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]

May 15, 2013

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.

May 14, 2013

Welcoming a new storyteller to Adobe

I’m delighted to say that accomplished young storyteller Bianca Giaever has just joined my team at Adobe.

Bianca recently graduated Middlebury College, where she created her own program as an Independent Scholar in Narrative Studies. Her short film “The Scared is scared” (below) recently crossed the million-view threshhold on Vimeo, and in 2011 she conducted interviews with veterans across the country by bicycle for the War In Voice Project through a grant from Davis Projects For Peace. She’s been all over public radio, featured at TED, working at the New York Review of Books, and generally making me feel like an underachieving slacker.

Now, why exactly would Adobe want a storyteller on staff? I can’t explain in full yet, but it’ll make sense soon enough. (In the meantime, if that piques your interest, shoot me a note: tinyElvis at adobe.)

For now I’ll just say welcome, Bianca!

May 12, 2013

Tuesday in SJ: Bert Monroy

Master digital painter Bert Monroy will be speaking at the San José Photoshop User Group Tuesday evening at 7pm:

Bert Monroy is an accomplished teacher and lecturer, having served on the faculty of a list of institutions that includes The School of Visual Arts (New York), Center for Creative Imaging (Maine), California College of the Arts, the Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging (California) and currently teaches at San Francisco State University. He also consults with and trains corporate clients, including Pixar and Disney Animation. His film credits include work for Industrial Light & Magic, Pacific Data Images, and R/Greenberg Associates.

Bert is a member of the Photoshop World Dream Team. In 2004, he was inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame.

Bert Monroy returns to show us some of his recent work, sharing techniques he has developed in the creation of his photo-realistic paintings.

Check out the event page for full details.

May 08, 2013

Adobe brass address photographers’ concerns about CC

Winston Hendrickson—a legitimately big cheese to my Kraft Single—talks about why Lightroom isn’t going subscription-only while Photoshop is, acknowledges that Creative Cloud doesn’t (yet) offer a lot of interesting photography-specific services, and more in a short interview with DP Review.

May 06, 2013

Watch the Adobe MAX keynote live, starting in 10 minutes

Check it out here. Today’s going to be a very news-rich day.

May 03, 2013

SpeedGrade’s new shot matcher

Color-correcting a single image can be a challenge. Correcting a video clip, even more so. Correcting a whole series of shots & making them look good together—well, that takes some skill, plus some tech like the forthcoming release of Adobe SpeedGrade:

May 01, 2013

Reminder: “Adobe, photography, & the cloud” briefing in 1 hour

Starting at 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific:

In this special live episode you can go right to the source and ask Tom Hogarty from Adobe your questions about their story for photographers and their photography roadmap. Also, Tom will sneak peek some future products and give us a look into the roadmap for photographers.

You can tweet questions to Tom via #thegridlive.

LayerMiner: Photoshop script exports Layer Styles to JSON

Of LayerMiner Tom Krcha writes:

In the designer/developer workflow it often happens that you want to export the Layer Style out of a Photoshop layer for custom processing in app UI development – native, web, gaming… I wrote a tiny script that exports data like Drop Shadow, Gradient Fill, Stroke, etc to a JSON file next to your PSD file.

April 30, 2013

Adobe, photography, & the cloud: Sneak peek tomorrow

As I type this, Lightroom PM Tom Hogarty is en route to Florida, preparing to talk live with Scott Kelby on The Grid tomorrow at 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific. Scott writes,

Feeling like photographers have been left out of this whole “cloud” discussion from Adobe?

In this special live episode you can go right to the source and ask Tom Hogarty from Adobe your questions about their story for photographers and their photography roadmap. Also, Tom will sneak peek some future products and give us a look into the roadmap for photographers.

I think you’ll like what you see.

April 29, 2013

Sneak Peek: QR Codes in InDesign

A treat for robots’ eyes:

April 25, 2013

An Interactive Forest of Musical Lasers

They had me at “Marshmallow Laser Feast”:

I would sure like to unleash some Micronaxx on this bad boy. [Via]

April 24, 2013

Join Russell Brown at MAX May 3-5

Full-body, mixed-media free-for-all: That’s how I’d describe the Russell Brown at MAX sessions I’ve had the pleasure to experience over the years. This year’s in LA should be no different:

Seven reasons to sign up for RussellBrown@MAX

1. Classic Movie Monsters
2. Amazing Photoshop Instructors like Julieanne Kost and Joel Grimes
3. Meet the Wolfman and Frankenstein’s Monster in person!
4. Print directly on to a t-shirt with a Brother Garment Printer!
5. Print 60X40 inch Epson GIANT movie posters
6. Learn cool things about Photoshop that you have NEVER been shown before!
7. Photograph with a RED Epic camera!

What are you waiting for?! Sign up here.

April 23, 2013

Page Layers app turns HTML into PSDs

Hmm—interesting concept (reversing what we normally see, i.e. PSD to HTML):

The app costs $28.99 on the Mac App Store. [Via Stephen Nielson]

More props for Adobe Anywhere

Bob Zelin writing for Creative Cow:

Adobe Anywhere was the most important product at NAB 2013 – more amazing than the Blackmagic 4K camera, or anyone else’s product. The reality that “one day soon” (and “one day” right now for CNN) that you can be in Iraq with a WiFi Connection and can access your company server’s 4K media and edit it over WiFi, and don’t need any other equipment – well that just makes me sick.

Anyone that can afford it will buy Adobe Anywhere, and anyone that has Adobe Anywhere will never use any other editing software other than what Adobe provides. […] As this product becomes more accessible to the regular production and post production companies, the only products that will survive will be the ones that tie in with Adobe Anywhere.

April 22, 2013

The Invisible Bicycle Helmet

“If people say it’s impossible we have to prove them wrong.”

Design students Anna and Terese took on a giant challenge as an exam project. Something no one had done before. If they could swing it, it would for sure be revolutionary. The bicycle is a tool to change the world. If we use bikes AND travel safe: Life will be better for all.

[Via Maria Brenny]

April 21, 2013

Time Lapse: Creating the Adobe MAX logo

Last month the design team of Jessica Walsh and Stefan Sagmeister locked themselves away for 24 hours to create a new logo for Adobe MAX. Here’s a time lapse of what happened:

April 19, 2013

Survey: What do you think of Creative Cloud?

From your lips to the Adobe brass’s ears. (And yes, there’s a sort of cheesy “push” aspect to the early set of questions, but there are legitimate questions and a free-text entry field at the end.) Thanks for your help!

[Update: I'm sorry that I didn't read through the whole survey before posting it, and sorry that it comes off as self-promotion masquerading as a real invitation to dialog. I believe that the creators' intentions were good, and that people really will listen to the answers you supply.]

April 13, 2013

Nordstrom builds an iPad app in front of customers

Wow—talk about rapid iteration & being close to customers. In this short piece, Nordstrom’s Innovation Lab team shows how they conducted the 1-week experiment of building an iPad app that helped customers (and sales reps) pick the best sunglasses for them. The team set up workstations inside the Seattle flagship store so that they could tweak designs and code immediately based on customer feedback.

[Via Molly Ruf]

April 12, 2013

“Why Adobe Anywhere is the Only Tool That Will Actually Make You a Better Filmmaker”

High praise from Filmmaker IQ:

This. Changes. Everything. […]

While every product being marketed out there was about making the image better and more beautiful, or the workflow easier and more automated, Adobe Anywhere was the only thing I saw that enables better collaboration and communication on a fundamental and crucial part of the filmmaking process. Although I’ve been a die-hard Adobe fan since I started editing, I’m trying to say this as best I can without bias – this idea of collaborative editing is one who’s time has come. Even though the current Adobe Anywhere may require be a little too much for small shops to implement right now, I have no doubt Adobe or whoever will find a way to bring this idea to everybody.

It’s only a matter of time for this paradigm shift.

[Via Todd Kopriva]

April 10, 2013

“So God Made a Zombie”

A little bizarre fun from Russell Brown:

[Via Ammar Al Midani]

April 09, 2013

What’s the Creative Cloud Packager?

If you’re not an administrator responsible for deploying Adobe apps, you can skip this one. If you are an admin, however, you may well be excited. According to PM Karl Gibson, “This new tool lets admins download all Creative Cloud products & updates; define custom installation behavior; and at the end have a native MSI or PKG that you use with your deployment tool.” See Karl’s post and product docs for more details, and check out the demo below:

April 08, 2013

What is Adobe Anywhere?

I’m so proud that my wife Margot gets to help deliver the next generation of collaborative awesomeness. Adobe Anywhere helps editors, VFX artists, and other video pros simultaneously access, stream, and work with remotely stored media. As the product site says, “There’s no need for heavy file transfers, duplicate media, or proxy files.”

Here’s how it works, in under 3 minutes:

And check out how CNN & others are putting Anywhere into action:

It’s fun for me to see some of these customers at last. Many are based in Europe, so I’ll often wake up to the sound of Margot dialing into early morning conference calls. One day Finn, age 4, asked me, “Dad-O, is Mom-O talking to Germans?” Yes, I told him. “No!” he said, “Nein nein nein nein!” :-)

April 07, 2013

“Pixel Rain”

Hmm—I’d never heard this metaphor when discussing the quantity vs. quality of pixels on a sensor, but I like it. Here’s HTC’s Symon Whitehorn talking about their move from 8 to 4 megapixels:

This debunks the so-called “megapixel myth,” which says that more megapixels equals a better image. “The old analogy that the industry uses is called pixel rain, so you can imagine photons coming down as rain—with photon rain being collected in buckets with the buckets being the pixel,” says Whitehorn. “Now you could put a lot of little cups out and try to collect the same amount of rain and you wind up getting noise between the cups as opposed to it all falling into one big bucket.”

Of course, now I kind of want to see some cheeky artist take this idea to its absurd extreme, producing a sensor that’s just 1 pixel in resolution—but oh man is that pixel’s quality ever high.

April 06, 2013

Creative Cloud for Students: Big discount until tomorrow

The special introductory price of $19.99 is good until tomorrow, April 7. Grab it here.

Quadrocopters swarm to draw the Star Trek insignia

Frivolous, silly? Possibly. Cool, impressive? You bet.

Here’s how they did it. [Via John Dowdell]

April 03, 2013

Today’s the 40th anniversary of the first cell phone call

From CNET:

Martin Cooper changed the world when he made the first cell phone call 40 years ago.

The former Motorola vice president and division manager made the call on the company’s DynaTAC phone while standing in front of the New York Hilton on Sixth Avenue. His first call: to the head of research at Bell Labs, a company that also was attempting to build the first cell phone.

Check out the rest of the article for a fun (albeit sadly Gekko-less) infographic.

April 01, 2013

How and When to Rename Files in Lightroom 4

Julieanne Kost shares her advice.

Photoshop is yours to download & keep, for free

Completely legal! April Fool’s? Not so much.

• The good news: It runs great in just 2MB of memory on an 8MHz machine.
• The bad news: The version is 23 years old & requires use of a compiler.

According to CNET,

The Computer History Museum has made the source code for Photoshop 1.0.1 into an exhibit that lets the public, or at least programmers, appreciate the inner workings of the historic software.

The museum also published the Photoshop 1.0 user guide and tutorial documentation.

Enjoy!

March 30, 2013

Jack Dorsey on what succeeded for Twitter

Okay, let me be honest: I generally hate the veneration of tech successes, particularly very newly minted ones (i.e. maybe you got lucky, and now I’m told to sit enraptured at your knee). Dang, though, if I didn’t find this talk from Twitter creator Jack Dorsey interesting. Key points:

1) Draw: get your idea out of your head and share it, 2) Luck: assess when the time (and the market) is right to execute your idea, 3) Iterate: take in the feedback, be a rigorous editor, and refine your idea.

“Get it out of your head” has sure been true in my experience. Sketch ideas out yourself, and if need be pay someone to design/animate them. Aids to audience imagination make all the difference between blank stares & “let’s do this.”

[Via]

March 28, 2013

Ephemicropolis: A city of staples

British artist Peter Root is the god of office supplies, arranging 100,000 staples over 40 hours to create “Ephemicropolis.” He writes,

A shining monochrome mega-construction defies immediate identification of scale. Vulnerable, not to a rampaging Godzilla, but to the looming threats of a micro-apocalyptic light breeze or a ballistic projectile fired from the shoe of an unwitting passer-by.

[Via]

March 27, 2013

Creative Cloud members: Your beautiful portfolio hosting has arrived

Check out the first fruits of Adobe’s acquisition of social network Behance: You can now build a beautiful home for your photography, design work, and résumé—all for free (instead of the usual $100/yr.), and without writing any code, as a full Creative Cloud member.

Check out this quick demo of Behance ProSite, and take a look at some lovely example sites.

To get started:

1. Log in and go to the Apps page on creative.adobe.com
2. Find the ProSite icon under “Other Services” and click on the “Get Started” link
3. You’ll be brought to the ProSite welcome page on Behance, where you can either log in or sign up for Behance to build your portfolio and launch your ProSite when you’re ready.

 

The Behance team hints at more good stuff to come:

We will start integrating some of Behance’s best community features into Adobe tools. Want feedback? Adding new work to your portfolio? We want to make this more efficient and more integrated into your everyday workflow. Stay tuned for updates in May!

We have grand plans for ProSite – and other “Pro” features – that will make Behance a more powerful utility for creative careers. We’ve got a long list of enhancements and features that will bring online portfolios to a whole new level.

Stay tuned, and meanwhile enjoy ProSite.

March 26, 2013

Join the Behance Portfolio Review Week, May 13-20

“If you don’t showcase your work because ‘it’s not good enough,’ don’t expect it to get any better.” Sounds about right to me. With that in mind, check out the Behance Portfolio Review Week, May 13-20:

Attend or organize an in-person Portfolio Review with the creative community.

Behance Portfolio Reviews bring members together at events in cities and towns around the world – organized by members, for members. Attend a Portfolio Review to present and get feedback on your work, hear from experienced professionals, and meet your local creative community.

Check out the site for full details (what goes on, how to find or start one, etc.). Last year nearly 4,000 people participated in 46 countries (80% of participants being outside the US). (Here’s an infographic.)

March 25, 2013

24 hours to design a logo: Go!

Jessica Walsh and Stefan Sagmeister* are going to lock themselves into a photo studio starting this Thursday, March 28 at 6AM Pacific time in order to reinterpret the Adobe MAX logo. The session will be live streamed on the Create Now Facebook app and on a billboard in Times Square in NYC. Details are here.

*presumably clothed this time; sorry, weirdoes!

March 21, 2013

Half a million people now subscribing to Creative Cloud

In less than 12 months:

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that Adobe® Creative Cloud™ has exceeded 500,000 paid individual members. The company also reported that free and trial memberships have exceeded 2 million. Free subscriptions are a proven on-ramp for customers to move to a paid Creative Cloud membership.

I know this subject arouses a lot of strong feelings. I can’t always provide satisfying answers, but please know that people are listening. It’s totally valid to raise questions & concerns. I just want to note that a huge number of people have already migrated to Creative Cloud subscriptions and are, by all accounts, digging it (even if they’re not necessarily motivated to comment here).

March 20, 2013

Welcome back, Bryan

I’m delighted that Bryan Lamkin, the PM of Photoshop back in its early days & later a key executive at Adobe, has returned to the company.

In a wide-ranging blog post he offers his take on the merits of Creative Cloud:

As a former product manager, I remember the team’s frustration when they were forced to hold back features to fit our 18-month Creative Suite product cycle. It was very difficult to deliver new innovations “off-cycle” due to our delivery and accounting model. (Every desktop software company struggles with this same challenge.) Nothing is more satisfying to one of our talented engineers than getting a new product feature into the hands of customers quickly, and now we can.

Creative Cloud… will be the hub for creativity worldwide and enable you to work when and where you want. It will be where creative communities gather to be inspired by each other’s work and collaborate on projects.

Right on. Glad to have you back, Bryan.

Apply for Adobe’s $1 million in youth scholarships

I’m pleased to see that Adobe is designating more than $1 million to the Adobe Foundation’s Creativity Scholarships for youth.

The Creativity Scholarships program was developed to support the next generation of creative thinkers and equip them with resources to apply creative confidence to advance their education in creative fields.

The scholarships provide financial support to high school seniors and students in their first year of post-secondary education who have participated in the Adobe Youth Voices (AYV) program and will be attending or continuing an accredited post-secondary degree or certificate program.

To apply, submit your application AdobeScholarship.com by March 31, 2013. Full details can be found here.

March 19, 2013

“You are selling people *themselves*”

Apropos of the “holes-not-drills” example (focusing on customer goals), I liked this bit of advice from CopyHackers.com. It meshes exactly with what I say about Instagram, Paper, and other apps making people look cool and even feel loved. And it reminds me of the coarse but candid promise I heard back when my team was building the Gucci.com Web site: “This shirt will get you laid.”

You are not selling a product…

…You are selling every visitor to your site the chance to see a better reflection in the mirror.

Don’t believe me?

• Apple isn’t selling me an iPod. They’re selling me a happier, cooler version of myself.
• SalesForce isn’t selling me a CRM. They’re selling me a more organized, more professional version of myself. They’re selling me a future of profiting from well-managed relationships, which is what I want.
• DonorsChoose isn’t “selling” me a way to support schools. They’re selling me a more giving, more community-minded version of myself. They’re selling me the chance to influence the next generation, which is what I want.

What aspiration does your product address?

March 18, 2013

What’s the deal with Creative Cloud for Teams?

Glad you asked!

Join Creative Cloud Evangelist, Paul Trani and Director of Evangelism for Creative Cloud, Greg Wilson on Thursday, March 21, 2013 at 8AM Pacific for a Google Hangout to get the inside scoop on Creative Cloud for teams – our solution that makes working together — and managing licenses — easier than ever.

Be sure to submit your questions for the evangelists using #CreateNow.

For more information on Creative Cloud for teams, visit our official website.

Adobe paid internship for art, design, & photography majors

From Julieanne Kost’s blog:

Adobe is looking for art student interns with expertise in any of Adobe’s Creative Suite products. These interns will interact with our user communities by answering questions and providing learning content to our customers. They will use Adobe’s products to create video tutorials, artwork, animations, and samples. Ideal candidates will have strong writing and communication skills as well as experience with social media, forums, or blogging.

Apply for the Digital Media Intern position at Jobs at Adobe and search for job number 20458.

March 17, 2013

Happy St. Pat’s!

The Royal Irish Academy has used Adobe DPS* to create “a gift from the people of Ireland to the people of the world for St. Patrick’s Day to mark Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union: ’A History of Ireland in 100 Objects’” (available for iPad/iPhone, Kindle Fire, and Android tablets):

“Fintan O’Toole, a journalist from The Irish Times, launched the project in 2011 with a series of newspaper columns highlighting 100 objects from Ireland, the UK and Norway that connect with Ireland’s rich past,” writes Joe Zeff, whose design firm produced the app.  ”Those columns became a hardcover book, and that book became the series of apps that we designed and developed for multiple platforms using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite.”

Elsewhere, the NY Times tells the story of the Jackie Clarke Collection, “an astounding treasure of more than 100,000 items that provide an intimate retelling of Ireland’s long struggle to free itself of English rule.” The collection was amassed by a fish merchant from County Mayo (home of my family). Check out the photos, audio & video.

* Did you know that if you subscribe to Creative Cloud, you can create an unlimited number of DPS titles for free? Just sayin’.

March 13, 2013

Promising tools for client reviews

I still have scars from making HTML “presents pages” at the very last minute for client reviews. Now some new tools promise to make things much easier.

Web service Flatsies bills itself as “a tool for designers to share their concepts with clients in a simple and elegant way.”

Elsewhere, Filefolio promises to help you “Share images, fonts, color swatches, documents and login codes. All on one gorgeous looking page.” It hasn’t yet launched, but you can sign up to be notified.

[Via Khoi Vinh]

March 11, 2013

Think On My Sins

This blog used to be better. Instead of posting just a bunch of semi-random content finds, I used to talk more about ideas that matter. Since incurring the vocational brain damage that is fatherhood, however, I’ve struggled to find time to compose meatier thoughts. I want to try to change that.

Silicon Valley loves to talk about the importance of celebrating failure. It’s mostly crap (when’s the last time you saw the Pets.com CEO speak? or WebVan, or Excite@home, or…), but there can be real value in reviewing what’s worked & what hasn’t. I plan to share some constructive reflections over the next days & weeks. Stay tuned.

March 10, 2013

A charming blue crochet quadropus

I think you’ll enjoy “the tale of a crochet quadropus, who journeys throughout the land turning things blue… All stop motion animation, painstakingly made by Oh Yeah Wow.”

You can check out some behind-the-scenes photos on Flickr. [Via]

March 09, 2013

Iron Man 3 gets Sweded

Check out Dustin McLean’s painstaking handiwork:

According to PetaPixel:

McLean used an entry-level Canon DSLR and an iPhone to capture the 67 shots in the trailer (some of which only appear on screen for half a second).

Here’s the original alongside the remake:

Turn Dropbox into a Web server with Site44

Here is an admirably simple (and free) way host static Web sites via simple Dropbox folders:

I found it incredibly simple to set up, though for my team there’s a significant limitation: we can’t share the Dropbox folder used to host the content. That’s not the end of the world, and it might actually be wise to have a single person be responsible for pushing all changes live. In any case it’s neat stuff. [Via Brian Nemhauser]

March 07, 2013

Goodness gracious, the papers…

• Holy crap: Şakir Gökçebağ turns toilet paper into elegant sculptures (really!).
• Lucas Simões creates rich, intricately layered paper cut portraits.
• Philippe Pétremant “collages together paper money from all around the world to form the faces of different political figures, including Che Guevara.”

March 05, 2013

Meet BMW’s new design chief

In this brief but interesting video, 42-year-old Canadian industrial designer Karim Antoine Habib pays homage to design history & talks about what inspires him.

Details:

• I love that he drives a vintage 2002, though in his shoes I’d try for a 3.0 CS.
• For a guy who cares so much about detail (and who hangs out in a room full of people sporting poncey scarves), it’s interesting that he uses such a humble (even crappy) pen. It’s nice to be reminded that tools are just tools.

[Via]

March 04, 2013

Adobe Create Now coming to San Jose

Via Sally Cox:

Join us at the San Jose Tech Museum and Adobe San Jose for CreateNOW, an Adobe Camp full of hands-on and lecture-style sessions. This event is geared toward photography, video, graphic design. Featured speakers are Colin Smith, Jeff Foster, Chana Messer, and Sally Cox. Our keynote speaker is the amazing Rufus Deuschler, worldwide Adobe evangelist.

Two tracks held simultaneously at the two locations, and you can pick/choose which tracks you wish to attend. All-day event includes breakfast and catered lunch for $35.

Adobe is raffling off Creative Cloud licenses and we will have other surprise raffles, as well. First 120 guests to arrive get an Adobe goodie bag, as well.

Learn more and register here.

Funny people turn to Premiere & After Effects

Specifically, the Saturday Night Live crew that makes Digital Shorts, and the folks behind Cartoon Network’s Annoying Orange.

• The SNL team has ridiculously tight deadlines, even re-cutting shorts between dress rehearsal & the live show. “We don’t ever have time to see a ‘spinning ball’ on the screen while we’re editing. It just can’t happen. Leveraging the tight integration between Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects and Photoshop makes the spinning ball go away.” Check out how they work.
• The Annoying Orange crew ditched Avid & chose an all-Adobe workflow, as you can hear them describe in the clip below. (Photoshop integration & no transcoding of RED footage were key.) “I’m happier than a talking piece of fruit with a weird mouth,” says Premiere PM Al Mooney. ”And that is HAPPY, obviously.” Check it out:

March 02, 2013

Five Years of Fatherhood

“I promise not to turn the blog into JNack’s Kiddie Kavalcade,” I promised five years ago today as Margot & I welcomed young Finnegan Liggett Nack into the world. I think I’ve kept my word, though my Twitter account (which didn’t even exist back then*!) hasn’t fared quite so well.

My God, do I ever love these little guys (Finn & his sequel Henry, codenamed “El Segundo” in utero & thus dubbed Goonie by his bro). A few sleep- and oxygen-deprived thoughts (as we’re celebrating Finn’s Fifth at 10,000ft):

• I’ve heard it said “It’s not amazing that adults make children, so much as that children make adults.”
• A friend remarked that when it comes to raising kids, “The days are long but the years are short.” Yes, days can be so long indeed—and yet, dang, five years??
• Work-wise, I’ve sometimes likened having kids to having suffered some kind of traumatic brain injury. I used to work all. the. time. Now I’d guess we spend ~40 hours per week kid-wrangling. “Work smarter, not harder,” blah blah. Whatever: there’s no potion to just restore that time & energy. Things do seem to be getting better, little by little. It’s a game of inches, man…
• “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” Bingo. (And no, Steve Jobs didn’t coin the phrase.)

And lastly I’m reminded of some Paul Simon:

Well, that was your mother
And that was your father
Before you was born dude
When life was great
You are the burden of my generation
I sure do love you
Let’s get that straight

Well said, Paul. And happy birthday, my magnificent little Finnster. Thanks for everything :-)

*to say nothing of theirs

March 01, 2013

Exciting hints from Wacom

From their Facebook page:

We’ve heard you shouting out loud for a Wacom mobile tablet for creative uses. Well… we’re listening. We’ve read your email and spoken to many about an on-the-go dream device. It will come. This summer. We’re working 24/7 on it. And yes, it has a real pressure-sensitive professional pen, smooth multi-touch, an HD display, and other valuable features that you haven’t seen in other tablets.

Hmm… Truly stylus-savvy tablet hardware that could run in mobile-optimized mode while on the go, then plug into a keyboard & run full Photoshop? That would be kinda epic, no? (Note: I’m out of this particular loop these days, so I’m just saying what I personally would love–which seems in line with many of the comments on the post.)

TechCrunch adds a little more detail.

[Via Jerry Harris & Scott Valentine]

PS–John Gruber made an interesting comment the other day: “How ironic would it be if the iPad becomes the dominant mass market computer and the Surface becomes the one for artists?”

February 28, 2013

Adobe at SXSW

Aaaand, once again I wish I were going to South by Southwest. If you’re luckier than I, check out Adobe Creative Camp Sunday, March 10th. Sessions include:

• Introduction to Adobe Edge Tools and Services
• Concept to reality: Creating Adobe Edge Reflow
• What’s new in Adobe Creative Cloud?
• Responsive Design, from every angle
• The content-shaped elephant in the room

February 27, 2013

Case study: Going from print to Web design

As I customer I always found it so much more interesting to hear from fellow designers than from toolmakers. On Friday at noon Pacific, Aaron Macdonald, the principal of A3 Creative Solutions, will talk about how his shop used Adobe Muse to broaden their skills:

A year ago A3 was specializing in print and brand design and turning web design work over to other agencies. When he became a Creative Cloud member, Aaron began experimenting with Adobe Muse to leverage his print design skills to design his first website. Aaron will discuss how this has changed his business, discussing his evolution from a traditional print designer into cross-media design agency utilizing Creative Cloud, Adobe Muse and Business Catalyst to design for the web and provide an enhanced service to his customers.

You can register here.

February 25, 2013

Sign up for ADIM13

“The Adobe Creative Cloud, Zombies and Beer – It doesn’t get better than that,” says Russell Brown. He points out that his ADIM13 show (April 7-10 in Boulder, CO), features some great speakers, including

• Julieanne Kost
• Chris Converse
• Mordy Golding
• Sandee Cohen
• Katrin Eismann
• James White

According to the show site,

You’ll begin with still images to create monster-themed beer packaging, then you’ll create an online beer advertisement utilizing advanced Photoshop video features. In the process you’ll master many of the wonders of Adobe Creative Cloud… You’ll follow your very own monster-themed project from inception to completion, including: printing, laser engraving a glass bottle, and hand assembly. Your finished packaging will be displayed in class for all to see.

 

February 24, 2013

What It’s Like to be a Dog Toy

Did you ever wonder? Well, me neither, but it still makes for a kinda entertaining little film:

[Via]

February 17, 2013

Quote o’ the day

I’m going to try holding myself to this:

My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, “So? Did you learn anything today?” But not my mother. “Izzy,” she would say, “did you ask a good question today?”

That difference – asking good questions – made me become a scientist.

— Isidor Isaac Rabi, Nobel laureate

[Via]

February 14, 2013

Happy Valentine’s Day from Adobe

Heh—cute.

[Via Andrew Kavanagh]

QOTD: Walt Disney on storytelling

“It is a curious thing that the more the world shrinks because of electronic communications, the more limitless becomes the province of the storytelling entertainer.” — Walt Disney

[Via Ron Green]

February 13, 2013

Great Adobe license plate o’ the day

This joins PXLPFCT, TYPENRD, & LIGHTRM on my growing list of faves. [Update: Other winners include 24P (After Effects), RTFM (support), and ADOBE PS.]

[Photo courtesy of Dan McSweeny]

February 12, 2013

Photoshop Cafe’s free CS6 Superguide is now available

“WOW!!!” writes Russell Brown. “This is a fantastic set of Photoshop CS6 tips and techniques for FREE! Really fantastic stuff.” 

In the free 77-page CS6 Superguide eZine, ”The new features of most of the CS6 Products are covered in depth, with articles from industry leaders such as Jack Davis, Colin Smith, David Blatner, Janine Warner, Stephen Burns, Chana Messer, Weston Maggio and more.”

Friday demo/Q&A: Get started creating video with Creative Cloud

Friday at noon Pacific:

If you’re currently using Photoshop or Lightroom and want to go the next step to create video, join this session to learn the basics of video capture, editing and delivery with Adobe Creative Cloud. Adobe Evangelist Jason Levine will show how creative pros can get started with Adobe Prelude, Premiere Pro, and Adobe Media Encoder, all included in Creative Cloud membership. You’ll be amazed at what you can create with a little coaching!

If you want to know what it’s like to work on improving the Photoshop UI…

…check out this post from XKCD.

I’ve compared working on mature apps to so many things—changing the wings of a plane while it’s in flight, building Johnny Cash’s Frankenstein car, and more. People always say, “Stop adding anything new… except this handful of things for me, personally.” And they always push us to “simplify” and “just reduce” the apps, yet they flip out if you take away their cherished anachronism. I always think of the Onion article, “98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others.”

Ah well—still good fun. [Via Foster Brereton]

February 11, 2013

Come to great Adobe events this spring

• The Create Now World Tour is underway, likely coming to a city near you (check the site for details). If you’re a Creative Cloud subscriber, there’s likely so much more you could be taking advantage of; if you’re not, come see what you’re missing.
• Russell Brown’s ADIM conference is set to take place in Boulder, CO, April 7-10. I’ve always had a blast at ADIM. “You’ll begin with still images to create monster-themed beer packaging, then you’ll create an online beer advertisement utilizing advanced Photoshop video features. In the process you’ll master many of the wonders of Adobe Creative Cloud… You’ll follow your very own monster-themed project from inception to completion, including: printing, laser engraving a glass bottle, and hand assembly. Your finished packaging will be displayed in class for all to see.”
• Adobe MAX goes down May 4-8 in Los Angeles & features more than 300 sessions and labs taught by industry leaders and Adobe experts, covering everything from Web & design to digital publishing, gaming, and video. Note that attending also gets you full year membership to the Creative Cloud, so admission is actually a lot cheaper than it seems. (Oh, and if you attend the Create Now tour, they knock another $200 off MAX attendance.)

February 09, 2013

2,000 pieces of PVC make a music video

I don’t share this because it’s beautiful. It is, but I share it because of the obsessive insanity that Polish duo Kijek/Adamski must have put into creating the animation.

The Fox Is Black writes,

Made with approximately 2000 silhouettes extracted from PVC plates using a computer-controlled cutter, the video is a rush of color and a parade of movement. For Kijek/Adamski, the video is “an everlasting chain of convulsive memories”.

February 07, 2013

Help my wife nag me (in a good way!)

Okay, enterprising coders, here’s your free million-dollar (or at least multi-dozen-dollar) idea o’ the day: I need a way for my wife to assign me a task/reminder & geofence it.

For example, yesterday she sent me to the kids’ preschool with a tuition check in hand—which I promptly forgot to deposit. I wished she could have sent me a reminder that was associated with the school’s location. 30 seconds after arriving I could have gotten a notification. Then this morning she forgot her phone & asked me to bring it to work. I wanted to turn her text message into a reminder pegged to my current location: if I try to leave here, ask me about that phone.

I did a little poking & I see that the iOS Reminders app lets me geofence items (i.e. remind me either when I arrive somewhere or when I leave), but I can do this only if I have my phone handy. Via iCloud.com you can add people to reminders—but then you can’t (as far as I can see) make those location-specific.

So, who’s gonna code up not “Find My Friends,” but “Remind My Friends”? (This seems like a great addition to the fun couples’ app Avocado.) C’mon, it’ll be fun to get Sherlocked at WWDC, won’t it? ;->

The most charming video you’re likely to see all week

“I asked a six year old what my movie should be about,” says Bianca Giaever, ”and this is what he told me.” Just watch: 

(Now I really want to step up my bedtime storytelling game.) [Via]

February 06, 2013

New Adobe Inspire Magazine comes to iPad & Web

Photoshop 3D features, CSS transitions, InDesign alternate layouts, and much more are featured in this month’s Inspire Magazine, both online and in the App Store.

Photoshop’s fans are in the top 10 most loyal

Cool:

Brand Satisfaction compiled millions of responses from Facebook Fans of over 15,000 Facebook pages to determine the Top 20 brands with the most loyal Fans.

Photoshop is #10 out of 15,000+. Take that, In-N-Out Burger—and Starbucks Frappuccino, watch your back! ;-) Thanks to Photoshop’s awesome fans!

[Via Tom Hogarty]

February 05, 2013

Students & teachers: Get 60% Creative Cloud membership

You can get the whole shebang—Master Collection, publishing, storage, and more—for $19.95 per month. Get in on it here.

Premiere Pro at the Super Bowl

My little sons drew enormous enjoyment from this piece:

Adam Pertofsky, award-winning editor and partner at Rock Paper Scissors, recently cut the “Got Milk” Super Bowl spot for the advertising agency Deutsch NY with Adobe Premiere Pro.

1

[Via]

February 02, 2013

Contest: Design a birthday cake for Photoshop

From the team:

Photoshop’s 23rd birthday is coming up and we want YOU to be a part of the celebration!

We’re asking our fans to create a birthday cake design using Photoshop! We’ll choose one submission to be created into a REAL cake to be delivered to Adobe HQ on our birthday, Feb. 19!

We’ll also share your artwork in a photo album right here on our Facebook page. Submit your photo here before Feb. 8.

January 29, 2013

Tonight at Adobe SJ: The Art of Photography in the Photoshop Era

(Sorry for the late notice; I just found out about the event.)

The San Jose Photoshop User Group is hosting Harold Davis tonight at 7 PM in the Park conference room at Adobe HQ. Pizza will be served at 6:30 PM.

Harold Davis is an award-winning professional photographer and the author of many bestselling books on photography and image processing including Creating HDR Photos: The Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Photography (Amphoto), Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Worlds with Harold Davis (Focal Press) andCreative Black & White: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques (Wiley Publishing). His images are widely published, collected and commissioned, and his popular photo workshops are often sold out. Harold is a Moab Paper Printmaking Master. Learn more about Harold and his photography at www.photoblog2.com. Harold lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Phyllis, and their four children.

January 28, 2013

Adobe & Sundance, Part 1

Final Cut vets talk about overcoming their disbelief about Premiere Pro—and the limitations of FCP—in these interviews from the show.

January 26, 2013

How Lego Hobbits are sculpted

I love that Lego has started featuring their product designers in these short pieces. Here Gitte Thorsen (and you just knew Legos were designed by someone named “Gitte Thorsen,” right?) shows how she sketches out Hobbit characters, then sculpts them at large scale:

January 25, 2013

A TED talk on the power of image

At some point I lost track of (and most interest in) all the hand-wringing articles about Photoshop & body image. Even so, I found this talk by model Cameron Russell interesting. She’s unusually sharp (her mom founded ZipCar, it turns out) and compares images of her with the real person.

Her points about models’ insecurities remind me of life in Silicon Valley: the more fortunate one is, the more one feels compelled to do & achieve even more (and the worse for not doing it). When I’m touring a potential kindergarten I think, “What kickass disruptive badassery am I missing out on?” I never think “I was 26 and living in Palo Alto and working on Photoshop”; it’s all “Facebook was taking shape down the street; what kind of loser misses out on that?” Talk about kindergarten… [Via]

January 24, 2013

Boss Wave! 8-bit mayhem in the real world

“If you don’t watch this music video,” writes io9, “you’re robbing yourself of an opportunity to see a particularly fantastic video of a guy in an awesome robot suit blasting real-life videogame enemies (along with a few innocent bystanders). Just sayin’.” Indeed.

Fungus Time!!

January 21, 2013

The Photoshop “Faking It” Contest: Show Off Your Image Manipulation Skills

To celebrate the Met’s exhibit Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop, the Photoshop team has created a contest:

We’d like to invite the Photoshop community to share their photo manipulations with us for a chance to win some special prizes. Every week, from now through February 7th, we will post an image from the Faking It exhibit that will serve as inspiration for that week’s submissions. Photoshop fans can submit their own altered photograph showing their interpretation of the theme, and at the end of each week, a random winner will be chosen to receive a print copy of the 296-page exhibition companion Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop by Mia Fineman.

In addition to the weekly winners, participants who submit a video screencast of their entry, showing how their image was created, will be eligible to win the grand prize; a trip for two to see the Faking It exhibit in person at either the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. or the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas.

January 19, 2013

An incredibly rare Lego holiday gift

Mission accomplished, Invisible Creature: now I totally want to be your client, if it would get me a bitchin’ bespoke Lego creation.

We love our clients. We love Lego. So why not combine the two? For our annual Client Holiday gift this year, we decided to design a custom Eye Creature Lego kit. Edition of 6 sets. 444 pieces. 4 instruction booklets. 8 different mouth combinations – and a hinged top that allows the owner to store all kinds of fun items (as shown below). We even found 2 extremely cute kids from 1972 in my house that wanted to participate in the box design. Disclaimer: This product is NOT affiliated with Lego, folks – this was a gift. Oh, enough already. Check out how we made it below:

The fun little storage compartment reminds me of the Lego “peanut” car I fashioned while courting Margot. It continues to hold some quietly disintegrating Peanut M&M’s. [Via]

January 17, 2013

Quick tip: Pasting content into layer masks

Spoiler: Opt-/Alt-click the layer mask! Yeah, I knew that; sure I did…

January 11, 2013

Who designs the Photoshop interface?

Meet Tim Riot & Matthew Bice, the Experience Designers on point for PS. They talk about the gig itself, some goals & challenges for CS6, and what they hope the future holds.

If that sounds like work you’d like to do, remember that the team is looking to hire a Senior Experience Designer.

January 08, 2013

What’s up with Adobe “giving away” CS2?

Here’s an explanation from the corporate blog:

Effective December 13, Adobe disabled the activation server for CS2 products and Acrobat 7 because of a technical glitch. These products were released over 7 years ago and do not run on many modern operating systems. But to ensure that any customers activating those old versions can continue to use their software, we issued a serial number directly to those customers.  While this might be interpreted as Adobe giving away software for free, we did it to help our customers.

January 03, 2013

Video: Boardwalk Empire VFX Breakdowns of Season 2

The crew at Brainstorm Digital is killin’ it once again:

Previously: The effects in season 1 of the show. [Via George Penston]

January 02, 2013

Demo: “The Difference Between Duplicating a Smart Object and Creating New Smart Object via Copy”

When devising what became Smart Objects in Photoshop, we had several goals:

• Enable non-destructive transformation & filtering
• Tighten integration with Illustrator & other apps
• Facilitate “edit one, update many” parent-child links among layers (a la “symbols” in Illustrator, Flash, etc.).

The last of these is far & away the most obscure and, frankly, confusing. Photoshop doesn’t present any indication about which layers are linked to which others, and it doesn’t offer a Library panel for managing SO’s. (There’s so, so much potential yet to be unlocked here.)

In any case, Julieanne Kost uses a real-world example to demonstrate how to link Smart Objects together (simply duplicate them on the Layers panel) and how to duplicate & unlink them.

December 31, 2012

A Short History of the GIF

When I first glimpsed an animated GIF on a Web site (Apple.com circa 1996), I felt like Galileo: “It moves!” Now I’m the cranky old man who says, “In my day, I could compose a whole trip to England [for British Airways] in 9.9kb! I was an LZW poet, I tell you!” And so, of course, Moving The Still is right up my posterized alley.

December 29, 2012

“Defining the fine line between catchy commercial jingles and mental paralysis”

I don’t know whether looping ads for The Clapper, deodorant, and more produces that “in sound,” but it’s certainly way out. You’re… welcome?

[Via]

December 25, 2012

Peace & Love

Merry Christmas, everyone. Wherever you are, and whatever holidays you may celebrate this time of year, I wish you great peace and happiness.

I’m not quite sure when I’ll get back to regular posting. I’m visiting my folks in snowy northern Illinois, aka “The Land That Connectivity Forgot.” (Margot says AT&T’s EDGE network represents “The Edge of Civilization.”) As soon as I can push enough content through a cocktail straw, I’ll get back in business.

Thanks for reading & for making it possible for me to do this job.

All the best to you and yours, now and in 2013,
J. (+M & the Micronaxx)

December 20, 2012

Wow! Adobe & Behance are getting together

I’m thrilled that Adobe & Behance announced today that Behance (a million-member creative community, in case you’ve been living under a rock) is becoming part of Adobe.

Adobe thrives only when our customers do, and it’s not enough just to build—or to use—great tools. Making a living as a designer involves much more than making designs: it of course demands making connections, finding jobs, promoting your work, and getting paid. There’s a big world before “File->Open” and a big one after “File->Export.” Adobe’s bet is that if we can help you more effectively engage with your clients & your peers, your business will improve—and thus so will ours.

As with every acquisition/merger, people will say “I love [Behance]. Please don’t ruin it.” That’s totally understandable, but I wouldn’t worry. Behance co-founder Scott Belsky writes,

Adobe deeply respects the sanctity of the Behance community, and will preserve the philosophy and values that drive it. Adobe’s acquisition of Typekit is a recent example; the service has remained intact while also being incorporated into Adobe’s Creative Cloud offering for better accessibility and value for users.

Adobe’s tech will make Behance better. Scott says,

We’ve got a long-term vision for serving the creative community that is greatly advanced by Adobe’s reach, and what we have planned will also improve Adobe’s services in the process… There are so many things we’ve always dreamed of doing but lacked the resources, data scientists, and PhD’s to figure it out.

Creative Cloud has just started rolling, and it’ll only get more valuable. (Just last week, we added new digital publishing services and training features, and launched file sync and sharing.) Now, Adobe VP David Wadhwani writes,

All Creative Cloud members will soon gain access to the base Behance capabilities (like portfolio creation and community features) while paid Creative Cloud members will also have access to premium capabilities (like Behance ProSite).

I’m just incredibly excited about this, and when you see what we already have cooking, I think you will be, too. Stay tuned!

December 17, 2012

Design: The BLAZE Bike Light

Check out this rather brilliant (pun intended) Kickstarter project:

BLAZE is a front light with super-bright LEDs, but it also projects the symbol of a bike down onto the road ahead of the cyclist. It’s adjustable, but ideally about 5m in front. It alerts road users ahead of the cyclist of their presence, helping to prevent them turning across their path (especially the big ones like buses and trucks!).  Making the cyclist more visible and increasing their footprint on the road.

[Via]

December 14, 2012

Demo: Non-Destructive Burn/Dodge in Photoshop

Ah, handy. I do the bulk of my local adjustments in Lightroom (where they’re inherently non-destructive), but sometimes I need a little more granular control.

December 11, 2012

Live stream: Create Now event

Starts at 10am Pacific time: The event was recorded & is available for viewing below:

December 07, 2012

Reminder: Sign up for Adobe Create Now, coming Monday

Sneak peek at Photoshop features to be unveiled:

At Create Now Live, you’ll:

• Be one of the first to hear what’s next in Adobe® Creative Cloud™.
• See what’s next in Adobe Photoshop®.
• Explore ways to take your design skills from print to online and mobile.
• Learn how teams can work better together with Creative Cloud.
• Learn from creative innovators.
• Iconic design agency Karlssonwilker talks about taking their unique design sensibility to the web.
• Go behind the scenes of “A Liars Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman” with Animation Director Justin Weyers.
• Scott Kelby shows off hidden gems in Photoshop CS6.

December 06, 2012

Inventors, screwing around with mortality

I’ve been enjoying David Friedman’s series of short interviews with inventors (e.g. this one with video game pioneer Ralph Baer). Now he’s creating a new PBS “Inventors” series, kicking off with the screw-in coffin*:

And I’m pleased to say that he’s now switched from Final Cut Pro X to Premiere Pro. This bittersweet piece on Batter Blasters is the first result:

*”What’s that, Death? Screw me? No, *screw you*!! (No, wait, you were right the first time.)” I will be here all week.

December 04, 2012

Designers: Come design Photoshop itself

“Yo dawg, I heard you like using design tools to make design tools, so…”

Ever wish you could make Photoshop work exactly the way you want? Ever wish Adobe designers would walk a mile in your shoes? Ever wanted to stand up & champion the needs of the millions of creative people whose livelihoods depend on these tools?

I know I did; that’s exactly why I came to work here. And now there are two openings for designers to shape Photoshop & the next generation of imaging tools.

These are not easy gigs, but you’d be bored if they were, right? You have to want to learn (and learn, and learn) what a crazy-diverse range of customers needs, then combine your transformative vision with fortitude & exacting attention to detail. You don’t change an industry standard overnight, but keep sweating the details & you’ll be amazed at what’s possible.

Now then, the listings (the first applies specifically to Photoshop; the second to “bold new iOS multi-device applications”):

• Senior User Experience Designer, Photoshop (18722): Adobe’s Photoshop team is looking for a motivated, creative, senior-level User Experience Designer who shares our passion for design and the urge to make better creative tools for real people. In this role you will be tasked with generating the design of new product features, interactions, and visuals, for Adobe Photoshop.

• Senior User Experience Designer (18723): Adobe’s Experience Design team is looking for a motivated, creative, senior-level User Experience Designer who shares our passion for design and the urge to make forward-looking creative tools for real people. In this role you will be tasked with driving the design of new products as well as new features, interactions, and visuals for bold new iOS multi-device applications.

Click through on either for more details. The team looks forward to meeting you soon.

November 26, 2012

Sprechen Sie Adobe?

We’ve just launched the Adobe Translation Center. As the team explains,

The translation community represents the voice of the customer. This program enables the user community to provide quick, direct feedback about our products and content.

We created this program to achieve two key objectives:

1. Enable user feedback to improve the quality of translations of “Adobe languages” (those already supported).
2. Help users contribute to new “community languages”. Those are languages that individual Adobe products don’t currently support and where community contributions may give us an indication which languages Adobe should consider for product inclusion.

You can connect with the team via Twitter and Facebook, and on the globalization team blog.

November 25, 2012

The Onion skewers social media buffoons

“I’m a successful social media consultant, even though I’ve never had a thought or original idea in my life. But, because my firm charges lots of money, we’ve put social media on some of the tongues of some of the biggest companies in the world.”

Enjoy.

[Via]

November 22, 2012

Design goodness: One World Futbol

Sting (yes, that Sting) says, “When Tim Jahnigen came to me with his idea for a football or ‘soccer’ ball that could be played on any surface and would never need a pump and never go flat, I immediately thought of all the millions of children and young people who could use the ball in refugee camps, conflict zones, and poor communities all over the world.” What a cool problem to attack with design.

[Via]

November 21, 2012

Adobe Create Now Live now set for Dec. 11

The event we initially announced for Dec. 5 has been pushed back one week. As a reminder,at Create Now Live, you’ll:

• Be one of the first to hear what’s next in Adobe® Creative Cloud™.
• See what’s next in Adobe Photoshop®.
• Explore ways to take your design skills from print to online and mobile.
• Learn how teams can work better together with Creative Cloud.
• Learn from creative innovators.
• Iconic design agency Karlssonwilker talks about taking their unique design sensibility to the web.
• Go behind the scenes of “A Liars Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman” with Animation Director Justin Weyers.
• Scott Kelby shows off hidden gems in Photoshop CS6.

Download the Adobe Creative Cloud Connection

Today Adobe’s previewing the Creative Cloud Connection (download it here), a utility that syncs files on your computer with those in the Adobe Creative Cloud. (Remember, you get 20GB of storage when you subscribe to Creative Cloud, and you get 2GB for free just for signing up.)

So, who cares? Don’t you already get something similar with Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.? Yes and no. It’s true that the basic concept is familiar, but Adobe will roll out some really unique capabilities over time. (Trust me, I’m working on some.) For now we’re starting with the basics. VP Jeff Veen writes,

Any file you place into the Creative Cloud folder on your desktop will be available at creative.adobe.com, where it’s easy to browse, get links to share publicly, and leave comments. In fact, if the files were created by one of the Creative Suite apps, you can do even more: manipulate layers on a Photoshop document, page through an InDesign file, or generate a PDF of your work to share with others.

We’ve got lots to come, as well. Up next, we’ll add even more collaboration features, including the ability to share privately with workgroups as well as browse and restore previous versions of files.

Zapped to the beat

Think they could give me riddim? Fast Company explains:

During the synth intro, you see five sets of arms wiggle listlessly. When the beat kicks in, they pump with a bit more rhythm. But the faceless performers aren’t dancing–well, at least not of their own volition. Instead, they’re serving as a human visualizer, shocked into action (literally) by carefully placed electrodes.

November 19, 2012

A Friendly Photoshop Forum

Julieanne Kost writes:

If you or someone you know is in the early stages of exploring Photoshop, there’s a new learning destination that’s worth a visit. Photoshop for Beginners is a sub-forum on Adobe.com that is tailor-made for newcomers to the powerful but complex software.

Ask any question in Photoshop for Beginners and you’ll receive an answer that emphasizes visuals — including video how-tos — and steers clear of unnecessary jargon.

November 18, 2012

Wes Anderson’s Star Wars

I’d ride in Chewie’s sidecar anytime. (We could go avenge the deaths of his relatives at the hands of this lady.)

[Via]

November 17, 2012

A giant “Lego pop-up book” temple

Seriously? Wow.

[Via]

November 15, 2012

Sculpture: Aluminum casts of ant colonies

Nothing tells someone “I’m a huge fan of your work & want to share it with others” like pouring a vat of scalding liquid metal into their home, incinerating their whole tribe. But if you can get past that, Walter Tschinkel’s aluminum casts of ant colonies (see photos) are pretty amazing. 

[Via]

November 14, 2012

Design principles worth noting

I like this list from Gov.uk:

1. Start with needs
2. Do less
3. Design with data
4. Do the hard work to make it simple
5. Iterate. Then iterate again.
6. Build for inclusion
7. Understand context
8. Build digital services, not websites
9. Be consistent, not uniform
10. Make things open: it makes things better

 

Check out the whole post for details & examples of each.

November 08, 2012

Interactive designers: Tell us what you need

Adobe has posted a quick (7-question) survey to learn a bit more about your needs. If you’re doing interactive design work, please take a minute to help us help you. Thanks much.

November 05, 2012

Golan Levin makes art that looks back at you

“Half performance artist, half software engineer, Golan Levin manipulates the computer to create improvised soundscapes with dazzling corresponding visuals.” Well, that sounds about right. Kick off your Monday with some offbeat tech:

Demo/Q&A: Switching to Premiere Pro, Part 2

This Thursday, 10am Pacific:

As you make the switch to Adobe® Premiere Pro, you’ll find many ways to get things done. What you may miss are some hidden gems you don’t know to look for. In this fast paced webinar, join Richard Harrington as he shares the advanced techniques that will speed up your workflow. This webinar is designed for experienced editors who want to jump in and get results.

November 04, 2012

Photoshop/Lightroom tour of Asia/Pac

Julieanne Kost writes,

Russell Preston Brown and I set off this weekend for the Adobe Eclipse Tour! We’ll be stopping in Korea, Singapore and Australia for a full day of Photoshop and Lightroom training. Click the links below for more information.

• November 6 – Korea
• November 9 – Singapore
• November 20 – Sydney
• November 22 – Melbourne

November 01, 2012

Premiere Pro & co. clean up on Readers’ Choice awards

I try to keep self-congratulatory posts to a minimum, but it’s nice to see the momentum around Adobe Premiere Pro & other Adobe video tools. Streaming Magazine just announced a number of Readers’ Choice Awards:

• Adobe Premiere Pro — Best Product of the Year Award for Desktop Video Editing Software
• Adobe Auditude – Best Product of the Year Award for Video Advertising Management Platform
• Adobe Media Server – Best Product of the Year Award for Server Hardware/Software
• Adobe SiteCatalyst – Best Product of the Year Award for Reporting and Analytics Platform

October 29, 2012

Live demo/Q&A: Learn to switch to Premiere Pro

This Thursday, 10am Pacific:

Join Robbie Carman as he guides you through the essential aspects of making the switch to Adobe® Premiere Pro. Designed for experienced editors, this webinar will help you get more comfortable and to work faster–allowing you to implement your current editing knowledge quickly. Specific topics will include: starting a project, setting up sequences, accessing essential preferences and keyboard shortcuts, ingesting media, marking and trimming clips in the timeline, and adding audio and effects.

October 25, 2012

Adobe wins an Emmy for Adobe Pass

This is one of those things you’ve probably never heard of (nor should you have to), but that enables all kinds of cool experiences. If you subscribe to cable or satellite TV, there’s a good chance Adobe Pass helps you be able to watch shows on other devices:

Adobe Pass is now supported by more than 150 US operators as they deliver hundreds of millions of authenticated streams for major live events such as The Olympic Games […] 

Approximately 98 percent of pay TV households in the U.S. are now able to view TV content via the Adobe Pass authentication service and consumers are pushing TV Everywhere adoption to an all-time high. Given the track we are on, we expect every major TV show to be available via a TV Everywhere app within the next two years.

Here’s a brief overview:

Congrats to the team! [Via]

October 23, 2012

MediaStorm: “Why I’m Switching to Adobe Premiere, not Final Cut X”

MediaStorm is comprised of expert digital storytellers, pushing the craft especially through use of DSLRs. They write,

After seven years working with Apple’s Final Cut Pro, we have decided to begin using the Adobe Production Suite. We were early adopters of FCP 7 and considered making the switch to FCP X. In the end, we felt more comfortable with Adobe’s product than Apple’s FCP X. We know that many people in the industry are struggling with the same decision, so our producers have agreed to share their reasoning for the switch.

[Via Tom Hogarty]

October 20, 2012

“Human-powered helicopters are hard to build”

NPR has put together interesting proof that human-powered helicopters are hard to build: Kottke writes,

A team at the University of Maryland are building a human-powered helicopter in an attempt to win the Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition. To win the $250,000 prize, the helicopter must fly for 60 seconds, reach a momentary altitude of 3 meters, and stay within a 10 meter square. This is surprisingly difficult.

I’d call it unsurprisingly difficult!

October 18, 2012

Filmmaker Philip Bloom talks about switching to Premiere Pro

“It is simply better than anything else out there.”

October 15, 2012

A Lego version of Felix Baumgartner’s jump from space

Fantastic:

The original:

[Via]

SNL Film Unit editor switches to Premiere Pro

 Digital Shorts, fake commercials, and more are now going through Adobe Premiere Pro:

The turning point, says Epstein, came when Apple released Final Cut Pro X. “We thought, ‘Well, this just isn’t going to work at all.’ So much of what I do is After Effects-specific, so when CS5.5 came along with Dynamic Linking—definitely the killer feature for me thus far—we decided to try that out on a simple piece featuring Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrelltoward the end of last season. It went so smoothly that once CS6 came out, we decided to dial the full workflow in and make sure it fit our needs. So far, it really has.”

I’ve loved SNL’s ad parodies since I was little, so it’s fun to get an in-depth look at the crazy-quick way they all come together.

[Update: I should clarify that the article refers to editor Adam Epstein, not to all of Saturday Night Live. Sorry for any inadvertent confusion.]

October 13, 2012

Youth Media Festival today in Oakland

I’m a fan of democratizing storytelling, and this event (2-5pm today) helps uncover otherwise hidden voices:

For its first public festival, the Bay Area Youth Media Network (BAYMN) will be showcasing youth-produced videos about social change with two specific categories on The 2012 Presidential Election and The High School Dropout Crisis on Saturday, October 13 at the Kaiser Center in Oakland from 2-5pm. It will be an afternoon dedicated to celebrate the great work of young people. There will be awards for the filmmakers as well as raffle prizes for the audience.

To attend the event, you must RSVP here.

[Via Matthew Williams]

October 10, 2012

I need to hire a server ninja

Engineers: I’m part of a seriously cool new project at Adobe, working with a rather kickass team (brave talk, but you’ll see). If you have skills like these, we should talk:

• Experience with developing and deploying applications and infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Chef
• Experience with scaling data storage with MySQL and non-traditional data stores (preferably Redis, Mongo or Elasticsearch)

Here’s the complete job listing. Ideally you’d work from Seattle, but we can discuss that.

Let’s do this thing!

[Update: Another server-savvy position is open in Creative Cloud engineering.]

October 09, 2012

The VW BBQ Bus

 Check out a rather brilliant creation from ad agency Achtung:

The Volkswagen BBQ-VAN is a full-scale model of a Volkswagen Transporter T1 that’s a specially-built barbecue pit. It has a grill under its roof and fits 10 burgers, and also has battery-powered headlights.

Sadly it’s a one-off created for a contest, so it won’t be driving around my back yard any time soon.

[Via]

October 05, 2012

Photoshop User Group next Tuesday in SJ

 Coming soon to Adobe’s San Jose HQ:

We will have two speakers for this meeting. One will be Sharad Mangalick, Lightroom Product Manager, talking about new features available in the 4.1 and 4.2 versions of Lightroom. These include tone mapping of 32-bit HDR images, new controls for eliminating chromatic aberration, new camera support, etc.

Our other speaker will be Jeff Butterworth, the founder of Alien Skin Software. He will give an overview of some of their products, such as Exposure 4, Snap Art 3, Blow Up 3, and Bokeh 2, including many before/after sample images. You can find out about their Photoshop plug-ins, along with lots of examples and videos, at www.alienskin.com.

Pizza and drinks start at 6:30, and the meeting will start at 7:00, in the Park Conference Room. To park underneath the Adobe building (345 Park Ave.), use the Almaden Avenue entrance, under the East Tower. If the security guard at the parking entrance asks for an Adobe contact, use Stephen Nielson’s name.

Please RSVP here.

October 02, 2012

What’s your favorite tool for app prototyping?

I’m kicking off a new project (so exciting; can’t wait to tell you more), and we need to make interactive iPad prototypes to test ideas. What tool(s) do you find effective for such work?

September 26, 2012

Educators: Adobe wants to talk to you

Adobe will be conducting research over the next several months, seeking to better understand students’ needs:

Adobe is looking to talk to teachers, professors and instructors to gain a better understanding about student assignments, software and technology use.  This unique and fun opportunity will allow educators to work with Adobe and share how technology is being incorporated in the way students complete assignments in their classrooms.  There will be several paid research opportunities.  If you’re interested in these opportunities, please fill out a preliminary screener. You’ll be contacted if you are eligible to participate!

This wave of research is happening in the US only.

September 25, 2012

Vimeo introduces “Tip Jar”

Let’s hear it for anything that helps independent artists sustain their craft:

More info is in the staff blog post.

September 19, 2012

Game of Thrones Season 2 FX reel

I always love these things.

[Via]

September 14, 2012

Video: “From Sketch to Scary” at Photoshop World

At Photoshop World, Russell Brown & co. went from Wacom sketch to a real live monster.

Russell brought together a team of makeup artists to create a monster that would be part of the Adobe booth at Photoshop World in Las Vegas. The original design was sketched on a Wacom Cintiq by Rayce Bird and then the prosthetics were fabricated in LA. The team of artist applied the makeup in the Adobe booth, and the monster came to life. Finally, the monster was photographed in the Westcott booth and then attendees edited their photos in the Adobe booth with Lightroom 4 and Adobe Photoshop CS6. The final results were amazing.

As Russell Brown always says “There is nothing better then creating a cool monster and letting our users take great photos.”

Check it out:

Russell writes, “Special thanks to TEAM MONSTER for making this possible. Rayce Bird, Ian Von Cromer, Frank Ippolito, Brianna Bird Kirkham, Thomas Willeford, Aaron Grimes, Amber McCoy, Weston Maggio, and Joel Grimes.”

September 08, 2012

Taylor Mali: What teachers make

It’s off topic for this blog, but this three-minute celebration of teachers is too good not to share:

September 07, 2012

In-depth info on Adobe Anywhere

“It’s a bit of a tough concept to get across,” writes fxguide, “but once you have that ‘aha’ moment, you realize how cool the tech is.” Check out this in-depth interview with PM Michael Coleman. He talks about how the system keeps people unblocked (no lock-outs during collaboration; automatic background upload of footage; etc.), able to collaborate across locations, and more.

August 29, 2012

Old Spice Muscle Music

This is… I… what?? Play it (or jump) to the end, then notice that on the Vimeo page you can drive the performance via your keyboard. Insane.

FLAME SAX!!

(I’m watching a table full of people watch this clip, and now I wish there were a genre of reaction videos for it.)

August 23, 2012

John From Cincinnati titles

Apropos of nothing, I’ve always loved the titles for HBO’s late & un-lamented John From Cincinnati. What a great evocation of time, place, and flavor. RIP Joe Strummer.

August 18, 2012

Horse taking it to the limit

Is there any reason that, at age 37, I should find this horrible animal puppetry so hilarious? No, but I’m not letting that stop me; I’m pushing to the limit!

August 14, 2012

Gotye remixing people remixing Gotye

If the sheer scale & diversity of artistic expression going on here—from beatboxing to shredding to whistling on plastic bottles; from body-painted video to homemade animation—doesn’t bring a smile to your lips, well, I probably can’t do much for you, my friend. :-  [Previously: Five people playing a single guitar]

[Via]

August 07, 2012

Thursday in SF: “Lightroom 4 to CS6 Workflow”

The San Francisco Photoshop Users Group will be meeting at Adobe SF Thursday evening starting at 6:30:

With the advent of Lightroom 4 a new Develop Module has been introduced with completely renamed sliders. Fine art photographer William Palank hopes to clarify some of these changes and propose a workflow completely different than in Lightroom 3 or its predecessors, bringing forth even more control with Shadows and Highlights on a single image.

Check out the event page for more details.

August 06, 2012

A new chance to join Photoshop Engineering

I’m not kidding when I tell you these things come along rarely. People really like staying on the Photoshop team, and one “new guy” just moved on after seven years. If you’re a smart, seasoned computer engineer who loves crafting tools & productizing cutting-edge research, we’d love to talk with you. Please read on for details.

August 01, 2012

It’s a small (design) world, after all

Not long after I started this blog, a student design portfolio started making the rounds & generating lots of buzz. Dave Werner had skillfully combined illustration, music, and photography with video (still a novel feat as this was pre-YouTube) to do some solid storytelling. The site generated all kinds of responses (“Brilliant!” “It’s just Flashturbation!”), but I was very impressed.

Six and a half years passed & I never met Dave, but right before the Fourth of July he dropped me a line to say he was looking for a new gig (something more stable than perpetual startup-land). I was glad to hear of his interest, but offhand I didn’t know of any good fits. Two days later–and equally out of the blue–a team at Adobe reached out & told me about a really cool project they’re starting that needed design talent.

Long story short, Dave just accepted Adobe’s offer & will be starting shortly. Let’s hear it for serendipity! We can’t wait to get started working together.

July 31, 2012

Photography session tonight at Adobe San Jose

Sorry for the late notice, but this event (starting at 7pm) should be interesting:

Our speaker for this meeting will be Brad Polt-Jones, from Future Light Digital Workshops. He has more than 20 years experience as a pro photographer and 10 years as a digital media artist. In addition to developing the Future Light workshops, Brad continues to teach digital photography classes for UCLA Extension and San Francisco City College.

Brad would like some input in terms of what topics he should cover in his presentation. These could include detailed workflows with the Content Aware Move / Patch, Adaptive Wide Angle, new tools in Camera Raw with Smart Objects, even basic Photoshop preferences and setup, or … you tell us!

“My philosophy is simple; I am passionate about the future of art and photography and want to bring the power and elegance of a new generation of tools to a wider audience. Digital photography allows everyone to participate in the image making process with an unprecedented ease of use and with total control.” -- Brad Polt-Jones

And, yes, There Will Be Pizza.

July 25, 2012

Engineers: The Photoshop team is hiring

Over the last couple of years, the Photoshop team has had great success turning promising research projects (Content-Aware Fill, Content-Aware Scale, Puppet Warp, etc.) into practical, transformative features for everyone. They’d like your help in taking things further:

The Adobe Photoshop team is looking for a highly motivated senior engineer who will develop state-of-the-art imaging features for Photoshop. The successful candidate will be working with a very dynamic customer-focused engineering team and will be responsible for productizing research ideas. The position will be located in San Jose.

Check out the complete job listing for more info. We hope to meet you soon.

July 24, 2012

How To Use Photoshop Files in Your Adobe Muse Website

Efficiently converting PSDs into Web content can be an enormous time-saver*. Here Terry White shows how to put two great tastes together for HTML:

* Back in the day, to get a 20-layer PSD ready to animate, Flash required 168 steps. With LiveMotion we took that down to 2 steps. I’ll never let that one go. :-)

July 21, 2012

“The Wire” in Lego

My God, has anything ever been more in my wheelhouse than a Wire homage rendered in Lego stop motion? (Nope!)

[Via]

July 19, 2012

Learn about the Adobe Web hosting you’re already getting

If you’re subscribing to Creative Cloud, you’ve got access to Web hosting powered by Adobe Business Catalyst. (Bet you didn’t know!)  Check it out tomorrow in a live demo/Q&A at noon Pacific:

Build everything from stunning website to powerful online stores, without server-side coding. Learn about Business Catalyst’s tight integration with Dreamweaver CS6.

• Create and publish BC websites online right from within Dreamweaver
• Insert dynamic modules such as blogs, photo galleries and more, without server-side coding
• Customer lead capture with database integration, in just minutes
• Set up a a fully-featured online store with payment integration in a few clicks 
• Easily host your site online with a few simple steps

July 14, 2012

Gorgeous “Kinetic Rain”

This just drew audible gasps from Nacks age 4 to 40.

 

“Kinetic Rain” is composed of two parts, each consisting of 608 rain droplets made of lightweight aluminum covered with copper. Suspended from thin steel ropes above the two opposing escalators, each droplet is moved precisely and seemingly floating by a computer-controlled motor hidden in the halls ceiling. The drops follow a 15-minute, computationally designed choreography where the two parts move together in unison, sometimes mirroring, sometimes complementing, and sometimes responding to each other.

[Via]

July 12, 2012

Inventor portrait: Ralph Baer

David Friedman sat down with 90-year-old inventor Ralph Baer, creator of the pioneering Magnavox Odyssey video game system, to reflect on his life’s work & on why he’s still inventing to this day.

Incidentally, if the Odyssey gives you a taste for ancient computer fonts, check out this.

July 10, 2012

Graphics awesomeness, circa 1990

Ian Moss juxtaposed an interesting pair of vintage videos. First there’s “The mighty Quantel Paintbox with its custom hardware and 10 years of knowhow behind it…”

“…versus version 1 of Adobe Photoshop, running on a Macintosh Classic for a 10th of the cost.”

The second vid’s a bit misleading as it shows PS 1.0 running on Mac Plus (from 1986) “with 1-bit (black&white) display, 8MHz CPU and 4MB RAM.” Here’s Photoshop co-creator John Knoll re-creating his original Photoshop demo:

July 07, 2012

Bill Gates inspired the name “NeXT”

Awesome. (Also, “MacMan”? We dodged a bullet there.) [Via]

“Uncle Drew”

I find this ridiculously great: NBA rookie of the year Kyrie Irving spent four hours in make-up getting disguised as an old man, then headed to courts in New Jersey to devour the “youngbloods.”

[Via]

June 25, 2012

What’s new with patterns in Photoshop CS6?

In 3 minutes Dave Cross demos the new “scripted fill” options that can apply an object randomly, symmetrically, in a spiral, and more:

[Via Andrew Kavanagh]

June 18, 2012

Feedback, please: Next steps for Creative Cloud?

Adobe’s just-launched Creative Cloud is off to a tremendous start.  Right now it offers access to Adobe’s line of desktop apps, plus 20GB of storage, Typekit access, and Web site publishing.

So… where to from here?

Right now I think most customers aren’t thinking “cloud” at all; rather, they’re thinking “a different way to purchase Photoshop et al.” That’s fine for now, but we could do so much more. For example, for the past—my God, eight?—years I’ve been pushing the notion of making one’s Photoshop “fingerprint” (preferences, brushes, etc.) portable & network-synced. Creative Cloud provides an architecture & business model to really make that possible. Similarly, it opens all kinds of possibilities for publishing (tablet publications & apps, video), commerce (photography, etc.), team collaboration, and more.

We have a ton of ideas on ways to make Creative Cloud even more compelling, but it’s critical that we get your opinion.  Here’s a brief survey (which should take just a minute or two to complete), and we’d love to hear your thoughts via comments.

Thanks,
J. 

June 13, 2012

Photoshop PMs & Scott Kelby chatting tomorrow

Winston Hendrickson, the VP of engineering for Photoshop & Lightroom, along with Photoshop PMs Bryan Hughes & Zorana Gee, will be sitting down with Scott tomorrow at noon Pacific.  They’ll be demonstrating tips & taking audience questions.

If you register in advance, you’ll have a chance to win Photoshop CS6 as well as a ticket to Photoshop World (Las Vegas, Sept. 5-7) or membership to NAPP or KelbyTraining.com.

The World’s Tiniest Police Chase

“100% projected and filmed FOR REAL without CGI trickery, Speed of Light features an escaped convict, a determined cop and a fully armed police helicopter! Filmed on Canon 5d MkII + HD MiniCam,” then projected with MicroVision projectors.

[Via]

June 09, 2012

Clever French performance art (wait, don’t click away)

Rather brilliant. (I won’t spoil anything by revealing what it’s about.)

[Via]

June 05, 2012

CheatSheet app reveals keyboard shortcuts

CheatSheet is a neat (and free) little Mac utility that presents all your foreground app’s shortcuts (or at least all of them that appear in menus) in a temporary overlay. Hold down the Command key for more than a second & they’ll pop up.

I like the concept, though I wish I could change the timing. I now realize I habitually hold down Cmd, then take a while invoking my shortcut of choice.

[Update: See, kids, this is why you should re-check an app/site *before* posting about it: the requested control now appears in the lower right corner of the app. --J.]

May 24, 2012

A Brief History of John Baldessari

I’m a little chagrined to admit that I didn’t know about artist John Baldessari prior to seeing this short film narrated by Tom Waits. Now I’d like to know more:

[Via Sam Potts]

May 19, 2012

Adobe MAX moves from fall to spring

The next show will be hosted on May 4-8 in Los Angeles, writes CTO Kevin Lynch. According to Kevin, it’ll focus on

• Design and creativity
• Web sites, including the latest on HTML5, JavaScript and CSS
• Digital publishing, video, and gaming, including the latest on Flash
• Applications, particularly for mobile platforms

More details will come out in the months ahead.

Vinyl-tossing trick shots

Does this have anything to do with this blog’s focus? No, it does not. Will you dig it? If you’re not dead inside, I think so. :-)

I plan to show it to our boys–but first I’ll have to explain what “records” were. [Via]

May 10, 2012

A classical flash mob in the Copenhagen Metro

Magical.

According to the YouTube caption,

In April 2012 Copenhagen Phil (Sjællands Symfoniorkester) surprised the passengers in the Copenhagen Metro by playing Griegs Peer Gynt. The flash mob was created in collaboration with Radio Klassisk. All music was performed and recorded in the metro.

[Via Margot]

May 09, 2012

LayerVault adds new features for Photoshop collaboration

LayerVault is a PSD-savvy service for versioning & collaborating on design work, and it’s just added a swath of cool new features (the “Wormhole” mechanism for inspecting changes being especially neat).  News site BetaKit writes,

Users can now view edits happening in real-time, and open compatible files directly in the browser, meaning less popping in and out of apps just to make a few minor tweaks. Tools added now let them pick colors and create transferable palettes on the fly, for instance, as well as measure design components with a click.

Here’s a 1-minute tour of what’s new: 

 

 

May 06, 2012

“It’s a nightmare for old people”

How pitch-perfect is this parody of speeds-and-feeds-based marketing?

[Update: Non-US folks, try this link. (Via Peter Steeper)]

The other day I heard some carrier/handset combo boasting about “wielding the Android 2.2 platform.” It’s so weird: they burned airtime noting a detail that would confuse most people while (I would think) alienating those geeky enough to grok it.

April 30, 2012

Giant pixel-art animation on 5-story LCD glass

“The thing is, I can’t figure if it’s the fish that are cooling me out, or all those uncut diamonds in the bottom of the tank, there.” (Wait, that’s something else.) Check out Patterned by Nature, “a 10 ft. wide by 90 ft. long sculptural ribbon that winds through a five story museum atrium and is made of 3600 tiles of LCD glass. Animations are created by independently varying the transparency of each piece of glass.”

[Via]

April 28, 2012

Waves: A motion & sound installation

The Waves project from Daniel Palacios “is made up of two turbines, supported by a tuning fork structure between which the waves are created.” The strings whip through the air, creating both sound and visuals, and they react to passersby:

[Via]

April 24, 2012

Photoshop CS6 Live Webinars all week

The NAPP guys are hosting live demos/Q&A’s all week (all at noon Eastern time):

• Tuesday: Photography
• Wednesday: Design & JDI Features
• Thursday: Video
• Friday: 3D & Performance Features
• Saturday (all day): Week in Review

Check out the site for complete details.

April 20, 2012

Beautiful high-speed film from India

Poor form to blog Phantom Flex ultra slow-mo two days in a row? Not when the images are this lovely:

I do kind of wonder whether even my staring into my monitor could look epic & meaningful if captured through one of these fly-bys. [Via]

April 13, 2012

Neat: Automatic speech alignment in Audition CS6

The Fremont troll makes a cameo to help demonstrate this new tech:

April 12, 2012

What should we talk about?

I’ll be speaking at the RE:DESIGN/UX conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, May 1. It should be a really interesting show, featuring a lot of savvy designers & creative directors. Each session lead speaks for about 10 minutes, followed by 30-40 minutes of group discussion.  Here’s my idea in brief:

TheFuture of Creation

Everyone’s a maker; everyone’s a sharer.  Great design software costs a buck.  When things are common, we value them less. (No one celebrates breathing.) How do we keep creation special?  Let’s talk about what it all means to designers & their tools.

Is that a conversation you’d find interesting? Feedback & ideas are most welcome.

April 11, 2012

Photoshop CS6 in Seattle next Monday

Photoshop PM Stephen Nielson will be presenting CS6 at Adobe Seattle on Tuesday the 17th Monday the 23rd [please note change of date]:

Photoshop CS6 is one of the biggest releases yet, and there is truly something for everyone. The team has been working hard on new features like Blur Gallery, new Content-Aware tools, the Mercury Graphics Engine, new and re-engineered design tools, and so much more!

We’ll have pizza at 6:30, and the meeting will start at 7:00.

 

April 06, 2012

Bay Area Photoshop meetings next week

• PM Stephen Nielson will be showing off the CS6 beta at Adobe San Jose Tuesday evening starting at 7pm. The registration list is already full (200+ signed up), but you can join the wait list.
• PM Zorana Gee will be presenting CS6 at Adobe San Francisco Thursday evening starting at 6:30. Looks like a few spots remain open on the registration list.

April 04, 2012

Imaging geniuses: Photoshop wants you

If you’d like to develop amazing tech like Content-Aware Fill & bring it to millions of people, the Photoshop team may have a job for you.  They’re looking for an experienced imaging engineer to fill the role of Senior Computer Scientist (req. #13612).

I love working with brainiacs like this, and we have a great track record or productizing research (off the top of my head in the last couple of revs of Photoshop: Content-Aware Fill, Content-Aware Scale, advanced blurring, improved sharpening, Puppet Warp, Auto-Align/Auto-Blend Layers, adaptive wide-angle lens correction, and more).  I think you’d really enjoy working with the Photoshop team to put cutting-edge ideas into practice.

Photoshop CS6 demo/Q&A tomorrow

Friday’s demo/Q&A (recorded here) was a hit, and more than 400 people have already RSVP’d for this session at noon Pacific on Thursday:

Downloaded Photoshop CS6 beta and got questions? Join Sr. Product Manager Bryan O’Neil Hughes this Thursday, 4/5 for a LIVE demo! He’ll take you on a tour of the new features and share expert tips and tricks. If you have any specific questions for Bryan about the beta, leave a comment below – you may see it answered during the demo session! Sign in as a guest for a special tour of the new features and some expert tips and tricks.

April 03, 2012

Photoshop CS6 demo/Q&A recording now available

In this Ask A CS Pro session, Photoshop PM Zorana Gee shows every major feature in the new public beta release. She not only provides detailed tips, but also addresses common questions from the large live audience. Dozens more questions are covered in the interactive chat pod. [Via]

March 28, 2012

Photoshop CS6 beta: 500,000+ downloads & counting

I’m delighted to see that the Photoshop CS6 beta has been downloaded more than half a million times in less than a week!  The response I’ve seen so far has been overwhelmingly positive.

Nice press quotes:

• Gizmodo: “Photoshop CS6: The Best Update In Recent Memory“
• PC Magazine:
  • “The future of creative image editing is upon us.
  • “You would think that after a program has been the leader in its field for over 20 years, there wouldn’t be much to add. But quite the opposite is the case with Adobe Photoshop CS6.
  • “The new version will thrill nearly all categories of users, from photographers to designers.
  • “All of this adds up to a superb upgrade that should make anyone serious about image editing salivate over Photoshop CS6.”
• Wired: ”Content-aware brushes, Liquify filter and new Blur tool will amaze. In-app search is a huge time-saver for sifting through giant stacks of layers.”
• USA Today: “We’ve been testing CS6 for the last week, and having lots of fun with the new tools. The new interface is a huge improvement — the images really do look sharper and more pronounced.”

And from some designers I follow on Twitter:

• “I’ll use it for a few days so I can give a better assessment, but so far: ball out of the park.” — Neven Mrgan
• “I’ve been using PS CS6 for a while, and it’s been sweet… The truth is that CS6 has a bunch of changes that make my life a lot better but may piss off some users. Which is great. Adobe did well.” — Sebastiaan de With
• “I think the community at large agrees: PS6 is an incredible update.” — Cameron Moll

Thanks for the kind words, guys!

March 27, 2012

Video: The Adobe Digital Imaging Team at Photoshop World 2012

Straight from the show floor. (I can vouch for background saving drawing cheers.)

Hitchcock on happiness

Unfettered creative impact; yep, seems about right.

March 24, 2012

PS CS6 drops Vista, 32-bit Mac support

I know it’ll seem odd, but Photoshop CS6 supports Windows XP and not (officially) Windows Vista. It’s all about spending finite resources wisely, and Jeff Tranberry explains the thinking in ”Photoshop CS6 Operating System Support…and beyond.”

March 23, 2012

Great places to learn about Photoshop CS6

• Scott Kelby & his crew have created a terrific CS6 learning center, featuring a couple of dozen videos plus a one-page summary of all the new stuff and a summary of “What to Expect if You Skipped CS5 & Now Want CS6.”
• Deke McClelland goes deep with 27 video tutorials Lynda.com.
• Jeff Tranberry is maintaining a list of tutorials, reviews, and other resources.

More great content is going live all the time, so feel free to mention good things we may have missed.

Check out new Content-Aware tech in CS6

Artificial intelligence + your intelligence = good things.

March 21, 2012

Metadata can kill you

How’s that for a salacious, click-baiting title? But this bit from the US Army is eye-opening:

A real-world example from 2007: When a new fleet of helicopters arrived with an aviation unit at a base in Iraq, some soldiers took pictures on the flightline, he said. From the photos that were uploaded to the Internet, the enemy was able to determine the exact location of the helicopters inside the compound and conduct a mortar attack, destroying four of the AH-64 Apaches.

[Via John Dowdell]

March 19, 2012

Come help us make WebKit more kickass

“The better the web, the better tools we can build, and the happier our customers.” With that in mind, Adobe’s putting more & more muscle into advancing HTML standards & helping rendering engines support them.

Adobe’s WebKit Contributions group is improving the web as a platform for applications by implementing features that enable new classes of applications, new levels of application richness, and by improving the tools web developers use to create, debug, profile, test and maintain applications. Features are developed in the open and contributed to WebKit trunk. This group works closely with web application developers and the web standards community to identify opportunities for improvement.

Currently open positions:

• Engineering Manager – WebKit Development — 11843
• Sr. Computer Scientist – WebKit Development — 11836
• Computer Scientist – WebKit Development — 11835
• WebKit Engineering Intern — 13714
• QE developer for WebPlatform/WebKit — 13989

Just type in the corresponding job number, or simply search for “WebKit.” Hope to meet you soon!

March 17, 2012

[OT] Bay Area Lego shindig tomorrow

On Monday at Pixar (where the lobby is adorned with giant Lego Woody & Buzz), I overheard not one but two groups of fellow nerds excitedly discussing Bricks By The Bay, happening this weekend in Santa Clara.  Our boys have been counting the days ever since. Hope to see you there!

March 16, 2012

A kid’s Rube Goldberg monster trap

So great.

[Via]

March 15, 2012

Do not taunt Angry Time Machine

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it. — Not Jack Handey

If you’ve had trouble backing up your Mac via Time Machine–as I did once I installed Lion–do not, for the love of God, push your luck and try to use Time Machine to migrate data from one Mac to another. Just don’t.

Details if you want ‘em:

Post-10.7, I couldn’t update my backups on my Drobo and Time Capsule, nor could I get one to work on the new USB 3.0 drive I bought for the job. When I tried a fresh FireWire drive, however, everything seemed cool. Thus when my new Mac arrived, I tried transferring apps & data via the Migration Assistant.

And now begins the screamin’ & the wailin’: The apps that made it over were all zero KB, and files never transferred. Not a big deal, I thought: I can just re-install apps & move files manually.  The trouble is, when I tried to install Apple Motion, I got a series of errors about missing files (ProKit). I tried various work arounds, including installing the FCP X trial.  Soon, though, all the Apple apps, as well as iPhoto, were crashing on launch.  It seems that the failed app migration stomped a bunch of critical libraries.

Here’s the excellent part, though: Lion’s airbag works great.  At the advice of my exhausted Apple friend (who’d been supplying would-be fixes), I finally reinstalled the OS. Fearing the worst (bare-metal, nuke-from-orbit, dogs-and-cats-living-together stuff), I backed up my files and blocked off a bunch of time. I still cannot believe how well it went: restarted the machine, held down Cmd-R, okayed a couple of prompts, and half an hour later 10.7.3 was up and running as if nothing had happened.  Everything (open docs, browser history, passwords, etc.) was restored.  I’m still kind of holding my breath, but so far, so amazingly good.  Hats off to the Apple folks behind this capability.

March 14, 2012

Behind the Splash Screen: Bryan O’Neil Hughes

So, how does one become a Photoshop product manager, and what does one actually do? Bryan briefly tells his story:

Brad Bird on morale

Via his Pixar colleague Michael Johnson:

In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale. If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.

March 13, 2012

Who do I fear being at work?

This guy.

[I find myself making this joke when I actually do connect people who wouldn't otherwise talk (different teams, engineers with customers, etc.). Still, it's an odd job where one doesn't often *build* anything specific.]

March 03, 2012

Star Wars Rorschach

Oh yes:

Does anyone know what software produces animations like these? [Via ]

February 29, 2012

“Confessions of a Printmaker” tomorrow eve in SF

Mark Lindsay will be presenting at Adobe San Francisco tomorrow night starting at 6:30. Mark will discuss:

• Ink Gamut: Knowing the limitations of printed color
• Soft-Proofing: How to anticipate print appearance before printing
• Print Options: Photoshop workflows for inkjet, digital, and offset lithography
• Sharpening: Advanced sharpening techniques for fine printmaking
• Paper Profiles: How to make them, where to get them, how to use them
• Color Management: The best color settings for Photoshop
• Color Correction: Solving basic and tricky color problems
• Special Print Problems: A bag of tricks for a world of problems
• CMYK: The other color space
• Paper: Best selection for outstanding prints
• On Press: Effective press checks

A Photoshop engineer vs. the exploitation of 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.

February 25, 2012

“Browser UI” action for Photoshop

Looks interesting:

Browser UI is an action that creates a browser window around any size Photoshop document you can throw at it. Simply install the action, choose a browser and play it. Check out the quick screencast if you don’t believe me.

February 23, 2012

A really arcane blogging/tweeting tool request

[Warning: Probably of zero interest to non-nerd bloggers, and even then…]

I like sharing links quickly via Twitter (and thus Facebook), and later–time permitting–I copy, paste, and sort those links into groups that I can share here. Other times I’ll use Instapaper to capture links that I’m not quite ready to share.

Trouble is, it takes a non-trivial amount of time to scan back through either list, then copy/paste/etc. Thus my sharing of links via the blog has dropped dramatically. (Sorry/you’re welcome, depending.)

Would you by chance know of a way to automate converting tweets and/or Instapaper (or similar) links into blog-ready form, making it easy to sort them into piles? Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

February 22, 2012

Photoshop.next sneak: Automatic preset migration & sharing

Also, Cmd-J duplicates multiple selected layers & layer groups; woo! (“JDI,” for the uninitiated, stands for “Just Do It.”)

Behind the Splash Screen: Seetharaman Narayanan

Meet the Photoshop hall-of-famer with his own fan club:

[Via Andrew Kavanagh]

February 19, 2012

What’s the point of having an Adobe ID?

I know, I know: you need another username/password combo like you need a hole in the head. There are real benefits to having an Adobe ID, though (e.g. keeping track of your serial numbers). Jeff Tranberry quickly lists details. [Via John Dowdell]

February 16, 2012

Pixelapse: PSD backup & sharing

Pixelapse promises “Visual version control done right”:

Hit save in Photoshop. Your artwork will be on the Web, ready to be shared in seconds.

Share and get feedback from your team members, or anyone you share the design with.

[Previous/similar: LayerVault.]

February 15, 2012

Friday Demo/Q&A: Mission Mobile

Check it:

Learn how to create mobile apps or websites using Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium software. Join Evangelist Paul Trani and discover the latest tips and tricks on Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Air for going mobile fast. We’ll cover how to customize content for different screens, create galleries, optimize graphics, and more.

Prior to joining Adobe, Paul led a team of interactive designers and developers at Starz Entertainment producing multimillion dollar web and mobile campaigns.

February 14, 2012

Valentine’s Special: Remove Your Ex with Photoshop.next

Artificial intelligence: Good.
Your intelligence: Better.
The two together: Best.

To reduce instances of “Content-Aware Fail,” the Photoshop team has been working on ways to let you guide the Content-Aware Fill algorithm. Check out this two-minute preview:

February 13, 2012

RED/Premiere Pro webinar Feb. 23

Join Ted Schilowitz, one of the founders of RED Digital Cinema, and Adobe’s Wes Howell, 10AM PST:

Adobe and RED have collaborated to bring a truly native, color-rich, 4K tapeless workflow to Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5. Join this webinar to learn how you can enable a robust workflow for editing, grading, and delivering native R3D footage in real time using Premiere Pro.

 

 

February 12, 2012

Video: Future Hipsters

Now I’m kind of tempted to get a QR code tat that links to “un gato vomitando.”

[Via Bruce Bullis]

February 10, 2012

A North Korean Photoshop tutorial

“Rotting misery pumpkin”? “Catify” command? Where can I get this version?? [Note: Contains a little off-color humor]