Imitating A Scanner Darkly's Rotoscope Look

Looking for an edgy look for that senior portrait? Check out this cool Illustrator technique for creating that rotoscoped look from the movie 'A Scanner Darkly' and the new Charles Schwab (Slate.com) ads on TV.

Aaron Sacco, a freelance artist and animator on the film shows us how to take a photograph and transform it into a 'rotoscoped' looking image in Adobe Illustrator.



Aaron says he expects to spend 5 hours or so on an image as complex as the one above so this isn't a 'quick and easy' effect. However, for the right image, it might be worth your time investment.

Canon Announces New EOS-1 D Mark III Digital SLR

So most of you know I'm a Nikon user but I couldn't just ignore the fact that Canon just annouced a brand new version of the EOS-1 D dubbed the Mark III and it looks pretty awesome!

Highlights:

• 10 MP APS-H sized sensor
• Live view LCD
• Dual DIGIC III Image Processors
• Priced in line with the Mark II N

It should be available this spring. Have at it!

Lexar Introduces Breakthrough 300x Speed-Rated Professional Flash Memory Cards

Now that I've gone and purchased a wallet full of 133x 4GB Compact Flash cards and 4 cool stackable firewire 400 card readers, Lexar has to go and up the ante on me! Typical. :)

Lexar announced today a new breakthrough 300x Compact Flash card as well as a new firewire 800 version of it's widely popular firewire 400 stackable compact flash card readers.

Here's a snippet from their press release:

New UDMA-Enabled CompactFlash® Cards Capable of Minimum Sustained Write Speeds of 45MB/s; Significantly Improve Digital Photography Workflow

Fremont, CA , February 20, 2007 - Lexar, a leader in advanced digital media and accessories, today introduced Professional UDMA (Ultra Direct Memory Access) memory cards, the latest addition to the company's award-winning Professional line of high-performance cards. When paired with a UDMA-enabled device, such as Lexar's new Professional FireWire 800 Reader, UDMA cards improve the professional photographer's digital imaging experience by reducing the time needed to download captured images to a destination computer. In addition, the benefits of Lexar Professional UDMA memory cards extend well beyond card-to-computer transfer rates, to improved in-camera performance in several UDMA-enabled digital camera backs and digital SLR cameras expected to be announced later this year. Speed-rated at 300x, or capable of a minimum sustained write speed of 45MB per second, and available in capacities of 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB, new Lexar Professional UDMA cards deliver a 125% performance improvement over Lexar's previous generation 133x CompactFlash® product line when the card is used with a UDMA-enabled device.

While I don't think I'll be running out to replace my current set of 133x cards for these guys I will probably buy the new ones if I find the need for more storage space in the future. 300x is FAST and anything to streamline the process of getting images from camera to computer is worthwhile. Especially when you're at a reception creating a slideshow on the fly during dinner. :)

The new Firewire 800 card readers on the other hand... Those may need to find their way into my bag. I LOVE firewire 800. It's fast and reliable. How can you go wrong. I picked up a new Firelite hard drive at the Apple Store in Alderwood mall the other day and almost bought it just because they upgraded the interface to firewire 800. That's twice as fast as FW 400. Fast is good. I didn't buy it though, my Firelite FW 400 60Gb drive is still performing flawlessly and it's plenty fast.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 Pre-Order Announced

Adobe announced today that it's groundbreaking photography workflow application Photoshop Lightroom is officially out of Beta and should begin shipping in mid-February.

Lightroom has been in public beta for around 12 months now so this is great news!

Leveraging Adobe Camera Raw technologies, Lightroom allows photographers to streamline their RAW workflow. It's competition, Apple's Aperture, met with lots of user apprehension and disappointment with it's initial release and it wasn't until version 1.5 that Apple has straightened out many of it's kinks. Hopefully we won't have any of those headaches with Adobe's new product.

Check out the write-up on dpreview.com for more details.

I guess I need to go download the last version of the beta and kick the tires again before I place my pre-order.