What makes a photo change the world?

© Robert Capa / Magnum Photo

Actually, many photos have been claimed to have changed the world. If you seek a collection of the most famous ones, it depends on wether LIFE or Magnum or some individual assorts them. Interestingly you will find not only pictures of war, agony or politics, but also a variety of luck, delight and fun. See some interpretations of the most influential photos here:

• LIFE (they also offer a book)
• Magnum Photo
• a book offered at Amazon
• a Blog offering explanations
• a different Blog just showing some pictures without a legend
• a kind of newspaper-blog
• an article in the Palm Beach Post

It´s not easy to determine what gives a photo the power to change the world, but often it seems that it´s related to showing the truth and opening up people´s minds – what do you think?

Adobe: News, Updates & Freebies

This is a brief round-up of Adobe-related news from the past days. Last week, a screenshot and some additional details leaked confirming there will be a free, web-based version of Photoshop, called Photoshop Express (see above). Let´s see what that will be like compared to it´s big brother. You can find infos here, here or here (oder auf deutsch: hier).

If you are working with “the real” Photoshop, you might find some shortcuts or tipps & tricks on the Web Designer Wall. I do admit I found some I didn´t stumble upon troughout the years. Thanks to Dennis for this hint!

Last not least, Adobe just released an update for Photoshop Lightroom (version 1.2). It´s said to include enhancements for XMP auto-write performance, noise reduction for Bayer patterned sensors and support for several new cameras like the Canon EOS 40D (Thanks to Camera Raw 4.2). I also found a page with tricks for Lightroom, called “killer tipps“.

Though I don´t know if it was just me (or my old G4 MDD) having this problem, I did not reinstall Lightroom on my new 24″ iMac after this damn programm accidently corrupted quite a few of my RAW-files. Very strange to see weired color-stripes on photos that have been viewed or developed before. Afterwards these files would not display correctly in Apple Preview nor Photoshop. Right now I´m test-driving Apple Aperture: No corrupted files so far. I´m having some probs with freezes and reconnecting to linked files though.