Vegas? Photoshop?  What can possibly go wrong?   Twice a year the faithful gather at PhotoshopWorld, called together by Scott Kelby and The National Association of Photoshop Professionals.   This week, the West Coast edition is taking place in Las Vegas.

A record number of Photoshop pros, over 4000, have descended on Sin City for three days of presentations, in-depth training and inspiration — everyone from digital re-touchers, commercial, wedding and portrait photographers, videographers and graphic designers.

Kicking off proceedings was a typically funky keynote session.  Over the years NAPP’s keynote themes and presentations have become the stuff of geek legend, ranging from Star Trek, Hard Rock, Heavyweight Boxing, NBA, Project Runway and Olympic horse dressage.  One from that list might not be true.  This year (as if we haven’t already had enough of it) it’s the Presidential Election: In Photoshop We Trust.

At this morning’s keynote Adobe’s Grand Photoshop Poobah, Winston Hendrickson, kicked off our section with a State of The Union address on inspiration, creativity and how our engineers are working closely with Apple to ensure that Photoshop can take advantage the new Retina display on the latest MacBook Pros.  It’s coming soon!

Dr. Russell Brown then gave a quick demo of Photoshop Touch 1.3, announced and available today (with Retina display support).  Russell seemed most excited that he was finally able to say that we have now integrated “The Power of German Engineering” into the Photoshop product line – Touch is developed by our talented team in Hamburg, Germany.  Vorsprung Durch Technik, for all you old ad luvvies out there!

Adobe evangelist Julieanne Kost then toured us around Lightroom 4, Photoshop CS6 and sneaked Digital Publishing Suite (DPS), Single Edition – which will be added to Adobe Creative Cloud in the next few weeks.   It’s easy to see that DPS Single Edition could be a huge boon for photographers – imagine a wedding photographer now having an iPad App, available free from the Apple Store, that showcases their work in an interactive catalogue or brochure.  Single Edition allows you to publish an unlimited number of single, stand-alone iPad apps.  This is another example of how we’re adding new capabilities continually to Creative Cloud, at no extra cost to members.

The vibe at Photoshopworld was, as it always is, full of energy and boundless enthusiasm.  Not many companies are lucky enough to product that can inspire passionate zeal, like Photoshop does.   At Adobe, it’s not something we take for granted and the Photoshop team are hard at work delivering new features that will ensure…….another four years in digital imaging power.