Monthly Archives: September 2012

Engineers: Come build the future of Lightroom

Past is prelude, and these guys are up to some seriously interesting stuff. If you’re a talented engineer interested in working from Minnesota or San Jose, you can help the future arrive faster.

We are particularly interested in candidates with strong backgrounds in digital asset management, performance tuning, and building of well-crafted user interfaces. A passion for photography is a plus.

Check out the full listing. We hope to meet you soon.

Power drill + 5D MKII = Queasy fun

Don’t worry: no DSLRs were, to my knowledge, harmed in the making of this music video—though boy does it test the viewer’s tolerance for motion sickness.

The filmmakers write,

The device is powered by an electric drill, constructed from bicycle and drum parts, wood and metal plates, which was strong enough to allow us to rotate the heavy weight of a Canon 5D MKII stably and at a very high speed. The drill was plugged to a variable speed controller, allowing us to adjust the speed of the cameras rotations by turning a dial.
The setting of the video is the band preforming live in a studio set. The main camera rotates at a selected speed as the band performs. While the camera is rotating, objects such as the skin of the bass drum start to rotate at the same speed as the main camera, giving the effect of those objects becoming static in the frame while everything else is spinning. When a person stands in front of these objects it gives the effect of the person spinning rather than the background.
Other circular boards with graphics are turned on and off running in and out of sync with the main rotating camera. Each of these graphics have variable speed control dials to adjust their speed.

Here’s the making-of:

[Via]

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.

Animation: A building's windows as pixels

The 11 floors tower of the HESAV (Health High School Vaud) has been animated as a rudimentary screen whose pixels are, in fact, all the windows and shutters that students, staff and friends shake for hours


The second half of the vid features making-of content, and a participant writes,

[It took] Just a couple of hours with the instructions. We NEVER did all the combos you can see in the video, just twice or three times all windows / shutters positions, all together at the same time. The rest is all post production.

[Via]

Adobe introduces Edge Web Fonts

How cool is this?

Edge Web Fonts gives you access to a vast web font library made possible by contributions from Adobe, Google, and designers around the world. The fonts are served by Typekit, so you can be sure of high performance and stability. Plus, it’s free!

Learn all about it (and about how Adobe’s releasing new open-source fonts, working to improve the quality of fonts created by others, and more) on the Typekit blog.

Creative Cloud adds publishing to iPad

We weren’t kidding when we said that as a Creative Cloud subscriber you’d get access to more & more benefits.

Adobe added Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition to the Creative Cloud today. Members can now create and deliver single-issue content for the iPad —such as brochures or personal design portfolios— without writing a single line of code.

This used to cost $400 per title published. Now you get unlimited publishing—along with InDesign and the rest of the Master Collection—for $49/mo. (or $29/mo. if you own a previous CS app). #progress

Check it out in action, and see more details here:

The Girl With The Photoshop Tattoo

How great is this?? Designer Megan Orsi writes,

When I was in high school, I spent every waking moment in Photoshop creating websites and collages for my favorite show, The X-Files (don’t laugh!). Thankfully, all of the time I spent paid off and now I’m able to use my Photoshop skills on a daily basis doing a job I love. Photoshop’s been a big part of my past, and now, it will always be a part of my future. Thanks, Adobe 😉
Hope everyone enjoys the Photoshop Toolbar Tattoo =D

Fantastic. (Your move, Goran Peuc. :-)) [Update: Tom Hogarty has posted more info about & from Megan on the Photoshop team blog.]


[Via Mike Giordano]

New Adobe HTML5 announcements due Monday

Check it out:

On Monday Sept. 24 Adobe will be hosting a free, full-day event for web designers and developers who want to learn more about the latest techniques to create content for the modern web. The event will kick off with a keynote where Adobe will introduce new web tools and technologies followed by in-depth sessions around HTML5, CSS3, motion graphics, and more.

The keynote will feature Jeff Veen (Typekit, etc.) and others starting at 10am event Pacific time, and it’ll stream live on html.adobe.com.

A new Photoshop extension detects image manipulation

I’m excited to announce that the company founded by my old boss & friend Kevin Connor, working together with image authenticity pioneer Dr. Hany Farid, has released their first product, FourMatch—an extension for Photoshop CS5/CS6 that “instantly distinguishes unmodified digital camera files from those that may have been edited.” From the press release:

FourMatch… appears as a floating panel that automatically and instantly provides an assessment of any open JPEG image. A green light in the panel indicates that the file matches a verified original signature in FourMatch software’s extensive and growing database of more than 70,000 signatures. If a match is not found, the panel displays any relevant information that can aid the investigator in further assessing the photo’s reliability.

Check it out in action, and see also coverage in the NY Times:

One other neat detail:

Fourandsix will donate 2 percent of their proceeds from the sale of this software to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). The donation will support NCMEC efforts to find missing children and prevent the abduction and sexual exploitation of children. 

Interpolate Extension for Photoshop CS6

Newly available via Adobe Labs:

Smoothly blend between colors in Photoshop CS6.

The Interpolate extension for Adobe® Photoshop® CS6 (currently for Mac only) provides two new filters based on smoothly blending between colors.

The first filter, “Interpolate,” fills the transparent areas of the current layer with a smooth mix of the colors in the opaque areas.

The second filter, “Match Edges,” changes the colors at the edges of the current layer to match those of the layer below it, and smoothly distributes this change through the layer.

Photoshop & Windows XP: End of the line

PM Tom Hogarty writes,

The Photoshop team would like to provide advanced notice that Photoshop CS6 (13.0) will be the last major version of Photoshop to support Windows XP. (Photoshop CS6 does not support Windows Vista.) In addition, all subsequent Photoshop feature updates specifically for Creative Cloud members will no longer support Windows XP.

As Tom notes, a number of new features in CS6 (those relying on modern graphics hardware, such as 3D and the new Lighting Effects engine) already weren’t supported on XP.

We encourage all customers who are currently using Windows XP to begin making their migration plans now so they can fully take advantage of future Photoshop innovations as soon as they are available.

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.”

Typography: Every single Unicode character in sequence

Why, exactly, Joerg Piringer decided to make a 30-minute movie that “shows all displayable characters in the unicode range 0-65536 (49571 characters), one character per frame,” I can’t really imagine. Just to honor its sheer craziness, however, I share it here:

“The sound is me reciting the alphabet (in German). One letter per frame.” Here’s more info on the project. [Via Carolina DeBartolo]

New: Switch from Final Cut or Avid to Creative Cloud, save 40%

Here’s a ridiculously good deal: Switch from FCP or Avid to Adobe Creative Cloud (which includes Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Illustrator, and much more) for just $29.99/mo. for 12 months

Step up to Premiere Pro CS6, including more than 50 new features designed to make switching easier. Final Cut and Avid keyboard shortcuts, tight integration with After Effects and Photoshop, unmatched performance, and more help you conquer even your most demanding projects.

She's a Rainbow

  • Gorgeous: “American artist Tauba Auerbach presents the 8 x 8 x 8-inch hard-back cubes illustrating the RGB color scheme in a page-by-page medium. a digital offset print on paper with airbrushed cloth cover and book edges create a colorful reference volume of all the colors in existence.” [Via Chris Peppel]

  • 99 Shades of Grey: As CreativePro writes, “For pledges ranging from $1 to $99, backers can get the book in soft-cover, hard-cover, or ebook formats, t-shirts, posters, and the privilege of naming a particular shade of grey.”

 

 

Or as someone just quipped about the Illustrator 1.0 video I uploaded a while back, “ANY SHADE OF GREY I WANT! <3”

 

 

Atari uses Flash Pro to make… HTML5?

The job’s never been about Flash per se; it’s been about helping people express themselves & solve problems. Flash Professional (the authoring tool) is a great way for animators to create assets for multiple runtimes (HTML or Flash Player):

The project involved creating multitudes of animated assets to create touch-friendly games with rich content. Yes, you guessed it right, Flash Professional CS6 along with the Toolkit for CreateJS extension and some custom JSFL was used to carry out this mammoth task of preparing assets.


Here’s more info.

Photoshop Touch goes high res: Now supports big images, Retina

Addressing the biggest requests from customers, a free update for Photoshop Touch is now available for iPad and Android tablets:

 

  • Retina Display Support: See your images like never before with the Retina display on the new iPad.
  • Higher resolution capabilities: Work on high-resolution images while maintaining the highest image quality. Supports images up to 12 megapixels. 
  • Two new languages: Russian and Brazilian Portuguese. 
  • Two new Effects: Shred and Colorize 
  • Smoother animation and scrolling in the organizer, tutorial browser, and file picker 
  • New gesture to toggle 100% view and fit screen (three-finger tap) 
  • New pixel nudging mode for precise movements 
  • Support for Apple Photo Stream 
  • Various bug fixes

 

What do you think? Where should we go from here?

 

Introducing Adobe Anywhere: Badass video collaboration

I’m delighted that Adobe has officially unveiled Adobe Anywhere, our collaborative workflow platform for video. You can use After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Prelude to manipulate assets on a server, letting people team up across locations, devices, and networks.
Seeing is believing: I’ve gotten to sit next to PM Michael Coleman as he cruises through high-res video on his MacBook Air, and you’d swear he was tethered to a brawny machine under the desk–not talking via WiFi to a server hundreds of miles away. Here’s a quick demo:

I’m especially proud as this is the project that the other leading Adobe Nack, my wife Margot, has been working on for quite some time. Congrats to the whole team!

Insane in the literal membrane

The crazy nerds at Backyard Brains have created “the world’s first cephalo-iPod,” pumping Cypress Hill through the body of an unsuspecting squid:

An iPod plays music by converting digital music to a small current that it sends to tiny magnets in the earbuds. The magnets are connected to cones that vibrate and produce sound.
Since this is the same electrical current that neurons use to communicate, we cut off the ear buds and instead placed the wire into the fin nerve. When the iPod sends bass frequencies (<100Hz) the axons in the nerves have enough charge to fire an action potential. This will in turn cause the muscles in the chromatophores to contract.


[Via]

HTML5 animation session tomorrow

The Adobe Edge Animate team is doing a live presentation/Q&A tomorrow, Tuesday the 4th, at noon Pacific:

Join our Ask a Pro next Tuesday to get an up close and personal look at what’s new in Preview 7. Our fearless Product Manager Sarah Hunt will cover new features like resizable layouts, enhancements to the timeline and stage, and much more. Sarah will also show you how to add interactivity to your compositions, as requested by our fans.

Register here.