Last Reminders for the Walk Tomorrow

Hello everyone,

Wow, I can’t believe it was raining the whole day today. I’m just hoping that it will all pour tonight so that we’d have good weather tomorrow.

Just a cool fact before I start — I can’t believe that there’s 27 walks in the Philippines this year! Last year, we only had 1: the one I led. This is just an amazing growth!

I realized that our meeting place is in an uncovered area! So, in case the weather is bad tomorrow, our meeting place will change. I will meet you guys at the Starbucks area in Greenbelt 3, between Starbucks and Cafe Havana.

Btw, in case you’re bringing a car, weekend rates at Greenbelt Parking is P45. I think this applies to all Greenbelt Malls. Last time I parked was at Greenbelt 5 and it was a flat rate on a weekend.

I also ran across some tips on what to shoot (from Laurie Excell). This is very applicable for us tomorrow.

Some final things to put on your checklist before you go to the walk:

• Get your gear ready. Charge your batteries! That includes both your camera batteries and your batteries for your flash (if you’re bringing one). Make sure to clean your lenses too!
• Empty out your memory cards. You don’t want to go there with a full memory card. You might not be able to take a lot of photos. If you have backup or spare memory cards, bring them as well.
• You don’t have to bring your laptop. You might think that we have to upload photos immediately after the walk. Well, we don’t have to! We have a week (deadline of July 25) to upload our photos. I also don’t want you lugging around a big bag tomorrow while walking around. I want us all to be as light as we can be!
• Wear comfortable clothes, and be ready to bring a jacket in case it rains tomorrow.
• Be there early so we can still talk and I can brief you guys on what will happen.

After the walk, we will all be going to Seattle’s Best. We’ll enjoy a cup of coffee (for some reason, it’s always nice to drink coffee and watch the rain fall) and share our photos/experiences with each other. Thanks to all who gave their feedback on our venue.

Oh, and on the day before the walk, Scott is giving away a freebie to everyone: 1 month free access to Kelby Training Online! This just sweetens the whole experience of the whole walk! You can now enjoy learning Photoshop, Lightroom and Digital Photography from the experts by accessing the training anytime you want! In order to access this, you have to  login to our Photowalk Location Page. Right now, the code is still not there, but I will let you know once it’s there.

And if I may leave one final message — I know you will all be competitive (because of the prizes) in taking photos. Just don’t forget that the overall spirit of the walk is for us to be with fellow photographers and just have a great time!

See you all tomorrow!

Photoshop World ’09 Boston: The Game Is On

Photoshop World ’09 Boston kicked off today with its popular Keynote.

One of the new things NAPP did this year is to have a live blog. Check it out now to know what’s new this year.

There are some announcements/videos there that are not being shown on the net yet, but here are some things that might interest you:

• Wacom introduced the Intuos 4. I’m not (yet) a tablet person but if you want details, check out the following links:
  • Terry White’s first impressions on Intuos 4
  • Wacom’s website for Intuos 4

• NAPP also made the WaterMark Creator
  • This is only available to NAPP members and it’s using Adobe’s Extension Manager.
  • It’s a pretty cool and handy tool, if you ask me
  • Here’s a screenshot (only a portion) of the WaterMark Creator:

Don’t feel bad if you’re not a NAPP member. You know  you can always join now and get some goodies free with your subscription (usually a DVD). Plus, you get 8 issues of Photoshop User Magazine.

Before I forget, one of the new benefits you get from being a NAPP member is this — a fee online class from Kelby Training each month!

If you haven’t done so, check out kelbytraining.com. It’s a great site to learn Photoshop, Photography, the whole Creative Suite and more — all at your own time and convenience. Plus, NAPP members have a discount! Told ya it’s worth it to be a NAPP Member…

And since you’re kind enough to read my post, don’t forget to check out Scott Kelby’s Blog extension for Photoshop that makes his blog available right inside Photoshop! Cool, eh! This is how it looks inside Photoshop:

Later…

NAPP’s Lightroom 2 Info

NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) also launched a couple of things for Lightroom 2. Here they are:

1. Lightroom 2 Learning Center

2. Updated Trainings on KelbyTraining.com by Matt K:
http://www.kelbytraining.com/instructors/matt-kloskowski.html
. Classes include: Lightroom 2 Power Session and Lightroom 2 In-Depth.

3. Lightroom Killer Tips Entry on the release of Lightroom

4. Scott Kelby’s Post on Lightroom’s launch

5. And finally, don’t miss Scott’s Entry on Lightroom 2 vs his LR2 wishlist…

Enjoy!!!

Photoshop Express is here!

Finally, the rumored web-version of Photoshop is here and it’s called Photoshop Express! How do you use it? Simple – just go to the Adobe Photoshop Express site and sign-up for an account. With this, you get:

• free 2GB of online storage for your photos
• a personalized URL for your site: name.photoshop.com
• very intuitive interface to edit your photos: cropping, saturation boost, black and white, and a lot more!
• create and share galleries and albums on the web
• link to Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa

Just be sure to have enough bandwidth (fast internet connection) to make the most of it because it’s using Flash to load everything. It’s cool… you even get to edit everything in full-screen mode!

I have created my own gallery. You can check it out at:
http://mikelaophotos.photoshop.com


Also, just a few minutes after the announcement from Terry White about Photoshop Express, Kelby Training launched a FREE TRAINING site (
http://www.photoshopexpresstechniques.com
)dedicated for Photoshop Express hosted by Matt Kloskowski! That’s fast!

My first impressions: I was amazed at the interface and how simple it is to fix a photo. The interface is very similar to Adobe Bridge. You get the photos in the middle and you can adjust the size of the thumbnails. Putting the description and getting the file info is also there on the main window called the ‘My Photos’.



Editing was designed so that you just pick what the best color option is! There is no need for you to play around with layers. The main controls for editing are located on the left-hand side of the screen. When you click an option, it offers you different versions of the photos (using that effect) by displaying a filmstrip bar on top of your photo. When you mouse over an option, the main image displays a preview of what the final image will look like. Cropping/Rotating is a lot similar to Lightroom because it shows you the ‘Rule-of-Thirds Grid’.

Here’s how the editing interface looks like:



Finally, the ‘My Gallery’ is where you can see all your albums and is also similar to what the other people will see when they visit your personalized site.



What are you waiting for? Go ahead and sign-up!!!

News Day…

Wow, it’s been almost 4 weeks since I posted an entry. I’m still in the process of organizing and fixing my photos from my recent trip to Palawan and a couple of other shoots I did so watch out for that. In the meantime, I wanted to share with you some news in photography/post-processing that might interest you.

First up is the newly-launched online training from Kelby Training. Instead of paying for each course, you only have to pay a subscription fee – either monthly or annually! This is a great venue to learn Photoshop and other Adobe products from the best folks. Some trainings that interest me are the Photoshop for Wedding Photographers, CS3 Power Session and Lightroom Stuff. One more thing, there’s even a free trial if you want to see how the tutorials are done.

From my experience, these group of guys (NAPP) really make it simple for you to learn and understand Photoshop (including Lightroom). For photographers, I would recommend you subscribe to the following podcasts because these will truly increase your post-processing and workflow techniques:

• Photoshop User TV
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips
• Adobe Photoshop Killer Tips

Second, there’s a new book for photographers by Joe McNally called “The Moment It Clicks“. I have read a lot of hype about this book on the internet and I’m already adding this to my cart on amazon.com! I think this stuff is great because Joe will be sharing with us some of his secrets when he goes out shooting.

Scott Kelby’s 7-Point System is so easy to read and understand. The photo from the previous post (scroll down to see the shark) was done using his method. I highly recommend it for people who want to take their photos a step further!