Fast performance, as I’ve said before, is the best possible feature: it just works, without requring you to learn anything or to change how you work.  Not surprisingly, it’s always at the top of customers’ lists of requested features.

The Photoshop team works hard to tune the application to run as well as possible for the majority of users, but the ways in which each person uses the can differ pretty wildly.  For example, do you tend to open files with small pixel dimensions and lots of layers, or do you tend to work more with large, nearly flat documents?  The optimal application settings & hardware setups may differ based on your needs & style of working.

To help shed some light on these topics, Photoshop co-architect Scott Byer & performance lead tester Adam Jerugim presented a popular session at Photoshop World last month.  They’ve posted some notes on Scott’s blog, and just this morning Scott uploaded a revised & expanded version of the presentation slide deck (PDF).

[Update: Photoshop 10.0.1 for CS3 is now available.  Here’s more info.]

We know that many people have been unhappy with printing from Photoshop CS3 (overwhelmingly on Windows), and we’ve been working on changes that will make things work better.  Unfortunately the process isn’t as quick as we’d like, given the sheer number of hardware, printer driver, and operating system combinations.  We’ve made some changes & will be issuing an update to Photoshop CS3, but it’s not quite ready to be shared with the world at large.

If, however, you’re experiencing printing problems & would like to test the current code, please drop me a note [update: get the update].  I’ll then ask our pre-release coordinator to send you an invitation, after which you can download the latest build and send us your feedback. 

I’m sorry that things have been more painful than they should be, and I hope this process helps get fixes into the hands of those who need them.

Thanks,
J.

Pitting Adobe’s imaging & page-layout flagships against one another seems a little wonky (kind of a Celebrity Deathmatch, minus the clay & gore), but by doing so Peachpit’s Mike McHugh shows off some of the power hidden in InDesign.  The battle, in six rounds, hits the following:

1. Recoloring Grayscale Artwork
2. Recoloring RGB Artwork
3. Creating Reflections
4. Applying Special Effects
5. Creating Vignettes
6. Generating Contact Sheets

I wouldn’t necessarily agree that ID beats PS on some of these points (cough), but the core imaging juice shared between the two enables ID to perform some neat tricks.  And when it comes to generating contact sheets (with a hand-off from Bridge), InDesign just trounces Photoshop–as well it should.  [Via]

[Update: Mordy Golding has posted an Illustrator vs. InDesign Smackdown on his blog.]

Grid-based Web design has gained currency as a best practice, as articulated by various experts.  For example:

• Mark Boulton talks about why to use a grid, and he offers Five Simple Steps to designing grid systems.
• NYTimes.com design director Khoi Vinh shares his approach.
• Mark & Khoi elaborate on their techniques in the SXSW presentation “Grids Are Good” (8MB PDF).

Now Andrew Ingram has stepped up with GridMaker for Photoshop, a script that enables easy creation of a grid comprised of Photoshop guides.  He’s also created a version for Fireworks using a Flash-based panel.  Many thanks for your efforts here, Andrew.

Elsewhere Matthew Pennell has created a Web-hosted approach to grid generation, complete with a nice set of draggable sliders.  It would be cool to see someone combine these approaches, using a Flash UI inside Photoshop to drive the guide-creation script. [Via my old roommate Khoi Uong; doppel-Khoi powers, activate!]

People managing large asset collections–especially photographers with lots of photos–have long requested finer-grained control over the way keywords are applied to & stored within their files.  Now a new technote on Adobe.com documents the changes & improvements in Bridge 2.1:

The keywords panel is enhanced significantly in the Adobe Bridge CS3 2.1 release. The primary enhancement is the addition of support for nested keyword hierarchies. In previous versions of Bridge, only a single level of nesting was supported. Bridge also now allows the hierarchical information to be written with the keywords. There are also new ways to find keywords quickly in your keyword hierarchy and to add new keywords at any level in the hierarchy. Additionally, Bridge now provides a way to import and export the keywords defined in the keyword panel.

Check out the doc for more details, and please let us know if there are ways in which you’d like to see keywording further improved in Bridge and/or Lightroom.

Through a design competition called cause/affect, the SF chapter of AIGA seeks to "celebrate the work of designers and organizations who set out to positively impact our society."  If you’re using your design skills for the betterment of life, the universe, and everything, or if you know of someone who is doing so, consider submitting your work (see the FAQ for details).  The deadline is November 9, and the awards ceremony will be held in SF on December 4. [Via]

Last night at MAX, Adobe’s Geoff Baum got on stage during the sneak peek session to show off a bit more of Photoshop Express.  Boy, things have come a long way in the few weeks since the sneak at Photoshop World, and last night’s demo showed Healing Brush- & Liquify-like tools running via the app’s Flash interface.  CNET’s Martin LaMonica has details & screenshots. (Update: Here’s a video recording of the session:

[Via Stephen Shankland])

The company is still being somewhat coy (as is par for the course when previewing technology), but as info firms up, I’ll pass it along.

Gratuitous addendum: I like seeing that former LiveMotion/Vanishing Point developer Steve Troppoli continues the Boston office tradition of inserting one’s fly Volvo into demos.  Somewhere, the Flavawagon (which lives forever, in tiny form, within Photoshop’s Web Photo Gallery) smiles.

• Adobe’s Russell Brown has teamed up with xTrain to create Dr. Brown’s Photoshop Laboratory.  For more on the free classes they’re doing together, check out the xTrain site.  Here are direct links to his recent tutorials on 3D, Black & White, and video in Photoshop CS3.
• Russell has posted a whole set of video experiments created using PSCS3 Extended in Dr. Brown’s Video Gallery.
• Layers Magazine has launched Layers TV–"The How-To Podcast for Everything Adobe." Hosted by Cory Barker and “RC” Concepcion, the podcasts are also available via iTunes.
• Hitting the century mark and going stronger than ever, the NAPP‘s Photoshop User TV celebrates its 100th episode.  Congrats, guys! Thanks for rocking out to make such a great community resource.
• And, perhaps hiding right under your nose, the Flash-powered Bridge Home (part of Adobe Bridge CS3–see screenshot) delivers info and training content (including more than 200 CS videos) right to your desktop.  Seems that someone is discovering the service, however: according to manager Jennifer Deming, Bridge Home racked up more than 125,000 unique visitors this month.  More info on Bridge Home is in Terry White’s podcast.

• Adobe’s Russell Brown has teamed up with xTrain to create Dr. Brown’s Photoshop Laboratory.  For more on the free classes they’re doing together, check out the xTrain site.  Here are direct links to his recent tutorials on 3D, Black & White, and video in Photoshop CS3.
• Russell has posted a whole set of video experiments created using PSCS3 Extended in Dr. Brown’s Video Gallery.
• Layers Magazine has launched Layers TV–"The How-To Podcast for Everything Adobe." Hosted by Cory Barker and “RC” Concepcion, the podcasts are also available via iTunes.
• Hitting the century mark and going stronger than ever, the NAPP‘s Photoshop User TV celebrates its 100th episode.  Congrats, guys! Thanks for rocking out to make such a great community resource.
• And, perhaps hiding right under your nose, the Flash-powered Bridge Home (part of Adobe Bridge CS3–see screenshot) delivers info and training content (including more than 200 CS videos) right to your desktop.  Seems that someone is discovering the service, however: according to manager Jennifer Deming, Bridge Home racked up more than 125,000 unique visitors this month.  More info on Bridge Home is in Terry White’s podcast.

A new issue (download) of Adobe Magazine, the company’s quarterly PDF for designers, photographers, and other creative folks, is available for download. Designed by São Paulo-based Kiko Farkas, this issue includes:

• Natural Synthesis: Discover how London-based artists use Adobe Photoshop to capture unique versions of reality.
• The Incredible Shrinking Screen:
  In many countries, efficient and intelligent design is the king in mobile branding.
• Fine Filmmaking:
  Los Angeles director Jacob Rosenberg works within a budget, without creative limitations.

More than 100,000 folks are already subscribing to email updates for the magazine.  You can join the list via the site.

Heh–this is one of the cooler things I’ve seen in quite a while.  David Friedman of Ironic Sans has hidden a picture in an innocuous-looking gradient.  Can you find the image?  It’s fun to poke at the pixels a little to see what you can discover.  To see the hidden image plus the steps for hiding it, check out the follow-up post.  [Via Marc Pawliger, Tobias Hoellrich, & Jeff Tranberry]

Elsewhere in the realm of genius through illegibility: check out this recruiting ad for Lunar BBDO, rendered in typographic dingbats.  (That that, Google math nerds. ;-))  For more on steganography (hidden writing) of all sorts, check out the Wikipedia entry.

I’m excited to see that Coudal Partners’ Photoshop Tennis (background)–now rechristened Layer Tennis–is due to return, after a long absence, this coming Friday.  Emphasizing not just what two designers can do head-to-head with a PSD file, the contest is gearing up to be more community-driven. According to the site, "You’ll be able to download the raw elements from every match to remix or remash any way you like and then post a link back to your creation."  

All matches take are due to take place on Fridays, live at 2pm Chicago time (GMT+6, meaning 3pm in NYC, Noon in SF and 7 in London).  Upcoming matches:

September 28th
Shaun Inman vs Kevin Cornell
Commentary by John Gruber

October 5th
Neil Durden vs Mathew Star Thomas
Commentary by Debbie Millman

October 12th
Chuck Anderson vs Steven Harrington
Commentary by Jason Kottke

Should be a ball–a fuzzy, RGB #CCCC00-colored digital ball.

The new RapidFixer extension for Adobe Bridge CS3 helps unlock the power of Camera Raw.  Created by photographer Peter Krogh & developer Tom Nolan, RapidFixer adds quick adjustment strips to the Bridge interface.  Now, instead of needing to pop into the Camera Raw dialog to apply image adjustments (converting to black & white, say, or bumping up exposure by 1/3 stop), you can use RapidFixer to tweak settings on one or more files.

Peter provides a nice overview of the tools in this video–adjusting white balance, applying vignettes, and more.  At around the 2/3rds mark he shows some interesting modifications that facilitate working on photographic negatives.  

I don’t shoot massive numbers of images, but I’ve found RapidFixer extremely handy in reviewing and tweaking my shots.  If you’re crunching a large number of images via Bridge & Camera Raw, you’ll likely find the $49 price of RapidFixer a bargain.

Various people have been wondering about this statement:

“CS3 hasn’t fully been tested under [Mac OS X] Leopard,” Adobe Chief Executive Bruce Chizen told Reuters in an interview. “If it doesn’t work, we will make the necessary adjustments.”

Here’s my take: It’s impossible to say that something has been “fully tested” on a platform that is not yet finished.  Therefore, until Leopard ships (expected this Fall), Adobe can’t say with confidence that everything is A-OK.  Once Leopard hits the streets, if the various product teams discover that something isn’t working well on the new OS, they’ll work on addressing the problem.

In the meantime, lots of folks at Adobe and Apple continue to work together, as they always do, to make things work as well as possible out of the gate. (The same is true with Microsoft & Windows updates.)

Anyway, I hope that provides a little peace of mind.

I’ve been remiss in not sharing the news sooner, but I wanted to give it a chance not to get overshadowed by the Photoshop Express excitement.  In any case, I’m pleased to report that the Photoshop family of products now has its own logo and tagline: See What’s Possible™. 

As you no doubt know, “Photoshop” has grown far beyond the side project of Michigan grad student, and even beyond a single application, to encompass a range of functionally different apps–Photoshop CS3, Photoshop CS3 Extended, Photoshop Lightroom, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Album Starter Edition, and soon Photoshop Express–that all share a solid core of imaging smarts.  As the press docs say,

To represent this rich family of products, Adobe is introducing the Photoshop visual logo.
This logo will soon appear in all Photoshop-related marketing, so keep an eye out for it. The
Photoshop logo on a product, service, or technology, represents the rich legacy, technical
quality, and attention to detail that has made Photoshop the gold standard in digital
imaging.

Or, as The Dude might say, “It really ties the room together.” 😉 Here’s a quick screenshot of the main variations on the logo. [Update: Jeff Schewe has posted a giant version, complete with E.T.]

So, whaddya think?
J.

PS–In light of the above, I can’t resist passing along a totally different example of “Photoshop branding.”

• Portrait of the Artists as Minifigs: the Young Woz & Jobs Lego set. [Via]  (For a little Apple/MS balance, the weirdos commenting about Bloods & Crips might enjoy Bill Gates thug life; the splayed fingers really make the shot.)
• Also comprised of small blocks are these unusual mosaics:
  • Albanian artist Saimir Strati creates huge portraits using nails and toothpicks. Check out the making of his 880-pound Leonardo nail mosaic on his site.  [Via]
  • 19-year-old David Alvarez has depicted Ray Charles using 2,000 Post-Its.
  • David Litwin depicts Stephen Colbert using Rubik’s Cubes.  Here he talks about the project. [Via]
• Slightly visually related: Frustrated that Google Maps wouldn’t flag the Royal College of Art, Robert Sollis created the "Google Carpet" to get the job done. [Via]
• Nicholas Kolyas creates lovely, minimalist cut paper and currency cities. [Via]
• Like Nicholas, Kako Ueda works in paper.  The beautifully detailed Memento Mori looks to have crawled out of Donnie Darko’s subconscious–or possibly a Gnarls Barkley video. [Via]
• Jason Bruges Studio’s Wind to Light –a system of 500 mini wind turbines–beautifully "explore[s] the power of the wind in the city, visualising it as an ephemeral cloud of light." [Via]

Hmm, let’s see: start with one high-res newfangled multi-touch display; add a powerful graphics processor; and throw in built-in telephony.  The result: handheld iPhonetoshop?

Er, maybe not yet, but Scott Kelby & co. had fun making a 2-minute spoof that played during the keynote address at Photoshop World.  You can see the very funny results in Terry White’s latest Creative Suite Podcast (direct link to video; “Photoshop CS3 for iPhone” starts at 3:10).  [Update: Here’s just the spoof itself–easier to see and hear, though you can’t hear the crowd reaction.]  And hey, maybe OnStar-style Photoshop support (“Would you like me to unlock that background layer for you?”) could have some legs. 🙂

Other demos captured in the podcast include the Flash/Flex-powered Photoshop Express (starting around 16:10), 3D hook-ups from Daz3D (23:45) and Strata (29:10), as well as an example of Photoshop Extended turning flat medical imaging data into a translucent floating 3D skull (37:40).

PS–If the Flash Player ran on the iPhone, might we see Photoshop Express running there as well?  Hmm–it’s an interesting prospect, anyway.

At Photoshop World on Friday, Jeff Tranberry & Tom Ruark from Photoshop engineering presented a very popular four-hour session on scripting Photoshop.  Despite having printed out 150 copies of their training hand-outs, they found that the pile disappeared very quickly.  A number of attendees asked me for info on where they could find the materials, so I’m pleased to report that Jeff has posted them on his Web site.  The info (freely downloadable by anyone) ranges from basic to more advanced & includes a number of sample scripts.

Jeff notes that people can ask questions via his feedback form.  For additional resources, he points out Deke McClelland’s Photoshop CS2 Actions and Automation title (6.5 hours of video training from Lynda.com) and Chandler McWilliams’s Adobe Scripting title.

//NA// I’ve been coming across all kinds of interesting artwork lately:

• Shout at the devil: Brian Dettmer has sculpted a skull using melted heavy metal cassette tapes.  Rockin’ like Dokken. [Via]
• Andrew Huff points out Michael Levy’s gut-busting Deep Fried Liberty (see details). I want to see Lou Dobbs suck one of these down on air while supplying “the facts, not fear.”
• What if people walked around with their names floating above them, World of Warcraft-style?  Aram Bartholl & Evan Roth give it a shot. [Via]
• Jethro Haynes creates rather amazing shoe art.  Here’s a particular fave.  [Via]
• The book Dictator Style catalogs the design tastes of colorful despots–what PJ O’Rourke calls "felony interior decorating." [Via]
• The Want/Need glass reminds the user to sip, not guzzle. [Via]
• I found myself enjoying an NYT slideshow covering new architecture in the Netherlands.  Unfortunately it concluded with the line, "Mr. Neutelings and Mr. Riedijk have fashioned a serious critique of a world saturated in advertising, and marketing images, and reaffirmed architecture’s heroic stature, according to Nicolai Ouroussoff"–making me want to throw up a little in my mouth.  The accompanying article thankfully bypasses the pedantic crap.
• On a less pretentious note, peep this Dutch satellite dish-pimping.
• Canon may be taking its time in revving the 5D, but in the meantime, can I interest you in a sewn felt Pentax? [Via]
• An uncredited YouTube vid shows the faces of women in Western art morphing into one another. [Via]
• D*Face subverts a simple pole with Missile Strike. [Via]

//NA*// On the off chance that, like me, you’re getting a little much-needed downtime, I thought I’d share some interesting but hard-to-categorize links I’ve encountered recently:

• Here’s a novel approach to selling Photoshop plug-ins: a developer is auctioning the source code for Cinematte, a plug-in for removing green screens & similar backgrounds. [Via Tom Hogarty]
• On a more precompiled note, how about a "Brutality Filter"?  New Mr. Retro filters are available (press release).  See ’em in action here.
• Photo blogger Jason David Moore recently profiled me. (I didn’t even know I had a favorite curse word.)
• The World’s Best Logos & Brands blog has a (very) short history of the Adobe logo. [Via]
• If you’re stumped, give the Idea Generator a spin.  Seriously, wouldn’t you like to see a Transparent Morphing Saxophone? (Goes well with the Brutality Filter, I’m told.) [Via]
• I’m keeping it Victorian these days, but I can dig this MIT-designed water-walled house.  On a slightly related note, researchers are also exploring how to use water as insulation within windows.
• Of Audis & iMacs: The ConceptCar blog notes similarities between the new iMac design & the latest crop of Audis.
• Box.net has created a plug-in that facilitates sharing large images right from Photoshop.  Their slogan?  "Put your junk in the box." (I kid you not.)
• Ars Technica features info on battery life preservation–relevant to everyone who schleps around one or more rechargable devices (which, I’m guessing, is everyone who stops by here).  I’m paranoid about being without power, but I’ll be damned if I run my batteries down & store them in a freezer.  ("Nothing more useless than an unloaded gun.") [Via]
• News.com reports on companies that put image sequences on subway walls. (I wonder if this is what Interpol had in mind.)  In a lower-tech vein, peep subway gum art. [Via]

* As in "(Largely) Non-Adobe" — a note to those who’d rather skip anything not 100% tied to Photoshop

It’s great to see that two very worthy guys–Andrew Rodney & Kevin Connor–have been inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame.  Andrew has been helping mere mortals untangle color management issues for years, and Kevin (boss’s boss to yours truly) has been guiding the Photoshop ship since version 4.0. 

[Kevin’s headshot on Photoshop News apparently comes from his “Young Seinfeld” period. ;-)  He now looks a bit more like this.  Oddly enough, Google Images pulls up evidence of a possible horrifying past career (scroll to the bottom of the poster)–maybe something to discuss at our next 1:1.]

In any case, congrats to both Andrew and Kevin.  The honor couldn’t be more deserved.

It’s been a great week to be a photographer, with Canon and Nikon upping the ante across their ranges of products.  Apart from the big sensors, “live view” enhancements, and other good stuff in the 1Ds Mk III, D3, and other new cameras, my eye gravitated to some wireless network-oriented features Nikon has announced. From DP Review:

Now, with the new Nikon Wireless Transmitter WT-4³, the era of the multi camera network has arrived. Not only can one transmit (‘push’) images to servers and remotely control the camera from afar, the WT-4 also enables remote browsing of the camera’s image thumbnails as well.

In a wireless environment, networks of up to 5 D3 and D300 cameras can be established. At a sports event, for example, photo editors could browse all thumbnails on each camera simultaneously, selecting (‘pulling’) the images they need, while the photographers continue shooting.

Hmm–that sounds pretty darn cool.  Does this spell an end to young guys sprinting down sidelines with sacks of CF cards, delivering them to some dude shielding his laptop in a sleeping bag?  Time will tell.  As with so much technology, of course, I’m sure it’ll keep compressing our perception of “fast enough.” [Update: Rob Galbraith has more details and a photo of the transmitter.]

Heh–fans of the insanely popular Guitar Hero series of games may enjoy this bit from Penny Arcade: Photoshop Hero! (Aside: Yes, Photoshop engineers, this is why I keep trying to jam Flash palette support into the app. ;->) [Thanks to Mark Kawano, Bruce Bullis, Rob Corell, David Parent, and all the other folks who suggested this link]

One year ago, Adobe & digital artist unveiled the San Jose Semaphore–24,000 LEDs that form "a multi-sensory kinetic artwork that illuminates the San Jose skyline with the transmission of a coded message."

Now the code has been cracked and is revealed to be spelling out an entire novel, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.  "The Pynchon book, written in the mid-1960s, is set in a fictional California city filled with high-tech campuses. It follows a woman’s discovery of latent symbols and codes embedded in the landscape and local culture, [Semaphore creator Ben] Rubin said."

Evidently the code does not, as second-generation Photoshop team member David Parent suggested, consist of "Be… sure… to… drink… your… Ovaltine. Son of a bitch!"

If you’re attending next month’s Photoshop World in Las Vegas, and if you’ve been kicking out the jams in PS, round up three of your best pieces and enter the Photoshop World Guru Awards –but hustle, as the deadline is Wednesday at midnight.  Categories include Artistic, Photography, Photo Restoration, Commercial, Photo Montage, Photo Retouching, and Illustration. [Via]

Speaking of Photoshop World, the crew has added five sessions on Photoshop Extended. The "Extended Special Interest Track will teach scientists, medical practitioners, data analysts, engineers, researchers, and other technical professionals to advance scientific knowledge and find treatments for medical conditions."  In addition, Adobe will be hosting a Birds of a Feather workshop specifically for professionals interested in using CS3 Extended for engineering, architecture, construction, and mechanical design.

I can’t claim to have returned from Ireland tanned (perma-cloud keeps everyone’s skin 255/255/255–my people!) or rested (a week of piloting a minivan down the “wrong” side of roads no wider than a cocktail straw leaves me shaking with PTSD), but I’m certainly ready to fire up the blog again.  I plan to share some photos shortly.  In the meantime, I’ll shake off the cobwebs with some a few things that made me smile today:

• The kids at freeloveforum have created a brilliant parody of the breathless promo videos that we technology companies (Adobe, Apple, etc.) can’t resist creating.  With MS Paint, “the future… is in the past!” [Via Alistair Lee]
• “Where do you live, anyway, a Simpsons cartoon?”  Elsewhere Mike Johnston of The Online Photographer shares his salty thoughts when looking at “Photoshop excess.”  (See also his previous parody of clueless photoblog commenters.)
• “PMS 187 runs deep in my veins…” My art director pal Maria at Hallmark passes along the frisket-slashing stylings of the Original Design Gangster. Pour out a 40 for the dead homie…
• Update: Poor Eric Clapton.  If someone photographed my every movement, I’m sure they’d catch stuff far dopier than this.  Still, it’s kind of funny to see the ol’ guy flummoxed by his lens cap. Maybe he should spend more time hanging around with Graham Nash. [Via Zalman Stern]

Even the most uncannable blog animal needs to recharge his batteries once and a while.  I’m terrible about taking time off (clearly), but for once I’m giving it a shot, planning to spend the next week and a half in Ireland with my family.  All this chatter has reduced my stock of blarney to dangerously low levels, so I plan to return to the source for a reload.  Therefore I expect the blog to go mostly, if not completely, dark until mid August.  [It depends in part on connectivity while on the road (in 1984 we were lucky to get hot water, though things are said to have changed dramatically), and in part on my ability to kick the ‘Net habit for a few days.]

In the meantime, you can keep busy visiting some of the blogs from which I so liberally borrow links (not an exhaustive list, so sorry if I’ve omitted anyone):

Design

• Core77 (industrial & other design goodness)
• Drawn.ca (great illustration, updated daily)
• Boing Boing (self-impressed but periodically interesting)
• Kaliber10000 (assorted designishness)
• Design Meltdown & CSS Beauty (focused on great Web craft)
• Jon Hicks (interesting links from the designer of the Firefox logo)

Photography

• The Online Photographer (brings a unique perspective and edge)
• Ben Long (low volume but well written photo-centric insights)
• Photoshop Support (general PS-related news)
• Rob Galbraith (photography and photojournalism news)

Photoshop

• Scott Kelby (Photoshop impresario, probably needs no introduction)
• Photoshop News (in a quiet period this summer), sister site of Lightroom News
• Lightroom Journal (LR team blog)
• MXNA, the Adobe News Aggregator (Flash- and Web dev-heavy)
• Technorati feed for "Photoshop" (hit the "View All" link)
• Terry White (Adobe evangelist/man about town)

You also might want to check out this site’s category archives, as I’ve tried to group most posts by topic (e.g. photography, illustration, typography, etc.).  Otherwise, see you on the flipside, and wish me luck capturing a few good images of the old country.

J.

Faster performance is the best possible "feature": you don’t have to learn a thing in order to get the benefits.  Consequently, the Photoshop team is in a never-ending quest to make the application run as fast as possible.  What’s important to one person, however, may be irrelevant to another, and we need to do periodic reality checks to make sure we’re focusing on the right areas.

To that end we’ve created a survey to identify your priorities for improving the speed of Photoshop & Bridge.  Performance expert Adam Jerugim writes, "The survey is an opportunity
for users to give us – the Photoshop engineering team – specific feedback that we
can then use to make PS a better and more productive tool for everyone."  If you’ve got a couple of spare minutes (shouldn’t be more than 5), please let us know your priorities for making things faster.

Thanks in advance,
J.

I know, I know: the world needs more iPhone commentary like it needs another folk singer.  Having said that, I’m happy to have won a multi-week battle of wills with AT&T* and to have finally activated my iPhone.  Now instead of just using its shiny screen to create little reflection-pals for my cat to chase (which works great, by the way), I can get down to business.

I have to say, the iPhone is a tour de force.   Inevitable quibbles aside (too minor to detail here), both the interface and the industrial design are magnificent.  I’m not talking just about the well known UI innovations, such as green/yellow/red traffic conditions overlaid on a Google Map; I’m talking about things like a ringer on/off switch on the side.  It’s finding these little details done right that makes me beam.  Like an appreciative designer once said when pulling the handles in my VW: "Dampened… They didn’t have to do that… but they did."

So, hats off to everyone involved in designing and building the iPhone.  Thank you for giving a damn.  It’s an inspiration and a reminder of why we do what we do (we being anyone who aspires to go that extra mile for good design).

J.

*One remaining fly in the ointment: Even though I’ve been auto-paying a ~$85 cell bill with AT&T for more than seven years–meaning that they’ve squeezed some $7,000 out of my pocket, without a single late payment–they required me to put down an $800 security deposit when switching my phone plan to accommodate the iPhone.  What exactly are they securing–my lasting animosity?  I will be sorting this out, but after 35 minutes on the phone with them just to make the switch, I had to get back to work.

Adobe has posted a security update for Photoshop CS2 and CS3 that addresses a potential vulnerability reported earlier this year.  We’re not aware of anyone having been affected by the vulnerability, but obviously we don’t want to leave it unpatched, so it’s a good idea to take a minute to run this update.  It consists of revised versions of the plug-ins that read BMP, PNG, RLE, DIB, and Targa files.

• The latest Diesel runway show features holographic fashion critters cavorting with self-serious models. [Via]  Seems like it would go well with this video dress. [Via]
• The LEDs of the Nocturne installation use less energy than a domestic dishwasher, yet they light the length of the Queen Elizabeth II Metro Bridge with 16.5 million colours; makes me think the Adobe HQ-mounted San José Semaphore could stand a splash of chroma.
• United Visual Artists use LEDs to create some really impressive displays at concerts and elsewhere.
• Lichtfaktor paints with light, in the spirit of Picasso.  Click through for some witty, beautiful stuff. [Via]  It inspires me to fool around with Photoshop’s new paint-on-video features, combined with the various Lighten/Dodge/Add blend modes.  On a related note, see previous: Pikapika lightning doodle project; Graffiti Research Labs’ giant laser.
• Tripping the light envelope: Japanese artist Kohei Nawa’s PixCell deer is festooned with glass beads, giving it a second skin.  More objects in the series are here.
• Frank Buchwald has designed a pretty foxy lamp (with kind of a wormy-Matrix-sentinel-thing happening). [Via]
• rAndom international’s light printing machine crawls the wall, leaving an impermanent trace.
• CNET says that paper-thin LEDs are coming soon, opening all kinds of new possibilities.

Adobe’s resident character-in-chief Russell Brown has unveiled a new revision to his popular set of image-processing scripts for Photoshop.  Downloadable from his site (installers for Mac, Win), these latest scripts buff up an already robust set of tools.  Numerous enhancements to the Image Processor that ships with CS3 are visible in the 1-2-3 Process tutorial movie.  In the Stack-A-Matic movie you can see an automated way to blend images using stack modes, as well as useful keyboard shortcuts installed by the script.  The core functions run in both Photoshop and Photoshop Extended, while the stack- and time-based functions work only with Extended.  The scripts are free for download.

Certain feature requests come up over and over, and customers wonder why Adobe doesn’t address them.  In many cases it’s a matter of time, resources, and priorities
(i.e. good idea, we just haven’t gotten there yet).  In other cases, however, there are conceptual issues that make addressing the request impractical or impossible.

One of those cases concerns something that seems simple: letting Photoshop users apply copyright & other info, then lock it so that it can’t be removed.  Photographers in particular request this capability year in and year out.  Unfortunately there are good reasons why things don’t work as desired.  If you’re interested in the details, read on for an explanation from Photoshop architect Russell Williams.

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As I’ve noted a few times, I really dig PicLens, the free browser utility that enables cinematic slideshows for Flickr, Google Images, and other popular image sources.  The great thing is that the capability is totally unobtrusive, appearing only when you roll over images that can be viewed as a slideshow.

I’m therefore happy to pass along a bit of great news: PicLens has been updated to v1.5, and for the first time it’s available on Windows, via Firefox.  Bust a move on over to their site and grab a copy of the new goods.

(And, for the record, I don’t know these guys personally, nor do I get any kickbacks.  It’s hard to do revenue-sharing on "free." ;-))

• "Dusasa I" shines with the light of a thousand discarded soda cans.  It was crafted by Ghanan El Anatsui.
• Suellen Parker builds clay sculptures, then uses Photoshop to project her digital photos onto their surfaces. The NYT hosts a video showing her process, and you can find more pieces on her site. [Via Erma Noxley]
• Nathan Sawaya is a master Lego sculptor.  CNN tells his story (via print and video) & features a gallery of his pieces. [Via]  (Speaking of Lego art, peep Lego Starry Night. [Via Maria Brenny])
• The Underwater Sculpture Garden is Jason Taylor’s project to "create a unique space which highlights environmental processes and celebrates local culture."  Some of the forms remind me of the crazy heads I recently encountered in my rural Illinois hometown. [Via]
• Joe Pogan builds metal sculptures from found objects.  [Via]
• Martin Klimas captures sculptures as they shatter. [Via]  (This is the kind of thing we’re often tempted to re-create with truck stop schlock purchased en route to Death Valley.)  [In a semi-related vein, see the previous previously Burning Bulbs.]
• Oliver Herring turns photos into sculptures. [Via] 
• Damien Hirst has sculpted a $100mm diamond skull. [Via] "’That’s when you stop laughing,’ Hirst says. ‘You might have created something that people might die because of. I guess I felt like Oppenheimer or something. What have I done? Because it’s going to need high security all its life.’"  If only there were a pomposity assassin, this dude would be the one needing high security.

Wow–I’ve known a few people to shave/dye an Adobe "A" into their hair, but this is really something else: an Adobe tattoo (not a Photoshop job, I think!).  I must officially throw the Adobe gang sign out of respect. 😉

Photo GPS nerds might enjoy learning that Angelina Jolie has tattooed the coordinates of her childrens’ births onto her arm.  Is that better or worse than adorning oneself with a Decepticon head? [Via]  In any case, it’s gotta beat getting the Zune logo, no?

Hello, my name is John, and I’m a recovering color management hater… (“Hello, John…”)

Coming from a background in Web design, I spent many years regarding color management–that is, the process of changing an image’s colors on the fly so that the appearance will match across systems (monitors, printers, etc.)–as a royal pain.  I mean, until 1998 things were good–or at least pretty simple.  You’d design on a Mac and make things look a little bit light, or design on Windows and make things look a little bit dark, then check on the other platform (ideally on a bunch of different systems) and call it a day.  Split the difference & everyone seemed happy.  (And printing? Who needed that?)

But then in ’98 Adobe had to get all clever, adding color management in Photoshop 5.0.  Suddenly every image started complaining about not having a color profile, or having the wrong profile, or… something… and it kept asking me (!) to make the right call.  Worse, images no longer looked the same in Photoshop as they did in Web browsers (or even apps like Illustrator, which for various reasons had different default settings).

Things have improved a bit (fewer cryptic messages, consistent defaults in at least some Suite apps), but big problems remain.  Apple’s Safari Web browser respects color management profiles, but others don’t.  Here’s a screenshot of the same image open in Safari & Firefox.  If you spend time in Photoshop or Lightroom massaging an image to look just so, it’s pretty irritating that the colors go all over the map when viewed online.  The lack of reliable color also leads to bad prints, according to Smugmug.

Now, though, there’s an interesting development: Photographer Rob Galbraith reports that Apple’s newly released Safari 3 beta for Windows is color managed–bringing color management to Windows browsers for the first time.  I never thought I’d say it*, but this is great news.  Now there’s a cross-platform way to present accurate color images on the Web.  Check “ICC Profile” in Photoshop’s Save for Web dialog to include the info needed for color management to do its thing.

CNET follows up with more details and reports that Firefox may follow suit in version 3.0, due later this year.  Why Microsoft hasn’t taken the opportunity to lead here, I don’t know, but hopefully they’ll get in the game as well with Internet Explorer.

As for Adobe, I’m not sure what will happen with the Flash Player.  Right now it’s not color-managed, and most Web designers wouldn’t know an ICC profile if it bit them on the calibration puck–hence they’re not asking.  They do know, however, how much it sucks that colors shift when going between Photoshop and Flash, and they’d like a solution.  I’m hopeful that we can make the right thing happen.

* Coincidence that this is blog entry #666 for me?  With JN cheering for color management, the End must be near… >;-)

[Update: In response to requests for a tutorial on the subject, Adobe forum-wrangler John Cornicello recommends this set from Gary Ballard.]

• San Francisco radio station KFOG is raising money for area food banks with their "Live from the Archives" CD compilation.  They need a cover design, and the grand prize winner gets $1000 and the Creative Suite 3 Design Premium.  There’s also a Suite up for grabs for whoever displays the best use of Adobe software in his or her entry.  If you’re game, check out the contest details.
  
• The Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament pits designers against one another in live, on-stage showdowns around the country. "Over the course of several fast-paced, single-elimination rounds," they write, "eight designers using the latest tools will be whittled down to one champion. now accepting entries for its 2007 series."  All contestants receive CS3 Design Premium (!).  Other loot includes a Wacom Cintiq tablet/monitor and the CS3 Master Collection (truck for hauling it not included). [Via Terry Hemphill]

One of the sleeper features making its debut in Photoshop CS3 Extended is its ability to interface with MATLAB, the number-crunching toolkit from Mathworks.  The capability was added for developers & technical users, but now it’s been turned to art.  Dr. Woohoo (aka Drew Trujillo) has created Color Combinatorics, integrating the two apps in pursuit of beautiful color harmonies.  He writes,

For me, it simply means that we can now ‘drive’ Photoshop by writing code in MATLAB while taking advantage of a *very* powerful engine with a superior supporting set of libraries (called ToolBoxes). Think of MATLAB as giving you the ability to write your own plug-ins for Photoshop.

You can check out a finished piece (9,261 sets of 3 colors) on Flickr, along with other interesting pieces.  Drew has written up a whole pile of notes on integrating Photoshop & MATLAB, so stop by his site to learn more.

Elsewhere in the world of interesting generative graphics:

• Drew’s In The Mod project analyzes the works of famous painters, and it now lets you download color swatches in the Adobe Swatch Exchange format (compatible with Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign). [Via]
• Robert Hodgin and the Barbarian Group, creators of the beautiful Magnetosphere, have turned it into a visualizer for iTunes.  It’s freely downloadable from their site.
• Leon Hong has made some groovy bits using Processing.

I recently came to the sad realization that fully two thirds of my blog traffic is drawn not by my incisive wit or fascinating Web finds (is any? ;-)), but by geniuses looking for free CS3 serial numbers.  Somehow I became Google’s top hit for "cs3 serial," and my stats reflect it.  Lame.

Now I see that attempts to steal Photoshop can result in machines turned into spam-spraying zombies.  So, not only are people sticking it to software inventors; they’re sticking it to everyone else (and themselves) by coughing more pollution into the Net.  How’s that for a crummy little cherry on top? Additional info. [Via John Dowdell]

A new issue of Adobe Magazine, the company’s quarterly PDF for designers, photographers, and other creative folks, is available for download.  Designed by London-based Precursor, this issue includes:

• Reverie & Technology: Artistic dreaming and digital imaging
• The New Collaborators: The audience speaks—and creates
• The Games People Play: Addictive, sticky online fun
• Shades of Green: Print gets eco-friendly and eco-mean

Featured artists and contributors include Jean-Francois Rauzier, Maggie Taylor, Brad Johnson of Second Story, and many others.  You can sign up to receive future updates via email, and editions translated into French and German will be available soon.

The blogging admin folks report that a new CAPTCHA plug-in is causing some havoc, making it impossible to submit comments.
Okay, things now seem to be working correctly.  If you run into problems commenting, please drop me a line (jnack at adobe).

Hang around the Photoshop booth at a trade show for 20 minutes and you’ll get a very clear message: the task of simply printing a photo to a desktop printer, getting just the results you saw on screen, is much harder than it should be.  After you’ve heard the hundredth question about setting up color management, then getting Photoshop and one’s printer driver to play well together, you’ll really want to get this situation sorted out.

The good news is that we’ve been thinking about these problems for quite a while; the less-good news is that solving them takes time and coordination.  Adobe has been working with the printer vendors, as well as the Apple & Microsoft operating system teams, on plans to improve the printing experience.  [Update: Please see this follow-up post.]

For the CS3 cycle we brought on a new printing expert, Dave Polaschek, to buff up Photoshop’s printing code.  He’s been able to make some visible improvements (e.g. a print preview that’s color managed), and to do quite a bit more behind the scenes.  In response to some questions about how PSCS3 prints (especially on Windows), I’ve asked Dave to contribute a guest blog post. Read on to hear his thoughts.

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Well, it was probably bound to happen: after getting irradiated with 500+ comments on the CS3 icons late last year, I have now turned into a series of Adobe icons myself!

This portrait was created by the talented and innovative Greek illustrator Charis Tsevis (profile, portfolio).  I mentioned his work in January & was delighted to receive this image in return.  It’s now hanging on the Photoshop floor and is being creatively desecrated by passersby (devil horns, soul patch, and probably more added by now).  Charis creates photomosaics using Photoshop (tutorial in Greek, but worth scrolling through) and Synthetik Studio Artist.

Speaking of the CS3 icons, at least they didn’t cause epileptic seizures (so far as I know) or draw the kind of scorn reserved for the new London 2012 Olympic logo: "[V]ariously derided as an uninspiring emblem, a puerile mess, an artistic flop…
the emblem was likened to a ‘broken swastika’ and a ‘toileting monkey.’" Jeez–maybe they should have gone with a two-letter mnemonic ("LO?" "OG?") and drawn less of a beating. [Via Thorsten Wulff]

Sometimes finding the right words for a feature is a bit of a challenge.  "Unsharp Mask," for instance, is a perfect example: a classically trained photographer may immediately get the reference, while other users are left saying, "Sooo… To sharpen something, I choose ‘Unsharp…?’"  Working vocabularies vary by user.

We ran into a one of these cases with the local contrast enhancement control added to the just-released Camera Raw 4.1.  Figuring that "local contrast enhancement control" was a tad wordy, the team went looking for alternatives.  One candidate was "Acutance"–a term familiar to some photographers, but far from universally understood.  The candidate I really favored was "Punch": the slider tends to make an image look punchier.  Unfortunately, the prospect of translating this idiosyncratic term into French, German, Japanese, etc. made it lose ground.  The simpler "Clarity" ultimately prevailed.

In the course of the conversation, Camera Raw engineer Zalman Stern offered some good quips. "We could always translate "punch" to "Umami" in Japanese…," he wrote.  And later: "I was mostly joking in suggesting ‘Punch.’ But to take it to the next
level of impossible-to-translate, we obviously need two sliders, ‘l337’ and ‘Teh Suck.’ The latter only has negative values of course. The
documentation can link to urbandictionary.com." 🙂

Bonus, unrelated Zalman quote, apropos of something totally different: "Writing a compiler in Visual Basic seems more the sort of thing one does to impress Jodie Foster than a sound technical decision…"

The peeps at RogueSheep have unveiled Magma Effects, a $50 InDesign plug-in that leverages Apple’s Core Image technology.  The result is that you can stack up fast, non-destructive image effects (blurs, glass, etc.); here’s a screenshot. [Via]  They’re also developing a version for Illustrator, downloadable now in beta form.  It would be cool to see these guys package up the filters for Photoshop (something we’ve wanted to do, but which hasn’t yet fit into a release cycle).    [Previous/related: Use Photoshop effects inside InDesign CS3.]

If you like the colorful packaging of the Creative Suite 3 applications but find the desktop wallpaper versions a little too static, check out the new CS3 screensavers, ready for download from Terry White’s blog.  I found the preview display a little jerky on my Mac, but the problem disappeared once I enabled Flash inside QuickTime (via System Preferences). [Via Jane Brady]

Adobe Bridge CS3 has been updated to version 2.1 (download for Mac | Win) .  In addition to squashing late-breaking bugs, this release includes a number of enhancements (quoting from the Read Me):

Multilevel Keywords

Organized your keywords into groups and subgroups as deep a hierarchy as you want by using the multilevel support in the keywords panel. Bridge now includes keyboard shortcuts for applying single keywords or parent keywords. Advanced options allow for storing hierarchy into the file metadata. Easily import and export keywords using tab-delimited file formats.

Improved Cache Management

Control the size of the Bridge cache of thumbnail and metadata information to better improve responsiveness. The cache can also be compacted to improve performance.

General Improvements

• Preference control over video and audio file previews
• Improved scrolling and renaming performance
• Usability improvements to custom workspaces
• Improved overall stability

These updates can be found via the Help > Updates menu from within Photoshop and other CS3 apps.  The automatic update system has been serving up a record load (seven different updates this week), so you may want to try using the Web links above if you hit any snags.

Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw 4.1 for Photoshop CS3 is now available for download (Mac | Win) from Adobe.com.  In addition to supporting 13 new cameras, this release brings welcome improvements to sharpening and noise reduction.  Jeff Schewe has posted a great & highly detailed overview of what’s new. If you want the cheap n’ cheerful overview, here’s what the Read Me* file has to say:

Clarity
New Control available in the Basic panel. Clarity adds depth to an image by increasing local contrast. When using this setting, it is best to zoom in to 100% or greater. To maximize the effect, increase the setting until you see halos near the edge details of the image, and then reduce the setting slightly.

Sharpening Improvements:
Additional controls available in the Detail panel. The zoom level must be set to 100% or greater in order to view the effects of these controls.

Amount
Adjusts edge definition. Increase the Amount value to increase sharpening. A value of zero turns off sharpening. In general, set Amount to a lower value for cleaner images. The adjustment locates pixels that differ from surrounding pixels based on the threshold you specify and increases the pixels’ contrast by the amount you specify. Press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) while dragging this slider to view the sharpening on a grayscale preview.

Radius
Adjusts the size of the details that sharpening is applied to. Photos with very fine details may need a lower radius setting. Photos with larger details may be able to use a larger radius. Using too large a radius will generally result in unnatural looking results. Press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) while dragging this slider to preview the radius effect on edge definition.

Detail
Adjusts how much high-frequency information is sharpened in the image and how much the sharpening process emphasizes edges. Lower settings primarily sharpen edges to remove blurring. Higher values are useful for making the textures in the image more pronounced.

Masking
Controls an edge mask. With a setting of zero, everything in the image receives the same amount of sharpening. With a setting of 100, sharpening is mostly restricted to those areas near the strongest edges. Press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) while dragging this slider to see the areas to be sharpened (white) versus the areas masked out (black).

* Hah–I will get someone to read the contents of a Read Me!  (Talk about an ironic name. Those things are like reader-repellents.)

Maybe it’s the BBQ warming up next to me, but I’ve got weird sculpture (food-based and otherwise) on the brain:

• Jennifer Maestre makes amazing pencil sculptures. [Via Reen Bodo]
• Crazy for Corks provides examples (crazy and otherwise) of how to reuse wine corks. [Via]
• You may have been a good smuggler once, but now you’re dark chocolate… Find out how to make a Han-Solo-in-carbonite chocolate bar.  (There’s also a queso version, si quieres.) [Via]
• If that’s up your alley, check out this life sized cake-Skoda (and accompanying TV spot).
• Cara Barer photographs books turned into sculpture.
• Devorah Sperber plays visual tricks using spools of thread. [Via Clare McLean]