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PodCast: Download
Running Time: 15 minutes
An audio podcast about Adobe Photoshop? Seriously? Yup! Would someone really want to listen to my podcast? Why not? I always have a ton of things to say, this seems to be a better place for most of my random thoughts than the beginning of the tutorials. This way, if your interested on more behind the scenes stuff, then this would be the place to find it.
In This Episode:
- Adobe Photoshop CS5.5 Released
- TimeLapse Retouching Video
- Sponsorship
- iTunes, Blackberry, and Zune… Oh My!
- Corporate Take Over of the Internet
- A Call to Action
- Live One-on-One WebCast
- Wrap Up
Transcript:
Hi, my name is John and I would like to welcome you to the Art of Retouching’s first podcast.
We have done many tutorial videos but I really wanted to work on an audio podcast so you can get to know me a little bit more, and about the brand, and hopefully get a little bit more of a connection, other than just watching tutorial videos. I know that in my personal life, I like to listen to podcasts – mostly about business and marketing – and I listen to it during the drive from my house to the studio, where I do all my retouching all day, every day. With this being the first podcast I don’t have any real structure to it yet, I’m just kind of winging it, but the big thing is to put yourself out there, and present something, and get it made. Otherwise you’ll just be sitting around and not actually doing anything at all.
So I don’t know how boring this first episode will be, but I hope it will get more interesting and more targeted as time goes on. So, if you can bare it with me, it would excellent.
I would like to start off by welcoming the Retouch-Pro visitors, and new subscribers, as well as other people that found me off the internet. Today seems to have been an amazing spike in traffic on the website. Yesterday, I had some free time, and I wrote a couple of posts on Retouch Pro and a whole bunch of traffic came my way. Then on top of those people, several other of them signed up for membership. I don’t know what Google did, but today my search stuff went off the roof. I would like to thank everybody that actually did come in. So that’s awesome.
Right now I am making this podcast because the website is down, and I am waiting for files to be uploaded. Technically, it is still up, and you can still access videos and everything, but there is a problem at the back end, where I had installed the plug in for the WordPress, and it absolutely broke the website. I’m trying to figure out what on the earth is causing it. Basically all the users can actually see everything, the same as always, but at the back end I can’t make any new posts. So I actually have all this content just sitting here., I have a blog post, I have another video, so while I was just sitting here waiting for all these files upload to the website again, I figured I’d finally make the time to do this first audio that I had ready to go for some time now.
I would like to thank everybody who comes back week after week to watch my video tutorials. A small army of you are watching videos that come from an RSS Feed that is being distributed through iTunes, Zune, or even directly from our own website. This is a test show, which I wanted to try out. As of this second, I have no specific format, guests, or topics. At this point, it's really just more about my ramblings of various Photoshop, or retouching news. It will not be edited down like the tutorials now are. So, you can expect the more humanizing ums, ahs, and other stumbling.
Adobe Photoshop CS5.5 Released
So, if I have not completely lost you yet, I would like to move onto our first news story, which is about the newly announced, and released Adobe Photoshop CS5.5, due to arrive Mid May. Now, I’m sure many of you are curious about what is new in Adobe Photoshop CS5.5. Well, I’ll tell you right now… absolutely nothing. To be honest, I can’t tell the difference, as it doesn’t affect me in the retouching side of things, as far as I can tell. Technically, it’s not even 5.5, it’s really called 5.1. It’s really just a point update. So it’s nothing that you really need to go out and buy, it’s nothing that you need to worry about.
In the studio, I’m still using CS3 I believe. It lacks some of the features that I teach about in my Photoshop videos, but obviously, it is perfectly usable and I don’t worry too much about it. It would be nice to upgrade, but why spend the money in order to fix something that really isn’t broken?
I’ve been a big fan, and I’ve been using Photoshop since 2.5 I think. So I definitely have seen the incarnations. I do remember that in version 8, they introduced a bunch of really interesting upgrades. After that, a lot of stuff they have been doing is just fluff, incorporating more web stuff and more 3D stuff, and more stuff I never really used. But occasionally there is a tool that I have picked up and started using or whatever, but for most products, I can get along just fine using the older versions.
Anyway, the new version of Photoshop is out, and overall it is nothing that you need to overly concern yourself with, because it looks, acts and behaves exactly the same. If you would like to learn more about this topic, you can go to links.theartofretouching.com/cs55 And that points out to an article that we have, and will give more information on the whole CS series upgrade.
I came across a video today that I thought you might find some interesting. You can find it at links.theartofretouching.com/timelapse Basically, someone had created a video of them doing retouching, and they did it in a timelapse, and it took them 2 and a half hours, but they recorded everything, sped it up and it’s an 11 minute video. Just in general, it was something neat to watch this person working. My personal comments on it – I did skip around, I didn’t really pay too much attention to it, other than it was neat enough to mention, but the guy had the tiniest brush in the world, and he was going point by point. I realize that everyone had his own style, but I never work with a brush that’s so small.
It was just crazy, I understand what he was doing and all that, but to me, time is money and spending 2 and a half hours cloning out every pore on the persons face is just a complete waste of time. But this is just my opinion and I know that everybody has his own opinion on that topic.
If there is anybody out there that would like to sponsor this show, or the tutorials that we work on, please let me know, as we might have a similar target audience, and we can help each other out so that would be awesome.
iTunes, Blackberry, and Zune… Oh My!
Let's talk a little bit about Apple's quest for world domination. I am amazed at how many of you download the tutorial videos for your ipods, iPads and iPhones. I'll be honest, if it wasn’t for iTunes, barely anyone would even know our website even existed. Overall, this is crazy to me, when you consider how much I need to dumb down the technical side of the video distribution, just to get it to work on Apple's iTunes platform. It’s crazy, I just have to crunch the video and the audio, just to get it on there, because otherwise it won’t even take it.
Due to the password protection we use on the website, the growing amount of content is not being sent through this various iTunes, Zune and Blackberry systems. I have had direct conversations with the software creator, for now there is no way for us to get that content into the existing RSS feed.
Now, sure, I could just loose the protection and send the videos to you, but I will be honest. I am trying to direct as much of the traffic to our website that I can at, www.TheArtofRetouching.com
It is safe for you to sign up as a member, and if you do, you not only have the access to our free content, but also to the higher quality videos that iTune,s or the other portable devices, will allow.
If you actually do want to use that lower quality content, just to take it with you, it’s cool, because each of our posts have a simple download link and you can just download it for yourself. You can always do iTunes or whatever, and if you are listening to this from iTunes, I strongly hope that maybe you would go into iTunes and give us a thumbs up and leave us a positive review, because that will help other people to find our videos. Right now, we are found in iTunes, but if we can get some positive feedback, that will boost us up in rankings, and that would be totally awesome.
I don’t know about this particular podcast, but if you do like our videos or tutorials, that would be really awesome if you did that for us. The more comments that the show receives, the more our ranks goes up, the more people will be able to find our show. Let’s be honest: if you search for the keyword Photoshop, 25 or 30 of those shows are filled with old content from more than 2 years ago. Help others find the good stuff, and you can do that by giving us the thumbs up.
Corporate Take Over of the Internet
It may not directly matter to you, but without the revenue stream coming in from people visiting our affiliate links or buying our extended video tutorial on cloning, we would have a very difficult time producing more quality targeted videos. I’m not sure that you have noticed, but our stuff is not trick of the week type. It’s content that can help hundreds of people around the world gain sound advice about using Adobe Photoshop.
I suppose though, Apple has been a huge contributor on how the Internet has evolved, something that does scare me though; is the way how in 5-10 years, the Internet will become more than a gateway to the corporate hubs of the social space.
iTunes, Facebook and Twitter: so how many people are actually these systems? Unless I sign up and become part of their machine, I will be overrun. If I really want to push the thought, how long it will take before the global governments become completely run by these corporations, which are mostly originating in America?
Consider how many products whether they are tangible or conceptual, are actually owned by the same 5 or 10 major companies? You may not notice, but Walt Disney Company owns ABC Broadcast Television, Pixar, Marvel Comics and all of their licensing, trademark, and intellectual properties. Then there are several smaller businesses, like Buena Vista Distribution, that are tiny blips on the map. Please note, that I have not even mentioned the 11 theme parks that are around the world.
But back to the point; if the Catholic Church were able to control everything from half a world away, for hundreds of years, there is no reason why Apple, IBM or AT&T can’t control everything. Did you know, that Donald Trump is running for president of the United States next term? Things to think about. If Steve Jobs wanted to, he could run, and he would have a really good chance of winning. I know that I would vote for him, he is my hero.
I’m sorry about all this cause-to-action, I just had so many different things that I wanted to put out there. So if there is anything that you are able to do to help us, that would be awesome.
Anything you are willing to do to help us, would be awesome. It could sending an email comment to info@theartofretouching.com or commenting on our iTunes, YouTube, Zune or Blackberry Channels, buying our video, buying from an affiliate link, or even asking a simple question. We even have a 24/7 voicemail line if you would like to give us a call, and leave a comment.
As we are considering a weekly spin off chat show, similar to this one, that is more free form and less tutorial specific, voice comments would be awesome, too. We can be reached at 203-551-9684. And again, if you know of any companies that would be willing to sponsor the show or video tutorials, please have them contact us. We are a target show with a growing audience, so if this is your niche, let’s talk.
One other thing before I go, I just wanted to let you know that I have very seriously been trying to work on adding some live retouching shows, where I will be giving a presentation, as well as answering questions, and working on your photographs to try and solve any problems that you might have. So, if this is something that you would be interested in, please send us that email or phone call and let us know that this is something that you are interested in doing.
The first one that we are doing will be offered to Members Only, so if you would like to get that email if that is available, be sure to sign up. It’s really easy, all you have to do is give your first name and your email address. Then we will be able to send you that information when we will have something more concrete going on.
And it’s not that I don’t want to do it, I really want to do this kind of stuff, because I love generating new content. The problem is that I constantly have these back-end problems that I need to deal with. Between the server, WordPress, the membership software, and all this other stuff that was wrong on a daily basis; not to mention actually trying to run a retouching studio, it’s not always easy for me to find time to create these videos for you.
And it’s not always easy for me, as I’m trying to spend some time with my family as well. So if at any time you find that the website is down or not working, or you haven’t seen any updates in a while or whatever, don’t be worried that I went away, the website is definitely is here to stay, I don’t always have the time to dedicate to the free content that I want to. It’s just one of those things, that if it’s free, then it comes when it comes.
I’m really trying to stay on schedule of 2 videos every week, but many times I don’t even get one video every week. So I just haven’t been able to get any created and then just sitting there and waiting to go.
Anyway, that’s just me, kind of rambling on. I hope next time I will have something little bit more concrete to talk about. I do hope you come back again. If you have anything to say better, or different, send me an email, or give us a phone call, and I will try to adapt the shows better to meet those needs of what you have said.
Thanks for listening and I hope to hear from you.
Oh, and if haven’t gotten to the real action yet, please go to www.TheArtofRetouching.com which has many more trips and tricks to make you a better retoucher.
