Adobe No, Adobe Yes, in China
Today, Adobe has announced CS6. Time to cough up some more cash in Adobe's direction, I suppose. I really don't mind it, but then again it's cash out of pocket. I know I'll love the additional features and soon consider them necessities. Funny, but I'm getting along just fine without any of these new features, now. Soon, I won't be able to imagine that. I suppose that's a testament to the changing technology and Adobe's effective marketing.
At this point, I have no idea what any of the new features are. I suppose today the Internet is all abuzz with previews and, I suspect, lynda.com has probably already posted some initial videos. They typically do on the day Adobe launches a new title. For me, however, life often has a way of imposing deadlines and priorities that are independent Adobe's marketing plans. Ahem. Tomorrow I'm off to the press check for LensWork #100 and the following day I leave for 10 days in China. I hope Adobe will forgive me if I postpone my review of these soon-to-be critical features until after I return.
They shouldn't feel too bad, however, because they will be with me on this trip with a new software I'm anxious to test. In a somewhat gut-wrenching decision, I've decided to leave my netbook behind and take with me only my Android tablet. This decision has one implication that causes me to break out in a cold sweat — I won't have Lightroom with me. Reviewing my images in the field has become a habit over the last few years, in fact a "normal working method." This trip, however, I'll be using my ASUS Transformer tablet and Adobe's new Photoshop Touch app. I've been playing with it for a week now and it's an amazingly powerful tool for use in the Android environment. It's a bit of a misnomer to related to its powerhouse progenitor, Photoshop, but I understand from a marketing point of view this probably makes sense. Photoshop Touch has the ability to do some pretty sophisticated in the field image editing, at least enough to fulfill my needs while away from the office and doing some simple blog posting. Because it only reads JPG files, I'll shoot this trip in RAW+JPG so I can access PS Touch. This means a few more memory cards, too. It's an acceptable trade off for 16 hours of battery life and the other advantages of a tablet device.
Speaking of blog posting, if you're interested in following along during my trip, bookmark http://china.brooksjensenarts.com where I'll be sharing some of my experiences and hopefully a few images. This trip is shorter than my last adventure in inner-Mongolia, so I doubt I'll have kind of extensive blog commentary that I had during my visit to Xiang Sha Wan. Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to this visit to the southern island of Hainan and experiencing a bit of tropical China. No down vests on this trip! Hopefully, with Adobe's cooperation, the images from Photoshop Touch will make for an interesting addition.
I use Lightroom for about 98% of my processing. I will skip this upgrade and buy a copy of Elements instead. I've been threatening to do that for a a couple of years. Now is a good chance to give it a try.
Have a great trip and enjoy the food.
Posted by: David Blanchard | 04/23/2012 at 09:52 PM