Rocking AIGA & FOWD with Cross-Media Workflows
Hello friends. Over the last few days, Greg Rewis and I have been conducting workshops and chatting with some of the top designers in the New York area about 'cross-media' workflows...and specifically...What do we mean by that?
After all, that *does* sound fairly 'marketing-esque', and to the faint-at-heart, it may seem rather ambiguous... Well, in short, it's all about people in *all* areas of design & production, leveraging the tools and techniques that they already possess to expand their knowledge and know-how in *other applications*, and, ideally be able to create and design content outside of their usual software comfort zone. This could be a Flash/Dreamweaver expert using Soundbooth to fix audio and generate XML cuepoints in FLV files; this could be traditional Print Designers using Photoshop CS3 Extended and After Effects to build 'moving' variations of their static creations, via Puppet Tool and Vanishing Point Exchange, or even the traditional Video Editor using SWF and FLV through Premiere and After Effects to bring their videos to the web, to everyone, everywhere.
In short, our first gig for members of AIGA turned out to really be a fantastic one! I'll tell you, if you want interactivity (and you ask for it)...in New York...you GET it! This highly-influential group of mixed designers (web & print) along with some modern editor/compositor types all asked the right questions, and naturally, got the answer from us. We were truly SO pleased with the Q&A that we let it continue long after the 4-hour session had ended.
Thanks to everyone at Noble Desktop, one of our training partners, for hosting the event. We look forward to evangelising and inspiring others in the future. And, if you're looking for some real-deal expert CS3 training in the greater Manhattan area, check them out!
Following the AIGA event, Greg and I spent some time with some of our design customers and another well-known web-community figure, Robert Hoekman, Jr.. Some of you may remember Robert from his recent appearance at MAX Chicago. In any event, hanging and chatting about cross-media, this just got us all revved up for *the next* event, FOWD the following day. Tomorrow, we'll be conducting two, 3-hour sessions on Cross-Media Workflow and Production, similar to the one for AIGA, but slightly modified, and with some different materials. :) (after all, we're always looking for new content to showcase!)
So, having said that, I decided to shoot some photographs today, and just experiment inside Photoshop CS3. As Greg showed off at Noble the other day, we've been doing A TON of work with Camera Raw, and *really* evangelizing the beauty of working in this truly 'hi-def' still medium. However, one thing that I really wanted to test was the Auto blend/Auto Align in PSCS3. Specifically, without any sense of tripod, or for that matter, keeping things in proper perspective. I basically took a bunch of shots in Times Sq, pivoting on one foot, and here's the three that I took...(oh, and let's not forget: a lot of these 'light boards' are CONSTANTLY CHANGING!!)
The 3 'raw' shots; notice the alignment...potential stitching nightmare, eh?
But, with the power of Photoshop CS3, Auto Align (auto & perspective) and Auto Blend, I was able to create the Panorama that I wanted to showcase. Granted, I didn't do *anything* else to this, and as you can see, the originals would have seemed 'virtually impossible' to stitch together. There is actually one little artifact that I noticed (which I left..feel free to call it out)...but once again, (a) this could be healed or cloned out easily; (b) the entire stitching process took about 10 seconds. Changing forever the way we think about working with multiple photos...
The finished Panorama, sourced from *really poorly shot*, hand-held, multi images
Simply amazing, and again, I would have thought the source was totally unusable. Crazy.
So, until next time, when we'll be heading off to the Netherlands to do another big Audio/Video Trade Show, and more...
Don't I look mysterious...and cold! lol
Blog on, everyone.