Where is Ben?

February Photoshop Seminars

I only have one public event on my schedule for February and that's PMA in Orlando, FL on Feb. 24-27. In fact, it's the only event between now and when my bus adventure is scheduled to begin, which should give me a good amount of time to liquidate my physical possessions and shop for buses (since the largest concentration of bus dealers is right around Orlando. At the PMA conference, I'll be presenting the following sessions:

Sunday, Feb. 26:
Creative Effects that Sell (Class CL4)

Monday, Feb. 27:
Making Photoshop Fly (Class CL7)
Photoshop Masking & Compositing (Class N13)

The Next Chapter Is About To Begin!

My house is under contract as of today and my motorcoach adventure is scheduled to begin March 16h. Between now and then, I'll have to do many things including:

1) Selling 98% of my material possessions
2) Finding the right motorcoach to purchase
3) Getting as many projects out of the way so I can have time to make the transition
4) structuring my business around my adventures

February 11th is the deadline for the person who is buying my house from being able to back out of the deal (if they were to not like what the inspector reports back), so I'll be spending most of my time liquidating possessions before that date and then I'll shift to buying the motorcoach once I know things are locked in.

MacBook Pro Observations

 

As I'm sure you've heard, Apple introduced their first Intel-based Macs yesterday. The one I'm most interested in is the MacBook Pro, which is the replacement for the PowerBook. Here are a few things to consider when looking at the new machine:

Great Stuff:

1. Much faster then Powerbook
2. Much brighter screen than Powerbook
3. Built-in iSight Camera
4. Includes Front Row with remote that can be used to control presentations
5. Can burn to both DVD + and - R's
6. New power adapter (all mine have mangled ends)

Clarification: The #1 above needs a little qualification: You might notice that Apple's web site does not compare the performance of mainstream applications such as Photoshop because those applications have not been optimized to run on the Intel chip. Instead, they have to be run through Rosetta, which is similar to how OS9 applications ran in Classic mode after OSX was released. So, Apple instead relies on showing benchmarks that measure processor performance instead of real-world performance. When they say the new MacBook Pro's are 4-5x faster than the old ones, do not assume they are referring to real-world performance with the current generation of applications. Those applications have to be revised in order to talk to the Intel chip directly instead of going through Rosetta.

Bad Stuff:

1. No FireWire 800 support
2. No PC card slot, so you need a card reader for Compact Flash cards
3. No modem (can't fax or connect to net in some hotels)
4. Lower resolution screen (60 fewer pixels in the hight compared to 15" Powerbook)

Stuff to Think About:

1. They replaced the PC Card slot with a smaller Express Card slot (don't know of any available accessories for this slot yet and it's too small to fit Compact Flash cards from my digital camera)
2. They just happened to forget to list the estimated battery life on the units
3. You should be able to boot into either Mac OS or Windows OS!

I would not purchase one of the first units released because they have not been tested by a wide enough audience yet (heck most developers didn't even know about them). I'd end up waiting at least 6 months for them to work the kinks out and check all the on-line reports because doing any critical work on these new machines.

Heading to Florida

I'll be speaking at the following public events on this visit to Florida:

• January 11-13: Mastering Color Hands-On Class @ Palm Beach Photographic Centre
• January 17-21: FotoFusion Conference @ Palm Beach Photographic Centre

Adobe Responds to Aperture

Adobe has just released a public beta of Lightroom. Lightroom is a stand-alone program designed for organizing your photo library, optimizing images, creating slideshows, and printing the results. I've worked with the program for a few days and am rather impressed. It is very similar in concept to Apple's Aperture, but does not have the stringent hardware requirements (Aperture won't run on my dual 2GHz G5 with 4.5 GB of RAM... I'd need to purchase a new video card). The public beta if free and will expire in June. At the moment it is a Mac-only application, but it will eventually be available for Windows.

A few things I like about Lightroom when compared to Aperture:
• I can run it on just about any machine that can run OSX 10.4
• I can leave my images in their original folders on my hard drive instead of being forced to import them into a different file system
• It seems to be rather fast, even on average machines
• It has a simple and effective method for converting images to grayscale
• It allows me to tweak individual colors without making selections

If you want to find more info on the product, do a search on google for Lightroom and Shadowland (it's development code name).

Free MacUpdate Memberships!

MacUpdate is a web site that I use to search for software related to any topic (like personal productivity) and to find out what the newest version of any program is. They are offering free membership for 2006 if you sign up in the month of January (it's usually $20). So, if you're a Mac user and want to keep your software up-to-date, then go signup.

Via The Mac Observer

January Photoshop Seminars

I'll be presenting the following seminars in the month of January

• January 11-13: Mastering Color Hands-On Class @ Palm Beach Photographic Centre
• January 17-21: FotoFusion Conference @ Palm Beach Photographic Centre
• January 27th: Photoshop for Photographers, Houston, TX