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Deadline: September 1, 2010

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The year 2010 seems to be the year of the color blue. It started with the worldwide box office hit “Avatar,” which rewrote box office history since it was released at the end of last year. Korean skaters at the Vancouver Olympics also wore blue, and the color is appearing as the main hue in the luxury fashion boutiques of New York and Paris, and in accessories, cosmetic lines, furniture, and kitchen appliances.

There is a reason for this. Color company Pantone picked turquoise as the color of the year for 2010, supposedly because it reflects the desire of people to regain hope amidst signs of economic recovery. “It is believed to be a protective talisman, a color of deep compassion and healing, and a color of faith and truth, inspired by water and sky,” the firm said. “Turquoise transports us to an exciting, tropical paradise while offering a sense of protection and healing in stressful times.”

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PicScout, the market leader in worldwide image services, today launched a services platform and a new product that enables client image monetization opportunities across the global landscape of the internet. For the first time, users of web-viewed images will be made immediately aware of images’ rightful owners or licensors and afforded an easy connection with them. PicScout is bringing both users and purveyors of images together online and on-the-fly to contract for legitimate image downloads for authorized usage on or offline.

Though every image by default is copyrighted for use, until now images have not always been visibly credited when viewed online. Equipped with a free PicScout Image Exchange(TM) add-on, image buyers surfing, searching, stumbling or visiting a particular site are able to identify images indexed by the Image IRC. Seeing a universally used “i” information icon, a user clicking on the icon exposes metadata that identifies the image’s owner or licensor and the connecting links to buy/use the image directly from the licensor. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the questions I get from customers as well as people whom are not my customers is… Why does my print job look different than my PDF proof?

For the most part it’s not a huge difference, but it could be. There are certain colors that don’t reproduce well when converted from RGB color to CMYK.  Most people who design in RGB are either Web designers, using Pantone colors or novices.  Novices tend to design in RGB to get the brighter colors then use their software to convert to CMYK.  It’s not a crime to design your piece in RGB then convert to CMYK, but consider this; printing is all about expectations.  You have something you need printed you expect it to look a certain way.  Either you or your designer setup the file, you previewed it on your computer, sent it to your printer and he sent you a pdf proof.  Everything looks great, you approve it and a few days later it shows up at your doorstep.

OH MY GOD… it doesn’t look like what I expected!  How can this be?  Good question.

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Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) and Omniture, Inc. (Nasdaq:OMTR) today announced the two companies have entered into a definitive agreement for Adobe to acquire Omniture in a transaction valued at approximately $1.8 billion on a fully diluted equity-value basis. Under the terms of the agreement, Adobe will commence a tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding common stock of Omniture for $21.50 per share in cash.

Adobe’s acquisition of Omniture furthers its mission to revolutionize the way the world engages with ideas and information. By combining Adobe’s content creation tools and ubiquitous clients with Omniture’s Web analytics, measurement and optimization technologies, Adobe will be well positioned to deliver solutions that can transform the future of engaging experiences and e-commerce across all digital content platforms and devices.
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DMN Newswire–2009-10-1– X-Rite, Incorporated the world leader in color management and measurement technologies (www.xrite.com) announces ColorChecker Passport (www.xritephoto.com), an all-new solution for digital photographers working in a Raw workflow to quickly and easily capture accurate color, instantly enhance portraits and landscapes, and maintain color control from capture to edit. For more info: www.cjcstrategists.com/resources/xrite/X-Rite_Passport_Press_Brief.pdf

“We developed Passport for photographers in a digital workflow, those working in Raw but also JPEG shooters as an all-in-one  capture to edit solution for color control and creativity. It’s a powerful solution that becomes even more powerful when combined with Adobe Imaging Solutions, for DNG profile creation and also to ensure accurate color, image to image and camera to camera, and a new easy level of creativity with one-click enhancement capabilities,” states X-Rite Senior VP of Sales and Marketing Iris Mangelschots.

ColorChecker Passport includes: Read the rest of this entry »

Adobe and McAfee said Monday that they have teamed up to deliver a combined data-loss-prevention and DRM solution aimed at businesses and enterprises.

The combined solution will characterize critical documents and then assign access controls to them, both based on policies. Both will serve as new tools to prevent confidential documents from being emailed outside the company.

The goal is to eliminate data breaches and their catastrophic costs. The Ponemon Institute estimates that in 2008, there was approximately $3.15 billion of latent demand by businesses in the United States for technology and software to protect unstructured data, a term which Ponemon uses for random files stored on a variety of media. Read the rest of this entry »

Karen Sperling, the original Corel Painter expert—she wrote the first manual when the software debuted 17 years ago—is pleased to announce the addition of Adobe Photoshop to her Artistry instructional materials and classes.

Photographers can learn to turn photos into paintings in Corel Painter and now, additionally, in Adobe Photoshop, from the Artistry offerings, including: Read the rest of this entry »

Here it is… our first QuarkXPress 8 tip, and it’s actually for QuarkXPress 4/5/6 users! Listen carefully: buy QuarkXPress 7 NOW.

collective groan

Seriously. Quark will give you a free upgrade to version 8 if you buy or upgrade to QuarkXPress 7 between now and August. Read the rest of this entry »

Dusseldorf, Germany – Pantone, Inc., the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries, today announced the PANTONE® GoeGuide™ and PANTONE GoeSticks™ on uncoated stock, the first product line extensions to its recently launched PANTONE Goe™ System. The new components allow designers to accurately visualize how PANTONE Goe Colors will reproduce on uncoated stock, which is important for creatives since the appearance may change from coated stock due to differences in ink absorption.
Presented in fan-guide format, the PANTONE GoeGuide uncoated, printed on Read the rest of this entry »

TripAdvisor®, the world’s largest travel community, today announced the top 10 art museums in the world, based on traffic to the attractions on tripadvisor.com.

1. Louvre Affair: Musee du Louvre, Paris, France
Once a fortified palace that was the home to kings of France, the Louvre is now the world’s most famous museum, renowned for some of the finest pieces of art in the world, including the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa. According to one TripAdvisor traveler, “The world’s greatest museum-from its Italian Renaissance Masters, to its Dutch Masters and the exquisite collection from Egypt’s Pharaonic period. Each time I visit I always discover new treasures and I reacquaint myself with my favorites.”

2. Religious Experience: Vatican Museums, Vatican City, Rome, Italy
Spanning nearly nine miles, the Roman Catholic Church’s Vatican collection is one of the largest and most stunning in the world. Estimated to have more than four million visitors annually, the Vatican museums feature the art of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and, of course, Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. As one TripAdvisor traveler commented, “The amount of history and art that is located here is mind-boggling, from the frescoes to the statues, virtually every nook and corner (even the floor) is a treasure.”

3. Art in the Apple: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
From Picasso to Pollock, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on New York City’s Museum Mile, is one of the world’s largest museums with over two million pieces of artwork and enough variety for any enthusiast. Peruse the Greek sculptures, admire the armory or browse the 2,000 European paintings, all contained in a magnificent Beaux-Art façade building. As one TripAdvisor traveler said, “The building itself is a work of art. This would be a great place to spend a day alone!”

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Students can obtain QuarkXPress® 7 (plus Quark Interactive Designer™ and Quark XPert Tools Pro) totally FREE of charge. They can use it at home for the full academic year, provided their school purchases the Quark School Unlimited User License priced at £1,750 excluding VAT.This offer is only available until 30th April 2008

Here’s how it works:1 Order the site license QUK-122922-S
2 Add QUK-123991 to the order, plus a contact within the school responsible for managing the student licenses
3 The contact within the school directs the students to download the software at:
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If your prepress shop is like most shops, you will have a spectrophometer from X-Rite kicking. It may have a layer of dust on the case from being on the shelf for a number of years, but you have one.

Many shops have an Eye-One, it virtually comes with every Prinergy system nowadays. You should use it to calibrate your Matchprint although many shops just calibrate it once and then stick it in a corner.

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 iStockphoto®, the world’s busiest online stock image marketplace, today announced that it will extend a year-old program that makes a collection of low-resolution images and illustrations available free of additional charge to Microsoft (News/Aktienkurs) Office® users through Microsoft Office Online. Based on the initial success of the program, iStockphoto will significantly increase the number of free images to the collection. In addition, the companies are looking to expand the program to new languages and countries in the coming year.

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Create Magazine is officially accepting entries for its 2008 Create Awards – one of the top creative competitions for professionals and students in advertising, film and video, motion graphics, graphic communication, photography, printing, interactive media, and copywriting.

The 2008 Create Awards (www.thecreateawards.com) has once again doubled its prize pool from last year. More than $125K worth of the latest in software and hardware from leading creative industry manufacturers is up for grabs, not to mention national print and online exposure in Create Magazine.

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X-Rite and Pantone Launch ColorMunki Family of Breakthrough Color Products for Photo and Design Markets ColorMunki Photo, ColorMunki Design and ColorMunki Create Empower Users to Create and Control Color from Inspiration to Final Output

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. � March 17, 2008 � X-Rite, Inc., the world leader in color management and measurement technologies, along with recently acquired Pantone, Inc., the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries, today introduced ColorMunki �, a breakthrough in both price and performance.

Based on X-Rite and Pantone�s deep understanding of the photo and design communities, ColorMunki solutions are the industry�s first easy-to-use, convergent technologies developed specifically to feed the artistic imagination of creative professionals � at an affordable price. Designed to meet the requirements of creatives working in a digital environment across industries, the revolutionary ColorMunki family, (colormunki.com) ensures accurate color from inspiration to final output in ways never before possible,

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The 1.4 update for Adobe’s Lightroom and the 4.4 update for Camera Raw, the Photoshop Raw importer, contain a number of errors. These relate to the way that Lightroom deals with the EXIF time stamp, the conversion of raw data to the open-source DNG format and the conversion of Olympus files. While it fixes these errors, Adobe has withdrawn the software update from 13 March, which included support for the formats of several new camera types. In the Adobe Blogs Lightroom Journal,Tom Hogarty from the Lightroom team recommends users who have already updated to uninstall the update and reinstall Lightroom 1.3.1 on their Windows-PC or Mac.

The EXIF error causes Lightroom 1.4 to incorrectly modify the EXIF time stamp in the original raw file, although the information written to the XMP sidecar files remains correct. Apart from this, the raw data itself is not affected by the errors. Lightroom also reports an error when converting Olympus JPDG photos.

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While Microsoft is looking to convince developers and consumers alike to try Silverlight, the alternative to Adobe’s Flash, the incumbent has made some strides of its own.

Adobe Systems Inc. has released the first version of its widely anticipated Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) cross-operating system runtime along with updates of its Flex framework for Windows and Mac platforms. The release of AIR is expected to let Web developers use their existing skills to build rich Internet applications (RIAs) for the desktop, smart clients and browsers.

AIR is a technology long in coming. Under development at Macromedia, AIR was acquired along with Flex, Coldfusion and Dreamweaver when Adobe acquired the developer tools company in 2005 for $3.4 billion.

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Quark Inc. announced that it has launched a community-based Web site for designers called ilovedesign.com. The Web site is developed around an interactive and accessible community concept that was inspired by a love for design. It features the work of leading industry designers David Carson, Peter Saville, Chip Kidd, and many more and gives users the opportunity to showcase their own work and become part of a design community.

On visiting the ilovedesign.com Web site, users are encouraged to join this community by creating their own profiles and uploading samples of their own design work. Users can also search, view, and rate designs uploaded by other members and even contact them in a secure way. The content of the site will be largely user generated and the aim is to create a platform where designers can showcase their work, be inspired by the work of others, and discuss their love of design.

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Ft. Lauderdale, FL, February 27, 2008 –(PR.com)– Quark Inc. and The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale announces that graphic design student at The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale Lina Herrera, of Coconut Creek, was the grand prize winner of a poster design contest to create an original design in QuarkXPress® that addresses typography in an informative, historical or humorous way. She won full entry to the upcoming Graphics of the Americas conference in Miami, along with software, and international notoriety from Quark.

Herrera’s compelling poster demonstrated the capabilities of QuarkXPress while staying within the parameters of the competition. “Out of a field of impressive entries, the judges selected Herrera’s as the winning poster. Her design stands out visually and her skill in QuarkXPress is apparent,” said Chris Edwards, business development specialist in education for Quark.

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