There seems to be a lot of mixed feelings about Adobe Lightroom CC Cloud and Adobe Lightroom Classic CC, as well as the long standing and polarizing subscription based model for most of Adobe’s software.

We’re not here to give our opinion on all of this, we’re going to see how things play out with Macphun’s future software.

Macphun had this to say:

After the recent Adobe news about Lightroom updates, we received a lot of questions about our plans for creating a photo manager, so we’d like to shed some light on this.

At the moment we’re working on the digital asset manager (“DAM”) which will work with both hard drives and cloud storage platforms. It’s going to be the perfect tool for organizing and managing images. Users will be able to run our DAM alongside their LR library and choose which one fits them best.

The new DAM will be added to Luminar in 2018, and will be a free update to everyone who owns Luminar 2018 after it is release. We’ll be sharing more details soon, so keep an eye out for them!

Macphun is asking: What do you plan on doing after the Adobe announcement?

Canon U.S.A. Launches Bold New Expedited Service at PhotoPlus EXPO 2017

MELVILLE, N.Y., October 19, 2017 – Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions, continues its mission to deliver industry-leading speed and quality of service offered through Canon Professional Services (CPS), its award-winning service and support program for professional photographers. CPS Platinum members will now enjoy next-day service, with equipment serviced and shipped the business day after an estimate is approved. For repairs that will take longer, Canon will offer next-day loaner equipment. In addition, CPS Gold members’ benefits will now be enhanced with two-day service turnaround.¹

“For professional photographers, sending equipment in for service can mean lost income while their gear is being repaired, and we are committed to do everything in our power to minimize their downtime,” noted Yuichi Ishizuka, president and COO, Canon U.S.A., Inc. “Canon has long been delivering fast, high-quality service and customer satisfaction, and this bold new level of performance sends a clear message to photographers that we remain dedicated to providing professional-level service and support.”

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A patent from Canon Japan showing new rear screen designs has appeared, and it looks very interesting. I think a lot of us have always assumed eventually the entire back of a camera would be an LCD/OLED. Beyond just the size of the screen, the patent also covers a new way pivot mecanism for the LCD, you can see the images below.

What’s also interesting is the mode dial appearing from behind the screen when you move it.

A lot of us have called on Canon to put vari-angle LCD’s on professional cameras such as the EOS-1D X series, EOS 5D series and the EOS 7D series, and we’re still waiting. This would definitely be a big leap in a new direction for rear camera screens, but I suspect too big of a leap to see first in a flagship professional camera such as the EOS-1D X Mark III, but it could be introduced in a lower end camera such as the EOS 7D Mark III or a new videoc focused DSLR.

Canon has released new versions of Digital Photo Professional and Picture Style Editor.

Changes for Digital Photo Professional 4.7.20:

• Supports PowerShot G1 X Mark III, PowerShot G12, PowerShot G11, PowerShot G10, PowerShot G9, PowerShot S95, PowerShot S90, PowerShot SX50 HS, PowerShot SX1 IS.
• Supports EF85mm f/1.4L IS USM, EF-S35mm f/2.8 Macro IS STM.
• Supports Chromatic aberration correction, Peripheral illumination correction, Distortion correction, and Digital Lens Optimizer for images captures with a combination of EOS 6D Mark II and TS-E50mm f/2.8L Macro, TS-E90mm f/2.8L Macro, TS-E135mm f/4L Macro, TS-E17mm f/4L, or TS-E24mm f/3.5L II.
• Enhances operability of the Filter/Sort function.
• Supports customization on the Preview Properties Display.

Changes for Picture Style Editor 1.19.10:

• Supports PowerShot G1 X Mark III

You can download the new versions at Canon USA.

Camera Raw 10 is now available as a final release available in the Adobe Create Cloud desktop app.

Range Mask
Range Mask works within the structure of the existing local adjustment tools to give you more precision with your local adjustments. One way to think of it is that Range Mask is a modifier that can be applied to a local adjustment, allowing you to create more precise selections with less hassle.  Range Mask is designed to be easy to use, and the resulting mask can be further refined by nudging the sliders.

Range Mask has two different modes to address two different types of color/tone-based masks: Color Range Mask and Luminance Range Mask.

Usage Instructions:

1. Open an image into the Camera Raw plugin
2. Select one of the local adjustment tools (Local Adjustment Brush, Graduated Filter, Radial Filter) and make an initial mask of your intended selection area.
3. From the Range Mask option, select either Color or Luminance.
   • Color: Use the Eyedropper to select the colors you’d like to include in your selection.  You can select up to 5 different colors using the Shift + click method with the eyedropper.  Alternatively, you can sample a range of colors, even completely different colors, by dragging out an area with the eyedropper. Once selected, you can further refine your selection using the Amount slider.
   • Luminance: Use the Range and Smoothness sliders to adjust your mask and fine tune.
4. Use the local adjustment sliders to make the desired edits to your images.

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