Photoshop Creative has launched a fantastic new feature which is highly addictive. Photoshop Face-off is a brand new Photoshop game, which enables you to vote on your favourite Photoshop images.Two images are thrown up onto the screen and you vote for your preferred image with a click of the mouse. The images are picked at random from the Photoshop Creative galleries, giving users a great excuse to have a look through all the artwork, whilst having fun at the same time. Head to www.photoshopcreative.co.uk/photoshopfaceoff  to try it out for yourself! 

So what do you think? Photoshop Creative has had a revamp to the website, with a brand new wider format. Now users have access to far more features at the touch of a button and can take in all that Photoshop Creative has to offer. Access the Galleries, the Editors Blog and Photoshop Daily in an instant, thanks to the much more user-friendly interface. Users can also enjoy direct access to the Photoshop Creative forum, where help and advice is on hand for all those Photoshop questions.For those who haven’t created their own gallery yet, get yourself registered and upload your images today. The Gallery is thriving more than ever, with more and more people uploading their Photoshop images everyday. We’d love to hear what you think, so take a look around today.

For those of you looking for the next big thing or n arts competition that really tests your skills and nerve then Cut&Paste is the event for you.

www.cutandpaste.com

FULL PRESS RELEASE BELOW

Cut&Paste to Unveil an Expanded Tournament and Global Championship in 2009

Live digital design tournament adds new cities, new disciplines, new format, new website, and first-ever international championship for upcoming global tour

September 29, 2008, NEW YORK – The annual Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament is traveling forward in time. The next global tour, originally slated for fall 2008, will instead take place in early 2009 to accommodate Cut&Paste’s new, largely expanded competition series. The scheduling shift allows what will be a considerably longer tournament series to avoid holiday interruptions—the upcoming global tour will span five months of consecutive weekend competitions across the world map, while the previous tournament in 2007 completed its circuit in three. The changes to the 2009 tour, outlined below, represent Cut&Paste’s decision to create a bigger, better program in response to its audience’s growing demand for more competitions in more places.

Cut&Paste’s 2009 global tour will begin in February and continue through June, leading the charge with city competitions in North America, moving across the pond to Europe, and rounding things out with the Asia/Pacific region. But this time it won’t end there. The 2009 tournament will culminate in the first-ever Cut&Paste Global Championship, bringing all its winners from cities around the world to one place for a climactic battle of the champions. Competitors again will perform live onstage in the high-pressure environment of Cut&Paste’s trademark 15-minute elimination rounds, eyed and observed by judges and audience alike as they design against the clock—only this time, the pride of their respective countries and hometowns, as well as their personal reputations, will be at stake. In June 2009, New York City, birthplace of Cut&Paste, will host this all-out, guns-blazing international showdown of skills, speed, and style.

The debut of the Global Championship will mark a milestone in Cut&Paste history, presenting its unique competitive concept on a grand scale in the city where it all began. Born as a novel idea—to have designers not only compete for bragging rights but also showcase their talents in a live performance, with the audience watching their every move in real time—Cut&Paste began with a single competition in New York City in 2005. This first event surpassed expectations, drawing a full house of hundreds of the city’s creative professionals and curious partygoers, all making noise for the designers they deemed worthy. The technical setup allowed every mouse click and tapped command to register immediately from each designer’s workstation (Apple® G5, Wacom® Cintiq®, and Adobe® software) to one of the large-scale projections displayed across the walls of the venue. Design became spectator sport, party atmosphere and all. And with this initial success, what began as eight designers and an energetic crowd in a brick-walled Tribeca bar quickly evolved: Cut&Paste followed up with a 4-city national tour in 2006, then exploded into a whirlwind eleven-city global tour in 2007.

The 2009 Digital Design Tournament will further expand the series, adding several new cities to the global tour and introducing new competitions in the disciplines of 3D and motion graphics design. Event formats will vary from city to city: while all tournament cities will host the 2D design competition, not every city will produce competitions in 3D and motion graphics. Cities for the 2009 global tour are to be announced in November 2008, but past tournaments have taken place in major U.S. and international cities including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, Boston, Tokyo, London, Sydney, Berlin, and Hong Kong.

To accompany the comprehensive changes it is making for 2009, Cut&Paste will also reveal a revamped website this fall. Fresh updates and detailed information about the tour schedule, city participation, and event programming for the 2009 Digital Design Tournament will be available on the Cut&Paste website when it publicly launches its redesign on November 10, 2008.

If your looking for a great gift for your creative friends or family then why not invest in some Xmas Getty goodies?

 Full press release below: 

Choose the perfect Christmas gift this year with a personalised hand printed photograph from the Getty Images Gallery.  With over 40 million images to choose from online, the Getty Images Gallery offers you access to some of the greatest collections of photography in the world. Offering a totally bespoke service, the Getty Images Gallery contains photographs that won’t fail to dazzle your friends and loved ones this Christmas, and will continue to impress in the years to come.

There are two quick and easy ways to find the right image for your Christmas gifts: you can either call the Getty Images Gallery team on 020 7291 5380 with a brief and our researchers will do a tailored search in the ‘archive’ on your behalf.  Or, if you prefer to do-it-yourself, just browse our on-line database by clicking on www.gettyimagesgallery.co.uk <http://www.gettyimagesgallery.co.uk/>

In addition, photographs are available to buy from all of the amazing shows held at the Getty Images Gallery this year. These include the hugely popular Time Out ‘London Through a lens’ which offered a rare glimpse into London’s people and places, both past and present, and ‘Capturing Film History in-the-making’ which showcased iconic, behind-the-scenes images of some of the world’s greatest stars filming at Pinewood studios.

Whether someone’s passion is classic cars, James Bond, sports or travel, the Getty Images Gallery will help find the perfect image, whilst fans of iconic celebrities such as Mick Jagger and Audrey Hepburn will be able to delve deep into an incredible range of portraiture by legendary photographers such as Slim Aarons and Terry O’Neill.

Each photograph is produced to the customer’s specific requirements. Hand-printed from the original negative by a specialised in-house darkroom team, using a range of top-quality papers, the Getty Images Gallery team can create the right look for any interior, using everything from timeless imagery to cropped and styled abstract montages.

The photographs can be printed in various sizes and on different materials to suit your needs. Prices start from as little as £65 for a 10×8 inch resin photograph and go up to £875 for a 40×60 inch premium fibre. The Getty Images Gallery also offers a hand made framing service.

Need a break from the Christmas crowds this December? Why not take a breather to come in, meet the team and browse the gallery? We are open from 10am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday and 12pm to 6pm on Saturday. We are conveniently located just off Oxford Street and entrance is free. You can find us at 46 Eastcastle Street, London W1W 8DX and the nearest tube is Oxford Circus. We look forward to seeing you and helping you choose that picture perfect present this Christmas!

NVIDIA GPU’s are powering a creative revolution with the latest adobe creative suite 4. This is allowing creative users of all its major software to achieve unprecedented performance and use dazzling new features with native NVIDIA GPU acceleration.

Press release below:

SANTA CLARA, CA—SEPTEMBER 24, 2008—NVIDIA today announced that Adobe will natively support its graphics processing units (GPUs) in their newly announced Adobe® Creative Suite® 4. Adobe is the latest visual computing company to grab on to the massively parallel processing power of NVIDIA GPUs for more than just rendering pixels to the screen. With NVIDIA GPU acceleration, Adobe Creative Suite 4 enables a faster, more natural way of working with images, while improving quality and productivity. The latest edition in a long line of award-winning software toolsets, Adobe Creative Suite 4 is the first application set of its kind to take advantage of the power of native GPU acceleration.

“A critical element of CS4 was to capture the enormous power of the GPU,” said John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe. “The difference is astounding. Performance is important to creative professionals and with the NVIDIA GPU, they are assured to be able to interact with images and videos in a much faster, smoother, more engaging way.”

GPUs have long been essential platforms for real-time rendering of images to computer screens, but software developers have recently begun using their parallel processing power for a variety of different visual computing tasks. Adobe Creative Suite 4 is the most important addition to this trend because of its market position as the leading design and development software suite.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 features a variety of creative tools that automatically detect the presence of NVIDIA Quadro® or GeForce® GPUs and uses the parallel processing capability of the GPUs to speed a number of visually intensive operations.

· Adobe® Photoshop® CS4 uses NVIDIA Quadro or GeForce GPUs to create an interactive digital canvas. The GPUs enable real-time image rotation, zooming, and panning, and make changes to the view instantaneous and smooth. Adobe Photoshop CS4 also taps the GPU for 2D and 3D compositing and high-quality antialiasing, making jagged edges of text and objects a thing of the past. Brush resizing and brushstroke preview, 3D movement, high-dynamic-range tone mapping, and color conversion are also accelerated by the GPU.

· Adobe After Effects® CS4 features a variety of creative visual effects accelerated by NVIDIA Quadro GPUs, making it easier than ever to add graphics and visual effects to a video, speeding the work flow, and quickly moving from concept to final product. Effects accelerated by the NVIDIA GPU include depth of field, bilateral blur effects, turbulent noise such as flowing water or waving flags, and cartoon effects.

· Adobe Premiere Pro® CS4 can take advantage of NVIDIA Quadro GPUs to accelerate high-quality video effects such as motion, opacity, color, and image distortion. Quadro-based graphics solutions enable faster editing of multiple high-definition video streams and graphic overlays and provide a variety of video output choices for high-quality preview, including display port, component TV, or uncompressed 10 or 12-bit SDI.

“The GPU being a central ingredient of Adobe Creative Suite 4 is a monumental milestone in the computer industry. Adobe is the recognized leader in revolutionary content tools and this marks the beginning of the GPU accelerated creative revolution,” said Dan Vivoli, executive vice president of marketing for NVIDIA. “We are honored to have been able to work so closely with the talented engineers at Adobe to help them take their world renowned suite to the next level.”

For more information on Adobe Creative Suite 4, visit http://www.adobe.com/. For more information on using NVIDIA GeForce GPUs and NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics solutions with Adobe Creative Suite 4, see www.nvidia.com/adobe.

About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) is the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, a high-performance processor which generates breathtaking, interactive graphics on workstations, personal computers, game consoles, and mobile devices. NVIDIA serves the entertainment and consumer market with its GeForce graphics products, the professional design and visualization market with its Quadro graphics products, and the high-performance computing market with its Tesla™ computing solutions products. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. and has offices throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. For more information, visit www.nvidia.com.

Mister retro are thrilled to announce their latest released plug-in for the creative consumer. Inspired by the aesthetic of vintage offset printing Mister Retro looked for a way to reproduce this appearance. Teaming up with Maxim Chernousov of Alpha Plug-ins Permanent Press was successfully created.

If your interested in experimenting with this entertaining creative plug-in then visit www.misterretro.com/permanent_press_filters.html and let Misterretro know what you think.

The Sony World Photography Awards 2009 have officially launched, with this years theme revolving a central theme of environment.  Bigger than ever the contest will include a student programme spanning across six continents. 12 categories for professional photographers and the nine categories for amateurs are available to entrants.

www.worldphotographyawards.org

Read below for the full press release:

A major new initiative, in association with The Prince’s Rainforests Project (PRP), was announced on Monday 22 September, at the launch of the second annual Sony World Photography Awards 2009 - a truly global competition that honours both professional and amateur photographers.

Speakers at the launch at the Seippel Gallery in Cologne included Scott Gray, Managing Director of the Sony World Photography Awards, James Kennedy, General Manager of Marketing Communications at Sony Europe, Vanessa Winship, winner of the 2008 I’iris d’or and Briony Mathieson from The Prince’s Rainforest Project. Also speaking were Ruth Eichhorn, Director of Photography, GEO Magazine and photographer and President of Magnum Photos, Stuart Franklin.

In addition to the 12 categories for professional photographers and the nine categories for amateurs, the Sony World Photography Awards are delighted to announce a new partnership with The Prince’s Rainforests Project for the PRP Awards which will complement this year’s theme of the environment.

Professional photographers will be submitting their portfolios in the hope of being selected for a fully-funded project to document the rainforest regions of the world. Amateur photographers will also be invited to submit their images for a global awareness campaign, using photography to educate and inform.

Also new to this year’s awards:

•    An extended university programme which has grown from 10 universities in Europe in the inaugural year of the awards to 60 universities across six continents. The brief for this year’s student competition is to produce one image which highlights a single environmental issue specific to their country.

•    The Festival @ The Sony World Photography Awards: a week-long festival of photography that takes place throughout the city of Cannes.  Through talks, seminars, screenings, networking events, book signings and many other programmes and events, The World Photography Awards have created a programme for the photographic community to participate and network through.  The Festival @ Sony World Photography Awards is also creating a new annual cultural event for the general public and all interested in contemporary art.

•    A new category list has been created for professional photographers.  It spreads across the three photographic genres - photojournalism and documentary, commercial and fine art

•    The introduction of the Sony Campaign Award for amateur photographers unites the global obsession for football with the enthusiasm and passion of photography.  Amateur photographers are invited to enter the Campaign Award with a single image that captures the beauty and spirit of football in unexpected places, with the winner having the chance of being one of the photographers used in Sony’s forthcoming digital imaging 2009 campaign work.

•    A global touring exhibition - Discovering a World of Images – showcases photographs by the 2008 winners and finalists.  Through the coming year, it will visit Belgium; Cologne; Tokyo; Delhi; New York; Singapore; Rio de Janeiro; Moscow and Melbourne.

The Sony World Photography Awards welcome submissions from every corner of the world. Last year – the inaugural year – over 70,000 entries were received from 178 countries.  For both professional and amateur photographers, the categories cover a broad range of subjects from photojournalism to sport, architecture to fashion, and offer an all-encompassing competition for the photographic world.

Now, in just their second year, the awards have grown to become much more than an awards programme. It is a mix of festival events, exhibitions, award schemes and student programmes throughout the year. In April 2009 the WPA will host Festival @ The Sony World Photography Awards, a week-long celebration of photography at the Palais des Festival in Cannes.  It will be attended by some of the most influential names in the international photographic industry. The highlight of the week will be the Awards Ceremony Gala Dinner where the winners in all the categories will be honoured and the Sony World Photography Awards Photographer of the Year will be announced.

Through its many initiatives, the Sony World Photography Awards aim to unite the international photographic community.

Vanessa Winship, winner of the 2008 I’iris d’or comments: “In its in augural year, Sony World Photography Awards have provided an opportunity for me to have had my work judged by some of the photographers whose own work I most respect and admire. In an industry as competitive as my own I was delighted to have been singled out with this series of portraits. I am not a new photographer, but this award has certainly assisted in allowing new audiences to see my work, an important and necessary aspect to anyone working in a visual medium.”

World Photographic Academy

The awards are judged by the World Photographic Academy which today comprises close to 100 of the world’s leading photographers including Elliott Erwitt, Mary-Ellen Mark, Susan Meiselas, Bruce Davidson and Tom Stoddart; gallery owners; representatives of international photo agencies; international Guilds; photo editors; critics and publishers. Their role is to promote excellence in photography and to set the standard for the award selections.

Key dates

2008

22 September     Amateur and Professional categories open for submissions
9 October        Global Tour opens in Tokyo
31 October         Student Focus participating universities announced
25 November        WPA Judges announced
2 December        Global tour opens in New York
31 December     Closing date for professional and amateur categories

2009

24 February        Amateur and Professional awards shortlist announcement
3 March        Student Focus winners’ announcement
17 March        Amateur and Professional winners’ announcement
14-19 April    Festival @ The Sony World Photography Awards - exhibitions and events in Cannes
16 April        Sony World Photography Awards gala evening and ceremony

Today records further advantages developments in the creative software industry with the official launch of Adobe Creative Suite 4.You to can experience all this creative software has to offer by registering for the hosted web broadcast this morning from 10 am.To do so visit the link below:https://www.adobe.com/go/somethingbrilliant

Creative Bulletin:

For all of you who like to keep your fingers on the creative pulse then keep an eye out for the latest site revamp from Oneighty Creative. They’ll be uploading a lovely new selection of full bleed designs and much more in the coming weeks.

You can keep abreast of any developments by visiting the link below.

www.oneightycreative.com

The London Design Festival launched its very first day dedicated to digital design on the 17 September and we sent senior staff writer and magazine correspondent Adam Smith to go see what this event was all about.
The Digital Design Day, D3, is an innovative inclusion in the creative calendar, which provided a free day of exhibitions and interactive workshops with some of the digital industry’s greatest minds. Big commercial hitters such as Apple, Smoothe, Future Sound and Digital Urban were present and on hand to inspire through presenting their own latest innovations.
Adam reveals: “D3 was an absolute triumph. The day was as educational as it was entertaining and digital creatives of all standards will surely take something from this event. It’s definitely one to put in your diary for next year if you missed it.” Sampling all event elements, Adam explains: “ The free two-hour Apple seminar demonstrated by Alan Rosenfield and Byron Wijayawardena was highly engaging. Presenting communication strategies through Apples latest software’s such as Leopard, Apperture and iDisk really opened my eyes to the new potentials of creating all-inclusive promotional digital and print material and innovative ways in which to share this with the creative community both on a commercial and personal capacity.”
As Adam shows in his estimation of the event, this is the place for students to educate themselves, professionals to expand and for everyone to maximise their network capabilities. “There was also a great tutorial session where students could get design reviewed by professionals, opportunities to familiarise with innovative events such as the global sensation Cut & Paste www.cutandpaste.com and a fee-based event, iDesign, which explore how our collective digital future will pan out relating to formats including TV, web, mobile and games. This was presented by the heads in these sectors such as Andy Cameron head of the Interactive Department at Fabrica and Paul Dawson, Experience Director at Conchango.”