News, news, news..

I’m off for a short visit with TK in Ann Arbor (I’m going to get to meet Eric Chan) and then off to Toronto to tape some stuff with Michael Reichmann. So, I’ll be off-line till the end of the week.

Original post by Jeff Schewe

Well, the workshop is over and I’m in San Francisco Sunday evening planning my route home. I rode down Highway 1 from Mendocino to San Francisco–that’s a heck of a ride. Monday I’m going to visit Peachpit and do a short ride with Lisa Brazieal, the production manager on my book. Then it’s all out riding East. I should be home Friday or maybe Saturday depending on photo ops. And the full story of the ride and workshop will come in a week or so.

Original post by Jeff Schewe

I’m leaving at dawn Tuesday on a motorcycle ride out to Mendocino, Ca. to do a workshop with Greg Gorman. Along the way I’ll be hooking up with George Jardine of Adobe (in Denver) and we’ll ride the back roads of Utah and Nevada and through Northern California to arrive just in time for Greg’s birthday on Saturday.

This is a shot of George and I during our fall ride to check out the aspens.

I’ll try to post updates from the road, but you know how tiring 500-600 miles a day on a bike can be. So posts may be pretty light until my return sometime around June 20th. If ya see a big guy on an R1100 GS BMW bike with aluminum bags, give a honk (and get into the slow lane). This trip should turn the milage on the bike to over 90,000 miles!

Original post by Jeff Schewe

Niagara Falls?

Yep…I’m hooking up with Michael Reichmann of The Luminous Landscape to shoot material (shots and video) for our upcoming Lightroom 2.0 video tutorial.Now, don’t make too much about the timing of this…this is the only time Michael have to actually get together to shoot stuff photographically before we tape our video.

We wanted to shoot stuff together (something a bit North of Antarctica ya know) in order to have working photo samples to demo our respective workflows. The release of the video tutorial will come after Lightroom 2.0 ships (we really can’t say exactly that will be).

So, stayed tuned for an update, but I’ll be gone for the week starting, well, now! I’ll try to post something while we work. Michael it seems, has booked a suite (not the honeymoon suite I hope) so we can shoot night shots of the falls & the fireworks (assuming they do it in the rain). So, we’ll see what happens…(or doesn’t).

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

Last week at Photoshop World, Scott Kelby was limping along on crutches due to an unfortunate “incident” with what turns out to be a home treadmill. See his admission on his blog. But it seems Scott was able to move around pretty good because of his rented scooter.

We first saw Scott at the instructor’s dinner, Tuesday night.

He was greeting people on crutches as they arrived to the dinner. Later, during dinner he had his handy crutches next to the table.

The next morning at the PSW Keynote, Scott was scooting around in preparation for the luanch of the starting ceremonies.

Later he scooted off towards backstage.

Did I mention that Scott is a fast scooter?

During the start of the Keynote, Scott appeared from a puff of smoke (presumably to allow him time to limp into position).

He explained his “issue” and went on to tell the truth regarding the injury. No, it wasn’t a Swiss sking accident and no it didn’t occur during a kickboxing match. He fell off a treadmill.

Always one to make the best of a bad situation, he pointed out that his walking boot cast sported advertising (hey, why not?).

At the end of the Keynote, he limped off the stage and got ready for the start of the conference.

He was spotted all over the trade show floor and the conference in his scooter. He had an annoying horn (to alert people to get out of the way) and a reverse beep (like a big truck) when backing up. Of course, he didn’t take the escalator like the rest of the attendees–he took an elevator.

In the speakers lounge, he even gave rides.

Here he is giving a ride to his son.

I was going to try to sneak out and give his scooter a test drive but Matt Kloskowski caught me and snapped a picture. I figured I better leave the scooter where I found it.

So, this points out a problem Scott is going to have at the next Photoshop World in Vegas later in the year. I’ve been talking to the other instructors and it seems we all agree–we should ALL get scooters to go to and from the hotel and tradeshow. Can’t you just see us having drag races up and down the halls of the Mandalay Bay Resort? Hum, maybe that isn’t such a good idea after all.

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

I made it back from rainy old London (well, it was sunny for some of the time) and now I’m off to San Francisco for some top secret (tell no one) meetings with people from a large company whose name starts with the letter A (and no it ain’t Apple).

Here’s Martin and George Jardine sitting around the living room on one of the sunny days.

Martin is turing into quite the father (or Dada as Angelica likes to say). Here’s Martin changing nappies (note, we called Seth Resnick who is the proud new father of Lucie-born on Lightroom’s birthday to find out how often Seth changes diapers. That day, Seth had co-changed his FIRST diaper)

George, Martin and myself took a day off to wander around the South Bank of the river Thames. George was shooting video while Martin & I were shooting stills.

This is only a very brief glance at what we shot–I think I came back with about 40 gigs of images (ok, I shoot a lot). But, since I’m off again this week, I wanted to let you know why I won’t be posting to PSN and give you a little “English Taste”.

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

I’m leaving, on a jet plane…don’t know when I’ll be back again.

Well, actually I do know. Friday the 14th of March. In the meantime I’ll be in London working with Martin Evening on some stuff. (top secret, tell no one) Well, ok, I’ll spill some of the beans…

I’m going over to London to shoot with Martin for an upcoming book we’ll be working on (can’t tell you the title because it’s yet to be decided) but I can say that it’ll be a pro level book on Photoshop techniques aimed at photographers.

I’ll also be there shooting Martin shooting for his upcoming Lightroom book (don’t read too much into the timing as it relates to an as yet, unannounced new version of Lightroom–other than the fact that the Lightroom engineers ARE working on a new version–DOH). But we’ll also have a special guest along, George Jardine, pro evangelist from Adobe who will be shooting video.

So, I’ll be off-line for about ten days, unless I can steal some bandwidth and make a couple of fun posts! See ya when I return.

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

As with many milestones in history, people tend to remember them in the context of their own life. Since we now know (or at least believe) that Photoshop 1.0 shipped on February 19, 1990 (and Lightroom shipped on the same day of February 2007), Jeff Schewe asked a few friends “where were you”? Here are their answers…

In the order in which they responded:

——

On 2/14/08 2:02 PM, “Christopher Sanderson” wrote:
Thanks to a FileMaker db, I can tell you with reasonable accuracy that Feb ‘90, I was under a table shooting a wind-up mouse being chased by a ferocious but highly-trained Hollywood Attack Cat for a Ralston Purina TV spot for Cat Chow.

While the memory is somewhat dimmed, last year I was in a similar position… but under a saloon table on the Akademik Shokalsky with a video camera held above - assuming wideangle & auto-focus would catch Schewe or Seth doing something memorable before the tape ran out.

——

On 2/15/08 11:51 AM, “Seth Resnick” wrote:
This was very fun indeed. My first child Paige was born on 2/15/90 and I photographed her on that day and on 2/19/90. Images are attached. Notice that in the images shot on 2/19/90 she is surrounded with wine and ski equipment. Some things never change. As of today no baby yet but Jamie may be induced on the 19th.

This year on the birthday I may very well be in the delivery room with Jamie. Last year I believe I was swimming in 38 degree water hoping to get a satellite signal while you photographed me and made a comment on how I looked something like a martini……

——

On 2/16/08 4:57 PM, “Thomas Knoll” wrote:
In 1990 I was starting work on version 2.0 of Photoshop, working on a computer in the basement of my 1700 sq ft condo.

In 2007 I was working on finishing up Camera Raw 4.0, working on a computer in my office in my slightly larger house. ; )

Nothing ever changes…

——

On 2/16/08 5:27 PM, “John Paul Caponigro” wrote:
In 1990 I was writing for regional newspapers on art, directing an art cinema, and illustrating children’s books. Little did I know that the very sketches I made at that time, for my personal work, would ultimately become finished composites made with Photoshop the next year, when I became an artist in residence at Kodak’s Center for Creative Imaging. Some of these were later purchased by Princeton University’s permanent collection by renowned curator Peter Bunnell. Photoshop was a dream come true and a Godfather II moment.

In 2007 I was in Antarctica on deck watching Seth Resnick dive in the water from the shore. I could see Schewe was nearby but I was too far away to hear what either one of them said. I couldn’t spot Michael Reichmann, Stephen Johnson, Bill Atkinson, or Ian Lyons. During those two hours I made two of my signature images from the trip by staying put and watching. They were processed on location moments after exposure with Lightroom. All the work in my Antarctica 2007 gallery was processed solely with Lightroom. You can see the work posted in my online gallery at johnpaulcaponigro.com and find one of the two images above online in PDN’s Focus on Nature awards and in forthcoming museum exhibits at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem.

Curious parallels. Big changes.

——

On 2/16/08 6:04 PM, “Ian Lyons” wrote:
Schewe had one eye on Seth and the other on the penguins (I think he was worried that one would bite ). I was about 20 feet from Schewe and had Seth’s precious 1DsMKII and 300F2.8 slung round my neck. As for what they were saying, well, Chris decided it wasn’t for public consumption and inserted the penguin squawk into the video. Stephen and Bill were tucked round the corner snapping the Glacier in Neko Harbour. Chris kept real close to the defibrillator unit (he was due to take a dip right after Seth and probably wanted to make sure the battery was fully charged ). I don’t recall where Michael was, but like me he had no intention of wetting his feet .

Like JP all of my images were processed in Lightroom. You can see some of the them on the linked page (includes a Lr Flash Gallery)

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/antarctica_2007/antarctica_thumbnails.htm

The picture of the marching penguins was where Seth went for his swim

——

On 2/17/08 10:24 AM, “John Nack” wrote:
In 1990 I was a freshman in high school in Dubuque, IA (oh, the humanity!), fooling with an Apple IIgs and wishing my folks would someday buy a Mac. Probably the less said about that time, the better.

In 2007 I was just back from a whirlwind European press tour in support of the upcoming Photoshop CS3. I found myself going nuts with the new panorama-stitching features, then exporting the high-res results via Zoomify, then (of course) blogging the results (http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2007/02/panopalooza_fro.html).

——

On 2/17/08 10:51 AM, “Michael Reichmann” wrote:
In 1990 I was traveling in Asia working to build a new type of telecom business based on voice over IP. As I write this I am once again in Asia, though this time on a speaking tour about photography.

In 2007 I was leading an Antarctic photographic expedition and using Lightroom of course.

——

On 2/17/08 11:34 AM, “Andrew Rodney” wrote:
In 1990, I was an advertising and annual report photographer in LA. I recall, walking into an Egghead computer store and saw a Mac II with a 13″ color display and fell in love. I wanted one but my wife wanted to know why the Mac SE-30 I had wasn’t good enough. Since I had just seen a demo of Photoshop, that became my excuse to buy a new system: Mac IIci, I think 8mb of ram and that lovely 13″ display. Of course, Photoshop 1.0.7. I didn’t at the time buy ColorStudio thankfully! But I recall the rivalry.

In 2007, I was not on a trip in the Antarctica but home in beautiful Santa Fe. I really don’t recall what I did on Lightroom’s Birthday although I see a note in my calendar that I had a new garbage disposal installed. Seriously, could I make that up? There was a pretty good possibility that I was working in Lightroom that day.

——

On 2/17/08 2:11 PM, “Sean McCormack” wrote:
1990? I would’ve been studying for my 2nd year Michaelmas exams in Engineering in Trinity College Dublin. 2nd year had different courses in each semester, so the exams were the full marks for the term in 4 courses. With 45 hour lecture weeks and 13 courses, it was a tough year. Computer wise I had nothing but the college computer systems available to me. I actually can’t remember the model of Mac, but it was the tiny B&W screen all in one! VAX, Gmac and Unix systems were the order of the day. I used Quark for society flyers, and that was the most I did with Mac, besides games! My first computer was actually an Atari 1040STE (shhh!) in 91 or 92..

2007, when Lightroom was released, I was in bed! Well it would’ve been 7am or so here! I had loads of blog posts around then, including a video on updating the Library from the Betas… It was both an exciting and a tough time on the users forums. Definitely an exciting time after all the pushing testing and suggesting. LR1.0 was quite mature for a V1.0 product, but not without flaws. It is going from strength to strength though. I try other workflows from time to time, but nothing really touches it.

——

On 2/17/08 2:42 PM, “Scott Kelby” wrote:
Here’s a little “Where I was when it launched” thingy:

The day Lightroom shipped, I was teaching at a landscape photography workshop in Yosemite National Park (as a guest instructor at the Digital Landscape Workshop Series), and the class I was teaching was (you guessed it)—-Lightroom. It was still in Beta at the time (well, it was in Beta for one day after my class), and I filmed a little video segment from the Yosemite Workshop the night before the release, and I uploaded the video to Adobe that night—just in time to be aired during the Lightroom Launch Party.

At the end of the video clip, I turned to my class said (on camera), “So, what do you guys think of Lightroom?” and the class went crazy, cheering like the Rolling Stones had just walked in the room (which gives you some idea of how old we all are).

——

On 2/18/08 9:13 AM, “Tom Hogarty” wrote:
In 1990 I was a high school freshman in Hopewell Junction, NY. I was still three years away from purchasing my first ‘real’ camera and my computer experience was limited to Basic programming on a DOS machine. (Still just toying with the blue screen of WordPerfect and the lovely UI of Lotus 123)

In 2007, I was up late on February 18th monitoring the release of Lightroom 1.0 at 9:01pm from home in San Mateo, CA. After ensuring that the release was successfully out the door it was time to move on to Lightroom 1.1 efforts.

——

On 2/18/08 10:55 AM, “Troy Gaul” wrote:
February 19, 1990 — The Soviet Union had recently collapsed, Best Picture Academy award-winner Driving Miss Daisy was leading the box office, and Paula Abdul was at the top of the Billboard charts with Opposites Attract…

:-)

In 1990 I was a freshman at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa (Nack makes me feel old). I wouldn’t start working on Color It! at MicroFrontier, my first real Mac programming job, until a year later.

Melissa was a freshman at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa (which happens to be 20 miles from the Iowa town where I grew up).

On the 19th, Melissa had just returned to Decorah from a trip she took to Des Moines with her friend Debbie for the weekend. During this trip Melissa and I met for the first time. She and Debbie came over to my dorm room, accompanying my friend Chris, who was Debbie’s boyfriend at the time (and is her husband now). We talked for a few hours that evening, and I made a special trip over to Chris’ dorm the next morning hoping to see her again, where I was able to say goodbye as they left for the bus. We started dating that summer.

In 2007, Melissa was taking a well-deserved week off from work. I was at work as usual. It was a fairly light day as I only sent three e-mails and made two check-ins, including a little work on a database optimizer for Lightroom (which was not shipped — instead we put the feature into the Catalog Info window for 1.1).

——

On 2/18/08 12:44 PM, “Kevin Connor” wrote:
In February of 1990 I was actually doing administrative temp work while trying to figure out how to translate my recently acquired liberal arts degree into a meaningful career. If only I had discovered Photoshop upon its initial launch, perhaps I would have gotten on track a bit sooner!

As for February 19, 2007, I don’t recall my specific activities for the day, but I do remember that I was incredibly excited about finally shipping Lightroom, née Shadowland, as a 1.0 product. I simply can’t overstate how much better February 19, 2007 was for me, compared to February 19, 1990.

——

On 2/18/08 12:59 PM, “Peter Merrill” wrote:
In 02-19-90 I was working on the Windows version of Harvard graphics for Software Publishing. Skills and techniques I developed allowed me to jump start the Windows version of Photoshop.

On 02-19-07 I was kicking myself for not joining the LR team after Mark Hamburg asked me to help Seetha with the Windows version when Aperture shipped. I felt I couldn’t leave Acrobat given what was at stake with it meeting the schedule.

——

On 2/18/08 11:42 PM, “Stephen Johnson” wrote:
On Feb 19, 1990 I was working at home trading off between a book project and caring for my new two month old daughter Sara, now 18. Part of the photo play before and after her birth was my Kodak XL-6500 Dye-sub printer with its video frame capture and a new photo program, BarneyScan XP, I had been using on my Great Central Valley book project. Of course, that same program was also licensed to Adobe and renamed Photoshop for its February 1990 shipping.

Zoom forward to February 2007 and I was in Antarctica, moving slowly through coastal waterways, watching gentle sunsets amid graying skies, humpback whales playing with our ship and penguins swimming everywhere. We visited the most amazing array of ice form, well beyond imagination in a place called Pleneau Bay, but commonly referred to as the Iceberg Graveyard. I preferred to think it as a wonderland of spires, cathedrals and shrines. Lightroom was my means our seeing what I had photographed, quickly access success, and heading back out on deck to take in yet more.

——

As for Jeff Schewe, he can’t be absolutely sure what he was doing but the shot below was done about the 17 or 18th of February, 1990 (we suppose it could have been delivered on that Monday).

And no, no Photoshop was involved (Jeff wouldn’t get Photoshop until after August 16th, 1992–read this article to see his first Photoshop job–it was garbage, really!).

No, this shot was a straight multiple exposure, one for the food and one to burn in the “spot lights”. And yes, it would have been A LOT EASIER to have done in Photoshop!

To see what Jeff was doing on February 19th, 2007 check this web page.

So, do you remember what you were doing on the day that Photoshop 1.0 or Lightroom 1.0 shipped? If you do, post a comment and tell us your story…

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

In the grand scheme of human history, February 19th may not go down as a momentous occasion, but it’s recently come to light that at least in the world of digital imaging, today signifies a more important date than most anybody realized. And that folks, is the delicious irony.

I’ve been noted as somewhat of a historian when it comes to Photoshop lore. I wrote an article for the now defunct publication Photo Electric Imaging (PEI). Elmo Sapwater, the senior editor at the time, had known that at one point in time, I was going to do a Photoshop book (ironically still listed here by Amazon) and one chapter was going to be a History of Photoshop. Due to a lot of factors, the book was never produced, but I had gathered a lot of info (and portraits of a lot of engineers) so Elmo thought it would make for a great story for the Feb, 2000 issue-Photoshop’s 10th birthday.

The image above was the cover (click here to read the story behind making the cover image). The article is still available in PDF form from my website here.

Photoshop 1.0 box shot (by Jeff Schewe)

So, okay, I knew that Photoshop shipped in February of 1990. But recently, Kevin Connor of Adobe was asked by PC World magazine EXACTLY when Photoshop 1.0 “officially” shipped. Kevin didn’t know, so he sent out an email to Russell Brown (because Russell was actually at Adobe then) as well as Thomas Knoll (since he was the co-author) and myself (since I had written the “History”).

Neither Russell nor I knew…but Thomas sent this along in an email:

On 1/3/08 7:49 AM, “Thomas Knoll” wrote:
> I’m about 80% sure it was Feb 19, 1990.

Well, if Thomas is 80% sure about anything, that’s good enough for me…so from that point on, I considered Photoshop’s “birthday” to be February 19th, 1990. Even Adobe finally woke up to the birthday occasion, it seems Adobe Germany wanted to celebrate Photoshop’s 18th birthday because in Germany, it denotes an official coming of age. I got phone calls and emails from Adobe marketing about making stuff available, such as the History article and box shots, which I did. I even filled out an email questionnaire for the Addison-Wesly blog about the birthday (my part is in English). So did Katrin Eismann (most of hers is in English but some in German, which Katrin speaks fluently).

But, something about February 19th stuck with me. I remembered that last year on 02-19-2007, I was down in Antarctica with Michael Reichmann on our 2nd photo expedition along with Bill Atkinson, JP Caponigro, Stephen Johnson, Ian Lyons and Seth Resnick. Read Michael’s article Antarctica 2007 – What Worked? What Didn’t. I specifically remember that on the 19th, we organized an instructors only Zodiak cruise to shoot material for the Lightroom 1.0 on-line launch party that was due to happen after we returned. I even did a story about the party on Lightroom-News.com called Backstage at The Lightroom Launch Party.

I had posted both the video we shot while in Antarctica as well as a slideshow of images shot on February 19th, 2007. You can find the videos and slideshow here. In addition to the video (which is, in itself very funny) there’s also a video of Seth going swimming with the icebergs (well, bergy bits) which is worth the view.

One of the shots I took on 02-19-2007.

I thought it was pretty interesting to find out that Lighroom and Photoshop both shipped on the same day, thus sharing “birthdays”. It’s also interesting that the original co-author of Photoshop, Thomas Knoll, was also involved in Lightroom (Lighroom uses the Camera Raw pipeline) and that the #2 engineer on Photoshop, Mark Hamburg, was also the founder of Lightroom.

Photoshop turns 18 (old enough to vote) while Lightroom is only one year old–still in diapers.

What are the odds?

But that February 19 date was still bouncing around in my head. Then it hit me, Camera Raw was announced and shipped February 19th, 2003. The announcement was made by Bryan Lamkin at Photoshop World in Los Angeles which ran the 19th, 20th and 21st. I was there because Adobe convinced Thomas Knoll to show up and help promote Camera Raw 1.0 and that it would work in Photoshop 7. Bryan introduced Thomas at the keynote. After the event, we all went over to Greg Gorman’s house for a big party. Greg called it my 50th birthday party (my birthday is the 22nd of February).

Bryan’s Powerpoint presentation slide…

…announcing Camera Raw. It was made available for download for $99.95 starting that day.

This is what Camera Raw 1.0 looked like running in Photoshop 7 (rather primitive when compared to Camera Raw 4). Camera Raw 2 was released later in 2003 when Photoshop CS was shipped the same week as Photo Plus Expo.

So, now we must come to the conclusion that the day, February 19, 2008 does have some real significance. It’s Photoshop’s 18th birthday, Camera Raw’s 5th birthday and Lightroom’s 1st birthday. One might wonder if some elf at Adobe has done this on purpose…well, I’m here to tell you that ain’t so. Adobe is always worried more about the “next version” and rarely, if ever, marks the passing of some distant milestone…even if it does have great significance.

About all I can say is, thanks Thomas (and John) for getting hooked up in the first place to write a little application that Adobe thought would sell a few hundred copies a year (and turned into a pivotal point in the history of the digital imaging industry).

Here are some additional links to Photoshop and Lightroom lore on PhotoshopNews.com:

Profile of Thomas & John

The Evolution of the Photoshop Splash Screen

The Evolution of the Photoshop Tool Bar

The Shadowland/Lightroom Development Story

A Visit to Adobe

A Visit to the Adobe Lightroom Engineers

The Photoshop Widows Club (Photoshop history by Ruth Knoll)

Photoshop Widows Club–Parte Due (Camera Raw history by Ruth Knoll)

Photoshop Widows Club–Rebecca Schewe (Jeff’s history with Photoshop by Becky Schewe)

Original post by Jeff Schewe