Monthly Archives: June 2012

Valve Source Filmmaker

3D

They’re just giving away this new storytelling tool?? From the site:

The Source Filmmaker (SFM) is the movie-making tool built and used by us here at Valve to make movies inside the Source game engine. Because the SFM uses the same assets as the game, anything that exists in the game can be used in the movie, and vice versa. By utilizing the hardware rendering power of a modern gaming PC, the SFM allows storytellers to work in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get environment so they can iterate in the context of what it will feel like for the final audience.


These are the days of miracles & wonder.

What if Photoshop became a game?

CS5, CS6

I think it was Scott Kelby who used to jokingly refer to Photoshop as “a video game for grown-ups.” Truth can be stranger than fiction, though, and now you can “play” Photoshop to improve your skills, learn new features, and actually win prizes.

LevelUp for Photoshop encourages people to explore the app, using features they may not know in order to complete various missions.  The first mission starts with removing redeye, and they get progressively more elaborate from there.  By accumulating points you get entered into drawings to win Creative Cloud membership and Amazon.com gift certificates. You also earn points by sharing your progress on Facebook and Twitter, passing quizzes, and more.  The game runs until July 15th.

My colleague Bruce reports that his 13-year-old son Noel is addicted to the game & now passes challenges with a Team America-style cry of “Photoshop, [Heck] Yeah!” So, we’ve got that going for us. 🙂

Slicy facilitates Retina graphics support

Mobile

MacRabbit’s $20 Slicy PSD-to-PNG conversion app (see previous) has been updated with greater CS6 support plus 

You design at 1x, but need high-res artwork? One annotation, and Slicy magically enlarges your vectors and layer styles to build a high-quality 2x version. For 2x designs, it fills in missing 1x versions by scaling down.

I haven’t tested the feature myself, and as always I’d welcome hearing others’ thoughts about what’s successful and/or what Adobe apps themselves should change to better support this kind of work.

[Also, to preempt questions about Photoshop & other apps being revved to support Retina screens: sorry, I don’t have any new info. I will share more once details are available.]

Developers: A new Adobe Exchange is coming

Suite Development

The extensibility team writes,

Adobe is creating a brand new Adobe Exchange, which will enable developers, trainers, and community experts to promote, distribute, monetize and track their CS6 solutions. These products will be made visible to potential CS6 customers within the “Adobe Exchange” panel in most CS6 applications.

They’re looking for launch partners, so check out their full post for more details.

The team has also created a new Adobe Exchange Packager that encapsulates content for distribution via this new channel.  You can get it by signing up for the Exchange prerelease program.

Lightroom 4 arrives in Creative Cloud

CS6, Lightroom

I’m delighted to say that Lightroom 4 is now available via Creative Cloud subscription.

If you’re a member of Creative Cloud, log into your account to download, install and start using Lightroom 4 today. If you’re not yet a member to Creative Cloud, you can get Photoshop, Lightroom, and other apps for as little as $29.99/month; here’s more info. 

As Photoshop PM Jeff Tranberry writes,

Lightroom coming into Creative Cloud is a good example of why we think people will really love Creative Cloud — we can add new creative tools and members just get them at no additional cost – it’s as simple as that. We’ll be adding even more great stuff to Creative Cloud over time; Lightroom is just the beginning.

If you’re new to LR4 or CS6, check out the list of free learning resources that Jeff has pulled together.

Adobe introduces Brackets, "A free, open-source code editor for the Web"

HTML5

Think Adobe’s just about Dreamweaver & Flash?
The new Brackets app offers inline editors & tight browser integration:

Today we’ve all gotten used to doing the save-reload-copy-paste dance… Brackets opens a live connection to your local browser and brings some of those in-browser tools back into the editor where it makes sense. When Live File Preview is enabled your browser shows real-time changes to CSS classes and properties as you type. Because the code lives in your editor but runs in your browser there is no need to save-reload-copy-paste. w00t!

Brackets is built in JavaScript, HTML and CSS, meaning that “if you use Brackets, you have the skills necessary to customize, extend and contribute to it.” Check out their introductory blog post, and see some of the features in action:

Monkeygram & Jittergram: Animation in your pocket

Illustration, Mobile

I’m a fan of the joyful iPad app Toontastic, saying last year:

The other day I said that creation on tablets would be more about fun, about speed, and about the unbridled pleasure of creation than what we know today. Toontastic is the sort of thing I have in mind.

Now its creators have created Monkeygram, a way to create animations (featuring your face, if you’d like) from your phone. It’s “Toontastic for the rest of us”:

Will “the kids” now start sending each other animations instead of texts? I don’t know, but I dig that these guys are trying.
Elsewhere, Jittergram helps you “make a 3D sterogram or a long stop motion animation… Jittergram makes it easy by showing your previous frame on top of the current camera view so you can line everything up perfectly. It then automatically creates a GIF and makes it super easy to share.”
As soon as my lads are old enough to start creating the stop-motion Lego videos they so enjoy, I think we’ll be all over this one.

This Friday evening: Making photo books in Lightroom

Lightroom

6:30 PM To 8:30 PM at Adobe San Francisco, hosted by members of the LR team:

Making Photo Books in Lightroom! — SF Bay Area Lightroom User Group: This month’s meetup will be in San Francisco, and we’ll discuss the new Book module in Lightroom 4. We’ll go through the complete process of making a book in Lightroom, from start to finish. The presentation will include a description of how to use Auto Layout Presets, which are a powerful tool for quickly and easily making the book you want in as few clicks as possible.

Check out the site to RSVP and for additional details.

Feedback, please: Next steps for Creative Cloud?

Uncategorized

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. 

Creating the Iron Man HUD for The Avengers

After Effects, Illustration

The VFX team at Cantina Creative sat down with Adobe to discuss the incredible attention to detail they put into creating on-screen graphics for Marvel’s The Avengers. From consulting with an A-10 pilot about his “ultimate HUD” to animating thousands of Illustrator elements in After Effects, their process makes for a really interesting read. The move to 3D demanded even tighter craftsmanship:

We focused a lot of time on how widgets and graphics would actually function because everything was clearly readable. Everything in the HUD, even down to the tiny micro-text, relates precisely to the current story-point.

Video: Multi-GoPro skateboarding mayhem

Photography

“What would you do with 50 GoPros at the touch of a button?” Hopefully (though not likely) something this cool. Check out Ryan Sheckler in action, and if nothing else, check out the neat burst effects that show up about 1:33 in:

A couple of weeks ago my friend Bruce & I did strap a couple of GoPros to the belly of a B-24 bomber that took us for a spin. I’ll try to share the footage soon. [Via Bryan O’Neil Hughes]
[Previously: A Skateboard’s-Eye View of Manhattan]

Photoshop PMs & Scott Kelby chatting tomorrow

Uncategorized

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.

Photoshop CS6 & Retina display support

CS6

From the Photoshop Facebook page:

What do the iPhone 4, new iPad and new MacBook Pro have in common?  Awesome Retina displays. Photoshop CS6 appeared onstage at WWDC, showing how we’ll soon provide unparalleled fidelity, power and precision on this exciting new hardware. It’s not ready for prime time just yet, but the team is hard at work to bring what you saw on stage to the desktop in the future!


(Nice to see the prominent use of an eye.) I don’t have further details (date, info about other apps) to share at the moment.
[Update: The release is due this fall (i.e. within the next couple of months). It’s a big task.]

Join the Camera Raw/Lightroom engineering team

Lightroom

Camera Raw—the engine featured in both Lightroom & Photoshop—is the definitive raw-image processing pipeline for professionals. Now there’s a unique opportunity for a badass imaging engineer to join the team. Check out more details here.

[Cynically I sometimes think, “Eh, who reads this damn blog anyway?” But last time I posted something like this, genius Eric Chan saw it, and he’s the reason ACR/LR feature killer noise reduction & many other things. –J.]

Levitation as UI

User Interface

“What if materials could defy gravity, so that we could leave them suspended in mid-air?” ask the creators of ZeroN. “ZeroN is a physical and digital interaction element that floats and moves in space by computer-controlled magnetic levitation.” One could ask questions about precision and practicality, but… holy crap, levitating balls as UI!

[Via]

Inside perspective on how PS CS6 came to be

CS6
  • Photoshop PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes has written the cover story for this month’s Photoshop User magazine. In it he & many other members of the Photoshop team share their perspective on what went into this release (especially after having cleared the hurdles of 64-bit and Cocoa conversion), who exactly builds the app (engineering, QE, localization, user research, etc.), what the heck we PM-types actually do, and more.  The issue isn’t available in HTML form, but you can grab a free copy here and read it through your browser.
  • Photoshop QE manager Jackie Lincoln-Owyang shares some Reflections on the Photoshop CS6 Beta, sharing some interesting stats (312 cases of beer, 9 babies, 2 calls to the SF fire department—all independent, we’re told) and more.

Reflection app brings iPad mirroring to Windows

Tablets

Reflection has been a godsend to those of us who demo iPad apps (no more lugging around an overhead cam!), and now it’s available on Windows as well as Mac:

With Reflection, we’ve been able to bring over all the features of the Mac version to Windows, including recording, full audio streaming, support for multiple devices, and full screen display.

[Via]

[Remember that if you’re demoing Photoshop Touch, you can go into preferences & invoke the “presentation mode” that displays red circles whenever you touch your fingers down. –J.]

CheatSheet app reveals keyboard shortcuts

Uncategorized

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.]

Friday demo: Liquid layout in InDesign

CS6

I know I already pimped a similar demo the other day, but this one features live Q&A.

Interested in learning how to efficiently create multiple versions of a document? Want to learn how to convert your traditional INDD layout for digital output (EPUB or DPS)? You’ll learn all these things, and much, much more at this Ask a CS Pro! Ben Trissel, Lead Quality Engineer on the InDesign team, will show you some of his favorite tricks – big and small – in InDesign CS6!

Friday at noon Pacific.

Security update for Photoshop CS5, 5.1

CS5

Adobe has released a security update for Adobe Photoshop CS5 & CS5.1 for Mac & Windows. This update addresses vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker who successfully exploits these vulnerabilities to take control of the affected system. For an attacker to exploit these vulnerabilities, a user must open a malicious TIF or DAE file inPhotoshop CS5.1, Photoshop CS5, and earlier. Adobe is not aware of any attacks exploiting these vulnerabilities.

You can grab it here. [Update: You can get the Illustrator update here.]

Heads-up for Adobe developers

Suite Development

Adobe is launching a new Adobe Exchange shortly, and

We are actively seeking launch partners for this program and are taking applications now for partners who would like to be added into our beta program.  Launch partners that commit to providing distributable CS6 content in the next 8 to 10 weeks will receive valuable benefits as charter members of the new Adobe Exchange.

You can also sign up for the prerelease program.

Tab through layers to rename them in CS6

CS6, JDI

All the juice is in the last 10 seconds:

As you might expect, Shift-Tab also works, letting you rename a layer, then rename the one above it.
On a related note, Illustrator CS6 now lets you rename layers inline in the Layers panel (i.e. you don’t have to look away to a little dialog box). The same change was the second biggest applause-getter in Photoshop 7, right behind the (then-new) Healing Brush. Details count.

(T)ether: A spatially-aware system for animation & annotation

3D, Multitouch, User Interface

Hey, it’s the return of my (not at all) beloved Nintendo Power Glove!
Cynical take: “Oh, you were bitching that UIs requiring you to lift your hands & touch a screen would make you tired? Wait’ll you have to hold up an iPad in one hand just so you can re-create Lawnmower Man! You’ll be built like Jeff Fahey in no time, tuffy!”
Actual take: Cool!

Check out the project site for more info.
[Via Dave Simons]

Messing with Photoshop users' heads (literally)

CS6

Yes, sometimes we just want to see whether you’re paying attention. A Photoshop CS6 “JDI” feature was to show, at long last, a badge on layers that had “Blend If” properties assigned. Before the final artwork was available, the team put in a placeholder image—which, for reasons never explained to me, featured PM Jeff Tranberry’s head. Man did this freak out the beta testers. “There’s a dude’s face in my layers?!” Mission accomplished. 🙂



[Previously: The toast/coffee easter egg.]