tips and tricks.
That one post is all we get for now though. If you have
anything to do with the worlds of nonprofit and design, I think Adobe just gave you something else to bookmark.
Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen, speaking at a Tokyo news
conference Friday, repeated Adobe's
position that it won't be shipping a Mactel-compliant version of Photoshop until Spring 2007. Chizen said:
"We are working very hard on making our products Mactel (Mac Intel) compliant. When we ship the new product
Acrobat 8 this fall it will be Mactel compliant. When we ship Photoshop and the Creative Suite products next spring
they will also be Mactel compliant."
Chizen also indicated that Boot Camp won't have much of an effect
on Adobe's plans to make software for the Mac:
"For the majority of our products, writing
directly for Mac OS is an advantage and you will see us continue to do so and not work through Boot Camp or the Windows
emulator because we think that will not be good for the majority of our customers. However there are some products that
we have today that we have not been able to afford to continue to develop to make available on the Mac. A great example
being FrameMaker. The majority of FrameMaker users use Windows as an OS but there is a small percentage that want to use
FrameMaker on the Mac so they can use Boot Camp."
Earlier today, Apple released Boot Camp, a utility that allows
the painless install of Windows XP on the new Intel Macs. TUAW has been covering this announcement quite a bit today, but one of the interesting questions that has been posed is:
what's going to happen to third party software? Or, the more specific question pertaining to TUPW here is: does Adobe
still have motivation to release CS3 for Mac OS X?
While we wait for an official statement from Adobe or a
post on the less formal Adobe Blogs (how about it Mr. Nack?), I think C.K. has
pretty much hit the
nail on the head at TUAW: While Boot Camp might be great for those who want or have a need to run both Mac OS X and
Windows XP on their Mac, those who are going to are most certainly not in the majority of the Mac-using base.
In other words: there's still a huge Mac OS X market out there (which doubled in the U.S. last year), and in all
likelihood, 3rd party apps that ride the fence like Creative Suite and Office aren't going anywhere.
Trevor Morris, of GFX^TM, has raised the bar for defining the phrase "too much
time on one's hands" by producing a 4-page PDF containing (what I assume is) every keyboard shortcut for Photoshop
CS2. As you might guess, he had to use some pretty small type to fit all the available keyboard shortcuts on only four
pages, including editing mode-specific ones. For those not living on the bleeding edge of Photoshop/CS versions, it
seems he's created documents like this for every Photoshop version back to 5.0, so take your pic.
iStockphoto is back at the
widget game again, now with a shiny new/updated set of widgets aptly titled the iStockWatcher Widget Suite which run
on the Yahoo Widget Engine, a.k.a. Konfabulator. The three widgets go a little
something like this:
iStockwater 2.0.6 (green): their original account widget updated for the latest
Yahoo Widget Engine
iStockwater Lite 1.0.1 (pink): for keeping an obsessive eye on your downloads
Downsample Calculator Widget: calculate the precise dimensions for downsampling for iStock, complete with drag and
drop support.
Alien Skin Software has
released a new plugin set called Exposure, which can
reproduce the look and feel of specific types of film stock. "Simulate the warmth and softness of real world film,
both color and black and white. Reproduce realistic film grain, and simplify your digital photography workflow."
Check out their examples page for a wide variety
of one-click film effects, tonal shifts, color cast manipulation and other tricks up Exposure's sleeves.
Exposure sells for $199, is available for both Windows and OS X, including Tiger, and works with Photoshop CS or
later, Photoshop Elements 3.0 or later, Fireworks MX 2004 or later, as well as Corel Paint Shop Pro 9.0 or later or
Windows.
FocalBlade is a Windows and OS X-compatible
plugin offering an array of automated, semi-automated and highly customizable tools for sharpening and blurring photos,
as well as adding soft focus and glow effects. It also offers batch processing, 8 and 16-bit RGB and grayscale editing
and radius thresholds far above and below other tools of its kind.
A demo is available, along with more samples of the plugin's abilities.
FocalBlade works with most Photoshop plugin-compatible applications like Paint Shop Pro, PhotoImpact, Photo-Paint,
Fireworks and Photoshop Elements, so if it earns a place in your toolbelt, it only costs a mere $49.
Ever feel guilty that you haven't been paying your dues to the mighty Adobe/Macromedia giant, overseer of all tools used by us lowly designers? Neither have I, especially with this nifty hack of Gimp. Called the GIMPshop, it's a cosmetic hack of the GNU image manipulation tool. Upon further inspection, it's not as much of a cosmetic hack as it is a UI hack. You may think those are the same things, but what it really does is reorganize all the menus, basically recreating your Photoshop workflow on Gimp. I've been forced to use Gimp for the last month now at work since they won't spring for an Adobe Creative Suite license, but I'm getting the hang of it and GIMPshop should only make things easier. Cross platform!
I know we're a little behind on this one, but I thought I'd give it a shot in the hopes that I'm not the only one: iStockphoto has re-released their screen saver for both Mac OS X and Windows in a 1.5 beta version. The screen saver displays previous Free Images of the Week, as well as the latest front page blog post.
Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen, speaking at a Tokyo news
conference Friday, 
iStockphoto is back at the
widget game again, now with a shiny new/updated set of widgets aptly titled the 
Ever feel guilty that you haven't been paying your dues to the mighty Adobe/Macromedia giant, overseer of all tools used by us lowly designers? Neither have I, especially with this nifty hack of Gimp. Called the GIMPshop, it's a cosmetic hack of the GNU image manipulation tool. Upon further inspection, it's not as much of a cosmetic hack as it is a UI hack. You may think those are the same things, but what it really does is reorganize all the menus, basically recreating your Photoshop workflow on Gimp. I've been forced to use Gimp for the last month now at work since they won't spring for an Adobe Creative Suite license, but I'm getting the hang of it and GIMPshop should only make things easier. Cross platform!
