When it comes to image manipulation tools, the granddaddy of them all has to be Adobe Photoshop. Go to pretty much any company that spends any time manipulating images and they will have Photoshop. It is, to all intents and purposes, the standard against which all others are measured.

It’s been quite some time since Adobe launched a new version of its Photoshop software but finally, that time has come. Well, at least in the form of a new Beta.

Late yesterday, the company released Photoshop CS6 beta into the wild. It features a new, faster and more modern user interface, re-engineered design tools and content-aware patching.

“Photoshop CS6 will be a milestone release that pushes the boundaries of imaging innovation with incredible speed and performance,” said Winston Hendrickson, vice president products, Creative Media Solutions, Adobe. “We couldn’t wait to share this beta of Photoshop CS6 with our customers and are looking forward to hearing from them and seeing the ways they are incorporating the beta into their daily creative workflows.”

If you want to check out the new beta it would help to have fast internet. The file weighs in at about 1GB. PC users need to have a 2GHz or faster processor with at least 1GB of RAM and be running Windows XP SP3 or Windows 7. Mac users need multicore Intel processor, 1GB of RAM and OS X 10.6.8 or newer.

The Photoshop CS6 beta is available now from Adobe’s website. Expect the final version sometime in 2012.

If you want to know more, click through for the full press release from Adobe.

Continue Reading →

Once the dominant player in the mobile and web content delivery space, Adobe’s Flash has seen quite a backlash against it in recent years. In truth, tt was always kind of a pain, at least for me, made websites look pretty ugly and often hogged system resources on my Macs to the point of crashing the entire system.

But the beginning of the end was probably Apple and then CEO Steve Jobs’ staunch refusal to include Flash on any of its iOS devices, including the iPhone and iPad. At the time some commented that Apple was making a big mistake in not including Flash on its devices. Now it looks like those people may have to reconsider their opinions.

According to reports, Adobe says it will “no longer adapt” the once-dominant program for handling multimedia and animation on computers and mobile devices. In an email to developers Adobe added that it will “continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.”

Previously, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs led the opposition to the program, which he said in 2010 was “unreliable, vulnerable to hacking, a battery hog, and gave Adobe too much power over the services that could be offered on mobile devices.” Besides, power over mobile devices was his job, not Adobe’s. I kid, I kid. Much love to Steve.

At the time, Apple, Google, and Microsoft said they preferred an open system: the pretty cool and easy to use HTML5. However, in spite of this, Flash survived and was incorporated on Google Android and BlackBerry smartphones — until now. Although, having used a few Android phones with Flash enabled, it was still pretty much a POS.

However, now it looks like even Adobe has seen the proverbial writing on the wall and has decided to end mobile Flash and concentrate on HTML 5. Smart move. A bit late, but smart nonetheless. Now let’s hope they end up killing Flash altogether and we never, ever have to see it again.

With Sprint’s new, shiny and huge HTC EVO 4G and the upcoming iPhone 4 hogging the smartphone spotlight, the focus is off of Verizon and their lineup of Android phones. But not for long.

Next week on June 23rd, a day before the iPhone 4 is released, Verizon, Motorola, and Adobe will be holding a press conference. That press conference, we hear, will be to introduce the world to their two newest Android devices, the Droid X (formerly known as the Droid Shadow) and the Droid 2.

The Droid X seems to be the closest competitor to the HTC EVO 4G, with a 4.4 inch screen, an 8 MP camera capable of shooting 720p video, and a 1GHz ARMv7 processor. It also comes packed with a built-in HDMI port, 8GB of storage, a multi-touch keyboard, and Android 2.1 with some form of Motoblur, Motorola’s social networking software.

The familiar touch sensitive shortcut buttons from the original Droid have also been replaced with real buttons. The device looks monstrous next to the iPhone and HTC EVO, but is also said to be rather skinny  From everything we’ve heard, this phone is going to be snappy, snazzy, and sweet, and a top player in the smartphone battle for dominance.

Continue Reading →

Day two of Google’s annual developer’s conference proved to be quite a bit more exciting in terms of new announcements. As I said earlier, day one was all about HTML5, Wave and open-source video codec, VP8.

Today, Google announced the newest version of the Android OS v2.2, dubbed ‘FroYo.’ For some reason, I now have a craving for frozen yogurt, but I digress. Other big announcements included flash support for Android as well as Google TV, their open-source venture to bring the web to your TV and revolutionize your couch-surfing forever.

Android OS 2.2 or ‘FroYo’ offers increased speed and includes 20 new features designed to help the enterprise user, including support for Microsoft Exchange. A demo showed the new OS running faster than previous OS version “Eclair” as well as the iPad. Additional features include tethering built-in at the platform level, better data backup, a new cloud-to-mobile messaging API that allow desktop users to look up directions on their desktop and then send them to their Android device.

Pretty slick, but perhaps the biggest Android-related announcement? Support for flash via Adobe’s Flash Player 10.1 public beta. (Take that, Steve Jobs!) The newest version of flash is mobile-optimized and addresses the two top complaints with Adobe’s flash product: resource-hogging behavior and battery-destroying power requirements. Wired.com tested the latest version of flash on Android 2.2 and found no significant problems on either front.

Continue Reading →

This week On the Radar bring a whole slew of new and interesting stuff. Let us know if we missed anything.

• The Flickcast’s own Elisabeth Rappe reports from the set of Jonah Hex (for another site but we don’t care, we love her).

• James Cameron says 3D will replace 2D soon. Yes, but when will substance replace style?

• True Blood gets a comic book. At least that’s better than a Lady Gaga comic. . . oh, wait.

• Heroes to get the axe? Isn’t it about time, really? The show has pretty much sucked sense Season One.

• Judge Dredd is returning to the big screen. He is the law, dammit!

• Some guys made a Mega Man movie. Why? Why the hell not?

• Hayden Christensen to help rip off The Da Vinci Code in The Genesis Code. But what about the younglings?

• Michael Bay says the Racist Robots will be banished from Transformers 3. On a related note, Michael Bay is a liar.

Continue Reading →

If you thought it was just a matter of time before Steve Jobs would come around, see the error of his ways and embrace The Flash (no, not the superhero) well, to put it nicely, you were wrong. Not gonna happen. . . ever. How do we know? Simple, Steve told us so.

In a statement signed off on by Jobs himself, Apple has posted their “Thoughts on Flash” which highlights most of what has been said in the past about why Apple won’t be supporting Flash on iPhone OS devices like the iPhone and iPad. They will also be blocking programs that attempt to recompile and be used as iPhone OS applications, especially games.

Still not convinced? Think it’s all just a misunderstanding at that Steve’s resolve will weaken? Well, take a look at what Apple said and tell us there’s room for doubt that Steve Jobs hates Flash:

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years.

The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

Continue Reading →

Even though Apple won’t be attending this year’s Macworld Expo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, that isn’t stopping organizers IDG from having one. This year, in what they are calling ‘The Start of a new Era” the organizers have assembled a host of great speakers, panels and events for Apple and Mac enthusiasts everywhere.

Some of the highlights of the event include an evening with David Pogue, Q&A with writer/director Kevin Smith, the 20th anniversary of Photoshop event, Macworld Magizine’s “Best of Show” awards and a hands-on demo of Apple’s latest product, the iPad.

The Show Floor opens Thursday: 12:00pm to 6:00pm

Thursday’s Highlights:

Late Night with David Pogue – Join New York Times’ Columnis David Pogue for song parodies, surprise guests, jokes at Apple’s expense, and a lot of geeking out.
9:00am – 10:00am

See the Best New Products First

11:00am – 12:00pm
Q&A with Kevin Smith – filmmaker and director of Clerks, Chasing Amy, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. The conversation, sure to be lively, wry and irreverent, will give Macworld attendees a special opportunity to engage with Smith as he answers audience questions – nothing is off limits!
2:00pm – 3:00pm

Continue Reading →

Now that I’ve had a chance to think about it and perhaps Steve Jobs’ “reality distortion field” has worn off a bit, there are some things about the iPad I don’t like or wish had been, or hadn’t been, included in the new device. On the surface, the iPad seems like a great device and one that I will most likely get. But today’s announcement still left me wondering about a few things.

And here they are:

No camera – For a device like this it would make sense to have a video camera for video conferencing and to take pictures and video, much like the iPhone 3GS. If this device is supposed to be some sort of laptop replacement, it should have a camera. The deliberate omission of a camera smells like an obvious ploy by Apple to not cannibalize sales of the iPhone and iPod.

No Flash – Say what you will about Adobe’s Flash but for the full Internet browsing experience you still need to have Flash. Sure, the iPhone doesn’t have it but if this is supposed to be a larger, better device that can replace my 13″ MacBook, it should have Flash.

Navigating to web pages and seeing those black rectangles where video should be isn’t the fantastic experience Apple makes it out to be. It’s just bad and seriously undermines the credibility of Apple’s mobile web browser.

Storage – I realize that Apple probably isn’t positioning the iPad as a complete laptop replacement but it would still be nice to have more storage than the maximum of 64GB. Of course, having more storage would probably mean that battery life would suffer or the device would be more expensive but still, video files are usually pretty large and I’ve also got a lot of music and other files, plus applications and games, so larger storage options would be great.

Continue Reading →