Adobe is the leader in graphics and illustrations for the web. Most midsize businesses use graphics created by the Adobe Photoshop and Flash applications, and Adobe’s Reader software is the primary application for viewing read-only documents. When the news was released that Adobe’s Flash and Illustrator products had vulnerabilities, the company refused to patch its software to protect users’ computers. Adobe recently changed its stance on patches, and released updates for vulnerable software.

Adobe Products and JavaScript

Adobe Flash and the Reader applications are vulnerable to malware because they implement JavaScript to run some procedures. Flash users must install the Flash software and run videos in the browser to view a website created in Flash.

The biggest vulnerability announced was with the Adobe Flash software. If users are running an older version of Flash, a hacker is able to take over the computer and insert malware. Typically, a hacker inserts malware that allows the hacker to gain access to website or email passwords. The information is uploaded to the hacker’s server, and the data is collected to either sell or use for the hacker’s own purposes.

ComputerWorld announced that Adobe had initially told users to patch Microsoft Windows to avoid being hacked, but after demands from technology experts, Adobe released a patch for the Flash system. The patch protects users who view Flash movies in the browser, including Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome.

Patching Your System

Adobe confirmed the security bug and offered a patch for the Microsoft and Apple operating systems. The security patch should be run on any system running Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator or just the Flash creation software. The security flaw allows a hacker to take control of the computer, so users are urged to patch the system to avoid having passwords and private information stolen.

The best protection from future security flaws is to always keep antivirus software updated on your system. Antiviruses do not always protect you from new viruses, but you can also avoid vulnerabilities by updating the Windows operating system using the update system included with Windows 7, Vista, and XP. The patches are sometimes distributed before the antivirus software updates the virus definition files, so using both methods protects your computers from being infected with malware.

The protection stops hackers from obtaining data from internal employee computers, so business owners and IT managers should always keep updates and antivirus software installed and watch network resources for any suspicious activity.

Source:http://midsizeinsider.com/en-us/article/major-vulnerability-announced-in-adobe-s

Adobe Systems Inc, maker of Photoshop and Acrobat software, has appointed three new members from technology and media companies to its board of directors.

The company said on Monday that it added Cisco Systems Inc chief financial officer Frank Calderoni, Comcast Venture’s managing director, Amy Banse, and Laura Desmond, global head of the Starcom MediaVest Group, to the board.

That raises the number of board members to 12 from 9, the company said.

“Amy Banse, Frank Calderoni and Laura Desmond bring deep expertise in media and technology to our board, which are critical to our mission of being the category leader in digital media and digital marketing,” John Warnock and Chuck Geschke, co-chairmen of the Adobe board said in a statement.

Adobe, the biggest maker of design software, reported slower first quarter revenue growth in March as sales of its widely used Creative Suite software fell, missing its forecasts, ahead of widely anticipated product launches.

Analysts are increasingly concerned the Web-based subscription service, known as Creative Cloud, will hurt Adobe’s financial growth over at least the short term.

In November, Adobe said it planned to lay off more than 7 percent of its workforce and take a charge of up to $94 million as part of a restructuring to focus on core businesses such as digital media and marketing.

Source:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/adobe-systems-appoints-three-new-board-members/articleshow/13143445.cms

Adobe Lightroom 4.1 is a comprehensive, self-contained environment for importing, editing, organizing, printing, and sharing your photos. Lightroom accommodates JPGs and video, but it’s primarily designed with RAW image files in mind: All of its editing is lossless, and its many tools are designed to tease hidden visual information out of your RAW photos. Unlike the jam-packed but expensive Adobe Photoshop toolset, the $149 Lightroom is optimized for digital photographers. The latest iteration isn’t revolutionary, but it adds an impressive number of important new features.

Lightroom’s design is set up around “modules,” with each tab revealing context-sensitive menus pertinent to a specific task.

Among the most visible changes to Lightroom are two new modules. The Map module seems to be a concession to the pervasiveness of GPS-enabled smartphones: When you import geotagged photos, you can see them arrayed on a Google Map. Most cameras don’t perform location tagging, so Lightroom lets you drag photos around on the map, or associate groups of photos with saved locations.

Meanwhile, the Book module gives you a new way to share and publish your work; it’s essentially a page layout program, where you can arrange text and photos on various predesigned page templates–as on Shutterfly, for example. When you’re done, you can save the project as a PDF file, or order the completed book through online bookmaker Blurb.

In addition, the existing Develop module, where the main image editing action happens, has undergone some very positive changes. The new Highlight and Shadow Recovery sliders hugely simplify the tasks of recovering details lost in shadows and improving the contrast in bright regions. Indeed, you can dramatically improve many photos by judiciously using those two sliders.

Beginning with Lightroom 2, you could “paint” mask layers onto your photos and then apply localized improvements (such as exposure, contrast, and saturation) to those areas. Lightroom 4 adds some new tools, including sharpness, noise reduction, and moiré to your localized toolkit. You can even apply white balance this way, which is ideal for photos in which different light sources illuminate the subject and the background.

Also, you’re no longer limited to painting masks with the adjustment brush. Lightroom now supplies a graduated filter, which you can use to apply a gradual effect across photos vertically, horizontally, or at any angle in between.

If you’ve ever struggled to make your prints look as good on paper or on the Web as they do on your own monitor, you’ll appreciate Lightroom’s new Soft Proofing. Turn it on, and you can graphically see the parts of the photo that are out of the destination’s color gamut, similar to the way you can see “blown out” areas when you activate brightness clipping. Soft proofing doesn’t fix your color problems for you–to handle that job, you’ll have to tweak the hue or saturation of the affected regions–but it’s a powerful way to ensure that your final prints look the way you want them to.

And if you have multiple destinations in mind–perhaps you’re posting a photo to SmugMug and making a photo book through Blurb–you’ll appreciate being able to make virtual copies of soft proofs so that you can adjust the colors in each one for optimal appearance wherever they appear.

Though Lightroom remains primarily a photo management program, you can now use it to trim video clips that you’ve taken with your camera, and share or publish them. Most photo organizers handle only still photos. Just don’t expect to apply any Develop module editing magic for videos.

Unfortunately, some of Lightroom’s little annoyances remain. For one thing, cropping a photo still feels as backward as working in a mirror: The mouse moves the image, not the crop box. And you still have to import your photos into Lightroom’s library before you can do anything with them. But at long last, Lightroom has a slider to control the zoom level.

Finally, if price can be considered a feature, Lightroom’s hottest selling point may be its 50 percent price drop. The full version costs just $149, down from a previously staggering $300 for Lightroom 3 (and the upgrade is just $79). The new price may reflect the fact that Adobe now has some real competition on its hands with up-and-coming photo management packages like Corel AfterShot Pro and CyberLink PhotoDirector 3. Nonetheless, Lightroom is now a real bargain.

Source:http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/review/software_and_services/adobe/lightroom_4_1/423784