Adobe brings Raw photo workflow to Android with Lightroom 2.0

One of the remaining speed bumps in the way of broader adoption of smartphones as the camera of choice among photo enthusiasts has been a lack of end-to-end support for shooting in Raw. Basic support for capturing Raw (DNG format) images has been rolling out in Android — for some phones running Android 5.0 or later — but processing and storing them has remained awkward. Google’s Snapseed added support for developing Raw images last year, but many have been waiting for a solution that would integrate with their Adobe-centric workflow.

Today, Adobe updated its Lightroom for Android application to version 2.0, and it now includes full support for Raw images through its in-app Camera — assuming your phone can shoot Raw to begin with. It further ups the ante with the ability to preview various presets in real time while you are shooting.

You can see how much difference Raw post-processing can make in the featured split image for this article (above). The left side is a portion of the JPEG as shot with a Nexus 5, and the right side is the Raw version of the same image post-processed using Adobe’s Lightroom. Pros and others who are serious about image quality have long relied on shooting Raw to give them the best possible post-processing possibilities. Now Adobe has full support for them doing it with their smartphones. Just make sure and double-check whether you can capture DNG images with your phone before getting too excited, as Adobe’s support only works on models which already have that capability.

Adobe’s in-app Camera feature is pretty cool

Lightroom 2.0 for Android features a well-designed in-app camera, making it trivial to capture images and have them available for editing and uploading. In addition to the usual set of camera controls, the in-app camera features five “shoot-through” presets that you can preview on your phone’s screen while you are composing and shooting. These special presets are non-destructive, in keeping with Lightroom’s editing mantra, so you can change or remove there effects later. You can further process your DNGs using Lightroom (or Snapseed) on your mobile device, but Lightroom also now syncs the DNG file to your desktop Lightroom, so it will automatically be available for you to work on from your main computer.

Dehaze and split toning also added to Lightroom for Android

In addition to support for Raw files, Adobe has continued to port some of its most popular image processing features from its desktop into Lightroom for Android. Version 2.0 adds support for Adobe’s popular Dehazing filter, and for Split Toning. You can now also specify specific points when you apply a Tone Curve, as well as set curves separately for each color channel. For those who want ultimate control, Adobe has also added targeted adjustments, so you can control which portions of your image are affected by the adjustments you add in Lightroom.

Adobe has also upgraded Lightroom’s sharing capabilities, and is working to build a community feel with the #lightroom hashtag. The new version of Lightroom also integrates directly with Adobe’s clever Clip mobile video editor, so you can very quickly and easily create professional-looking photo stories from your images. Lightroom 2.0 for Android is free, and available now for download from the Google Play store.

Oracle kills Java browser plug-in

Oracle said that it will finally kill its Java browser plug-in. This move does not come as soon as possible — in the past years, the Java browser plug-in was a easy target for hackers and malware authors. A 2014 report from Cisco said that a whopping 91% of all attacks were targeted at Java.

The situation has improved afterwards ; Cisco’s mid-year 2015 report revealed that for sometime Java was a serious course for concern,the company had made strides on mitigating its attack profile and enhancing total security. As of last year, attacks against Flash were increasing alarmingly, while that of Java declined overall.

Even after these improvements, Oracle is still scaling down the Java plug in when it releases Java 9, and removing it totally at some point after that date. Both Edge and Chrome have already nuked browser support for Java from orbit; Firefox announced plans to do so late last year. Historically, Oracle has been slow to respond to vulnerabilities in Java, and its sandboxing was never as foolproof as the company advertised.

Oracle’s stated reasons for killing the browser plug-ins doesn’t mention the broken sandbox model or the lack of an automatic security update process. Instead, it reads:

As Java evolved to become one of the leading mainstream development platforms, so did the applet’s hosts – the web browsers. The rise of web usage on mobile device browsers, typically without support for plugins, increasingly led browser makers to want to restrict and remove standards based plug in support from their products, as they tried to combine the set of features available across desktop and mobile versions. The Oracle JRE can only support applets on browsers for as long as browser vendors provide the requisite cross-browser standards based plugin API (e.g. NPAPI) support.

In other words, Java was a cool, cutting-edge technology, until pesky browser companies decided to kill it.

If you don’t specifically need Java, we recommend uninstalling it. It’s the kind of application that you’ll know if you need (and won’t miss, if you don’t). IE11 still supports Java from within the browser if you need to use it, but Chrome has phased it out and Mozilla is in the process of doing so. Oracle’s migration document suggests that firms which rely on Java’s browser plug-ins should begin investigating “plug-in-free alternatives.”

Computer security is, by its nature, a moving target. Every now and then, however, Team White Hat scores a genuine victory. With Adobe Flash rapidly fading and Java plug-ins facing a near-term expiration date, the Internet should be genuinely safer — at least, for a little while.

5 Employee Productivity Tools For Startups Robert Cordray

For startups it’s highly critical for entrepreneurs having multiple employees, and solopreneurs in an office of one, to use all available tools and resources to maximize productivity and have a competitive edge. Entrepreneurs need to challenge the status quo and constantly improve rate of production. To this end, lets look at five highly effective employee productivity tools for startups.

Trello

Better collaboration translate to better productivity. And Trello is a free and visual online collaboration tool that sorts projects into “lists of lists” with cards on a virtual board. The cards may be dragged and dropped between lists to know if a project is progressing.As visual tool, Trello provides entrepreneurs a view of what’s being worked on, which employees are working on what, and what progress has been made, all at once.

Trello is not only an interactive project management solution for groups but also works for individuals. Tim Maurer, an highly successful financial consultant and regular contributor on Forbes.com, said in a recent post that Trello, “has become my highly-personalized,individual task management system of choice.”

Rescue Time

Nothing reduces productivity like time waste which is highly true for entrepreneurs and solopreneurs who need to make every moment at work count. Rescue Time is a free software program installed on a computer,that assists bosses and employees increase productivity by tracking productive time. Together with monitoring activities throughout the day, Rescue Time enable users to set goals and track progress, track time spent both on and offline, restrict access to distracting, time-wasting websites, and see what apps and websites were used during the day. Using a metric called “productivity pulse”, Rescue Time measures daily time productivity on a scale of very distracting, to very productive, to produce an overall score that shows just how productive the user’s day actually was. Based on those scores, workers can make amendments to improve the productivity of their time.

Dropbox for Business

This well known file-sharing desktop and mobile app,which is a hit among consumers. And now more and more startup entrepreneurs are using Dropbox for Business as a software tool to increase productivity.With work in recent time occurring on multiple devices, the Dropbox app makes it easy and convenient for workers to sync important work documents across all platforms for quick and easy retrieval on the device of their choice, whenever and wherever they are. With more than 50% of IT business professional disclosing that they will be deploying a personal cloud for workplace purposes, it’s clear that options such as Dropbox is required for day to day business. And ability to create shared folders, and choose which team members may access those folders to work on documents, makes Dropbox for Business a good collaboration tool.

Mailbox

As illustrated by many business productivity professionals, although rummaging through email boxes may cast illusion of being productive, it is anything come by. That’s where Mailbox, a mobile email management tool, comes into play. Designed by developers who realized that today’s business professionals are always on the go, Mailbox uses colorful swipe-based features, allowing entrepreneurs on the move to view and prioritize email on their mobile phones. Mailbox is available for OSX, iPhone, iPad, and Android. It’s just been integrated with Dropbox to allow quick and easy attachment of files while composing emails.

Bitrix24.com

The setback with major software collaboration tools is that they are not all that easy for employees to make use of. That’s the reason several small businesses are using internal websites known as the social intranet. Free for startups and more established businesses with 12 employees or less, Bitrix24.com has emerged as the fastest growing social intranet for business. Featuring a combination of work tools such as CRM, project management, file sharing, activity planning and real-time streaming, Bitrix24.com has collaboration incorporated from all angles. It  has advantage of being a cloud-based app, that enables employee access from anywhere and on any device.

From the founding solopreneur or entrepreneur, today’s startups should take advantage of all the tools they can to turn those young margins green. While the above list of productivity tools is by no means exhaustive,it serves as a very good start for startups.