Cross-media publishing

Quasar Technologies launches DAM system based on NUQLEO core technology

2009-11-18T04:20:00-08:00

The first thing I noticed when the people at Quasar Technologies fired up Firefox to demonstrate QAM to me was the clean interface. The interface consists of a search toolbar, a sidebar with LOM (Learning Object Model) thesaurus based themes, a matrix containing thumbnails, and three tabs along the...

PDFpen Pro 4.5.x Review

2009-11-17T07:06:01-08:00

You can use SmileOnMyMac’s PDFpen Pro as a PDF reader—one that is as fast as Apple’s Preview. In contrast to Preview, though, PDFpen Pro allows you to do a lot more than just read existing PDFs. The application’s features can be grouped in two categories: things you can do to existing or new PDFs,...

iZotope Ozone 4 Audio Mastering Plug-in Review

2009-11-12T05:36:36-08:00

Ozone 4 is a 64-bit audio processing system, the result of analogue modeling applied with digital precision packed in a highly efficient user interface. With iZotope Ozone 4, you can add spice, colour and punch to an audio mix. You can also just make it sound loud or more dynamic. CD masters that...

The 4 obstacles that stand in the way of eBook breakthrough as a publishing medium

2009-11-10T04:19:19-08:00

There are at least two formats of eBooks: Kindle and EPUB. EPUB is used on iPhone, Sony book readers, etc. Kindle is amazon.com’s proprietary format. It looks like EPUB is going to make it as a standard, despite what amazon.com would probably love to see happening. The reason is that EPUB is built...

ColorChecker Passport, your digital camera colour management system

2009-11-05T06:03:18-08:00

Do you need a ColorChecker card? The answer is: it depends. If you are a fashion or commercial photographer you will want full control over how your camera sensor interprets colours. A ColorChecker card is the only way to create a profile of the sensor’s interpretation of colour across the entire...

Jobo 33in1 Card Reader at a glance

2009-11-03T04:35:28-08:00

Nevertheless, I didn’t want to skip Jobo’s reader for the simple reason that it’s the fastest and least stubborn of all—given its USB 2.0 performance limitations, of course. Almost all card readers are stubborn: once you insert a CompactFlash card, for example, it is hard to get it to...

ScreenFlow 2 screencasting software review

2009-11-02T06:01:08-08:00

After having played with ScreenFlow 2 for about a week, I do believe ScreenFlow 2 has everything a professional online educator or presentator will need in a package that is extremely well designed and user friendly. That’s not to say ScreenFlow 2 is an all-in-one package; all-in-one packages often...

Digieffects Falloff Lighting for After Effects Review

2009-11-02T05:20:35-08:00

There’s not much to the Falloff Lighting plug-in, to be honest. You drag it to an object in the scene and you control the effect with no more than two parameters which you can set dragging a slider or entering a number. The most important slider in Falloff Lighting obviously is “Distance Scale”....

I’ve seen the future of publishing: NUQLEO V6

2009-11-02T02:30:05-08:00

However, the front-end and everything around it have been changed, improved and updated to a state that I can only describe as dynamic publishing of the future. NUQLEO V6 is what others are promising but not delivering. The key concepts of NUQLEO V6 are layout and image editing application...

Strata Foto 3D CX turns photos into 3D objects, but how simple is it?

2009-10-29T11:00:08-08:00

Instead of painstakingly creating a complex object in Cinema 4D or Maya, just take a couple of photos of a similar object and turn that into 3D, and you’re done. That is in a nutshell what Strata Foto 3D CX promises you. Strata delivers on that promise, but it still isn’t a job that you’ll take on...

A Review of the Alien Skin Photo bundle including comparisons with other Filters

2009-10-25T01:35:19-08:00

The Alien Skin Photo bundle includes the Bokeh, Blow Up, Exposure and Image Doctor Filters. If you are looking for a way to adjust photos the traditional way, the Alien Skin Photo bundle probably offers too much creative choice. However, if your objective is to go beyond simple adjustments and...

Can you really publish into the conversation?

2009-10-19T03:32:35-08:00

Today’s great minds are teaching us that technologies like Twitter, Facebook, and even the old weblog, are not publishing tools but tools of conversation. That term is all over the web—it makes your ears ring. My opinion has always been not to accept anything from anyone without first thoroughly...

Recall feelings of crime, dirt, past memories… with Magic Bullet Mojo

2009-10-13T09:58:49-08:00

Magic Bullet Mojo provides a simple way to make your footage look like an action movie, works together with primary colour correction tools like Magic Bullet Colorista, and is more simple and cheaper than Magic Bullet Looks. The tools and controls have been designed by director Stu Maschwitz for...

First release of new generation publishing system announced at Ifra by Microsoft and Quark

2009-10-11T08:38:45-08:00

Undoubtedly, the new features of QPS will make Quark’s core publishing system more attractive to smaller corporations. The first new functionality Quark is adding is squarely aimed at automating XML workflows—especially important in book and corporate publishing environments. Instead of just...

Creating archives of film-based images with SilverFast HDRi and iSRD

2009-10-08T23:57:57-08:00

Users of prosumer and professional dSLR cameras can choose to save their images in the camera’s internal “RAW” format, a file format which has been called the equivalent of an analogue photo negative. Camera RAW as it is called has many benefits: you can generate multiple creative versions of it in...