• 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.

The Daily Show has always put Photoshop to great use*, but now they take things further in response to the Iranian missile manipulation incident. (And who knew that CNN was now demoing the Clone Stamp?) From last night’s episode, in two parts:


See also lots o’ good riffs on Boing Boing. (Shouldn’t it really be a Persian LOLcat, though?) [Update: Engadget readers show off their gags. [Via Adam Jerugim]]
* Personal fave from years back: A photo showed American Special Forces guys teaching Afghan kids baseball while the kids’ somewhat confused dads looked on. TDS modified the image to show a guy in the stands holding a banner that read, “ESPN: Execute Some Pashtuns Now.”

Just a thought: If you’re not into the links I share here, that’s fine.  Please don’t feel compelled to take time out of your day (and mine) to write in and say so.  Just ignore the stuff, as plenty of others seem to find it interesting.  (I don’t know why this gets under my skin so much, but I’m amazed that people devote energy to writing "You suck."  It’s like the "F You" bits in Catcher in the Rye.  They’re gonna write it on my tombstone.)

Incidentally, in the last seven days I’ve posted a very long post about the future of Photoshop; news about Apple fixes that affect CS apps and Flash Player speed-ups, insight into the Lightroom UI, and more. It’s not *all* just stuff I steal from Kottke et al. >;-P

[Update: Thanks for all the kind comments. The flow of ephemera will continue, though I’ll look into whether our blog server can support multiple RSS feeds per blog. That way I could separate the links from the more strictly Photoshop-/Adobe-related content, and you could subscribe to one, both, or neither. –J.]

Our friend Scott Kelby has been posting some interesting surveys to determine what his readers would like to see in future versions of Photoshop.  Now I’ve replied to some of those thoughts in a guest blog post on his site.

Also, on the extremely off chance you aren’t already hearing enough from me, Harris Fogel of Mac Edition Radio has posted the interview we recorded back at Photoshop World.  (The secret to my maintaining this blog?  Gross dereliction of other work duties.)

Our friend Scott Kelby has been posting some interesting surveys to determine what his readers would like to see in future versions of Photoshop.  Now I’ve replied to some of those thoughts in a guest blog post on his site.

Also, on the extremely off chance you aren’t already hearing enough from me, Harris Fogel of Mac Edition Radio has posted the interview we recorded back at Photoshop World.  (The secret to my maintaining this blog?  Gross dereliction of other work duties.)

Good news: Apple has just released the 10.5.4 update to OS X Leopard, fixing some incompatibilities with Creative Suite applications:

• A problem introduced in the 10.5.3 update that could cause file corruption with files saved from Photoshop and other applications, has been fixed.
• Navigation Services issues that could cause InDesign to crash have been addressed.  InDesign evangelist Tim Cole has provided more details, and the InDesign team has released their own ID 5.0.3 update today (Mac|Win; InCopy Mac|Win).

• And Now For Something Completely Different: Photoshop ninja/uncannable rhyme animal Deke McClelland puts his skills to the test, dropping 101 Photoshop Tips in 5 Minutes.  As he says, "It’s bold, it’s brash, it’s ridiculous. It’s a podcast with serious issues. Enjoy."  The KBSC geek (and occasional Nada Surf fan) in me certainly did.
• "Have we created an unattainable image of perfection?" Diet.com explores The Photoshop Effect and the Photoshop guns hired to tune up celebrities.  (The video has racked up nearly 900,000 views in just 10 days.) [Via Steve Johnson]
  • Related: Glossy magazines face an airbrush ban over concerns about promoting unrealistic body images. [Via Gary Cosimini]
• Photoshop gets used in a music video–not just in the production, but in the video itself.  (Hey, gotta love the use of those CS3 video layers.)

A couple people have written recently to request features in Photoshop and Bridge, not knowing that what they’re seeking is already there:

• A digital painter named Gracie Rafferty asked for the ability to reorder brushes.  To do so, choose Edit->Preset Manager, then rock out.  The same goes for gradients, patterns, swatches, etc.  You can delete individual items by Opt/Alt-clicking them, which also works in the Brushes palette.
• Eric James Wood would like to move from iView to Bridge and asked for a way to see the contents of multiple folders at once.  That’s possible in Bridge CS3, but the UI is quite subtle. Open up the Filter panel in Bridge, then click the little "no folders" icon at the top of it. That’ll instruct Bridge to show you the contents of the current folder & all the folders nested within it.  From there you can select, rate, rename, hand off to Photoshop, etc.–everything you’d do with files that live in the same folder.

"I’m trying to understand how to make life better for script developers," writes Adobe developer evangelist Mark Niemann-Ross, "and a couple of minutes of your time would tell me worlds about your needs. When you’ve got five minutes to spare, please point a browser at this survey.  Thanks!"
[Update: Mark replies to some tea-leaf-reading about doom (or lack thereof) for AppleScript support.]

I’ve gotten a few inquiries lately about whether it’s possible to extract metadata from images and other files using Adobe Bridge.  Short answer: Absolutely.  Try John Hake’s workflow automation scripts, one of which (Metadata_BR.jsx) extracts metadata from selected files and generates Comma Separated Value (CSV) reports.

To do more with Bridge automation, check out this Flash-enabled JPEG export script, and download the Bridge SDK to write your own scripts. [Via David Franzen]

(Dang, now I have that Ice-T song "Colors" in my head)

• HP’s new monitor eats your mere 16.7-million-color display for breakfast.  For $3,499, the 30-bit (10 bits per RGB channel) DreamColor LP2480zx promises up to a billion colors per pixel.  The display is aimed especially at people doing cinema post production & was produced in collaboration with DreamWorks Animation SKG.
• Firefox 3 is the latest web browser to support the colour managed display of photos with embedded ICC profiles, points out Rob Galbraith.  "That’s the good news. The bad news is it’s turned off by default. Here’s how to turn it on."  (For why all this matters, see previous.)

PS–The topic of color also makes me think of some cute profanity.

(Dang, now I have that Ice-T song "Colors" in my head)

• HP’s new monitor eats your mere 16.7-million-color display for breakfast.  For $3,499, the 30-bit (10 bits per RGB channel) DreamColor LP2480zx promises up to a billion colors per pixel.  The display is aimed especially at people doing cinema post production & was produced in collaboration with DreamWorks Animation SKG.
• Firefox 3 is the latest web browser to support the colour managed display of photos with embedded ICC profiles, points out Rob Galbraith.  "That’s the good news. The bad news is it’s turned off by default. Here’s how to turn it on."  (For why all this matters, see previous.)

PS–The topic of color also makes me think of some cute profanity.

The Photoshop team is recruiting for a color-savvy Quality Engineer:

Are you a specialist in digital imaging science? Do you possess an in-depth knowledge of color management? Are you eager to bring your experience and analytical skills to a dynamic testing environment?

 

The Photoshop team is looking for an eager Quality Engineer who specializes in the area of digital imaging science and possesses an in-depth knowledge of color management. You need to exhibit potential in the areas of understanding QE methodologies and approaches, which encompasses scripting and automation capabilities. You must also be able to work independently to complete deliverables and tasks on time, have excellent communication skills and work well in a team environment with members of all functional groups.

 

Be prepared to detail your expertise and experience, answer some technical questions, describe details of imaging science and be able to speak to your color management background.

For more info see the PDF, and if you’re interested in applying for the position, please send your info to recruiter Juliya Alvarez.

I’ve been getting quite a few inquiries about problems saving files from Photoshop directly to
network drives when using the recently released Mac OS 10.5.3. (I’m told the issue can affect InDesign and maybe other apps as well.)

The short story is that we’ve been working closely with Apple to troubleshoot the issue and have identified the cause. Apple is working on a fix, and we expect they’ll release it in the next System Update.

The slightly longer story is that saving directly to a network is a generally bad idea.  Here’s what I’ve heard from a contact in engineering:

Directly writing to a network filing system adds a level of complexity, which includes timing issues, network noise, performance, and other potential issues. We’ve occasionally run into bugs with different configurations/combinations, but as there are too many variants for us to reliably test and certify all the clients, servers, hardware and software, we recommend the safer course of working with files locally and then copying them up to a file server when you’re done. While directly reading/writing to network file systems should work in theory, and while we do some limited testing in the most popular configurations to verify that it does, we can not certify that it will work reliably in your configuration.

I know that’s not what you may want to hear, but it’s a long-standing advisory.  Saving files locally, then transferring them, offers better performance as well as greater reliability.

Note to self: "Blog first & ask questions later" is a really bad approach.

On Saturday I posted a blog entry in which I tried to clarify some details of what we’ve been developing in Photoshop.  Unfortunately, looking back, it’s clear I did a poor job of communicating what I intended.  In particular I regret the way I went about pointing out some errors I’d seen in stories.

Let me give you a little context about how things unfolded.  A few weeks ago I demonstrated some "potential future Photoshop technology" (more on what that means in a minute) during Adobe’s meeting with financial analysts.  Some folks at NVIDIA saw that demo and asked whether we’d mind repeating it at a press gathering they’d scheduled for last Thursday.  We said sure, and I got busy testing everything on a system they supplied.

On Friday I saw Theo Valich’s story on TG Daily covering the demo.  One detail jumped out at me: "The package is expected to be released on October 1."  As anyone who’s dealt with Adobe will tell you, we very rarely share details about when most products are expected to ship.  In fact, during my demo I’d noted a number of times that I was just showing some possible future technology, not announcing a new version, timing, etc.

Throughout the next day and a half, I kept getting Google Alerts linking to articles that repeated and amplified the news, occasionally misstating various details.  I started getting mail from colleagues to the effect of, "You said what??"

At that point, watching the story morph and replicate, I decided to try to nip things in the bud by sharing some clarifications.  Given that we were in the middle of a long holiday weekend, I opted to act quickly–too quickly.  I ended up overreacting, and whereas I should have dropped a line to at least some of the various media outlets, I called them out here.  The irony is that I was complaining about people blogging too quickly without checking all their facts, and in the process I was blogging too quickly without checking my facts!

On Sunday I got a quick & courteous note from Jonathan Fingas of Electronista thanking me for the clarifications & noting that they’d updated their story.  Similarly I heard from staff at Gizmodo & TG Daily noting that they’d made updates.  I greatly appreciate that, and in the future I’ll find a much better way of pointing out needed changes.

As for the content of my post, I know there’s been some lingering confusion, so let me try to clarify a few points for the record:

• I didn’t say whether the next version of Photoshop would or would not be called CS4.  Instead, I was simply trying to point out that what I was showing was a technology demonstration that was independent of a particular version.
• Similarly, I didn’t say that GPU-enabled features would or would not ship in the next version of Photoshop.  Think, "I can neither confirm nor deny…"  When developing any product, details are always subject to change, and it’s always possible that some unforeseen roadblock will appear.  That’s why we try so hard to wrap a lot of caution tape around any future-looking statements: we’re excited to be showing you some of what we’re building, and we hope you are, too, but we want to manage expectations & not over-promise anything. Make sense?
• Lastly, I didn’t say that the next version Photoshop would or would not ship on a particular date.  My (badly made) point was that nothing had been announced, so the fact that a date of "October 1" kept getting repeated should be taken with the appropriate grain of salt.

In short, I just meant to say that we weren’t promising any particular features at any particular time–nothing more, nothing less.  Hopefully needless to say, we’ll work as hard as we can to bring you the good stuff sooner rather than later.

According to an FAQ on Adobe.com,

During the month of June 2008, certain product trials that are launched for the first time (regardless of when they were installed) will function for only one day instead of 30 days, due to an error in a line of code that counts down the remaining days in a trial. You will not experience this issue if you have launched your trial before June 1, 2008, or do not launch it until July 1 or thereafter.

Therefore product trials are unavailable for download from Adobe.com at the moment.  Customer Service says, "If you tried to use an Adobe trial in June and it expired after one day, please visit www.adobe.com/go/trialupdate for more information."

The Bridge folks are looking for more input & testing coverage on the next version of the software, so they’ve asked me to pass along the following note:

Bridge Customers,

We are looking for a few interested Adobe Bridge users to join our Prerelease Program. We need customers who use Bridge in their workflow regularly and want to provide constructive feedback to the Bridge team on monthly prerelease builds of Bridge. If you are interested, please complete the prerelease request form.  Be sure to select ‘Adobe Bridge’ from the product list.

Note: A non-disclosure agreement will be required and space is limited, so unfortunately we won’t be able to accept all who apply.

Thanks for your interest in Adobe Bridge!

It seems that news of the demo I did the other day (a repeat of what we’d shown publicly three weeks earlier) is bouncing all around the online tech press.  People are excited that the Photoshop team is exploring ways to make the app feel faster and smoother, and that’s all good.  What’s irritating, though, is just how much bogus info is getting invented, passed around, and swallowed without question.

Gizmodo is repeating info found on a site called TG Daily, stating that "Photoshop CS4" (a term that I’ve never heard anyone from Adobe use publicly) "is expected to be released on October 1."  Uhh… expected by whom?  And based on what?

I didn’t say anything about schedule.  In fact, I never said that any of this stuff is promised to go into any particular version of Photoshop.  Rather, as with previous installments, it’s a technology demonstration of some things we’ve got cooking–nothing more.

Doesn’t matter, though: Someone pulled a date apparently out of thin air, and now everyone who can copy & paste is dutifully repeating it.  The fish story grows with the telling, too.  In addition to repeating the date, Electronista is inventing new details (e.g. "CS3 has already had limited support for graphics processing units (GPUs) for certain filters"; sorry, no; "An upcoming wave of video cards with special physics processing will also help, Adobe explains"; nope, didn’t say that; and more).  Where do people get this stuff?  It’s particularly annoying to see made-up info presented as a response from Adobe–to questions that were never asked. (Contacting Adobe PR, or me directly, to confirm some detail isn’t exactly tough.)

I’m not feeling a lot of confidence in the tech press these days.  People just make up whatever they want, creating a bunch of expectations & misperceptions that people like me have to try to unravel.  There’s no disincentive to doing so: the sites still get their ad impressions, and clearly bloggers and readers are all too happy to take what they read at face value.

I don’t know what to tell you, as the quest for ad bucks is eroding journalistic standards across the board.  "Caveat lector," and I’ll keep trying to share actually legitimate information here.

J.

PS–I found this warez link kind of hilarious.  Not only are people inventing product info in order to entice you to download a bunch of unknown executable code onto your machine (something from the Eliot Spitzer Memorial Hall Of Unprotected Terrible Ideas); now they’re actually using Photoshop to design fake Photoshop packaging! (Screenshot here in case the shady server disappears.)

• Spectra is an interactive 3D news presentation from MSNBC.  Although I’m not convinced that putting news onto flying postcards will boost anyone’s concentration or retention, I dig the aesthetics and the attention to detail.  I couldn’t get the Web cam access to work with Flash Player 10 on my system, and the inability to click on stories of interest is annoying, but maybe you’ll have better luck.  Here’s the direct link.
• Steven Wood’s Tag Galaxy uses the Papervision3D library for Flash to explore Flickr photos via virtual planetary systems.
• I’ve mentioned the very cool, very fast, and free PicLens browser plug-in a number of times.  In addition to working with Flickr, Google Images, etc., it’s been upgraded to search YouTube.  Check out the video demo.
• TimeTube visualizes YouTube content via a timeline, list view, flipbook and map view. [Via]

• Spectra is an interactive 3D news presentation from MSNBC.  Although I’m not convinced that putting news onto flying postcards will boost anyone’s concentration or retention, I dig the aesthetics and the attention to detail.  I couldn’t get the Web cam access to work with Flash Player 10 on my system, and the inability to click on stories of interest is annoying, but maybe you’ll have better luck.  Here’s the direct link.
• Steven Wood’s Tag Galaxy uses the Papervision3D library for Flash to explore Flickr photos via virtual planetary systems.
• I’ve mentioned the very cool, very fast, and free PicLens browser plug-in a number of times.  In addition to working with Flickr, Google Images, etc., it’s been upgraded to search YouTube.  Check out the video demo.
• TimeTube visualizes YouTube content via a timeline, list view, flipbook and map view. [Via]

The subject of copyright is always high in photographers’ minds, especially in light of Orphan Works legislation & rampant image “borrowing” online. Consequently there’s an ongoing burning desire for secure metadata that can’t be stripped away from images.

Last summer I posted a guest blog entry from Russell Williams on why Photoshop doesn’t provide secure metadata.  Now Adobe metadata expert Gunar Penikis has posted about the Economics of Trust and Permanent Metadata.  If this subject is of interest to you, check out Gunar’s thoughts & the comments that follow (and feel free to add your own perspective).

The subject of copyright is always high in photographers’ minds, especially in light of Orphan Works legislation & rampant image “borrowing” online. Consequently there’s an ongoing burning desire for secure metadata that can’t be stripped away from images.

Last summer I posted a guest blog entry from Russell Williams on why Photoshop doesn’t provide secure metadata.  Now Adobe metadata expert Gunar Penikis has posted about the Economics of Trust and Permanent Metadata.  If this subject is of interest to you, check out Gunar’s thoughts & the comments that follow (and feel free to add your own perspective).

Via Daring Fireball I caught this little blurb from Panic‘s Cabel Sasser:

A company like Adobe, which has hundreds of engineers working on
Photoshop, releases ONE version every two or three years, and maybe a
single bug fix release in the interim. For the most part, we’re all
cool with that, myself included! 🙂

I’m glad to hear the last bit, especially as I love Panic’s Transmit and Unison software–models of simplicity and refinement.  The rest is kind of funny, though: in reality we have only a couple dozen engineers working on Photoshop.  (If you added in every person who tests Photoshop and Bridge, localizes them, builds the installers, manages the process, etc., you could get to more than a hundred people–but only with some effort.)  Relative to our feature set and code base, the team runs very lean.

As for the shipping schedule, it’s been 18-24 months between major releases for quite some time.  I don’t mean to take a casual comment in a forum overly seriously.  It’s just that I’ve been thinking about the Photoshop (and Suite) shipping schedule, wondering whether it’s too long, too short, or both.

On the one hand, the richer Suite apps get and the more of them there are, the more time people would like to settle into using them.  It’s generally easier to absorb upgrading a number of applications at once, then living with them for a while, than it was to handle continual unsynchronized updates (the pre-Suites world).  Through this lens, 18 months looks short.

On the other hand, we’re increasingly living in a world where "software is a relationship, not an artifact" (as I think Tim O’Reilly put it).  An application like Google Maps or Photoshop Express could be updated seamlessly, simultaneously for all users, every hour if desired.  Through that lens, 18 months looks awfully long.

I’d like to get to a point where we can have it both ways.  I’d like the core team to be able to go off and spend several years retooling essential pieces of plumbing, making changes that won’t become visible for a few versions.  At the same time, I want to wake up in the morning and have Photoshop be smarter & more feature-rich than when I went to bed.  Some things should be updated every 5 years; others, every five minutes.

Obviously this isn’t the kind of change a team makes overnight, but we’re getting there.  Building on what we’ve got percolating, functionality like peer-to-peer help will become possible.  More on that foundation soon.

PS–Re: people banging on Panic for more frequent updates to their inexpensive tools, I’m reminded of an observation attributed to Edward Tufte: "The sense of entitlement increases as the price of the service or product decreases."

If it’s in Photoshop and it goes fast, there’s a very good chance that Chris Cox has had something to do with it.  Chris is, among a great many other things, the go-to guy for optimizing many functions in the app.  (At various times we’ve known there’s some kind of crazy-exotic Apple hardware in Chris’s office–something that would emerge many months later as the G5, etc.–and that he’s busily tuning the app for it but can’t tell us any of the details.)  In any case, he has started a blog on C++ performance.  If that’s up your alley, I recommend subscribing to the feed.

[Semi-irrelevant personal aside: After so many years of consulting Chris to learn about HDR imaging, color management, GPUs vs. CPUs, and so on, I’m taking some pleasure in sharing my meager (yet superior) knowledge of CSS with him, hipping him to groovy tools like Xyle scope.  I’ve gotta enjoy the moment while it lasts!]

Hats off to all the Apple folks responsible for Time Machine: I’m pleased to report that restoring my Mac from the data stored on my Time Capsule went off without a hitch. Performing a synch with the drive was easy, and after a couple of hours everything was just where I left it–right down to my Dock icons, desktop picture, and app preferences. (James Duncan Davidson provides more detail on a similar (albeit planned) experience.) I was especially pleased to see that all my NetNewsWire clippings & tabs came back in place.
I’ve encountered only a little strangeness so far:

• In Adobe Contribute, my local drafts are present, but the app preferences seem to have gotten partially lost. I’ll pass my info along to the CT team. I did lose some material I’d worked on over the weekend (as Saturday night’s Time Machine backup failed for unspecified reasons), but the rest of the drafts look recoverable.
• Photoshop held onto my serial number, but it asked to be reactivated (which transpired successfully)
• Update: iTunes lost my authorization info. Hopefully I haven’t now burned another authorization. Also, Ambrosia’s iSeek and Snapz Pro have lost their registration info. QuickTime Pro seems unaffected.

Thanks to everyone who provided suggestions below. The Letterbox add-on for Apple Mail seems to do a great job enabling Entourage-style three-pane viewing, but I haven’t tried it extensively. I’m really torn about leaving my old friend Entourage, especially as Mail apparently doesn’t offer the ability to accept/decline meetings sent through the Exchange server. Efficient incremental backups sound pretty appealing, however.
I’m now going to try using Time Machine with a Drobo. It seems that it’ll be possible to store a large photo collection (which wouldn’t fit onto the laptop drive) alongside the Time Machine data file. If anything interesting develops, I’ll pass along the info.

I hope never to verify the effectiveness of an airbag using my face, or the completeness of my life insurance at the cost of my life. I guess I won’t get a pass on testing the promise of my new Time Capsule, however.
Today the hard drive on my inordinately hard-working MacBook Pro bit the dust. I’d had no signs of trouble whatsoever, but I admit the machine did take a spill from several feet up a few months ago. (Let’s just say the Slingbox is working out better than the idea of perching a laptop on a music stand.) That jolt didn’t cause it to skip a beat, however–not even to disrupt the show that was streaming.
This morning, however, my apps started running really slowly, with the Mac beachballing so hard that I finally had to hold down the power button. After that, no más: just an endless gray startup screen. The guys at the local Mac “genius bar” (not geniuses, but not bad) confirmed that this critter is toast.
Thus far the Time Capsule (acquired in the nick of time, evidently) has been a bit of a mixed bag. For my tastes it’s a little off the mark from “As simple as possible, but no simpler”–omitting the second half of that phrase. I haven’t found a way to set backups to be nightly, not hourly, so I have to do them manually. (Otherwise the system would presumably be trying to copy my multi-gigabyte Entourage data file over wireless every hour–not a good use of CPU and bandwidth.) I also don’t see a way to store a superset of data on the Time Capsule (i.e. keeping a large image collection there but not on my local Mac). Overcoming the latter obstacle may not be that hard, as it seems possible to mount the disk as a normal server, but I haven’t had a chance to test it out. And finally, like just about every Apple networking system I’ve tried (AirTunes, Apple TV, iChat AV, etc.), the Time Capsule doesn’t get along with my Cisco VPN connection, meaning I have to shut it down before connecting.
All of these little beefs will melt away, of course, if the TC saves my bacon. I guess we’ll see once I get a new HD or a new machine. (This post comes to you from my wife’s MacBook.) I’m really curious to see whether it’ll be possible to restore things like the list of tabs and clippings I have in NetNewsWire, as that plus my Adobe Contribute drafts constitute all my pending blogfodder. (Without all that stuff, expect a dry period here for a while.)
Crossing fingers,
J.

I’m pleased to see that this Tuesday marks the first San Francisco meeting of the San Francisco Bay Area Photoshop Users Group.  According to the Evite, here’s what’s planned:

Photoshop Power Users with Kelly McCathran: In this session we will wow you with some new hot features and double wow you with some little known and under utilized tools… Adobe Bridge: Batch renaming multiple files; The Image Processor to batch convert to different file formats; Photomerge for building Panoramics. Creating and Batching Actions; Vanishing Point Filter; Placing Smart Objects; Image Warping; Patch & Spot Healing Brush Tools; Red Eye Removal Tool; History palette and painting with snapshots; Layer Masks; Setting the best Preferences Tips & Tricks as well as Keyboard Shortcuts.

Kelly McCathran is the Service Provider Evangelist for Adobe.  Her mission is to maintain relationships with the top print shops in North America. To fulfill that roll, she is the primary contact for printers to get the support, training and information they need to successfully work with Adobe’s line of products. In addition Kelly is a Certified Technical Trainer and an Adobe Certified Expert in InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, GoLive and PageMaker. Kelly has traveled North America and abroad teaching applications to the largest print shops in the world.

The meeting starts at 5:30pm at the Adobe SF office (601 Townsend St.).  If you plan to attend, please RSVP to info@photoshopusers.org so that they can get the right amount of pizza and drinks.

At the Photoshop World show a couple of weeks ago, PS co-architect Russell Williams & performance testing lead Adam Jerugim presented a session on tuning application performance to a packed house (see photo).  Adam has now passed along their presentation slides (6.5MB PDF), including notes.

Related topics:

• Russell contributed a guest entry about What’s the story with Photoshop & multi-core?
• Russell’s co-architect Scott Byer posted his notes after giving a similar presentation at last fall’s Photoshop World
• Scott’s post from late ’06, 64 bits…when?, remains a useful overview of that subject

• The Imaginary Forces kids look like they had a ball putting the aesthetics of children’s books into motion for the titles of Nim’s Island.
• "Lasers, Boombox, Muscles, Keith Haring, 80s beats"; yep, that’s about right.  Bizarre & wonderful. [Via]
• Peliculas Ponder offers a magical view of the world from the Madrid Metro. [Via]
• Things get hairy–really hairy–in for the video for The New Pornographers’ Myriad Harbor.  Montreal-based Fluorescent Hill kicked out the illustrated jams. [Via]
• Peep this terrific musical rollercoaster for Zürich Chamber Orchestra. [Via]
• I dig the simple shapes and sound design in the Wallpaper Design Awards animation. [Via]

• The Imaginary Forces kids look like they had a ball putting the aesthetics of children’s books into motion for the titles of Nim’s Island.
• "Lasers, Boombox, Muscles, Keith Haring, 80s beats"; yep, that’s about right.  Bizarre & wonderful. [Via]
• Peliculas Ponder offers a magical view of the world from the Madrid Metro. [Via]
• Things get hairy–really hairy–in for the video for The New Pornographers’ Myriad Harbor.  Montreal-based Fluorescent Hill kicked out the illustrated jams. [Via]
• Peep this terrific musical rollercoaster for Zürich Chamber Orchestra. [Via]
• I dig the simple shapes and sound design in the Wallpaper Design Awards animation. [Via]

If you know some JavaScript and have thought of applying your skills to Photoshop automation, you might check out Trevor Morris’s Intro to Scripting Photoshop and follow-up practical example.

Trevor, who both offers a set of free scripts & does scripting for hire, is right that scripting is a very powerful yet underused part of the Photoshop story.  It’s a key part of the moduarlity & customizability I always mention as a key area for us to develop in the future, and we’ll keep working to make it easier & more powerful.

Photoshop team script wrangler Jeff Tranberry reports that he’s posted the class materials from the "Photoshop for Geeks" session he & Tom Ruark presented at Photoshop World.  He also reports that the very useful Dr. Brown’s Services set of scripts have been updated to v1.9.4 and are available for download. [Via]

This little milestone may be of interest only to me, but I’m kind of amazed to be writing my 1,000th post on this blog.  In the 969 days since I’ve started this journey, quite a lot has gone down.  Needless to say, if you weren’t reading this, I wouldn’t bother writing it, so thanks for all the encouragement.  I’ve felt like looking back over the effort to date & thought it would be fun to dig up some of the meatier posts.

Since August 2005 I’ve gotten to announce an unprecedented public beta of Photoshop; introduce Lightroom (twice); welcome a competitor and lots of new friends; mourn the loss of others; fan and then help defuse controversy; celebrate new integration; share some tips (e.g. Photoshop Text; Killer B&W); momentarily crack the TechMeme Leaderboard; and more.  Oh, and somehow in there I became the #1 search term for "cs3 serials," giving me a chance to throw Yiddish & Spanish at pirates ;-).

I’m proudest of getting to share some perspective on the challenges of developing Photoshop, hopefully giving some insight into the problems we wrestle every day (which are, of course, what make the job fun).  I’ve gotten to wax on many times about the sheer size of Photoshop & what it means we must do:

• Photoshop, as seen through Johnny Cash (with follow-up/clarification)
• Simplicity vs. Power in Photoshop
• Photoshop & "The Paradox of Choice"
• Get lean. Stay hungry.
• Psst–wanna see Photoshop 15?

Somewhat related, I’ve tried to illuminate reasons why [cue the Stones’ choir] You Can’t Always Get What You (Think You) Want:

• The Secret Life of Smart Filters
• Why Photoshop doesn’t provide secure metadata

With the help of some friends, I’ve gotten to to share some techier bits:

• What’s the story with Photoshop & multi-core?
• Is Photoshop CS3 a 64-bit app?
• Tuning Photoshop for peak performance

Readers have provided timely, concrete feedback on some specific ideas (e.g. User-powered help and kuler inside Photoshop), providing data we can use to push to get things built.  You’ve offered a wealth of opinions on how to move applications forward:

• Photoshop + Fireworks: Where to from here?
• FreeHand no longer updated; moving to Illustrator
• Iconfactory talks, Illustrator listens

And then periodically I get to muse a little aloud:

• Trilobites & Kilobytes (on the impermanence of digital bits)
• How far would you go to get the shot?
• "Most of your pictures suck"
• Genericide: Xeroxing "Photoshop"
• lol i can yoose photoshop

That’s probably more than enough nostalgia for one evening, so I’ll wrap it up. Thanks again for having me.  Feedback on where you’d like to see all this go is always welcome.

Oh, and one more thing: despite it having netted me a great portrait, I think I’ll never blog about icons again! ;-P

This coming Tuesday evening (April 8), we’re hosting another meeting of the San José Photoshop User Group.  Instead of just talking about the normal ins and outs of software, three speakers will be talking about adopting environmentally sound work practices in the graphics industry.  If you’re in our neck of the woods, feel free to swing by (6:30-9pm).  Details are below.

This will not be a typical user group meeting, but it’s certainly a topical subject. We’ll begin with a general talk about working green in the graphics industry and cover the issues involved. These include the carbon footprint of using the Internet, printing to read and to judge color, keeping devices on and plugged in, printing too many pieces with chemically toxic inks and coated papers, commuting to work alone, etc.

We’ll also talk about the power of the consumer and the end user to affect change by rethinking how they work and by either influencing their managers or, if they are the buyers, by choosing green vendors. We’ll show a tool that will be available to AIGA members that calculates the carbon footprint of a project and offers different combinations to reduce the damage.

We’ll have three speakers. The first is Phil Nail of AISO.net. His company has done a lot of research on the environmental damage of using computers and the internet. He offers web hosting solutions that are entirely powered by the sun. Son Do, from Rods and Cones, will talk about waste reduction by using applications correctly in a color-managed environment, and also with softproofing. Peter Montgomery of Moquin Press will talk about what an environmentally responsible printer can do and why it’s important to use them. He’ll offer suggestions on what to ask to select the right printer. If there’s time, we’ll do a sidebar on book publishing through a company like Blurb that uses digital presses and enables a customer to print only the number of books or brochures needed.

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).  If you’d like to be on our email list, send a note to dan at weinberg-clark.com.

See you there,
Dan Clark and Tom Upton

In response to customer feedback about terms of service, the Photoshop Express team has made some changes.  Here’s the note I received from them this afternoon:

We have revised the terms of service for Photoshop Express beta. Revisions were made in context of user feedback. The original terms of service implied things we would never do with the content within Photoshop Express.  Thus, revisions were made to clarify our intent:

• Adobe’s Rights – Adobe has retained only those limited rights that allow us to operate the service and to enable you to do all the things the service offers.  If you decide to terminate your Photoshop Express account, Adobe’s rights also will be terminated. We don’t claim ownership of your content and won’t sell your images.
• Shared Content – We clearly state the rights you’re granting other users when you choose to publicly share Your Content.

The terms of service will not take effect until April 10th, in order to give you time to review and choose to continue using the Photoshop Express beta under these new terms.

Thank you for your feedback on Photoshop Express beta. We value your input and support in improving the service for all users.

When you show up as an answer in Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me‘s lightning round, people must be starting to take notice. 🙂

Adobe’s Photoshop Express service tore out of the gate last week:

• 1 million+ visitors to the PX homepage on the first day
• More than 3 million images uploaded to PX on the first day (3.5 terabytes of data!)

Adobe VP Doug Mack says, "This was way more than the team expected for the beta launch (pretty exciting).  With all this activity all at once, the service slowed down, but it’s now back to running nicely as things have normalized.   If you found it slow, you may want to come back and check it out this week."

Doug reports that on day 1, "Service ramped up so fast that account verification emails and sharing emails were literally flying out of the service.  As the email traffic ramped from literally ‘zero’ to ‘full tilt’ in just a matter of hours (basically starting at 9am EDT), many email services and spam filters thought we were spammers and some gray listed us.  We worked with them so they knew we were legit and had it sorted out by lunchtime."

In case you signed up but didn’t get a new account verification email, please try going back to the site; try logging in with the account you set up; and choose the option to have the email resent.  You’ll get an email with a new key to activate the account.

One other thing to note: Even though the beta is listed as US-only (due to the incomplete state of the server infrastructure), the service is being used around the world.  Doug writes:

• We’ve been seeing a high level of activity around the clock.  We have not seen things go quiet through the middle of the night at all.
• Either we have some serious photo-loving insomniacs in the US, or people are ignoring the "US Only" beta period and we are already global, like it or not.
• Just a reminder that the beta is US only.  And while anyone around the world is welcome to try the beta, the experience will be nothing like that of when we expand to beta globally (as right now, they are accessing US-based servers)

Amidst all the positive, enthusiastic responses to the launch of Photoshop Express, I’ve seen some concerns about the terms of use.  This item in particular draws attention:

8. Use of Your Content. Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

This afternoon I got the following note from the Photoshop Express team:

We’ve heard your concerns about the terms of service for Photoshop Express beta.  We reviewed the terms in context of your comments – and we agree that it currently implies things we would never do with the content.  Therefore, our legal team is making it a priority to post revised terms that are more appropriate for Photoshop Express users.  We will alert you once we have posted new terms.  Thank you for your feedback on Photoshop Express beta and we appreciate your input.

I’ll post an update when I know more. [Update: See the revised terms of service.]

Alongside Photoshop Express, Adobe has been quietly and vigorously building out some interesting online collaboration and sharing tools.  (“Watch Out – Adobe Is Slowly Building an Online Empire,” says ReadWriteWeb.) Here are a pair that can help you work with colleagues and clients–for free.

• "Brio" is the codename for the next version of Adobe Acrobat Connect (once known as Breeze), the screen/voice/document-sharing system that runs through the Flash Player.  Brio lets you
  collaborate in real time with up to two partners. Terry White writes,

  The only catch is that Adobe hopes that by trying this FREE version out, you’ll get so hooked that you’ll want more and you’ll want to step up to the full version of Connect Pro for your business or organization to get rid of the limits. However, you’re not obligated to do so. So you have nothing to lose. Account setup is painless and if you already have an Adobe ID, it takes about 1 minute to set up your BRIO account.

• "Share" is a free Web-based service that allows you to share, publish and organize documents easily.  According to the Adobe Labs site,
  

  Each document you upload to your Share account is assigned a unique website address. To share a document with someone, select the document you want to share, enter the person’s email address and an optional message, and set whether the files will be publicly accessible or restricted only to the recipients. Recipients will get an email with a link they can click on to download the document. You can also link to your documents, or embed rich Flash® previews on your own website, blog or wiki.

  On Entrepreneur.com photographer Danya Henninger says,
  "We use it to send large files to clients. We can deliver the product online. I just got into the Adobe Share beta. It worked out perfectly."

[Via Karen Tomlinson]

Alongside Photoshop Express, Adobe has been quietly and vigorously building out some interesting online collaboration and sharing tools.  (“Watch Out – Adobe Is Slowly Building an Online Empire,” says ReadWriteWeb.) Here are a pair that can help you work with colleagues and clients–for free.

• "Brio" is the codename for the next version of Adobe Acrobat Connect (once known as Breeze), the screen/voice/document-sharing system that runs through the Flash Player.  Brio lets you
  collaborate in real time with up to two partners. Terry White writes,

  The only catch is that Adobe hopes that by trying this FREE version out, you’ll get so hooked that you’ll want more and you’ll want to step up to the full version of Connect Pro for your business or organization to get rid of the limits. However, you’re not obligated to do so. So you have nothing to lose. Account setup is painless and if you already have an Adobe ID, it takes about 1 minute to set up your BRIO account.

• "Share" is a free Web-based service that allows you to share, publish and organize documents easily.  According to the Adobe Labs site,
  

  Each document you upload to your Share account is assigned a unique website address. To share a document with someone, select the document you want to share, enter the person’s email address and an optional message, and set whether the files will be publicly accessible or restricted only to the recipients. Recipients will get an email with a link they can click on to download the document. You can also link to your documents, or embed rich Flash® previews on your own website, blog or wiki.

  On Entrepreneur.com photographer Danya Henninger says,
  "We use it to send large files to clients. We can deliver the product online. I just got into the Adobe Share beta. It worked out perfectly."

[Via Karen Tomlinson]

I’m happy to report that Photoshop Express, Adobe’s new online tool for organizing, editing, and sharing images, has launched in beta form. Some highlights at a glance:

• Includes tools for applying spot healing, distortions, sharpening/softening, color tweaks, image filters, and more
• Offers 2GB of space for storing images
• Supports tie-ins to Facebook, MySpace, and Picasa
• Runs in any browser on Mac, Windows, or Linux using the Flash Player (v9) [Update: Sounds like there are some beta-ish glitches in some browsers]
• Will include an AIR-based desktop version (useful for editing images offline) and printing services
• Will remain free, with paid service adding more functionality

Adobe’s Terry White gives a great intro with screenshots, and you can jump right into using Express by hitting the “Test Drive” button on the right side of the landing page.  More info is in the press release, this CNET overview, and more stories that are popping up by the minute. [Update: Kelby Training has created an online learning center for Express.]

[Update 2: Here’s what Adobe SVP John Loiacono has to say about Photoshop Express, software as a service at Adobe, and more.]

Enjoy!

I’m pleased to report that Photoshop Elements 6.0 for Mac is now shipping.  The new release runs natively on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs & offers a wealth of new features.  As Macworld sums up the highlights,

New features in Photoshop 6 include “Photomerge,” which lets users create group shots by combining the best facial expressions and body language from an entire group of shots. The software has three edit modes — Guided, Quick and Full. Guided Edit mode is new, offering step-by-step help for users. New tabs provide access to many of Photoshop Elements’ features. Color to black-and-white conversion has been improved.

A new copy runs $89.99 (upgrade $69.99), available via the Adobe.com store.

• People are raving about Nik Software’s Viveza plug-in for color correction within Photoshop.  The tool uses Nik’s unique U-Point technology for placing a control element onto the document, then tweaking hue, saturation, contrast, etc. on the canvas. Here’s a quick video intro to the basics.  Scott Kelby loves it, and the plug-in picked up a Best of Show from Macworld at PMA.  It’s $249 diretly from Nik.
• onOne Software, publishers of tools like Genuine Fractals and Mask Pro, have announced Focal Point for selectively blurring images, adding vignettes, and more.  I’ve mentioned ways to simulate lens blur & tilt-shift photography using Photoshop, but Focal Point goes further in offering an interative "lens bug" widget for fine control.  The plug-in is scheduled to ship next month and will cost $159.95. [Via]

CommandShift3 (heh, great little Mac-nerd name) describes itself as "like Hot or Not.
Except, instead of clicking on hot babes, you click on hot websites."  In other words, screenshots of two sites are presented for your review, and you click the one whose design you prefer.  It’s fun to think about why certain sites are more appealing than others, and I’ve found myself clicking through to explore more than a few of the contestants.  Note the leaderboard that shows particularly strong sites from the week, month, and all time.

Ah, this new generation, always trying to one-up us:

[Claws, tail, and Gene Simmons-style tongue not included] 😉
And not that you asked (or that I need another blog to feed), but the sleep-filled life and times of the new guy are chronicled on my (or rather, his) site.

The following tips are a tad esoteric, but I’m passing them along in case they’re of interest/use:

• When you press F in Photoshop and enter Maximized or Full-Screen Mode with Menu Bar, the background surrounding the image goes to gray; press F again (taking you into Full-Screen Mode (no menu bar)) and the background will change to black.  Not long ago a customer who does retouching at a large magazine asked for the ability to change the background color in Photoshop windows.  In order not to pollute his color perception, he wanted to view images against a particular shade.

  It turns out the capability is already there: right-click (Win)/Ctrl-click (Mac) to set the background color to gray, black, or a color of your choosing; here’s a screenshot.  Alternatively, you can grab the Paint Bucket tool, then shift-click the background to make it take on whatever foreground color you have selected.  Each screen mode can have its own background color.  New to CS3 is the abilty to cycle through gray, black, and custom colors by pressing Shift-F.  This little trick gave rise to my CS3 Stupid Photoshop Trick: going "clubbing" in Photoshop by holding down ShiftSpace-F* while singing the "do-DE-do-DOO-do" riff from The System Is Down. (Trust me, you’re not missing out.)

• On the Mac OS you can drag the little "document proxy" icon in any document’s title bar (screenshot) in order to move the document around, provided you don’t have any unsaved changes.  Dave Girard from Ars Technica swears by this capability as a quick way to move files between Photoshop, Bridge, Maya, and other applications.  In this short video he shows a folder being revealed in Bridge, then documents being moved among apps without requiring a trip back to the Finder or Bridge.

*D’oh–sorry, I typed the wrong modifier; now fixed. I need to stop writing these things at 3am (no kidding).

According to an Adobe tech note, it’s possible that the Adobe Version Cue CS3 3.1.0 update won’t get installed correctly, leading to a damaged framework file that can cause Photoshop to crash.  To fix the problem, you can download this small updater and run it.  If you’re not able to run the script (e.g. you don’t have admin privileges on your machine), you can go into Photoshop preferences (Cmd-K), then go into File Handling and uncheck "Enable Version Cue." The tech note mentions other Adobe CS3 apps, but I’ve tried the fix only with Photoshop.  In any event running the updater is a good idea.

“‘Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
  He chortled in his joy.”

I could not be more proud (or tired!) in announcing that precisely 18 hours ago, my inimitable Margot launched
our greatest collaboration—one Mr. Finnegan Liggett Nack (“Finn” to future pals).  The wee master (a full 9lb, 7oz) stormed into town after a whirlwind labor—kicking off around 10pm last night, and stepping onto the world stage at 4:54am Pacific.  I promise not to turn the blog into JNack’s Kiddie Kavalcade, but a handful of photos are here in case you’re interested. [Update: The little man has his own blog now, too.]

Right now the small guy is practicing his nursing (c’mon, sucking isn’t that hard; just pretend you’re in marketing!), and this marks my first (but hardly last) blogging-at-crazy-kid-induced-hour post.  I actually did have the presence of mind to bank a few posts ahead of his arrival, but I expect my publishing schedule to be erratic for a while.  Now excuse me while I keel over in a happy, spent pile. 🙂

[Update: Wow, thanks for all the kind wishes!  What an amazing experience…

By the way, regarding his name, we freestyled on a lot of contenders.  Mashing up a lot of teammates’ names, we (okay, I) thought that “Seetharaman Narayanan Shig-Zorana Nack” would be pretty cool. 🙂 ]

Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions about improving Photoshop’s color-picking tools.  I’ll reply to many of the comments once I get a few free cycles.

In the meantime, I notice that many people are asking for Photoshop to gain the ability to sample colors from outside the application.  That capability is there already: grab the Eyedropper Tool, then simply click and hold on a document, then drag elsewhere on the screen.  Notice that the foreground color on the toolbar keeps updating as you move your mouse.  When you let go, the sampled color will be your foreground color (or background color, if you were holding Opt/Alt when you clicked).  I’ve confirmed that this behavior works on the Mac, and I believe it’s the same on Windows, but I don’t have a machine handy on which to check.

Clearly this behavior isn’t very discoverable, but I’m not sure what would make it easier to find.  Some commenters noted that the color picker in Flash and other former Macromedia apps makes it easier to sample colors from outside the app: when you mouse away from the preset color swatches, it keeps sampling colors under the mouse.  That’s true, though I’ve often found that behavior annoying (i.e. I end up sampling things I didn’t intend to sample).

I’m glad the topic has come up, and I’ll bounce some ideas around with the UI and engineering folks.  Hopefully there’s a way to get the best of both worlds.

The Color palette in Photoshop (see screenshot) is, to be charitable, a bit long in the tooth. In particular, the little color ramp at the bottom is awfully small (occupying just 0.00072% of the screen real estate on at 30" monitor; yes, I did the math).

We certainly won’t break what’s working or force you to use a larger color picker than what’s there today.  Having said that, there’s clearly room for some innovation.

What kind of color-picking tools would you like to see in Photoshop?  Are there good examples you can share?  We’ve already batted around the idea of revealing kuler-like functionality in Photoshop (see very rough mockup).  What else would be cool/useful/powerful?

Thanks,
J.

Is today, February 19th, "The Most Important Date In Digital Imaging History"?  That’s the case Jeff Schewe makes on Photoshop News.  On this date in 1990, the first version of Photoshop shipped to the world; exactly five years ago we saw the debut of Photoshop’s Camera Raw plug-in; and one year ago today, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 made its official bow.  Jeff posts all kinds of good info on the site, and in a sidebar he asks "Where were you on 2-19-1990?"  (I thank goodness that no digital cams were on hand there to capture my hairdo.)  For a bit more info and color, see Lightroom PM Tom Hogarty’s post on the occasion.

Adobe has teamed up with Cut&Paste for the "See What’s Possible" challenge:

Compose an engaging 15-second or less animation or motion graphic video of the Photoshop brand logo that illustrates the theme of “See What’s Possible.” The winning work must incorporate and close with the Adobe Photoshop logo and will be used by Adobe as part of an upcoming Photoshop marketing campaigns.

The grand prize is $20,000 (USD) and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection (BYO forklift & Brinks truck).  "But this challenge isn’t just about winning," says John Fiorelli, executive director of Cut&Paste.  "All submissions will be publicly showcased on CutandPaste.com where contestants can share their skills with not only fellow designers, but fans, recruiters, and potential clients."

You’ve got until the Ides of March (specifically, 11:59 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on March 15, 2008) to submit your work, and it needs to be created predominantly with Photoshop, Flash, and/or After Effects.  Full details are on the site.  Rock out!  [Via]