Released on Adobe Labs in October, the Adobe Soundbooth beta seems to have drawn a pretty amazing response.  (The announcement was the #3 post on the MXNA aggregator this year.)  Now Soundbooth PM Hart Shafer reports that Beta 2 of Soundbooth is available for download from the Labs site.   Hart lists a variety of fixes and improvements in this release, and as always, the door remains open for feedback prior to shipping.

I’m terribly sorry to relay the news that our dear friend Bruce Fraser passed away yesterday.  His friend Stephen Johnson says that Bruce was resting in his own bed,
surrounded by people that loved him.  It was a very peaceful passing.  It remains awfully rough for those left behind.

I’m not sure what to say, and I know that others will write better, deeper remembrances than this one.  Bruce’s work touched untold thousands of people, whether directly through his teaching and writing, or indirectly through his guidance of Adobe, Epson, and other companies towards better, smarter solutions.  The outpouring of well wishes in response to news of Bruce’s illness only hints at the reserve of goodwill and gratitude that so many feel towards him. As one of those many beneficiaries, I can share a few thoughts.

Many of the merits of Camera Raw owe a debt to Bruce. The move from ACR 2.0 to 3.0 was a huge one, filled with twists, turns, and tradeoffs.  Bruce was among a handful of folks to whom I could drop a line at nearly any hour, asking for guidance.  Back would come a deep, thoughtful, often impassioned reply, making his arguments plain.  We’d often disagree, but that’s part of what made the dialog fun and valuable.  No matter how well Bruce got on personally with many folks at Adobe, I never had to worry that we’d get a free pass on anything.  I will always, always be grateful for that.

This whole past product cycle, we’ve felt Bruce’s absence as he battled his illness. Any number of times I thought of him and wished we could duke it out about favorite topics–DNG, Camera Raw editing JPEGs, color management for the Web, and so much more. I write this through a shifting blur of emotions–anger and sorrow at the loss, sympathy for Bruce’s wife and loved ones, gratitude to have known him, relief that he is now at peace.

A tribute to Bruce’s life and work is planned for Macworld, to be held Macworld on Janurary 10th, 2007.  PhotoshopNews will post more details as they become available.

[Update: Rick LePage and Jason Snell have posted rememberances of Bruce.]

“What I’m really doing when I work generatively is I’m making seeds," says musician and visual artist Brian Eno, in this profile on Apple.com. Then I’m planting them, in the case of ‘77 Million Paintings,’ in your computer.  Then the seed grows into all the different kinds of flowers it can produce.”  The result is his 77 Million Paintings project, visual and sound art created with the help of Adobe Director, Photoshop, and Illustrator, and designed to be experienced on one’s own computer or via a live, ever-changing installation.  This three-minute video from the project site gives a taste of the work & the ideas behind it.

According to the Apple site, more than 300 Eno paintings — most of them scratched or inked onto slides — were digitized for 77 Million Paintings.  Collaborator Nick Robertson painstakingly scanned and retouched every one using Photoshop and a Mac.  Of the travelling installation they write, "Eno and his team have designed and constructed several configurations for the live shows, including a massive pyramid of monitors enveloped by mirrors. ‘The floor and sides of the room were mirrored and the pyramid was effectively turned into a diamond,’ says Robertson."  A few additional photos of the live installation are here.

[For more on generative art, see this post on Josh Davis’s work with Illustrator scripting.]

As you may know, Photoshop co-creator John Knoll has been a visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic for many years.  (My friend Phil says, "It’s a little intimidating to use Photoshop in front of one of the guys who wrote it."  I know your pain, man.) Now ILM has produced a beautiful Flash piece showcasing their work on the latest Pirates of the Caribbean, detailing some of the processes & techniques that bring scenes and creatures to life. [Via]

Photographer, Scotsman, color mangement guru, Pixel Genius, and friend to everyone in digital imaging (whether directly or through his work to improve the tools of our trade) Bruce Fraser has been honored with the first Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Photoshop Professionals.  As one who’s experienced Bruce’s amazingly generous outlays of time and effort in helping guide Adobe and other companies towards the solutions customers really need, I can think of no one more deserving of this accolade.  Congrats, Bruce, from all your friends and admirers at Adobe.

• The Time Fountain uses strobing LEDs to let you interact with water in slow motion.  Check out the amazing video. [Via]
• Furniture maker DB Fletcher has devised some insanely cool, radially expanding tables, presented in videos on their site. (There’s gotta be a pun here about leaving leaves in the dust, but I’m wisely avoiding it.  Well, I was…) [Via]
• Watchismo features a beautiful "tourbillon" wristwatch from Richard Mille. [Via]
• The intro copy is a wee bit self important, but TAG Heuer’s belt-driven watch (!) is a piece of work–and far cooler than their blinged-up, €100,000 Diamond Fiction Watch.
• For more chornographic goodness, see also the Core77/Timex contest on The Future of Time.

Nearly a year ago I posted a blog entry called "Photoshop + Fireworks: Where to from here?"  Customer response was immediate and overwhelming, making it my most commented-upon entry (thanks for all that feedback, by the way).  At the time people were a little freaked out that Adobe would bury Fireworks, but I’m pleased to say that just the opposite has happened. 

The app is finding new life as a great environment for rapid prototyping & quick interface development.  At MAX in October the team demonstrated Fireworks creating an MXML layout for use in Flex, and now the Adobe Edge news letter has posted "A sparkling future for Fireworks."  I’ll let you check out the article for complete details, but based on the comments made here, I think folks will really dig the enhanced Photoshop and Illustrator integration, among many other things. [Via]

Adobe has released a second beta version of the Adobe Color Management module, now available as a free download from Adobe Labs.  (For background on the CMM project, check out this intro post.)  Customer response has been extremely positive so far, and I’m pleased to report that because of this feedback, we’ve added support for device link profiles.  (Hey, maybe there’s a future to this whole Labs/openness thing… ;-))  As always, if this technology is useful to you, we look forward to hearing your thoughts about it.

…if you’re on the DW team and break their build, that is! Engineering and QE would be nowhere without a little hazing, and it seems that each team has its own rituals for dealing with folks who make code changes that screw up the project (i.e., break the daily product build). Unfortunate Photoshop engineers are sometimes known to have a stuffed Space Monkey hanging, albatross-like, from their office doors. The Dreamweaver team is sharper edged, though, and in this video from team member Dominic Sagolla, we see what happens to codebreakers in their world (in this case, newly minted PM Kenneth Berger).

The folks up the road at Xerox PARC (onetime home of the Adobe founders) have been busily developing a new kind of paper that erases itself after 16 hours or so.  The idea is to reduce waste by letting people reuse some of the large percentage of paper that’s printed & recycled in short order–often on the same day.  More details are in the press release.

The story provides some background on the research that gave rise to this technology: “What she has discovered is a notable change in the role of paper in modern offices, where it is increasingly used as a medium of display rather than storage [emphasis added]. Documents are stored on central servers and personal computers and printed only as needed; for meetings, editing or reviewing information.”

It’ll be interesting to see what, if any, role this technology plays in a world of email, electronic paper, etc.  “I worry that this would be like coming out with Super 8 just before the video camera,” says consultant Paul Saffo.  Time will tell. [Via]

PS–At the other end of the permanence spectrum, tattooing has become so popular that even Chinese fish are doing it.  No word on whether "Shanghai Ink" will be airing soon. [Via]

Growing up, I clipped a newspaper’s list of all the James Bond films to date, keeping the yellowing paper taped to our refrigerator until I’d seen & checked off every one. So as you’d imagine, it was kind of a thrill when, during the new Casino Royale last week, one of the characters said, "It’s amazing what you can do with Photoshop these days."  Hot damn!  And apparently I wasn’t hallucinating, as Digit Magazine has taken note. [Via] [Update: The Bond films’ classic intro sequences are here. [Via]]

‘Tis the season for Photoshop making cameos, it seems.  Photoshop engineer Russell Williams writes, "Last week’s CSI featured a murderer who’s a news photographer who kills to
hide the fact that he’s composited his Iraq war pictures with Photoshop. At
one point the police officer questioning him says something to the effect
that ‘I’m surprised an adrenaline junkie like you would want to waste his
time with Photoshop.’"  (What, the clone tool isn’t adrenaline-packed…?)  Our PR folks report that the app popped up recently in Two And A Half Men as well as Desperate Housewives.  And The Daily Show continues to rock out, even featuring a montage of 10 years of P’shopped photos–now sadly yanked off YouTube.

We have in fact visited folks in Hollywood and talked about Photoshop’s role in their work & the stories they tell, but as far as I know these mentions are purely organic.

J.

PS–Much to her delight/chagrin, I think I’ll now start referring to my wife as Pixels Galore. 😉

Growing up, I clipped a newspaper’s list of all the James Bond films to date, keeping the yellowing paper taped to our refrigerator until I’d seen & checked off every one. So as you’d imagine, it was kind of a thrill when, during the new Casino Royale last week, one of the characters said, "It’s amazing what you can do with Photoshop these days."  Hot damn!  And apparently I wasn’t hallucinating, as Digit Magazine has taken note. [Via] [Update: The Bond films’ classic intro sequences are here. [Via]]

‘Tis the season for Photoshop making cameos, it seems.  Photoshop engineer Russell Williams writes, "Last week’s CSI featured a murderer who’s a news photographer who kills to
hide the fact that he’s composited his Iraq war pictures with Photoshop. At
one point the police officer questioning him says something to the effect
that ‘I’m surprised an adrenaline junkie like you would want to waste his
time with Photoshop.’"  (What, the clone tool isn’t adrenaline-packed…?)  Our PR folks report that the app popped up recently in Two And A Half Men as well as Desperate Housewives.  And The Daily Show continues to rock out, even featuring a montage of 10 years of P’shopped photos–now sadly yanked off YouTube.

We have in fact visited folks in Hollywood and talked about Photoshop’s role in their work & the stories they tell, but as far as I know these mentions are purely organic.

J.

PS–Much to her delight/chagrin, I think I’ll now start referring to my wife as Pixels Galore. 😉

Offering "international prestige and valuable prizes," the 2007 Adobe Design Achievement Awards are now accepting entries from student designers, photographers, illustrators, animators and digital filmmakers. The press release has more info, and the site lists offical rules & so forth.  Loot includes $5k per winning entry, Adobe software, plus a trip to San Francisco for finalists to participate in the awards ceremony.  You can also check out the gallery of winning 2006 entries.  [Via]

On a similar note, the Pixel Awards (not connected to Adobe, as far as I know) have showcased their set of 2006 winnners. They have a sign-up form if you’d like to submit in ’07.

Okay, I’m slow on the draw in mentioning it, but if by chance you’re near San Francisco and feel like watching designers rumble, check out Cut & Paste, going down tomorrow night.  The tournament-style competition "pits eight of the city’s best graphic designers against each other in an elimination battle of creativity, technical expertise, and wit. The competitors will work live on stage, in front of an audience and panel of expert judges. An MC will host the festivities and a soundtrack will be provided by hometown favorite DJs."  Each round is 15 minutes, and designers have to create artwork totally from scratch.  There’s also an audience design contest.

Tickets are 10 bucks, and Puma is raffling off a bike to advance ticket holders.  (Puma makes bikes…?) Anyhow, it should be fun, and I hope to see you there.

Apple’s recently released 10.4.8 system update includes a number of enhancements to the Rosetta processor emulation technology.  Now Macworld’s benchmarks add some specifics, reporting a roughly ~35% improvement running Photoshop CS2 on Intel-based Mac systems.

This is pretty great news.  I mean, when’s the last time you got a free update that made your machine 35% faster at something?  Our engineering and QE folks worked closely with Apple as the new code was developed, testing frequent drops for compatibility and performance.  (See, it’s knowing/doing this kind of thing that makes me flip out when people start making up nonsense.)

Now, obviously–obviously–the preferred solution is to get Photoshop & other PPC apps to run natively on Mactel ASAP, and of course we continue to work hard on that front.  (Just figured I’d spare anyone the trouble of writing "Git-r-done!!" or words to that effect. ;-))  In the meantime, it’s great to see Rosetta making strides to let people be more productive on these new systems.

[Update: Mike Downey reports that Flash 8 runs roughly 10% faster due to the update, and Steve Kilisky says that After Effects can run up to 15% faster.]

• Photographer and workflow expert Peter Krogh has created new video training that addresses Adobe Camera Raw, DNG, Bridge, and Peter’s RapidFixer extension for Bridge, as well as interfacing with iView Media Pro and more.
• As Help Desk Director for NAPP, Pete Bauer has heard just about every Photoshop question a dozen times. Maybe for the sake of his sanity, he’s committed the answers to the Photoshop CS2 FAQs for Lynda.com–a set of 120 or so short movies that address each common question.
• Speaking of Lynda, they’ve added Deke McClelland to their stable of talent.
• In conjunction with the Creative Suite 2.3 and Acrobat 8 launch, the folks at Total Training offer new training in high definition.
• The Online Photographer has posted a review of Bruce Fraser’s Real World Sharpening in Photoshop CS2.  (I’m kind of fascinated by this trend in specialized publishing.  Could there be a Real World Open Dialog coming soon? ;-))

Scrybe, described by C|NET’s Rafe Needleman as the "demo of the gods," is a forthcoming Flash-based rich internet application that promises to handle calendar tasks, manage to-do lists, and gather Web clippings. I haven’t gotten to try the service myself (the site is accepting applications for private beta testing, just begun), but the 7-minute video demo (at links above) is damn impressive.  Rafe has posted a review:

"It’s like using a Macintosh: these UI cues make it much easier for your brain to follow what your hands are doing with your mouse… The other huge benefit: Scrybe works offline. I’ll say that again: It’s a Web application, but when you’re not online, it still works. You can view your calendar, add things, move items around, print and so on. This shouldn’t be a big deal, but it is, since other online applications don’t work at all when they’re not connected. When Scrybe goes online, it synchronizes the data from your local machine to the Web."

I’m most intrigued by the thoughtful little innovations that seem to be spread throughout the app–multiple time zone management; easy printing of compact, foldable calendars; one-click gathering of Web clippings; and more.  I think that it, along with other forthcoming Flash-based RIAs I’ve gotten to preview (more news soon), will really start to redefine the world’s understanding of what the Adobe Engagement Platform can do.

The Adobe Color Mangement Module (CMM) is now available on Adobe Labs for community review and testing.  So, what is this thing?  In a nutshell, it’s the color converter part of the Adobe Color Engine (ACE), transformed into a library that can be used by non-Adobe apps.  The upshot is that you can use a single color management engine across your workflow, enabling more consistent display and output of colors.

ACE is built into Adobe products and therefore can’t be used by non-Adobe products (Quark, etc.). This project takes a chunk of ACE (the color conversion engine) and packages it for use by applications that support external color management modules (using ColorSync on the Mac OS and ICM2/WCS on Windows).  In-house color ninja Peter Constable adds, "Adobe hopes users will find the Adobe CMM a useful tool to
enable consistent, reliable, and accurate color in all parts of their color
workflows."

If the CMM sounds useful to you, please grab a copy, kick the tires, and let us know what you think.  A dedicated discussion forum should pop up on Labs in another two weeks.

A few days ago Adobe introduced Soundbooth, a free download (in beta form) from Adobe Labs.  Notably, and happily, the app not only supports Mac OS X, but also runs natively on Mactel systems.  More controversial, however, has been the news that the app runs only on Mactel systems, not those using a PowerPC.

"The elimination of PowerPC support in Photobooth [sic] raises major issues," writes Macintouch.  I’m a little puzzled: how is it that people can refer to the "elimination" of something that never existed–namely, PPC code in Soundbooth?

Here’s the reality: Apple’s migration to Intel chips means that it’s easier to develop for both Mac and Windows, because instead of splitting development resources optimizing for two different chip architectures, you can focus on just one.  That’s all good, and it makes Mac development more attractive. Users benefit from having developers’ efforts go elsewhere (features, performance tuning, etc.), rather that into parallel, duplicate work. In the case of Soundbooth, the team could leverage Adobe’s expertise in building great audio tools for Intel chips (namely Audition) to bring the app to market faster and with a richer feature set.

Now, if you were Adobe and had started developing a new application at exactly the time when Apple told you, "This other chip architecture is dead to us," would you rather put your efforts into developing for that platform, or would you focus elsewhere?

This logic seems lost on a lot of online posters, who leap to some fairly outlandish conclusions.  "Oh my God, next thing you know, Photoshop and the other apps won’t run on PowerPC, and the next thing you know, they’ll kill Mac versions altogether and just tell us to run Windows using Parallels!"  At what point Adobe will burn Snuggle the Fabric Softener Bear in some dark pagan ritual isn’t specified, but that must be the natural next step, right??

Come on.  As regards Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, etc., these apps have been tuned for PowerPC for many versions, and therefore continuing that support is a very different matter than creating support from scratch. To put the freaking out to rest: the next versions of the CS and Studio apps are being built as Universal apps, and they’ll run great on PPC.  Someday Apple, Adobe, and everyone else will stop supporting PPC, as they did with 68k chips, OS 9, etc.–but not anytime soon.

Macintouch writes, "There are 10 or 20 million active PowerPC Macs and no excuse in the world for abandoning them and forcing people to buy new Intel Macs to run applications."  Doesn’t it seem like something would have to exist before it could be abandoned?  "That’s completely contrary to Apple’s whole approach to the Intel migration," they write.  And again, in order to migrate, you have to start somewhere (namely, on the PPC). Soundbooth is a fresh start, not a migration.

If you’re a Mac user, I think it’s important to ask yourself, "Would I rather encourage software developers to bring their titles to the Mac, or would I rather jump down their throats given any opportunity?  If Adobe were to bring other Windows-only apps to the Mac, would I be happy about that, or would I rather give them hell for focusing on features & functionality rather than a discontinued chip architecture?"

I have to ask myself, Why on earth am I devoting part of my weekend to writing all this?  Why not blow it off and get out of the house?  Maybe I should, but as a die-hard Mac user I feel like someone has to speak a little truth to the Mac community–or rather,
to that vocal little group of
zealots and forum trolls. So here’s my message for those folks: You’re hurting the Mac platform. You’re hurting the Mac community. You need to crush a little aluminum foil against those antennae of yours, because you’re hurting everyone concerned. You’re making it harder (and less appealing) for people of goodwill to make the effort to support the Mac.

In economics, Gresham’s law states that when both legitimate money & counterfeit money are in circulation, the bad stuff tends to remain in circulation while the good stuff tends
to be hoarded or exported.  This applies to politics and to online conversations: extreme voices drive out (or at least silence) more moderate, level-headed thinking. I’ve bothered to write this, and to risk catching a lot of slings and arrows, because it’s important that someone stand up and say, "Whoa, hey, simmer down.  Take another look at the situation, and let’s take a second to accentuate the positive."

At the end of the day, instead of supporting only Windows, Adobe is bringing a new app to the Mac.  As a Mac user, I think that’s great news, and I suspect the vast majority of Mac users do, too.

Grabbing the Aerobie and heading out the door,

J.

[Update: Soundbooth PM Hart Schafer shares his perspective on the question of making Soundbooth support PPC. Suffice it to say, it’s not a “flip the checkbox in Xcode and you’re done” kind of thing.]

The Sony Bravia "Paint" ad (also available in high res–requires QT7) looks like someone doused the Bellagio fountains with a tanker full of Punky Colour.  The spot took 10 days and 250 people to film, not to mention 5 days and 60 people just to clean up.  (Putting your eco-worries to rest, they say, "A special kind of non-toxic paint was used that is safe enough to drink.")  [Via Paul Ramsbottom]

Meanwhile Turkish film studio Imago New Media has created OÏO, featuring paint "catapulted into the air, filmed by a high-speed camera and then composited with other catapulted paint footage."  Here’s a clip.  (The soundtrack has "deservedly obscure James Bond score" written all over it.) [Via]

See also the first Bravia spot (high res), featuring colored balls cavorting around SF.

It’s with enormous sadness that we learned this week of the passing of Hans Grande, a dear friend to many, many Adobeans; a stellar product manager; and an all-around excellent fella.  There’s a huge lump in all our throats, but at the wise suggestion of his wife, I’d like to take a moment to remember and celebrate his life.

Hans joined Adobe in 2002 as a PM on the Creative Suite team. Although we worked in different teams & disciplines, our paths would cross periodically, and I remember thinking, "Man, I’m not sure I understood all that MBA science he just laid on me, but I’m glad to have that guy on our side!"  When the Macromedia deal was announced last year, Hans took the reins on leading the planning activities.  Once again, although he was in the "clean room" and thus couldn’t talk much to the rest of us about the plans, I remember thinking, "Well, whatever he’s doing in there, I think those Macromedia folks are going to be impressed."  I couldn’t think of a better rep for that tricky assignment, and I knew he’d do Adobe proud.

Both Hans and I got married last year, and as we each dealt with the planning details, we’d compare notes.  I told him, "Oh man, this whole business of marrying a project manager is great–highly recommended, if you have the means!" He laughed and replied, "Yeah, but I’m marrying another product manager, and you know how that’s going to go: we’ll have all kinds of brilliant ideas for the wedding, and none of them will ever get implemented!"  I knew, though, that somewhere between driving the next great Adobe business initiative & going for long training rides with other Adobe cyclists (a real underachiever, this guy), he’d get it all put together.

I wish I’d gotten to know Hans better.  I wish we’d acted on more of those tossed-off oh-hey-let’s-grab-lunch suggestions.  I’m grateful that he came into the Adobe world for a while, and for the wonderful influence he exerted on so many folks here.  Maybe we can best honor him by picking up the phone & actually having that lunch, making that connection.  I know it would make Hans smile.

Sneak-previewed on Tuesday at the Adobe MAX show, the new audio-editing application Adobe Soundbooth is available in beta form on the Labs Web site.  "Built in the spirit of Sound Edit 16" (my trusty, lightweight sidekick for many years), Soundbooth is geared towards:

• Editing audio quickly
• Cleaning up noisy audio
• Visually identifying and removing unwanted sounds
• Recording and polishing voiceovers
• Adding effects and filters
• Easily creating customized music—without musical expertise

It’s a professional application, but it’s simpler and more streamlined than Audition, Adobe’s tool for audio professionals. In other words, it’s the kind of thing a Flash developer can grab and start using immediately.  Soundbooth PM Hart Shafer has posted his intro, and there’s also a press release.

By the way, note that in addition to supporting Windows, it runs on the Mac.  Intel-natively.  (And so does Flex Builder, for that matter.) In fact, given that it’s brand new, the app is Mactel-only.  I’m a little disappointed that I can’t run it on my PowerBook, but I understand why the team has decided to focus entirely on the future.

At risk of swamping you with MAX coverage, I wanted to pass along a bit more info.  Jen deHaan has posted in-depth coverage of the Day 2 keynote, and Matt Woodward offers complementary coverage (PDF). Jen’s notes mention some new hooks for doing mobile authoring from Photoshop:

• Using Photoshop.next, Bill has Café Townsend open. Before he hands it over to the developer, he wants to make sure the design looks correct.
• In Photoshop, he selects "Save for Web and Devices."
• He clicks the button at bottom to preview content, and it opens mobile emulator — a newer version of mobile emulator that we’re working on. Making sure that image size, display, alignment is OK for the designer. Can check that it works on a variety of devices. You can change things like brightness, make sure that the contrast is OK when the phone is indoors, outdoors, etc.

This, like the Photoshop/Dreamweaver and Photoshop/Flash integration shown yesterday, elicited spontaneous applause from the crowd–always music to a product manager’s ears. 🙂

During yesterday’s MAX keynote, Flash evangelist Greg Rewis gave a sneak preview of some integration we’re planning between Photoshop and Dreamweaver.

In numerous visits to Web shops, designers made it clear that instead of always exporting a whole Photoshop file to the Web, they’d often like to grab just a chunk of it and drop it into an HTML composition.  Greg showed that in a future version of Dreamweaver, it’ll be possible to copy a chunk of data from Photoshop, paste it into Dreamweaver, and have the built-in Fireworks optimization engine pop up with compression options.  Better still, Photoshop passed along enough info that DW knows the location of the source PSD & can tell PS to re-open that file.

Jen deHaan has posted an excellent, detailed write-up of the keynote, including info on Fireworks improvements (e.g. the much requested better PSD import); the After Effects "puppeting" demo; the new Soundbooth application (more on that soon); and much more. Flashmagazine offers good coverage with photos. [Via]

During a packed keynote address at Adobe MAX yesterday, the company made a rather interesting announcement: according to (and buried in) the press release, "Adobe also plans to invest approximately $100 million in venture capital over the next 3-5 years in companies leveraging Adobe platform technologies, particularly companies delivering applications via Apollo, as part of Adobe’s commitment to building an ecosystem for the Adobe® Engagement Platform."

Tschka-tschka-ehWHAT?  As they say in Congress, "$100M here, $100M there–pretty soon you’re talking about real money."  I wasn’t hired for my math skills (at heart, I remain a simple unfrozen caveman Web designer), but this kind of money strikes me as a huge vote of confidence in the platform & the developer community around it.

Last week a group of Mac developers–Rich Siegel of Bare Bones, Jayson Adams of Circus Ponies, and  Paul Kafasis of Rogue Amoeba, and I–sat down (virtually) with Chuck Joiner of MacVoices.  We discussed the state of software development on the Mac, as well as the future of the platform, hosted apps, and more.  You can hear the hour-long podcast here.  (For the impatient: my comments largely boil down to "Lots of work is ongoing, but on the whole, things are all good.")

[On a slightly related note, Apple announced these fire-breathing bad boys yesterday. My 17″ is on its way! (Laptop-induced scoliosis, schmoliosis. Come to JNack…)]

Here’s a pair of interesting examples of using Flash technology to build hosted applications for a very specialized market: 

• Developed at Penn State, ColorBrewer is designed to facilitate selecting good color schemes for maps. To that end it makes it easy to test drive various options using a sample map.  The warning icons, indicating whether a particular scheme works well for  colorblind users, monochrome copiers, etc., are a nice touch.
• UW Madison’s TypeBrewer, meanwhile, is "an online map design tool that lets mapmakers explore typography in a semi-structured environment."  It can preview more than 300 unique combos of typeface options; check your machine to see whether you have the fonts being previewed; and even generate a downloadable Illustrator template from the results.

From my perspective it’s cool to see the rise of highly focused, easy-to-use complements to larger design apps, developed in a way that makes them accessible to anyone with a computer, regardless of platform. [Via Colin Fleming]

[Update: If this kind of thing is up your alley, you might also want to check out Digital Vector Maps, purveyors of fine stock maps for Illustrator. [Via]]

Microsoft UX dude Dave Vronay has a great sense of humor about his company’s occasional struggles to make Windows elegant and usable. In his mock-apologetic list of features that didn’t make the cut for Vista, he mentions "Mimesweeper," a more politically sensitive version of the venerable Minesweeper game. "Just like wandering around Paris, the goal is to figure out where all of the mimes are without actually encountering one."  Sadly, he reports, the game came to naught, as did the, ah, highly discoverable "Safe Delete" feature.  [Via]  [For more tech parody see previous.]

Microsoft UX dude Dave Vronay has a great sense of humor about his company’s occasional struggles to make Windows elegant and usable. In his mock-apologetic list of features that didn’t make the cut for Vista, he mentions "Mimesweeper," a more politically sensitive version of the venerable Minesweeper game. "Just like wandering around Paris, the goal is to figure out where all of the mimes are without actually encountering one."  Sadly, he reports, the game came to naught, as did the, ah, highly discoverable "Safe Delete" feature.  [Via]  [For more tech parody see previous.]

Splice Music is an interesting example of using Flash-based tools to build a social network.  Aimed at aspiring DJs, the site echoes the spirit of JumpCut, the video mash-up service that Yahoo! recently acquired, and the Flash-based sequencer offers some fairly sophisticated audio tools.  It’s cool to see a site embracing rich internet app technology to bring creative folks together.

Here’s
an example song sequencer interface (press play button to hear and drag clips around).  The site enables users to:

• Remix existing songs by other DJs
• Drag and drop sound clips
• Embed remixes in a blog or web page with an HTML snippet they provide (similar to YouTube)  
• Rate songs as well as sounds that compose a song, and search a database of community-rated sounds
• Record new sounds directly within the UI
• Browse existing sounds via tags
• Click on a sound in the sequence to see metadata about that song (BPM, community rating, length, tags, etc)
• Create detailed artist profiles
• Add friends

[Via Rob Christensen]

I know I’m not an unbiased source, given that I work for Adobe, but I have to take a second to plug the new Contribute 4, released earlier this month.  Until now I’d never used any flavor of Contribute, though having been a Web designer I’ve always liked the idea of a tool that let clients do their own updates/grunt work.  I grabbed the release build of v4.0 ("C4"? Hmm–too explosive) on the weekend and, after taking a couple of days to switch gears, have been on a tear with it ever since.  Being able to compose blog entries offline in a WYSIWYG editor, then publish them in one click, just crushes my previous approach (typing raw text in a Movable Type interface).

By the way, on a blogging-related note, Adobe’s acquisition of Serious Magic brings with it Vlog It!, an app designed to make video blogging similarly easy.  The built-in Teleprompter & green-screen capabilities sound particularly sweet. I don’t have any inside info on Adobe’s plans here, but a combo of MacBook Pro + built-in iSight cam + some green construction paper mean you may be seeing more of me here soon.  (Wait, don’t unsubscribe that feed already…!)

Earlier this year Logitech announced the NuLOOQ Navigator (crazy name, cool device), a button/dial combo that’s designed to sit in your non-dominant hand (i.e. the one you aren’t mousing/drawing with) and provide quick access to tools, zooming, panning, and more.  There are some brief video overviews on the product site, showing how you can bring up a little on-screen tool dial that’s context-aware (displaying options relevant to the app & tool you’re using at the moment).

Now they’ve made the product much more affordable (chopping the price to $79.99) and made the product compatible with Windows while adding support for a number of additional apps (iTunes, iMovie, etc.). These moves make the device much more of an impulse buy, and I hope it sells like hotcakes (er, Krispy Kremes, or Tickle Me Senseless Elmo, or whatever people are buying like mad these days).

Earlier this year Logitech announced the NuLOOQ Navigator (crazy name, cool device), a button/dial combo that’s designed to sit in your non-dominant hand (i.e. the one you aren’t mousing/drawing with) and provide quick access to tools, zooming, panning, and more.  There are some brief video overviews on the product site, showing how you can bring up a little on-screen tool dial that’s context-aware (displaying options relevant to the app & tool you’re using at the moment).

Now they’ve made the product much more affordable (chopping the price to $79.99) and made the product compatible with Windows while adding support for a number of additional apps (iTunes, iMovie, etc.). These moves make the device much more of an impulse buy, and I hope it sells like hotcakes (er, Krispy Kremes, or Tickle Me Senseless Elmo, or whatever people are buying like mad these days).

Want a free trip to Rome?  If you win Best in Show in the Photoshop User Awards, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals will send you on just that.  According to site, "The Best of Show winner will go on assignment for Photoshop User magazine to Rome, Italy to create a cover image for the magazine. Photoshop User will provide round-trip airfare for the winner, and an assistant of their choice, along with hotel accommodations, hotel transfers, and daily expenses. The cover they create will be used on the cover of Photoshop User magazine."  Other good loot goes to winners of the 11 categories.

Sweetness.  Check out the full details (categories, rules, etc.) in the press release.

The Bay Area Photoshop User Group is meeting this Tuesday, Oct. 17, at the Adobe San Jose office (map). Pizza and drinks kick off at 6:30pm.
Computer scientist Nelson Chu is visiting from Hong Kong and plans to demo his badass painting technology (scroll down for videos). We’re also planning to present an overview and demo of Lightroom Beta 4, as well as a tour of the new Acrobat 8 and the collaboration tools in Acrobat Connect (formerly Breeze).
Hope to see you there,
J.

The Bay Area Photoshop User Group is meeting this Tuesday, Oct. 17, at the Adobe San Jose office (map). Pizza and drinks kick off at 6:30pm.
Computer scientist Nelson Chu is visiting from Hong Kong and plans to demo his badass painting technology (scroll down for videos). We’re also planning to present an overview and demo of Lightroom Beta 4, as well as a tour of the new Acrobat 8 and the collaboration tools in Acrobat Connect (formerly Breeze).
Hope to see you there,
J.

Heh–hot on the heels of the Uncyclopedia Photoshop gag, the wisenheimers at Coloribus have announced that to combat piracy in emerging markets, Adobe will release a version of Photoshop slathered in corporate sponsorship. Hmm, yeeeah, this just might work… I’m imagining integrating the Flash Player into Photoshop to power interstitial ads. “The Brush Tool–but first, Will and Grace weeknights at 6 on Action 13!!” Or, maybe not. 😉 [Via Russell Brady]

To dignify or not to dignify, that is the question…
Normally I prefer to let random piles o’ nonsense pass by unremarked, but this one has been Dugg, and the resulting traffic makes me feel like saying something.
So, an anonymous article says that an unnamed Adobe exec “vented ire and shock^* ” at an unspecified company meeting. Very racy!
For what it’s worth, I don’t recall anything like this happening, and other folks don’t, either. That said, it’s hard to prove a negative, especially without names, quotes, etc. In any case, it would have been nice if someone–anyone–had approached Adobe for confirmation or comment, instead of taking the story at face value.
Here are a couple of tips for any self-styled business news source:

• Include bylines (y’know, so we know who’s saying what).
• Feature actual quotes and sources (ditto).
• Don’t suggest that big, publicly owned, successful companies would do manifestly stupid, self-defeating things like “dropping or delaying support for Apple’s new Intel platform products with the upcoming version of Adobe Photoshop CS3.” Mactel nativeness is expected to motivate a lot of folks to upgrade, and if Adobe could flip a switch and make it happen tomorrow, we would–Aperture and anything else notwithstanding.^**

Now, does the Lightroom team want to kick Aperture’s butt? You bet! And can we safely guess that the Aperture team wants to wipe the floor with Lightroom? Hell yeah! And is this all good for customers? Absolutely. I know both companies to be full of bright, passionate, ethical people, and some healthy competition benefits everyone.
So listen, my Mac brethren: We’re working like mad on this Mactel thing (with Apple’s excellent ongoing help) because it’s the right thing to do for customers. Everyone knows that, and assertions that Adobe would do something petty and stupid just to irk Apple–well, they’re not worth the pixels they’re printed on. (It was a pitch in the dirt, but I felt I had to set the record straight.)
Oh, and one more thing: news we share over the next weeks and months is going to confound a lot of critics. Stay tuned.
And now, back to work.
J.
——-
^* Incidentally, Aperture wasn’t a surprise to Adobe. As I said at the beginning, it’s something we’d expected for a long time. Apple had likewise anticipated Lightroom.
^** Not convinced? Here’s a little history: When the PowerPC first came to the Mac, Adobe released a free plug-in for Photoshop 2.5. And when the G5 was released, Adobe released a free update for Photoshop 7, despite the fact that CS1 was roughly six weeks away. We spent time this year trying to do the same for CS2, but it wasn’t in the cards.

First you could print on paper, then on clothes, mugs, stamps, then on furniture… and now comes printing on food. The Zuse Toast Printer claims to pump imagery right onto your morning carbs. Hmm, I wonder how you’d color-manage toast out of Photoshop… At least the consumables (!) would be cheaper than regular inkjet paper, and if the printer shipped with a clipart gallery of famous faces, you could probably make a bundle selling the output on eBay.
I wonder, do elephants eat toast? If so, maybe you could recycle the Zuse output into a different sort of paper (not one I’d care to see color managed). [Via]

What’s more fun and (amazingly) even less productive than screwing around in Wikipedia all day? Screwing around in Uncyclopedia! This parody of Wikipedia has an excellent take on “Photoshop or, as they want you to call it, Adobe® Photoshop® Image® Enhancement® Creation® Software®” (gah!). Among the bits:

A huge advantage was the simplistic and easy-to-grasp feature set — essentially, anything you would ever want to do graphically is about a single mouse-click away. You could easily undertake even the most challenging task and your workflow would be so smooth and processes so intuitive that you would actually *gain* time at the end of your project!

>;-) And do mind those Murphy’s Laws of Photoshop Phoniness. [Via Mark Hamburg]

• Bad Maggie, no biscuit: The Mighty Illusions blog features two takes on Margaret Thatcher’s face, highlighting the way our brains interpret shapes differently based on orientation and context. (Try scrolling the page slowly, so that you see only the first pair of images before looking at the second, inverted pair.) [Via]
• Artist Harvey Opgenorth does “Museum Camouflage,” placing himself in front of well known pieces of art, using thrift-store salvage to blend into them. [Via] He shares some theory on it here. (Reminds me of that wallpaper shirt from Garden State.)

[See previous I and II.]

Heh–the fascination goes on: the excellently named killer coder and all-around good sport Seetharaman Narayanan of the Photoshop team has been interviewed by David Friedman of IronicSans. Seetha talks about his fan club, history with Photoshop, and enjoyment of “Playboy’s number one Party School in 1987” (wha? though it does help explain why I once got a feature into PS in exchange for a bottle of Don Julio). Now that Boing Boing has picked up the news, we just need someone to make a techno remix featuring the phrase “Seetharaman Narayanan”… [Via]

The Photoshop 9.0.2 update is now available for Mac OS X, along with the previously posted Windows update. (Both were initially posted together, but we found that a printing change made for OS 10.4 broke something on 10.3. That’s now been addressed, but if you are running a pre-10.4 system and already applied the earlier 9.0.2 update and have encountered a printing crash, you’ll want to reinstall CS2, then apply the new 9.0.2 update. Sorry for the lameness.)
9.0.2 is a small update, and fixes included in the Mac side include these:

• Photoshop no longer crashes when encountering unsupported file types through the Acrobat Touchup workflow.
• Supported files that incorrectly produced an “unsupported color space” message now open as expected.
• TIFF files with layer data greater than 2GB now open correctly.
• A printing issue that could cause banding when using inkjet printers with Mac OS X v.10.4 has been resolved.

The Photoshop 9.0.2 update is now available for Mac OS X, along with the previously posted Windows update. (Both were initially posted together, but we found that a printing change made for OS 10.4 broke something on 10.3. That’s now been addressed, but if you are running a pre-10.4 system and already applied the earlier 9.0.2 update and have encountered a printing crash, you’ll want to reinstall CS2, then apply the new 9.0.2 update. Sorry for the lameness.)
9.0.2 is a small update, and fixes included in the Mac side include these:

• Photoshop no longer crashes when encountering unsupported file types through the Acrobat Touchup workflow.
• Supported files that incorrectly produced an “unsupported color space” message now open as expected.
• TIFF files with layer data greater than 2GB now open correctly.
• A printing issue that could cause banding when using inkjet printers with Mac OS X v.10.4 has been resolved.

Ooh, now here’s a cool development: the OptiPaint system promises to let users paint with real brushes, sponges, water, and even their fingers, then have the results appear inside Photoshop. The system consists of a translucent painting surface, tilted slightly towards the user, on which you draw with water while a video camera below captures your movements. (Graphics.com has a bit more info). [Via Marc Pawliger]
The system is far from cheap ($2495!), and the underlying technology dates back to the mid-80’s. That said, I got to play with one for a few minutes at Photoshop World yesterday, and I was surprised at how gratifying it is to work with real, physical art materials, rather than a mouse, trackpad or stylus. I was struck by a clear sense of “Yeah, this is out things oughtta be.”
OptiPaint makes me want to learn more about systems that offer rich tactile input. Project Sumi-nagashi aims to offer “touchable fluid digital painting,” letting users feel the viscosity of digital paint and the texture of the canvas. The demo video, showing the system’s linear induction motors moving objects on the surface, is a trip. And elsewhere SensAble technologies offers a variety of systems that enable force feedback in 3D space. It all gets my little wheels turning about ways these technologies could dramatically change the way artists work with Photoshop. [Via Nelson Chu]

• Luxology, makers of the super cool modo 3D modeling package, have introduced imageSynth, a $99 plug-in for creating tiling textures within Photoshop. Check out the 4-minute video intro to see this interactive approach to tile generation, or see the press release for more info.
• If you’d rather stick with Photoshop’s built-in tools, check out Dave Nagel’s Texture Generators, a set of 15 actions for creating paper and other rough textures. Dave’s article for Digital Producer Magazine links to the actions and walks through how to use them.
• And if you’re looking for textures that are good to go as-is (or that can be used as nice seeds for imageSynth, etc.), check out Texture King, a great set of free images offered by site creator REH3design. [Via]
• [Update: Enrique Flouret from The Photoshop Roadmap offers a tutorial on texture creation using the new Filter Forge toolset.]

• Luxology, makers of the super cool modo 3D modeling package, have introduced imageSynth, a $99 plug-in for creating tiling textures within Photoshop. Check out the 4-minute video intro to see this interactive approach to tile generation, or see the press release for more info.
• If you’d rather stick with Photoshop’s built-in tools, check out Dave Nagel’s Texture Generators, a set of 15 actions for creating paper and other rough textures. Dave’s article for Digital Producer Magazine links to the actions and walks through how to use them.
• And if you’re looking for textures that are good to go as-is (or that can be used as nice seeds for imageSynth, etc.), check out Texture King, a great set of free images offered by site creator REH3design. [Via]
• [Update: Enrique Flouret from The Photoshop Roadmap offers a tutorial on texture creation using the new Filter Forge toolset.]

• Dutch artist/engineer Theo Jansen makes unbelievable kinetic sculptures; it’s as if da Vinci had access to PVC. This video (a BMW ad, as it happens) shows off some of his walking machines in motion on the beach. Wired covers the genesis and evolution of Jansen’s work, and you can see his two-ton Animaris Rhinoceros Transport on the move in this video. Many more photos are on his site. [Via] [For more on kinetic scuplture, see previous entry.]
• Thomas Demand is a photographer who replicates regular scenes with cardboard and paper. [Via] His efforts to make the tiny seem large strike me as an exact counterpoint to people making the large seem small via tilt-shift lens or Photoshop.
• Along marginally similar lines, someone (perhaps preparing for a future career as prison escapee) has fashioned a set of amazingly intricate paper guns. [Via]
• And I know I mentioned them not long ago, but Richard Sweeny’s paper sculptures really are worth a look. [Update: so are Peter Callesen’s.]

The Photoshop 9.0.2 update for Windows is available on Adobe.com. It fixes a handful of irritating issues that weren’t caught for the 9.0.1 update:

• Menus now respond correctly after a single click.
• Undo/Redo work properly when multiple documents are open.
• Photoshop no longer produces a program error when encountering unsupported file types through the Acrobat Touchup workflow.
• Supported files that incorrectly produced an “unsupported color space” message now open as expected.
• TIFF files with layer data greater than 2GB now open correctly.

If you haven’t updated Photoshop CS2 with the previous 9.0.1 update, no worries: 9.0.2 contains those fixes as well.
We expect the Mac version of 9.0.2 to follow shortly. The Mac and Windows updates both got posted via the automated update system last week, but we quickly discovered that a fix for a printing issue on Mac OS X 10.4 caused a crash on systems running OS X 10.3 and earlier (doh!). We pulled the update off the server and will repost it as soon as the 10.3 printing crash is fixed. If you’ve already updated and aren’t affected by that crash, you’re all set (and won’t need to install the updated 9.0.2). If you are affected by the crash, you’ll need to reinstall Photoshop CS2, then apply the revised 9.0.2 update. Sorry about the confusion and hassle there.

Creepiness Level = Orange (Elevated): Some Israeli researchers have proposed a tool that, after analyzing a library of beautiful faces, can adjust anyone’s features to make them more beautiful. Umm… no, please?
Yes, my livelihood comes from making a tool that’s used to propagate standardized ideals of beauty, but somehow having the computer make the call on am-I-hot-or-not, then “fix” my various deficiencies, starts getting uncomfortably weird–a little too Fitter Happier. I’m reminded of a quote from Francis Bacon: “There is no excellent beauty, that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.” Here’s hoping it stays that way. [Via Russell Williams]