It’s the first day back after a lovely break and it’s taking some time to get used to having to work again! But I spent the first part of this morning going through the images submitted on our gallery site over the last couple of weeks – it looks like you’ve been very busy! Next to tackle is my mountain of emails, including all the entries for our web challenge that ended today. The next one will be up and running in the next couple of days, as soon as we’ve finished judging all the entries we have in for the AP 052 comp. We’re also fast approaching deadline for issue 53, so that’ll throw the whole team back in the deep end! Stacey is busy with the cover at the moment – it’s going to be a good one! Adam is already writing next issue and I’m just trying to figure out where I left off last year!I hope you all had a good New Year!

It’s nearly that time of year. I am literally watching my countdown clock on my desktop, which tells me that I have 1 day, 15 hours, 7 minutes and 32 seconds till Christmas Day morning! Here at Imagine Publishing, the Creative department has been counting down Christmas since 1 December, and we’re all surrounded by Christmas trees (just the four biggies and five minis this year) and far too much chocolate.So, to all Advanced Photoshop readers and website users, I wish you a massive Merry Christmas from the whole Advanced Photoshop team: Stacey (our wonderful new designer), Adam (senior staff writer and Photoshop expert), Steve (multimedia editor), Sam (sub editor, who has left for Christmas already!) and me! We’ll all be out of the office from the end of play tomorrow and we’ll be back on 5 January.I will do my best in-between mince pies to approve your images over the break, but I won’t get your emails until I get back.See you in 2009!1 day, 15 hours, 2 minutes and 2 seconds (wow, that took me a while to write my post) to go!

Advanced Photoshop 51 hits the shelves tomorrow…The best features, interviews and artist profiles:-Industry Insight: Photoshop trends of 2009-Interview with Aaron Sims-CS4 reviewed and ratedChallenging and inspiring Masterclasses, including:-Create a realistic snow scene-Fake HDR from one photo-Design a steampunk-inspired imageAlso featuring:-Must-have hardware and software-Helpdesk and Insider Info for Photoshop advice-Free CD with brushes, project files and more

You might have noticed on our Photoshop Daily news blog that Imagine Publishing (publisher of Advanced Photoshop) has announced the launch of a great new DVD: The Beginner’s Guide To Photoshop. With over 90 minutes of video tutorials in our favourite app, I reckon it’s a great Christmas gift for anyone who needs to get to grips with Photoshop’s features and functions. It’s just £19.99 and you can get it from the  Imagine eShop. I’ll definitely be checking it out!

I’ve been looking forward to the release of Adobe’s Configurator for a while, and it’s now available for download from Adobe Labs (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/configurator/). Why? Because I can’t wait to start making my own panels! It would be so handy to have all the tools I use every day in one place. But it’s more than that. It opens up a whole new way of presenting tutorials – one panel in CS4 could lead you through the creation of a whole new effect. John Nack’s amazing Adobe blog has a roundup of some of the first wave of panels to be released, but I imagine that we will see a complete influx of them soon. Has anyone used Configurator yet? I’d love to see what you’ve come up with!

Get your entries in for the latest Peer Pressure challenge, now up on the website! Pick one, two or three of the available images and do what you like with them in Photoshop, email them in to me and the top three will be selected to be printed in the magazine. The winner will also receive a great book from David & Charles and will be shown on the website under the Challenge Winners link. I can’t wait to see what you can come up with this month!

Well, after a month of hard slog, issue 50 has gone to press, to hit the shelves on 6 November. With over 100 artists featured throughout the various special features, tutorials and profiles, it’s a pretty ambitious issue – and a showcase of the very best digital art around. We’re now full steam ahead into getting issue 51 sorted, so there’s no rest for the wicked! I’ll update you more on issue 50 nearer the publication date and give you a sneak preview of the cover.

Hi all. I have had a couple of queries about the Peer Pressure online challenge. I am in the process of sorting this out now in-between working on our mammoth 50th issue. The new challenge will be online in the next couple of days, however, as well as showing off the winner from the last challenge. Keep your eyes peeled!

Well, after two amazing weeks in America (first Las Vegas and then Los Angeles), I am back in the AP offices catching up with about a million emails and taking my first look at how issue 50 has been progressing – it’s going to be special! I was pretty excited when I went into Borders on Sunset Blvd and saw AP 47 sitting there along with loads of other Imagine Publishing titles (Digital Photographer, Photoshop Creative, iCreate, Web Designer, Corel Painter…) – the security guard didn’t seem so impressed when I starting flicking through them all, though!I’m in a bit of a jet-lagged haze (I only got back last night, plus there’s the eight-hour time difference), but it’s actually quite nice to be back at work – I did keep an eye on the AP website and gallery while I was away. I can’t believe how much I have missed – the new website looks amazing, so thanks to the web team for a great job, and the Photoshop Face-Off is so addictive. I couldn’t stop using the one over at the Digital Photographer site, but it’s even better now that I can do it here! Honestly, give it a go – it’s a great way to see a random selection of images from the site, which you might otherwise miss, especially now that we have nearly 8,000 images on the gallery.Thanks also for all your entries into the latest Web Challenge – I’ll be picking a winner with the team tomorrow, as well as putting the new challenge online.I’m going to start browsing the gallery now to see what you’ve been up to over the last couple of weeks…

Well, today is my last day at the office for two whole weeks! Finally, my summer holiday has rolled around and after the disappointment of the British ’summer’ this year, I can’t wait to get some sun.Tomorrow I will be heading for some gambling/shopping/site-seeing (did I ever mention my slight poker addiction?!?) in Las Vegas, and next week I’ll be making the drive across to California and setting up in LA for another week.  To say I can’t wait is a bit of an understatement! I’m really looking forward to Disneyland (it is the ‘happiest place on Earth’ after all), Universal Studios, Hollywood. I wonder if Advanced Photoshop needs an American branch?Of course, I’ll be on holiday, but try and stop me taking a million photos of things that could work in digital projects – it’s never far from my mind. I just hope my cameras are up to the challenge – I have a fantastic little Olympus compact and a Kodak prosumer. I must get a DSLR at some point, but I’m sure that I’m going to be pushing excess baggage anyway!  Adam will be looking after everything in the Advanced Photoshop world for the next two weeks and working on our exciting fiftieth issue! See you when I get back!