Category Archives: Tablets

Feedback, please: A Photoshop iPad companion

Tablets, User Interface

In August I asked for ideas on tablet-based companions for Photoshop, and last week at MAX we demoed a paint-mixing prototype. Now the designers have taken a crack at mocking up some companion features that could run on a phone or tablet.
In a nutshell, you get:

  • groups of task-based tools & commands (e.g. all your photography/retouching tools & buttons on one page, or all your painting ones, 3D ones, etc.)
  • interactive, task-based tutorials that drive Photoshop, helping you get things done

The idea is to let you work faster–offering more organized access to tools & knowledge. What do you think? What would you pay for this?

Adobe's enhancing WebKit for better typography

HTML5, Mobile, Tablets, Typography

I’m excited to say that Adobe’s working with Google to enable better HTML-based typography, contributing the work to the open-source WebKit project.

Why not just say “Web typography”? Because HTML goes beyond the Web, supporting apps like Adobe’s new tablet publishing solution.  Trouble is, for all its strengths (e.g. separating content from layout), HTML’s type handling has been pretty limited–especially for creating print-quality layouts.

Adobe wants to help solve the problem, making HTML better suited to more demanding applications.  Check out this demo from engineering VP Paul Gubbay:

Paul writes,

The team has taken the approach of extending CSS with a few new elements utilizing the webkit- prefix so that the designer can adequately describe their intent for the content as the page is resized to simulate working across different screens.  We look forward to working with the Webkit Open Source project and of course the W3C to contribute our work back in the most appropriate way.  And, as always your comments are very much appreciated.

"Witchcraft": Content-Aware Fill & paint mixing on tablets

Mobile, Tablets

During Monday’s MAX keynote, Kevin Lynch demoed a couple of the tablet explorations we’ve been doing:

As you can see, we’re trying some different design directions, making stand-alone imaging tools for tablets, as well as companions to Creative Suite apps. Props to Iván Cavero Belaunde, Christoph Moskalonek, and the other folks who brought these features to life.
So, what do you think? How would you like to see these technologies evolve?

Better PS Techniques mag comes to iPad

Tablets

The folks behind Better Photoshop Techniques magazine have put together an interactive iPad version using Adobe’s new Digital Publishing System. Publisher Philip Andrews notes,

It is called DI Magazine and is now available as a free download on the iTunes AppStore store. It’s the first Photoshop magazine of its type in the world and has the great augmented reality ‘back cover’ that we trialled with the print magazine earlier this year.

Stories include photos from Lightroom team member Kelly Castro. The app is a free download from the App Store.

Incidentally, I know people are hungry for more info about when they can get their hands on InDesign-to-tablet publishing tools.  I don’t have any inside scoop to share, but with Adobe MAX coming next week, I’m hoping we’ll see more info soon.

New Photoshop 3D book, iPad app

3D, CS5, Tablets

Photoshop 3D PM Zorana Gee & lead engineer Pete Falco, working with expert digital artists, have created new new book 3D in Photoshop, together with a free interactive version for iPad. Zorana writes,

Check out the only book of it’s kind that breaks down everything you need to know about working with 3D in Photoshop. Not only is it written directly by the Photoshop 3D Team themselves but also Photoshop masters, like Bert Monroy, have contributed useful and inspiring tutorials that will benefit any designer wanting to learn 3D.

Further, the team has put together a companion iPad app that takes the first chapter of the book (basic 3D concepts) and added interactive animations to each page to help illustrate the concepts. Scrolling across will read as the first chapter of the book plus interactivity and scrolling down will introduce 15 unique tutorials (only found in the iPad app) that show you how to create all the animations directly in Photoshop CS5 Extended.

 

The New Yorker comes to iPads through InDesign

Mobile, Tablets

Adobe & Condé Nast have worked together to launch The New Yorker tablet edition. Here’s Jason Schwartzman’s intro:

I found this bit about the publishing technology’s evolution interesting:

The New Yorker […] demanded not only design fidelity, but flexibility due to its weekly, text-heavy nature. To solve this design and production challenge, The New Yorker used HTML pages as part of its tablet edition. HTML provided flexibility for The New Yorker to rapidly flow text into the magazine application and meet the requirements of a frequent publishing cycle. In the future, the Digital Magazine Solution will provide the option of using either HTML pages for flexible publishing or rasterized images for publishers that demand pixel-perfect layouts.

My translation: Yes, the team is well aware of file size concerns, and they’re using various technologies (e.g. HTML) to give publishers choices. I expect we’ll be hearing more details soon.

3D light painting with an iPad

Photography, Tablets

What a fascinating technique & beautiful result:

We use photographic and animation techniques that were developed to draw moving 3-dimensional typography and objects with an iPad. In dark environments, we play movies on the surface of the iPad that extrude 3-d light forms as they move through the exposure. Multiple exposures with slightly different movies make up the stop-frame animation.

For more info, check out the makers’ blog post & the resulting book.

New blog, channel for Adobe mobile apps

Mobile, Tablets

Six months after the launch of Adobe Ideas, customers continue to file great suggestions via my blog.  Now that team has launched their own Adobe Ideas Blog.  It’s spartan at the moment but it’s sure to grow.

Meanwhile Adobe TV now features a channel devoted to mobile and devices.  Expect to see more good stuff added there, too.

Previously: How Adobe Ideas came to be (and where it’s headed)

Waiting for wireless tethering

Mobile, Photography, Tablets

Could photographers be clearer in wanting their images sent wirelessly & immediately to iPads and similar tablets, turning these devices into extensions of the back of the camera?  I seriously doubt it.

At the moment you can kinda-sorta do some interesting things, as long as you have a traditional Mac/PC in the loop.  Here’s a 3-minute demo from Brent Pearson:

More details about the setup are on Brent’s site. [Via]

Relying a regular computer largely defeats the purpose of using the tablet, of course.  Photogs want to be shooting with a tablet-wielding assistant on the red carpet; checking lighting on set by reviewing raw image data; and just chimping on vacation.  The whole point is to avoid lugging a 5-8lb. laptop & to carry a ~1lb tablet instead.

Here’s hoping that device makers are working on a Bonjour-like solution that’ll let cameras, computers, phones, and other devices in close proximity locate one another, then exchange data (stills, live video streams, etc.).  If nothing else I’d stop wishing that my iPad included a camera for capturing raw materials for sketching, as I’d instead just use my phone as an extension of the tablet.

Tablet companions to Photoshop?

Tablets, User Interface

In playing with Photoshop Express for iPad, Jesus Diaz from Gizmodo observed:

I got a craving for something very simple, which I hope Adobe can make (and which will be extremely useful for me and other desktop Photoshop users): Release an application to convert the iPad into a Photoshop control surface. I will love to display this application while I’m working on the image and quickly use it to apply filters and transforms. Or just access many of the Photoshop tool palettes, adopted to touchscreen use.

Photoshop-control apps such as Photokeys, Keypad, and perhaps others already exist & have for some time.  Do you use them?  I haven’t encountered anyone who’s mentioned using them, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.  How widespread is this desire?

Other companion ideas that spring readily to mind:

  • Using multitouch input from a tablet to drive Liquify (for pinching, rotating, etc.)
  • Using multitouch to mix paints together, a la a real artist’s palette, then send the results to Photoshop (i.e. what gets mixed on the tablet is streamed into your PS brush)
  • Using a tool like Configurator to assemble custom layouts of tools, buttons, interactive tutorials, etc. that would run on a tablet and drive desktop Photoshop
  • Other?

Your feedback and ideas would be most welcome.

Thanks,
J.

Photoshop Express comes to iPad

Mobile, Tablets

What do you do after more than 10 million people download your iPhone app? Bring it to the iPad, of course!

Photoshop Express–formerly called Photoshop.com Mobile–has been updated for both iPhone and iPad.  In addition to stability & performance improvements, iPad-specific features include:

  • Support for portrait and landscape orientations
  • Redesigned Online, Edit, and Upload workflows
  • Ability to work on multiple photos in sequence from within a single workflow
  • Redesigned Organizer view with simplified album sharing
  • Updated icons and visuals that make it easier to navigate and use the Editor
  • Ability to upload to Photoshop.com and Facebook simultaneously

 

The update went live yesterday, but it contained a couple of bugs for which it got justifiably dinged.  The bugs are now fixed; sorry that they got past the team initially. (Thanks, Apple, for pushing out the update quickly.)

Plenty of cool additional enhancements are in the works, and your feedback is more than welcome.

Zooming in Adobe Ideas = Interesting note-taking

Illustration, Mobile, Tablets

Kevin Burg has posted an interesting article on How To Take Notes Like a Champ using the free Adobe Ideas iPad app.  In a nutshell,

Adobe Ideas allows fractalesque zooming. You are able to use vast scale differences to communicate importance as well as benefit from a very flexible canvas, so you almost never run out of space taking notes.

Via David Macy, Ideas PM. For David’s perspective on what Ideas is all about, see previous.

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.]

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.)

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]

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.)

Brief thoughts (and a question) on tablets & styluses

Tablets, User Interface

When did my finger start resembling a giant breadstick? More on that in a moment.

Of tablet computers Steve Jobs recently said, “If you see a stylus, they blew it.”

I think he’s right, insofar as he’s talking about requiring the use of a stylus. There’s a big difference, however, between requiring something and enabling it as an option.

Regarding the former, ten years ago I bought and almost immediately returned a big Kyocera-Palm frankenphone. I loved the promise of a phone/pocket computer, but having to pop out a stylus to perform even the simplest tasks was a deal breaker. In contrast, my simple Nokia offered just two soft keys and a rocker switch, but that simplicity led to an efficient UI. Forcing me to use a stylus forced me to ditch the phone.

When it comes to drawing and painting, however, using a finger really sucks for anything precise. Yes, a talented artist can do impressive work, but there’s a reason people don’t use their fingers to draw and write on paper. Have you tried drawing anything with any precision on an iPad? (Don’t just launch an app and screw around; try to draw something very specific.) Maybe it’s just me, but suddenly my fingertip looks enormous, blotting out the area I’m trying to mark. I find myself tipping my whole hand up and down, trying to see what’s underneath my finger.

I don’t know what can be done with the I/O on iPads and future tablets, but I really hope that a vendor can deliver a pressure-sensitive stylus. I think it would be a watershed moment for sketching on the go.

Question: Would you be willing to pay for such a thing? And if so, how much?

PS–Yesterday Steve acknowledged the imprecision of a finger: “The minute you throw a stylus out, you have the [reduced] precision of a finger, you can’t use a PC OS.”

PPS–Somehow I neglected to mention an insight gained talking with artists at Pixar and elsewhere: they find drawing and painting on an iPad interesting, but in a sort of abstract, intellectual way–until you show them the ability to smudge pixels with a finger. That’s when they start lighting up. Pretending that one’s finger is a pencil isn’t that interesting, but using one’s finger as a finger *feels* deeply correct. There’s some kind of lower-brain connection that brings out a lot of smiles.

Adobe/Wired digital viewer for iPad coming soon for all publishers

CS5, Mobile, Tablets

I’ve written previously that Adobe is not in the Flash business, or the Photoshop business, or the PDF or HTML5 business. Rather, it’s in the solving customers’ problems business, and any given technology is just a means to an end. Today you’re getting more proof.
As you may have seen last week, Adobe and Wired Magazine have collaborated to bring a richly interactive version of the magazine to iPads. Here’s a 1-minute demo:

I received quite a few questions about how regular Creative Suite customers can tap into these capabilities. Today Adobe announced that the ability to target the digital viewer technology it created for Wired will be made available soon on Adobe Labs. According to VP Dave Burkett,

“We aim to make our digital viewer software available to all publishers soon and plan to deliver versions that work across multiple hardware platforms. It’s safe to say that if you are already working in InDesign CS5, you’ll be well on your way to producing a beautiful digital version of your publication.”

Check out Adobe’s Digital Publishing Platform pages for more background & details.
InDesign CS5 adds a bunch of simple, powerful tools for adding animation and interactivity to documents, and it can export those documents in a number of formats. That is, you can choose PDF, Flash, AIR, XML, etc. based on the needs of your project. Apple blocked AIR conversion on iPads, so Adobe simply built an alternative way to view the content.
It isn’t about one runtime/format vs. another; never has been. It’s about getting results.
PS–I’m really hoping that my inner cynic is wrong, and that this post doesn’t draw a bunch of counterproductive neener-neener jeering from Apple zealots. It would be so, so refreshing to hear instead that people are focused on what benefits them, and that they actually prefer cooperation & pragmatism to ideological finger-pointing.

Feedback, please: PSD viewing on iPads?

Mobile, Tablets

As you may have read, I’m switching my focus from Photoshop to the development of tablet apps. I periodically hear requests for the ability to view Photoshop PSD files on devices like the iPad (for example, browsing files that one has synced via Dropbox).

I’d like to hear your thoughts on whether such a capability would be relevant to you. Some questions offhand:

  • What would you hope to accomplish? For example:
    • Would you be bringing your portfolio on the road?
    • Would you be taking the files somewhere to print them?
  • Would viewing just a flat representation of the files be sufficient, or would you want to interact with layers (for example, to switch among layer comps in order to show design iterations)?
  • Would you pay for such a capability? If so, how much?

This is obviously a capability that Adobe could build. The question of course is whether we should build it (as opposed, say, to building something else).

The iPad dirt pile

Photography, Tablets

“That a big dirt pile back there!,” says our two-year-old in-house photo critic Finn eyeing the iPad’s default background image. “How did that dirt pile get back there??” ArtInfo has the story. (Apologies to photog Richard Misrach; it really is a nice image.) [Via]

Related/previous:

[Update regarding a couple of the comments: Guys, I was just passing along a (to me cute) thing my kid said about this new device, as I’ve been doing. I’m not trying to yank anybody’s chain, and I find that we can all handle most thing better with a sense of humor. Let’s not let the enjoyment of Apple products turn anybody into a scowling Defender of Faith and Morals, eh? :-)]

How Adobe Ideas came to be (and where it’s headed)

Illustration, Mobile, Tablets

David Macy, artist & product manager for Adobe Illustrator and the new Adobe Ideas for iPad, shares his thoughts on the goals of the new project. –J.

Its pretty darn hard to beat pencil and paper for jotting visual ideas down quickly. That’s why this great combination travels with many artists everywhere they go.

Adobe has explored, and even prototyped a variety of thoughts related to digital sketching for some time, but we could never believe that they would compete with a pencil and a nice sketchbook. Aside from the precision and tactile feel of a pencil, there was always the problem of needing a computer. Even if we built the most elegant sketching application one could imagine, would our creative customers be convinced to pull out a laptop to sketch on in the park or in a café? OK, sure some would, but I think most would find it just too cumbersome.

And, oh yeah – there’s that issue of using a trackpad or mouse to draw with. I love my Wacom tablet too, but by the time I fish through my bag for the tablet and USB cable and wake my laptop, I could have already done some nice doodling on the nearest napkin.

I love it when technology changes in unexpected ways. When we saw what the latest smart phones could do, and heard the super-un-secret rumors of this year’s crop of tablet devices, we new that something very important had changed. Portable, high resolution, multi-touch devices are destined to be a close companion of many digitally savvy creatives. This simple realization was the birth of Adobe® Ideas.

Simply stated, Adobe Ideas is a digital sketchbook, meant to help you with exploring and realizing your creative ideas.

OK, sounds great, but can it compete with pencil and paper? Nah – at least not for the basics of drawing. A capacitive touch-screen without pressure sensitivity and without a fine-point stylus* isn’t going to win if you just talk about plain and simple drawing.

But if you add a resizable pencil tip, color mixing, transparency, zooming, the ability to drop in photos, automatic color extraction from photos, 50 steps of undo, and a vector file format compatible with Illustrator and Photoshop, then you’re talking about a great start on the concept of a digital sketchbook.

And, yes this is just the start. The small team that’s behind Adobe Ideas is having too much fun now, so we plan on revving the app frequently and adding other functions that relate to creative ideation, probably some of them as “premium” features. What ideas come to your mind?

*Check out the Pogo stylus for one that’ll be better than your fingertip.

Draw & share with Adobe Ideas for iPad

Illustration, Mobile, Tablets

ipad_example2.jpgAdobe Ideas, the company’s first iPad app, is now live on the Apple App Store. Here’s a set of full-res screenshots.

This free app helps you sketch out ideas, annotate photographs, extract color themes from photographs, and more. Sketches created in Adobe Ideas can be emailed as a PDF for editing in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop or viewing with any PDF viewer.

Key features:

  • Simple vector-based drawing tools
  • Zoom control without jaggies or big pixels
  • Variable-size brushes using multitouch control (i.e. you can resize the brush tip on the fly while painting, approximating pressure sensitivity)
  • Vector eraser
  • Huge virtual canvas
  • Automatic creation of harmonized color themes from your photos or images
  • Ability to email ideas as PDF files for editing in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop or for viewing with any PDF viewer
  • Gallery-style organizer to quickly scroll through your ideas and color themes
  • Separate drawing and photo layers
  • Easy creation of multiple versions of design concepts
  • 50-level undo

We’re eager to hear your feedback. It’ll be interesting to rethink what an app should be, especially as Adobe tools are known for being big and feature-rich as opposed to light & tightly focused. Where should the Ideas team take the app from here? What else would you like to see Adobe bring to tablets?