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Buy Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 and Get CS6 Free

0	Posted by Marc Leitner March 26, 2012

With an abundance of Adobe previews over the last few weeks, it's no secret that CS6 is right around the corner. Throw in this latest promotion, and we now have a clearer look at an estimated ship date. From March 26th to May 6th, 2012, purchasing a full license or upgrade of an Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 product will also get you an upgrade to CS6 at no additional cost. Aside from the obvious benefits of saving money in the long run, there are numerous reasons to take advantage of this limited-time promotion:

• Pay todays prices for tomorrows software. Whether you purchase full or upgrade licenses to CS5.5 today, you or your organization will receive the CS6 license for each of those purchases at no additional cost. That translates into significant savings, and all users will benefit from the latest and greatest Adobe software now and in the future.

• Be among the first to take advantage of the newest Creative Suite software. With this offer, you can implement the current version of Creative Suite immediately, helping yourself, or your organization, increase productivity and take advantage of powerful tools and time-saving features. When CS6 is released, users will be at the front of the line to access the most cutting-edge, feature-rich creative software available—at no additional cost.

• Standardize and save. Lets face it, managing a mix of software versions with different operating systems and hardware requirements is costly and time consuming. Deploying the latest, cutting-edge creative software across your workflow or organization gives you the opportunity to significantly reduce deployment and support costs.

Dont miss this limited-time offer to upgrade at current prices. And if you have CS2 licenses, this is your last chance to upgrade before losing your upgrade eligibility.

So what's in store for CS6? Check out a humorous preview of Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 from the editors over at The Conan OBrien Show below, or see our comprehensive Adobe Photoshop CS6: Video Previews and Sneak Peeks blog post.

Hurry! Offer ends May 6, 2012.

Photoshop CS6 Beta Now Available on Adobe Labs

0	Posted by Marc Leitner March 22, 2012

SAN JOSE, Calif.—(March 22, 2012)—Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced Adobe® Photoshop® CS6 beta, a preview of what’s to come in the next release of the industry standard in digital imaging, is available as a free download from Adobe Labs. Customers can download the beta, try out the experience and provide feedback to the product team. Packed with groundbreaking new innovations, features and incredible performance enhancements, Photoshop CS6 beta is available for the Mac OS and Microsoft® Windows® platforms. T1he final release is expected in the first half of 2012.

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.

New Features in Photoshop CS6 Beta

Photoshop CS6 beta demonstrates Adobe’s focus on huge performance enhancements, imaging magic and creativity tools that offer customers a new experience in digital imaging. Key features include new additions to the Content-Aware tools: Content-Aware Patch allows greater control by letting users select and duplicate an area of an image to fill in or patch another, and Content-Aware Move lets users select and magically move an object to a new place in the image.

Customers will experience incredible performance, powered by the new Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine*, enabling near-instant results from popular editing tools including Liquify, Puppet Warp, Transform and Lighting Effects; and a refined, modern interface featuring dark UI options to make images pop. New and re-engineered design tools make creating designs faster and more efficient. Vector layers allow users to apply dashed lines and gradient strokes, searchable layers quickly zero in on any layer, and new type styles let designers swiftly apply type treatments to their designs.

In addition, the Photoshop CS6 beta offers all the features of Adobe Photoshop CS6 and Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended, such as new 3D editing features and quantitative imaging analysis capabilities. These features will be included in the shipping version of Photoshop CS6 Extended when it becomes available.

Pricing and Availability

The Photoshop CS6 beta is available immediately as a free download in English and Japanese. At installation, users will be required to provide an Adobe ID to complete a one-time login and online product activation. For information on how to install Photoshop CS6 beta, visit www.adobe.com/go/photoshopcs6.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Now Available

0	Posted by Marc Leitner March 6, 2012

SAN JOSE, Calif.—(March 6, 2012)—Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ:ADBE) today announced the availability of Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 4 software for Mac OS and Windows. Lightroom is the essential digital photography workflow solution helping amateur and professional photographers quickly import, manage, enhance and showcase their images. First released as a public beta in January 2012, the final version of Lightroom 4 is now available for US$139.99 for the full version and US$77.99 for the upgrade, providing an incredible value for photographers. Lightroom 4 introduces refined technology for superior shadow and highlight processing, ability to create photo books, additional local adjustment controls, and enhanced video support.

"Feedback from our customers is invaluable in developing Lightroom and the real trick to a great release is to combine these insights with Adobe’s unrivalled image processing innovation," said Winston Hendrickson, vice president products, Creative Media Solutions, Adobe. "Lightroom 4 is a stunning new release that will enhance photography workflows and help photographs stand out from the crowd."

New Features in Lightroom 4

Lightroom 4 is a major release, adding significant new capabilities and innovations. New adjustment controls maximize dynamic range from cameras, recovering exceptional shadow details and highlights. The software features new and improved auto adjustments to dynamically set values for exposure and contrast, and additional local adjustment controls including Noise Reduction, Moire and White Balance.

Lightroom 4 provides photographers the tools to create beautiful photo books with text controls and a variety of easy-to-use templates, as well as a direct link for photo book creation from within the new Book module. A new intuitive Map module displays images already assigned a location, provides location tagging and reverse geo-tagging controls and saved locations for easy assignment of a photographer’s common locations.

Now, native video support gives photographers the capability to play, trim and extract frames from video clips shot on DSLRs, point-and-shoot cameras and smartphones. Video-specific presets and many standard Lightroom image adjustment controls can be applied to video clips, and adjusted videos can be exported as a H.264 file or published directly to Facebook or Flickr*.

In the Develop module, presets fully utilize new processing technology and the addition of soft proofing helps photographers tune images in a destination color space to ensure content looks its best. In addition, customers can now email images directly from Lightroom using an email account of their choice.

Pricing and Availability

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 is now available for Mac and Windows at www.sharbor.com/vendors/ADO.html for $139.99 for new users or $77.99 for upgrades. For more detailed information about product features, upgrade policies, pricing and language versions, please visit www.adobe.com/go/lightroom.

Adobe upgrade policy to expire with the release of CS6

0	Posted by Marc Leitner December 13, 2011

Whether you’re a video editor, designer, or any other form of creative professional/hobbyist, it’s probably safe to assume that you’re using at least ONE piece of Adobe software in your workflow. With what many refer to as "industry standard" applications, Adobe has always made staying up to date with their software a fairly liberal process. If you had CS3 and the new features in CS4 didn’t particularly appeal to your needs, it is entirely possible that you waited to upgrade until the release of CS5. Or, perhaps upgrading one program sets off a chain reaction causing multiple upgrades, requiring attention to budgets, planning and headaches. Whatever the case may be, if this has been your philosophy regarding Adobe upgrades, it’s time for a fresh start.

Enter CS6, the highly-anticipated upcoming release of Adobe Creative Suite. While it’s rumored to be their biggest and most monumental update yet, the release comes with an entirely new upgrade policy…

"In order to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 releases, customers will need to be on the latest version of our software (either CS5 or CS5.5 editions)." – David Wadhwani, Adobe Senior Vice President and General Manager, Digital Media Business Unit

According to Adobe, when the release of CS6 is made available, anyone using pre-CS5 software will be required to pay full price, should they choose to upgrade to the latest edition. While there is no clear answer as to when this may be, it’s also no secret that Adobe has historically planned major announcements around large industry events such as NAB. Rumored for an April 2012 release, CS6 will likely be no exception. On June 21, CEO Shantanu Narayen said during an Adobe conference call that the CS5.5 launch in April, 2011 was "the first release in our transition to an annual release cycle," adding, "We intend to ship the next milestone release of Creative Suite in 2012, and it will include an updated version of Photoshop."

If you're looking to stay up to date with the latest tools from Adobe and save money in the long run, now is absolutely the time to get up and running with CS5.5. Through 3/15/12, Adobe is offering 20% off all upgrades from CS4 and earlier, with additional savings and bundles exclusively from Safe Harbor. You can see all of our Adobe sales here, or feel free to give us a call at (800) 544-6599.

How do you feel about the new upgrade policy? Let us know in the comments section, or connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.

Adobe Acquires Auditude to Capitalize on Exploding Video Advertising Opportunity

0	Posted by Marc Leitner November 1, 2011

SAN JOSE, Calif.—(November 1, 2011)—Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that it has acquired privately held Auditude Inc., a leader in video ad management and monetization technologies for premium publishers and media companies. Through the acquisition of Auditude, Adobe® is now uniquely positioned to provide an end-to-end video offering, seamlessly connecting authoring, publishing, monetization and optimization with the goal of helping customers build long-term businesses through the delivery of quality video content and superior viewing experience across all IP-enabled devices.

"Premium video publishers want to capitalize on the foundational shift to digital by providing viewers with great media experiences and maximizing the value of their content on every IP device," said David Wadhwani, senior vice president and general manager, Digital Media Business Unit, Adobe. "With this acquisition, Adobe can now offer an unparalleled platform for authoring, distributing, analyzing and monetizing digital video experiences everywhere – simplifying workflows, increasing consumer engagement, delivering insights and driving increased revenue for content publishers."

Supporting video ad management and monetization delivered via an open architecture platform, Auditude lets premium publishers and media companies efficiently create a high-quality, TV-like, multi-device advertising experience that is an essential component to viewer loyalty and attracting major brand advertisers. Industry-leading features of the Auditude platform include: easy integration into content management and other video operations systems; outstanding targeting capabilities; flexible ad placement and ad product offerings; intuitive sales rights management; access to and control of incremental advertising demand; and efficient cross-device workflow.

"By joining Adobe we are accelerating our vision of helping top media companies and publishers maximize the value of their video content," said Jeremy Helfand, chief executive officer, Auditude. "Adobe has deep roots in video and bringing our capabilities together will provide great incremental benefits for our customers. As part of Adobe we are excited to bring publishers and media companies a platform offering that has never been possible before, driving unprecedented monetization opportunities for them."

Auditude’s advertising server platform meshes neatly with Adobe’s video technologies, such as Adobe Flash® Media Server 4.5 software and Adobe Pass. The Flash Media Server family of products delivers media to multiple platforms – including Flash, HTML and native apps – with a choice of powerful protocols that can save significant bandwidth costs and lighten network load. In addition, Adobe Pass, the industry leading TV Everywhere Platform, is enabling premium content publishers to securely bring large catalogues of programming online. The combination of Adobe Flash Media Server, Adobe Pass and Auditude creates the most comprehensive solution for the world’s leading content publishers, broadcasters and brands to encode video once, securely deliver their content across platforms on-demand and efficiently monetize it.

Adobe also plans to integrate Auditude with the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite, which consists of integrated analytics and optimization products to collect and unleash the power of customer insight. For example, using the Suite, customers can identify the most effective marketing and content delivery strategies and ad placements as well as create relevant, personalized and consistent customer experiences across channels, such as onsite, video, display, email, social and mobile. The Suite enables Adobe customers to better maximize marketing ROI and advertising yield, which ultimately can positively impact the bottom line.

Adobe Posts New "Sneak Peek" Videos

0	Posted by Marc Leitner October 17, 2011

SAN JOSE, Calif.—(October 17, 2011)—Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today posted videos of the technology "sneak peeks" that were showcased recently at the company’s annual MAX user conference in Los Angeles. Included in the videos is the image deblurring technology, demonstrated in an on-stage demo by Adobe senior research scientist Jue Wang, which has become an Internet sensation.

"We sneaked some early-stage technology from our labs during the recent Adobe MAX conference that exemplify the kind of technology innovation that is thriving across Adobe," said Kevin Lynch, chief technology officer, Adobe. "Adobe's technology leadership is ensuring that designers and developers have the tools they need to help shape the future of digital media."

The sneaks are intended to give MAX attendees a look at future technologies. These technologies may, or may not, make it into future versions of Adobe products. The demos are currently being hosted on AdobeTV, and include:

• Image Deblurring – removing blurriness from digital photos caused by camera shake while the pictures were being taken;
• Local Layer Ordering – a new way for graphic designers to create layered compositions that better reflect the way real world objects act;
• InDesign Liquid Layout – using InDesign to create high quality magazines that automatically adapt layouts across devices and screen orientation;
• Near Field Communications in Adobe AIR – using Adobe AIR to create applications that communicate with the physical world;
• Automatic Synchronization of Crowd Sourced Videos – synchronizing video clips taken with different cameras and from different vantage points into a single immersive video;
• Reverse Debugging in Flash Builder – the ability to step backwards in time while debugging a Flash application to better find the root cause of bugs;
• RubbaDub – automatically replacing the dialog of a video clip with separately recorded audio with perfect synchronization;
• Pixel Nuggets – searching through a large library of images by identifying images that contain the same people, backgrounds, landmarks, etc.;
• Monocle – a new visual tool to help developers find and fix performance problems in Flash applications;
• Video Meshes – an entirely new way to edit videos, including the ability to create 3D fly-throughs of 2D videos and change focus and depth of field;
• GPU Parallelism – using a device’s graphic processing unit (GPU) to accelerate performance of general purpose computing.

Adobe Showcases Advances in Broadcast Workflows at IBC 2011

0	Posted by Marc Leitner September 8, 2011

SAN JOSE, Calif. & AMSTERDAM—(September 8, 2011)—At the IBC 2011 Conference and Exhibition, Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ:ADBE) is showcasing new video technologies and initiatives that are enabling media professionals to create, deliver and monetize premium video content across a myriad of platforms and devices. For content delivery, Adobe® is announcing a new version of Adobe Flash® Media Server that can now deliver Flash technology to Apple iPhone and iPad devices (see separate release), a new version of Adobe Flash Access®, a robust content protection solution that is available for the Android platform and showcasing widespread adoption of Adobe Pass, a TV Everywhere user authentication solution used by leading broadcasters (see separate release). For content creation, Adobe is announcing the acquisition of certain assets of IRIDAS, a leader in high performance tools for digital color grading and enhancement of professional film and video (see separate release); accelerated industry adoption of Adobe solutions for video creation, along with an expanded partner ecosystem.

Adobe will demonstrate its new solutions and highlight key customers and partner focused initiatives during the IBC 2011 Exhibition at its stand (Hall 7, Stand 7.G27) in the RAI Convention Center, Sept. 9-13.

"At Adobe we understand the issues professional broadcasters and media publishers face throughout the entire creation-to-delivery workflow, at a time when others in the industry are focusing on one piece of the puzzle or shifting their focus altogether," said Jim Guerard, vice president and general manager for professional video and audio, Creative and Media Solutions Business Unit, Adobe. "Adobe is dedicated to helping our customers streamline their entire video workflows for any screen, and looking out for their bottom line with new ways to monetize their content on mobile devices."

Groundbreaking New Ways to Stream Media and Protect Content to a Myriad of Devices

IBC 2011 attendees will be the first to see significant new versions of Flash Media Server and Flash Access video delivery and content protection solutions, which enable video businesses to deliver scalable, protected streaming content online, including new support for mobile devices (see separate release). With Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5, media publishers now have a single, simple workflow for delivering content using the same stream to Flash-enabled devices or to the Apple iPhone and iPad. Adobe Flash Access 3.0 gives media publishers a streamlined workflow to easily protect, monetize and scale the delivery of premium video content, for the first time reaching Android mobile devices, the first of many mobile platforms.

Adobe Pass for TV Everywhere Gains Momentum

Further exemplifying Adobe’s strength in video delivery to any screen, Adobe is demonstrating Adobe Pass, the leading TV Everywhere authentication solution, which now supports top U.S. pay TV providers. Adobe Pass makes it easy for TV programmers and media companies to validate that users are entitled to content based on their pay TV subscription package. This enables content owners to have direct relationships with consumers; Pay TV providers to add more value for their customers; and Pay TV subscribers to watch the content they are already paying for anytime, anywhere. This is the promise of the broadcast industry’s TV Everywhere initiative.

Adobe Pass is now offered as a TV Everywhere implementation option to content providers serving approximately 90 percent of the U.S. pay TV market via Comcast Corp., DirecTV, Dish Network Corp., Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Inc., Verizon Communications, Inc., Cablevision Systems, Charter Communications, Suddenlink Communications and others. Content providers can leverage Adobe Pass to help pay TV subscribers to easily access TV Everywhere content via content provider websites and mobile applications. Adobe Pass is also seeing rapid and widespread adoption with popular programmers and over-the-top services including Fox Networks, Hulu, Turner Broadcasting (including the CNN app for iPad), MTV Networks, Scripps Networks Interactive and AMC Networks, which have chosen the solution to seamlessly and securely establish a user’s entitlement to premium content anywhere, anytime and on virtually any device.

Further Advancement in Industry Leading Content Creation Tools

Adobe Creative Suite® 5.5 Production Premium software has taken the industry by storm with breakthrough new features and performance that help video professionals deliver content to virtually any screen. Demand for Adobe’s video content creation tools has exploded, growing 22 percent year-over-year with 45 percent growth on the Mac, fueled by the large number of Apple Final Cut Pro customers switching to Adobe Premiere® Pro. Adobe continues to show its commitment to streamlining video workflows and announced the acquisition of certain assets of IRIDAS, an industry pioneer with a family of software products that cover all aspects of a unified color workflow, from on-set to finishing.

Strong Industry Adoption by Leading Broadcasters and Universities

Highlighting the growing demand for Production Premium across the broadcast industry, Adobe is also announcing that leading U.K. broadcaster ITV has selected Adobe Story, an online and offline collaborative script development tool, to manage preproduction of over 500 episodes per year of ITV’s popular programs Coronation Street and Emmerdale (see separate release). The beginning of the Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium script-to-screen workflow, Adobe Story integrates directly with Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 and other Adobe software to streamline the planning and preproduction phases. As the script is drafted, Adobe Story reduces production costs by automatically turning script content into relevant metadata that travels with the content and can be used throughout the Adobe digital video workflow.

Also from the U.K., the University of Salford, a leading higher educational institution offering strong opportunities in research and innovation, will engage in a strategic alliance with Adobe. The integrated collaboration will encompass the opening of a new Adobe branded, dedicated VFX studio standardized on Adobe Creative Suite CS5.5 Production Premium and the introduction of CS5.5 within its campus-wide NLE technology platform for future teaching in undergraduate and postgraduate programs. The partnership will also encompass training, research and development with a focus on new broadcast workflows. A prestigious school for leading U.K. broadcasters ITV and the BBC, the University of Salford is at the heart of MediaCityUK, a new media hub for content creation in the northwest of England.

Expanding Broadcast Partner Ecosystem

Recognizing that multiple third-party technologies are mission critical to many professional broadcast video workflows, Adobe has also expanded its ecosystem of broadcast solution partners and banded together with leading solution providers Active Storage, Primestream, Chyron, FilmPartners, Harmonic, IPV, S4M, SeaChange and Red Giant, among others. These dynamic partnerships are driven by strong customer demand to ensure the tightest possible integration with Adobe’s professional creation-to-delivery workflow.

Adobe & NVIDIA Team Up for Ray Traced Compositing

0	Posted by Marc Leitner August 10, 2011

(SIGGRAPH 2011: Vancouver BC, Canada—August 10, 2011) One thing you’re going to want to check out at SIGGRAPH 2011 in Vancouver is the Adobe pod within the NVIDIA booth, where Adobe is showcasing an experimental technology demo of GPU ray tracing for motion graphics.

By using ray tracing, a motion graphics artist can quickly generate eye catching reflections, refractions and accurate lighting – all without being a 3D rendering expert. GPUs make ray tracing practical for production. This new renderer is fast enough for you to actually scrub the timeline when using Fermi-class GPUs. With a couple of GPUs, the interaction is fast enough for you to do all your work WYSWIG within the production renderer and forget about the OpenGL mode.

Adobe’s research project is running within a test application framework that allows the compositing of 3D shape and text layers in a 3D environment. What’s remarkable is that they’re doing this with a fully ray traced renderer. While they also have an OpenGL renderer for realtime manipulation, its production rendering is 100% ray traced.

What made it practical for Adobe to build this, and reach such high performance levels, was the NVIDIA OptiX ray tracing engine. Adobe worked with NVIDIA to leverage OptiX to build their new renderer in just a few months. The job of OptiX is to let the developer concentrate on rendering while it handles all the intricacies of making it go fast on the GPU – and Adobe’s results are proving it’s good at its job.

Come visit the NVIDIA booth at SIGGRAPH to see this technology demo running on Quadro 6000 and Tesla class GPUs. For those of you not at the show, check out the video demo below.

Switching from Final Cut Pro: Premiere Pro CS5.5 Resources for Pro Editors

0	Posted by Marc Leitner July 7, 2011

Thinking about switching to Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5? Join Karl Soule as he shares some of the tricks that can make that transition easier as well as a variety of assets which will help you make an informed decision.

If you're an Avid, Final Cut, or Adobe point product owner (Photoshop, After Effects, etc), take advantage of our limited savings for over 50% off Premiere Pro CS5.5 and Production Premium CS5.5. Click the link below to the previous article in this series for more information or see all of our Adobe specials.

Updates to DVD Export Settings for MXO2 CS5.5 Users

0	Posted by Jeff Pulera July 5, 2011

If you’re using Premiere Pro CS5 or CS5.5 on the PC with Matrox MXO2 hardware, there’s some important information we’d like you to be aware of to get the best DVD export quality. This info only pertains to exporting "MPEG-2 for DVD" from a Matrox NTSC sequence – if you’re using a Matrox HD or Matrox PAL sequence, the cropping does not apply and you may disregard these instructions.

With the CS4 drivers for MXO2, a Matrox NTSC project was 720x480, but starting with CS5, Matrox changed this to 720x486. Since DVD uses 720x480 resolution, the 6 extra lines need to be cropped at export to get the proper 720x480 size for DVD. If you don’t crop these lines, the entire image will be scaled down, resulting in a quality loss. Also, it’s very important to crop a specific number of lines from the top and bottom, as choosing the wrong top and bottom numbers will soften the output quality.

With CS5, you need to crop 5 Top, 1 Bottom. With CS5.5, there are two cropping options to consider. If using the "Export" button to begin the encoding, choose 4,2. If using the "Queue" button that sends the job to Adobe Media Encoder, you must use 3,3. If you are working with a Matrox 486p sequence, use 6,0 for CS5, and 4,2 for CS5.5 (using either export method).

To set cropping, first set up all the parameters for the DVD export as you normally would. Next, at the top left of the Export window, select the SOURCE tab and click the cropping icon at the top left to make the crop settings active. Click on the "0" to the right of "Top" and then enter a number from the keyboard. Next, click the "0" to the right of "Bottom" and enter the other number. Do NOT hit the "Enter" key – this will launch the export immediately! Just click in another area of the export window to deselect the crop settings.

Now, you can toggle between the SOURCE and OUTPUT tabs to see the "before and after" results of the cropping. The image shown under the OUTPUT tab should fill the screen with no black borders. After double-checking that you entered the correct cropping numbers and that the output image looks correct, you can proceed with the encoding.

For more information, CS5 and CS5.5 users can reference pages 82 and 88 of their respective Matrox user guides. The above instructions are only for export to DVD; when exporting to a Matrox .avi file, CS5 and CS5.5 users should refer to pages 79 and 84 of their respective user guides for cropping charts.

MXO2 user guide for CS5 drivers

MXO2 user guide for CS5.5 drivers