Monthly Archives: June 2010

Photoshop CS5 update (12.0.1) now available

CS5

Nothing matters more than stability & performance. I’m glad we can report that based on crash reporter statistics, Photoshop CS5 is more than 10 times as stable as CS4* (that is, it generates fewer than one-tenth as many crash reports). That’s not yet good enough progress, however.

Accordingly, Adobe has released an update for Photoshop CS5 (Mac | Win). You can also get the update by choosing Help->Updates from within Photoshop.

The Adobe Photoshop 12.0.1 update addresses a number of high priority bugs with 64-bit Mac, Performance, User Interface, Type, Content-Aware Fill, HDR, 3D, Painting, GPU and Liquify. The most significant fixes in the Photoshop 12.0.1 update include the following:

 

  • A number of issues that could cause slow performance have been addressed.
  • Top crashers found in the field have been addressed.
  • 3D refractions, Ray Tracing and IBL workflows have been improved.
  • Out of memory error opening some TIFFs has been addressed.
  • A crash in Content-Aware Fill has been addressed.
  • Font related crashes have been addressed.
  • A number of user interface and workspace issues have been fixed.
  • A number of painting-related problems have been addressed, including video layer issues.

 

We also addressed several issues that were result of the major architectural changes on the Mac side in the move to Cocoa/64-bit:

 

  • Right-click correctly selects the layer clicked on in the context menu.
  • Right-click to bring up the brush picker displays the picker under the cursor on the correct monitor.
  • Slow performance when using the Liquify filter has been fixed.
  • An issue where menus become disabled has been fixed.
  • Scrolling speed using Apple Mighty and Magic Mouse mouse wheel has been improved.
  • Double-clicking the document title bar now correctly minimizes the document.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when generating font previews. Note: We continue working with Apple to address remaining issues related to fonts and font caches. For info on those issues, use the Troubleshooting Fonts in Photoshop CS5 tech doc here.
  • Fixed an issue with batch processes on open documents.
  • Droplets are now Intel-native to improve compatibility in 64-bit mode and to remove the requirement to run droplets using Rosetta.
  • Fixed an issue where a white pixel would show up on screen after invoking certain dialogs.

 

Windows-specific issues of note:

 

  • Fixed an issue running on older AMD processors that prevent Photoshop from launching. (Application failed to initialize properly (0xc000001d))

 

The team thanks everyone from the community who helped us identify issues and test several of the fixes prior to the 12.0.1 update being released.

 

* Comparing 11.0.0 (CS4) to 12.0.0 (CS5) during the equivalent period following initial product availability

Busted links? Let me know.

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One more (hopefully last) bit of current blog housekeeping: Some folks mentioned encountering broken links here following the move to WordPress, and I’ve been working with the blog admins to fix the problems.  If you spot any continued problems (broken links or otherwise), please let me know via comments or email (jnack at adobe).  Thanks.

YouTube talks Flash and HTML5

Flash, HTML5

The folks at YouTube have put up an informative post about why, despite positive advances in what browsers support, “Adobe Flash provides the best platform for YouTube’s video distribution requirements.”

Of course, Flash is at death’s door, right?  I suppose you didn’t hear that ESPN just streamed the US-Algeria World Cup match via Flash to “the largest U.S. audience ever for a sports event on the web,” with 1.1 million unique viewers.  Through 14 days of World Cup coverage, 5 million viewers have watched the World Cup on ESPN3.com and consumed more than 9.2 million total hours.  Somehow the Mac sites fail to notice these things.  (Actually, that few people notice is a good thing: billions of times a month, Flash just works.)

I’m sure someone will point out that Hulu will be streaming video to iPads without using Flash as the presentation layer, so now Flash is screwed, haw haw.  In that case, let me repeat what I said a few months ago:

John Gruber wrote the other day that “Hulu isn’t a Flash site, it’s a video site. Developers go where the users are.” Well sure, of course they do. Flash is a means to an end for Adobe, too, not the end unto itself.

The folks at Hulu, like those at YouTube, are pragmatists.  They’ll use whatever delivery mechanisms, presentation layers, etc. they need to reach the most eyeballs.  On desktops Hulu prefers Flash, for the same reasons YouTube cites.  (Even if more than 13% of the audience could play back H.264-format video on their desktops without using a plug-in, the browsers are lacking in content protection & other vital areas.)  On mobile devices, Flash Player’s support for H.264 (and later VP8) makes it easy to use an alternate player to display the same video files.

I’m not saying all this to rile people up.  I just get tired of all the uninformed rah-rah triumphalism out there, so I thought I’d help share some real-world perspectives.

Blog housekeeping: Notice anything different?

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Answer: Hopefully not.  We moved this blog over to a WordPress foundation yesterday, but there shouldn’t be any visible changes or disruptions, including to permalinks and RSS subscriptions.  If you hit any snags, please let me know.

One somewhat minor, hopefully temporary problem is that comments listed on the right side of the main page no longer include an excerpt.  I know that some of my teammates scan that list so that they can jump in with replies when needed, so we’ll try to fix the problem.

Thanks to the folks at blog consultancy Firmdot for making the move so painless.

Design bits: Shape-shifting Bimmers & more

Uncategorized

A film shot & edited entirely on an iPhone

Mobile

Amazingly, Apple of My Eye is a short movie shot and edited entirely on an iPhone 4:
I’m smitten, especially given that my little brother and I made our own little train video (embarrassingly crude by comparison, but helped immeasurably by Johnny Cash) on our parents’ iMac some years ago. I’m struck by the radical quality difference between a 2002-vintage consumer camera, and what David Lynch might call your effing telephone of today. [Via]

Illustration: Hairy bikers, chemical coffee, & more

Illustration

Stylus recommendations?

Tablets, User Interface

Why is it I can draw more accurately with our 2-year-old’s Magna Doodle than I can with an iPad? Simple: it’s the stylus.

I tried a stubby Pogo stylus a few months back and had an instant aversion to drawing with a big, flat, round disk. I see that other styluses are available, but I’ve yet to find a good set of comparisons. If you’ve successfully used a stylus to draw on an iPad, I’d like to hear your recommendations.

Incidentally, the imprecision of drawing with a finger certainly raises the value of natural media brushes (e.g. a realistic pencil simulation). Crappy input driving a high-precision line looks bad, but crappy input driving a deliberately crappy (sketchy) line looks more like “I meant to do that.”

[Update: Incidentally, just so people know, I’m not completely incompetent when it comes to drawing.]

20,000 comments & counting

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Lordy, lordy: roughly five years after its launch, this blog has racked up some 20,000 reader comments:
20000.png
That’s just as I’d have it, and it says more about the Photoshop/Adobe community than it does about me. I’ve always wanted the blog to be about others’ voices as much as mine (okay, almost as much!), and reader feedback has proven invaluable. Whether it’s opining on new product ideas, puking on the app icons, exchanging product tips, or even trying to steal Photoshop, I’m always eager to hear what people are thinking & trying to achieve.
Thanks so much for your generous feedback, and here’s to the next 20,000 (!),
J.

PS–I believe the honor of being #20k goes to my pal Adolfo Rozenfeld, who was in fact remarking on approaching 20k–appropriately meta & self-referential.

Adobe's bringing pro audio editor Audition to the Mac

Uncategorized

I’m delighted to hear that Adobe is bringing Audition to the Mac. As video evangelist Jason Levine explains in the videos below, this professional audio software packs a big, fast wallop. If nothing else, go to around the 3:20 mark in the first vid below to see how you can use Photoshop-style painting and Spot Healing brushes to edit audio (!):

The public beta should be available later this year, and you can sign up to be notified when it’s ready to download.

Adobe MAX, Russell Brown, coming in October; register now

CS5

Adobe MAX is returning to Los Angeles, CA Oct. 23-27 and registration has just started. Early bird discount pricing gets you $200 off the full conference pass price if you register before 8/15/2010. Check out the schedule at a glance or browse the more than 300 sessions planned.

Of special note is the Russell Brown@MAX lab, a three-day, hands-on course that brings together top art directors, designers, illustrators, and photographers to learn new techniques with Photoshop CS5. According to the event site,

Starting with photographic portraits we will turn reality into renaissance. Participants will unleash the powerful combination of cameras, computers, and Adobe Creative Suite® 5 software to produce an original artwork on canvas.

Hope to see you there.

New 64-bit Exposure 3 twice as fast in CS5

CS5, Lightroom

The folks at Alien Skin have released Exposure 3.0, a 64-bit-native plug-in that faithfully emulates the look of numerous film stocks & techniques. According to the company, “Exposure 3 in Photoshop CS5 is over twice as fast as Exposure 2 in CS4 on the Mac and about 30% faster on Windows.” The plug-in has also been updated to work beautifully with the new Lightroom 3.

Check out the product site for feature details, some neat interactive examples and much more info.

Photography: Augmented reality, vintage strobism, & more

Photography

Crafty maps

Illustration
  • Bing Maps offers some really cool looking napkin-sketch-style map renderings. (Unfortunately, even after downloading a Silverlight update and restarting my browser, I still can’t get it to work.)
  • Heh: “Fears of Dust Bowl Déjà Vu Spur Oklahoma Expansion.” Michael Crawford makes (mostly) witty map art for the New Yorker. (Deep linking is being flaky, so click through for the Oklahoma bit.) [Via]
  • Locals vs. Tourists shows where people take photos in various cities around the world. [Via]

New iOS 4-ready PSD templates available

Illustration, Mobile, Tablets
  • Designer Sebastiaan de With has updated his iPhone/iPad icon PSD file, adding support for iOS 4 and 114x114px icons.
  • Neven Mrgan leverages that file and offers lots of comments and tips for making clear icons using Photoshop and Illustrator.
  • The designers at Teehan+Lax have revved their own iOS4 PSD, saying “Fully redesigned Photoshop template. Now accurate, still free.” [Via] (Not using these templates in production, I’m not in a position to evaluate their relative strengths.)

Flash Player & Photoshop.com app updated for Android

Mobile
  • Flash Player 10.1 Public Beta 3 for Android is now live on Google’s Android Market for Nexus One phones running Android 2.2. Flash Player was already the #1 free download on the Android store, and people seem to be digging the new release (“Awesome.” “Epic.” “Live soccer on my phone = win.”).
  • An Adobe installer–the Flash Player installer at that–has actually drawn praise from irascible Mac IT guy John C. Welch. (I will now check for the sun becoming as black as sackcloth, etc.)
  • Unrelated to Flash, a new release of the Photoshop.com Mobile app for Android is available. The new release adds support for uploading to Facebook and Twitter via TwitPic, along with one-touch borders (soft edges, vignettes, rounded corners) and more.

NYC photowalk with Adobe PMs next Saturday

Photography

On June 26th, Lightroom and Photoshop product managers Tom Hogarty and Bryan O’Neil Hughes will be leading a morning photo walk around New York’s Madison Square Park and Flatiron district. Meet up at Foto Care 41 West 22nd (between 5th & 6th Aves.) at 10am sharp. The walk is scheduled to last until 2pm and includes a free lunch and software tips/demos. Feel free to bring your disc camera & crampons whatever camera you’d like & comfortable shoes.

Space is limited to 50 participants, so please RSVP via the event page.

Other NY/next week-related reminders:

  • On Friday the 25th from 4:30-7:30 pm, Scott Kelby & crew will be joining Adobe folks for a free Photoshop CS5 Summit.
  • Tom and Bryan will be presenting LR3 and PS CS5 at Fotocare on the 28th and 29th; see details.

From great heights: Cool weather balloon + camera project

Photography, Scientific & Technical Imaging

Colin Rich used a homemade weather balloon to carry cameras to an altitude of 125,000 feet:

According to PetaPixel,

After purchasing two Canon compact cameras on eBay, Rich programmed them to take 3 photos every 3 minutes, and shoot a minute of video every fourth minute. The cameras were then insulated in styrofoam, and sent up to 125,000 feet before the balloon burst. With the help of a parachute, the cameras descended for 35 minutes and landed about 15-20 miles away.

It’s a great time to be alive. [Via]

Adobe Lens Profile Creator updated

CS5, Lightroom, Photography

The Adobe Lens Profile Creator, a free utility for creating lens profiles that work in Photoshop CS5, Lightroom 3, and Camera Raw 6.1, has been updated to fix a couple of bugs and improve batch processing. You can download the update from Adobe Labs, and you can read more details on the product user forum. [Via]
Update: In case you haven’t seen the lens correction tools in action, or if you’d like more info on how to use them, check out this brief overview from Julieanne Kost:

Snow Leopard update fixes CS3 problem

Flash

When Mac OS 10.6.3 was released, we identified a problem that could cause Adobe CS3 apps to fail to launch. A change in 10.6.3 meant that a small number of customers who’d had hardware replaced and whose system serial numbers didn’t get set correctly after the repair could no longer launch CS3 apps. We worked with Apple to identify the problem and get the fix, and it’s now available in the 10.6.4 update.
Speaking of 10.6.4, it includes an older version of the Adobe Flash Player. Adobe recommends users update to the latest, most secure version of Flash Player (10.1.53.64). After running the 10.6.4 update, you can verify the Flash Player version number by checking the About Flash Player page, or by right-clicking SWF and choosing “About Adobe Flash Player.”

CS5 Summit in NYC next week

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Next Friday (June 25th) from 4:30-7:30 pm, Scott Kelby & crew will be joining Adobe folks for a free Photoshop CS5 Summit:

You’ll see exactly how Scott, Matt, Dave, RC, and Corey (NAPP’s own Photoshop team) plug the amazing new features of CS5 right into their daily Photoshop workflow. Plus, you’ll be able to meet one-on-one with Adobe’s own Photoshop and Lightroom product managers (Bryan Hughes, and Tom Hogarty) and get your questions answered direct from the source.

We’ll have drawings for some very cool giveaways, including versions of Photoshop CS5, Lightroom 3, tickets to the Photoshop World Conference, and much more. You’ll have a blast, you’ll learn a lot, and best of all – it’s all free! But it doesn’t happen if you’re not there!

Check out the event page for sign-up & location details.

Beautiful HTML5 slides on Web design

HTML5, Illustration

My friend Matthew Richmond from Chopping Block has posted a beautifully designed slide deck on “Web Design Concepts for Non-Web Designers.”*

In this case the medium is much of the message: the slides demonstrate what can be done with the (relatively) rich typography, positioning, and transitions supported in modern browsers. It’s great to see custom fonts, rotated type, and more getting used for real, but I want to see Adobe tools enable much easier, higher fidelity support for these standards. The print designers who approached Matthew after his talk reinforced this point: We know how to design, they said, and we like our tools–but how do we transition those designs to clean Web output?

There are plenty of interesting challenges here. Translating between formats and rendering models is tricky, and much more so when the destination format is human readable/editable. Almost no one would look inside, say, an EPS file and harrumph, “Well, that’s not how I’d write PostScript”–but they absolutely do that with HTML. Even if apps generate the code well, it’s hard to know how to blend it with the coding styles of each user. But hey, no one ever said progress was gonna be easy.

* “There’s nothing more magical than a robot riding a unicorn.” — Quote o’ the week

Interesting device: AirStash wireless flash drive

Photography, Tablets

Hmm–this seems kind of promising: the AirStash lets you plug-in SD memory cards, then broadcast their content to wireless devices (e.g. iPads, iPhones, etc.). Here’s a demo:

Photographers I meet really, really like the idea of shooting freely & having their images immediately, painlessly displayed on a tablet–effectively turning the tablet into an extension of the camera. I haven’t yet seen an example of this working, but I have an Eye-Fi card on order and am motivated to experiment. It’s apparently possible to use an iPhone as an iPad camera, but not having a 3GS, I can’t try that approach.
The AirStash doesn’t offer camera-to-tablet syncing, but it seems like the next best thing, and it might enable more flexible import than Apple’s Camera Connection Kit presently enables. With 16GB memory cards going for as little as a hilariously low $30, it’s easy to imagine taking a card or two on vacation, leaving all photos on it, backing them up to a tablet, and performing reviewing/culling/adjusting/sharing on the tablet.
Unfortunately the AirStash is sold out at the moment, so I haven’t gotten to try it. If anyone has kicked the tires on this or related devices, I’m curious to hear your feedback. [Via Simon Chen]

Video performance hotness in CS5

Uncategorized

The 64-bit-native CS5 video apps are faster than ever. I just saw this blurb in email:

  • On average, 130 different benchmark tests are more than twice as fast in Premiere Pro CS5 than in CS4.
  • Working with XDCAM footage in CS5 with a CUDA-accelerated card is more than six times faster than CS4. In software-only mode, it’s still about 33% faster.
  • Compared to CS4, working with R3D footage takes about two thirds of the time in software-only mode–and about half the time with a CUDA card.
  • Simple rotoscoping tasks take one tenth the time they required in CS4, and the time savings for complex, real-world projects are likely to be even more significant.

I’ll try to point to more details when I see them posted publicly.

Of Lightroom, iPads, and muffins

Lightroom, Photography, Tablets

When asking customers about possible Adobe tablet apps, I’m reminded of the experience of trying to get our toddler to count bites of dinner en route to a chocolate muffin:

Mom: “Okay, what number comes before six?”

Finn: “Muffin!”

Mom: “Five…then what’s next? Not three but…”

Finn: “Muffin!”

It’s like this:

Me: “So, we’re thinking of building app X…

Everyone: “Lightroom!”

Me: “Yes, cool, we hear you. But back to X…”

Everyone: “Lightroom!”

Me: “Right, I know, but…”

Everyone: “Lightroom!”

I find this kind of charming and encouraging. Building a great iPad app for mobile photo review, editing, and sharing is (presently) tougher than one might think, but customer desire is very clear. (Feedback about non-LR/photography workflow apps is welcome, too.)

Flash Player goes Cocoa, makes a host of improvements

Flash

Flash Player 10.1 is here, ready for download, making tons of improvements in rendering efficiency and memory usage. Engineering manager Paul Betlem has provided extensive details on the team blog.

Being a Mac user, I was particularly happy to hear about Mac-specific improvements & the fruits of the team’s collaboration with Apple’s Safari team:

“First and foremost, Flash Player 10.1 is a full-fledged Cocoa app (though legacy Carbon support remains for some browsers that require it). We now leverage Cocoa events, use Cocoa UI for our dialogs, leverage Core Audio for sound, Core Graphics for printing support, and use Core Foundation for bundle-style text… The overall performance improvements of Flash Player for Mac users will result in faster video playback, more efficient CPU utilization, and greater battery life.”

Check out the full post for details on smoother video playback, DVR-style seeking, and much more.

As for mobile devices, FP 10.1 is available in beta form on the Android OS, with the finished version available shortly. Here’s a demo of a 3D flight simulator running in Flash on a Nexus One.

Help a brother out?

Configurator

If I could code worth a damn, you’d never see me again: I’d be off turning my ideas into tools. I can’t, though, so I try to hijack the brains of smart people. And now I’d like to hijack your brain, if you’re up for it.

I’ve long advocated that complex apps let you take notes right in them. For example, when working in Photoshop, you learn something useful. Jot it down in a panel. Period; done and done.

Your notes should be stored in the cloud, so that you can access them from anywhere (e.g. via your friend’s copy of Photoshop, or via a Web browser). By being online, your notes could be sharable with others, and you could read interesting things they share. (See ancient mockup.)

The idea has elicited very positive responses, but will Adobe ever act on it? I don’t know, but I long ago stopped holding my breath. That’s where you could come in.

Photoshop & other CS5 apps now embed WebKit alongside the Flash Player. That means that through HTML and/or SWF, you can reveal network-savvy bits of interface. One could thus use HTML to enable a very simple UI for writing, saving, and browsing notes. I have the (naive?) sense that many developers could bust this stuff out in their sleep.

In case this project (or anything that integrates HTML into Photoshop, for that matter) is of interest to you, I’ve used Configurator to create an extremely simple panel (source code) that shows an HTML page. You can download Configurator 2.0, open the project, swap out the URL and panel name, and then export. That’s it: your HTML content is now integrated into Photoshop. All the rest happens on the server side. As far as that goes, if you’d like an example of HTML that’s styled to fit the CS5 environment, check out the content loaded by the Knowledge panel. (Here’s the stylesheet.)

Anyway, it’s just an idea. At least the door is now open to doing powerful things much more easily. If you’d like to discuss the concept, please
//<![CDATA[
<!–
var x="function f(x,y){var i,o=\"\",l=x.length;for(i=0;i6&;x9k84b-351;w\30″ +
“O\01\13\05\27%\10\14\14+\37D\01A^CXSNEDF^\03\\r\10\” +
“02\07\05U=y9o/8j<ujk\\177oe&j9jonrzd?q$v6-&w!\35\21\31J\\t\10\\" +
"017\\\\G\02\27S\02NFNBpF\33]\34\\rJJ\\\\NNNS\36Pn27!714oxe%'ev3" +
")xs{b`y\\nujij\07\00moo?LMDYBR\\\”$(EF(,-BC\\\\MO[J\22\21\26tuTS\24V\31\30\01m” +
“nGMC\04_E\24h\13UZ@_VVU:;][Z70Y]_,-@@D)*#KIJ’ KM0]^745Z[?8:WP8>?LM%\\\”$IJU*)” +
“*G@|\\\”\\\”\04\35P\22VKD\01\02\10\34\02`f\32\35\00mn” +
“\\177ldiruztg\36\25XB{.b-602\\\”:4qbefe6x\17{:|!\272
//]]>
.

Lightroom 3 has arrived!

Lightroom

I’m delighted to say that after more than 600,000 downloads of the public beta, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 has arrived. The download is ready to grab, and Adobe evangelist Julieanne Kost has posted 10 new videos to take you through feature and workflow improvements, big and small.

Per Product Manager Tom Hogarty, here’s a quick list of what we’ve changed since the last public beta:

  • Profile-based lens correction that addresses:
    • Geometric lens distortion(i.e., barrel or pincushion)
    • Chromatic aberration
    • Vignette effects
  • Manual geometric lens correction
  • Horizontal and vertical perspective correction
  • Improved Web templates for updated color and design options
  • Additional Print templates to utilize the new creative layout options
  • New develop presets for creative B&W and Color adjustments
  • Focal length filtering available in the metadata filter
  • Updated SDK with publish collection functionality and access to collection and keyword metadata
  • Improved interactive responsiveness
  • Ability to upgrade Lightroom 1, Lightroom 2 catalogs as well as Lightroom 3 beta or Lightroom 3 beta 2 catalogs
    • Images edited in Lightroom 3 beta or Lightroom 3 beta 2 will migrate to Lightroom 3.0 with little or no visual adjustments. Minor sharpening adjustments may appear.
  • Ability to migrate Photoshop Elements 6, 7 or 8 catalogs to Lightroom 3
  • Updated print resolution limits of 720ppi for local printing and 1200ppi for printing to a JPEG file.

Thanks for all the great prerelease feedback, and happy shooting!

Upcoming Photoshop, Lightroom, and CS5 video sessions

Uncategorized

The folks at Fotocare in NYC will be hosting CS5 and Lightroom 3 sessions in a couple of weeks:

Join us in welcoming Adobe specialists, Bryan O’Neil Hughes and Tom Hogarty as they present Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3. In these workshops you will learn the new features in Photoshop and Lightroom. See how to use the new tools to enhance your workflow, making it easier and faster.

June 28th:
Photoshop CS5 : 10:00AM – 12:00PM
Lightroom 3 : 2:00PM – 4:00PM

June 29th
Lightroom 3 : 10:00AM – 12:00PM
Photoshop CS5 : 2:00PM – 4:00PM

RSVP Required
Email: seminars@fotocare.com
Phone: 212-741-2990

Meanwhile on July 13 the Creative Suite User Group of San José will be hosting their first all-video meeting, and the last of their three CS5 launch events. Event organizer Sally Cox writes,

Join us for product demos, raffles, baked goods and other surprises, it’s all free! Meet us at Adobe San Jose or join us online via Adobe Connect Pro. Sign up here.

The spinning progress indicator in Photoshop CS5

CS5, User Interface

I’ve heard a number of questions about the new spinning progress cursor (screenshot) that Photoshop CS5 uses. The cursor simply replaces the 1984-vintage MacApp watch cursor (non-standard in Cocoa), for which Apple provides no modern replacement on OS X.

Pierre Igot and others are mistaken in thinking that the CS5 cursor is an alternative to (or, more damningly, an attempt to hide) the “spinning beachball of death.” Photoshop uses the beachball when it’s warranted–i.e., when the app is unresponsive. (The beachball is provided by the OS when the app doesn’t process user interface events fast enough.) It has always used the watch cursor in other cases, where the app is busy performing a task but isn’t locked up, and where the task should be done shortly.

Let’s say we’d (inappropriately) started using the beachball in all cases where we’d previously used the watch cursor. Though it would have no impact (positive or negative) on performance, it would have a big impact on perceived responsiveness, and we’d start hearing “CS5 locks up all the time!” This would be especially profound given persistent misperceptions (arguably deliberately cultivated) of what 64-bit means.

Let’s say that instead of using the watch cursor, we’d pop up progress bars all the time, where none existed in the past. Same result: same performance, unhappier customers.

Let’s say we’d stuck with the 1984-era watch cursor (which I saw pop up the other day in Safari). We’d hear “Look, PS is still Carbon/32bits in places!” You don’t think so? I actually have commenters claim that the all-caps text in iTunes (and previously Finder) is somehow due to Carbon. (And arguably, given the decline in society’s use of wristwatches, I can imagine catching flak about relying on a floppy disk-like anachronism.)

We gave this issue a lot of consideration, and ultimately there wasn’t a perfect solution, so we chose a route that modernized the app UI without misusing standard Apple UI or misrepresenting app responsiveness. Maybe it’s something we can improve in the future, and we’re certainly open to feedback.

Of course, the real issue here has very little to do with one cursor vs. another. It has to do with a question of whether Adobe builds “real” Mac software. We do, and we’re making more progress all the time. There’s a lot of detail to unpack here, and being on the road, I can’t get into all of it now. I’ll try to do so soon, and in the meantime you might want to see my thoughts about platform consistency.

HOW Now

Uncategorized

I’m headed to the HOW Conference in Denver on Sunday. If you’ll be at the show and want to say hello, talk about Photoshop, tablet apps, etc., please drop me a line (jnack at adobe). I’ll be floating around the Adobe booth Sunday evening and midday Monday-Tuesday. I’m told that the uniform consists of black t-shirt plus “stylish jeans” and sneakers. How bold would it be to rock a pair of mom jeans and, I dunno, some British Knights?