Adobe Education Technologies

Edcuation Quarterly # 16 is out now!

2009-11-06T21:24:27Z

Grab the newest edition of the Education Quarterly right here from the Adobe Education Technologies blog! Inside, you'll find showcases, contest winners, ideas, tips, and tricks. You can download it here (link to download the PDF file), or find out more online (link to the Asia-Pacific Edu website).

Lightroom 3 is in Beta and available for you to try

2009-11-02T13:56:55Z

Photoshop Lightroom,BETA,Adobe Labs

We here at the Adobe Education Technologies blog like to think of ourselves as amateur photographers (except for Rick—who is a real photographer, but the rest of us try to keep up). We are all VERY excited bout the next release of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom—version 3 BETA, and you can see it yourself on Adobe labs: (link to the Labs Lightroom 3 BETA site)

Some of the new features included for you to play with in the Lightroom 3 beta are:

Brand new performance architecture, building for the future of growing image libraries
State-of-the-art noise reduction to help you perfect your high ISO shots
Watermarking tool that helps you customize and protect your images with ease
Portable sharable slide shows—with audio—designed to give you more flexibility and impact on how you choose to share your images, you can now save and export your slide shows as videos and include audio
Flexible customizable print package creation so your print package layouts are all your own
Film grain simulation tool for enhancing your images to look as gritty as you want
New import handling designed to make importing streamlined and easy
More flexible online publishing options so you can post your images online to certain online photo sharing sites directly from inside Lightroom 3 beta

Read on for more resources and information about the next release of one of our Adobe favorites:

]]> There are many, many resources to help you if you want to have a look at the next version of Lightroom and include it in your curriculum:

For more details on the new functionality in the Lightroom 3 beta:

Watch 3 short videos about what is new in the beta: (link to the videos)
Read the blog post from the Lightroom team to learn about the vision behind the features included in the beta: (link to the Lightroom team's blog posting)
Find helpful resources on the new NAPP Lightroom 3 beta Resource Center: (link to NAPP site)
Read the release notes (PDF) for detailed information: (link to the release notes)

So, interested? Try it out now: (link to download the beta)

Oh, and I probably don't have to mention this, but I will anyway. The software id still in BETA, so please don't use it with real work. Test it with copies. Please.

New Photoshop.com APP for iPhone!

2009-10-20T16:23:57Z

What's incredibly easy and fun to use so your students and you can share & store your priceless photos on your iPhone with the world? The brand spanking new Photoshop.com application for Apple's iPhone!

]]> Not only can you instantly upload photos you've taken with your iPhone or stored in your iPhone's Camera Roll, you can even edit them on the fly right smack on your phone before you share them; you can also view thousands of photos that you may have in your Photoshop.com account directly from your iPhone including running a slideshow of them even though they are stored on the web.

All you need to do to get stared is to simply open a free Photoshop.com account (link below) and download the Photoshop.com app from the Apple Store (link below). Once you have the Photoshop.com app on your iPhone simply fire it up, take a picture or two, and edit them with features like: crop, rotate, color change, and sketch - you can even add effects like black & white. Once done simply upload your pictures to your free Photosop.com account - it's that easy.

Photoshop.com

Photoshop.com for iPhone

Updated Teacher Resources

2009-10-09T19:01:17Z

Adobe Digital School Collection,ADSC,Photoshop Elements,Premiere Elements,teacher resources,curriculum,lesson plans,netbooks

The lesson plans on the Adobe Digital School Collection teacher resources web page have been updated to include sample project assets and technical guides for the new release of Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and Adobe Premiere Elements 8. There is also a new resource page tailored for Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and netbooks. Finally, the Adobe Education SE team is hard at work creating video tutorials taking you through some of the lesson plans/projects. These can be found on Adobe TV.

Adobe TV & Elements 8

2009-09-30T18:12:54Z

Adobe TV,Photoshop Elements,Premiere Elements,Adobe Digital School Collection,Teacher resources

In case you missed it, last week we announced the updates to the Elements "twins" Photoshop Elements 8 and Premiere Elements 8, you can read more about it on Adobe.com (link to the Elements site).

However, that's not what we here at the Adobe Education Blog wanted to tell you about. We were given the opportunity to help to launch them by recording some Adobe TV (link to Adobe TV) episodes that also premiered on the same day.

]]> link to the curriculum resources).

Test Drive New Adobe Story!

2009-09-21T20:51:03Z

I'm excited to let you all know that Adobe Story, our new collaborative script development tool designed for creative professionals, producers, and writers working on or with scripts and screenplays is now available (and currently free) on Adobe Labs!

]]> The current lab preview version of Story will let you try out many of the tools that will be part of the overall features in the final version of Adobe Story.

Adobe Story in the future will go beyond just script writing, it will tightly integrate with future versions of Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium tools too.

Check out Adobe Story on Adobe Labs as well as a really nice overview of Story on Adobe TV (links below). Write that Hollywood or educational blockbuster film or video with it. And please tell Brad and Angelina hi for me when you receive your Oscar!

Adobe Story on Adobe Labs

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/story/

Adobe Story Overview on Adobe TV

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adobe-presentations-2009/a-deeper-look-at-adobe-story-/

Lightroom 2.5 and Camera Raw 5.5 released

2009-09-15T04:12:45Z

New Supported Cameras:
Support for the following cameras has been added in this update.

Nikon D300s
Nikon D3000
Olympus E-P1
Panasonic DMC-FZ35
Panasonic DMC-GF1

Camera Raw 5.5 and Lightroom 2.5 include a correction to the demosaic algorithms for Bayer sensor cameras with unequal green response. Olympus, Panasonic and Sony are among the more popular camera manufacturers affected by this change. But the demosaic correction provides only a subtle visual improvement to the processing of those raw files.

Lightroom 2.5 corrects for the following problem in Lightroom 2.4. Lightroom 2.4 on Windows continued to display the import dialog when a memory card was detected regardless of the preference setting "Show import dialog when a memory card is detected."

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/

Cheers!
Rick Miller
Sr. Solutions Engineer
Adobe Systems Inc.

Check Out the New Video Production Resource Center

2009-09-09T01:38:34Z

Creative Suite 4,Production Premium,Master Collection,digital video,sample projects,tips and tricks

The Adobe Education Technologies blog presents a fantastic new resource for faculty teaching digital video. The new Video Production Resource Center is a robust collection of sample projects, curriculum, professional development resources, tips & tricks, and more. You can also access video production resources for students with a wealth of free tutorials and inspiration from work created by their peers.

Lackluster Adobe Customer Support?

2009-08-31T17:09:26Z

Growth pains, we all have experienced them personally from time to time. Growth pains are also true for companies and Adobe Systems is no different. If you've called upon Adobe for EDU tech/customer support over the last few months you may have been put on hold for a while or even worse experienced being left to figure out on your own what to do to come up with a solution to an issue you may be having with a Adobe product or service.

]]> This of course is extremely frustrating and just like you I can't stand it when this happens to me. That's why if you have had any issues with Adobe customer support lately I'd like to sincerely apologize to you on behalf of Adobe Systems.

So what's up with Adobe support and the lackluster help you may have experienced from us?

Bottom line is Adobe is transitioning to a new global support provider. While our new service provider will improve our EDU customer service worldwide, the transition taking place right now to our new global provider has not gone as smoothly as we had anticipated.

Lambert Walsh, our VP of Technical Services spoke for Adobe on this subject recently: "Adobe is committed to providing the most advanced, innovative products and services in the world. Recently, however, our customers have experienced a level of service that is inconsistent with what they expect and deserve. This is unacceptable and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused. We are working diligently to resolve these issues."

Mr. Walsh has even written an Open Letter to Adobe Customers about our customer support and the transition to our new service provider. I encourage you to please give Mr. Walsh's letter a read so you know firsthand that we are in fact addressing these issues and are getting back on track with stellar customer support as quickly as possible (link below).

Thank you for understating and again I apologize if you've had any poor customer support from us recently.

Sincerely,

Richard John Jenkins

Open Letter to Adobe Customers (PDF, 424 K) from Mr. Lambert Walsh, VP, Technical Services

Adobe Support Site:

http://www.adobe.com/support/

Photos from Adobe Educator Summit 2009 (Santa Fe, New Mexico)

2009-08-11T18:31:48Z

Greetings all,

Last week Adobe Systems Inc. hosted the Adobe Educator Summit 2009 at the highly respected and ideally located Santa Fe Photographic Workshops (SFPW) in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

We invited 25 top photographic educators from the US and Canada to participate in a 7 day Lightroom and Photoshop boot-camp that covered learning and integrating both Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4 into the education environment.

]]> Training was run by Julieanne Kost, with presentations by Lightroom Product Manager Tom Hogarty, who also discussed & answered technical issues and feature requests. Bob Rose, also provided major assistance. Special thanks to Bill Gratton (National Manager of Educational Markets for the MAC Group and Leaf America) for providing the teachers with Leaf digital backs and Profoto lights to use during the week.

Eric Scouten (LR Eng.) and I assisted the educators during the training. Eric took numerous notes that he posted internally so that the entire Lightroom team could be aware of the needs of the attending educators. I was amazed and impressed with how quickly the LR team responded to Eric's comments. This is a team that "gets it".

We even got to photograph at the famous Eaves Movie Ranch and Tent Rocks...check out the photos below!

Movie slideshow of the photographs taken by the attending educators:
http://santafeworkshops.com/FridayShow/b3d7g6.html

*Note: for the slideshows below, please make sure that your browser isn't stretching out the images. If so, just resize your browser down so that the photos don't show up pixellated...

Captivate slideshow of some of the week's events (including Eaves Movie Ranch):
santaFe_2009.swf

Captivate slideshow from Tent Rocks:
santaFe2_2009.swf

Some photos that I took...

Cheers!
Rick Miller

How to Create a "Connect Card" with Presenter 7!

2009-08-05T20:43:57Z

Two years ago at an education conference I met way cool Dave Forrester, a school counselor at Olympia High School in Olympia, Washington. After the conference ended Dave and I decided to stay in touch. Dave handed me a thumb drive just before we departed and said it contained his "Connect Card," his virtual business card that had all his contact information on it and more. Now I had never heard of a Connect Card but when Dave informed me it was created with our very own Presenter 7 software I was eager to check it out.

]]> After arriving back at my home office I fired up Dave's Card. I was so impressed by what Dave had created with our Presenter 7 tools I decided to create my very own too. In fact now in every outbound Outlook email I send to educators there is a link to my Connect Card so K12 educators that I work with can easily get in touch with me and learn all about Adobe in K12 education.

Just so you know, Presenter 7 is not a stand along software tool like for example, Photoshop; it's a plug-in for Microsoft's Power Point and works in conjunction with Power Point's slides. It's perfect for making presentations, eLearning content and has a wonderful and easy to use quiz creation tool set that communicates with popular LMS (learning management systems).

Since I created my Connect Card I've been contacted by dozens of educators (even Adobe coworkers) asking me to show them how to create one. I decided the best way to do this was to create a series of online demos using our terrific Captivate CS4 tool to show & tell you all how to make one.

Below are five separate demo movies on how to create your own Connect Card, plus a few eductor's cards (including Daves) that are complete.

Please note, these are big movies with sound, meaning they are large files and wil take some time to load into your browser for viewing - go get a Starbuck's coffee and come back tommorow to see them (just kidding! It only takes minutes).

Connect Card Demonstration Movies: Total running time - 28:30

How to Create a Connect Card Part 1 (4:20)

How to Create a Connect Card Part 2 (8:30)

How to Create a Connect Card Part 2-B (4:30)

How to Create a Connect Card Part 3 (4:45)

How to Create a Connect Card Part 3-B (6:30)

Judy Durkin's Connect Card

Dave Forrester's Connect Card

Richard John Jenkins' Connect Card

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about making a Connect Card, or our Presenter 7 or Captivate CS4 tools.

Richard

Adobe Digital School Collection Enterprise Deployment Resources

2009-08-03T21:23:09Z

Adobe Digital School Collection,ADSC,Silent Installation,Enterprise Deployment

K-12 school districts across the United States and internationally are embracing the Adobe Digital School Collection as their solution for providing students with a foundational set of digital communication skills for the 21st century workplace. Many of these deployments can require installing the five included applications across hundreds, even thousands of machines. The Adobe Education Technologies blog has compiled a list of helpful resources for school IT personnel:

]]> Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro:

Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Enterprise Deployment Resources
http ://www .adobe.com /devnet /acrobat/enterprise_deployment.html
Adobe Customization Wizard 9 Documentation
http ://www .adobe.com /products/acrobat/pdfs /cust _wizard9_datasheet .pdf
Adobe Customization Wizard 9 Download
http ://www .adobe.com /support/downloads/detail.jsp ?ftpID =3993

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7:

Silent Install Instructions for Photoshop Elements 7 (AOO volume license version on Windows)
http ://kb2.adobe.com /cps /406/kb406822.html

Adobe Premiere Elements 7:

Silent Install Instructions for Photoshop Elements 7 (AOO volume license version on Windows)
http ://kb2.adobe.com /cps /406/kb406822.html

Adobe Soundbooth CS4 & Adobe Contribute CS4:

Adobe CS4 Enterprise Deployment Toolkit
http ://www .adobe.com /devnet /creativesuite /
Additional Adobe CS4 Deployment Resources
http ://blogs.adobe.com /edtechatadobe /adobe_software/creative_suite/

Happy Installing!

New Education Catergory at Adobe MAX Awards!

2009-07-28T18:53:19Z

I'm sure you've all heard about the awesome Adobe Max Conference taking place October 4 - 7 in Los Angeles, California (What!? You haven't registered for MAX yet? Click Here to do so right now!). But did you know that within the MAX Awards there is a brand spanking new Education category? This is the first time in fact that educators who are fans and users of Adobe's tools have their very own category at MAX!

Below is some information from our awesome Adobe Education team about the new Max Awards EDU Category.

Across education institutions worldwide, technology is transforming the way we teach, learn and experience campus life. In this new EDU category, we will look for ways in which Adobe solutions are improving learning, facilitating access to information and services, and enabling better collaboration across the institution. Winning applications do more than just communicate information to students; they engage students to become active participants in their learning or greatly simplify institutional productivity and administration.

Category- Specific Judging Criterion: Innovative applications of technology to improve teaching and learning, communication and collaboration or to enable education institutions to reduce operating costs and improve faculty and student services.

As Film producer/director/actor Woody Allen is often quoted, "80% of life is simply showing up". Click the link below and show up by submitting your EDU work with technology to the Awards!

2009 MAX Awards Submission & Rules Web Page:

https://www.adobemaxsubmission.com/submission/

Optimizing Photoshop CS4 for peak performance

2009-07-20T10:26:49Z

Adam Jerugim (Photoshop QE Product Lead) and I recently presented to members of the Adobe Technical Exchange (ATX) user group in Southern California. Adam spoke about optimizing Photoshop CS4 for peak performance; attached is his presentation slide deck.

ATX_07_18_09.pdf

Cheers!
Rick Miller

Time to Revist Adobe TV

2009-07-16T17:28:12Z

Adobe Education Technologies,Adobe TV,AdobeTV,video tutorials,tips and tricks,Adobe CS4,Adobe Creative Suite,ADSC,Adobe Digital School Collection

If you've never visited Adobe TV before or haven't been back for awhile, I highly suggest checking it out. Adobe TV is your "one stop shop" for free Adobe tutorials, demos, tips & tricks, and general design inspiration. There are various channels which are comprised of different programs, each with multiple episodes (short videos) to choose from - most are less than 5 minutes in length.

]]> There is a dedicated Education channel with content covering the Adobe Digital School Collection (ADSC) and Adobe CS4 applications. At the time of this post there were:

80 videos for our digital design tools

79 videos for our visual design tools

111 videos for our digital video tools

70 videos for ADSC applications.

Episodes are being added on a continual basis.

Need to learn all the important Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro tips and tricks? Visit the Adobe Acrobat channel. And you can learn the in's & out's for nearly every Adobe CS4 applications from the How To channel ...plus much more!