Photographer Peter Krogh has just published The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers. I haven’t seen a finished copy yet, but I’ve attended Peter’s lectures & can vouch for his insight into how new technologies like DNG facilitate open workflows (e.g. batch-adjusting color in Camera Raw, then passing DNGs with embedded previews and metadata to iView Media Pro).
[See also: Peter’s related DAMUseful.com and the publisher’s site for the book.]

Maybe I’m addled from downing too much of the turkey fixings (and it’s barely even noon), but I’ve been thinking about restaurants’ penchant for adding absurd descriptors to otherwise ordinary food. On a roadtrip out east last week, I noted menus offering:

• Pan-Seared Chilean Sea Bass
• Lamb Lettuce with Toasted Goat Cheese
• Iowa Caramel Custard

Okay, the fish may be neither Chilean nor bass (discuss!); I have no idea what lambs have to do with lettuce; and having gone to high school in Iowa, I can tell you it’s not synonymous with gourmet desserts. But now that Photoshop CS2 supports menu customization, I’m thinking we should take a cue from restaurateurs. How about:

• Puréed Liquify filter
• Vector Confit on a Bed of Merged Layers
• Braised Shank of Smart Object
• Dodged & Burned Creme Brulée
• CCD-Fresh Megapixels in a Chromatic Noise Reduction

Or perhaps not. 😉 Really I just wanted to say thanks for reading, and to wish you and yours an extraordinarily happy Thanksgiving.
Fondly,
El Tryptophan (master of the Sleeper Hold)

The LayerMatch 2005 site takes a novel approach to depicting the evolution of Photoshop Tennis matches. A Flash interface makes it possible to shuttle back and forth through the evolution of a PSD (sort of like clicking among states in the History palette, or switching among Layer Comps).
And if this kind of collaborative design exercise is up your alley, see also Designologue.com, a site that combines written & visual dialog.

I’d heard Todor and Jeff talk about plenoptic camera research, but it wasn’t until reader Joe Lencioni mentioned this Stanford work that I followed up. Wow. If nothing else, check out this video demonstrating how images can be refocused after the fact. (For background, Todor notes the word “plenoptic” was coined by Ted Adelson in this 1992 paper.) Wired News coverage is here.
Being more an Arts & Letters guy (read: math Cro-Mag), I tend to dwell on the social aspects of technology, and I wonder how photographers might react to these developments. There’s already a vocal minority of strident anti-raw shooters who say, “Raw is for when you plan to get the shot wrong.” That is, the post-processing flexibility that raw enables lets bad photographers sweep ever more mistakes under the carpet. What would they say about something that forgave flaws in focusing? It’s also funny to note that as technology like this makes it possible to keep more items in focus, technology like Photoshop’s Lens Blur works in the opposite direction, letting you add a “Bokeh” effect to otherwise crisp shots.
Personally, I’d love to see the concept of taking multiple captures in single pass used to enable greater dynamic range. Wouldn’t it be great to effectively auto-bracket shots simultaneously, instead of in quick succession?

I’d heard Todor and Jeff talk about plenoptic camera research, but it wasn’t until reader Joe Lencioni mentioned this Stanford work that I followed up. Wow. If nothing else, check out this video demonstrating how images can be refocused after the fact. (For background, Todor notes the word “plenoptic” was coined by Ted Adelson in this 1992 paper.) Wired News coverage is here.
Being more an Arts & Letters guy (read: math Cro-Mag), I tend to dwell on the social aspects of technology, and I wonder how photographers might react to these developments. There’s already a vocal minority of strident anti-raw shooters who say, “Raw is for when you plan to get the shot wrong.” That is, the post-processing flexibility that raw enables lets bad photographers sweep ever more mistakes under the carpet. What would they say about something that forgave flaws in focusing? It’s also funny to note that as technology like this makes it possible to keep more items in focus, technology like Photoshop’s Lens Blur works in the opposite direction, letting you add a “Bokeh” effect to otherwise crisp shots.
Personally, I’d love to see the concept of taking multiple captures in single pass used to enable greater dynamic range. Wouldn’t it be great to effectively auto-bracket shots simultaneously, instead of in quick succession?

Among other fixes and improvements, this update adds a check to confirm that Camera Raw is correctly installed (something that had been a source of confusion). Go to Adobe.com to grab the installer for Mac and Windows. Let us know via the Bridge forum how it goes.

If you ever find yourself living in a post-apocalypic, Mad Max-style hellscape *and* needing a new macro lens–or if you just like to tinker–know that evidently a Dremel, a can of Pringles, and some elbow grease are all that stand between you and that sweet new glass. No word, however, on the efficacy of Jalapeño vs. Spicy Cajun flavor… (Going to these lengths somehow reminds me of Jack Handey’s observation, “Most people don’t realize that large pieces of coral, which have been painted brown and attached to the skull by common wood screws, can make a child look like a deer.”) [via Tobias Hoellrich]

If you ever find yourself living in a post-apocalypic, Mad Max-style hellscape *and* needing a new macro lens–or if you just like to tinker–know that evidently a Dremel, a can of Pringles, and some elbow grease are all that stand between you and that sweet new glass. No word, however, on the efficacy of Jalapeño vs. Spicy Cajun flavor… (Going to these lengths somehow reminds me of Jack Handey’s observation, “Most people don’t realize that large pieces of coral, which have been painted brown and attached to the skull by common wood screws, can make a child look like a deer.”) [via Tobias Hoellrich]

I’d heard long-time author David Biedny, creator of the Attention Photoshoppers podcast, mention that his out-of-print work was commanding a premium, but it wasn’t until today that I saw what he meant. A photographer on the ProDig list noted that Photoshop Channel Chops is selling for $495 at a used book store. Some quick Googling reveals that the title commands $199 and up on Amazon. Dang; I haven’t read the book myself, but it must be quite the resource.
Of course, this sets my mind in motion. I tend to accumulate samples from lots of publishers, so I wonder what gems linger on my bookshelf. Psst, buddy, how much’ll you give me for this sweet Illustrator 6 Visual QuickStart Guide? Flash 4 Magic, maybe? Or how about a vintage LiveMotion Classroom in a Book? (Anyone, anyone? Bueller…?)
Not quitting my day job,
J.

Print designer humor by the numbers :-). (Me, I need my jokes in multiples of 51–as in, I’m so pale & pasty I’m 255/255/255, with a little checkerboard in the background.)

Author Ben Long has posted a major update to his Photoshop Action Pack, a set of 56 actions for Photoshop CS and CS2. Leveraging Mac OS X 10.4’s Automator technology, these actions build upon Photoshop’s built-in batching & can integrate with other applications (FTP upload, CD/DVD burning, etc.). Newly added actions include Add Watermark & Bleach Bypass, as well as a variety of bug fixes.

If you happen to be in the Bay Area on Saturday and like comics and/or retro design (or if you’re just a giant NPR dork like me), you may want to check out Chris Ware and Ira Glass speaking at Berkeley this Saturday. I’m looking forward to it. [More links to Chris’s work are here and here.]

Our friends over at the National Association of Photoshop Professionals are keeping plenty busy these days:

• At PhotoPlus Expo in New York they announced the 2006 Digital Canvas Awards, “the first worldwide competition exclusively for Adobe® Photoshop® users.” Check out the contest site here.
• Photoshop Radio, we hardly knew ye: the broadcasts have already been upgraded to be Photoshop TV, now streaming as Flash Video and downloadable via iTunes.
• And sometime in the wee hours this morning, my boss Kevin Connor touched down in Tokyo. He’ll be giving the keynote address in the first ever Photoshop World Japan. Good luck to the whole crew. Maybe next year we can get Jeff Schewe to fly over and meet speaker Hiroyuki Hayakawa for an Intercontinental Battle of the Beards. 😉

I should no doubt preface this bit with the “[OT]” disclaimer, but as there’s a design/photography angle, let’s pretend it’s all germane to this blog.

• The absurdly talented Yugo Nakamura has produced Honda Sweet Mission, “a kind of enhanced podcasting site.” Yugo writes, “We made an experimental interface system for a program broadcast by
  TokyoFM. Posted MP3 data is analyzed in the server and its volume history is visualized to Avatar motion. I’m sorry that all language is Japanese, you will not able to know what they
  are speaking.” No, but it sure looks cool, and the groovy pixel-globe is another idea on burrowing through a large set of images.

• Liz Hickock sculpts San Francisco out of Jello. Yes. (Take that, Richard Dreyfuss ;-)) Stunning.

Our friends at Wacom have announced a new, wide-format member of their professional tablet line. The new 6×11″ Intuos3 looks like a great match for the aspect ratios of modern monitors.
We’ve been adding features to Photoshop to improve the experience for tablet users. The Intuos 3 offers touch strips for two-handed input, so in Photoshop CS2 we changed zooming to center on the mouse cursor. Now you can be painting with one hand, and zoom in on those pixels using your other hand. (Tip: You can also zoom using a mouse wheel, or the two-finger input on a PowerBook trackpad; hold Opt/Alt while using the wheel to zoom. To make this behavior the default (instead of panning), enable the new preference “Zoom with Scroll Wheel.”)
The painting engines in Photoshop CS2 and Illustrator CS2 also support the barrel rotation properties of the new 6D Art Pen. And to make things better for those using a Cintiq or TabletPC, we made it possible on Windows to move the menu bar to the bottom of the screen. That way menus pop up, rather than down, meaning your hand is less likely to get in the way.
If you’re using a tablet and have ideas on where we should take things from here, please let us know.