After an amazingly successful run, today’s the last day to get in on a great offer:
With Creative Cloud, you can download every Adobe post-production tool — including Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop, along with Adobe Prelude™ for logging, SpeedGrade™ for color grading, and Story Plus for scriptwriting — for just US$29.99 a month.
Use Production Premium promo code: SWITCH. Creative Cloud discount applied automatically. Hurry, offer ends November 30, 2012. See details.
National Geographic and the Cincinnati Zoo teamed up to create some captivating footage:
Using a Phantom camera filming at 1200 frames per second while zooming beside a sprinting cheetah, the team captured every nuance of the cat’s movement as it reached top speeds of 60+ miles per hour.
Stick around ’til 5:40 or so to see the contraption used to drive the camera. Watching the cat pursue the stuffed target, my wife sat next to me & quietly whispered “Get it, get it, get it!” [Via Danny Smythe]
“Tornado seeds! Giant magnets! Dynamite! Rocket-powered roller skates!” writes illustrator Rob Loukotka. “I spent over 100 hours illustrating, designing, and researching this one poster.”
The fictional ACME Corporation appeared in nearly all 43 Coyote & Road Runner cartoons from 1949-1994. They make any product you can imagine. I’ve loved The ACME Corporation since I was a kid because they’re a true dream factory.
How amazing would it be if The ACME Corporation were real? That’s why I made this poster; to make our world a little crazier.
Pressure-sensitive drawing is at last available on iPad, and I’m delighted that Photoshop Touch (available via the Apple App Store, Google Play, and the Amazon Appstore) now supports the Pogo Connect, Jot Touch and JaJa Stylus. The app has also been tuned to support smaller tablets. PM Stephen Nielson writes,
Photoshop Touch 1.4 is now optimized to work on smaller devices, including the iPad mini, Google Nexus 7, and Amazon Kindle Fire 7-inch and 8.9-inch devices. In fact, Photoshop Touch 1.4 will work on any Android 3.1 or later device with at least a 7-inch screen and a resolution of 1024×600.
Other new features:
Check out Jeff Chow’s (now funded) Kickstarter project:
What do you think? It’s great-looking, but I remain a bit skeptical about using touchscreens (which obviously lack the physical variation of a keyboard or dedicated hardware controller) in this way. If you’re a Photoshop user with an iPad, are you using Adobe Nav–and if not, why not? I suspect the problem is that one has to keep glancing over at a touch screen, whereas one can navigate a keyboard (or physical jog wheel, etc.) simply by feel. Yet the concept remains alluring, so I’m curious about others’ assessment.
[Via James Cox]
Oh good Lord. Petapixel says, “Director Arturo Perez Jr…. snapped a total of 1905 iPhone photos around San Francisco to capture the story.”
The band writes, “This is the very first music video done entirely on Instagram without any third party alterations. Every single frame of this music video is an actual picture that we ran through Instagram. We never shot any video. We only shot still photography.”
I’m getting a repetitive-stress disorder just thinking about the creation process.
With version 2.5 Adobe’s vector-based drawing app for iPad & iPhone has just taken some big steps forward. The points below understate the impact, but in early reviews customers seem to be really enjoying the changes.
- Three new drawing tools with unique stroke characteristics.
- Ability to quickly fill areas with color.
- Duplicate, merge and flip layers horizontally or vertically.
- Enhanced eyedropper tool lets you easily compare and match colors in different parts of your artwork.
Remember to sign up for the event coming Dec. 11th:
[Via Pierre-Etienne Courtejoie]
“Drawing a perfect curly, swirly Stroke with varying widths,” points out Jeff Witchel, “used to be a tedious task requiring a steady hand and a tremendous amount of ability using the the Pen tool.” In this tutorial he shows off how variable-width strokes in Illustrator make tricky looks much easier to pull off.
We’ve just launched the Adobe Translation Center. As the team explains,
The translation community represents the voice of the customer. This program enables the user community to provide quick, direct feedback about our products and content.
We created this program to achieve two key objectives:
- Enable user feedback to improve the quality of translations of “Adobe languages” (those already supported).
- Help users contribute to new “community languages”. Those are languages that individual Adobe products don’t currently support and where community contributions may give us an indication which languages Adobe should consider for product inclusion.
You can connect with the team via Twitter and Facebook, and on the globalization team blog.
“I’m a successful social media consultant, even though I’ve never had a thought or original idea in my life. But, because my firm charges lots of money, we’ve put social media on some of the tongues of some of the biggest companies in the world.”
Enjoy.
[Via]
The folks at Linden Lab have whipped up Creatorverse, what looks to be a super simple way to create drawing imbued with physics. Here, I’ll let them explain:
Designed by Alex Fowkes, reports CreativePro.com,
The Sony Music Timeline celebrates 125 years of musical history covering almost 150 square meters of wall space in Sony’s Derry Street offices. Using just CNC cut vinyl as the sole medium, 54 columns measuring over 2 meters tall cover feature nearly 1000 of Sony Music’s signed artists from 1887 to the present day.
Sting (yes, that Sting) says, “When Tim Jahnigen came to me with his idea for a football or ‘soccer’ ball that could be played on any surface and would never need a pump and never go flat, I immediately thought of all the millions of children and young people who could use the ball in refugee camps, conflict zones, and poor communities all over the world.” What a cool problem to attack with design.
[Via]
A great city finally gets its tilt-shift due. I can’t wait to take our lads there for Christmas.
[Via Terri Stone]
Bonus miniaturized water traffic: The “Toy Boats” of Sydney harbor, which Nathan Kaso created by applying a tilt-shift effect in Photoshop, then compiling in LRTimelapse & After Effects, and finally editing in Premiere Pro CS6.
[Via]
The event we initially announced for Dec. 5 has been pushed back one week. As a reminder,at Create Now Live, you’ll:
- Be one of the first to hear what’s next in Adobe® Creative Cloud™.
- See what’s next in Adobe Photoshop®.
- Explore ways to take your design skills from print to online and mobile.
- Learn how teams can work better together with Creative Cloud.
- Learn from creative innovators.
- Iconic design agency Karlssonwilker talks about taking their unique design sensibility to the web.
- Go behind the scenes of “A Liars Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman” with Animation Director Justin Weyers.
- Scott Kelby shows off hidden gems in Photoshop CS6.
Today Adobe’s previewing the Creative Cloud Connection (download it here), a utility that syncs files on your computer with those in the Adobe Creative Cloud. (Remember, you get 20GB of storage when you subscribe to Creative Cloud, and you get 2GB for free just for signing up.)
So, who cares? Don’t you already get something similar with Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.? Yes and no. It’s true that the basic concept is familiar, but Adobe will roll out some really unique capabilities over time. (Trust me, I’m working on some.) For now we’re starting with the basics. VP Jeff Veen writes,
Any file you place into the Creative Cloud folder on your desktop will be available at creative.adobe.com, where it’s easy to browse, get links to share publicly, and leave comments. In fact, if the files were created by one of the Creative Suite apps, you can do even more: manipulate layers on a Photoshop document, page through an InDesign file, or generate a PDF of your work to share with others.
We’ve got lots to come, as well. Up next, we’ll add even more collaboration features, including the ability to share privately with workgroups as well as browse and restore previous versions of files.
Think they could give me riddim? Fast Company explains:
During the synth intro, you see five sets of arms wiggle listlessly. When the beat kicks in, they pump with a bit more rhythm. But the faceless performers aren’t dancing–well, at least not of their own volition. Instead, they’re serving as a human visualizer, shocked into action (literally) by carefully placed electrodes.
Adobe’s Web experts are traveling around the US, China, India, Mexico, Chile, and Brazil over the next month, showing how the company’s advancing Web standards & tooling. Check out html.adobe.com for dates & details.
Bryan O’Neil Hughes uses presets in the new Color Lookup adjustment layer to add automatic toning to photos and video, then customizes the adjustments with blend modes and opacity.
Julieanne Kost writes:
If you or someone you know is in the early stages of exploring Photoshop, there’s a new learning destination that’s worth a visit. Photoshop for Beginners is a sub-forum on Adobe.com that is tailor-made for newcomers to the powerful but complex software.
Ask any question in Photoshop for Beginners and you’ll receive an answer that emphasizes visuals — including video how-tos — and steers clear of unnecessary jargon.
Remember that Wayne’s World “Camera one, camera two!” scene where he opens & closes one eye at a time? (No, you probably weren’t born when that came out; but I digress.) Lytro’s “perspective shift” feature works a bit like that, letting you switch among two subtly different points of view on the same scene:
It’s cool, though my big hope here remains that such technology offers a better way to select elements in a photo by detecting their varying depths. [Via]
Seriously? Wow.
[Via]
Photoshop PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes discusses techniques to achieve opposite effects.
Simulating shallow depth of field [Note: this is a talk, not a tutorial]:
Flexible sharpening via Smart Objects:
“It’s the most fun you can have with lasers without a cat,” they say. Hmm—be that as it may, I have a hard time imagining people shelling out $179 and then using this thing comfortably. Still clever, though.
[Via Guy Nicholas]
By very popular demand, Photoshop Touch now supports the new Kindle Fire & Kindle Fire HD. The new version of the app is available for purchase in the Amazon Appstore for US$9.99. According to the Photoshop.com team blog,
This means that Photoshop Touch is optimized for both 8.9-inch and 7-inch screens, giving users a great experience on all recent Kindle Fire devices. (This does not include the 1st generation Kindle Fire, but only the newer devices running Android 4.0.)
The Photoshop Touch team is constantly looking at new devices and form factors and is committed to bringing the core Photoshop features to new devices. Please keep an eye out for additional updates coming and make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
I like this list from Gov.uk:
Check out the whole post for details & examples of each.
In September I mentioned some great photos of the Shuttle Endeavor flying over San Francisco, captured by Lightroom team member Ben Warde. Now Ben shows some of his techniques for turning a flat image into something much more impactful.
[Via Andrew Kavanagh]
The font-serving crew needs a product lead & an experienced engineer. Check out these listings & other good ones (WebKit engineer, JavaScript developers, Web standards leader, and more) on html.adobe.com.
In August I pointed out the inspired lunacy of Old Spice’s Muscle Music (see below, especially if you have Flash installed as it becomes interactive at the end). Now Jake Friedman, creative director and co-founder of LA-based Wildlife, offers a behind-the-scenes tour of the ambitious project.
We worked with Adobe Flash, Flash Builder, After Effects, Photoshop, and Media Encoder. There were a huge number of assets moving back and forth across these products, so it was important that they could integrate to the pipeline seamlessly. We also benefited greatly from Photoshop’s recent addition of video integration and support. […]
We also had to crop these videos to their minimum canvas area in order to speed up performance for both pieces of software and avoid layering dozens of full-screen clips over one another. Photoshop was a champion here…
At Create Now Live, you’ll:
- Be one of the first to hear what’s next in Adobe® Creative Cloud™.
- See what’s next in Adobe Photoshop®.
- Explore ways to take your design skills from print to online and mobile.
- Learn how teams can work better together with Creative Cloud.
- Learn from creative innovators.
- Iconic design agency Karlssonwilker talks about taking their unique design sensibility to the web.
- Go behind the scenes of “A Liars Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman” with Animation Director Justin Weyers.
- Scott Kelby shows off hidden gems in Photoshop CS6.
The Lightroom 4.3 Release Candidate is now available, adding new support for a range of cameras and offering Retina support in the Develop module.
Check out the Lightroom Journal entry for complete details.
The amazing thing isn’t that the folks at FiftyThree poured a year’s worth of work into “just” color mixing in their iPad app Paper. The amazing thing is that they had the guts to ship a drawing app without as basic & obvious a feature as color picking—and that by all accounts the app was a big hit without it.
Is there any reason I should get such a large kick out of the punking of unsuspecting people who want free Photoshop work? No. Is that going to stop me? No. (Here’s my favorite I’ve seen so far.)
Tom Ryaboi has made a lovely homage to a beautiful city:
[Via Pete Green]
Adobe has posted a quick (7-question) survey to learn a bit more about your needs. If you’re doing interactive design work, please take a minute to help us help you. Thanks much.
This certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, and you’d do well to skip right ahead to 1:20 or so, but at that point it showcases some great illustrations: “The animation section was created by taking illustrations by Adam Relf, prepping them in Photoshop then animating and compositing in After Effects. I did the final compile in Adobe Premiere.”
This is so great. 24-year-old A. J. Brockman can move only his facial muscles and three fingers of his left hand, yet he just got to give his portrait of the First Family to President Obama:
“He ducked out of the security area and came over to us. He said, ‘Did you do that magnificent painting?’” recalled Brockman, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens.
The president lingered a few minutes, asking about Brockman’s computer painting technique. The president posed for photos and signed Brockman’s copy of the painting: “Thanks for the wonderful portrait…you make us proud! Barack Obama.”
“He told me he hoped it would one day hang in his personal library. He was such a dude,” said Brockman.
Five days later, the “New York Times” ran a half-page photo of a presidential aide carrying Brockman’s painting off Air Force One.
Beatles fan Peter Dean enlisted woodcarver Andy English in re-creating a Victorian circus poster that inspired John Lennon to write the song Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!, which appeared on The Beatles’ 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band:
Lennon bought the poster in an antiques shop and hung it in his music room. While writing for Sgt. Pepper one day, he drew inspiration from the quirky, old-fashioned language and set the words to music… It is printed in a limited edition of 1,967.
Make Productions nicely tells the story:
[Via]
“Waldo was a chump at hiding compared to Liu Bolin.” The artist sort of Content-Aware Fills himself out of photographs, disappearing into background via elaborate make-up. Now Ford has cleverly commissioned him to highlight its competitors’ blandness, making them melt into their backgrounds. Check it out:
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Dutch photographer Iwan Baan hopped aboard a helicopter with his 1DX to capture this striking photo of a half-darkened Manhattan:
“[It was] the kind of shot which was impossible to take before this camera was there,” Baan said.
It was more difficult to rent a car than a helicopter in New York the day after Sandy, Baan said. And because there was such limited air traffic so soon after the storm, air traffic control allowed Baan and the helicopter to hover very high above the city, a powerful advantage for the photo.
[Via]
“Half performance artist, half software engineer, Golan Levin manipulates the computer to create improvised soundscapes with dazzling corresponding visuals.” Well, that sounds about right. Kick off your Monday with some offbeat tech:
As you make the switch to Adobe® Premiere Pro, you’ll find many ways to get things done. What you may miss are some hidden gems you don’t know to look for. In this fast paced webinar, join Richard Harrington as he shares the advanced techniques that will speed up your workflow. This webinar is designed for experienced editors who want to jump in and get results.
Julieanne Kost writes,
Russell Preston Brown and I set off this weekend for the Adobe Eclipse Tour! We’ll be stopping in Korea, Singapore and Australia for a full day of Photoshop and Lightroom training. Click the links below for more information.
You know what you see every day? Not this.
[Via]
“Dear society: You got used to seeing people talk into space & learned to figure ‘Bluetooth, not schizophrenia.’ Now let’s see you get used to dead-eyed zombies fidgeting with the air to turn virtual dials as they walk. [Here’s more info.]” —Love, the tech industry
I kinda want to get one of these into—or rather, next to—Russell Brown’s hands.
