Craig April 13th, 2008
Fireworks madness from the Mazu Festival. Don’t forget to take a look at previous posts detailing the origins of the Mazu Pilgrimage and images from the first 2 days of this years festival. Also, check out the complete gallery of Mazu images from which these few highlights are taken.
Craig April 12th, 2008
The teams at Adobe have been busy over the past few days.
First up, we have the Lightroom update to 1.4.1 and Camera RAW update to 4.4.1. They are both available in the downloads section of Adobe’s site. For a complete list of what’s been changed, updated and fixed, visit Tom Hogarty’s blog. Tom is the Senior Product Manager at Adobe for Lightroom.
Also launched last week was Adobe Media Player. Adobe® Media Player software provides control and flexibility to view what you want, when you want — whether online or offline. You can queue up and download your favorite Internet TV content, track and download new episodes automatically, and manage your personal video library for viewing at your convenience. Participating networks include CBS, MTV, Comedy Central and Universal, amongst others.
And finally, we have the launch of Adobe TV. Adobe TV is your online source for expert insight and inspiration. Feed your passion for Adobe products with insider tips, innovative techniques, and behind-the-scenes tours delivered on video, on demand. Get to know Adobe personalities by tuning in to Russell Brown revealing Adobe® Photoshop® secrets, Greg Rewis taming the web, or Jason Levine editing video. See the favorite tricks of design luminaries, take tours of cutting-edge creative shops, and find out what Adobe employees do with technology in their spare time. The best of Adobe’s expertise and community is now in one place. Watch when you want and where you want, save episodes, subscribe to your favorite channel, and post shows on your blog. And it’s not only the talent that’s in action — Adobe TV itself is produced and delivered using Adobe products and technologies. From planning to playback, Adobe TV is brought to you by Adobe.
Craig April 10th, 2008
Craig April 7th, 2008
Saturday April 5th saw the start of the 2008 Mazu Pilgrimage. Among the many gods and goddesses worshipped in Taiwan, Mazu (媽祖), the Goddess of the Sea is perhaps the most revered. Every year, in the 3rd month of the lunar calendar, the Dajia Mazu (大甲媽祖), which is housed at the Zhenlan temple (鎮瀾宮), is taken out on a pilgrimage lasting 8 days and covering 300km. Over the course of the 8 days, more than 1 million people will come out to see Mazu as she makes her way from Dajia to Hsingang in Jiayi county and back again, visiting more than 80 temples. It is thought that the Mazu pilgrimage is one of the three largest religious festivals in the world. Last year I wrote a detailed post describing the history of Mazu. Rather than rewrite it today, I’ll point you here for a look at the orgins of Mazu. This post will just be some images from the first 2 days of this years festival, with photos from Dajia’s Zhenlan Temple and Changhua’s Nan Yao Temple.
Craig April 4th, 2008
With the release of the public beta for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0, many photographers are eagerly diving in to check out the new features. So lets take a look and some of whats new. All screenshots below are from the Windows version because here in Taiwan, a Windows machine is half the price of a comparable Mac. As always, click on the image for a larger view.
One of the biggest new changes in this public beta is native 64 bit support. For Mac users, that means an Intel-based machine with Leopard (OS X10.5) and for Windows users, Vista-64. The key advantage of this is that it allows Lightroom to access more than 4GB of RAM. There is some discussion in the comments on John Nack’s site as to whetherit will work with Windows XP-64. I’m running XP64 and it seems to be working smoothly for me.
