And then there were three…

First off, some software news that we all may want to stay abreast of – Adobe has released the latest updates for Camera Raw and Adobe Lightroom.

The ACR update applies to CS4 users, Elements 7.0 users, and Premiere Elements 7.0 users, and includes raw conversion algorithms for the Canon 500D, the Powershot XS1 IS, the Nikon D5000 and several Hasselblads, as well as some other camera updates for Olympus, Sony, and Pentax.  It’s version 5.4 and is now out of beta and available for download.  The updates for Windows and Mac are available here:

Camera Raw

For Lightroom users, the update takes you to the latest stable release of version 2.4.  So, if you are running version 2.3 or earlier, this update is a recommended one for you.  It basically is the same as the ACR update for Photoshop and other programs, but since there’s no secondary GUI for the converter portion, it’s just built into the program update.  You should be able to over-install it on top of your current installation, but as with everything else, I always recommend backing up your system and important files prior to updating things like this that can have an impact on your entire library.   The downloads for Windows and Macintosh are available here:

Lightroom

Now, onto the more exciting news…speaking of Adobe and all, as you may recall, there was a contest held here at Canon Blogger on the Learning Digital Photography podcast a while back and the winner is slated to get their very own copy of Lightroom from the folks over at Adobe.  Well, I am happy to announce here today that The Adobe Lightroom Contest has entered it’s final phase here at Canon Blogger/Learning Digital Photography!.

As you  may recall, as alluded to above,  a few podcasts back, I had the honor of sitting down with Tom Hogarty and talking shop about Lightroom, it’s purpose, development, and lots of fun stuff about photography in general.  At the end of the show, Mr. Hogarty generously donated a copy of Lightroom to some lucky listener of the podcast.  We started a photography Flickr thread, and the entries started pouring in.

After 58 entries came in that met the criteria we were looking for, the contestants were narrwoed down to 10 finalists, which were then compiled and put on display here at the blog (and you can see all of them here).  We now have narrowed the field down to three possible contenders for the grand prize of the Lightroom software.  We’ll talk a little more amongst myself and Mr. Hogarty to see which is the “best of the best”, but the three that we are now in our final phase of considering are:

Blooming Orchid


Black-and-white Magnolia Blossom


The Foggy Lighthouse

Once we have the grand prize winner determined, one of these three people will have a copy of Photoshop Lightroom arriving on their doorstep soon.  Thanks again to all the entries – we’ve actually worked quite diligently on this to really get a sense of which image captures the essence of both photography, what Lightroom processing can do for your creativity, and also purely on the artistic merit.

Again, thanks to all the entries for the contest – the latest one is still going on for another week – the winner will get a 33% discount code to FotoQuote Pro – and to enter that all you have to do is make an entry here on the blog!  (Limit one entry per person per day).  Keep on shooting and sharing – happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

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