Stephen Shankland Blog

Nikon app teaches photography on the fly

I've owned a dSLR camera for years, but it spends most of its time on Auto mode. That's because I can't wrap my brain around things like aperture priority, ISO, and f-stops.

Unsurprisingly, most of my shots bite. I've tried reading enlightening books like How to Do Everything with Your Digital Camera (nepotism alert: I know the author), but that doesn't help me when, say, I'm standing on the soccer-field sidelines trying to capture my daughter as she scores a goal.

What I need is a simple, informative how-to guide that fits in my more

Smile! Flickr has an official iPhone app

Better late than never? Following in the footsteps of countless third-party efforts, Flickr has finally made its official debut in the App Store.

The app hits the ground running--make that scrolling--with a slick Ken Burns-style slideshow of hand-picked images from the site.

An initial tap of the Recent, You, or Contacts button along the bottom leads you through a one-time authorization process (which requires a visit to Safari), after which you gain access to the respective user-account features on Flickr.

You can also search for photos and videos, of course, and do all the usual stuff with whatever you find: more

Corel Digital Studio 2010 opens up to consumers

Multimedia tools are nothing new to Corel, a company now responsible for titles in the Ulead family and Video Studio Pro. But the particular combination of features in Corel Digital Studio 2010 (Windows) is something new. Or rather, a it's a fresh take on Corel's existing technology.

The software suite marries editing and project creation tools for photos and videos, giving the application interfaces a tinted look and rounded corners that share the philosophy of Apple's iPhoto and iMovie. Corel's goal was to provide an entry-level media manipulation package for home users that is also appealing

Adobe tests raw support for Olympus E-P1, new Nikons

Adobe Systems has released a test version of its Camera Raw 5.5 plug-in so Photoshop can handle raw images from the Olympus E-P1 high-end compact camera, Nikon's new D3000 entry-level SLR, mid-range D300s SLR, and Panasonic's DMC-FZ35 ultrazoom.

Raw images are made of data taken directly from cameras' image sensors without in-camera processing, and they offer more flexibility and higher quality to those willing to put up with the hassle of converting them to JPEG or other more universal formats with software such as Adobe's Photoshop and Lightroom, Apple's Aperture and iPhoto, or Google's more

Adobe's next Lightroom to forsake PowerPC Macs

Adobe Systems, taking the same course with its forthcoming Creative Suite applications, will offer the next Mac OS X version of Photoshop Lightroom only on Intel-based machines.

Apple has chosen to discontinue support for Macs using PowerPC processors beginning with its next operating system, version 10.6 aka Snow Leopard, which is due to arrive in coming weeks. Adobe said last week that its next Creative Suite will follow suit. The CS family includes programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, DreamWeaver, and Flash Professional.

Lightroom, which is for editing and cataloging photos, isn't part of the suite, but it'more

How Flickr needs to change

I use and enjoy Flickr. But with each passing month it worries me more that when I visit a photo page on the Yahoo photo-sharing site, it looks essentially identical to when I first started using it four years ago.

Flickr has typical online photo site abilities to upload, share, and print photos. What sets it apart, though, are features that make Flickr a community: discussions in comments below photos, groups for like-minded photographers to share their work, and social networking attributes that let people stay on top of their contacts' doings.

Flickr revamped members' home pages starting last September, more

Adobe kills low-end Photoshop, urges users online

Adobe Systems is discontinuing Photoshop Album Starter Edition, the lowest rung on its ladder of image-editing software products, and the company is nudging its users toward the online Photoshop.com site.

Adobe launched Photoshop Album Starter Edition in 2003 as a free, bare-bones image cataloging and editing package. Adobe discontinued the line, though, and support for it ended June 30.

So what's the alternative? In a customer note, Adobe puts its online service front and center.

"As part of our commitment to providing customers with a free photo-editing solution, we have created Photoshop.com, an exciting new online service more

Toshiba plans 64GB SDXC memory cards for 2010

The new SDXC specification for faster, higher-capacity flash cards emerged in January, and Toshiba now promises the cards themselves will begin arriving about a year afterward.

Toshiba said Monday it expects to be the first to bring SDXC cards to market, with testing samples of a 64GB version shipping in November and the real thing shipping in the spring of 2010. Those dates will be key moments in what doubtless will be a gradual transition away from the prevailing SDHC standard.

SDXC backers promise higher capacities and data transfer speeds for SDXC, which is important for devices such as video more

Adobe reclaims design guru from Microsoft

A high-powered programmer who'd left Adobe Systems to lead a Microsoft Windows interface design team is heading back after just over a year.

Mark Hamburg had worked on Adobe Photoshop since version 2.0 in 1990 and then was instrumental in designing its photography-specific cousin, Lightroom, which sports a radically different user interface.

Hamburg left Adobe for Microsoft in 2008 to become a "distinguished engineer" leading work on improving operating system usability. He called the job an opportunity that "was a little too interesting to turn down" because he found the Windows' experience "really annoying."

On Friday, Adobe's German public relations staff welcomed Hamburg back more

Adobe: why Lightroom image export isn't faster

Updated 3:04 p.m. PDT with further Adobe remarks. I misunderstood the company's position: Lightroom's export behavior reflects engineering priorities.

Earlier this month, I encountered an Adobe Photoshop Lightroom analysis by consultant Lloyd Chambers that expressed surprise with a facet of the image editing and cataloging software: it didn't export photos as fast as possible.

Chambers found that if a photographer wants to produce JPEG or TIF images from the originals in the program, the fastest way is to divide the batch into thirds and export each third separately. Using a modern Mac Pro system, exporting a test set of photos took 351 seconds as one batch and 189 seconds divided into three batches running at the same time.

"The big disappointment is the sluggish performance importing and exporting files, which are tasks that are key to efficient workflow--tasks one has to do over and over. Most of the 'juice' of a Mac Pro goes untapped," Chambers concluded. "You have to load it up with more than one job to force more of the available CPU cores to be used. Lightroom should do this automatically!"

The study caught the attention of others, including Scott Kelby, head of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. I was intrigued, too, because although many programming chores are difficult to spread across multiple processor cores, exporting photos is trivially easy since it breaks conveniently into independent bite-sized pieces. So I thought I'd see what Adobe had to say for itself.