Mac OS X Leopard

With 300+ new features, Leopard is the most impressive Mac OS X version yet.

                       

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Creative Stuff

To view designs, like templates, intros, colages etc, user can click on creative stuff link.  I have updated this column and had placed the links and fewwebsite  designs

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Adobe to open Lightroom to developers

Adobe plans to release Photoshop Lightroom 1.1 on Tuesday, but bigger changes will come later when the company starts letting outside programmers add their own plug-ins to the software.

The update responds to user complaints, fixes bugs and adds features that Adobe couldn’t squeeze into the 1.0 release last February, said Lightroom Product Manager Tom Hogarty. For example, performance and memory errors are improved on Windows systems; tools for sharpening, noise reduction and red-eye removal work better; photographers get more control over storing images in catalogs; and the software now fully supports Windows Vista.

Lightroom 1.1, unlike the original Photoshop software, remains a closed package that only Adobe can modify. But that will change when Adobe opens up its interfaces to outside developers.

Hogarty wouldn’t say when Adobe will release a software developer kit to permit that third-party programming, but the wheels are in motion.

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Red Glow

This Photoshop tutorial will show you how to create a red glow web layout.

Step 1.Start of by making a new photoshop document, with dimensions

Step 2.Create a curve, Next, we’re going to convert the path into a curved line. Set the brush size to 7, the foreground color to dark grey (433A39) and then create a new layer. Right click on the path, in the path panel, and select “stroke path”. This will create a dark grey stroke with a radius of 7.

Step 3.Next, make a selection using the curve, feather (select > feather) it by 1 pixel, contract (select > modify > contract) it by 2 pixels and then fill the selection with a light grey (DADADA)

Step 4. Change the blending mode of the layer to “color dodge”, in the layers paneland.

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Adobe Photoshop CS3 – Working With The Vanishing Point Filter

A quick look at how to work with the Vanishing Point filter in Photoshop CS3. In this Photoshop CS3 video tutorial you will learn the following:

• How to familiarize yourself with the Vanishing Point features.
• How to create a new plane in the Vanishing Point filter.
• How to tweak the handles to make perfect planes in Vanishing Point.

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Adobe Photoshop CS3 – Using The New Black And White Adjustment Tools

Learn how to use the amazing black and white conversion tools in Photoshop CS3. This new tool makes turning a color photo into a stunning black and white photo easy. Learn how to make the right adjustments so that your pictures look perfect.
In this Photoshop CS3 video tutorial you will learn the following:

• How to call up the black and white adjustment conversion tool.
• How to control the black and white conversion sliders.
• How to create various effects using the sliders.
• How to add a tint to your photo.

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SWX: A new data exchange format for Flash

Flash is getting a new data exchange format today! It’s my pleasure to introduce you to SWX (previously known as project codename The Tangent.)

SWX stands for SWF Data Exchange Format. It’s a new way of working with data in Flash that uses simple SWF files to exchange data. SWX is the natural, native way to get data into Flash: You loadMovie() your data.

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Macromedia

Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software house headquartered in San Francisco, California producing such products as Macromedia Flash. The line of Macromedia products is now controlled by its former rival, Adobe Systems, which acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005

History
Macromedia was formed by the 1992 merger of Authorware Inc. (makers of Authorware) and MacroMind-Paracomp (makers of Macromind Director). Director, an interactive multimedia authoring tool widely used to make CD-ROMs and information kiosks, was Macromedia’s flagship product until the mid-1990s. As the CD-ROM market began to decline and the World Wide Web gained in popularity, Macromedia created Shockwave, a Director viewer plugin for Web browsers, but decided it also needed to expand its market by branching out into web-native media tools. 

Acquistion
To jumpstart its web strategy, the company made two acquisitions in 1996. First, Macromedia acquired FutureWave Software, makers of FutureSplash Animator, an animation tool originally designed for pen-based computing devices. Because of the small size of the FutureSplash viewer application, it was particularly suited for download over the Web, where at the time most users had low-bandwidth connections. Macromedia renamed Splash to Macromedia Flash, and following the lead of Netscape, distributed the Flash Player as a free browser plugin in order to quickly gain market share. 

Purchase
On April 18, 2005, Adobe Systems announced an agreement to acquire Macromedia in a stock swap valued at about $3.4 billion on the last trading day before the announcement. The acquisition was consummated on December 3, 2005, and the companies’ operations, networks, and customer care organizations were integrated shortly thereafter

 Products
List of Macromedia software
For the future of Macromedia please look to Adobe Systems for more information about the new structures of Adobe/Macromedia.
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Mashups: The Small Business Applications

By Renee Oricchio

The next big thing involves combining two or more applications into one new mutant application that is customized for your business’ specific needs. While the business world races to catch up with Web 2.0 applications like wikis, RSS feeds, and widgets, the “next thing” is already here and starting to catch on fast: mashups.

“It’s the next natural step of the Web,” says Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst from Zapthink, an IT advisory firm based in Baltimore, Md.

Mashups are a hybrid genre of Web applications that borrow from two or more other Web applications or data sources and then literally mash them up into one unique application. For example, a company called Infopia has developed a mashup that eBay sellers can use combining the data from their online stores with the tools of Salesforce.com, such as customer relationship management (CRM), inventory management, and online performance analytics.

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Cringley: Apple and Intel to merge; Steve Jobs finally beats Bill Gates

What’s behind Apple’s announcement that future Macs will use Intel processors “is so baffling and staggering that it isn’t surprising that nobody has yet figured it out until now,” Robert X. Cringely writes. “Apple and Intel are merging.” …Intel hates Microsoft. It hasn’t always been that way, but in recent years Microsoft has abused its relationship with Intel and used AMD as a cudgel against Intel. Even worse, from Intel’s standpoint Microsoft doesn’t work hard enough to challenge its hardware. For Intel to keep growing, people have to replace their PCs more often and Microsoft’s bloatware strategy just isn’t making that happen, especially if they keep delaying Longhorn. Enter Apple. This isn’t a story about Intel gaining another three percent market share at the expense of IBM, it is about Intel taking back control of the desktop from Microsoft.Intel is fed up with Microsoft. Microsoft has no innovation that drives what Intel must have, which is a use for more processing power. And when they did have one with the Xbox, they went elsewhere.

So Intel buys Apple and works with their OEMs to get products out in the market. The OEMs would love to be able to offer a higher margin product with better reliability than Microsoft. Intel/Apple enters the market just as Microsoft announces yet another delay in their next generation OS. By the way, the new Apple OS for the Intel Architecture has a compatibility mode with Windows (I’m just guessing on this one).

This scenario works well for everyone except Microsoft. If Intel was able to own the Mac OS and make it available to all the OEMs, it could break the back of Microsoft. And if they tuned the OS to take advantage of unique features that only Intel had, they would put AMD back in the box, too. Apple could return Intel to its traditional role of being where all the value was in the PC world. And Apple/Intel could easily extend this to the consumer electronics world. How much would it cost Intel to buy Apple? Not much. And if they paid in stock it would cost nothing at all since investors would drive shares through the roof on a huge swell of user enthusiasm.

That’s the story as I see it unfolding. Steve Jobs finally beats Bill Gates. And with the sale of Apple to Intel, Steve accepts the position of CEO of the Pixar/Disney/Sony Media Company.