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Julie

I’m pretty excited by the latest new magazine to come from Imagine Publishing. 3D Artist is our new sister title, aimed at, well, 3D artists. It contains the same blend of tutorials, interviews and inspirational images that you’ve come to expect in Advanced Photoshop, showing you how to do more with 3D software.

There’s a full press release on Photoshop Daily to find out more, but I highly recommend taking a look.

If you’re into videogames, then Imagine Publishing has got a great new ’supersite’ dedicated to every console and PC release going, including in-depth reviews, previews, features, cheats and much, much more. It’s a great site that could easily keep you entertained for hours, and is right up to date with the latest releases. If you’re not into gaming, then it’s worth a look anyway, if only to check out the impressive web development technology and clean design that makes it the best website the company has produced yet! See it at www.nowgamer.com.

It’s that time of year again when the AP team get let out of the office to descend on The NEC in Birmingham to check out the Focus On Imaging show. Adam is there today and I will be there tomorrow, ready to bring you all the latest product releases and hands-on reviews. Watch this space…

That’s one way to get your attention! With the credit crunch still going strong, I’ll take ‘free’ anything right now. Luckily, this is a really good offer that’s worth taking up. Play With Pictures is a utility that enables you have fun with your images, creating amusing composites in minutes. Sure, you could do it in Photoshop, but this piece of software is simple, intuitive and time-saving – a handy addition to your software arsenal.  Even better, the first 10,000 people to download the trial version of the software will get the full-version licence for free! Go to www.playwithpictures.com/blog to find out more about this great offer and if you’re one of the lucky 10,000 people to get it first, you’ll receive your full-version licence key within 15 days. There’s even a Flickr group you can join to share your creations!About Play With PicturesPlay With Pictures is a highly entertaining picture creator that is so fun and easy to use that anyone can cut out people and objects from their pictures and turn them into unique and imaginative creations, which are perfect for livening up a social network profile, making greeting cards and invitations or letting school projects come alive. The software automates the process of cutting out an unlimited number of people and props from images, seamlessly layering them onto a background of choice, and then applying additional effects, all with simple and user-friendly controls. Using Play With Pictures, imaginations come alive.

Wow, I can’t believe that we have passed the 10,000 mark on images submitted to our gallery site. That’s amazing! You have been so busy – the team has been looking through and commenting on your images as well as rating them, so why don’t you do the same? It’s great to receive constructive feedback on artwork – so give, and you might very well receive in return!Let’s try for 11,000 now…

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!