May 24, 2013

Test: Moving files from Photoshop CC to CS5

Longtime Photoshop trainer Dave Cross has posted the results of his experiments opening a PSD file containing new-to-CC features back in Photoshop CS5. (Spoiler alert: Everything works as expected.)

Previous/related:

• Can you open a Photoshop CC file in CS6?
• You should never lose access to your work, period.

What’s New in Adobe Creative Cloud for Web Pros

Check out CSS extraction from Photoshop & Illustrator, responsive page design with fluid grids, motion paths in Edge Animate, and more:

May 23, 2013

Demo Using Smart Previews in Lightroom 5

The freely downloadable beta of Lightroom 5 introduces the ability to work with files that reside on disconnected drives—even modifying their Develop module settings:

[Via Andrew Kavanagh]

May 22, 2013

The Visual Storytelling Tour

This tour (hitting 31 cities around the US this summer) sounds pretty cool:

[The tour] delivers an intense educational overview of the artistic elements and core principles of cinematography. Taught by Oscar nominee and Director of Photography of the Saturday Night Live Film Unit, Alex Buono, this all-day class features training that will dramatically increase the impact of your films. 

I was talking about attending with a couple of teammates, only to discover later that Adobe’s a sponsor. Maybe I’ll see you there!

3D Glass Cows

People who live in them… Ah, never mind. Enjoy your good-looking non sequitur of the day:

And see also the finished ad in which these cows appear. [Via]

May 21, 2013

Demo: Hidden gems in Photoshop CS6

Photoshop PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes writes, “This presentation of Hidden Gems was popular enough to get a second session added and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. I don’t touch CC (as that’s all still a “hidden gem”), and instead focus mainly on CS6 (though I also show some cool stuff in CS5 and CS4… and people really seemed to appreciate that).”

A Leap Motion- & Arduino-controlled marble labyrinth

“Strange,” mused the Director, as they turned away, “strange to think that even in Our Ford’s day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting. Imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It’s madness. Nowadays the Controllers won’t approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games.” [Brave New World]

[Via John Dowdell]

May 20, 2013

Using Photoshop to help find missing kids

A few years ago, John Penn was invited to attend the Internet Crimes Against Children Conference and share his knowledge as a Photoshop engineer. The experience changed his life. Now he’s a Senior Solutions Architect helping law enforcement agencies around the world use Photoshop to combat the exploitation of children.

May 19, 2013

Clever 360º Building Capture

The resourceful kids at Candy Glass Productions show how to use Google Street View + Photoshop to create an animation that spins around a reference building (in this case the CN Tower):

[Via Ben Hansen]

May 18, 2013

Camera Raw 8.1 brings Retina support to Photoshop CS6

In addition to HiDPI support, the new release (available via Adobe Labs) supports a number of new lens profiles plus the following cameras:

May 17, 2013

Apples, Oranges, & Creative Cloud: My Thoughts on CC

I joined Adobe to make the tools that my friends & I wanted to use. I was a Web designer & animator who loved what I could do with Photoshop & Flash, but who hated all the barriers that got in the way. My whole mission was—and has remained—to hijack the brains of smarter people and get them building the stuff we (creators) need. My loyalty has always been to that mission.

Like most big changes, the move to Creative Cloud is both exciting & disruptive. So far some people love it while others are very upset. I’m not writing this post thinking I’ll change everyone’s hearts & minds. I just want to tell you how I personally have thought about the change, from the perspective of someone who deeply wants to help creative people thrive.

My overriding thought for months has been, “How can I take advantage of all this to do good things for customers—things we couldn’t do before?” If you’ve come to know me at all through the years, I hope you’ll know how sincerely I say that.

A few key points about the change:

(more…)

May 16, 2013

The Coen Brothers switch to Premiere Pro

How cool: 

The next version of Adobe video tools has been developed with features created in direct response to the needs of filmmakers, broadcasters and video professionals. In fact, the multiple Academy Award winning Coen brothers have been working directly with the Adobe Premiere Pro product team and are switching to Adobe Premiere Pro for their next feature film slated for late 2013.

I remember Apple demos at NAB featuring these guys. How times change. [Via]

The World’s Smallest Movie

WTF, IBM, GTFO…

I remember in the early 80′s “drawing” on an IBM PCjr, fastidiously pecking out pixel after pixel. Now the company behind that artistic juggernaut has taken that approach to an insane extreme:

You’re about to see the movie that holds the Guinness World Records™ record for the World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Film. The ability to move single atoms — the smallest particles of any element in the universe — is crucial to IBM’s research in the field of atomic memory. But even nanophysicists need to have a little fun. In that spirit, IBM researchers used a scanning tunneling microscope to move thousands of carbon monoxide molecules (two atoms stacked on top of each other), all in pursuit of making a movie so small it can be seen only when you magnify it 100 million times. A movie made with atoms.

The making-of is fascinating:

Presumably, notes Adobe video PM Al Mooney, it was edited in Premiere Proton. ;-)

May 15, 2013

Can you open a Photoshop CC file in CS6?

Over the last few days I’ve seen numerous questions about what data, exactly, is backward-compatible when opening a Photoshop PSD file in an older version of the app. The Photoshop team has worked to keep things as compatible as possible even with 20+ years of evolution. Just for reference, here are some points that might be useful to know.

• Generally speaking, features that don’t depend on new functionality (e.g. bitmap layers) open just fine in older versions. (In theory an 8-bit layered PSD full of images should open in Photoshop 3.0, released in 1994.)
• Photoshop makes a point of storing rasterized copies of layers (e.g. text) to avoid cases where the appearance could get lost (e.g. when a font is missing).
• In cases where a previous version of Photoshop doesn’t support a newer feature, it tries to retain the appearance of the file, but the behavior may vary case by case. Some examples:
  • A Smart Object layer that depends on a newer version of Camera Raw would be retained as a Smart Object, but the older version of Photoshop wouldn’t be able to open & edit the layer’s contents.
  • Text layers retain their appearance, even if the underlying text engine has changed, unless you try to edit them. At that point you may receive a message saying that layout & appearance changes may occur.
  • For a major change that affects multiple layers (for example, 32-bit layers), the older version may need to try opening a flattened version of the file.

I should also note that the PSD format specification is freely downloadable from Adobe.com so that third parties can build their own readers/writers.

What about raw photos?

When you edit the settings of a DNG file using Camera Raw or Lightroom, you can opt to update the embedded JPEG data as well as the settings themselves.  This means, as photographer Peter Krogh likes to say, that a DNG file can serve as a “job jacket”: a container that holds your negative, your development instructions, and your print. (See “The DNG Advantage.”)

Friday demo/Q&A: New Ways to Work with Creative Cloud

10am Pacific time with evangelist Paul Trani:

Creative Cloud is so much more than just the apps available. It’s about removing the clutter from work and focusing on producing great projects. It’s about sharing and collaborating. It’s about syncing more than just a file, and more than just with yourself. In this session, Paul Trani will take you through this new way of working and new ways of thinking about Creative Cloud.