Adobe has just launched the Photoshop Marketplace, designed to offer the most up-to-date listing of Photoshop resources–everything from plug-ins & books to communities & events.

According to the site, Marketplace:

• Allows you to discover a variety of companies, products, services, events, and communities related to Photoshop
• Provides information about each offering, including number of click-throughs, ratings, reviews, and comments
• Enables you to share an offering with a friend directly from Photoshop Marketplace
• Gives you various ways to browse and search for offerings
• Enables you to rate and review offerings
• Offers easy access to updates via RSS feeds

Anyone can publish information about solutions related to Photoshop, including details about events, hardware, software, training (for example, books or DVDs), communities, etc. For more info, click on the “Become a Publisher” box on the main page. (The site admin suggests reading through that section in the FAQ.) [Via Allison Goffman]

Occasionally I have to laugh at–not with–the comments I receive here. This week’s gem:

can i have the full version of adobe photoshop cs4 for free,cause this is our business that’s why i need it.

Wow, that’s awesome. It’s for your business? Well, coming right up, then!

Coincidentally, from the “having no concept of/respect for others’ intellectual property” department, reader Torben Brams passed along this little gem.

…would anyone hear it? Not if it’s PowerPC, apparently.

I’m kind of amazed at the absolute lack of discussion of the fact that Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) will be the first Mac OS in fifteen years not to support PowerPC. The one mention I’ve found was a CNET article. Jeez–nobody wants to pour one out for the dead homie*?

I dunno; maybe I’m just a little sentimental. For what it’s worth,

• I remember being a freshman in college & hearing about this amazing new RISC design–seeing a chart showing the 601, 603 & 604, and finally the 620 aiming higher and higher. Mac über Alles!
• We named the 7100/66 in our computer lab “Rocket Sled”–66MHz of musclebound fury, suckkaz.
• I just about danced when Exponential announced the oh-my-God-533MHz X704 chip in 1996. I even printed out their press release & hung it on my door to shame my Mac-hating friends. (God, I was totally mental…)
• Being a real fanboy, I talked up the “megahertz myth” to anyone who’d listen (and to everyone else for good measure).
• Years later, working on Photoshop, I knew PS performance engineer Chris Cox had some sort of incredible machine in his office (could it be the mythical “G5”?), but of course it was hush-hush and only he could see it.

Ah well. It was a good ride. Thanks to everyone at Apple, IBM, Motorola, Metrowerks, all the independent software vendors, and everyone else who made it all possible.

One last thing: I have to laughing at all the articles cheering Snow Leopard’s 6GB** reduction in install footprint, all without mentioning the loss of PowerPC support. At it happens, we could cut the installed size of Photoshop on Mac in half by dropping PPC support. (Of course, packaging 32- & 64-bit binaries together will push it right back up. Too bad those first Intel Macs had 32-bit chips.)

*Quite a difference from when Adobe got crucified for going Intel-only with Soundbooth. And yes yes, I know that time changes things, but I’m still picking carbonized bits out of my hide on that one.

** I hate bloat, and everyone likes getting storage space back. Of course, 6GB of storage will set you back roughly 50 cents at Fry’s.

RetouchPro.com is hosting another live session: “Perfecting the Montage” is slated for this Wednesday at 12 noon Chicago time (other time zone info).

Watch live in your Web browser as internationally recognized photo-illustrator Steve Caplin creates an original photomontage and answers your questions about masking, compositing, and anything else that happens to come up.

Check out the site for more info & to sign up for future session notifications.

(which I don’t mean as a complete, imperative sentence)

• “Sharp has developed a full HD LCD panel that mixes the hue of each pixel from a palette of five colours rather than the usual three. The result, the company claimed, is the ability to render faithfully the colour space of the unaided human eye.” Each pixel “not only has the usual red, green and blue colour elements but also cyan and yellow sub-pixels too.” This news led to a long email discussion among Photoshop engineers about rods & cones, the Purkinje effect, the hard-wiring of mouse brains, and so on. (I’m not kidding, and it’s one of the reasons I love working on the team.) [Via Jerry Harris]

• NEC’s huge CRV43 LCD display offers a gently curving, 43-inch, 2,880 x 900 resolution panel–for a mere $8,000. Looks really cool, though I’m surprised the resolution isn’t higher. (My 17″ MBP offers 30% more vertical resolution.) [Via]

…because it’s already in there: “Linear Dodge (Add).” Seriously. Please tell a video-editing/compositing friend. 🙂
I’m not entirely sure about the naming history–that is, why Photoshop doesn’t just call Add “Add.” I think it has something to do with the fact that Calculations in PS already has “Add” and “Subtract” functions, and at the time the blending mode was introduced, the team didn’t want to cause confusion with Calculations.
Of course, confusion has ensued regardless, so maybe it’s time to simply switch the blending mode name to be “Add (Linear Dodge).” Just know that if we do that and people still ask for Add, my head may literally explode.

I’m delighted to see that our globetrotting colleague & friend Julieanne Kost, Adobe Evangelist, is #67* on Fast Company’s list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business. Congrats, Julieanne! They could not have picked a nicer, harder working, more down-to-earth person to honor. Check out Julieanne’s photography, tips on Photoshop & Lightroom, her book Window Seat, and her blog (available inside PS CS4) for more info.

* “So, according to this, do you know who she’s more creative than?” my boss Kevin started to ask in his staff meeting, meaning to mention Brian Eno (#83), Zaha Hadid (#68) and other luminaries. “You mean besides all of us in this room?,” I asked.

For years now The Onion has been running their “Ask A {So-And-So}” series of articles (e.g. “Ask A Navy SEAL“), in which a bizarre choice for an advice columnist replies to every inquiry with complete non-sequiturs. Last night my fellow PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes asked me a family-related question that I somehow turned into a discussion of a planned Photoshop feature. “You know,” he said, “this whole thread is straight from the Onion’s ‘Ask a Photoshop Product Manager'”:

Dear PS PM, I’m having trouble choosing a good gift for Valentine’s Day. I just want to do something special for my boyfriend. Do you have any ideas?

PS PM: So, you want to start through Camera Raw or Lightroom, making sure you’re converting to DNG. I really recommend that you preserve the fidelity of your image’s 16-bit data and embrace a Smart Object workflow….once in Photoshop….

Brief notes on upcoming events:

• Scott Kelby & his crew have announced their Second Annual Worldwide Photowalk. The event is set for Saturday, July 18th, and plenty of details are on the site, including a list of the ~200 cities already signed up. Check out Scott’s brief FAQ for more.
• RetouchPro.com is launching RetouchPRO LIVE, a two hour real-time retouching demonstration and Q/A event. Chris Tarantino is slated to present the first installment on Wednesday, May 27, at 8pm CDT (0200 GMT on the 28th). Doug Nelson of RetouchPro writes “Tickets are only $10, and attendees will watch Chris Tarantino do a beauty retouch in real time using PS CS4. I’ll be along as host and interviewer. If there’s enough time afterwards, Chris will answer questions from the audience about his technique or working as a professional retoucher.”

In the past I’ve enthused about “PicLens,” a Web browser plug-in that enables crazy-fast 3D slideshows for Flickr, Facebook, and more. PicLens was renamed Cooliris, and the team behind it keeps adding slick features. I was delighted to see that the plug-in now supports the Safari 4 beta, can browse local files, display image metadata, and more. Check out the features page for more info.

The fact that you’re reading this text indicates that this weekend’s blog server upgrade has gone according to plan. If you experience any weirdness (e.g. problems posting comments), please drop me a line (jnack at adobe); thanks.

A couple of senior Photoshop engineers have offered sometimes colorful perspectives on the challenges inherent in tapping into graphics processors’ great potential.

• TGDaily spoke to Photoshop architect Russell Williams and me about Photoshop and the GPU. To illustrate the bottleneck of reading data back from the GPU, Russell “compared this scenario to a company that would like to print local papers in San Jose, but decides to go with a printer in New York. ‘You will have to fly the data to New York, and it’s returned on a bi-plane.'”
• Imaging Resource conducted a similarly themed interview with Jerry Harris. “It’s hard to actually achieve that theoretical goal when running in parallel,” he said. “So it’s sort of like working with a bunch of mules. You might work with two of them but four or five, forget it. They don’t want to behave. Where a GPU is more like a stream of fish you see in the ocean or a flock of birds. They just seem to do better with more of them. More naturally suited.”

PS: I should reiterate that we’re quite actively engaged with the GPU makers. We’re working together to tune both the hardware & the software sides of the equation, and I see encouraging signs.

Cue Neil Young warbling “Tonight’s the ni-iiiight…”
Well, after many years of discussion, planning, and pauses, Adobe’s blogging infrastructure team is due to push us live to a new system (based on Movable Type 4.25) tonight. Much goodness should result (at a minimum not having the server crap out when you’re trying to post a comment), though from about 10pm Pacific time (0600 GMT) I won’t be able to post anything for a while. More importantly:

Commenting will be disabled until the transition is complete, and you’ll experience errors if you try to post a comment.

I’ll post the all-clear when things are back to normal. And if that doesn’t happen & you never hear from me again, well, it’s been real!

Let’s hear it for flood fill! [Via]
I lusted after an Amiga or a Mac back then. It took several years to talk my folks into getting an Apple IIgs (2.8 MHz, suckkaz!). I’m reminded of a tweet I saw yesterday: “Going to take some pictures that will blow your mind today. With an Apple Quicktake. Oh yeah, 0.3 Megapixels of pure digital SEX.”
In other news, David Hockney now draws with an iPhone. I mostly dig the tiny easel that supports it.

I have the attention span of… wait, hang on… uh… {spinning beachball pupils}… shiny thing shiny thing, start two emails, open three tabs… ah yes–the attention span of a sugar-smacked third grader. Therefore I’ve tried to keep Twitter at arm’s length, to say the least. I’ve felt like Old Man (Jon) Stewart shaking his fist at the technology, digging how McSweeny’s has characterized it:

Twitter seems to be, first and foremost, an online haven where teenagers making drugs can telegraph secret code words to arrange gang fights and orgies. It also functions as a vehicle for teasing peers until they commit suicide.

As my friend Hughes says, “It’s like reading someone’s life in fortune cookies–and about as nutritious*.”

Ah, but now, for whatever reason, I’ve taken the plunge and am on Twitter as jnack. It’s a little like a dog catching a car, though: now what does he do with it? People seem happy I’m there, but I’m not quite sure what they’re expecting.

I’m curious what you, as a reader of this blog, would like to see.

• Should I create separate profiles in order to separate kid-related stuff from Adobe-related stuff? Or do you actually want to hear about our toddler celebrating bacon?
• Should I post content on Twitter first (offering immediacy without context), then take the time to group things here as I always have? (I’ve structured this blog as one I’d want to read. I’d generally prefer to have fewer, better links than to have more random ones, and I’d prefer to have a sense of what to expect before clicking.)
• Should I look into pulling my feed onto the blog as some sort of sidebar? (I have no idea what’s possible, just that it’s gotta be doable.)
• Are there tools that you’d recommend to make Twitter more useful? So far Tweetie seems good, and I’m playing with Birdhouse and Twitterific on my iPhone.

I don’t just want to hear myself talk. It’ll be worth tweeting only if people are actually getting something useful out of the effort, so I welcome any thoughts or advice you’d like to share.

Thanks,

J.

*What a perfect tweet, say I, having immediately become the pusher-man.

Nothing groundbreaking here, just an anecdote & observation.

Yesterday I bumped into Bill Hensler, Adobe’s VP of engineering for video products, and somehow conversation turned to his time as a Motorola intern back in the ’80s–back before even Gordon Gekko was rockin’ a mobile phone. “We did a lot of focus group research,” said Bill. “You know who wanted a mobile phone back then? Nobody. People would say, ‘Why would I want to be interrupted at a restaurant or a ball game? It’s bad enough when people call during dinner.'”

It’s easy to want customers to gift-wrap directions, and Adobe certainly puts rigor into its data-gathering process. (For example, teams go on the road & present customers with a list of potential features, then ask them to stack-rank the ideas, allocate $100 of engineering effort among them, etc.). That approach helps affirm one’s next couple of steps, but it’s obviously not a recipe for bold leaps. (“If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse,” noted Henry Ford.)

I mention this as someone who’s been advancing a few “crazy” ideas for some time, often to the sound of crickets. Sometimes, though, you’ve gotta say, “They’ll like us when we win.”

Thanks for the quick and detailed feedback on whether to drop support for PICT files in Photoshop. Going forward our plan (at least for the foreseeable future) is to keep reading these files, but not to keep writing them.
For the sake of completeness, I’ll mention that I don’t think Photoshop will continue to read QuickDraw-based PICT files (as QuickDraw is unsupported in Cocoa/64-bit). I don’t expect that to matter, thought: Photoshop CS4 dropped QuickDraw PICT support on Windows & no one has mentioned it. Additionally, no one who commented in response to my query talked about using this flavor of PICT; rather, people talked about using raster PICTs, and Photoshop will still support opening those.

Here’s what I think people want to know: Is Photoshop’s PSD format a goofy, antiquated piece of crap, and by extension is Photoshop slow, clumsy, and/or outdated?

No. (Read on for details.)

Continue reading →

Reprising the session from a couple of weeks ago, I again joined Deke McClelland & Colleen Wheeler for a Martini Hour podcast. This time we were joined by Adobe creative director Russell Brown. Both conversation & sidecars flowed freely, though only the latter stayed within predictable boundaries.

Regarding the low-level fly-over of NYC by an Air Force One 747 trailed by fighter jets–an act that inadvertently terrorized New Yorkers:

“Hey, you know another way you could’ve gotten that picture… Photoshop. Remember? We did it? [showing obviously faked picture of Joe Biden flying the plane] Remember?? Oh, but that’s right, Photoshop can look so fake–when the look of terror on so many people’s faces today, you can’t fake that.”

My wife made exactly the same suggestion upon hearing the news earlier in the day.

Update: Here’s the clip:

What exactly is the best way to construct a Web page comp in Photoshop, then convert it to a clean, CSS-based HTML layout? To many designers the process remains a black art.

At Photoshop World I got to chat with the guys from WebAssist, a developer with a distinguished track record of extending Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks, about their new CSS Designer Starter Kit for Photoshop. In describing the $19.99 training product, the company writes:

If that sounds appealing, check out the feature tour on the product page.

Elsewhere, PSDTUTS lists a set of 30 Brilliantly Flexible Templates & WordPress Themes. Each one goes for $15 or so. Meanwhile, PSDtoWordPress will have a real person do just what it says, for a fee. [Via] Adobe Blogs use Movable Type, so I can’t evaluate either offering, but I certainly see the appeal: I found skinning this blog fairly painful.

For “effortless conversion of your Photoshop designs into standards-compliant, CSS-rich webpages,” check out MediaLab’s SiteGrinder 2. The plug-in runs entirely within Photoshop and promises to require no hand coding. Check out the product’s feature tour for more info.

If you know of other good tips or resources in this department, please feel free to share them.

Update: How I could have failed to mention Fireworks, I don’t know. FW offers excellent PSD import, and in CS4 its CSS-generating chops are better than ever. See John Wylie’s notes on Exporting CSS and images in Fireworks CS4 for more details. [Via Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Numerous sites (including Adobe’s own Exchange) facilitate the sharing of Photoshop brushes, but BlendFu caught my eye for its inclusion of a cool Flash-based preview engine. You can load up a brush tip, then vary brush engine settings (e.g. size, scatter) & lay down some sample strokes. Groovy. [Via Freddy Wang]
Incidentally, I continue to long for a day when a background synchronization agent (a la the one that syncs contacts & bookmarks between a desktop & an iPhone) would observe the creation/modification of all Adobe app files (brushes, swatches, actions, styles, etc.) and sync them with an online repository.

• Your settings–i.e. that little layer of DNA that makes your copy of an app yours–would be backed up at all times, period.
• To share any bit of content (e.g. a set of brushes), you’d simply check a box, then optionally add some metadata (keywords, description, etc.).
• You could browse & use others’ shared content right from within your app. For example, in the Brushes panel you could type “airport signage” to get matching brushes–no need to leave the app, start downloading & installing files, etc.

Note: I’m not hinting at anything specific, just sharing a very long-standing desire to plug the “Photoshop Nation” that much more directly into the software itself, helping people continuously improve the tools for themselves & for others.

Everything must go…

• 19 great ads. The Hoover & Amnesty International pieces are my favorites. [Via]
• George Lucas frozen in Carbonite
• Design history:
  • Current Apple design owes more than a small debt to 1960’s Braun, it would appear. [Via]
  • Cold War Calculators rounds up just one thing. Check out the book. [Via]
• Post-It note sculptures [Via]

I obviously scan a ton of content in order to create this blog, and rather than just spray random links, I like to group them & add a little context. The process consumes more time than you’d think, though, and I’ve managed to rack up hundreds of links that just haven’t fit into other posts. Therefore, being on vacation this week, I’m clearing out a bunch of old, random, potentially interesting stuff that would otherwise go unmentioned.

• Customers mistake familiarity for superiority [Via]
• David Byrne goes to IKEA
• Eastern Bloc:
  • "Svimvear!!" Sweet Russian fashions of the ’80s
  • Weird Serb Christmas tank.
• Modular pie-cosahedron [Via]
• Arrogance + Humility = Design
• An alarm clock you have to chase
• Terrible iPhone concepts [Via]
• Automotive:
  • Hubcap creatures [Via Bryan O’Neil Hughes]
  • Hood ornaments
  • Great examples of urban camouflage [Via]
• Now-defunct musicians Fine China have the best band URL I’ve ever heard.

Check out what Daring Fireball calls the “Jedi Mind Trick Error Dialog in Dreamweaver.” I have to smile a little thinking about similar alerts that could pop up from time to time: “Photoshop is not messing with picutres of your exes. Nope, don’t know where you heard that. [OK]*”
Elsewhere, I just stumbled upon this old weirdness in the bowels of my hard drive. It’s a screenshot I took ~15 years ago, squirreled away, and forgot until now. Props to that old developer for having a sense of humor.
* Absolutely tangential, and in no way work-related, but tied to the “don’t sweat it vibe”: Peter Bjorn & John’s “Nothing To Worry About” video.

• Sex, Lies, and Photoshop: Jesse Epstein interviews retouchers and talks about, among other things, the French government’s desire to mandate the disclosure of image manipulation. [Via Marc Pawliger] Much related conversation ensues on The Online Photographer blog. This reminds me of a Kurt Vonnegut/Kilgore Trout story in which unrealistic body images pave the way to interplanetary conquest.
• The Danish Press Photography Union has excluded photojournalist Klavs Bo Christensen from the judging for this year’s Press Photo Awards due to excessive post-processing (in Danish*; here’s a machine-translated version.) Again T.O.P. features discussion. [Via Zalman Stern]
• Government in action:
  • “Women in Israeli govt? Not if Photoshop can help,” reports the Seattle Times. [Via Margot Nack]
  • AP Suspends Use of U.S. Army Photos Over Digital Alteration

* Does “råfiler” mean “raw files”? If so, cool. I’m always a fan of the “a with the little hat.”)

Developer Garrett Dimon has posted a nice set of suggestions for making feature requests. None of them are likely to come as a surprise, but it’s still a good refresher of things to bear in mind.
I mention this, by the way, not just as someone on the receiving end of feature requests, but as one who frequently makes them. Working with other teams at Adobe, we frequently pass along what we’ve heard from customers plus our own ideas for other products. Interacting with teams like Flash Player, I have to remember that they’re just as overwhelmed with good suggestions as we are on Photoshop, and that everyone comes to them asking for “just this one thing.”
Before I came to Adobe, I’d frequently craft suggestions for Adobe, Macromedia, and other companies. (In fact, I think they hired me in part to say, “Okay, smart guy–let’s see *you* do it!”) Garrett’s suggestions ring true in my experience. [Via]
[Update: I meant to mentione that the Acrobat.com team has kicked off ideas.acrobat.com to help gather community feedback & conduct discussions. We’re thinking about similar options for Photoshop. –J.]

Not long ago, I was snatched off my bike, thrown in the back of a dirty Econoline van (is there any other kind?), and taken to the undisclosed location of Martini Hour, the imbibing-positive podcast featuring long-time Photoshop expert Deke McClelland & editor Colleen Wheeler. Over the course of a half hour or so, we talk about sidecars (.XMP & otherwise), “the labyrinthian nature of Photoshop” (not in the David Bowie/Muppet-sense), Eyes Wide Shut, and more.

Here are the regular & high quality versions of the file.

Elsewhere, photographer & author Derrick Story sat down with the man who oversees Photoshop & Lightroom engineering:

The perfect blend for a Photoshop discussion: an expert who oversees the Photoshop engineering team, and who is a photographer too. Meet Winston Hendrickson, Sr. Director, Engineering, Digital Media, forAdobe.

During this chat in a conference room at Adobe headquarters, Winston and I talk about what’s happening under the hood for Bridge, ACR, and Photoshop. He explains lots of goodies such as, the difference between the Lightroom and Bridge “databases,” the similarities between the Develop module in Lightroom and the sliders in ACR, improvements in Photoshop, and some great lesser-known features such as Camera Profiles. Terrific, informative interview.

The chat, downloadable directly here, runs 29 minutes.

• “Danish photographer Peter Funch stakes New York City street corners out for two weeks at a time, taking pictures of passersby from the very same spot.” He then uses Photoshop to composite the results into single images. I love the mass of yawners. [Via Dave Dobish & VSL]
• Tomato-upon-dog? Nothin’ wrong with that.
• Sony Photographer of the Year Awards 2009 features, as expected, some winning pix. Dig this one from Amit Madheshiya. [Via Emma Wilkinson]
• Photojojo shows a simple technique using old photos that might, as a side effect, land you in “a nightmarish half-life of Morlocks, flux capacitors and Michael J. Fox”–oh my.
• Al Vinjamur shares his large & impressive wildlife photography portfolio. [Via Ken Lawson]

Adobe is developing a new version of the ExtendScript Toolkit for use with CS4, and the development team is looking for input. Program manager Elba Sobrino writes:

I am collecting the names of any external developers who may be interested in installing and testing this new ESTK CS5 with their CS4 products, including InDesign, After Effects, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Please contact me directly if you’d like to participate and provide your feedback.

The San Francisco Photoshop User Group is meeting tomorrow night, and the San Jose chapter is meeting on Tuesday the 21st. Here’s the agenda for both meetings:

Photoshop Product Manager Bryan O’Neil Hughes will deliver a presentation on the many new technologies released since CS4, including the DNG Profile Editor, Pixel Bender, updates to Camera Raw/Lightroom and a recent performance update to Photoshop CS4. Additionally Bryan will show and discuss some hidden gems for photographers in CS4.

The new version of Bryan’s Black & White book is now out, so he may well show some interesting B&W techniques.
To RSVP & for details, check out the San Francisco and San Jose meeting pages.

We’re delighted to learn that young Gareth David Clark Graham, the 2.0 launch from our fellow product mgr. Pam Clark & husband Greer, has come into the world. The little hombre is 8 lbs 6 oz, 21 inches, and quite sleepy, but everyone is doing great. Congrats, guys! Now it’s up to Margot & me to round out the explosion in July (Project “El Segundo” remains on track), bringing the total to six MicroPMs in sixteen months (!). (No word yet on whether the babies will join together to form one large, Suite-steering megachild.)

Do you read/write the old PICT file format in Photoshop? We’re not aware of current workflows that have any dependency on the format, but if you have one, please speak up ASAP.
As we move Photoshop forward, we need to keep pruning dead branches off the tree (rather than spend time rewriting them for Cocoa, 64-bit, etc.). We’d like to drop PICT support unless there’s a good reason to keep it around.
[Update: Thanks for the quick & copious feedback. I got a kick out of reader Gordon Williams’s suggestion that the Photoshop team put old features “On Notice,” Colbert-style.]
[Update 2: Based on your feedback, the plan is that in the future, Photoshop will keep reading, but will no longer write, PICT files.]

The folks responsible for managing the Adobe User-to-User Forums are excited to announce that the legacy Adobe and Macromedia forums have now been integrated onto a single platform, and they asked me to help spread the word.

Notable highlights:

• Integration of Adobe ID for true single sign-on to all forums
• Updated look and feel, more consistent with other forum systems
• Email participation, including starting a new discussion and alerts
• RSS feeds for many parts of the forum (topics, users, announcements, etc.)
• Improved moderation capabilities (hosts can delete inappropriate content)
• Rich text options: inline images and videos, file attachments, code samples
• Improved search capabilities:
  • Wildcard searches (Multiple or single character)
  • Fuzzy Search (e.g. searching for “foam” also retrieves “roams”)
  • Proximity, weighting, date range, specific user

If you’re planning to attend the NAB tradeshow in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks and would like to discuss your ideas for Photoshop vis-à-vis film & video production, drop me a line. I’m planning to be in town at least part of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday & would love to hear your thoughts. The company is planning a number of events at the show, so check out this list for more details.

Filter Forge , the Photoshop plug-in that lets you build your own filters, is now available for the Mac as well as Windows. Filter Forge consists of a node-based editor used for assembling a series of mathematical operations into a filter. The tool is available in a variety of editions, ranging from $6 (!) to $209 (regularly $299). $69 gets you access to the nearly 6,000 filters already generated by users.

If you have the slightest interest in computer drawing tablets, you need to see this thing.

Back in college, probably 15 years ago (dang…), I somehow persuaded my parents to let me buy a Wacom tablet for my Mac. The device blew my mind, and I remember spending the whole day at the dining room table, drawing & painting in Photoshop and Painter. I knew it was a transformative tool.

I felt echoes of that sensation playing with Wacom’s new Intuos4 tablet. The new device shows the results of some close collaboration between Wacom & Adobe during its development.

Until now I’ve never really been satisfied with the feel of the contact between the tablet surface & pen nib, as it’s always felt to me more like plastic-on-plastic than pen on paper. The new surface, however, feels great. My wife tried it and immediately said, “Oh, it feels just like a Sharpie.”

The Intuos4 introduces a clever, iPod-style TouchRing. A button in the center lets you cycle the behavior of the ring, letting it change brush size, rotate the canvas, move up/down through the layers stack, and more (screenshot). Being recessed, the ring is much less likely than the previous TouchStrips to get activated accidentally as you drag your hand past it.

The tablet also supports a very cool on-screen “pie menu” that supports quickly switching tools & running commands. Pressing a key on the tablet invokes the menu contextually, under your cursor, and you can configure the commands associated with it (screenshot). It’s similar to the “tooldial” from Logitech’s deceased NuLOOQ device. Frankly I’ve always been bummed that Adobe apps haven’t offered this kind of menu, so it’s great seeing Wacom step up to the plate.

The tablet design team flew down from Portland a number of times during development to consult with Adobe teams. As we don’t design hardware, it was fun to play with the various plastic mockups to evaluate feel & functionality. Wacom’s Joel Bryant writes,

We worked with Adobe to understand what features we could add that most complemented the direction you were going with CS4 and get validation on some of the ideas that we had such as the ExpressKey Displays. One direction that was totally changed based upon Adobe feedback was using the Touch Ring vs. the existing Touch Strip design (customer research had them with even preference). From the Adobe perspective, the Touch Ring fit much better with the CS4 Rotate Canvas feature especially. So we actually made that change directly based on Adobe feedback.

Also, the defaults for the different ExpressKey and Touch Ring modes were based directly on Adobe feedback and we worked collboratively with Jerry Harris to get the right code into Photoshop to support it. We actually went back and forth with the Adobe team a few times with prototypes to validate that the overall Intuos4 design did indeed have synergy with the CS4 design.

I don’t want to gush all day, so I’ll wrap by saying congrats to the Intuos team on an excellent release. PC Magazine has posted a detailed overview, so check it out if you want a deeper dive.

The folks at PixelNovel (whom I’ve mentioned previously for their FlickrShop & ComparePSD tools) have created Timeline–what appears to be a very cool Subversion-based version control system for Photoshop. As they describe it:

Timeline works as a Photoshop plug-in and features a unique user interface that allows you to always see the file’s history and save and get file versions without switching from the main Photoshop window. The plug-in is free of charge.

Together with the Photoshop plug-in the users get their own online space on the PixelNovel server.

One of the key features of the Timeline version control system is the web interface to your account. You (or your clients) can view all versions of your files online on any computer with Internet access, the comments for the versions, and also download individual versions in the PSD format.

This means that you can access your projects from anywhere in the world – either using Adobe Photoshop or any web browser.

As noted, the plug-in is free, and you pay for the service based on usage. I haven’t gotten to try it myself, but I like the idea, and the development team is eager to recruit beta testers. Check out their site for more info. [Via Anatoly Paraev]

Heh–now this you don’t see every day: a pen & paper simulation of working in Photoshop:

The video was created by 15-year-old Josh Sunshine with a little assist from padre/Photoshop author David Asch (who used Photoshop Extended to color-correct the piece).
Man, thank goodness none of this stuff was available when I was younger. I’d probably still be holed up in my parents’ den!

A number of folks on Adobe’s internal design team have been putting the beta of GridIron Flow through its paces. Among other things, Flow can automatically version your files (much like Apple’s Time Machine, but continuously as you work and without relying on an external drive).
I just saw this comment from designer Cynthia Fong:

Yesterday, I accidently saved over a file that I didn’t want to, so I opened
it in FLOW and retrieved my previous version. SWEET!

I’ve always said that the beauty of Flow is that it’s like an airbag–totally unobtrusive unless and until you need it. The software does lots of other things, too, but I think its file protection features will be the first to pay off for most people. You can download the free beta from the GridIron site.
(For the record, I don’t have any formal tie to or vested interest in these guys. I just dig what they’re up to & would have loved it in my previous life as a Web designer. If I could somehow clone myself, I’d go work on Flow in addition to Photoshop.)
Tangentially related: my new 17″ MacBook Pro just arrived yesterday (yeah!), and Time Machine did its usual scary-good job of facilitating transfer from one machine to another. The fact that I have last week’s browser history on a machine that showed up yesterday is pretty amazing. (FWIW I’d previously hit a file permissions problem when backing up to my Drobo, but these steps from MacFixIt got me sorted out–and I didn’t even manage to nuke my hard drive via Terminal. Thanks, guys.)

The Adobe MAX conference is already starting to take shape for this fall (Oct. 4-7 in Los Angeles), and the organizers are looking for good speakers. I’m told that the proposals are pretty geek-heavy so far (lots of emphasis on tools, how-tos, etc.), and we’d like to get more folks talking about their work & creative processes.
Check out Ted Patrick’s call for sessions & labs proposals for more info. And for inspiration, check out some of the presentations from MAX 2008.

The InDesign team has posted a detailed guide (PDF) to chucking QuarkXPress and moving to InDesign CS4. It’s part of a comprehensive set of resources (links to trainers, customer success stories, etc.) available from Adobe.com. [Via Lynly Schambers-Lenox]

The Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament is back in action, coming soon to a city near you. Here’s a video overview:

Tomorrow night things get underway in San Francisco (7pm, 101 Henry Adams St.). Check the site for other cities/dates/times.

• Kid bits:
  • Conduct Happiness’s Pea Pea Dance and other drawings are ruthlessly cute.
  • Kid Kong: Fun illustrations on these baby blocks make your child seem like “a vengeful god” wreaking havoc on unlucky citizens. [Via]
  • Someday I’d love to have my son do a portrait like this of me (sans goatee, etc.).
  • Joey Ellis made a set of nifty Letter Monsters to help his son learn the alphabet. [Via]
• I love Johnny Beerens’s water storage tank embellishments.
• The Smoking Gun’s Mug Shot Metamorphosis shows the evolution of a tattooed face. [Via]
• Obama sushi. Really.

Last year I described GridIron Flow as offering “Ridiculously cool workflow management.” Now at last you can download the beta and give the team feedback. I’ve grabbed a copy and am really looking forward to giving it a spin.

Proposed new tagline: “Photoshop: Now Anaconda-Approved.” [Via Abbas Rizvi] And yes, I do feel slightly weird juxtapoxing this with a baby announcement. “This is the strangest life I’ve ever known…^*”
[Update: For readers outside the US, here’s the YouTube link (while it lasts).]

Terrific news: just after midnight on Valentine’s Day, one little Miles Lewis Hughes was born to mom Alex & dad (Photoshop PM) Bryan.  Congrats, guys!!  The wee man (photos one, two, and three) is doing great, and his birth weight was recorded as "One (1) MacBook Pro 17." :-)  Taking after the old man, Miles is keeping a list of proposed "Just Do It" tasks.  Early entries include Feed Me, Change Me, and Stop Jabbing Me In the Dang Heel.  The team can’t wait to meet him.

It’s game on in about 3 minutes (less by the time you see this). For the uninitiated:

In the coming weeks, we’ll be hosting a series of live design events called Layer Tennis…
Two competitors will swap a file back and forth in real-time, adding to and embellishing the work. Each artist gets fifteen minutes to complete a “volley” and then we post it to the site live. A third participant, a writer, provides play-by-play commentary on the action, as it happens.

Enjoy!

Sorry for the late notice, but if you’re in the SF Bay Area this evening, you might want to check out the meeting of the local Photoshop User Group.  Kate Chase will be speaking about the business photo retouching & portfolio review, and as always the pizza is on the house.  Complete details are here.

A couple of months ago, some of the managers from the group that builds Adobe’s installer technologies posted their notes here.  Now they’ve started a dedicated blog in order to communicate more readily with customers.
From speaking to them, I know they’re eager for readers to be open and candid while recognizing the spirit that’s intended here: providing greater transparency, listening to the community and improving the experience for Adobe customers.