Tag Archives: Adobe

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

New AI Upgrades to Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements

While Premiere Elements 2023 is receiving a couple of new features and a considerable speed boost, Photoshop Elements 2023 adds some powerful new features and enhanced performance. Along with these enhancements, both editors have been given a boost from Adobe Sensei, the company’s universal AI.

While Premiere Elements 2023 is receiving a couple of new features and a considerable speed boost, Photoshop Elements 2023 adds some powerful new features and enhanced performance. Along with these enhancements, both editors have been given a boost from Adobe Sensei, the company’s universal AI.

Adobe’s mission is to make video and photo editing more efficient, regardless of the user’s skill level.

The latest editions of the Elements software rely heavily on artificial intelligence. For example, thanks to the new AI implementations, one of the most eye-catching editing features in the new Photoshop Elements 2023 is the ability to convert still images into moving photos.

Adobe demonstrated how easy it is to add movement elements to still pictures. This demonstration showed how you could quickly add animation to bring a waterfall picture to life. All you have to do is select the Moving Elements tool, choose the region to be animated, and specify the movement’s direction. The newly released Photoshop Elements also includes an excellent range of overlays, patterns, backgrounds, and other features.

As for the video editing software, Premiere Elements 2023 will automatically recognize faces and tag videos, making it easier to find friends and family for compilation videos. Another handy feature is auto-reframe; this feature lets you switch between portrait and landscape modes without sacrificing any of the crucial details of the scene. The last features worth mentioning are the different aesthetic effects that can be applied to a video clip and the Auto-Creations feature that automates editing.

The introduction of a three-way “connected experience” has also been announced by Adobe. With the release of web and mobile apps for iOS and Android, users can now view and share media on their mobile devices. In addition, users can make basic edits from a browser.

In addition to the new features, Adobe claims that these new versions are lighter than last year’s versions and that the software launches 50% faster. They also claim that installs are now 35% faster.

Each application is priced at $100 or $80 if upgrading from a previous version. The two applications can be purchased in a bundle for $150 or upgraded for $120.

 

0
Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Update Adobe Now For Several Critical Security Updates

Adobe continues to work at a feverish pace to address critical security vulnerabilities in its product line. Their most recent patch addresses a total of ten security flaws across the following four products:

  • Photoshop
  • Adobe Digital Editions
  • Adobe Bridge
  • RoboHelp

Of the ten flaws addressed by the latest patch, seven are rated as being Critical in their severity as they allow either arbitrary file writes or arbitrary code execution when exploited.

Adobe Bridge got the most attention, with the patch addressing four critical flaws and two additional vulnerabilities rated as ‘Important.’ Next up, the patch deals with a pair of security flaws in Photoshop, and one critical issue each in RoboHelp and Adobe Digital Editions.

If you use any of the products listed above, you should update to the latest version as soon as possible to minimize your risk. In most cases, this is as simple as firing up the software in question and navigating to Help, and then to “Check for updates,” although if this happens not to work for you, it’s easy enough to simply head to Adobe’s Download Center and grab the files you need from there.

Adobe has had an unfortunate history with many of their products, which have seen more than their share of security flaws. However, to the company’s credit, they’ve abandoned the worst offenders, like their beleaguered Flash player, and have been steadily working to shore up the rest.

Kudos to Adobe for keeping up the good work and for addressing so many security issues with this latest update. As mentioned, if you use any of the products above, be sure to update as soon as possible. Hackers around the world seem to have a soft spot for Adobe products and the longer you wait to patch, the higher your risks.

0
Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Adobe Flash Is Done And Flash Content Is Being Blocked

Adobe has finally done it, as promised. For more than a year, the company has been slow-walking their iconic Adobe Flash Player to its eventual doom. As of December 31st, 2020, Adobe stopped providing support for the product. Not long after, beginning on January 12th, 2021, it made another change that prevented Flash content from running on Flash Player, so that’s it. The final nail in Flash’s coffin. It is finished.

For the most part, that’s good news. When Flash Player was first introduced, it was groundbreaking technology and clearly ahead of its time. It was one of the key pieces of technology that made the modern web what we know and recognize today, giving Webmasters the capability to introduce a dazzling array of features and effects to their sites with relative ease. At the time, there was simply nothing else like it.

Unfortunately, however, the player was also riddled with security flaws, many of them serious and critical. That gave hackers around the world all sorts of potential inroads in terms of infiltrating and compromising any site that relied on Flash’s capabilities and components.

Adobe tried gamely for many years to stop the bleed. To their credit, they did succeed in closing dozens of security loopholes, but they couldn’t keep up. New security flaws were being discovered at a rate faster than the company could fix them. That, combined with that over the years, other, better and more robust technologies like HTML 5 came onto the scene that could do a better job at enhancing site capabilities than Flash. In the end, the company decided to pull the plug.

It was the right decision, but if your company is one of the holdouts and you’ve still got a website or an on-site application that relies on Flash, know that it’s now well past time to change. As of the 12th, your application or site feature is no longer going to work, and the only fix for that is to migrate to some other, more secure technology.

It’s inconvenient, but at this point, it’s also inevitable. Flash is dead. Long live Flash.

0
Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

The New Year Brings End For Adobe Flash Player

We’re drawing close to the end of an era.

The writing has been on the wall for Adobe’s Flash player for quite some time, and the company has set a firm date of January 12th, 2012 as its official end of life.

Recently, they took another important step closer by releasing what will be their final Flash Player update.

With it will be a note with stronger language asking users to uninstall the app before its official end of life. It matters because there are no more security patches coming, and it’s almost a given that additional security flaws will be found and increasingly exploited. If you’ve still got the app installed on your machine, you’re not only putting your system at risk, but if you’re connected to a corporate network, you’re putting the entire company at risk too.

At the end of the year, Adobe is planning to push out a notification to all users who still have the app installed, warning them again that the software is nearing its end of life. However, of course, even that is unlikely to be sufficient to prompt everyone to uninstall. There’s bound to be a small subset of the user base that will keep on using it until the last day, and then forget to uninstall it, which will put untold numbers of systems and networks at risk.

If you own a company of any size, it pays to keep the date January 12th, 2021 firmly in mind. Be sure that your IT staff has a plan in place to check every PC and handheld device connected to your network to be sure that the Flash Player has been uninstalled. For years, hackers have used Flash exploits to gain easy access to networks around the world. Don’t let your company be their next target.

0
Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Update Adobe Acrobat Reader To Patch Security Issue

A lot of people have a complicated relationship with Adobe Acrobat reader.

On the one hand, it’s an undeniably useful piece of software and one of the most widely installed and used on the planet.

There’s simply no better and more convenient way to view PDFs, no matter what kind of device you’re using.

On the other hand, the Acrobat Reader is notoriously riddled with bugs and security flaws, and Adobe is forever playing defense. They’re gamely trying to patch each new issue as it is discovered. Recently, the company released a major patch that addresses a total of fourteen different security flaws, with ten of the fourteen being rated as either critical or important.

Here’s a quick overview of the flaws that are addressed by the latest patch:

  • CVE-2020-24435 – Critical – Arbitrary Code Execution
  • CVE-2020-24433 – Important – Local Privilege Escalation
  • CVE-2020-24432 – Important – Arbitrary JavaScript Execution
  • CVE-2020-24439 – Moderate – Minimal (defense in depth) Fix
  • CVE-2020-24429 – Important – Local Privilege Escalation
  • CVE-2020-24427 – Important – Improper Information Disclosure
  • CVE-2020-24431 – Important – Dynamic Library Injection
  • CVE-2020-24436 – Critical – Arbitrary Code Execution
  • CVE-2020-24426 – Moderate – Improper Information Disclosure
  • CVE-2020-24434 – Moderate – Improper Information Disclosure
  • CVE-2020-24428 – Important – Local Privilege Escalation
  • CVE-2020-24430 – Critical – Arbitrary Code Execution
  • CVE-2020-24437 – Critical – Arbitrary Code Execution
  • And CVE-2020-24438 – Moderate – Improper Information Disclosure

Needless to say, this is a big, important patch. Even if you don’t normally make Acrobat Reader updates a priority, this should be an exception to that rule. The faster you get all copies of the software updated on your network, the safer and more secure your system will be.

Hopefully, the day will come when Adobe can stop playing defense and the pace of newly discovered security issues will begin to slow to a trickle. Until that happens though, kudos to Adobe for their fast action and continued efforts to plug the security holes in their widely used Reader software.

0
1 2 3