September 28, 2009

CS4-style Flex skins available for panel dev

Commenters here sometimes slag the use of Flash panels inside Creative Suite apps, saying that Flash leads to poor UI. These comments confuse the technology with how it’s been used. Unfortunately it’s true that some SWF panels (example) have been poorly done.
Endeavoring to drive more consistency, the Adobe Experience Design & developer support teams have created a set of “Scope Skins” for use in CS4 panels. According to the download page,

Scope Skins (for Flex Builder 3) were created to skin Adobe Flex apps to provide the same UI as a native Creative Suite panel. This was done with little impact to the functionality of the standard Flex 3 components.

If you’re creating panels for use in Photoshop and/or other Suite apps, please take a look at these skins and let us know what you think.

MAX session: How to Write a Plug-in for Photoshop

Next Monday from 5:00-6:30pm at Adobe MAX, Mark Niemann-Ross will be hosting an interesting session:

This hands-on session will walk you through the process of creating a Flex plug-in for Photoshop. We’ll start with a basic “hello world” shell, add a Pixel Bender filter, and then integrate an online service. You get to take your work home with you and show your mom!

(rt) Illustration: Charlie Parker, Busted coffee, & more

• One bedtime treat is reading young Finnegan an ABC book from the amazing Charley Harper. (Reading him the marvelously weird Charlie Parker Played Be Bop is another.)
• The Photoshop team coffee pot was recently broken again–and yes, QE has graphed the impact!
• This “Tech support cheat sheet” from xkcd is spot-on funny. [Via]
• Here’s a 6-minute video on how Wired makes mag covers. One involved a 1GB (!) Transformers .PSD rendered by ILM. [Via Adam Pratt]
• Check out some impressive photo manipulations/illustrations from Erik Johansson. [Via Kirsten Harris]

A note for PowerPC-based Camera Raw/LR users

Lightroom/Camera Raw PM Tom Hogarty has posted some information on the Lightroom Journal blog, detailing a bug that can affect PowerPC-based Mac customers using the recent 2.5/5/5 update. Please check out Tom’s post for more details.