Since its launch, Adobe’s Creative Cloud has clearly indicated where the company’s future lies. But no one expected the company to get rid of Creative Cloud’s predecessor, Creative Suite, quite so soon.

But that’s exactly what Adobe is doing. Not only is the creative services software shop closing down the Creative Suite version numbers and branding; it’s getting rid of the entire paradigm of old-school, cereal-box* software.

*Our own term for CD-based hard copies of software you’d buy in a store, where they were lined up like boxes of cereal, instead of downloading it online.

RIP, Creative Suite

In a conversation with Scott Morris, Adobe’s director of product marketing, we learned that “Adobe has made the decision that moving forward, we are focusing all our efforts on Creative Cloud. We have no plans for a perpetual release.”

That means no more waiting two years for bug fixes. No more waiting for your design software’s features to catch up with what the web guys have been doing for six months.

It also means a new purchasing paradigm for the entire creative industry. Every ad agency, every magazine, every indie design firm and print shop — they will all be transitioning from bought-and-owned software at $200 or $700 or $2,000 a pop to the Creative Cloud subscription model, which can cost as little as $20 per month.

As for existing and even older versions of Creative Suite software, Morris said, “We’re not doing any [new] feature development. For the next major release of Mac OS and Windows, the products are supported.” And CS6 purchasers will get special, rock-bottom subscription prices.

But that’s as far as it goes. This is the last stop for the Creative Suite train; all passengers must deboard.

Why Creative Suite had to go

“The writing is on the wall for where Adobe is headed, but people are surprised we’re going all in as soon as we are,” Morris said.

Over the past 18 months or so, Adobe has been headed in a decidedly modern direction. It’s been making making big bets on responsive design and adding cloud-based collaboration features to some of its most popular products. It acquired Behance, a web-based portfolio service and creative community, and it started integrating those features into its other software.

Creative Cloud itself is the crown jewel as well as the signpost for Adobe’s recent directions. It presents more tools for developers (and transitioning designer/developers) and puts a greater emphasis on community, collaboration, and the web.

“They’re lightweight, task-specific tools to get the job done,” said Morris. “That’s the direction things are heading. This model lets us meet the new world way better than the old model ever would have.

“We have a beautiful vision of where creative workflows are going, but it is incredibly taxing on our engineers to have two different code bases … We’re not as focused as we want to be.”

Killing off Creative Suite, he said, “frees up our product teams to come up with new innovations faster.”

And speed is, these days especially, of utmost importance. Morris said, “With responsive design or HTML5, to be quite frank, when all that started coming out, Adobe had a hard time keeping up. … There wasn’t time to do another product cycle. The amount of time it takes to make that happen is tremendous, and it slowed us down enough that our customers felt left behind.”

Responses to Creative Cloud

Adobe has been frankly surprised by the creative community’s response to Creative Cloud and the new web-based software delivery and management model. Morris said customers are volunteering to migrate in huge numbers. “They love the promise that you get everything new as soon as it’s available,” he said.

But there are others who aren’t as immediately jazzed.

“It’s gonna be difficult,” said Morris of the shift. “We’re gonna have some cranky customers who aren’t ready for this transition. But it modernizes the way we operate. We have a 20-year-old desktop franchise, and things have changed so rapidly around us that we were getting pretty slow. We weren’t an agile, nimble company because of the software model.”

That agility, he said, is palpable. He continued to say that even employees at Adobe are more excited to come to work because instead of promising new features with the next release cycle in 2015, they can offer something much more responsive.

But to the die-hards who resist change because — let’s be honest — the current model is good enough and already required substantial financial investment, Morris said, “We’ve been through this before.

“Ten years ago, we moved from only individual products to suites, and we were told, ‘No! I don’t want this “CS” thing! I don’t get it.’ But we proved it was valuable because of all the things you could do with it. And now, everyone’s on Creative Suite, and they love it.

“It’s not just a business model change; it lets them do things better and faster than before. That’s what Creative Cloud is going to do, and we’re just at the beginning of this journey.”

Today, Adobe’s creative software for development and design is getting 15 full-version upgrades to its apps, a total rebranding with a new versioning system, and a payment plan and future upgrade path overhaul.

The most important thing for you to know is that Creative Suite is gone. In its place is Creative Cloud. That means no matter what you use, you’ll have to pay a monthly subscription fee to use it; it also means you’ll never again have to wait two years for a bug fix or a crucial feature you need to keep up with others in your industry.

As for the new features and news apps, we’ve got a full rundown, and they’re pretty exciting.

“They’re lightweight, task-specific tools to get the job done,” Adobe marketing director Scott Morris told VentureBeat in a phone call last week. “We have a beautiful vision of where creative workflows are going.”

A lot of what you’ll see in Creative Cloud is fuller integration between desktop and cloud; for example, you will be able to sync fonts, colors, and assets between all your devices.

You’ll be able to create Behance posts directly from Photoshop to show off what you’re working on.

Also, Adobe is killing off the Adobe Application Manager. Instead, a Creative Cloud app will automatically install on the desktop along with any CC software. The Creative Cloud app will also send you notifications on software updates and Behance activities in an activity stream and will help you keep assets, fonts, and style synced.

The 15 new apps and new app versions come with hundreds of new features and revamped features, which we’re highlighting below in painstaking detail for every kind of developer and designer.

New for Photoshop

One of Adobe’s most popular pieces of software is getting a thoroughly modern overhaul. It has new features here that everyone — web designers, pro photographers, photo-happy grandmas — is going to love.

• The new Smart Sharpen feature minimizes noise and haloing while leaving your pics supercrisp.
• Intelligent upsampling makes your images larger without all that sloppy-looking noise and blurring.
• Photoshop CC includes the video and 3D editing features in Photoshop Extended, too.
• Photoshop CC supports Camera Raw edits for any Photoshop layer or file, which permits for better heal edits and vignettes.
• Adobe is giving Photoshop users editable rounded rectangles and multishape and path selection so you can select more than one path, mask, layer, or shape at a time.
• Conditional Actions use if/then statements to automatically choose between different actions based on rules you set up.
• Photoshop is also getting expanded support for Smart Objects, so you can blur and liquefy in a nondestructive way, even after you save the file.
• For 3D painting, live previews have gotten a lot faster — up to 100x faster, the company says.

New for designers

Here are all the new Adobe software features you’ll want to know about before you decide whether your CS package needs an immediate upgrade.

• Adobe Ideas is a new, free iOS app that creates freeform vector illustrations on Apple touchscreen devices.
• Kuler is a new mobile app that takes a photo and creates a color palette that can be synced across your whole system.
• Touch Type is a feature that manipulates individual letters via multitouch, stylus, or mouse. You can also instantly switch between area and point type.
• Images can be turned into brushes, and pattern brushes have auto corners.
• Font search in Illustrator and InDesign, and font preview, and font favorites in InDesign.
• Syncing for fonts, styles, preferences, you name it, across your whole system.
• Multi-file place in Illustrator.
• For InDesign, the new version is faster; has a new, dark UI; supports HiDPI and Retina displays.
• An InDesign QR code creator.
• Parallax scrolling and in-browser editing in Muse.
• InCopy comes to Creative Cloud with HiDPI/Retina support, font search, and a dark UI.

New for developers

Adobe has been placing a ton of emphasis on web design and responsive mobile design lately. Here’s what the company has planned for the more technical side of creative teams.

• Flash has been reengineered for performance with 64-bit architecture.
• Flash now has hi-def export options, better HTML publishing, and a simpler UI.
• The new Flash brings a powerful code editor and comes with Adobe Scout, which detects potential problems in your code.
• With USB connections, you can now do real-time mobile testing in FLash with iOS and Android devices.
• Edge Animate now has motion paths, templates, and support for swipe gestures, as well as an Akamai-hosted content delivery network for your runtime files.
• Edge Reflow is getting an Assets panel and Typekit integration.
• Dreamweaver has a new CSS Designer, a Typekit-powered font library, and a simpler UI.
• You can also author new Dreamweaver projects in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, and you also get a jQuery widget.
• Dreamweaver has PhoneGap integration and an upgraded Fluid Grid layout for doing responsive design.
• As with all the other new CC products, Dreamweaver supports syncing of files, preferences, and settings across your whole system.

New for video

Video pros and special effects folks will also see a lot of the syncing, collaboration features popping up elsewhere in the Creative Cloud family. But Adobe’s video apps are also getting their own special dose of refreshed magic.

• Premier is getting a redesigned Timeline to make editing more efficient.
• Link and locate in Premier will help you keep track of the thousands of clips in a big project.
• Collaborative editing in Premier and After Effects is easier with new sync options. You can also use Anywhere features to edit on the go from a shared server without running into versioning issues.
• Premier Pro now supports closed captioning.
• A few Premier features focus on more precise audio control, including a clip mixer and new plugins.
• In After Effects, you can use tools like Refine Edge, Warp Stabilizer, and Pixel Motion Blur to up your creative game and create higher-quality visual effects.
• After Effects has new tools for 3D video with Cinema 4D support.
• Audition is getting new features for sound removal, previewing tracks, and multitrack editing.
• Adobe is also announcing minor feature upgrades for Prelude, SpeedGrade, and Story Plus.

Image credit: Adobe

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

At long last, Adobe has launched Photoshop Touch for the iPhone and Android phones in a bid to make its flagship photo-editing software available across the most popular smart devices in the world.

“This will bring the power of Photoshop to millions of people worldwide,” Photoshop product manager Stephen Nielson told VentureBeat. “My phone is the device I always have with me so I can be creative no matter where I am.”

Adobe has offered Photoshop Touch for iPad and Android tablets since October 2011, showing its willingness to make its powerful software available outside traditional PCs. That application has been quite popular — it made Apple’s Top Apps of 2012 list, and the latest version of it on the iPad has an average rating for four stars.

But smartphones are much more ubiquitous than tablets, and if Adobe truly wants to be part of the mobile conversation, it needs to have a presence on the iPhone and popular Android phones. Adobe previously only offered an extremely minimal app called Photoshop Express for iPhone and Android phones, but it did not encompass all the features a regular Photoshop user might want.

Photoshop Touch for iPhone and Android does at least offer some satisfaction for those that thought Express wasn’t up to snuff. It lets you do a lot of what you do in Photoshop Touch on the iPad and Photoshop on the desktop. It’s simple to start new projects, and popular tools like layers, levels, cropping, clone stamp, adjustments, and filters are all right there in the app and relatively easy to access and control with your fingers.

One especially cool feature is the ability to shoot a picture from your camera and have that automatically placed as a layer in your project. So if I was in the middle of a project on my phone and happened to be sitting in a park, I could see a live camera feed behind my layers, take the right shot, and then I can have a snazzy tree-and-grass background.

The app is also designed to be part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud, so you can start a project on the iPhone or Android and then work on it from a different device like the iPad or your desktop computer. Creative Cloud offers users 2GB of free storage so you can have one folder available everywhere for photo projects.

Maybe most importantly, it’s easy to share your photo projects from the iPhone version of Photoshop Touch on Facebook and Twitter through the built-in iOS integration. To share a project on Instagram — one of the most popular photo-sharing apps out there — you’d need to save your photo to the iPhone’s camera roll and then select it from there inside Instagram. Thankfully that’s not too hard.

“I myself use Instagram all the time, but sometimes I’ll use Photoshop Touch to touch up a photo,” Nelson said. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”

Nelson said that Adobe not only wants to make this a fulfilling experience for the Photoshop faithful but also use this as a point to introduce some new users to Photoshop.

“On the tablet version, we’ve seen a lot of creative professionals and photographers using it, but there are also a lot of aspirational Photoshop users too,” Nelson said.

Adobe has made this a powerful application that needs a lot of processing power. So the app only runs on the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, and Android phones running version 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or later. This clearly limits the number of people who will be able to use it (think of all the iPhone 4 users out there), but Nelson said the experience has to be good to live up to the standards of Photoshop.

Photoshop Touch will cost $5 on both iPhone and Android. Here’s a full list of features from the iOS app (the list is almost the same on Android):

• Use popular Photoshop features, such as layers, selection tools, adjustments, and filters.
• Improve your photos using classic Photoshop features to bring out the best in your photography. Apply precise tone and color adjustments to your entire composition, a particular layer, or a select area.
• Create something other-worldly using painting effects, filter brushes, and more.
• Make your images pop with graphical text. Apply strokes, add drop shadows and fades, and more.
• Take advantage of your device’s camera to fill an area on a layer with the Camera Fill feature.
• Quickly combine images together. Select part of an image to extract just by scribbling with the Scribble Selection tool. With the Refine Edge feature, use your fingertip to easily capture hard-to-select image elements, like hair.
• Start a project on your iPhone or iPod Touch and finish it on your iPad or back in Photoshop at your desk using a free membership to Adobe Creative Cloud. Your projects are automatically synced between your devices.
• Free membership to Creative Cloud provides 2GB of cloud storage.
• Work on high-resolution images while maintaining the highest image quality. Images up to 12 megapixels are supported.

Photo via Adobe

This sponsored post is produced by StackSocial.

Learning how to code – whether at a high or marginal level – is something that is becoming increasingly important. Yet it isn’t something many people put much though into – or even make a priority. That’s because it either seems too time-consuming or takes too much effort to wrap your head around.

This VentureBeat offer won’t just help you up your coding knowledge and expertise, but it will do so in a way that allows you to go at your own pace – and at a fraction of the regular cost.

This bundle contains 6 video courses that cover everything from design to Photoshop to web development, and they can be accessed whenever you want. That means you can learn at your own pace – which is ideal for those of us who are working on this as a side project to start. And The Learn to Code Bundle is priced right as well – just $99 for a course that is valued at over $900!

Here’s what you’ll receive in The Learn to Code Bundle:

• Make iPhone & iPad Games without Programming ($250 value)
• Become a Web Dev From Scratch ($199 value)
• Learn How to Code iOS Apps ($197 value)
• Create Responsive Web Design ($150 value)
• Ruby Programming for Beginners ($99 value)
• Photoshop CS6 Crash Course ($40 value)

There’s a lot to like about this bundle, but the fact that you can access it anytime and anywhere makes it something you can return to over and over again should the need arise.

So head over to the VB Store page now and grab The Learn to Code Bundle – because it is available only for a limited time!

This sponsored post is produced by StackSocial.

If you’ve ever wanted to get better acquainted with the plethora of Adobe apps out there, VentureBeat has an opportunity that’s simply too good to pass up. You’ll get $891 worth of education on Adobe Creative Suite 6 – including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Premiere Pro – for just $99 for a limited time through the VB Store.

Here are the contents of The Adobe CS6 Training Bundle:

1. Adobe Photoshop CS6 Video Course
2. Adobe Illustrator CS6 Beginner Course
3. Adobe InDesign CS6 Master Class
4. Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 Course
5. Adobe After Effects CS6 Course
6. Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 Course
7. Adobe Flash CS6 Course
8. Learn To Conquer Encore CS6
9. Adobe Audition CS6 The Easy Way

That’s a whole lot of learning…and without having to part with a whole lot of cash in the process.

With this bundle you’ll learn to master the most powerful digital editing and creation software on the planet with the Adobe Photoshop CS6 Video Course, learn the tools and techniques that will give your graphics that extra edge with the Adobe Illustrator CS6 Beginner Course, master the art of creative page layout with the Adobe InDesign CS6 Master Class, and so much more.

(The highlights of each course in the bundle – and all important offer details – can be found over at the VB Store page.)

Whether you’re into graphic design, web design, audio work, or video production, The Adobe CS6 Training Bundle is for you! So get this offer for a staggering 88% off while this offer still stands – which won’t be for long. Pick up The Adobe CS6 Training Bundle for only $99 – and start on the path to creative mastery today!

This sponsored post is produced by StackSocial.

If you’ve ever looked at designing iOS apps and icons, then this latest VB Store offer is going to get you well on your way. With the iOS App Design Course Bundle you’ll be able to fast track your iPhone and iPad app design skills with 3 actionable video courses for just $79 – a savings of 68%!

If you have beginner level knowledge of Photoshop – and a desire to learn iOS app design – this course trio will help you quickly learn how to design both iPhone and iPad apps and icons. These comprehensive courses include everything needed to give your app a snazzy design that will make it stand out from the crowd. With the blossoming iOS marketplace, this skill is also something you can use to help others in their own app development process.

Here are the courses included in the bundle:

• iPhone App Design Course: This course is for anyone with beginner-level knowledge of Photoshop. In this class you will learn the comprehensive process of iPhone app design, including prototyping, user experience design, interaction design, and visual design where you will learn to make your app pretty in 7 days.
• iPad App Design Course: Looking to get a jumpstart on your iPad app design? This mini-course includes a full set of iPad design templates (retina and non-retina) and video lessons that will illustrate the quickest way to get started on your app design.
• iOS Icon Design Course: Your icon is the first thing your potential customer sees before buying your app – and it is your first chance to scare off or attract new customers. In this course you’ll learn how to create an icon that will make them tap through for more.

So if you’ve got even some novice-level skills in Photoshop and a desire to create some top-notch app and icon designs then the iOS App Design Bundle is the ideal offer for you. And for just $79, it’s a deal that really can’t be beat. But it won’t be around for long…so get this VB Store deal while you can!

Adobe has escalated its efforts to outlast the print era with a string of announcements about new Photoshop features and Creative Cloud, its decentralized reincarnation of Creative Suite.

While other recent product launches from Adobe — think Edge and Muse — have been focused on bringing old-school designers into the digital fold, today’s announcements are equally about allowing modern designers and developers to work together in a cloud-based environment.

But on to the reason you clicked this post: Photoshop updates.

In a phone conference with Creative Cloud marketing director Scott Morris, we learned that Adobe is giving Photoshop a bunch of new bells and whistles: the HiDPI/Retina support it announced last night, new time-saving workflows, CSS support, support for larger JPEG image files, conditional Actions, default type styles, and Smart Object support for Blur adjustments and the much-loved lose-10-pounds-in-30-seconds Liquify filter.

Photoshop is also getting spiffy new 3D graphics tools: better image-based lighting, improvement for texture details, and an overall 3D effects tune-up.

And that’s just the beginning of the company’s announcements today; the real meat of the news is the cloud-based stuff.

The new Creative Cloud Connection brings us desktop syncing of files, drag-and-drop sharing, and automatic saving of files to the cloud as well as to your folders. You can also share collaboratively, whether with one person or your entire team, whether a single file or a whole folder.

It’s Adobe’s answer to all the Dropbox-like cloud-based storage and collaboration services, the biggest difference being that Adobe’s version is designed from the ground up to work with the tools creatives use every day — not just Photoshop, mind you — and contains tools specifically tailored for working within creative teams or with external clients. Also, Creative Cloud team users will have access to enterprise-grade support from Adobe.

Another cool note for mobile-shy designers: Muse, the InDesign/Dreamweaver hybrid that makes designing websites easy for print people, is now going to support mobile and tablet development. Since Adobe is very much in the mobile web/responsive design camp, Muse for mobile will focus on the mobile web rather than native applications.

“Any print designer who’s comfortable with InDesign is going to be comfortable with Muse out of the gate,” said Morris.

Finally Adobe has put together a library of video courses (again going back to that original point: Adobe wants to make print oldsters good at digital media) for Creative Cloud. Created by a range of experts, including non-Adobe partners, the tutorials are designed to work with Creative Cloud and to teach everything from prototyping to publishing.

“We want to make customers successful as they’re trying new things,” said Morris. “It’s not focused on things like an introduction to Photoshop.”

Top image courtesy of AISPIX by Image Source, Shutterstock

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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This sponsored post is produced by StackSocial.

If you’re a designer, you’re always looking for more assets to have at your disposal. Here’s a great chance for you to stack up on some high quality design resources so you can tackle any design wishes you may have!

The Mega Design Bundle contains more than 2.5 GB of smooth icons, flashy vector elements, intuitive Photoshop templates, and other essential designer assets for literally pennies on the dollar. That’s right – you can get it at the VentureBeat Store for just $49!

Here’s what’s in The Mega Design Bundle:

• The Ultimate Vector Collection 1: Just some of the included items are: Skulls, Splatters, Tech Shapes, Crests, Wings, Architecture, Hooladanders, Paint Splatters, Trees, Spray Paint, Grimey Brush Strokes, Statues, Banners, Halftone Patterns, and more.
• 25 Christmas Backgrounds Set 01: This set includes various Christmas and winter-themed holiday backgrounds and elements.
• HTML5 Photo Gallery Collection: This collection includes seven newly released HTML5 photo gallery templates optimized for both web and mobile devices.
• Pix Glyphs 500 Icons: This package includes 500 monochromatic vector icons available in 8 different sizes with tons of supportive file types.
• Ultrashock Backgrounds Collection: This set includes abstract, studio shot imagery, winter scenery, fire and water, canyons, HDR images, various nature backgrounds, and more.
• Ember Stock Label Collection: This label set includes the latest collections as well as a few classics, including Beach Lifestyle, Crossfit and Athletics, Outdoor Adventure, Native American and Vintage.
• Vector Holiday Images:This set features seasonal backgrounds, Christmas and holiday elements, and infographics all with a clean modern style.
• Vector Special Effects Series: This set contains stunning visual light effects perfect for adding extra flare to any project. Each set is grouped and layered, and the items in this set also include transparencies.
• Glyph Ocean Icons: This package includes 4,500 monochromatic vector icons including user interface, brands and social media, sports, communication, food, weather, medical, transport, furniture, human interface, commerce, and more.
• 25 Christmas Backgrounds Set 02: Items included in this set are in hi-resolution JPEG format and fully editable EPS files, and ready for your customization.
• iPhone And iPad Mockup Templates: This set includes 4 high-quality templates, including 2 iPhone views and 2 iPad views.
• Assorted Icons Pack: A nice assortment of icons including social media, fuel, web and computer, green and environment, and more.
• Book And Magazine Templates:This set includes 5 high-quality templates, including 2 Book views and 3 Magazine views, and clipping masks for your art on the Book and Magazine pages and covers.
• Solarseven Label Collection: This collection contains various labels and banners, QR and bar codes, sketchy hand drawn arrows, stickers and text bubbles.
• Plants And Nature Vector Series: This series includes popular plant flourishes, exotic birds, frogs and fish, butterflies and insects, bonsai trees, and more.
• Vintage Paper & Stamp Set: This set features assorted vintage and antique paper set including old postcards, blank paper and cards, envelopes, and more.
• Tiled Backgrounds: This seamless HD image set includes cracked paint and mud, metal, rock, wood, concrete, and more.

There are a several other items in The Mega Design Bundle, so for more details on that and to get a first-hand look at what some of the assets look like, check out the VB Store page.

A package of this magnitude is a huge opportunity for a designer to add to their arsenal. Don’t let it slip you by. Go and pick up The Mega Design Bundle today!

This sponsored post is produced by StackSocial.

When you’re trying to get fit, a boot camp is one of the best ways to get started on that path. So we’ve assembled a boot camp that will set you on the right path to becoming a top-notch developer. These 6 video are great in that they cover everything from web development to design to Photoshop (and tons of things in between), and they can be accessed when you want so that you can learn at your own pace.

But the best part about this VB Store offer? You can have it all – valued at over $900 – for just $99 for a limited time.

Here’s what you’ll get in the Learn to Code Bundle:

• Become a Web Dev From Scratch ($199 value)
• Create Responsive Web Design ($150 value)
• Make iPhone & iPad Games w/out Programming ($250 value)
• Learn How to Code iOS Apps ($197 value)
• Ruby Programming for Beginners ($99 value)
• Photoshop CS6 Crash Course ($40 value)

You’ll be able to access all of these courses online at Udemy.com forever. As long as you have internet you’ll be able to access your courses anytime, anywhere. That means you can brush up on your coding and design skills anytime…and anywhere.

But there’s more to this VB Store offer. We have a “Learn to Create a Song in Garageband” freebie that shows you the ins and outs of songwriting, with the end result being your very own song!

You’re getting a lot in this deal – both in value and in knowledge – so take advantage of it while you can. After all, this VB Store offer won’t be around for long!

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Adobe’s anticipated Creative Cloud digital hub, with access to CS6 software and cloud storage, is now available for anyone who wants to give it a spin.

As we’ve noted before, Creative Cloud promises access to the latest version of Adobe’s staple program, Photoshop, as well as upgrades to Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash Pro, Fireworks, Premiere Pro, AfterEffects, Lightroom, Muse, Edge, and more. You also get 20GB of cloud storage with syncing options.

The service runs between $50 and $75 per month depending on whether you sign up for a full year or if you pay month-to-month. While that might sound a little high, buying a full license to the latest version of the Adobe Creative Suite runs between $1,300 and $2,600, depending on which programs you want.

The Creative Cloud subscription is a direct response to piracy of Adobe’s very expensive products. Design professionals who can’t get their employers to pay for it or strapped students who need the software for projects sometimes steal Adobe’s software via Torrent sites and file-sharing sites. But with Creative Cloud, Adobe hopes to get some of these would-be pirates to pay a more-affordable monthly subscription rather than steal the software.

Check out the pricing options below and let us know in the comments if you plan to sign up.

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Adobe revealed new details today about the latest versions of its ultra popular line of design software, Creative Suite 6, which features speed improvements, user interface updates, and an emphasis on working in the cloud.

In addition to a worth new version of the company’s staple program Photoshop, the CS6 pack includes upgrades to Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash Pro, Fireworks, Premiere Pro, AfterEffects and others. The production-focused package also contains two new post-production video programs, Prelude and Speed Grade. And speaking of specific software packages, CS6 will offer four versions with each one offering a bit more than the lower tier (see image below).

Adobe is touting increased speed and performance through its Mercury technology, something that all users will certainly enjoy. Many of the programs will also get a revised, “modern” user interface as well as some re-imagined design tools. VentureBeat’s Sean Ludwig pointed to Photoshop’s new Content-Aware Patch tool being sort of like a cross between the clone stamp and CS5′s content-aware tool.

But as Adobe admitted in its CS6 briefing, the company has more or less topped out when it comes to offering the optimum software for people to design and remain creative. That’s why Adobe is pushing its services toward two main new fronts. The first of these is the cloud, which Adobe will offer to users in the form of its Creative Cloud subscription service.

As we previously reported, Creative Cloud promises access to the latest version of Creative Suite software, Lightroom 4, Muse, Edge, touch applications, and 20GB of cloud storage with syncing options. The service has a $50 per month price tag, with a required one-year contract. Although, Adobe plans to offer an education version for students and teachers, as well as a month-to-month option of people who only need short-term access.

The second front that Adobe is trying to advance its products with is education, which its hoping can be much more palatable under the Creative Cloud service. The basic idea is to have people with different talent backgrounds not feel nervous about going outside their comfort zone. For instance, designer hosting, building, and launching web sites.

We should know more about both CS6 and Creative Cloud at Adobe’s event April 23 event.

Screenshots via Adobe

Every time I try searching Google for images marked with Creative Commons licensing, I can’t help but feel like there’s plenty of stuff that’s incorrectly listed. This isn’t something that’s specific to Google, as most sites don’t always keep the best records for attribution.

Image analysis startup Verifeyed wants to bring a new a sense of legitimacy to the world of digital images.

“Today, digital images are everywhere. But, image editing tools like Adobe Photoshop easily allow the creation of fake images with just a few clicks,” the startup told VentureBeat. “As a result, digital images have lost their trustworthiness. This situation only worsens as products such as Photoshop become more prevalent, sophisticated, and easy to use.”

But hey relax, Verifeyed doesn’t want to abolish the use of Photoshop, or any other image manipulation software for that mater. Instead, it plans solve the problem using its patent pending technology that is able to certify the originality (or absence of modification) for digital images taken from any device. Also, it uses math (a lot of it) — a product of the founders specialty as PhD researchers in the area of applied mathematics.

Verifeyed explains:

“Each device (cameras, cell phones, scanners, etc.) produces a unique mathematical fingerprint. Our database consists of almost all existing capture devices and is constantly being updated. When verifying an image or searching for traces of image manipulation, we automatically extract hidden fingerprints from a photo and compare them with the mathematical model of its acquisition device. Based on this, we are able to accurately determine if the photo has been tampered with. Several methods are applied to detect traces of tampering on each image.”

I think I speak for most people when I say, that’s kind of incredible.

Founded in 2010, the startup’s four employees are based in New York City. Verifeyed hasn’t raised any outside funding, and relies on its founders for money. It faces competition from Digimarc and Mitek Systems.

[On stage, Verifeyed pretended to have a copy of President Obama's birth certificate. They marked it up and altered the birth location and noted how their own technology would be able to discover a fraudulent document such as that one. And they say that they can do these kinds of authentications in a matter of seconds.

In the DEMO Sage panel that followed, moderator Jolie O'Dell said that she could see how this could be valuable for insurance companies authenticating claims. Christine Herron, a director at Intel Capital, said that she could see how merchants authenticating checks might want this. But Jeff Clavier, managing partner at SoftTech VC, said he wasn't sure if the level of fraud was so high that there really was a big problem to solve.]

Verifeyed is one of 80 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

Image courtesy of Cartoon Network

Every new launch of Photoshop is an incremental upgrade of the last, so if you use CS5, this won’t be mind-blowing. But if you’re using CS3, for example, you’ll really love all the things you can do with CS6. It includes a darker default theme, new tools, a video editor, and more. It also boasts better performance with under-the-hood tweaks and the ability to use some computers’ graphics chips to make it run faster.

Digging in

After downloading the 1.7 GB Windows (984 MB on Mac) installation file, I quickly installed and booted up CS6. Immediately, I noticed the theme has been changed to a dark gray interface by default. I rather like the color scheme, but if it’s not for you, you can make it darker or lighter with four different theme choices. The tweak helps match Photoshop with the themes of other Adobe products like Premiere Pro and After Effects.

On the left side, you’ll notice that Adobe has redesigned the menu icons slightly. Like CS5, you can hold down on a design tool and see other similar options pop up. On the right, the Properties panel now includes Adjustment layer and Mask settings in the same pane. Thankfully, the panels are no longer all uppercase lettering, so each option is more legible.

Testing out a few tools I use often, I noticed other changes as well. When you crop a picture, the program tries to guess what you’re cropping with its own rectangle. Then you move the sides of the rectangle to adjust the crop. As someone who crops a ton with photos, this actually was annoying and jarring. On the plus side, there is now a “background save” option that makes saving your work a faster process. After tapping “Control + S”, you can continue to work on other projects instead of waiting around for the save to finish. Another handy addition is the ability to search layers.

While we didn’t get a chance to play with it, there is also a new basic video editor included in CS6. This likely won’t be used by serious video editors but it’s nice to have another option for cutting videos. And if you’re just looking to do a minor edit and Photoshop is already open, why not?

New tools

The addition we like most so far is Patch, which is similar to the Clone Stamp tool. It helps you select an area and copy it to another part of the photo, except it also blends the colors and patterns. This means you can move objects around the photo with less hassle. In the example above, I was able to duplicate an out-of-focus tennis ball and move it to a different position very easily.

There’s a new Adaptive Wide Angle filter that lets you straighten objects that are slightly curved because of using a fish-eye or wide-angle lens. There is also a Blur Gallery consisting of “Field Blur, Iris Blur, and Tilt-Shift” and a new Paste Lorem Ipsum feature, which can help you fill up dummy text as needed.

Conclusion

Overall, I like the feel and love the look of CS6. The 64-bit beta version runs noticeably faster than my 64-bit version of CS5 and the new tools will come in handy. The new version of crop was the only thing that really agitated me.

Photoshop CS6 will be available before the end of the “first half” of the year. It will cost $699 brand new, but there is an upgrade option for $199. You’ll also have the option to sign up for the Adobe Creative Cloud, which allows you to pay $50 each month for a full subscription to the Creative Suite.

Contemplating expanding your business to Asia? Sign up for a free VB webinar this Thursday 3/22 at 1pm PT. You’ll benefit from actionable tips and lessons learned as VB Executive Editor Dylan Tweney moderates a lively discussion with a group of Silicon Valley CEOs about their experience in using Singapore as a hub for Asian expansion. There will also be an attendee Q&A portion directly following the session. For full details, go here.

However you feel about the trend of airbrushed and Photoshopped magazine covers, sometimes we’d all like to make a few tweaks to our own portraits.

Up until now, making realistic photo edits was something only digital imaging professionals were meant to do. ArcSoft’s newest product, Perfect365, changes that by bringing intelligent and powerful portrait editing to the masses.

The software isn’t a traditional photo editor — instead it automatically detects faces in images and lets you make cosmetic changes, like removing a blemish or fading dark circles under your eyes. It also lets you add makeup, which could make it useful for testing out new looks. Perfect365 is cloud-based, so the more people use it, the better the software will get at detecting faces (this also means that offline, the software needs a bit more hand-holding).

ArcSoft has some 15 years of digital imaging experience, with its software helping to power editing tools in many digital cameras on the market. With Perfect365, the company wanted to deliver to consumers an easy to way touch up photos without much expertise, CEO Michael Deng told VentureBeat in an interview last week.

I took a look at both the iPad and Mac versions of Perfect 365, and both worked as advertised. While the interface is a bit rough, the software could end up being a very useful tool for those who don’t normally like having their picture taken. At the moment, the mobile version of Perfect365 can only detect a single face, but the company says it’s working on improving that.

I suspect the software will be particularly popular on smartphones, where consumers are taking plenty of self-portraits and snapshots, as well as on Facebook, which is now the largest photo sharing site on the web. The company says the Mac and Facebook versions of Perfect365 will be available before the end of the year.

The free Windows version of Perfect365 is available today, though it can only output lower quality photos. For higher resolution photos, you’ll have to pay $29.99 for the premium Windows version. iPhone and iPad apps are scheduled to be released later this month.

In the past, Jobs has publicly derided Flash and suggested that the platform is in decline. iOS has not supported Flash since its inception, so it’s not surprising that Lion — which pushes the Mac OS closer to iOS — offers less support for Adobe.

It’s also possible that Adobe simply hasn’t caught its products up to speed with the changes in the Lion OS yet. Anytime a new OS is released, software developers have access to beta versions of the OS to get their software in order, and Adobe is no different. Still, the sheer amount of issues related to Adobe’s products, the history of the two companies, and the fact that many users will be affected makes this significant.

Just a few years ago, Apple and Adobe had a close relationship. So close, in fact, that it would be unheard of for a new version of the Mac OS to break a feature in Photoshop, one of the most popular Adobe products.

On Adobe’s support page chronicling known issues with Lion, it notes this specific problem:

Flash Player may cause higher CPU activity when playing a YouTube video. Possibly related to disabled hardware acceleration.

Apple did not respond immediately to our questions about this issue.

On top of hardware acceleration issues, Adobe listed other Lion-specific problems with Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst, Illustrator, Lightroom, Photoshop, and Premiere Pro.

In some cases, older programs do not work at all. Adobe lists non-current versions of Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst as programs that “will not work on Mac OS X 10.7.” Abobe said it “does not intend to update” these products. That could definitely cause developers trouble if they upgrade to Lion while still using older versions of these programs.

Some affected programs like Photoshop and Illustrator are significant to the design community, which has an affinity toward Apple hardware and software. In Photoshop CS3, CS4 and CS5, Adobe says the “droplets” feature does not work. And in Illustrator CS5, the option to save or export is disabled from the Save As or Export dialog window when trying to save to the desktop.

Adobe did not respond to queries we had concerning the incredible amount of issues specific to Lion. However, in early June, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said the company would work around any “arbitrary obstacles” that were put in its way concerning Apple. I bet the company is looking into doing just that when it comes to Lion.

Do you think Apple’s treatment of Adobe is fair? Have you had any Adobe-specific problems when using the new Lion OS?

Update: The article now has more information about incompatibilities between Adobe products and the Lion OS and the software development process.

Update 2: Adobe sent us a message saying Flash hardware acceleration was, in fact, not disabled in Lion. The company declined to talk about all of the other problems mentioned in this story. Here is the company’s official statement:

The final release of Mac OS X Lion (10.7) provides the same support for Flash hardware video acceleration as Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6). The previous “Known Issue” suggesting that video hardware acceleration was disabled in Lion was incorrect and based on tests with a pre-release version of Mac OS X Lion that related to only one particular Mac GPU configuration. We continue to work closely with Apple to provide Flash Player users with a high quality experience on Mac computers.

That gives social networks built on Ning a one-up over sites that are built around image sharing, like 4chan or news aggregators like Reddit. It removes the barrier of having to purchase (or pirate) expensive photo-editing applications like Photoshop to modify images and create original content for those sites.

Photo editing is a feature that’s so popular it spawned a new startup from 4chan founder Christopher Poole called Canv.as. That site is essentially a massive image-sharing board that lets users “remix” images with rudimentary photo-editing tools — all from within the web browser. And so far it’s proved to be pretty popular, with hundreds of new, remixed images appearing on the site daily.

“If you look at usage and popular features, photos are right up at the top of the list,” said Ning Chief executive Jason Rosenthal. “And users are really doing both Photoshopping and photo sharing, people are already uploading and sharing photos around the topic of the site.”

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Ning previously eliminated its free product and focused on paying customers. Small groups interested in building a tight-knit social network can pay $3 per month to build one on Ning. Then there are “plus” and “pro” pricing plans that are for larger social networks, which cost $25 and $60 per month. The company has more than 100,000 social networks built on top of its service. More than half of those social networks are either “plus” or “pro” clients.

Adobe’s revenue rose 9 percent to $1.023 billion in the second quarter of 2011, up from $943 million in the same quarter a year earlier. That’s also higher than the $996 million in revenue Wall Street analysts were expecting. Net profit of 55 cents a share came in four cents ahead of the Street’s consensus estimate.

The company recently released Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, a monthly subscription service that gives users access to Photoshop, InDesign and other company products. It’s designed to make the cost of Photoshop and other applications a little more manageable. Adobe’s Master Collection, the high end package of Creatve Suite products, retails for $2,599 and can be bought for less on Amazon. A one-year subscription of the Master Suite runs $129 a month.

“The release of CS 5.5 in Q2 has helped maintain the solid run-rate that CS5 established during the prior four quarters,” said Adobe chief financial officer and executive vice president Mark Garrett. “Adoption of the new subscription edition has met our expectation and is attracting new users and we expect this to build a new recurring revenue stream over time.” In a conference call to discuss the earnings, however, Garrett warned that weakness in Europe could offset strength in the U,S.

The company plans to release Creative Suite 6 sometime next year. The subscription-based incremental releases like CS 5.5 should provide the company with revenue until it can ship new versions of its flagship software, Garrett said.

Adobe also expects more people to use its flagship Flash software for premium video streaming and gaming. Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen spent most of the first part of the company’s quarterly conference call reassuring investors that Flash would remain relevant. That’s thanks to tools that help programmers and developers convert Flash code over to other types of code for the iPhone and other devices. He also said that Adobe Air, which gives users access to web-based software that run in Flash and other languages, would continue to grow on multiple devices like the BlackBerry PlayBook.

In after hours trading Tuesday, Adobe’s stock was down 3.5 percent at $32.01.

The Canv.as website is an imageboard that lets people post photos or other pictures online anonymously or under a moniker they pick when they sign up. You have to connect with a Facebook account initially. The site is currently in beta testing, so you need an invitation to post — though anyone can view the threads. Any Canv.as users can then “remix” the image, using some rudimentary photo-editing tools that appear in Photoshop through the browser and make it easy to quickly modify an image.

For example, both images came from Canv.as and were made using the remix tool. Canv.asers made them in a few minutes and both images spawned huge threads with more than a hundred remixed images each.

Canv.as is a descendant of 4chan, a lightly-moderated imageboard that has been around for eight years and has become the font of many memes in the internet era. Canv.as has more moderation than 4chan does in order to attract advertisers. 4chan was originally a tough sell because it has often been used to post racist, illegal or just plain tasteless content. A lot of sites have tried to replicate the community energy that 4chan seems to have — Reddit included — but the 4chan magic just doesn’t seem to pop up anywhere else.

Poole said 4chan has reached 18 million monthly unique users, citing data from Google. According to internet traffic monitoring company Quantcast, 4chan has 4 million monthly visitors in the U.S. and 8 million globally. The number of users registered by Google shot up because of a change in a tag, Poole said.

4chan has basically no rules, and that has become part of its appeal. But it also has a number of barriers to entry, such as requiring a few technical skills like Photoshop mastery to fit into the somewhat haphazard community.

Canv.as is trying to remove that technical barrier to entry by making it simple to edit images. It doesn’t require users to purchase (or pirate) larger image-editing programs like Photoshop. And so far it seems like a pretty vibrant community, with hundreds of original images appearing on the site daily. I’ve been using the site for several months and it looks like it has done a good job replicating the same rogue-ish feel the 4chan website originally had, but with a more approachable vibe.

The site lets users moderate content by voting up original and popular submissions with “stickers” and quickly reporting offensive content — and down-vote unpopular content with stickers as well. Poole’s team regularly changes what kind of stickers are available depending on the pop culture flavor of the month. For example, when Internet celebrity Rebecca Black was popular, a custom sticker was made that poked fun at her song “Friday.” The site also encourages participation by handing out a limited number of “#1″ stickers that they can award funny images.

The New York, N.Y., based company has five employees and has raised around $3.7 million to date.

Poole has turned to Reddit, an online news aggregator that already has that kind of community, to build up Canv.as’s user base. He showed up in one of Reddit’s famous “ask-me-anything” threads, which lets users ask questions in comments in the hope that the original poster will reply to them. He added a link to an invitation for Canv.as — which is currently in a half-open beta (it allows the rest of the world to view image threads, but only beta users can post).

Canv.as is a descendant of Poole’s last venture, 4chan, which is a lightly-moderated imageboard that has become the font of most memes. A lot of sites have tried to replicate the community energy that 4chan seems to have — Reddit included — but the 4chan magic just doesn’t seem to pop up anywhere else. But the Reddit community is able to get pretty close and does have a very tight-knit community — the type of thing Poole is looking for in his new venture.

“4chan’s culture is unique and spreads and draws people in like no other,” Poole said in a comment on Reddit. “It’s also important to realize that 4chan wasn’t some overnight success, and there was never ‘hockey stick’-like growth. Its growth has been entirely organic (we’ve never advertised, past posting it on day one to IRC and a forum), and has been a slow steady build over seven and a half years.”

4chan has around 4 million monthly visitors in the U.S. and 8 million globally. Most of them are tech-savvy and know their way around image-editing programs like Photoshop — much like the users that typically visit Reddit. The site has basically no rules, and that has become part of the appeal. Canv.as is trying to remove that technical barrier of needing rudimentary Photoshop skills that both Reddit and 4chan have by making it simple to edit images and “remix” them. Anyone can then vote on the images with “stickers” — signaling a positive or a negative vote.

Poole’s last creation has been around for just more than seven years, and throughout that entire time he’s treated the site like a personal hobby. The site’s major drawing point is that any user can post anything anonymously — which leads to an enormous amount of content creation, but also some issues regarding illegal content.

Existing beta Canv.as users can link to threads within Canv.as and show threads of images created within the image-sharing site. The site is designed to streamline the content creation process by making it easy to “remix” images with additional pieces of content or create animated images. Canv.as beta users can simply link to a thread within the image-sharing site, and external visitors can view the entire thread — but cannot remix images or post new images. Users will still require a beta invite to get a chance to remix images.

Canv.as is basically a descendant of 4chan, a lightly-moderated imageboard that has become the font of most memes in the modern era. Poole’s project is worth watching closely, since a lot of sites have tried to replicate the same community energy that 4chan seems to have — for example, the comment streams in news aggregators like Reddit.com — but the 4chan magic just doesn’t seem to pop up anywhere else.

The site has more moderation than 4chan has in order to attract advertisers. 4chan was originally a tough sell because it was inadvertently host to racist or illegal content. The site lets users moderate content by voting up original and popular submissions with “stickers” and quickly reporting offensive content — and down-vote unpopular content with stickers as well.

4chan has 4 million monthly visitors in the U.S. and 8 million globally — many of whom are tech-savvy and know their way around image-editing programs like Photoshop. The site has basically no rules, and that has become part of the appeal. But it also has a number of barriers to entry, such as requiring a few technical skills like Photoshop mastery to fit into the somewhat haphazard community.

Canv.as is trying to remove that technical barrier to entry by making it simple to edit images. Each image thread has a “remix” option that makes it easy for users to quickly add their own flair to the image with brush-strokes or additional images. It doesn’t require users to purchase (or pirate) larger image-editing programs like Photoshop. And so far it seems like a pretty vibrant community, with hundreds of original images appearing on the site daily. It hasn’t quite reached 4chan standards yet, but it looks like it is on track.

Adobe’s revenue was up 33 percent when compared to the $757 million it brought in during its fourth quarter last year. The design software developer brought in a total of $3.8 billion this year, up 29 percent from $2.95 billion last year.

Going off that momentum, Adobe expects to make another $1 billion in the first quarter next year. Adobe turned around from a loss of $32 million in the fourth quarter last year to bring in a net income of $269 million.

Adobe is particularly known for its Flash technology, which runs most video hosting sites today. It’s also increasingly present on mobile devices, despite battery concerns and the very vocal and sometimes comical spat between Apple and Adobe. The company released Flash 10.1 for Google Android users, and it’s working on versions for Palm WebOS, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7 and others. The whole argument also seems to be dying down now that Apple has approved SkyFire, a browser that runs flash video, for the App store.

The company’s strong performance this year probably puts a final bullet in the head of the Microsoft-Adobe acquisition talks that rose up in earlier this year.  The chief executives of software makers Adobe Systems and Microsoft discussed the possibility of Microsoft acquiring Adobe to take on Apple in the mobile-phone market. Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen quickly tried to kill that rumor, but that didn’t stop shareholders from driving up the stock in anticipation once it came out.

Adobe’s shares surged nearly 5 percent to $30.59 in extended trading today after the company released its financial results.

Adobe today announced the Creative Suite 5 product family, the latest addition to Adobe’s long-running line of creative software. It includes the latest versions of popular applications like Photoshop CS5, Flash CS5, and Acrobat 9 Pro.

The software, a standard set of tools for graphic and interactive designers, is Adobe’s flagship product line, giving it a dominant role in the creation of interactive content, particularly content in Adobe’s proprietary Flash format. The introduction of CS5, as it’s more commonly known, is a reminder of Adobe’s continued importance. Apple is contesting Adobe’s hold over creators of interactive content and games by refusing to allow Flash on its iPhone and iPad devices — and more recently forbidding the use of Adobe’s Flash-authoring tools in creating said content

Altogether, there are 15 products included in Creative Suite 5, although only the $2,599 CS5 Master Collection will include all of them. Other CS5 editions include Design Standard ($1299), Design Premium ($1899), Production Premium ($1699),  and Web Premium ($1799) — each of which offer a selection of the 15 CS5 products.

The prices may seem high, but it’s nothing unusual for Adobe’s design customers. It’s also a fairly important release for Adobe, since it’s updating more than a dozen of its applications at once. Notable new features include Photoshop CS5′s magical Content Aware Fill (which we’ve covered previously) and Warp Wrap tools, as well as better eReader device support in InDesign CS5.

The suite also boasts native 64-bit support in Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and After Effects — which is particularly useful for design users that work with large files. Premiere Pro also supports hardware acceleration for Nvidia video cards, which will let users work more easily without waiting for effects and video to render. In addition, Dreamweaver CS5 now supports content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla.

Adobe is also introducing a new product in the suite, Flash Catalyst CS5. It allows designers to turn their Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fireworks art assets into interactive Flash-driven websites without writing any code. Catalyst fills a longstanding divide that has kept away talented art designers — who aren’t necessarily familiar with code — from developing their own interactive content.

As long as it’s not for the iPhone, that is.

Creative Suite 5, along with the individual products within it, will ship within 30 days.

Y Combinator presents 26 new startups — Y Combinator hosted its latest Demo Day this week for startups graduating from its incubator. This post offers a roundup of every presenting company, except for those in stealth mode.

Photoshop’s new “Content-Aware Fill” feature gives you the power of the gods — You can practically see VentureBeat’s Devindra Hardawar drool as he describes Adobe’s preview of a new feature in its image editing program. Content-Aware Fill doesn’t accomplish anything that wasn’t technically possible in Photoshop already, but it makes powerful editing capabilities to the average user.

Dudes can pay hot girls to play online video games with them — If you’re a lonely gamer dude, then GameCrush might be your ticket to meet a hot girl. That’s the basic pitch of this social networking service, where guys scan pay cash to play hardcore video games online with attractive females.

6 critical tips for launching a startup while holding a day job — Most people start their first company while they still have a day job. It makes sense: You don’t need loans. You don’t need funding. And if you “fail,” all you’ve lost is time. But if managed improperly, you’re unnecessarily risking lawsuits and worse. Entrepreneur and angel investor Jason Cohen offers tips for how to pull off the balancing act.

InVisage’s QuantumFilm enables gorgeous camera phone pictures — QuantumFilm could usher in a new age of high-quality, thin, inexpensive digital cameras and camera films. Based on a new kind of image sensor technology from chip startup InVisage Technologies, QuantumFilm can deliver mobile phone camera images that are four times sharper than today’s cameras, with twice the dynamic range, or the ability to have both dark and light features in the same picture.

And here are five more stories we think are important, thought-provoking, or fun:

Sixteen years in the making, Trip Hawkins’ latest game for Facebook is the “best idea I’ve ever had” – Hawkins, chief executive of Digital Chocolate, isn’t shy about describing his company’s latest Facebook game, NanoStar Castles. He first conceived the game, which you could summarize as Pokemon for grown-ups, more than 16 years ago.

Angels sing: “Frankly ridiculous” restrictions might “destroy Silicon Valley” — Angel investors don’t usually stay up at night worrying about Capitol Hill. But a financial reform bill proposed by Chris Dodd, the Democrat chairing the Senate Banking Committee, includes new restrictions on startups and angels. And investors aren’t happy about it, saying it’s “insane,” “frankly ridiculous,” and aims to “destroy Silicon Valley.”

Cisco buys into WiMax for Smart Grid, acquires stake in Grid Net — Cisco Systems has been scouting for major plays in the Smart Grid infrastructure arena for about a year — some analysts even speculated that it would buy wireless networking provider Silver Spring Networks. This week, it announced its decision to go with Grid Net, one of the first and only companies to trumpet WiMAX as the ultimate solution for transmitting data between utilities and smart meters.

Facebook may automatically share your data with “pre-approved” partners — Facebook said it may start automatically sharing data about users with special partners the minute they visit a site for a more “personalized” experience. The changes are part of a new privacy policy the company proposed yesterday.

Phone Halo launches automated loss prevention system — Ever misplace your keys, wallet or cell phone? Chances are it’s happened a few times. Now a startup called Phone Halo has launched Protect, a solution that notifies you when your valuables are left behind or stolen.

Prepare to have your minds blown. Adobe has released a sneak peek at one of the upcoming features, Content-Aware Fill, in the new version of image-editing software Photoshop. The feature allows you to retouch images so easily that there just has to be sorcery involved.

In the video demonstration below, product manager Bryan O’Neil Hughes starts off by demonstrating how the feature can easily eliminate trash and a few distant poles in a photo. Simple enough — but then he goes on to remove an entire tree from the image within a few seconds.

The demonstration builds in scope from there. He shows us a desert image with a road that needs to be removed. Content-Aware Fill manages to remove the entire road, and replaces it with desert imagery that’s indistinguishable from its surroundings. He then moves on to a typical panoramic image with incomplete edges — at which point you just have to brace yourself, because you know what’s coming.

After a few seconds of computing, Content-Aware Fill manages to fill out the entirety of the panaromic image’s edges — seemingly out of nothing.

I’ve chatted with a few heavy Photoshop users who say that it’s technically possible to do everything the feature does already, except that it has to be done manually and takes forever. The beauty of Content-Aware Fill is that it brings powerful editing capabilities — that were previously only accessible to experts — to the common user.

Here are a couple responses to the video from my Twitter followers:

“A friend’s response to seeing that video. ‘it’s a WITCH’” – @sickrubick

“The next Photoshop wields the power of the gods.” – @winglmui

Adobe previously unveiled a similar feature for resizing images, dubbed Content-Aware Scaling, in Photoshop CS4. The company is planning a launch event for Photoshop CS5, and the rest of the CS5 suite, on April 12.

[via Gizmodo]