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March 29, 2008
Lunchtime in Shinjuku
Posted by Marcus at 10:40 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
March 28, 2008
Photoshop Express Released
Adobe has released Photoshop Express, the much-anticipated online version of their flagship Photoshop software. The web app promises users the ability to upload, edit and present photos online.
If first impressions are anything to go by, Express is still very much in beta. Although the interface looks good, the site runs very slowly, clicking the back button doesn't work and the free 2MB of space available is small even for the casual user. Perhaps, as with the early versions of Google Docs, Adobe just wanted to get the product out there and let users nominate potential changes.
In a move which is going to Terms of Use Agreement carries with it Adobe's right to, "worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable" use of the images. My guess is that as with most license agreements the lawyers have been somewhat overzealous and that these terms will be relaxed in the near future.
On the plus side, the tools on offer (crop and rotate, red-eye removal, sharpen, white balance, etc.) are things that I do in Lightroom everyday. Again, Adobe's interest in simplifying the language for non-professionals is apparent in describing the clone/heal tool as 'touchup' and color saturation as 'pop color'. There's no doubt which part of the market Photoshop Express is aimed at.
At the time of writing, Adobe's servers were having a hard time keeping up with the number of user registrations. I abandoned my initial attempts to sign up for an account as the promised 'user identification email' was taking too long to arrive.
Overall, Photoshop Express shows potential, but for anyone looking to do more than simply edit picures and upload them to Facebook or Myspace, the limited functionality is going to prove frustrating. The gallery is promising, but is severely hamstrung by the limited free disk space and unwieldy interface. For now, Flickr is sure to remain the photo-sharing site of choice for the vast majority of users.
Oh, and while we're on the subject of Photoshop, check out the very funny PhotoShopped blog. Here you'll find examples of what happens when Photoshop is applied a little too liberally.
Posted by Marcus at 9:08 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 21, 2008
Camera woes
Ughhh.
I'm in photographic limbo as I wait for my D200 to come back from a painful overhaul. I'd noticed a faint line had developed in photos taken at higher ISOs. When I took the camera to the Nikon Service Center in Shinjuku I was told that the only way to fix the problem was to have the camera's sensor replaced at a cost of around fifty thousand yen (or five hundred dollars)!
Hence the 'ughhhh'.
But there is a silver lining: the stony-faced technicians at Nikon have assured me that they can have the repairs done in about a week. Just as well as I'm booked on a flight to Spain at the start of April and am taking the camera with me.
Posted by Marcus at 3:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
DJ Antomattei at The Room, Shibuya
Posted by Marcus at 3:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 17, 2008
Watching the marathon
Posted by Marcus at 4:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack