Posts Tagged ‘Adobe’
I'm happy to announce an important update to my Learn the Adobe Creative Suite with Terry White App. Most importantly this update addresses a video playback bug introduced in iOS 5 that prevented you from being able to see the video and only hearing the audio. This update also adds:
- Retina Display Graphics
- A new tab bar interface
- Swiping to the left and right from the episode detail page will go to the next or previous episode
- UI enhancements
- Faster show loading
- Minor bug fixes
Thanks for your patience and support! You can get the App as a free update if you already have it or for $1.99 here from the 
Although iOS supports PDFs natively (just like Mac OS X) there are features in the PDF spec that aren't supported in iOS or may never be. One of the things that has made the Portable Document Format (PDF) a success is that with the Adobe Reader of Mac, Windows and other platforms you get to have a consistent experience no matter where you view them. Now that Adobe has officially released the Free Reader for iOS and Android, "rich" PDFs can now be shared across both desktop and mobile platforms with a consistent viewing experience once again!
Here's what the Adobe Reader lets you do:
View PDF files:
• Quickly open PDF files from e-mail, the Web or any application that supports “Open In…”
• View ePortfolio (PDF Portfolios), PDF Packages, annotations and drawing markups
• Read text annotations such as Sticky Notes
Access encrypted PDF files:
• Open and view password-protected PDF files
• Access files secured by Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management, which helps protect sensitive documents
• Supports the highest grade of PDF encryption, up to AES256
Interact with PDF files:
• Search text to find specific information
• Use bookmarks to jump directly to a section in your PDF file
• Select single page or continuous scroll modes
• Easily zoom in on text or images for a closer view
• Quickly navigate through large files using thumbnails
• Select and copy text from a PDF file to the clipboard
Print and Share files:
• Print wirelessly with AirPrint
• Share PDF files with other applications using “Open In…”
• Email PDF documents as attachments
Watch this video for a quick overview of the app.
Get the Adobe Reader for iOS for FREE here from the
And, Adobe released Adobe Reader 10.1 for Android, offering many of the same great features for fast, high-quality interaction with PDF files on your Android smartphones and tablets.
What You Can Do with Adobe Reader 10.1 for iOS
Adobe has updated its 3 Photoshop Touch Companion Apps for Adobe Photoshop CS 5. The New versions take advantage of the iPad 2's camera as well as other ways to work with the images on your iPad and send them over to Photoshop on the desktop. Russell Brown is here to show us the new features.
You can get Adobe Nav for iPad for $1.99 here from the
You can get Adobe Eazel for iPad for $2.99 here from the
You can get Adobe Color Lava for iPad for $2.99 here from the
Just yesterday, Adobe released the three companion applications on the iPad for Photoshop. The three applications utilize the brand new Photoshop SDK which is also available to developers. These three apps each do their own different things, from helping you to blend color to letting you paint on the iPad and transfer it directly into Photoshop.
Sure, it isn’t entire Photoshop on the iPad but it is parts that do very well on the iPad. I particularly like being able to use the iPad as a canvas to draw on, to then send it to Photoshop for final work. Going even further, I’d say this now makes the iPad useful to paint with (to an extent).
Here are the links to each of the three different applications. Clicking on the app name (ie. the link) will take you straight to the iTunes App Store where they are all available.
- Adobe Eazel ($4.99): Paint on the iPad and access it through Photoshop.
- Adobe Nav ($1.99): Use the iPad as a tool selector for Photoshop.
- Adobe Color Lava ($1.99): Blend custom colors together for use in Photoshop.
Here is a video from Jeff Tranberry that shows all of the apps and how to get them set up and connected to Photoshop.
One of the Apps that I've been waiting for for iOS is finally here! I participate and give presentation over the web via Adobe Connect Pro all the time. However, in order to really participate in those meetings up till now I've had to do so on my MacBook Pro or desktop computer. In a pinch I could participate via the older iPhone version, but the screen was just too small at times to see some of the slides. Now that Adobe Connect Mobile 1.5 for iOS has become a Universal App and has support for the iPhone's retina display, viewing live meetings will be much much easier on iPads, iPhones and iPod touch devices. With the 2-Way Video Feed Support you can even share your video/audio feed from your iOS device including iPad 2.
See it in action here:
Adobe offers regular webinars and internet presentations on Creative Suite. I usually do a couple of "Ask a CS Evangelist" sessions a quarter as well. Now you'll be able to check those out on your iPad in all of it's 10.1" display glory. To find out when the next Creative Suite session is, follow the Creative Suite Twitter account here or check us out on Facebook here.
Learn more about how you can get your own Adobe Connect Pro Online Meeting Room here.
You can get Adobe Connect Mobile 1.5 for FREE here from the
Photographers have been eyeing the iPad since day one trying to figure out ways to incorporate it into their existing workflows. One of the most popular photo organization and processing tools on the desktop is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. While Lightroom will bring in photos from just about any source, including your iPad, photographers have dreamed of a way to do image selection, metadata/keyword work, and other tasks while still out in the field and yes on an iPad. The form factor, touch screen, built-in wireless capabilities and long battery life make the iPad more attractive than a laptop for many situations. That brings us to today's review of a NEW App that promises to help bridge the gap between the iPad and Lightroom on the desktop.
Photosmith Lets You Organize in the Field
Lightroom does a lot of things and I want to make sure you don't walk away from this review thinking that Photosmith is Lightroom for the iPad. It's NOT! What it does do though is appealing to many. Think of Photosmith as most of the most commonly used features of the Lightroom Library Module, on your iPad. When you import your pictures into Lightroom you can use the Library module to organize them into collections, make picks and rejects, rate them, assign color labels, add keywords and other metadata. That's exactly what Photosmith allows you to do on your iPad. While that's great, what makes it even better is that the organizing that you do on the iPad is then sync'd to Lightroom on the desktop!
What's the workflow?
The first thing you'll need to do is get the images from your digital camera into your iPad. There are several ways to do that not the least being using Apple's own Camera Connection Kit that allows you to bring images in from an SD card OR directly from just about any camera using a USB cable. Yes this works with both JPG and RAW. If your camera shoots to Compact Flash Cards you can either use the USB option of the Camera Connection Kit or this new CF Reader for iPad, which is in route to me as we speak (I'll review it when I get it). I've also covered wireless options here and here. Once you get the images into the iPad's Camera Roll presumably while you're still out in the field, you would then be able to see them the minute you launch Photosmith. At that point you could then do all the things I mentioned above for organizing the shots into collections and making your selections. Once you get back to your computer you can then wirelessly (or via USB) sync everything you've done on the iPad to Lightroom (with their free Lightroom plug-in) on the desktop. What you would end up with are only the images you wanted and they would already be organized into collections, have ratings, titles, etc. and be ready to go with the rest of your workflow in Lightroom. There is a full-screen mode that shows just your image as well as mult-gesture support.
Yep, there's sharing too
The App let's you upload your images directly to the most popular sites as well as email.
Sounds great! What's missing?
Well you have to first remember that this is a 1.0 product and yes there are known limitations. The first limitation is that there are no image processing features in the App. Any image adjustments you want to do should either be done back on the desktop in Lightroom/Photoshop or in other Apps on the iPad. There is no support for bringing in the videos from your camera. Although you can reject a photo in Photosmith, neither Pick flags or Reject flags sync over! That's a biggie! I rarely use Pick Flags as it is, but if you use this App you're going to have to use either color labels (which I use) or star ratings to identify picks in Lightroom. If you reject a photo in Photosmith, that photo doesn't sync over to Lightroom to begin with. In this case my workflow is to reject in the field, put the images that are left in a Collection in the App and then mark my favorites with a Green Label (Blue for client picks). Lastly, while you can sync back to Photosmith when you make changes in Lightroom, it doesn't sync everything back. For example, once the Collection was in Lightroom I did some experiments where I made some picks, rejects, color label changes, star ratings and keywords. I also edited one shot in the Develop module. When I performed another sync the only things that seemed to go back to the iPad were the keywords and the updated image preview from the changes I made in Develop. Granted, I don't see this as a huge problem since most people will be using this going in one direction, but it would be nice to have an official list of what gets sync'd in either direction. Lastly one thing I found a bit odd was that i couldn't see any way to apply the same keyword to multiple photos at the same time. Hopefully, I just missed it?
What I'd like to see in the next update – While you can select multiple photos, the UI seems a bit clumsy. Perhaps some type of two finger tap to start selecting more than one photo would work better. Also I'd like to see the ability to size thumbnails. There needs to be additional ways of bringing in photos besides the Camera Rol. While you can export to Dropbox, there is no import (or better yet, sync) to Dropbox. I know that the App is designed to work with images off your camera, but since this is an organizational tool you might have images in other places (like your existing albums) that you want to incorporate in a collection. Also they give you several choices of image size for uploading to Dropbox & Flickr from small jpg all the way to RAW (for Dropbox), but for email you have no options. While I'm on the sharing topic, it would be nice to see some watermarking support. It would be nice to have the option for visible watermarks when sending photos to a client to review.
Ultimately I'd like to see either a direct tie to the Shuttersnitch and/or the Eye-Fi App or this App needs its own ability to do a wireless tethered workflow! As it stands right now I'm more interested in a wireless capture and review process than a wired/card reader one.
The Bottom Line
This is a good step in the right direction for making the iPad a "better" mobile tool for photographers. The workflow is still a little clunky and the App is still missing some needed features. However, for what it does and having to basically engineer this thing around Apple's limitations as well as not having direct access to the Lightroom code, these guys have done a great job. I look forward to watching this product evolve!
If you have an iPad and you're a Lightroom user with a desire to leave your computer behind, this is a good App to have in your ever evolving workflow.
You can get Photosmith for $17.99 here from the
One of my favorite iOS image editing Apps, Photoshop Express has just been updated to version 2.0
Photoshop Express 2.0 remains a free App that now has more support for iPhone 4's retina display as well as multitasking.
New Adobe Camera Pack
If you want to go further Photoshop Express 2.0 now offers an in-app purchase of the Adobe Camera Pack. This in-app purchase gives you additional features like an instant Review feature that is similar to what you find on traditional point and shoot and DSLR cameras. For example, when I take a photo on any of my other cameras, I see the photo for a few seconds on the LCD to make sure I got the shot. However, after you take a photo with the built-in iDevice cameras the photo goes directly to the camera roll without showing you what it looks like first. Granted you can tap to see the photo that you've just taken, but then you're missing out on taking more photos while the action is still going on. With Photoshop Express you can now set a 2 second or 5 second review that will show you the photo AND allow you to delete it, right after you take the shot to make sure it's what you want. You can just keep right on shooting without any additional navigation. You also get a timer for taking shots that you want to get into or have the iDevice be totally steady on a tripod. You can also take advantage of Adobe legendary Noise Reduction features:
You can download Photoshop Express 2.0 for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch for free here from the
The iPad is a popular gadget amongst graphic designers. With SneakPeek it just became a whole lot more useful. SneakPeek for iOS allows you to preview your Adobe InDesign CS5 and Adobe Illustrator CS5 directly on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. The concept is really quite simple. Both InDesign CS5 and Illustrator CS5 now have the ability to save embedded "previews" in their respective file formats. SneakPeek can use those previews to display on your iOS devices. This is extremely useful for viewing artwork from Illustrator, but it becomes even more useful because InDesign CS5 can now save ALL of the pages in the preview as well. With SneakPeek you can thumb through an entire InDesign document right on your device. The next question becomes: "how do I get these files into the App?" SneakPeek takes advantage of the "Open In" command found in Apps like Safari, Mail and yes…..Dropbox! I just wrote a post the other day on "5 Ways To Take Advantage of Dropbox" and now we have a great 6th way.
How does it work?
The first thing you have to realize is that while this App does what it says, you still have to change a preference in InDesign to take advantage of it. InDesign CS5 by default will only save a "medium" quality preview and only of the 1st 2 pages of the file by default. You have to change your InDesign Preferences to save a larger preview (if you want it to look good on the iPad) and enable the All Pages option. Yes, this will make your InDesign files a little larger, but it is soooo worth it.
For Illustrator CS5 just make sure you have PDF Compatible File enabled in the Save dialog box.
Now that you've made your file the next question is "how do I get it on my iPad?" You have a few options. You can email it to yourself and use the Mail Open In command to Open the attachement in SneakPeek. You could post the file on a website and do the same command in Safari. Lastly and probably the best way is to put the file in your Dropbox (get a FREE 2GB Dropbox account here) from your Mac or PC. Then using the FREE Dropbox App you can select the file and choose Open In SneakPeek to view it. Once the file is open you can just swipe through the pages and pinch to zoom. Awesome!
But wait, there's more
Seeing the file is cool, but you could do that already with a PDF version of the file. So SneakPeek takes it up a notch by also allowing you to see which fonts were used in the document, which images are linked as well as which colors and swatches were used.
The Bottom Line
This App is a must have for the InDesign and Illustrator users out there. It's also an Art Director's dream come true. While it does work there is one thing I'd like to see added in the next update and that is DIRECT support for Dropbox. Instead of having to open the document in the Dropbox App first and then move it over, I'd love to see the ability to log into my Dropbox account directly in the App. This is possible because I have other Apps that allow this. No need to stop there either. Might as well add direct support for MobileMe and FTP too. These direct connections would definitely earn a 5th star from me. However, there is no reason for a Creative Suite user not to grab this one immediately.
You can get SneakPeek for $9.99 here from the
Adobe has released an update today to Photoshop Express for iOS, now in version 1.5, adding quite a few noticeable features. Firstly, the app now enabled batch capturing of photos together with a review mode for looking through images. The update also includes support for the Retina display on the iPhone 4.
Finally, the most important update is with some iOS 4.2 features, enabling the app to be able to upload photos in the background. This means that you no longer have to stick around waiting for your photos to get uploaded before moving on and doing something else.
Back a while ago, Adobe released the first ever version of Adobe Ideas (which Terry reviewed here). Now Adobe has come out with an update to the popular application with some highly anticipated features, turning this app more into a proper drawing application.
Layers are here!
Let’s get the biggest new feature addition over with from the start. You can purchase an in-app purchase that will enable layers in your document. For each sketch you are able to create ten layers with order and opacity controls available for each layer.
(universal for iPhone and iPad)
