Author: Dan Gendro

iPad Pro now supports Apple Pencil for Adobe Photoshop

A recent fix updating the app for iOS has now made it possible to use the gadget along with the application.

Photoshop Fix has now been released on Photoshop technology in order to make it possible for users of iPhones or the iPad Pro to be able to more effectively retouch and restore images.

The new capability offers greater precision using smooth, liquefy, heal, lighten and other image edits.

The new features for the iPad Pro version of the app have been powered by Adobe CreativeSynch and are designed to allow mobile device users to be able to refine and adapt their creative projects with greater accuracy and efficiency than was previously possible. This is greatly due to the addition of support of the Apple Pencil, which allows an artist to make changes with greater precision than a fingertip.

The most recently updated version of Photoshop Fix for iPad Pro involves a number of new features.

Among the new features in this mobile app include the following:

• The ability to restore and retouch images using tools for greater precision for the structure and appearance the user is trying to achieve. These include liquefy (which lets a user reshape an area by swelling, rotating, pulling or pushing it for effects ranging from drastic to quite subtle), heal and patch (to repair imperfections by using surrounding content that is blended over the zone), smooth (which lets landscapes, skin or other content experience sharpening and smoothing with simple painting techniques) and lighten or darken (where light can be added or removed from specific parts of the image).
• Images can be adjusted and edited with a new range of tools including: color (to create a combination of black-and-white and color or to de-saturate areas to remove color), paint (using an eyedropper to capture sample colors for precise effects and then use an adjustable brush and eraser), adjust (to boost exposure, saturation and contrast control as well as to add vignettes) and defocus (to blur a portion of the image so the viewer’s eye will be drawn elsewhere).
• Images can be sent to desktop Photoshop CC for further editing. The new fix converts the edits made into layers and packages that are all sent as a PSD file to the PC.

The addition of Apple Pencil support when using iPad Pro has been gaining considerable applause as it helps to add precision through the sensitivity of the gadget to tilt and pressure for considerable control in selective edits. The version is now available with additional bug fixes and in 15 more languages than had previously been published.

New virtual and augmented reality hub announced by Deakin University

The VR and AR technology spot will be launched to let staff, students and industry partners use the tech.

Australia’s Deakin University has now announced its intentions to launch what will be an Interactive Digital Centre Hub, located in Melbourne, which will focus on virtual and augmented reality technologies.

The hub is expected to open at some point in the first half of 2016, though a specific date hasn’t been released.

The idea behind this hub is to provide a place where industry partners, students and staff members can come together and get their hands on some of the very latest in virtual and augmented reality technology. The hub is being opened in partnership with EON Reality. In total, more than $10 million (USD) has been invested into the creation of this new facility. Once it is up and running it will be the very first center that is dedicated exclusively to VR and AR tech within the greater Asian region.

Deakin University chose to open its augmented reality hub as it already boasts a strong research group.

Augmented reality hub market researchWith a strong set of researchers already in place among its staff and students, Deakin University decided it would be a good investment to provide a location in which VR and AR technology could be studied. This way, it will become easier for these researchers to work with the industry itself, and it will also open up a world of new forms of educational courses and programs that focus on this type of mobile technology.

Among the courses that are already slated to start along with the hub includes a new Bachelor of IT Virtual Reality Major, in addition to a Virtual Reality Graduate Diploma and a Masters in IT specialization in Virtual Reality. Those new offerings are set to begin as of July 2016.

Among the hub features that are attracting the most attention include a multi-user high res immersive 3D dome. That feature will be used primarily for outreach programs.

Professor Trevor Day, the pro vice chancellor of the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment at Deakin, described the benefit of the virtual and augmented reality hub, saying “Deakin University’s commitment to innovation will take another leap forward thanks to this exciting new partnership with EON Reality Inc and perfectly matches the Federal Government’s new Innovation Strategy.”