Man, this is some Russianness embedded in more Russianness:

[YouTube] [Via]

“Nothing will take an audience out faster,” says DP of Saturday Night Live’s film unit Alex Buono, than bad audio. “They’ll sooner accept out-of-focus, underexposed shots” than bad sound.

Well-regarded audio engineer & trainer Larry Jordan agrees: “The best way to improve the quality of your picture is to improve the quality of your sound.” He recently recorded a session on demystifying Adobe Audition for video editors.

During this 45-minute presentation, you’ll discover:

• Send files and projects between Premiere Pro and Audition
• Remove hum from an interview
• Remove background noise
• Maximize audio levels without causing distortion
• Do an audio mix of your project
• Create “stems,” or submixes, of your dialog, effects, and music tracks
• Test your final mix to be sure it meets all technical specs before submitting it to the client

“I will have that Noguchi table someday,” notes Margot, shooting me the people’s eyebrow.

[YouTube] [Via Talin Wadsworth]

Live, this Friday at noon Pacific:

During this interactive webinar Richard Harrington will show how to craft dramatic visual sequences using the various motion effects & time-lapse tools in Adobe Creative Cloud.

Fantastic.

[YouTube] [Via]

One of my favorite benefits of working at Adobe is the sabbatical program. Starting at one’s 5-year anniversary, you get an extra three weeks of paid vacation time (which grows longer on subsequent 5-year marks). Adobe Life Magazine has published a nice piece about a number of employees who’ve elected to spend time serving others during their sabbaticals. In it I talk a bit about the brief time I spent last year in Guatemala.

Tangentially related, I’m also proud that Adobe matches each employee’s charitable contributions up to $10,000/year. I think that speaks to the fundamental decency of the founders, Chuck & John.

Ah, now isn’t this clever: Via a Web interface, you can mouse over PSDs you’ve synced with the LayerVault service, then copy text objects it contains. Check it out:

They write,

Enabling the type tool will allow you to click any text in a PSD and copy it to your clipboard. You’ll be able to use the Type Tool with some older PSDs and any PSD you work on going forward.

[Vimeo]

Apropos of nothing (well, except that I’m getting jazzed for our first-ever trip to Legoland next week!), $12.99 gets you a sack o’ wheels & axles. Our boys delight in making hilariously offbeat “vehicles” (incredibly long series of planks connected via random wheels, etc.), and you can never, ever have too many wheels and axles.

Glamorous? No. A catalyst for hours of good times? You bet.

Sure, well over a million people use Behance, but there’s so much power yet to unlock. Check out this session at noon Pacific* on Friday:

Mell Perling, Community Manager at Behance, as she demonstrates how Behance can take your work directly from the cloud and into the creative community on Behance. In this Ask A Pro session, you will:

• See how being on Behance increases the discoverability of your work
• Share work on Behance easily using your files from Creative Cloud and in CC apps
• Learn how Behance fits into your Creative Cloud workflow
• Explore the activity and inspiration stream of Behance on Creative Cloud Desktop
• Harness the power of the creative community on Behance

* time zone convertor

Clinton-Dole… Toad the Wet Sprocket… “the Jennifer”… Oh, excuse me: During the seizure that this clip induced, I fell down a memory hole into the mid-’90s when I swiped the “Gallery Effects” set of filters from an Adobe CD. They were later bundled into Photoshop, and thus appear here:

“Photoshop CS5 Filters Animation” is a small tribute to Photoshop filters. We used the Ps logo and systematically applied the filters in the same way, seeking the essence of the software, exploring the aesthetic values of its resources but letting the spectator judge them. […]
[The video shows] every filter one after each other, with a custom sound design that uses the same sound for each filter but with a different distortion effect for every case, exporting the graphical concept to the sound.

[Vimeo] [Via]

Heh–it doesn’t have much to do with this blog, but I got a kick out of it: the Millennials in the Workplace Training Video.

[Via the millennial Bianca Giaever]

Very cool. To quote a very excited-sounding Scott Kelby:

As I’m writing this, I gotta tell ya — I can’t believe it myself, but Adobe is giving everyone who attends the upcoming Photoshop World Conference & Expo (Sept 4-6, 2013) in Vegas, a FULL one year Adobe Creative Cloud membership. I am just floored!

That’s a $600 membership, because you get it all!!! Photoshop CC, Lightroom, InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Muse, Dreamweaver, and on and on, and it all comes with your paid full conference registration. […]

You can sign up right now for a full conference pass for $598 (or just $498 if you’re already a NAPP member). Here’s the link. This is you’re best deal….well…ever!

Tantek Çelik, Web Standards Lead at Mozilla, will be speaking at the SFHTML5 meetup, 6-9pm:

New HTML5 elements and microformats give us a simple way to represent web data without additional URLs, file formats, or callbacks. Microformats2 and HTML5 improvements bring better accessibility, simpler markup, improved semantics, and a direct mapping to JSON APIs for data consumers.

Millions of web sites use microformats to make their data available. Other approaches have emerged as well (e.g. RDFa, microdata, OGP, schema, Twitter Cards). Tantek will discuss which microformats to use for search engines and for public APIs.

10am Pacific (time zone convertor):

Description: Come join us to learn how to author projects using HTML (HTML5 forms, Enhanced JQuery support) CSS and JavaScript. You will also learn how to build and package native mobile apps for Android and iOS with Adobe PhoneGap Build support in Dreamweaver CC.

…equals compelling, if gut-churning:

What was James Kingston thinking? He’s here to tell you:

[Via]

This would’ve been a good gig for me back in the day (when I was an Apple student rep):

If you’re passionate about design or video and want hands-on marketing and event planning experience with a company that is changing the world through digital experiences, this program is for you.
The ideal Student Rep will be creative, entrepreneurial, and well-connected, with strong online and offline social networks. A deep knowledge of and passion for Adobe applications is essential. This career-building position will potentially lead to a creative internship in a top advertising agency, so the ability to work independently to meet deadlines and reporting requirements will be hugely beneficial.

Check out the program page for complete details.

Cool news from stop-motion legend Phil Tippett:

The Tippett Creature Shop, featuring downloadable, quality creature animations including dinosaurs, robots, dragons, zombies, monsters and penguins has just opened in the free app Efexio, a marketplace for special effects. Standard animations are priced between $0.99 and $1.99. Pro versions are available for between $4.99 and $9.99 for those users who wish to export videos at full HD resolution. Each animation is fully textured.
Efexio comes with one free effect and a new free effect will be released each month.

Check out the app’s community channel for more info. [Via Dan Goldman]

My wife’s team’s new collaborative video platform, Adobe Anywhere, began shipping last week. In this video Principal Scientist Enzo Guerrera talks how Anywhere brings scalable video editing workflows to the cloud with NVIDIA Tesla GPUs.

•  Vesa Lehtimäki makes terrific images of Legos on Hoth. On Flickr he shares some of his techniques (e.g. creating snow by using ground plaster of Paris flakes underwater).
• Adobe’s own Christian Cantrell makes tons of fun Lego Star Wars portraits (e.g. the pet AT-AT below).
• Elsewhere on Wired Spencer Ackerman breaks down what Kottke calls “The hubris and folly of Darth Vader at Hoth.” (Pro tip: “Don’t place unaccountable religious fanatics in wartime command, and never underestimate a hegemonic power’s ability to miscalculate against an insurgency.”)
• On Quora someone dares to ask, “Did the Rebel Alliance really blow up the Death Star, or was it all planned by Vader and the Emperor to drum up support for their war against the terrorists?”
• And this… I don’t even know what to say about this. But I want to drive it, immediately.

The trippy vid for Canadian DJ A-Trak’s “Jumbo” reminds me of Michel Gondry’s earlier, brilliant looper Come Into My World:

[Vimeo]

Astute Graphics, makers of popular & powerful Illustrator plug-ins like VectorScribe, have introduced the cool-looking MirrorMe for Illustrator CS5 & above:

• User-defined origin and axis angle
• User-defined number of axes
• Flexible live annotations to keep you informed
• Pause and resume mirroring on layers
• Copy and paste mirror axes in and across documents
• Auto-trim and joining of paths across axes

The product costs £39 +VAT (approximately $58 / €45) and is part of their larger product bundle (£149/$225/€173).

In brief, tell product creators what you’re trying to accomplish, then give them a chance to figure out how to help you accomplish it.

Lightroom creator & longtime Photoshop leader Mark Hamburg puts things really well:

Lists of desired features are interesting because they let us know what it is you want. Descriptions of what these features should do are interesting because it provides clarity around how you think about the features.

But what really scores points are use cases. Tell us what you are trying to do because that tells us what problem we need to go solve.

For example:

“I shoot pictures of sunsets. Almost always this generates a lot of photos — 10, 20, 30, 100. I want to share the photos but I want to just share a few so as not to overwhelm my audience. I need Revel to make it easier to go from 10 to 100 photos down to 2 to 5 photos.”

Note that that didn’t specify particular features. It specified a problem and what it gave us was a use case that we can reference and judge features against. It sets us up to ask “how well does the image review feature work for solving the sunset problem”?

Sometimes the use case for a feature is obvious. But that’s not always true, and by couching requests and discussions in terms of use cases, we have another way to check and confirm that we are all on the same wavelength.

My friend Jeff Tranberry is one of the great unsung heroes of the Photoshop community. After working in design & photography, he joined Adobe, did many years of testing of Photoshop & ImageReady, and most recently became Chief Customer Advocate. He tackles what’s sometimes “an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about*” on behalf of customers, all while maintaining composure during his little daughter’s medical odyssey. You can read about Jeff & his work on the Photoshop team blog.

*Okay, Cameron Crowe’s words, not Jeff’s, but always kinda great

Visual Effects supervisor Chris Godfrey gives a peek behind the curtain:

[Vimeo][Via]

Adobe’s Experience Design department crafted this ode to all those who create:

I love the way the team at Sagmeister & Walsh uses physical media (magnetized iron filings, exploding powder, braided hair, and more), as shown in this brief interview with partner Jessica Walsh. (Note: Very mildly NSFW due to very brief nudity.)

Thursday at 10am Pacific, Creative Cloud for Video Pros:

• Use the powerful new Creative Cloud Desktop for managing your CC applications, file access, Behance integration, and more.
• Take your preferences with you with Sync Settings in Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects
• See the top newfeatures in Adobe Premiere Pro CC and After Effects Pro CC
• Learn about Photoshop and Camera Raw workflows for video.

Friday at noon Pacific, Creative Cloud for Web Designers/Developers:

In this session Evangelist Paul Trani will take you through how Creative Cloud helps both web designers and developers work faster and smarter than ever before when building content for the modern, responsive web. Learn how to collaborate and share files and folders as well as new ways to work with web fonts on the desktop. See the latest in Photoshop, Illustrator and Reflow when creating web content, as well as discover the latest in Edge Tools and Services. A session not to be missed.

You can register here. (time zone convertor)

Zorana Gee gives a concise set of suggestions:

[YouTube]

It’s available on the Web and for iPad in the App Store. Highlights include typographical portraits, tips on creating parallax scrolling, free access to Edge Web Fonts, and more.

Via art director Paul Clements, who’s posted some production stills on Behance:

[Vimeo]

Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long. — Walker Evans

After I first heard this, I’d find myself having scary-intense moment staring at, say, grout in the shower. Good times.

“If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.” — Montesquieu

I meditate on this frequently, especially in our industry where it seems everyone’s chasing the apparent validation that comes from making millions selling some some money-losing POS to a greater fool.

Tuesday, 10am Pacific (time zone convertor): 

Come join us to learn about the new CSS Designer feature in Dreamweaver CC. The new CSS Designer is an intuitive visual editing tool that helps generate clean web-standard code and let you quickly apply CSS properties such as gradients and box shadows.

Sign up here.

This Thursday [update: here’s the recording] catch a demo/Q&A session with director Richard Jobson starting at 10am Pacific (convertor):

Wayland’s Song is an independent feature film that was completed entirely with Adobe CC production software. Please join us for a special session with director Richard Jobson where he will describe the whole process from planning through to final delivery, including scriptwriting and production scheduling with Adobe Story, ingest with Prelude, video editing in Adobe Premiere Pro, audio editing in Audition, and final color grading with SpeedGrade. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A.

About Richard Jobson
Richard Jobson is the former lead singer for The Skids, a popular punk band in the 1980s. From there he moved into broadcasting where he became a well-known film critic and television host in the UK. Jobson started writing screenplays in 2002 and moved into directing short films and game cinematics in 2003. His first exposure to Adobe production software was through working with After Effects –in fact one of his feature films was edited entirely in this motion graphics application! Scheduled to open in June, 2013, Wayland’s Song is Jobson’s sixth feature film.

No word on whether he’ll shoot a sequel to Don’ You Go Rounin’ Roun To Re Ro.

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” — W.B. Yeats (via Gov. Jerry Brown)

So c’mon, baby, let’s light some fires.

“Design means making decisions,” we’re told, instead of trying to be everything to everyone. Along those lines I enjoyed this bit of profanity-laced wisdom from Adam Carolla. (Context: He’s talking about cable channels’ decision to make interesting shows for specific audiences, instead of milquetoast “minivans” that fail to please anyone.) [Source]

Sarah Polley has released Stories We Tell, “a genre-twisting film that playfully excavates layers of myth and memory to reveal the truth at the core of a family of storytellers.” Our new resident storyteller Bianca Giaever writes, “I was half-laughing, half-crying the entire second half. If you get a chance, it is a must see!”

Wait… why would you create & edit videos in Photoshop? Julieanne explains:

Discover how you can use Adobe Photoshop to easily create polished videos from your DSLR video footage and stills. Watch as Adobe Digital Imaging Evangelist Julieanne Kost demonstrates easy workflows and techniques to create great videos using Photoshop. In this session, Kost will cover:

• What’s possible with creating videos in Photoshop
• How to use the built-in video features introduced in Photoshop CS6
• Step-by-step techniques for creating stunning videos
• Understanding key techniques, tips, and tricks.

The Photoshop team has just made a Photoshop CS6 update (13.0.5 for Mac, 13.0.1.2 for Win) available for perpetual-license customer (non-Creative Cloud subscribers). It addresses a small number of bugs on each platform. CC members can sit tight: Photoshop CC will be released on June 17th and will include any fixes that aren’t already in the current version (13.1.2) along along with all the new features.

Lynda.com’s Justin Seeley gave a comprehensive presentation at MAX:

Justin reveals image optimization techniques while debunking web resolution myths. He’ll also help you learn how to use Photoshop to work with HTML and CSS files, and show how these tools can help improve your workflow. He may even have time to sneak in a few new Photoshop features. In this session, you’ll learn how to:

• Use layer comps to simulate interactivity and multipage layouts
• Create Retina display–caliber graphics using actions and batch processing
• Build UI libraries with shape layers
• Create image sprites
• Work with pixel grid alignment and design with grid systems

Anastasiy Safari has updated his popular color-picking panel for Photoshop with, among other things, the ability to maintain colors’ tone while changing their hue:

Jack Davis is a master Photoshop teacher. Enjoy the techniques he recently showed at Adobe MAX:

I can all but guarantee you’ll learn a lot & enjoy this presentation from the guy who brought me into Adobe, Michael Ninness.

This energetic, fun, and fast-paced session will leave you smacking your forehead and saying “I wish I’d known that years ago!” This session will reveal as many tips and techniques to boost your productivity as can be packed into 60 minutes. In this session, Michael Ninness, Senior VP of Product and Content, lynda.com, will cover:+ The top 20 power shortcuts every Photoshop user MUST know.+ Easy techniques for correcting color and tone and recovering image detail.+ Automating certain tasks — without recording Actions!+ Optimization tips for smaller and more efficient web graphics.

Kind of fascinating:

Creator Bartholomäus Traubeck says,

It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently.

[Via]

Dang… how strong must your résumé be that “Photoshop co-creator” doesn’t even get mentioned? Congratulations to John Knoll on his promotion to Chief Creative Officer of Industrial Light & Magic:

Knoll’s credits as vfx supervisor include the first three “Pirates of the Caribbean” pictures, the “Star Wars” prequel trilogy, two “Mission: Impossible” pics, two “Star Trek” films and the upcoming “Pacific Rim.” He won a vfx Oscar for the second “Pirates” pic and was co-leader of ILM’s production team on the Oscar-winning animated feature “Rango.” […]

“Folks tend to get very busy on their own shows,” said Knoll, “and don’t have time to periodically share with everybody else what they’re working on. ‘Have you thought about that?’ We have this wealth of talent that if we’re smart we leverage on all projects.”

My friend Philip worked at ILM and said, “It’s really intimidating to use Photoshop in front of a guy who wrote Photoshop.” On the upside, he reported, if a lens flare doesn’t look good, John will just go and write you a new one.

Here’s John re-creating his original demo of Photoshop 1.0.

There’s no justifying the amount of pleasure this gives me: