Can this possibly be real? In any case, Happy Halloween!
Monthly Archives: October 2012
Tutorial: Toning Black and White Photographs in Lightroom 4
In this episode of The Complete Picture Julieanne explains the best way to add a color tone to an image using the Split Tone and Tone Curve panels and shows how to save presets to increase your productivity. You can download the presets discussed in the video via Julieanne’s blog. Note: although this video was recorded in Lightroom, the same techniques are available in Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CS6.
Fascinating dog photography (no, really)
- Tim Flach (mentioned last year) has returned with more striking, sculptural work in his “Dog Gods” series.
- How visually cool are Underwater Dogs? Cooler than I’d have thought! Petapixel writes, “His process involves using an underwater housing to bring his camera into a pool, and then training each dog to slowly fetch balls deeper and deeper into the water. When the dog becomes confident enough to plunge its entire body into the pool, that’s when the magic begins to happen… He says that he has now photographed over 300 dogs”–and one wolf!
Check it out:
Windows 8, Photoshop CS6, and Lightroom
From PM Jeff Tranberry:
We’re happy to announce that Photoshop CS6, Lightroom 4 and Elements 11 are compatible with Microsoft Windows 8.
The only issue customers might see is with document window transparency/flickering in Photoshop CS6 caused by video drivers. The drivers that ship with Windows 8 may not be the most recent available from the card vendors. See here to resolve this issue.
See the rest of Jeff’s post for a few additional details & links.
Drone octo-copter + goggles = Aerial photography radness
“A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool?…” Um, this? Core77 writes,
Danish shooter Ebsen Nielsen has made the latest advancement: After cobbling together an octo-copter from several different manufacturers’ kits, he rigged up a way to send a live feed from the camera to a pair of goggles he wears, enabling him to fly it from a first-person POV.
In a related vein, how about a climb up Pakistan’s 20,000ft Trango Towers? Stick around (or skip) to about 1:30. #HNL
[Via]
Live demo/Q&A: Learn to switch to Premiere Pro
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.
"Cut&Slice me" helps Photoshop target Web, mobile
Cut&Slice me looks like an interesting free add-on to Photoshop CS6. According to the site:
- Create overlapping slices exporting only what you need in the minimal time with the maximum detail: no more cut gradients.
- Export easily your button states
- One Design to rule all resolutions: For iPhone design for Retina, for Android design for xhdpi and then export to ldpi, mdpi and hdpi with only one click.
I haven’t yet gotten to try it out, so feel free to post feedback.
Pilot's-eye views, human & seagull
Pilot Jakub Vlk captured & accelerated footage out the front of his aircraft:
[Via]
Better still, a seagull kept pace by taking off with a running GoPro!
Upcoming Photoshop CS6 system requirements changes
Photoshop PM Jeff Tranberry has posted a heads-up regarding Photoshop System Requirement Changes:
Back in September, the Photoshop team provided advanced notice that Photoshop CS6 (13.0) will be the last major version of Photoshop to support Windows XP.
In addition, all subsequent Photoshop feature updates specifically for Creative Cloud members will also require 512 MB of vRAM in order to use the 3D features found in Photoshop CS6 Extended.
See the whole post for more details.
The story behind the cover of Joy Division’s "Unknown Pleasures"
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]
3D Puppetry: A Kinect-based Interface for 3D Animation
Our system allows puppeteers to directly perform animations using physical toys in front of a Kinect depth sensor. Our system tracks the puppets in real time and re-renders them in a virtual scene using stored 3D models. We combine the ease-of-use of a physical puppet show with the 3D camera and lighting controls afforded by animation software.
VSCO Keys customizes Lightroom shortcuts
Visual Supply Co., makers of popular image adjustment presets for Lightroom, has announced VSCO Keys. According to the press release,
VSCO Keys™, a powerful keyboard shortcut tool created to drastically reduce image editing time in Adobe Lightroom 4 and Lightroom 3. Fully customizable, lightning fast and economically priced… Using the VSCO Keys online app, photographers can add, change or delete shortcut keys, or even save multiple keyboard configurations.
Teaser:
They note,
We’re not automating the mouse; you’ll notice sliders just move by themselves when you press a key. This allows us to access all tools and presets in Lightroom’s Develop Panel, not just what’s visible and clickable on the screen. It also enables the user to edit their photos in any mode or layout of Lightroom. You can even hide all the panels and it will still work… VSCO Keys is totally customizable through the online app, allowing you to assign any tool in the Develop Panel, any preset, and most Lightroom shortcuts to any key on the keyboard to suite your own needs.
Demo:
VSCO Keys costs $79 (or $59.25 for users of other VSCO products).
Friday Demo/Q&A: New features in Edge Inspect (formerly Shadow)
Friday at noon Pacific, engineer Mark Rausch will show off the latest from Adobe’s tool for previewing & inspecting Web designs on devices:
Recent enhancements include the ability to install a custom local Weinre server, integration with JS Bin, localhost configurations with xip.io. Learn what’s coming down the pipeline and share your feedback with the product team.
Here’s a 2-minute peek at Edge Inspect in action:
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]
Adobe photography events in NYC this week
Photo Plus Expo is drawing a range of Adobe folks & expert artists (Julieanne Kost, John Paul Caponigro, Dan Marcolina, Bryan O’Neil Hughes, and many others) to New York. Check out some of the interesting talks going on all week.
Richard Koci Hernandez on photography
“The simplest way to describe Richard [Koci Hernandez],” says my friend Michael Ninness, “is that he is the ultimate evangelist for new storytelling tools.” Richard spent many years working as a photojournalist for the SJ Mercury News before becoming a professor at Berkeley.
Now he’s put together a full-throated defense ostensibly of using Instagram, but really more about democratized image-making, the value of filtering/manipulation, and more. I think you’ll find it interesting:
"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!
The new GoPro looks amazing
It’s said to be “30% smaller, 25% lighter & 2X more powerful than previous models. New resolutions and frame rates include 4K @ 15fps, 1080 @ 60fps, and 720 @ 120fps. It also offers 12MP burst photo capture at 30 fps.” Oh, and it has built-in WiFi, for $399 (or down to $199 minus some resolutions/rates). Wild.
fxphd writes,
While much of the popular press may focus on the jump to 4K, we wanted to flag the incredible shift from being a ‘straight to YouTube’ camera to a camera that now also offers a very real alternative for those wanting to intercut GoPro footage – a pipeline that assumes there will be grading, that there will be post, and outputs from the camera in a format that lets you maximize both.
[Via Colin Stefani]
A new Photoshop panel for learning CS6 features
Check out the new Photoshop Features panel:
Created with Adobe Configurator 3, the Photoshop Features panel lets you easily explore, try out and learn the new and enhanced tools and features in Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CS6 Extended. Arranged in a series of tabs, from the panel you can check out the new tools and features, access the timeline tools and capabilities for video and frames, go to video tutorial websites and if you have Photoshop Extended use all the major 3D tools and functions.
The panel is free and exclusively available on Adobe Exchange. To download it you will need the Adobe Exchange panel which currently works with 9 different CS6 applications.
[Via Jonathan Ferman]
A beautiful "Berlin Hyper-Lapse"
Shahab Gabriel Behzumi shot for six days, then produced this rather eye-popping piece.
He writes,
I had to import and customize the NEF files before I equalized them with the great LR-Timelapse from Gunther Wegner. (Adobe Lightroom is necessary) The observed JPEG had then to be droped into virtual dub and were rendered as AVI. When this was done, I had to stabilize the sequences manually frame by frame (AE motion tracker) and rendered each of them in 3 different sizes: (4928×3264 pixels, 1920×1080 pixels, 1024×768 pixels) Last but not least the snippets were edited fitting to the beautiful title “Diving Through The Blue” by the respectable composer and musician Valentin Boomes.
Filmmaker Philip Bloom talks about switching to Premiere Pro
“It is simply better than anything else out there.”
Cassanet: A typography homage in flesh & blood
What a fun idea from Spanish studio Atipo: “To promote our new typeface Cassannet [a free download], based on the style of lettering seen on Cassandre posters, we’ve recreated on flesh and blood the famous triptych “Dubo, Dubon, Dubonnet”.
[Via]
"Empty America": A San Francisco Time Lapse
“Ross Ching, the director,” writes Gizmodo, “used Adobe Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere to delete every human and moving car from all the timelapse sequences. His short, the first of a series called Empty America, shows every landmark from the Golden Gate Bridge to Fisherman’s Wharf to Lombard Street to Ghirardelli Square to the Bay Bridge, ‘wiped empty of tourists and traffic.'”
Here’s a peek behind the scenes:
Pro tip: You can shoot videos like this any day of the week here in San Jose (population 1 million) and never need to do any post-processing. “It’s more necropolis than metropolis,” says my wife. [Via Dave Helmly]
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.]
How to tune Photoshop CS6 for peak performance
Photoshop performance expert Adam Jerugim has posted a detailed guide to optimizing Photoshop for peak performance. No single configuration is ideal for all types of work:
What type of Photoshop user are you?
[…] The photographer who regularly processes high-resolution images will greatly benefit from increasing the amount of system RAM available to Photoshop, whereas the designer who works with 3D models will obtain far better performance by installing a faster video card containing more video RAM. So, itemize the tasks that you regularly perform in Photoshop and then use the recommended setup details contained in this paper as the basis for optimizing your system.
Check out the guide for a discussion of how 64-bit, RAM, scratch disks, and more affect various operations. [Via]
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]
Red Bull Racing tears through Lincoln Tunnel
Getting the weekend off to a rather fast start:
[Via]
Demo: The Graduated Filter and Adjustment Brush in Lightroom 4
Julieanne Kost writes,
In this episode of The Complete Picture (The Graduated Filter and Adjustment Brush), discover the power of making selective adjustments like dodging and burning, color corrections and noise removal using the Graduated Filter and Adjustment Brush. Note: although this video was recorded in Lightroom, the same techniques are available in Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CS6.
[Via Jeff Tranberry]
"Get your scanner to work with Photoshop CS6"
Over at Macworld, Jay J. Nelson has a useful summary of ways to get your scanner to work with Photoshop CS6. He describes various architectural changes that have complicated the process over the years, and he lists workarounds for problems like scanning not working on OS X 10.8. [Via Bryan O’Neil Hughes]
Tutorial: Gradients Galore in Illustrator
Looks like a deep & interesting tour from Adrian Taylor. Says Smashing Magazine,
This extended video tutorial covers a wide variety of topics including basic gradient tools (0:30), the appearance pannel and multiple gradient fill layers (2:30), creating gradients with the blending tool (3:45), gradient strokes (6:30), gradient mesh (7:45), using gradients with type (14:00), wrapping gradients with envelope distort (16:30), and using opacity masks.
HTML5: Announcing WebPlatform Docs
Adobe has teamed up with Apple, Facebook, Google, HP, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, Opera, and the W3C to deliver the new Web Platform Docs (WPD) on webplatform.org. WPD aims to become “the most comprehensive and authoritative resource for web technologies on the planet.” And to enable everyone to contribute, WPD is implemented as a wiki.
Here’s a bit more info from Adobe engineering manager Arno Gourdol.
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.]
Maily: Visual email for kids
Being the dad of young boys, and being really eager to encourage their drawing-skill development, I’m intrigued by Maily:
Especially designed for kids from 4 years old, Maily allows your kids to send quirky, personalized emails to mom and dad, their grandparents or close friends easily, rapidly, and securely.
Your kids can now create and send their own emails, using elements like digital pencils, brushes, photos, personalized backgrounds, stickers, and their most commonly used expressions.
[Via]
ColoRotate offers 3D color exploration, Photoshop integation
Offering sort of “Kuler on steroids,” the new ColorRotate iPad app enables interesting ways to create & share color palettes. It offers “powerful tools for extracting from images, adjusting with blends, making precise edits, or generating fresh ideas with randomized palettes.”
CreativePro.com writes,
Perhaps best of all, ColoRotate can work seamlessly with Adobe Photoshop CS5 or CS6. The app synchronizes in real-time with Photoshop so when you make changes to the Photoshop foreground and background colors, those changes are simultaneously reflected in the app. The app can also load the image from the current Photoshop window and add the current palette to Photoshop’s Swatches panel.
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]
FilterHub utility enhances Photoshop's filter chops
Harald Heim’s FilterHub looks like a cool way to run filters (enabling multi-layer application of filters, creation of Smart Objects, and more).
According to the product page, the panel lets you:
- Run filters fast and conveniently (e.g. with a double click) without navigating the Filter menu
- Apply the last effect of any filter (not just the last used one) without displaying its dialog
- Paint or erase filter effects with the brush tool
- Favorites list for quickly running your preferred filters and plugins
- Display either all filters, only third party plugins or filters that match a search string
- Run multiple filters (from the favorites list) with one click
- Apply a filter on multiple layers in one pass
- Even better: Run multiple filters on multiple layers with a single operation
- Apply all filters to smart objects, even those filters that normally do not support it.
- If a filter does not support an image mode, the image is converted to a supported mode.
- Before running a filter it can automatically create a duplicated layer, a merged copy of all layers (stamped layer), a smart object or flatten the image.
- Visit the homepage of a selected filter (only in Photoshop CS5/CS6)
The panel costs $39.95, or $24.95 for students.
[Via]
The DNG format evolves to support HDR, more
The Digital Negative format lets you convert your proprietary-format raw files (NEF, CR2, etc.) into a format that’s fully publicly documented (more future-proof). Now the standard has been extended to support 32-bit floating point data (capable of representing hundreds of f-stops of dynamic range), plus optional lossy compression (JPEG-like sizes with the flexibility of raw), and more. Check out the DNG 1.4 specification notes on the Lightroom Journal for more info.
Painting a McLaren with lasers
They kinda had me at “Marshmallow Laser Feast,” but boy this is beautiful:
Working with McLaren we were able to process their wind tunnel airflow data and score out paths for individual trails of light. Each frame was then sliced into 650 frames that represent depths of 3D space and a plasma screen, mounted on a motion control rig, was used as a 3D light printer to play back the 650 slices as it moved through the space. We then repeated the move a thousand times for each frame of the animation and with each frame the camera, mounted on another motion control rig, moved a few millimeters so that over the course of the shoot we were able to create the effect of a moving camera.
[Via Adam Pratt & Gizmodo]
Video: Artists illustrate the mysteries of science
Check out this lovely trailer for The Where, the Why, and the How: 75 Artists Illustrate Wondrous Mysteries of Science:
[Via]
New Adobe Inspire Magazine available
The October issue of Adobe’s Inspire Magazine is now available on the App Store (for iPad) and on the web at inspire.adobe.com. New stories:
- How we created the iPad edition of Inspire Magazine
- Interview with Hydro74 (aka Joshua M. Smith)
- Projects that inspire
- 10 steps: Simple website with Dreamweaver CS6
- Four cool features you can use with HTML5 today
- Putting Adobe Edge Animate to the test for a great cause
- Adobe Touch Apps in the workplace
- Patterns with Adobe Ideas and Illustrator CS6
- Q & A with Ajaz Ahmed of AKQA
- Cover art by Joshua M. Smith
- ADVERTS: Edge Tools and services | Adobe Touch Apps
HTML5: Adobe's Contributions to the Web Platform
Vincent Hardy, director of the Web Platform Group, talks about enabling better effects and interactivity, authoring surfaces, and creating mobile apps with web standards.
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.
Backyard shenanigans at 2,400fps
“So what do you do,” asks Brad Kremer, “when you have a day off and a $300,000 camera package sitting at your house? Invite all of the neighborhood kids and throw a water balloon party of course! Duh!”
Having enjoyed this sort of thing with stills, I’d love to try it with high-speed video. [Via Mark Kawano]
What's new in Photoshop Elements 11?
Power or simplicity? How about both? PSE 11 features a totally overhauled interface & much more. Here’s a 1-minute tour:
And if you’re up for trying a bit of filmmaking, check out the new Premiere Elements:
Get started in Adobe's open-source HTML editor, Brackets
The new Edge Code product is built on an open-source effort called Brackets. Check out some key features:
Lightroom 4.2 now available
The update (Mac, Win) supports support for 22 new cameras & several dozen new lens combos while also squashing a number of bugs. For details check out the Lightroom Journal.
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?
New Dreamweaver features for Creative Cloud members; demo/Q&A Friday
Check it:
Dreamweaver CS6 just released a major update via our Creative Cloud. Learn about the enhanced HTML5 support for Forms and Semantic tags, integration with Edge Animate, and the ability to easily insert HTML audio and video into projects. Plus, meet our new DW Product Manager, Alejandro Gutierrez. Bring your Dreamweaver questions! Join us Friday (10/5 at 12 pm PT).
Here’s a taste of the new functionality in action: