• The titles for Novaya Zemlya take the postcards-in-space aesthetic to the extreme.
• “Early… and terrifying”: the stop-motion Jolly Green Giant.
• Happy New End features a giant Elvis robot, among many, many other things.
• Dig the collage stylings of Mysh and Mashko’s animation The Battery Menace.
• No motion graphics are involved, but this depiction of base-jumping/wingsuit madness deserves a nod just for the cinematography. [Via Joe Nack]

Heh–now these I dig: the folks at Brazil’s Meninos are selling sets of magnets styled like the palettes (panels) in Illustrator and Photoshop.  As Gizmodo notes, “These magnets can make a whiteboard full of photos look like a screenshot of Photoshop or Illustrator.” (The same guys also offer a fun set of iPhone-inspired coasters.)  [Via Lori Grunin]

The project of course recalls the recent “Photoshop adbusting” stunt in Berlin, and it makes me think of the little lapel pin sets of Photoshop icons through history that the Adobe Japan office commissioned a couple of years ago.  That’s the kind of unique stuff that I’d like to see offered through the Adobe merchandise site. [Update: I didn’t notice that the merchandising site says that its use is, for whatever reason, restricted to Adobe employees.  Tattoos, however, remain a free-for-all.]

• Adobe XD dude Ethan Eismann rounds up some good animated infographics. (Sorry, but the Royksopp song will be getting into your head; nothing I can do about it.)
• Lernert Engelberts & Sander Plug “built a duo glass harp and learned to play this 18th-century musical instrument in less than 8 weeks. Instead of a classical piece or suchlike, we have chosen the classic 20th-century pop song ‘No limit’ by 2unlimited — easily the worst song ever!” [Via]
• Yuval and Merav Nathan have made a terrific stop-motion piece for Oren Lavie’s “Her Morning Elegance.”
• What is up with Cadbury these days? In any case, let’s hear it for advanced eyebrow stylings. (The balloon scratching makes it.)

I periodically get questions about whether Adobe-oriented groups exist in a certain region, about how to start up such a group, etc.  Now the company has launched groups.adobe.com, a resource meant to "give the Adobe community a place to connect, find one another, and locate communities of people who share their interests."  Community mgr. Rachel Luxemburg talks about how the site works & how to get started.

“Mac trojan horse discovered in pirated Photoshop,” reports Macworld.  Yeah, well, what can I say?  I’m just mentioning it an an FYI (and so that everyone can stop sending me variations on the link ;-)).

I think the title pretty much sums it up.  We have lots of ideas, but rather than lead with those, I’d really like to hear what you want.  The floor is open. [PS: When commenting, it would be helpful to know what version you’re using today.] –Thanks, J.

[Update: Wow, thanks for all the great feedback so far.  I’m hoping to get a chance to go back in and reply to various comments, but I may end up rolling info into a new post.]

Layer Tennis (née Photoshop Tennis) is coming back!  As summarized by Kottke:

Layer Tennis, the online Photoshop/Flash battle series, is gearing up for another season, starting on Feb 13th and running for twelve weeks. At the end of it all, there will be a single elimination championship tournament. Sign up for season tickets to keep informed and to be able to vote on the outcomes of matches.

In the meantime you can check out "volleys" from previous matches (e.g. this one).

The InDesign folks asked me to pass along the news that a problem that bedeviled ID CS3/CS4 users on Mac OS X 10.5–namely, that the Cmd-H keyboard shortcut wouldn’t work (or couldn’t be undone)–has been fixed by Apple’s 10.5.6 update.  Thanks to all the folks at Apple and Adobe who worked together to get things sorted out. [Via Michael Ninness]

I sure extract value from the MacBooks Adobe has bought for my use: as I log 12 hours/day on them (sad? impressive? both?), my hands tend to wear crescent-shaped marks into the finish. Now, however, my 17″ MBP’s ability to take a charge has crapped out, meaning that the slightest jiggle to the power cord means instant system shut down. Gooood times! Thus I type this from my wife’s 13″ MB. It makes me realize how dependent I am on a single piece of machinery.
I’m excited about the 17″ system Apple announced last week. The ability to stuff in 8GB of RAM is particularly welcome, though for the $1200 price of adding those last four gigs, you could buy two complete Mac Minis (or a regular MacBook plus an AppleTV!). Mmm, yeah, gonna sit tight on that option for a little while. I was also a little disappointed not to see a quad-core processor option (Acer will sell you one with an 18″ screen for $1800). On the other hand, I suppose I don’t need Whopper-style grill marks on my thighs (hard to explain at swim lessons).
In any case, here’s hoping my regular machine can be brought back to life soon (as it contains all my blog drafts), and that the new ones start shipping soon. In the meantime, Jason D. Moore has just posted an interview we did over the weekend, in case you’re interested.

• Mordy Golding & the crew at MoGo Media are putting on The Adobe Creative Suite 4 Launch Tour, featuring presentations from Adobe & independent creative professionals.  They’ll be in NYC Jan. 16, Chicago Jan. 21, and LA Feb. 19.

• Next Wednesday the 14, the Professional Photographers
  of Santa Clara Valley are hosting my fellow PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes, talking about Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4, starting at 7pm.

Lately I’ve come across some Photoshop-centered contests that might be up your alley:

• Planet Photoshop has kicked off their first Planet Design Contest, offering a pass to Photoshop World, among other prizes.  Corey Barker writes,

You are presented with three tutorials that have been selected from the vast library of tutorials here on Planet Photoshop. After watching the tutorials, your assignment is to use the techniques you learn from one or all of them to create an original piece of artwork. Feel free to be as creative as you want. Just think of these tutorials as a springboard as you proceed to create your original art.

 

The entry deadline is January 15.

• Meanwhile PhotoshopCafe is running “Photoshop — The Concert,” with CS4 Design Premium, an NVIDIA Quadro CX card, and more up for grabs.  Colin Smith writes,

Make a poster for a concert with a Photoshop-themed band!  The twist? You have to use a tool from Photoshop as the title of the band. (Think of a concert poster with a band that has a Photoshop-themed name, such as “The Healing Brushes,” etc…) Props for wit and cunning! Use any original artwork you desire. You may use any tools or platform you choose, but you must use Photoshop for at least 50% of the Image editing/design.

 

The deadline for is January 31.

• Lastly, PSDTUTS is showcasing the winners of their recent movie poster design challenge.

The PS User Groups in San Jose and San Francisco are busy this week, holding a pair of events.  Tomorrow night the San Jose group meets:

Vincent Isola from Genesis Photography will talk us through a typical capture to ready-to-print workflow. The following topics will be covered in detail:

 

• Explain color management thought process and workflow and importance of screen to print matching.
• Convert raw files.
• Open images to be worked on in CS3 and prep for print.
• Explain printer drivers and cover color management options.
• Discuss different paper types and their characteristics.

We’ll have pizza and drinks at 6:30, and the meeting will start at 7:00, in the Park Conference Room of Adobe Systems’ East Tower, 321 Park Avenue, San Jose. If the security guard at the parking entrance asks for an Adobe contact, use Bryan O’Neil Hughes’s name.  Please RSVP to Dan Clark.

On Thursday the group in SF meets:

Come join the 2009 kick-off of “Photoshop till you drop” – a San Francisco-based user group for Photoshop fanatics. We’ll kick off these meetings with Photoshop Product Manager, Zorana Gee who will take us through a tour of all the new features in Photoshop CS4 and even a taste of 3D in Photoshop CS4 Extended. Her demo will include (but not limit to) new GPU enhancements, time-saving workflow improvements with the new adjustments and mask panels, greatly improved stitching capabilities for both panoramas and a stack of images and a whole bunch of little things that make a huge difference.

 

The event starts Thursday at 6:45 PM at Adobe’s San Francisco office (601 Townsend St.).  Please RSVP here.

• Contraptions:
  • “Set up two mirrors at an angle, throw a bunch of animals in it, tape it from above so it looks like a kaleidoscope, and voila! Instant awesome art.” Check out Souvenir de Chine by Körner Union.
  • This series of clocks spells out a set of words twice a day.
  • oobject features a a gallery of kinetic building facades. I particularly like A facade of apertures, moving in synch with museum visitors.
• Motionographer rounds up a list of this year’s Emmy nominees for Main Title Design.
• Among the nominees are the Mad Men opening titles, which were recently treated to an excellent Simpsons parody.

David Pogue asked a good question the other day:

Is there any way to make CS4 stop hiding menu
commands it doesn’t think I want?  Or is every menu selection an additional
click now…?

 

I knew what had happened.  By default Photoshop doesn’t hide menu items.  If you use the workspace switcher (screenshot) in the upper-right corner of the app, however, you may end up changing more than panel (palette) locations.  You may apply a menu configuration that hides certain menu items.

In CS4 the "Basics" workspace hides some of the more advanced/esoteric menu items.  The idea, of course, is to slim down the application so that it’s less overwhelming to new users.  Once you’ve applied this workspace, menus will be shorter & will feature an entry for "Show All Menu Items" at the end.  Photoshop does pop a dialog box asking whether you want to apply a workspace that changes menus and/or shortcuts, but I think it’s one of those dialogs that makes people say, "Uhhhh… I don’t really want to think about this… so, ‘Yes’?"

Long story short, to get things back to normal, just choose the "Essentials" workspace (which is the default).  Photoshop will reset panel, menu, and keyboard shortcut settings.

Frankly this area of PS remains a work in progress.  We’ve been slowly building up ways to customize your work environment (workspaces, editable keyboard shorcuts & menu configurations, and now Configurator), but I don’t feel we’ve really "tied the room together" yet.  I’d like to see Photoshop (and other Suite apps) ship with workspaces that truly present "everything you need, nothing you don’t" on a moment-by-moment, task-by-task basis.  Lightroom takes this approach with its modules, but I think we can go much farther.  (And let me add, lest anyone freak out, that I imagine all of this being optional.  No one wants to compromise the very general, highly flexible work environments the CS apps present today.)

Recent scene from the Nack family couch:
Margot: “So, do you post every day?”
J: “Yeah, pretty much.”
M: “Will you not post on Christmas?”
J: “Okay.”
M: (hopeful) “Aaaand… maybe not Christmas Eve?”
J: “Hey, let’s not get crazy…”
I’m planning to take a couple of days off from the ol’ blog, giving the eyeballs & RSS feeds a needed rest. Before doing so, I wanted to say thanks for reading, and to wish you and yours a most joyous Christmahanukwanzaa season. 🙂
All the best, and stay frosty,
J. (intermittently partying with M. & the boy, and wikicheting the paper way)

Last week I requested feedback about operating system usage among Photoshop CS4 customers, and I said I’d share the findings here.  Having gathered some 1,200 responses, I can share a few notes I found interesting.

I was curious mainly about how rapidly Windows-based customers are adopting 64-bit operating systems.  You get both 32- and 64-bit flavors of Photoshop in the CS4 box, but plug-in developers need to know when a critical mass of customers will demand 64-bit compatibility.  Of current CS4 customers running PS on Windows:

• 39% (!) are using Vista 64
• 8% are planning to migrate in 3-6 months
• 9% are planning to migrate in 6-12 months
• 23% are planning to migrate "at some point"
• 20% are not planning to migrate

I should point out that this poll is hardly scientific–more like sticking your finger in the air to gauge wind direction.  Still, I was struck by the high number of people using Vista 64.  Of course, the data come from people who bought CS4 in its first two
months, and who are motivated to read my blog and to answer surveys. 

My take is that Windows-based customers aren’t in any rush to install Vista on existing hardware, but that when they do buy new machines, they’re going with Vista 64.  In any case, it’s great to see people moving forward.  The sooner customers drop old technologies, the sooner we can lop off (and stop maintaining) old code.

Here’s another wrinkle in the numbers: among visitors to this blog, Mac browsers account for just
over one third, yet 68% of survey respondents say they run PS
on a Mac (with 60% running it primarily there). I take this to mean Mac
users are disproportionately likely to respond to an OS usage survey. The
same may be true for Vista 64 adopters (who are proud of their choice and
want you to know about it).

If you’d like to see the raw data collected, be my guest.

In October I documented the keyboard shortcuts that have changed in Photoshop CS4.  I also posted a ZIP file containing a plug-in (Mac)/registry entries (Windows) that remap the channel keys to CS3 behaviors.  Unfortunately the plug-in was Intel-only, so PowerPC-based users were out of luck.  We’ve now updated the archive to contain universal (Intel & PPC) code.  Sorry about the snag.  (There’s no need to re-download unless you’re using a PPC-based Mac and want the old shortcut behaviors.)

Recordings of the sessions at last month’s Adobe MAX are now appearing on Adobe TV.  16 sessions are now available, with 20 new ones planned to go up every week. [Via Bob Donlon]  I’ll be linking to a few key ones in particular as they go live.

Continue reading →

Like the idea of creating ultra-fast image filters for Photoshop, Flash, and After Effects, but prefer visual authoring to coding/math?  Check out Conduit for Pixel Bender, a node-based editing tool for creating and tweaking PB files (see screenshot).  I’ve taken it for a spin, and even a math-stooge like me can snap together some interesting stuff.

Conduit for PB is presently in beta testing & can be pre-ordered for €50.  It exports PBJ files for use in Flash Player 10 but doesn’t yet generate PBK files or use in Photoshop.  Hopefully that support will appear shortly.  Meanwhile you can test drive Conduit Live, the free version of the authoring tool, snapping together filters to run on low-res image or video.

See also the free Pixel Bender Toolkit for writing & exporting PB files. [Via]

• To make this crazy Toshiba ad, says reader Travis Owens "the creators had to store 20TBs of snapshots."
• I’m not totally sure what it has to do with eating candy bars, but a new Snicker’s spot features metal creatures running wild in the streets. [Via]
• Gnarls Barkley goes hand-drawn superheroic in their new video.
• YouTube Contest Challenges Users To Make A ‘Good’ Video, says The Onion. [Via]

On Thursday I said that I’d gather information from the Adobe installer team and post it here when it’s ready.  On Friday and over the weekend, some senior Adobe folks involved in the installer effort started reaching out to Pierre (whose blog post occasioned the need for a response) and John C. Welch to talk through the details.

I appreciate that people are eager for more info, but it seemed only wise/courteous to try to learn more before posting a reply.  The timing just now is tough: many of us have been at Adobe MAX from 7AM-10PM since Sunday, so communication is taking a little longer than usual.  When I’ve had more time to pull together a proper post, I’ll share it here.  (In the meantime, I’d love not to get crucified for trying to do the right thing.)

Thanks,

J.

I just got a quick heads-up from the Illustrator team:

Special Offer — Free Pass to Adobe MAX on 11/17 for tokidoki

Come see renowned illustrator Simone Legno from tokidoki at Adobe MAX in San Francisco Monday, 11/17

Space is limited to the first 200 who sign up. Register now at the website below and use the following promo code: CRC998

http://max.adobe.com/na/register/?secret=1&payment=1

Registration for Legno’s session will open at 4:00 pm on Monday, November 17. Registration is located at Moscone West, Level 1, 800 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA

 

Sounds great, and I hope to sneak into the session myself.

[Via Terry Hemphill]

There’s an misleading line in the system requirements listed for Photoshop CS4 and other Adobe CS4 products: contrary to the statement that CS4 “cannot install on… flash-based storage devices,” the apps install and run perfectly well on solid-state drives (SSDs), such as those available in the MacBook Air and the new Sony VAIO.

I’m told that the line was written to let customers know that they can’t install on removable flash-based media such as Compact Flash cards.  (Yes, people try weird things, then get mad when those things don’t work.)

On a related note, I expect to get some questions about performance impact of using SSDs together with Photoshop.  I don’t have any numbers or recommendations to share at the moment, though our performance testing lead has been testing a high-end Fusion-IO drive (160GB,
~$7200 retail).

Lots of people are writing me to mention a blog post that rants about the CS4 installer.  Yes, I know about the post, thanks.  I’m going to work with the installer folks to create a response.

The Adobe MAX Awards Finalist Gallery is now live and People’s Choice voting is open.  You can check out the finalists’ submissions and then click to vote.  Adobe’s Lisa Hanna writes,

The voting will close on November 18th at 12:00 noon PST. The People’s Choice winner will be announced that evening at the Sneak Peak and MAX Award Ceremony at MAX.  There is no limit to voting and it is open globally.

 

If you are attending MAX, the Finalists will be displaying their award submissions Monday evening, Nov. 17th from 6:30 – 8:30 pm in the Community Pavilion, Moscone West Level 1. Please drop by and introduce yourself.

The popular & long-running News of the Weird eventually has to retire stories (e.g. ill-informed guys playing Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic pistol) that have repeated themselves out of weirdness.  I’m starting to get that feeling about shady government attempts to digitally manipulate reality.

Recently we had the Chinese antelope, followed by Iranian missiles. Now, apparently, the North Korean news agency has engaged in "communist photoshopaganda"–making ailing leader Kim Jong-il appear fit enough to stand with his troops. 

When the Dear Leader does kick the can (if he hasn’t already), maybe the propagandists will engage in a whole "Weekend at Kim’s" series, propping up his remains in all kinds of fun contexts. (He’s already got the Elvis specs & a slammin’ physique, so the possibilities seem endless.) [Via Jerry Harris & many others]

The Adobe MAX show (Nov. 16-19th in San Francisco) is shaping up to be a whopper, set to break previous attendance records.  There’s still time to register (deadline is the 14th), and I hope to see you there.  (I’ll be presenting Photoshop & Bridge CS4 on Wednesday the 19th at 2pm.)

If user experience/interface is your thing, be sure to check out the Adobe XD (Experience Design) segments.  They’ve posted a list on INSPIRE, their new publication.

Quick–which of the following doesn’t seem to belong?

• Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple
• Peter Max, Pop art icon
• Rudolf Frieling, Media Arts Curator @ SF MoMA
• Me (!?), guy without Wikipedia page/icon status (this biz notwithstanding)

Somehow I’ve gotten tapped to serve as a judge with these guys for a digital art contest connected to Macworld:

The Macworld Conference and Expo Digital Art Gallery is now accepting artwork submissions. Images chosen will be exhibited at Macworld being held at Moscone Center in San Francisco January 6-9, 2009.

 

This competition is open to all Macintosh digital artists in the United States and the cost to enter is $20.00 per artist with a 3-image limit. Artists may enter in either the Student or Hobbyist/Professional category.

I’m kind of tripped out (and flattered) to have any association, however tangential, with a guy whose signature adorned the Apple IIgs after which I lusted in 7th grade.  If the contest is up your alley, don’t delay: the deadline to enter is this Friday, Oct. 31.  More details are on the site.

I know they’re slightly OT from my usual fare, but you may dig ‘em:

• Cooliris (formerly known as PicLens), the super cool hardware-accelerated browsing plug-in that I’ve praised many times, now makes a version for iPhone. The power of the little GPU in the phone is incredible, and seeing things like this, I’m inclined to agree with John Gruber: “It is our flying cars.”
• David OReilly has created the delightful little iHologram, an animated cat that seems to be jumping off the screen in 3D. [Via]

• Even sweeter? iPhone cupcakes!

Hoping to make it easier to find CS4-related info, I’ve created a category–blogs.adobe.com/jnack/cs4/–where all such posts will live.

We’re planning some customer visits, so if you’re located in the Bay Area and might like to chat face-to-face about Adobe Bridge, drop me a line.  We’d like to learn more about how people use the app across a variety of workflows, and to discuss the app–past, present, and future.  Whether or not the timing works out for this set of visits (we’re targeting the week of the 27th), it would be good to be in touch.

Thanks,

J.

Okay, this has nothing to do with anything, really, but you may find it amusing.

I’ve been eagerly awaiting Apple’s next batch of MacBook Pros (my current 17" is nearly 2 years old), and tomorrow they’re due to announce new hardware.  In particular I’ve been awaiting the next batch of GPUs, and I’m eager to see whether they go farther with multi-touch technology.  (For CS4 we worked with Apple to enable the new gestures on MacBook Pro/Air models to let you zoom, pan, and rotate images in Photoshop and Bridge, and I can’t show off this support with my current rig.)

Anyway, I awoke this morning to discover that the letter "J" (aka the thing I now have to keep on a text file for copy and paste) had stopped working.  No warning, no other affected keys–and no J (kind of a big deal for me, for obvious reasons).  I’ve had keys occasionally get stuck in the past, but in this case lifting the key and cleaning underneath had no effect.  In fact, the key popped off entirely, leaving me with this somewhat disconcerting sight of a glowing stump.

Now I have to explain to my boss that no, really, it’s completely coincidental that my machine broke right before the new ones are announced–I swear.  (Mm, yeah, good luck with that…)

Next month’s Adobe MAX conference is shaping up to be a great show.  These sessions seemed worth a mention:

• Russell Brown has adjusted his popular-and long-running ADIM (Art Directors Invitational Master Class) to coincide with MAX.  It’s "the essential two-day, hands-on instructional course that brings top art directors, designers, illustrators, and photographers together to learn advanced tips and techniques using Adobe products."  ADIM takes place Sunday & Monday, Nov. 16-17th, and plenty of details are on Russell’s site.
• Dr. Woohoo will be presenting three sessions talking about using Flex+AIR to automate CS3/4.  (Here’s some background on that subject if you’re interested.)
• I’ll be covering Photoshop CS4 on Wednesday the 19th 2-3pm, and Bryan Hughes will be giving his PS session 3:30-4:30 that day.  You can find other Photoshop-related sessions by clicking the "By Session" tab, then choosing Photoshop from the product drop-down.

If you’ll be in the San Jose area next Tuesday, Oct. 14, you’re welcome to join us for the next meeting of the area Photoshop User Group.  Info, pizza, and drinks are on the house, and event details are below.

Bryan O’Neil Hughes, from Adobe Systems, will show presentations on the new Lightroom 2 and the even newer Photoshop CS4. We’ll have pizza and drinks at 6:30, and the meeting will start at 7:00, in the Park Conference Room of Adobe Systems’ East Tower, 321 Park Avenue, San Jose. To park underneath the Adobe building, use the Almaden Avenue entrance, under the East Tower. If the security guard at the parking entrance asks for an Adobe contact, use Bryan O’Neil Hughes’s name. He’s our contact there (as well as a Photoshop Product Manager). Please RSVP via Evite, and feel free to forward this invitation to anyone you know who might be interested. If you would like to be on our email list, send a note to dan@weinberg-clark.com. See you there, Dan Clark and Tom Upton

With the CS3 product cycle, Adobe instituted a "3 versions back" policy on upgrades.  That is, you can upgrade to the current version of Adobe tools from any version up to three versions back.  In the case of CS3 that meant Photoshop 7, CS, and CS2.  With CS4 it’s of course CS through CS3.  The upshot is that if you want to upgrade from Photoshop 7, the window is closing, and you’ve got until October 15 to do so.

Despite my being "the Rachael Ray of Photoshop PMs" (chatty & overexposed), I’m hardly the only one helping to steer things around here.  Just last week my fellow PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes was talking with hundreds of journalists, photographers, and partners at Photokina, alongside Tom Hogarty from Lightroom and our boss, VP Kevin Connor.  Meanwhile Photoshop PM Zorana Gee was on tour in Japan, demonstrating Photoshop to several hundred local journalists–even drawing some audible oohs & aahs from a normally very reserved bunch.

Bits you might find interesting from Photokina:

• Bryan spent about 10 minutes demoing CS4 to Dave Etchells of Imaging Resource.  It’s a nice tight overview that shows off things like the ability to select, then hide part of a 3D model (in this case to paint the interior of a car).
• He also sat down with Thorsten Wulff for a brief interview.
• Elsewhere on the show floor, Kevin chatted with the guys from Calumet Photographic about Photoshop and Lightroom.

Despite my being "the Rachael Ray of Photoshop PMs" (chatty & overexposed), I’m hardly the only one helping to steer things around here.  Just last week my fellow PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes was talking with hundreds of journalists, photographers, and partners at Photokina, alongside Tom Hogarty from Lightroom and our boss, VP Kevin Connor.  Meanwhile Photoshop PM Zorana Gee was on tour in Japan, demonstrating Photoshop to several hundred local journalists–even drawing some audible oohs & aahs from a normally very reserved bunch.

Bits you might find interesting from Photokina:

• Bryan spent about 10 minutes demoing CS4 to Dave Etchells of Imaging Resource.  It’s a nice tight overview that shows off things like the ability to select, then hide part of a 3D model (in this case to paint the interior of a car).
• He also sat down with Thorsten Wulff for a brief interview.
• Elsewhere on the show floor, Kevin chatted with the guys from Calumet Photographic about Photoshop and Lightroom.

My wife now has the distinction of being (an obviously unwilling) part of the largest bank failure in US history.  (As their ads would say, “Woohoo!”)  The Design Fail blog predicts the natural evolution of the Washington Mutual logo and brand.

Meanwhile Adobe HQ apparently features what appear to be gallows up on the roof.  Talk about some killer Halloween spirit.  (Too bad I could never talk building management into using all those LEDs up there to spell out Jenny Holzer’s messages.  Now that would unnerve people.)

In the wake of various sneak peeks, I’m seeing a fair number of questions about what kinds of graphics cards (GPUs) will be required or recommended for running Photoshop going forward.

We’ll have more to say once the new version is announced, but very generally I can say
you’ll want at least 128MB RAM on a card that’s Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0 compatible.  Of course, more brawn is always welcome, and if you anticipate working with numerous large documents and/or 3D, having 512MB RAM on your card is a good idea.

For what it’s worth, I’ve been demoing by tossing around an enormous image on a 2-year-old ATI Radeon 1600 card (256MB) in a MacBook Pro, and it does just fine.  If your GPU doesn’t meet Photoshop’s requirements, you won’t lose any features you have today, but certain new things won’t be enabled.  As I say, we can get into more details soon.

Adobe’s Terry White traveled to Photoshop World and recorded a video podcast of the keynote presentation, during which Adobe VP Johnny Loiacono and I offered some sneak peeks of the next version of Photoshop, as well as a few Adobe Labs projects expected to follow closely behind the new release. [Via]  Photographer, artist, and author John Paul Caponigro summarized the demos, and the Photoshop-specific content starts around the 16-minute mark, running 20 minutes or so.

At Photoshop World this week, an attendee asked me why, after switching from Windows to Mac, she was having trouble changing layer blending modes via the keyboard.  It turned out the choice of OS had nothing to do with it.  Rather, she was missing a subtlety in how these shortcuts work: their target depends on which tool is active.

• With the Move tool (V) selected, you can:
  • change a layer’s blending mode by hitting Shift-plus/minus, cycling forward/backward through the available options;
  • apply a specific mode via Shift-Opt/Alt-letter (e.g. Shift-Opt-O for Overlay);
  • change layer opacity by hitting number keys: "5" sets it to 50%, "6" to 60%, etc., while "55" sets it to 55%, "66" to 66%, and so on.  (Insert joke about "666" erasing your hard drive.)
• With other tools selected (Brush, Eraser, Gradient, Clone Stamp–anything that can be applied with its own blending and opacity options), these shortcuts apply to the tool options instead of to the layer.  Therefore you can quickly alter your brush opacity by tapping the number keys, but to change the opacity of the layer, you’ll have to switch to the Move tool.
• For completeness I should point out that you could also switch to another tool that doesn’t have it’s own blending options, such as Crop, and have the shortcuts apply to the layer.  Really, though, it’s easier to say that Move = layer, and brush = brush where these shortcuts are concerned.

Hopefully that’s of some value/interest.  For reference, here (bottom of the page) is a list of the specific blending mode shortcuts.  For further geekery I recommend scoring a copy of the Photoshop Power Shortcuts book on which I collaborated with Michael Ninness.  Skim it and you’ll quickly see why finding shortcuts for new functions in PS is, ah, non-trivial.

Dear Adobe is a site devoted to rants & raves (but mostly rants) directed at the Big Red A.  You can "Submit Your Gripe" and vote others’ contributions up or down.  Although much of this stuff is hard to hear (in part because some of it echoes what’s said privately at Adobe), the site is a valuable exercise.  It has driven lots of conversation here: I count 30+ emails from yesterday alone, and that was just among Photoshop team members.  We’re listening, and in response to a request from Adobe VP Dave Story, site creator Erik Frick quickly created a Top 25 list (thanks, Erik).

Some thoughts, in no meaningful order:

• About the CS3 installers and updater: We know. Painfully. We could blame it on trying to mash together Macromedia & Adobe in one rev while moving to Mac Intel and Vista simultaneously, but at the end of the day things never should have happened as they did.  That’s as much as I personally can say about it.

• Just because it would be unprofessional of me or others to rant about this or that aspect of the company in public, don’t for a second think it’s not happening behind closed doors.  As I remind my teammates, "I swear because I care"–and I care a lot, at high volume.  It is, to borrow a phrase, "an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about."

• Similarly, it may look like all we do it ladle on more features (more coats of paint on a creaking house).  What’s not apparent is that we–Photoshop at least–are devoting a large chunk of our resources to architectural work that will yield greater speed, stability, and extensibility.  I’ll share some more specifics on that soon.

• Russell Williams wrote, "Of course the top engineering item, ‘Stop creating new features and make
  your software fast, stable and straightforward,’ really means ‘stop creating
  new features except for the ones that really help me.’" Everyone likes to complain about "bloat" while asking for just one or two "wafer-thin" features.  Apps will inexorably grow more powerful, and it’s extraordinarily difficult to remove features, but we are taking real steps to make things better.

• Re: "Consistent interfaces. Sweat the details. Designers notice how much you fake this crap."  That’s nice.  Have you noticed how much more aligned things became in CS3, and how much further that’s been taken in the CS4 betas now revealed?  We’re actively making things more consistent, and that will necessarily entail change, pain, and thus bitching.  So it goes.

• Re: "Please allow cross-platform upgrades! Thanks to you, I can’t switch from PC to Mac :-("  Sure you can.  (How is word not getting out about this?)

• I’m told that the requirement to close your browser during CS3 installation is related to a desire not to overwrite a color settings file that could be in use by Firefox.  I agree that it sucks, but at least you know the rationale.

• In response to "You f___ing f___ers should be in jail just for calling that software," Caleb Belohlavek wrote, "Anyone who uses the f-bomb as an adjective and an noun together is tops in my book."  He also celebrated, "God help me, your the MILF of the software world. And I love you for it."  (I would have thought that some of our apps are GGILFs by now…)

[Via Joe Lencioni & others]

• It’s Imperial Fleet Week SF: The Death Star Over San Francisco.  I love how blasé everyone is, totally ignoring the crazy death-machines around them. [Via]

• Guinness keeps producing terrific spots, now painting with light.  (How much do you want to get a bunch of friends together to try this?)
• Luchador tennis!  Architecture in Helsinki’s new video gets animated using embroidery.
• The titles for We’re Here to Help play with the visual language of government forms (with results groovier than that description would suggest). 

Lenovo has just trotted out the ThinkPad W700, a new portable (luggable?) machine geared towards pro photographers and graphic artists.  This warlock features:

• Quad-core processor
• Up to 8GB (!) of RAM
• Up to three internal hard drives
• Integrated screen calibrator
• Mini Wacom tablet (!)
• Both SD and CompactFlash card slots
• 17" monitor with 24-bit Dream Color (2.3 million colors)
• HDMI video output [Thanks to Bob Rose for the correction]
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700

Adobe’s Robert McDaniels remarks, "With a 17min battery life and a mere 4" thick and 48lbs case, it also doubles as a space heater, pumping out 52K BTUs per min."  Reminds me of the similarly girthy ThinkPad I named "Battlepig" when I started on the Photoshop team.  I’m pretty fond of the Mac 17-inchers I’ve been rocking ever since then, but I’d love to see Apple answer the challenge (especially from the integrated tablet).  Engadget features more info and a video demo. [Via Tobias Hoellrich, from whom I snatched the subject line as well]

Apropos of absolutely nothing Adobe-related, happy 08-08-08!  I’m especially into the date as I was born at 10:08 on this day 33 years ago.  I celebrated my birthday on 8-8-88 watching the first Chicago Cubs night game on TV.  (It being the Cubbies, they got rained out.)  I’m told the series of 8’s is auspicious, so I wish you happiness, good fortune, and delightful pixel-wrangling.  And with that, I’m closing the computer to have some good times with the family here in Illinois.

I recently got word that I’ve been selected to receive an incredibly nice honor–induction into the Photoshop Hall of Fame.  I’ve hesitated to mention it for fear of sounding like a shameless little self promoter; on the other hand, it would be worse to seem ungrateful, so to all the folks at the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, thanks so much!  I am honored indeed.

I do feel kind of sheepish about this–not through any false modesty, but because there are dozens of incredibly talented, hard-working folks who’ve logged many more years than I have on the Photoshop team, and who right now continue to gut it out in all kinds of unglamorous ways.  I can flap my gums all day, but it’s their work that really makes the difference.  They deserve the credit and exposure, so maybe I can get cranking on some profiles so that you can get to know more of the peeps behind PS.  In the meantime, thanks, guys, for letting me represent you.

J.

PS–Here’s a trippy little twist: having returned to O’Hare this morning to pick up luggage we’d abandoned at midnight (following an epic and awful rain-delayed flight with infant), I walked up behind none other than NAPP chiefs Scott Kelby and Dave Moser.  I got to thank them in person for the honor and to wish them good shooting as they teach Chicago Bears bigwigs about sports photography.

The peeps behind the Photoshop Express online image editor have been keeping busy, adding drag-and-drop upload, more printing and editing options, and more. According to Macworld,

A couple of the new updates use Adobe’s AIR technology. The Photoshop Express Uploader enables photo uploading from the desktop of any Internet-connected computer. AIR is also behind a feature that “bridges the real-time, dynamic capabilities of the Web with the computing power and data capabilities of the desktop computer,” according to Adobe.

 

Another handy feature is the ability to drag and drop photos directly from your photo application into Photoshop Express. Users can now also print photos through Shutterfly.

 

Dynamic slideshows can now have music created exclusively for Photoshop Express. For organizing, the addition of tags allows for easy viewing and searching by name, party, venue, subject and anything else you find useful.

 

A one-click Resize tool with presets for mobile, Web, e-mail or online Profiles is now available and you can now download photos from anyone’s public album and keep a collection of their favorites.

 

All of the new features are available immediately by logging into the Photoshop Express Web site.

• Gizmodo hosts a mostly great collection of gadgets P-shopped into fine art.  [Via Gary Cohen]
• The loose & sketchy quality of Ad Media Studio’s site is a refreshing antidote to the polychromatic perfection of most Web sites.  So, for that matter, is Bjork Ostrom‘s torn-paper site. [Via]
• Dig the simple, efficient problem-solving in Ruben Parra’s logo.
• I love James White’s lines & sense of color.  If you do as well, check out his posters for sale.
• Using people to create symmetrical illustrations: Human Mirror, brought to you by the same guys who staged the excellent Frozen Grand Central earlier this year.