Earlier this week Adobe made a surprise move by putting its Creative Suite 2 software, as well as individual programs like Photoshop CS2 and Illustrator CS2, up for download on its website along the corresponding serial numbers. Initially it was believed the company got tired of keeping the activation servers running to support legitimate installs of ~8 year-old software and decided to give it away. But that’s only partly true.

Turns out Adobe did retire the activation servers used by CS2 back in December, but when legitimate owners of the suite started complaining that without these servers they’d be unable to reinstall their copies if needed, the company began offering versions of CS2 that didn’t need activation.

It’s the CS2 standard edition. Wikipedia says it includes Bridge, Illustrator, inDesign, Photoshop, and Version Cue. Not bad.

* Adobe says you’re supposed to have a license, so some folks’ consciences may keep them from getting a free copy.

Adobe Creative Suite 2 Available for Free* is a post from Les Jones.

I think most professionals will talk about switching and how unhappy they are with the new licensing. Then they’ll keep on using Photoshop and the other Adobe apps anyway. They’ve got too much time invested learning how to use it, too many files in that format, and the need for file compatibility with colleagues and clients. In Mike’s case, learning a new version of Photoshop is still easier than learning an entirely new program. Inertia is a thing.

For people who aren’t locked into Adobe, DPReview’s 10 Photo Editing Programs That Aren’t Photoshop has some alternatives. I can vouch for two of the options.

• For photo editing I like Adobe Lightroom better than Photoshop. There are some very technical things it can’t do, but it can do some things Photoshop can’t, and the workflow is faster and more intuitive. The price is crazy cheap for Adobe – $86 at Amazon.
• For Photoshop on the cheap there’s Photoshop Elements. For what I do in Photoshop I haven’t noticed any major deficits for the relatively simple way that I use Photoshop. What I have noticed are small reductions in features. For instance, there aren’t as many filters and layer effects. (You can see a list of all differences here.) Price is $67 or $114 bundled with Adobe Premier Elements video editor, which is how I bought it.

If consulting turns into a full time gig at some point I’ll need the full Adobe Creative Suite 6. The Web and Design Premium Edition ($1,407) doesn’t have video editing, so I’d need the Master Collection ($2,200) so I can get Premiere and After Effects.

Expensive stuff, ain’t it? (That’s why I’m amazed by the low price of Lightroom and Elements.) If I’m taking a $200 non-credit photography class at the University of Tennessee I can get student pricing. That drops the price to $912. At that point you’d have to use the software for a year and a half before it becomes a better deal than paying $50/month for a subscription. Without the student discount it would take almost four years.

The only downside I see is that if you ever stop paying you won’t be able to access those files. Even then, if you really need to do something you could install a 30 day trial. So yeah, the subscription is looking better and better, especially since you don’t have to pay everything up front and you’re getting a newer version of the software with free updates.

More on the Adobe Creative Suite/Photoshop Subscription Pricing is a post from Les Jones.

Photos – Red Tomato Stakes is a post from Les Jones.

“…there’s no such thing as Flickr Pro, because today, with cameras as pervasive as they are, there is no such thing really as professional photographers, when there’s everything is professional photographers. Certainly there is varying levels of skills, but we didn’t want to have a Flickr Pro anymore, we wanted everyone to have professional quality photos, space, and sharing.”

Most photographers are upset because the implication is that the owning a camera makes someone a photographer. Plenty of people have that perception, but that doesn’t make it a reality. Owning a musical instrument doesn’t make someone a musician; they need knowledge, skills, and practice.

What throws people off about photography is that you can push the button and make a picture, but that has as much relation to being a photographer as pushing a gas pedal has to being a Formula 1 race car driver. Putting affordable, user-friendly tools in the hands of lots of people is a good thing, but having a smartphone in your pocket doesn’t make you Ansel Adams.

The thing I’ll add is that Mayer used the wrong word. “Professional” doesn’t mean expert. Professional means pursuing an activity as a business. Someone might be a damned good photographer, but will they show up on time at your wedding, have equipment that won’t break (and backups in case something does), persevere in the face of difficulty, get results no matter what, and complete the job with guaranteed results in a timely manner? You can’t expect to get all of that in a wedding photographer unless you’re paying them, and you can’t know if they’re capable unless someone else has paid them to do it in the past.

ex·pert

noun
1. a person who has special skill or knowledge in some particular field; specialist; authority: a language expert.
2. Military
a. the highest rating in rifle marksmanship, above that of marksman and sharpshooter.
b. a person who has achieved such a rating.
adjective
3. possessing special skill or knowledge; trained by practice; skillful or skilled (often followed by in or at ): an expert driver; to be expert at driving a car.
4. pertaining to, coming from, or characteristic of an expert: expert work; expert advice.
verb (used with object)
5. to act as an expert for.

pro·fes·sion·al

adjective

1. following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain: a professional builder.
2. of, pertaining to, or connected with a profession: professional studies.
3. appropriate to a profession: professional objectivity.
4. engaged in one of the learned professions: A lawyer is a professional person.
5. following as a business an occupation ordinarily engaged in as a pastime: a professional golfer.
6. making a business or constant practice of something not properly to be regarded as a business: “A salesman,” he said, “is a professional optimist.”
7. undertaken or engaged in as a means of livelihood or for gain: professional baseball.
8. of or for a professional person or his or her place of business or work: a professional apartment; professional equipment.
9. done by a professional; expert: professional car repairs.
10. a person who belongs to one of the professions, especially one of the learned professions.
11. a person who earns a living in a sport or other occupation frequently engaged in by amateurs: a golf professional.
12. an expert player, as of golf or tennis, serving as a teacher, consultant, performer, or contestant; pro.
13. a person who is expert at his or her work: You can tell by her comments that this editor is a real professional.

“There is no such thing really as professional photographers” (and “professional” vs. expert” is a post from Les Jones.

Bionics (also known as biomimicry, biomimetics, bio-inspiration, biognosis, and close to bionical creativity engineering) is the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology.^{[citation needed]}

The word bionic was coined by Jack E. Steele in 1958, possibly originating from the technical term bion (pronounced bee-on) (from Ancient Greek: βίος), meaning ‘unit of life‘ and the suffix -ic, meaning ‘like’ or ‘in the manner of’, hence ‘like life’. Some dictionaries, however, explain the word as being formed as a portmanteau from biology + electronics. It was popularized by the 1970s television series The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, which were based upon the novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin, which was influenced by Steele’s work, and feature humans given superhuman powers by electromechanical implants.

The transfer of technology between lifeforms and manufactures is, according to proponents of bionic technology, desirable because evolutionary pressure typically forces living organisms, including fauna and flora, to become highly optimized and efficient. A classical example is the development of dirt- and water-repellent paint (coating) from the observation that the surface of the lotus flower plant is practically unsticky for anything (the lotus effect).^{[citation needed]}

The term “biomimetic” is preferred when reference is made to chemical reactions.^{[citation needed]} In that domain, biomimetic chemistry refers to reactions that, in nature, involve biological macromolecules (for example, enzymes or nucleic acids) whose chemistry can be replicated using much smaller molecules in vitro.

Found while reading about Velcro, which is a biomimetic invention that imitages burrs that stick to fur and clothing.

Previous WOTD – Selfie

Word of the Day – Bionics/Biomimicry/Biomimetics is a post from Les Jones.

There are some other videos in the can that are better than this one (which has a couple of places where my framing wasn’t as good as I would have liked). I’m putting this one out first because it’s the title track to the band’s new album. The CD release parties are in Knoxville on May 23rd at Preservation Pub and May 25th at Wild Wings Cafe. Check ‘em out.

The Royal Hounds “I’m In Love With a Zombie”

P.S. One of the challenges with the monopod is that you can go high and you can go low, but you have to use the pan/tilt head to compensate for the change. So if you start low, the camera is tilted up. As you life the monopod vertically you have to push the tiltbar up at just the right rate to level the camera. Otherwise you wind up pointing at the floor or ceiling until you get the camera levelled.

DSLR Video – The Royal Hounds “I’m In Love With a Zombie” is a post from Les Jones.

The Kirk/Spock friendship is still the best part of the reboot. The other thing I like about the J.J. Abrams movies is how they seriously consider the realities of life in space. Last movie it was the lens flare. It was overdone, but it showed how raw and harsh life in outerspace would be. In the new movie there’s a scene where the Enterprise has lost power and artificial gravity and is falling sideways into a planet’s gravity. As the heroes run down a corridor they’re running on the wall. When they come to an intersection with a hallway they have to jump across the gap caused by the intersecting hallway. Wicked.

Spoilerific stuff for people who have seen Star Trek Into Darkness

This one really telegraphed the punches. In the first scene with Admiral Marcus isn’t at all concerned about all-out war with the Klingons. He’s all it’s inevitable and let’s just go ahead and get on with it, so you’re wondering if he’s just a little too enthusiastic.

Then he’s handing over a super secret black ops photon torpedo. That torpodo is suspicious because it never gets opened, despite characters wanting to open it or inspec it. That isn’t a small detail – Scotty resigns because he doesn’t know what the energy source is inside the torpedo or how will it affect the warp core. So right away it seems like the secret squirrel photon torpedo is a Trojan horse.

The thing with the Tribbles is likewise a big searchlight painting the sky. Why is Bones shooting Kahn cells into Tribbles? Sure, they’re doing fan service to Trekkies whose Spock Ears are no longer in mint condition, but come on. Things don’t happen in drama for no reason. And at least Wrath of Khan had the decency to let Spock stay dead until after the credits rolled. (Though I’ll admit Kirk dying to save everyone had me a little teary-eyed.)

As far as the villain … He was a badass, but even if he’s 5 times faster and 5 times stronger than a human, he’s still just a dude. Send 20 guys with phasers after him and he’s toast. And the Federation has starships. He just seemed too outmanned to be a threat.

Star Trek “Into Darkness” is a post from Les Jones.

Something to work into my writing is a post from Les Jones.

This guy shows how. Just what I needed. The only thing you need is Audacity, which is free and good. The video is for Premiere Elements, but the idea is the same for Premiere Pro and not that different for other non-linear video editors if you know how to run them.

P.S. I bought a licensed copy of DualEyes/PluralEyes recently. It’s supposed to automatically sync the audio track from a movie created with a DSLR like my Nikon D7000 with an audio track from a separate digital audio recorder (DAR) like my Zoom H4n. Point it to the movie file and the audio file (which can be much, much longer than the movie). The software will match the waveforms in the movie’s audio track with the audio file and splice out that section of the audio file. Then you can either use your video editor to replace the movie’s audio track or let DualEyes/PluralEyes do it for you.

Why would you want to do that? The audio track on the DAR is almost always better than what the camera recorded. That’s because the DAR is a dedicated audio recording device, while a DSLR is a dedicated still photo recorder that also happens to record video and – oh yeah – I guess we need to throw some audio circuitry in there somewhere because folks nowadays sure do love them some talkies. A $3,000 DSLR might have twenty bucks worth of audio circuitry. If you’re lucky.

The trial version of DualEyes/PluralEyes worked great. Thing is, once I got a licensed copy as part of a mic bundle I could never get it to work again. Not on three different computers and not after working with tech support. It would not could not in a box, it would not could not with a fox.

Oh, well. Maybe the long-promised new Windows version of PluralEyes will fix everything. In the meantime now that I know how to sync manually I don’t care. It’s really not a big deal to take a few minutes to manually sync with Audacity.

DSLR Video – Syncing a Movie with External Audio in Adobe Premiere is a post from Les Jones.

Which leads to this week’s poll question

I’ll average all the answers. That should provide a solid consensus for the pH of lemon juice.

Help! My ph Meter is Broken is a post from Les Jones.