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Visualizations of mathematics create remarkable artwork

Source: Science News
Written by Julie J. Rehmeyer

“Coral Star” shows the motion brought about by one particular dynamical system.
By Michael Field

Mathematicians often rhapsodize about the austere elegance of a well-wrought proof. But math also has a simpler sort of beauty that is perhaps easier to appreciate: It can be used to create objects that are just plain pretty—and fascinating to boot.

That beauty was richly on display at an exhibition of mathematical art at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego in January, where more than 40 artists showed their creations.

Michael Field, a mathematics professor at the University of Houston, finds artistic inspiration in his work on dynamical systems. A mathematical dynamical system is just any rule that determines how a point moves around a plane. Field uses an equation that takes any point on a piece of paper and moves it to a different spot. Field repeats this process over and over again—around 5 billion times—and keeps track of how often each pixel-sized spot in the plane gets landed on. The more often a pixel gets hit, the deeper the shade Field colors it.

The reason mathematicians are so fascinated by dynamical systems is that very simple equations can produce very complicated behavior. Field has found that such complex behavior can create some beautiful images. For example, the dynamical system he depicts in “Coral Star” does some peculiar things as it gets closer to the center (technically, the equation is discontinuous at the origin). So as you get closer and closer to the center, the image gets more and more complex.

“Even apart from the center, the image has quite a lot of depth to it,” Field says. “It’s a feature of the way it’s colored. I’m not so keen on bright primary colors. The shading makes it more interesting.”

This image has an unusual 35-fold symmetry, and Field created it as a present for his wife on their 35th anniversary.

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The website for the exhibition is at www.bridgesmathart.org/art-exhibits/jmm08/.

Copies of the catalogue for the exhibit, complete with high-quality reproductions of all the pieces of art, are for sale at www.mathartfun.com.

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

Source: Daily Mail
Written by Emily Sheridan

Introducing Carlizina Jolectron, the latest Hollywood beauty.
On closer inspection, the stunning actress appears rather familiar.

In fact, Carlizina isn’t even a real woman - she’s a digital combination of Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron and Carmen Electra.

Carlizina is just one of the entries in Photoshop website Worth1000.com contest to find the ultimate celebrity.

The entrant has combined the hair and lips of Jolie, the nose of Theron and the alluring eyes of former Baywatch star Electra.

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Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

World Digital Camera Market to Reach 122 Million Units by 2010, According to New Report by Global Industry Analysts

Press Release: San Jose, California (PRWEB) February 26, 2008—The world digital camera market stands enthused by the effervescent level of technology development and product feature innovations. Technical innovations in the field of batteries, photo printing, storage devices and internet technologies are expected to propel the growth of digital cameras. Wireless communications enabled digital cameras, for instance, are growing in popularity, given their cutting edge advantages and benefits, such as, added convenience, effectiveness, and functionality in the form of e-mail transmission ability, enhanced storage media, compatibility with PC image processing, and higher image resolution.

Ease of use, compact design, size, style and convenience are few of the product features critical to commercial success in the marketplace. In addition, amplified digital photo improvement and management software, shorter shutter delays, partial image capturing, ability to modify scene backgrounds, high-end optical and storage features, also represent product features, which play an instrumental role in keeping demand alive and consumer enthusiasm sufficiently kindled. Encouraged largely by rapidly falling prices, higher functionality and improvement in picture quality, consumer preferences are increasingly shifting towards medium and high-end models, thereby promising expanded market opportunities. The waxing popularity of single-lens reflex (SLR) digital cameras is triggering several acquisitions in the industry, since production of these cameras requires advanced optical technologies. Matsushita, Sony and Samsung are few global players who have forayed into the SLR digital camera market, lured by its lucrative potential. Sony’s teaming up with Konica Minolta, and Samsung’s partnership with Pentax represent just the tip of the iceberg. The industry is abuzz with mutually synergistic alliances, partnerships, and collaborations.

Digital Cameras: A Global Strategic Business Report
As stated by the recent report published by Global Industry Analysts, Inc., world digital camera market is dominated by the United States and Europe with a combined share of over 59%, estimated for the year 2007. In the >2 MP - 5 MP digital camera market, European sales are estimated at 7 million units. Global sales in the above 5 MP digital camera market are expected to grow at a CAGR of over 50% through the period 2001-2010. In Europe, Germany and the United Kingdom, together, collar nearly 43% of the market for digital cameras.

Leading global and regional players operating in the industry include Canon Inc, Fujifilm, Samsung, Eastman Kodak Company, Sony Corporation, Toshiba America Inc, Sanyo Electric Co Ltd, Nikon Corporation, Olympus, Polaroid, Leica Camera, Panasonic, Casio Computer Co Ltd, Hewlett-Packard Company, and Vivitar Corp, among others.

The report titled “Digital Cameras: A Global Strategic Business Report” published by Global Industry Analysts, Inc., provides a comprehensive review of market trends, drivers, issues, challenges, and technology developments. Richly annotated with authoritative, and unbiased commentaries, and hard-to-find statistical facts, the report provides unequivocal views on future potential while throwing light on the prevailing climate in key regional markets. Product markets analyzed in the report include 2 MP - 5 MP Digital Cameras, and above 5 MP Digital Cameras. Latent demand patterns in product markets are quantified across major geographic market verticals including the United States, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, and Asia-Pacific, among others. Also provided in the report is an enumeration of recent mergers, acquisitions, and other strategic industry activities.

For more details about this research report, please visit
http://www.strategyR.com/Digital_Cameras_Market_Report.asp

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (GIA) is a reputed publisher of off-the-shelf market research. Founded in 1987, the company is globally recognized as one of the world’s largest market research publishers. The company employs more than 700 people worldwide and publishes more than 880 full-scale research reports each year. Additionally, the company also offers a range of more than 60,000 smaller research products including company reports, market trend reports and industry reports encompassing all major industries worldwide.

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

New Program Honors Most Creative High School Students

Press Release: SAN JOSE, Calif. — Feb. 26, 2008 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced a call for entries for the Adobe School Innovation Awards. The awards program honors the creative and innovative work of high school students.

With the theme “My Community - My Planet - My 21st Century” students can submit entries in three categories: Web Design and Development, Film and Video, and Graphic and Print Design. Category award winners will be named, as well as one grand prize winner for best overall submission.

“The new awards program celebrates the amazing creative capabilities students are showcasing at an early age,” said Peter Isaacson, vice president of education marketing at Adobe. “Our education initiatives worldwide continue to enable new ways of learning by providing digital creation, communication and collaboration tools that help students express themselves in creative ways.”

Full-time students age 14-19 years in grades 9-12 from accredited public or private high schools in the US and Canada (except Quebec) are invited to submit through the Adobe School Innovation Awards website www.adobe.com/education/solutions/k12/awards/index.html . Entries will be reviewed and scored by an independent panel of judges, including members of the Adobe Education Leader group, Adobe employees, and industry luminaries.

Submission will be accepted through May 12, 2008. Winners will be announced at the end of June at NECC 2008 in San Antonio, TX and will receive cash and software prizes. Category winners will receive US$1,500, a Lenovo laptop and a copy of Creative Suite 3 Master Collection. In addition, the grand prize winner will be invited to attend NECC (including round-trip airfare and hotel accommodations for two).

About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information - anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com .

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

Source: CNET
Written by Stephen Shankland

It’s one of the oldest, most common problems in photography: that picture you thought would be the prize shot is out of focus.

Refocus Imaging, a Silicon Valley start-up, thinks its technology can be used to make cameras that can fix that problem–after you take the photo.

By fitting a camera’s image sensor with a special lens and then processing the resulting data with new methods, Refocus Imaging’s technology will let photographers fix their photos and exercise new creative control after the shutter is released, founder and Chief Executive Ren Ng said.

“There’s a lot of physical stuff in the camera that is limiting its performance,” Ng said. “What we’re doing is to capture much more than a two-dimensional photograph inside the camera…By collecting the light, we can process it in software to do what the hardware usually has to do.”

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Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

Source: CNET
Written by Martin LaMonica

Adobe Systems on Monday is set to finally release Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) software, which is on the leading edge of a movement to make Web applications act more like traditional desktop applications.

At the company’s Engage event in San Francisco on rich Internet application design, executives will announce the availability of AIR 1.0, a free download for Windows and Macintosh.

Also on Monday, Adobe will release Flex 3.0, its application development tool that is now free and open-source. Another development tool, called BlazeDS, for linking Flex applications to back-end business applications, will also be released into open source as planned.

Adobe has been working on AIR for at least two years, when Kevin Lynch, now Adobe’s chief technology officer, first publicly spoke about it. The company plans to build AIR versions of many of its Web applications, including photo-imaging application Photoshop Express and Premier Express for editing video, he said.

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Original post by Jeff Schewe

Source: WIRED
Written by Anick Jesdanun

NEW YORK (AP) — Sometimes, a photo is simply too good to be true. Tiny details in an image, for instance, may be too similar to have occurred naturally, suggesting a cut-and-paste maneuver. Or the color patterns may be too “normal” - beyond the limitations of sensors on digital cameras.

A growing number of researchers and companies are looking for such signs of tampering in hopes of restoring credibility to photographs at a time when the name of a popular program for manipulating digital images has become a verb, Photoshopping.

Adobe Systems Inc., the developer of Photoshop, said it may incorporate their techniques into future releases.

“There’s much more awareness and much more skepticism when (people) are looking at images,” said Kevin Connor, a senior director of product management at Adobe. “That’s why we think that’s something we need to get involved in. It’s not healthy to have people be too skeptical about what they saw.”

Meanwhile, camera maker Canon Inc. sells a data-verification kit with some models. It can stamp digital photos with an invisible, mathematical summary of the image, such that even one tiny change will produce a mismatch and flag the photo as an alteration.

These techniques are of interest to law-enforcement officials and defense attorneys because photographic evidence can make or break cases. News organizations also have been increasingly exploring ways to spot hoaxes.

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Original post by Jeff Schewe

Adobe has launched software designed to make it easier for computer users to use online applications offline.

Source: BBC News

Adobe Air allows developers to build tools that still have some functionality even when a computer is no longer connected to the net.

A free download will allow users of Macs, PCs and, later this year, Linux machines to run any Air applications.

The first programs that use the technology, developed by web sites such as eBay, have already been released.

“Air is going to allow applications that run on the web today - that run in the browser - to be brought down to the desktop,” Andrew Shorten, platform evangelist at Adobe told BBC News.

“It’s about taking existing web applications and adding extra functionality whether you want to work offline or whether you want to access data on your disk.”

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Original post by Jeff Schewe

PSN posted a story earlier today noting that CNET has posted a poll about Poll: Which is better, Aperture or Lightroom?

Well, so far the poll results as of 5:45PM Central have Apple’s Aperture out ahead by a whopping 63.4% to Lightroom’s 36.6%. Could it be that people are really that more impressed with Aperture than Lightroom?

I suppose it could be…but since this is the season of politics and polls, I though I would look into this a little bit.

While the poll story had been placed at the top of the CNET Top Technology news headlines banner on and off during the day, it seems that Apple’s www.apple.com/startpage/ has had the story about the poll up ALL day.

So, am I saying that Apple has intentionally skewed the results of the poll by placing this poll story on their startpage? Not at all.

But it does make one wonder if the current poll results are really an accurate representation of general CNET viewers or the opinions of a lot of Mac users who found out about the story directly from Apple’s startpage. Could it be that Apple users, who we all know are, shall we say, passionate, may have been inclined to vote along party lines? Since Aperture is not available for Windows (and Lightroom is), could it be that only Apple users would really have an informed opinion?

As a resident of Chicago (you do know that our nickname; “The Windy City” refers to Chicago politics, not our weather, right), I’m pretty sure that “Polls” are really only a representation of the views of those polled and who those people may be can always be “adjusted” by outside factors. Just ask Hillary and the recent Wisconsin polls that showed her much closer to Obama than the election results showed.

So, in the old Chicago political tradition, maybe Lightroom users need to vote early, and vote often!

:~)

Original post by Jeff Schewe

Press Release: TAMPA, Fla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–If you want to use Adobe Photoshop like a pro, then you have to master the Photoshop tool that the pros rely on most - Layers.

That’s the rationale behind Layers: The Complete Guide to Adobe Photoshop’s Most Powerful Feature – the latest book by world-class Photoshop instructor and author, Matt Kloskowski. Written in casual, easy-to-understand language, Layers shows Photoshop users of all skill levels the tips and techniques they not only need to succeed, but to excel.

Described by the author as, “the Photoshop book I wish had been around when I was learning Photoshop,” Layers covers such topics as working with and managing multiple layers, building multi-layer images, blending layers together, and layer masking in a clear, concise, fully-illustrated style that makes learning easy and fun. Additionally, the book delves into layers-based photo retouching and design techniques that save valuable time and produce stunning results.

Layers: The Complete Guide to Adobe Photoshop’s Most Powerful Feature is published by Peachpit Press and currently available on Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, and on Kelbytraining.com. The cover price for the new book is $39.99.

Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Peachpit Press; 1 edition (February 22, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0321534166
ISBN-13: 978-0321534163
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.4 x 0.5 inches

About Matt Kloskowski

Matt Kloskowski is a Photoshop guru whose books, videos, and classes have simplified the way thousands of people work on digital photos and images, and his clear and concise teaching style has made him one of the world’s top go-to guys for Photoshop training and education. He is one of the co-hosts of PhotoshopUser TV, the host of both the Adobe Photoshop CS3 Killer Tips and Adobe Lightroom® Killer Tips podcasts, and the author of numerous books, including the Photoshop CS2 Speed Clinic and the Photoshop Elements Retouching and Restoration Book.

Matt has built a massive portfolio of educational DVDs, online training courses, and magazine articles for Photoshop User magazine. Additionally, he is a full-time education and curriculum developer for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, as well as an instructor at the world’s premier Photoshop event, Photoshop World, and other Photoshop and digital photography at workshops and conferences around the world.

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff