Adobe updates Camera Raw and Lightroom; adds support for 22 new cameras

Adobe has today released the final versions of Lightroom 4.2 and Adobe Camera Raw 7.2 for public consumption. Finally some good news for the early adopters of the cameras that have been coming out recently.

Adobe Camera Raw 7.2 and Lightroom 4.2 add support for 21 new cameras not just limited to Canon or Nikon camps. The update also plays well with the Sony RX100 and the Fujifilm XF1 to name a few (the full list at the end of the article). While ACR 7.2 only adds RAW support, Lightroom also gets equipped with tethering support, the lack of which has been quite a bother for many of those who bought these cameras at the time of release. Tethering is great for many photographers as especially in a studio environment, where the camera doesn’t really need much moving. It also allows the photographer (or client) to view the shots immediately on a big screen. The lack of this ability has been severely impacting the workflow of many photographers and the support forums at Adobe have been over-loaded by the question of “when will the support be added?”

Along with RAW and tethering support, Lightroom also gets a bug fix for issues such as “The Navigator Panel in Map did not pan correctly” and the addition of roughly 45 new lens profile for chromatic aberration and distortion correction.

Well, the wait is over as the official 4.2 build of Lightroom can be downloaded directly from the Adobe website for Windows and Mac. The Adobe Camera Raw 7.2 can be downloaded directly from within Photoshop by going to “Help > Check for updates” as there is no direct way to download it from the website.

Added raw file support:

• Canon EOS 650D / Rebel T4i
• Canon EOS M
• Fujifilm XF1
• Fujifilm X-E1
• Fuji FinePix F800EXR
• Leaf Credo 40
• Leaf Credo 60
• Leica S
• Leica D-LUX 6
• Leica V-LUX 4
• Nikon Coolpix P7700
• Nikon 1 J2
• Panasonic DMC-G5
• Panasonic DMC-LX7
• Panasonic DMC-FZ200
• Pentax K-30
• Samsung EX2F
• Sony Alpha NEX-5R
• Sony Alpha NEX-6
• Sony Alpha SLT-A99V
• Sony DSC-RX100

Added tethered capture support:

• Nikon D4
• Nikon D800
• Nikon D800e
• Canon EOS Kiss X5
• Canon EOS Kiss REBEL T3i
• Canon EOS 600D
• Canon EOS Kiss X50
• Canon EOS REBEL T3
• Canon EOS 1100D
• Canon EOS 5D Mark III
• Canon EOS 1D X
  

Source: http://www.thinkdigit.com/Apps/Adobe-updates-Camera-Raw-and-Lightroom-adds_10964.html

Adobe releases Edge suite for web developers

Adobe’s relentless drive to provide exceptional products for the creative souls has met with another major addition in the form of Adobe Edge. Edge has been expanded by Adobe to include more tools and services to streamline the web development process. The various tools tackles the task of animating, coding, inspecting and packaging for mobile devices and play well not only together, but with third party applications too.

Amongst the various tools Adobe Edge Animate takes a key spot as a tool for creating animations for the web. It has an interactive UI based on WebKit in order to provide maximum fidelity across various popular browsers.

• Edge Reflow allows for the designing and laying out of websites. Reflow takes full advantage of CSS to create impressive designs along with an option to export code to etiher Dreamweaver of Edge Code.
• Edge Inspect is an inspection tool for designers to preview and tweak the final HTML code for mobile sites.
• Edge Code is powerful code editor built on the Brackets open source project optimized to work efficiently with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
• Edge WebFonts is a free web fonts service that plugs into an ever-growing online library of open-source fonts.
• PhoneGap Build – A service for packaging mobile apps built with HTML, CSS and JavaSCript for popular mobile platforms.

The idea behind this collection of products is to allow the web developers to deliver a polished product, along with making the process of creating said product much more streamlined and simpler. "We are excited to put a powerful new set of HTML5 tools into the hands of Web designers and developers and can't wait to experience the beautiful websites, digital content and mobile apps they'll create," said Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager, interactive development at Adobe. "We are passionate about enabling creative people to do anything they can imagine with Web technologies, which is why we're contributing to the Web platform and making the Edge Tools & Services available for free, including the first release of Edge Animate."

Pricing and Availability

Adobe Edge Tools & Services are available immediately as part of Adobe Creative Cloud free and paid memberships. Following an introductory period, Edge Animate is expected to be priced at US$499 for a perpetual license, US$14.99 per month for a standalone subscription, and included in a paid membership to Creative Cloud. Additional capacity for Edge Inspect and PhoneGap Build is available via standalone subscriptions priced at US$9.99 per month each and included with a Creative Cloud paid membership. Typekit paid plans which include more websites, fonts and page views are available for between US$24.99 per year and US$99 per year, with the US$49.99 per year Portfolio Plan included in paid membership to Creative Cloud.

Paid membership to Creative Cloud for individuals is US$49.99 per month based on annual membership and US$74.99 per month for month-to-month membership. Customers who own an individual license of any Creative Suite edition or single product, version CS3 or later, are currently eligible for an annual membership price of just US$29.99 per month for their first year. Education pricing is also available. For more details, visit www.adobe.com/go/creativecloud.


Source: http://www.thinkdigit.com/Software/Adobe-releases-Edge-suite-for-web-developers_10883.html

Adobe shuns Windows XP, drops support for next version of Photoshop

Adobe has issued an official statement that the next version of Photoshop will not be compatible with Windows XP. Microsoft released XP back in 2001 and for the last few years, has really been pushing people to upgrade to the newer OS.

Tom Hogarty, Adobe Product Manager, said in a blog post "The Photoshop team would like to provide advanced notice that Photoshop CS6 (13.0) will be the last major version of Photoshop to support Windows XP.” He justifies the move by explaining that the newer versions of Photoshop are very performance sensitive and therefore require modern hardware and graphical interface, which XP doesn’t provide.

“Leveraging advances available on newer operating systems and hardware allows us to deliver significantly better performance, and focus our innovation efforts around the areas of the greatest benefit to our customers. Photoshop CS6 already demonstrates that relying on a modern operating system, graphics cards/GPUs and graphics drivers can lead to substantial improvements in 3D, Blur Gallery and Lighting Effect features not available to Windows XP customers. The team hopes that by providing this information early it will help you understand our current decisions around operating system support and where we we're headed with future releases of Photoshop. We encourage all customers who are currently using Windows XP to begin making their migration plans now so they can fully take advantage of future Photoshop innovations as soon as they are available.”

Adobe has already dropped support for Lightroom on Windows XP, so the move to discontinue Photoshop isn’t unexpected.

Source: http://www.thinkdigit.com/Software/Adobe-shuns-Windows-XP-drops-support-for_10786.html