If you have a Flickr account you should add The Official White House Photostream to your contacts—some really great photography of President Obama by the staff photographer. Have a good weekend everyone!

+ The Official White House Photostream

Here’s a Friday quickie for you:

The OnOne Software DLSR Camera Remote—this thing is fantastic!!! I’m amazed and excited to see what developers are doing with software for the iPhone. It only works with Canon cameras now, but there’s a update coming very soon for Nikon users—Seriously, go get this thing, it’s an amazing piece of software—$9.99 introductory price ($1.99 Lite Version). Have a great weekend everybody!

+The OnOne Software DLSR Camera Remote

I recently started an iPhone Photography Album after seeing the one Chase Jarvis did. I’ve been taking quite a few photos lately and editing them directly on the iPhone with photo apps from the iTunes store. All the photos are straight out of the iPhone—no Photoshop. I’ll be updating the album occasionally, so bookmark it and check back often for updates.

+ Alan Valek iPhone Photo Album

Went down and shot some pics of the 2009 Long Beach Pride Parade on Sunday, these people LOVE getting their picture taken so it wasn’t hard to get any shots…..

Went to the Britney Spears Show w/ The Pussycat Dolls last night at the Honda Center & took these shots with my Canon Powershot G9 @ 800 ISO (…I know), who knows what digital zoom distance too….after some Photoshop and noise reduction software some of them were salvageable.

I’ve been working on my design portfolio day & night lately, should have it done shortly + new website, stay tuned. Here’s some of the images…

Blitz Distribution Catalog Design + Direction.

Blitz Distribution Summer Catalog Detail Shots.

Birdhouse Skateboards Catalog Design + Direction.

Baker Skateboards Catalog Design + Direction.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this band, I can’t stop listening to their new album “Fantasies”, here’s a bunch of their video’s to aqauint yourself if you’re not already. enjoy.

+ Metric Official Website

First Impressions Are Everything.

Well, My Intuos 4 tablet arrived last week so I thought I’d post up some photos and my first impressions after using it for a few days for all of you debating on wether or not to replace your older one. This thing blows away my old Intuos 3—hands down, Wacom did an amazing job on this device, it’s a beauty for sure. The surface has more of a texture / paper feel to it now, but trying different nibs seems to have less effect on the way it feels when compared to the Intuos 3, surface does feel better though. The black color looks sleek, although it tends to show smudges easily being that it’s matte black, but it does come clean with very little effort—regardless this thing looks amazing in person. I went for the large size this time, I was worried that it might be too big, but not at all.

Game Changer.

Not too many devices come out in the graphic design world that I can say this about, but this product is pretty amazing. The Intuos 4 with it’s new scroll wheel & LED buttons (so you can finally remember what you programmed your keys with) will forever change your workflow. I’ve used Lightroom quite a bit with this tablet doing this post and it is SO nice to use—I found reaching for the keyboard less for the first time in years. The scroll wheel is fantastic for changing the adjustment brush sizes and scrolling your library, it’s kinda weird at first because you want to just use your keyboard, but after you program your keys and get used it, you’ll never go back. Even web browsing is great with this thing! The wheel will scroll your page up and down and I set my LED buttons for new tab, close window, back & forward + you can use the new pop-up radial menu for cut, copy & paste…convinced yet?

Re-designed Pen + Stand.

The pen doesn’t seem to be all that visually different other than they’ve changed it to black and some other small details, but it’s what’s inside that apparently where they’ve made the most changes. I guess by putting the pen / tablet in “Precision Mode” it will register as little as a gram of pressure, so you basically touch the surface of the tablet and it will start to paint / draw + it has double (2048 I think) the levels of pressure sensitivity as the Intuos 3, I can say that “Precision Mode” is very touchy, but haven’t really used it enough yet.

I want to say a huge “thank you” to Wacom for finally giving us more nibs with purchase—10 to be exact, and they even hid them within the base so you won’t lose them, they also included a nice nib extracter so you don’t have to find creative ways to pull the nibs out of the pen anymore—very nice touch.

Conclusion

If you’re on the fence considering buying one of these tablets because you already have a Intuos 3 and it works fine and you’re not sure—go buy one if you can, you won’t be disappointed. The Intous 3 is a very nice tablet, I’ve used it for quite a while, but this tablet makes it look and feel like a toy. For me—just the new scroll wheel and LED buttons are reason enough to upgrade—it’s already changed the way I work in a very short time.

Pros:

• New scroll wheel
• LED buttons
• More levels of pressure sensitivity
• Radial menu
• Nib extractor
• Comes with 10 nibs
• Surface feels more like paper / has a texture

Cons:

• Black surface will leave smudges from your hands—but minor, wipes off easily
   

Find More technical information here:

+ Wacom

+ Layers Magazine Review

+ Corey Barker’s Intuos 4 Overview Videos

Subtle, ballsy & genius.