November 30, 2010

Adobe goes a little greener

I know it’s small potatoes* in the big scheme of things, but I’m always proud when I hear about Adobe improving its environmental impact.  I just saw an internal note about some changes happening this month:

• Eliminating bottled water from all break rooms and kitchens
• Adding dual-flush toilets to restrooms to increase water efficiency
• Moving to paper towels with 100% recycled content
• Offering soy milk and organic, fair-trade coffee in break rooms
• Replacing compact fluorescent lamps in elevator lobbies

Previously: Adobe HQ gets fuel cells, windmills, more efficient HVAC.

*free-range, no-kill, locally grown, hemp-infused, patchouli-scented small potatoes, perhaps

November 29, 2010

I won on Jeopardy, baby (oooh)

Well, I’ll be damned. From tonight’s show, I’m told:

[Via Winston Hendrickson]

Sneak peeks: New Adobe digital imaging tech

At Adobe MAX last month, digital imaging researcher Sylvain Paris showed off some tech he & colleagues are cooking up in Adobe’s Boston office. Here he touches on color/tone matching between photos; more sophisticated auto-correction of color and tone (based on analyzing thousands of adjustments made by pro photographers); and image de-blurring:

Lots of other really interesting MAX sneaks are collected here.

Photoshop Elements half off ’til Tuesday

Customers in North America can get the new Photoshop Elements 9 for $49 until Tuesday afternoon:

Offer ends November 30, 2010, at 5:00 p.m. PST. When purchasing through the online Adobe Store, you must enter offer code SAVE2010 in the shopping cart prior to checking out when prompted to do so. To purchase by phone, call 800-585-0774 and mention offer code SAVE2010. Savings are limited to one discount per product per customer.

PS–Sorry if I just embedded Voices Carry in your head.

November 28, 2010

European special: Lightroom 30% off, Monday only

I sometimes share news that’s North America-specific, so it’s nice to pass along an offer for European folks:

Save 30%* off the standard price of a full version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 when purchasing directly from the Adobe Stores in Europe or by telephone between 26 November 2010 and 29 November 2010. To receive your discount, your order must be made via the Adobe Store or by calling Adobe Direct Sales and quoting offer code BFS2010. When purchasing via the online store, enter the offer code BFS2010 in the shopping cart prior to checking out when prompted to do so. The discount will be taken off subtotalled amounts prior to calculation of tax and shipping fees. Savings are limited to one discount per customer.

*In addition, save an additional 30% off Photoshop Lightroom 3 when purchased with a Creative Suite 5 edition, Photoshop CS5 or Photoshop CS5 Extended.

New features in the WYSIWYG DiskFonts panel

Developer Anastasiy Safari’s DiskFonts panel has gotten a major update to version 1.2. He writes:

Now one can organize fonts with favorites and bookmark paths with fonts for later use, right inside Photoshop and other CS3, 4, and 5 apps. There are so many new features and improvements, so I’ll just mention some highlights:

• Drag and drop of stylized text directly into document
• iPhone/iPod/Android support (you can view the fonts from your computer on these mobile devices)
• Fast font rendering with Pixel Bender.

The panel costs $29.

November 26, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving

“Are you going to stuff me into the bird, Dad-O??”
“Absolutely, my boy!!”

Whether or not you celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, I hope you had a great day today. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m giving myself a little break from daily blogging. Thanks for reading & for giving me the chance to do this job.

All the best to you & yours,
El Tryptophan

November 24, 2010

Photography: Buildings in motion

• I love the stark geometries & palettes in this architectural imagery by Philipp Schaerer.
• The Big Picture looks down (literally) on human landscapes in Florida. [Via]
• French street artist JR puts giant photos onto favelas, other slums, security walls, and more. [Via]

November 23, 2010

Video: Body Dysmorphia, Xbox edition

I’ve been a fan of Robert Hodgin’s visual experiments for many years, and now he’s creating some intriguing work by hacking a Microsoft Kinect:

See also his Dueling Kinects demo. (And I’m probably alone in this, but these weird characters are giving me flashbacks of the bad guy in RoboCop 2.) [Via]

Video: An optical illusion for public safety

“You’re probably not expecting kids to run out on the road.” Nor, presumably, are you expecting that event to be simulated via large street art. Is this effort helpful, alarming, desensitizing? I don’t know, but it’s certainly interesting.

[Via]

November 22, 2010

So, what has Adobe actually done for HTML5 lately?

Oh, y’know, only little bits here and there. :-)  Here’s a quick recap from just the last ~6 months. I’ve bolded/italicized the bits I find most interesting.

 

• New authoring support shipping now:
  1. Shipped the Dreamweaver CS5 HTML5 pack, facilitating multiscreen work
  2. Shipped the Illustrator CS5 HTML5 pack, enhancing CSS & SVG export
  3. Added support for using HTML5 content in digital publications
  4. Added support for Firebug, Safari 5, and more to BrowserLab
  5. HTML5 Video:
     1. Facilitated the use of HTML5-tagged (non-Flash) video in Dreamweaver
     2. Added HTML5 video publishing to the Scene7 hosted service
     3. Added HTML5/Flash support to the Open Source Media Framework

      
• Future authoring tools:
  1. Demonstrated a prototype tool for creating HTML animations & interactivity
  2. Demonstrated technology for converting Flash graphics and animation to HTML5
  3. Announced a new tool for creating HTML without coding

   
• Supporting community technology:
  1. Working to contribute advanced typographical layout code to WebKit
  2. Actively contributing to jQuery Mobile (which leverages HTML5 & CSS3)

   
• Miscellaneous:
  1. Added HTML5 slideshows to Photoshop.com, in parallel with Flash
  2. Added HTML5 video playback for videos hosted on Photoshop.com; Adobe TV to follow
  3. Embedded WebKit in CS5 apps to facilitate HTML-based extensibility
  4. Added HTML5 compatibility tracking (NetAverages) to CS Live
  5. Began offering typefaces via TypeKit

 

This isn’t about one technology (HTML, Flash) “vs.” another; it’s about putting customers, and the solutions to their problems, ahead of any technology.

So, let’s stick a fork in the “Adobe doesn’t like/doesn’t support HTML5″ canard once and for all. Can I get an amen? [Update: If that war of perception is truly over, fantastic. As I say, I'd be delighted to lay it to rest.]

November 21, 2010

Video: A mesmerizing, fluid-filled dress

When you say, “600 ft. of knitted tubing powered by a pump located in the backpack,” I say, “Christmas for Margot!” Well, perhaps not, but Charlie Bucket is onto something pretty rad. (Instead of resorting to the opposing cliches of either silver body suits or post-apocalyptic ripped sweaters, why don’t movies depict more visually active clothing in the future?)

More info is on what gets my name for URL o’ the year, CasualProfanity.com. [Via]

(rt) Typography: Font detection, crazy bikes, & more

• Yes, there is a sort of “Shazam for fonts” (letting you snap pics to ID typefaces): WhatTheFont for iPhone.
• “Write a Bike“: Crazy typographical cycles. [Via Mira Albert-Bullis]
• Ian Curtis is spinning in his grave: “Joy Division Divorce Attorneys.”
• “If you touch…” Oh my. A topical, TSA-themed cross-stitch.
• When this is someday done in HTML5, it’ll be considered the best, most revolutionary thing ever. [Update: I probably should have added a jokey wink emoticon to convey my tone on this one. So, ";-)!" I'll shortly post a very long list of big, significant things Adobe is doing to support the advancement of HTML5, so no one need stress.]

November 20, 2010

Wi-Fi Direct promises wireless tethering

Not really newsworthy, but encouraging: A few months ago I wrote about the need for wireless tethering, whereby your camera could discover transfer photos right into a tablet or laptop. (Today’s setups–e.g. setting up a portable hotspot while on the go–are too neckbeard-a-riffic to get mass adoption.)  The customer demand is so strong that I’ve assumed that a bunch of hardware manufacturers have been working on solutions. Now I see that the Wi-Fi Direct spec is apparently inching its way towards shipping products.  I’m eager to see what results. [Via Sean Parent]

November 19, 2010

(rt) Illustration: Pixel art, beautiful cards, & more

• “Achtung!” Here’s a rather brilliant TSA Checkpoint sign. [Via]
• Goodness abounds in the beautiful state card designs in this Dribbble set.
• Pixel art:
  • I love Andy Rash’s pixel Star Wars characters. If those are up your alley, see his pixel Bond, Borat, and others.
  • “Koopa, It’s What’s For Supper.” Jude Buffum’s made meat-cut diagrams for Nintendo characters. [Via]
• Cinematic characters:
  • Halloween party stylings: Four duelling DeNiros & more appear in Ivan Brunetti’s great New Yorker cover.
  • “It’s Murray Time…” Bill Murray as other Wes Anderson characters. (Malkovichian.)
• Lee Rubenstein’s created crazy lo-fi creatures from CS5 splash screens. [Via]

November 18, 2010

A beautifully done HTML5 book from Google

Check out the company’s “20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web,” then check out some background info from the dev team:

We built “20 Things” in HTML5 so that we could incorporate features that hearken back to what we love about books—feeling the heft of a book’s cover, flipping a page or even reading under the covers with a flashlight. In fact, once you’ve loaded “20 Things” in the browser, you can disconnect your laptop and continue reading, since this guidebook works offline.

This is exactly the kind of thing that Adobe should help people create.  InDesign supports creation of similar content running in Flash, but runtimes are just means to an end. (I should note that this is just my opinion, and I’m not involved with digital publishing efforts.) [Via Scott Evans]

Video: Tiny Coachella

You’d think I’d be sick to death of tilt-shift faux miniature vids by now… but you’d be mistaken! Check out this great example:

Director Sam O’Hare (remember the NYC Sandpit?) talks more about the project here.

“AERO: Are you the most patient person on the planet?
SAM: Not really! Adobe Lightroom helps quite a bit!”

[Via]

November 17, 2010

A new BrowserLab team blog

Cross-browser testing tends to suck, and the Adobe BrowserLab team is working to make it better.  If you’re interested in hearing their thoughts and providing feedback, please check out the BrowserLab Team Blog.

A cool, free Photoshop book comes to iPad

Photographer Dan Marcolina has used InDesign’s new tablet-publishing tools to create the very cool The World Without Photoshop, “A unique interactive iPad book featuring a dozen Photoshop Masters.”

See for yourself what some of the best digital artists’ work looks like without the software. Then with the touch of your finger The World Without Photoshop is transformed and you can see and hear the imaginations of these artists come to life in their work. Pinch and zoom into over 48 works by artists, illustrators, designers, and photographers and get their insights into how twenty years of Photoshop innovation have changed their world.

Bonus content includes an interactive timeline of 20 years of Photoshop features, Russell Preston Brown’s Photoshop ODDyssey presentation, more.

All Nik plug-ins go 64-bit

Nik Software has updated their complete collection for 64-bit/CS5 compatibility.  Way to go, guys! [Via]

Mac folks, is there anything keeping you running CS5 in 32-bit mode? I ask because the more legacy code we can lop off, the more we can focus on building for the future.

November 16, 2010

There’s now a Photoshop channel on YouTube

“So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.” :-)  Check it out.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the Adobe TV team is working to add support for non-Flash-enabled devices (leveraging the HTML5 Video tag).  In the meantime the YouTube channel provides an alternate way to access many of the same clips on those devices.

Type: 200-billion-pt. Helvetica, WTF, & more

• There’s plenty to enjoy in this set of 40 Typographic Posters.
• “For all your puzzlement needs”: the WTF Stamp.
• Somehow it kind of had to happen: Lego Letterpress.
• How big would “Helvetica” need to be to stretch from the Earth to the Moon? 282.6 billion points. You’re welcome.

November 15, 2010

Video: TimeScapes Rapture

Speaking of beautiful time lapses, here’s another worth seeing:

Come on, who doesn’t love a Zeppelin? Other installments are at TimeScapes.org. [Via]

Video: NYC timelapse

Alexandre Favre, Pierre Dumont, and David Mignot fire up the Beethoven in this bombastic tour of the city:

New York City – Timelapse from stimul on Vimeo.

[Via Rob Cantor]

November 14, 2010

Adobe Audition Mac beta now available

You can now download a Mac preview version of Audition, Adobe’s pro audio editor that was formerly Windows-only.  According to the Adobe Labs page,

Adobe Audition for Mac brings modern audio post-production to the Mac platform. Familiar tools for audio editing, multitrack mixing and recording meet improved performance, greater workflow flexibility, and new features such as native 5.1 surround support and new effects. Plus, the best-of-breed audio sweetening and restoration tools in Audition make it easy to clean up production audio.

Check out the product page for an FAQ and more.

November 13, 2010

Alien Skin starts an interesting blog

“In the end, we shall all be dead!” Anyone who pairs a statement like that with cheerful astronauts on their marketing materials is my kind of weirdo. :-)

With that in mind, I’m happy to see that Jeff Butterworth & the Alien Skin Software crew have started their own blog.  Like mine it mixes product info with interesting bits about photography, design, and more (e.g. one involving iPhones, suction cups, and plane windows).  I look forward to bogarting their finds like it’s my job.

Video: OKGO + Geoff McFetridge = Animated toast (really)

[Via]

November 12, 2010

Lightroom Plug-in Resources

Over on the Lightroom Journal, Tom Hogarty has listed a wealth of Lightroom Plug-in Resources.  Check it out to find tools for making prints, wrangling metadata, building great Web galleries, and more.

Flash Player’s adding hardware-accelerated 3D

“Flash will innovate or die,” I wrote earlier this year. “I’m betting on innovation,” and that’s paying off.

Flash Player is used to deliver something like 70% of all online games, and its 3D chops about to grow much more powerful. At MAX the team announced “Molehill,” a new set of low-level, GPU-accelerated 3D APIs that work across screens (desktops, phones, TVs, etc.). Here’s a sample demo:

Flash Player PM Thibault Imbert shares more info & demos here:

And for a deeper dive, check out this presentation from engineering manager Kevin Goldsmith.

November 11, 2010

(rt) Photography: Frozen explosions, toxic sludge, & more

• Euclidian eats: Ikea’s made a coffee table book of ingredients laid out as patterns.
• This smart poster reacts against domestic violence–literally.
• I dig these colors & compositions from photographer Jim Green.
• Fluid dynamics:
  • You know what’s been great today? Not getting buried in a flood of toxic sludge.
  • NPR shows photos of water balloons caught mid-pop. The water retains its shape for impossible-seeming images. [Via]
• The “Muybridgizer” app creates Victorian-style freeze frames.

November 10, 2010

Learn to switch from Final Cut to Premiere Pro

Hey, remember which company makes multiple* 64-bit, GPU-accelerated video tools for the Mac?  (Hint: it’s not Apple.)

If you’re a Final Cut Pro user, check out live sessions next week in which veteran FCP users talk about how and why they’ve moved to Premiere Pro–and how you can, too.

* “Any” would also work

Microsoft enables Illustrator->HTML5 Canvas

How cool: Microsoft’s Mike Swanson has enabled Illustrator (CS3-CS5, Mac & Win) to export vector graphics as HTML5 Canvas elements. As former Illustrator PM Mordy Golding puts it,

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could generate great-looking and useful HTML5 content (with interactivity, motion, interaction, etc) DIRECTLY from Illustrator? Now you can — with a new FREE plugin for Illustrator.

Here’s a great 90-second demo (no embedding option I can discover, unfortunately). Now Illustrator can create SVG, CSS, and Canvas content, thanks to this plug-in plus the recently released Illustrator CS5 HTML5 pack. Way to go, Mike & Microsoft.

[Semi-pointless historical footnote: the plug-in brings back memories of Macromedia's ancient Flash Writer plug-in for Illustrator (the system requirements for which still list Windows NT!). Here, I'll make that same part of your brain twinge again: "DeBabelizer!"]

November 09, 2010

Search & replace metadata in Lightroom

John Beardsworth’s Search Replace Transfer plug-in for Lightroom 2 & 3 sounds useful.  Designed for bulk changes to text in Metadata Panel fields, the plug-in:

1. Searches and replaces text like a word processor
2. Appends text before or after existing text
3. Transfers text between fields
4. Transfers metadata from iView/Expression Media to 18 custom fields
5. Audits title, caption and keyword entry

[Via]

November 08, 2010

Adobe Ideas adds iOS4 support, layers, more

I’m really pleased to say that the Adobe Ideas team has released version 1.1, offering a range of free enhancements plus the app’s first optional paid feature.

Free features:

• Support for iPhone 4 retina display
• Support for iOS4 Multi-tasking
• Support for Redo
• Available in French, German and Japanese
• Sketches save much faster, avoiding loss of data when you close the app or you need to answer a phone call.
• Save drawing to “saved photos” album on iPad and iPhone (no longer a need to create a screenshot)

In-app purchase (optional):

• Layers: Available for in-app purchase. Create up to 10 drawing layers plus a photo layer for each sketch; control order and opacity for each layer.

Here’s a quick (sub-2-minute) demo:

You might also be interested in the Ideas Facebook page, Flickr Gallery, and team blog.  Congrats, guys!

(rt) Illustration: Black Swans, fun with Carbonite, & more

• “Holy crap is Africa big,” observes Daniel Jalkut. [Via]
• Check out some bold & excellent “Black Swan” movie posters. [Via]
• Star Wars:
  • Heh: Mr. and Mrs. The Hutt Make a Compromise.
  • I like José Pulido’s Día de los Muertos-style Star Wars illustrations.
  • Long, long ago–specifically, from the 70′s: Boba Fett’s invoice to Jabba the Hutt.

November 07, 2010

(rt) Photography: Strange Cargo from the skies

• The infinitely patient Chris Thomas has captured a rather amazing airplane/moon photo. (Why use Photoshop when you can really suffer for your art?) [Via]
• “Not the Great Pumpkin”: a great shot of the Sun, captured in the wavelength of hydrogen alpha light. See also this close-up from the image. [Via]
• Shockwave & awe: The Beauty of Vapor Cones. [Via]
• Cow-dung toothpaste–for real? In Strange Cargo, Taryn Simon photographs contraband seized at JFK. (Presumably no one was shipping Photoshop 5.0 in there.)

November 06, 2010

Quote of the Week

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius

Taking it to heart,
J.

(rt) Type: Signs to Restore Sanity, citys as letters, & more

• Hah: Katrin Eismann points out the 100 Best Signs At The Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear.
• From the school that is old:
  • Mark Simonson critiques anachronistic type use in films. [Via]
  • Neat tech artifacts: Pre-digital displays used tiny neon tubes for numbers.
• Shapes from type:
  • Check out these great city maps made of nothing but letters. [Via]
  • TechCrunch made sketches of Steve Jobs, assembled from his recent comments on Android.
• How about using Comic Sans as home security (ghetto design camouflage)?

November 05, 2010

Learn about BrowserLab at noon

Cross-browser debugging: the eternal joy!  Things can at least suck less with the help of Adobe BrowserLab.  A live Q&A is going on today at noon Pacific:

Learn how Adobe BrowserLab, an Adobe CS Live service, solves this problem by showing you how your web pages look on popular browsers and operating systems – without having them installed. You’ll learn how to preview your content and use the various diagnostics tools that help you pinpoint issues.

[time zone converter]

November 04, 2010

Feedback, please: A Photoshop iPad companion

In August I asked for ideas on tablet-based companions for Photoshop, and last week at MAX we demoed a paint-mixing prototype. Now the designers have taken a crack at mocking up some companion features that could run on a phone or tablet.

In a nutshell, you get:

• groups of task-based tools & commands (e.g. all your photography/retouching tools & buttons on one page, or all your painting ones, 3D ones, etc.)
• interactive, task-based tutorials that drive Photoshop, helping you get things done

The idea is to let you work faster–offering more organized access to tools & knowledge. What do you think? What would you pay for this?

Get crisp Web/screen text in Photoshop, FW

“Improved text rendering” was near the top of readers’ wish lists a few weeks back when I requested feedback on potential Web & drawing features for Photoshop, and it’s something the team is investigating.  In the meantime, these links may be of interest:

• Ksenia Chernyavska provides info on creating pixel-perfect text of small size in Photoshop.
• David Hogue has posted tips on how to Simulate ClearType Text in Fireworks CS4. [Via]

Let me agree in advance that one shouldn’t need tips & that these things should Just Work™.

November 03, 2010

SF Photoshop User Group meeting tomorrow

In case you’re in San Francisco and feel like joining us:

We are pleased to have visual effects artist Lisa Yimm return for another great presentation.

Join Lisa for a walk-through the workflow and creative possibilities available with Red Giant Software’s Magic Bullet PhotoLooks 1.5 and Photoshop CS5.

PhotoLooks is a unique set of color-correction and image enhancement tools that can speed up your workflow and spark your creativity with built-in presets that help you easily achieve some of today’s most recognizable film and television “Looks” like CSI:Miami, The Matrix, and Band of Brothers.

The event starts at 6:30.  Please RSVP & get other details here.

Video: Star Wars via paper animation

Heh–a great tune, too:

[Via]

November 02, 2010

Adobe’s enhancing WebKit for better typography

I’m excited to say that Adobe’s working with Google to enable better HTML-based typography, contributing the work to the open-source WebKit project.

Why not just say “Web typography”? Because HTML goes beyond the Web, supporting apps like Adobe’s new tablet publishing solution.  Trouble is, for all its strengths (e.g. separating content from layout), HTML’s type handling has been pretty limited–especially for creating print-quality layouts.

Adobe wants to help solve the problem, making HTML better suited to more demanding applications.  Check out this demo from engineering VP Paul Gubbay:

Paul writes,

The team has taken the approach of extending CSS with a few new elements utilizing the webkit- prefix so that the designer can adequately describe their intent for the content as the page is resized to simulate working across different screens.  We look forward to working with the Webkit Open Source project and of course the W3C to contribute our work back in the most appropriate way.  And, as always your comments are very much appreciated.

Photoshop SJ User Group meeting next Wednesday

Hope to see you there:

Bryan O’Neil Hughes will present “Hidden Gems”, showing lesser known features and workflows in Photoshop CS5. Michael Lewis will give an introductory talk about tips and techniques for shooting DSLR video, useful accessories, advantages/disadvantages of different cameras and file formats, getting the files into a computer, and a very brief look at project workflow and editing.

We’ll have pizza and drinks at 6:30, and the meeting will start at 7:00, in the Park Conference Room of Adobe Systems’ East Tower, 321 Park Avenue, San Jose.

Please see the Evite for details & to RSVP.

November 01, 2010

Photography: X-ray pinups, pinhole experiments, & more

• Science:
  • X-Ray pinup girls seem like the ideal Misfits groupies.
  • So much for the idea of tasteful, pure white sculpture: Ultraviolet light reveals how ancient Greek statues really looked.
  • Behold some gorgeous electron microscope photos of grains of pollen.
• Pinholin’:
  • “What happens when you place a small pinhole camera on the top of a turntable and expose the film for the length of L America by The Doors?”
  • Check out Adam Magyar’s homebrew slit-cam photo Walking As One. The rest of his collection is worth a look, too. [Via]