Archive for the 'Apple' category

Lightzone is a RAW manipulation tool (”Your personal digital darkroom“) that some people like a lot for its specific set of qualities (clean neat interface, support for a lot of RAW file formats, ability to handle batch jobs, end-to-end color management) despite its hefty price tag ($150 for the Basic version and $250 for the Full version for Windows or Mac).

Now, thanks to Download Squad, I noticed that there is more than the 30-day trial version that you could be interested into. Light Crafts made LightZone available for free for those of you running GNU/Linux. I would say that it make sense to have a partition running Linux on your PC (or maybe even a LiveCD boot and some reserved disk space) just to be able to run some useful applications like LightZone on your computer.

The Linux-based LightZone is essentially the Full version of the software application, so it’s a really neat bargain.

However, you will not find it on the corporate web site of Light Crafts. You should go to the specific LightZone for Linux web site. Light Crafts is OK with it, but does not want to support this version. However, since this is good software…

PS: After all, it looks a little like the shareware strategy of some years ago. You can use my software application, it should be attracting you to pay in full later for additional benefits (here, to get to run it natively on your Mac OSX or Windows).

Update: Modified the link to LightZone for Linux.

Microsoft promised that the new graphics standard for Windows (DirectX 10) will not be applied to anything older than Windows Vista. This was enough to push some people in looking for ways to make it work on Windows XP (WinXP), or on Mac, or on Linux. A guy, named Cody Brocious from San Diego, California, claims to have had the first success at this. He created a wrapping code to make those DirectX 10 appplications (mostly games) run on Windows XP and even on some DirectX 9 hardware.

That could quickly become one of the most interesting development in video games for Windows this year.

Cody Brocious official Project Alky blog.

From the Inquirer.

The 27th of March should be launch day for the newest Adobe Photoshop graphics product line: Creative Suite 3 or CS3. Be prepared for more details from Adobe, but the products will not be shipping before the second trimester (and Q2 may mean just before Summer).

There will be new features and the important support of both Vista and PPC+Intel Apple Mac (Universal Binary). The news come with the information that CS2 (and quite a number of other Adobe products) will NOT be upgraded to support Vista. Either it seemed too complicated or not compelling enough for Adobe. You will have to pay full price to go to the new product.

Speaking of new, the official prices start to be known:

• Standard Design suite: 1269€ for InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat 8 pro
• Premium Design suite: 1999€ for InDesign, Photoshop-Extended, Illustrator, Acrobat 8 pro, Flash professional and DreamWeaver
• Standard web suite: 999€ for Flash pro, DreamWeaver, FireWorks and Contribute
• Premium web suite: 1699€ for Photoshop-Extended, Illustrator, Acrobat 8 pro, Flash pro, DreamWeaver, FireWorks and Contribute
• Production Premium suite: 1999€ for Photoshop-Extended, Illustrator, Flash pro, DreamWeaver, AfterEffects pro, Premiere Pro, SoundBooth and Encore
• Master Collection: 2799€ for ALL (InDesign, Photoshop-Extended, Illustrator, Acrobat 8 pro, Flash pro, DreamWeaver, AfterEffects pro, Premiere Pro, SoundBooth, Encore, FireWorks and Contribute

NeoOffice is a OS X port of OppenOffice.org by a group of developers who have thought from the beginning that the Main OO.o team was taking the wrong tack in offering X-11 support on the Mac.

Aqua-native, includes both PPC and Intel binaries, allows Spotlight to index both content and metadata of OpenOffice and OpenDocument files.

Importantly, NeoOffice v2.1 arrives on March 27th, and it will immediately include support for Microsoft Office 2007 document formats.

In the spotlight: Sony Alpha 900 Canon EOS 5D Mk II Nikon D700 FX Download Nero for free

HD Photo, this is th new name of the image format from Microsoft that they want to replace JPEG, PNG, Raw and GIF. It was previously known -at launch time- as Windows Media Photo and it is now fully integrated into Windows Vista.

Adobe Photoshop will support this format through a plugin to donwload from a Microsoft web site. For the time being, this is only a beta version for Windows, but a Mac version is under preparation.

The format should be natively supported soon (within 12 to 18 months!) by digital camera manufacturers. It works with both Photoshop CS2 and CS3.

PS: Really! everybody is trying to stick HD to anything that remotely looks like image-related, even when there is no objective reason for it (apart from the media attention magnet it becomes).

Following the current trends about LCD panels is quite interesting. Currently, on professional trade publications like DigiTimes, we keep hearing one simple message:

The price of the LCD panels is falling down in 2007, except for small sizes.

Essentially, it translates into: the LCD TV sets and screen displays are going to see plumeting prices in 2007. The relative slow down of sales and increased production capacity leads to a price war that should be favorable to the buyer (you and me). However, on the smaller end of the market, things are slightly different. Laptops are fonder and fonder of relatively small size screens (14″, 15″ to 17″) but they strive for better resolution and this is still in limited availability. The laptop prices will not go down parallely.

OpenOffice, the free desktop suite competing directly against MS Office, reached an important milestone with the availability of version 2.2, Release Candidate 3. This time, we believe, the officiel release of v2.2 is near.

Some of the most sensitive improvements were expected by the users:

• Calc should improve notably the management of dynamic pivot tables from Excel origin Excel (a powerful tool that is too often under-appreciated or ignored).
• PDF files: More control possibilities/options, including the ability to generate in-PDF bookmarks.
• Adaptation to Vista for a better compatibility.
• Appearance of SQL requests inside requests for the database manager.
• Stability improvements on the Mac version (along with size reduction).
• Better compatibility with Slackware, NetBSD, Linux 64, Linux SPARC.

For a download (still free, of course), go and check on the OpenOffice web site.

We thought that last year’s story of burning and exploding laptop batteries from Sony was a dead one, but everybody is speaking about this now: A MacBook burned while charging its battery. And this is not one of the batteries recalled by Sony. The problem may not be fully under control.

An importance feature to check when considering the size of an LCD screen. The pixels do not always have the same size on all the screens. At some diagonal sizes, the manufacturers just increase the glass surface but not the number of pixels.

This is the reason why the French-speaking Hardware.fr web site made a nice little comparison graph that I re-use here:

All this could have a noticable influence depending on the application you envison for your new screen: photo handling and retouching (you may be willing to have large readable pixels), video games (your graphics card must be able to drive so many pixels or the LCD screen willl have to interpolate up from the low resolution the card will be providing), desktop application (you may be willing to have a maximum number of windws on your desktop, or your reading will be improved by larger pixels).

I recently installed on my main Windows-PC computer a (rather old) LCD display from Hyundai: ImageQuest Q17. I wanted to improve significantly the correct color calibration. Fortunately, I could get a Pantone ColorVision SpyderPro for the weekend.

It was only a matter of minutes to setup the sensor and run the calibration process. Everything goes smoothly since it is a completely automated process (you only have to wait while test colors change on your screen until the correct calibration is reached).

The result is impressive. Before doing it, I knew that my colors were slightly off. After, the white and greys are so much better that it was immediately perceptible.

Great product that exists both for Apple and Windows.

Adobe has been observing the desktop application market and specifically seen Google challenging Microsoft with its online Google desktop suite (spreadsheet, text processor, agenda, etc.). They determined that they want to go the same way in order to ensure a bright future for the Photoshop line.

Currently, Adobe has already split its market niche between entry-level Photoshop Elements and high-level PhotoShop CS suite. From what has been told this week, they wish to go one step further by introducing online version of their image editing tools. It should be free even if limited to a subset of functions.

It is definitely interesting. Do not expect that to translate into free professional-level tools (no free CS4 suite). However it means that, depending on your needs, you will be able to choose from the widest possible spectrum:

• Free online
• Low cost (PS Elements)
• Pro-grade (PS CS suite)

The user (you and me) get maximum choice, the software company (Adobe) covers all bases and reduces the risk of being out-sold from the lower level and provides a consistent upgrade path from $0 to $1000 products. This is the way technology innovation should be used by companies willing to protect their market while serving user needs.

Others, please, take notice.

PS: You should also notice that Adobe is already ben starting this kind of move in relation with video edition announcing Remix, an online video mixing/remixing tool.

PPS: According to Monkey Bites, it would be launched within 6 months and supported by ads.

Again, I come back to the issue of free fonts of great quality. DaFont holds links to hundreds of character fonts readily downlodable for both Mac and PC. Usually, this leads to a bunch of crap fonts. Here, the top 100 list is really of impressive quality. Waltograph is copying Walt Disney’s signature, Evanescence is both sophisticated and elegant, Loki Cola will remind you of some cola brand, Shanghai is the archetypical Chinese font, and all the others are really pleasant.

Now, what is often left aside in most font libraries is the presence (or lack) of accented letters. DaFont tells you clearly which ones have those internationally-needed letters and adds also the Euro sign to it.

It’s pleasant to merely go sight-seeing.