October 08, 2009

Photoshop World Las Vegas 2009

Back from another Las Vegas Photoshop World. This was my 18th PSW conference speaking with NAPP. Always a great show! The show started with a keynote from Adobe’s VP Johnny L. and Creative Director Russell Brown showing off some of the upcoming technology we will see in future versions. This year’s theme was football and the Photoshop Guys did a very nice job of entertaining the 3000+ crowd of attendees. There were lots of new faces at this show this year. All the programs went very well. Helene and I had our hands full throughout the week teaching multiple programs. Helene started the week in charge of Portfolio Review where attendees can have a PSW instructor do a 15-minute review of their work. Thursday night is always the big PSW party at the House Of Blues where Scott’s band Big Electric Cat entertained a packed house. On Friday, Helene and I both did live photography shooting classes. Friday night I finished with hosting the “Art Of Digital Photography” panel that had about 2000 attending. Saturday, Helene had a full house for her Creativity and Marketing class out in the trade show stage, while I taught new classes in Photo Illustration and Panoramic Photography. In the trade show Mark Maio and I spent a lot of time talking with representatives of software and hardware companies about our new association, The Digital Imaging Institute for Science and Medicine with lots of great feedback. http://www.digitalimaginginstitute.com. We ended Saturday night with a nice wrap up get together in Scott Kelby’s suite to say goodbye till next time. It’s just amazing how far this association has gone in the last ten years.

I am always asked when I get back what were the coolest new products in the trade show, and this year is no exception. Anyone who has heard me speak knows than I am a big evangelist for burning files off the hard drive and onto DVD’s. I always get a lot of arguments that DVD’s a based on dyes that will fade in time while I argue about the failure of magnetic media hard drives. Well, things have now changed. A brand new type of DVD burner and disc has arrived that is total archival and will last forever. That’s what I have been waiting for. You need to check out this info at http://www.millenniata.com. Wouldn’t you pay a little more for a disc that you know as long as you don’t trash it, will always have your most important work permanently stored. I know I would…. Another great product was the introduction of the X-Rite Passport. It is a new color checker that is in a plastic case so it would not get ruined with time. It has lots of cool features including different tones of gray so you can have a warmer or cooler point to set your white balance and has software to custom profile your Raw camera file with. You can fine more info at http://blog.xritephoto.com. This along with my trusty Photo Master Target will always assure my color is perfect when shooting….
After returning home from Las Vegas, I get a call from my good friends Jim and Laura Sullivan that they had a couple of U2 tickets for me, so it was off to my 8th U2 show. I didn’t have a ticket for the show and I was not happy about missing it since I missed the show while I was in Dublin Ireland. Show was outstanding. The biggest stage they have ever done. Set list consisted of mostly material from their newest CD, but they had time to fit in many of their classic songs from the last two decades as well…. All in all, a very good show…. Till next time… JD