Rather brilliant. (I won’t spoil anything by revealing what it’s about.)

[Via]

CheatSheet is a neat (and free) little Mac utility that presents all your foreground app’s shortcuts (or at least all of them that appear in menus) in a temporary overlay. Hold down the Command key for more than a second & they’ll pop up.
I like the concept, though I wish I could change the timing. I now realize I habitually hold down Cmd, then take a while invoking my shortcut of choice.
[Update: See, kids, this is why you should re-check an app/site *before* posting about it: the requested control now appears in the lower right corner of the app. –J.]

I’m a little chagrined to admit that I didn’t know about artist John Baldessari prior to seeing this short film narrated by Tom Waits. Now I’d like to know more:

[Via Sam Potts]

The next show will be hosted on May 4-8 in Los Angeles, writes CTO Kevin Lynch. According to Kevin, it’ll focus on

• Design and creativity
• Web sites, including the latest on HTML5, JavaScript and CSS
• Digital publishing, video, and gaming, including the latest on Flash
• Applications, particularly for mobile platforms

More details will come out in the months ahead.

Does this have anything to do with this blog’s focus? No, it does not. Will you dig it? If you’re not dead inside, I think so. 🙂

I plan to show it to our boys–but first I’ll have to explain what “records” were. [Via]

Magical.

According to the YouTube caption,

In April 2012 Copenhagen Phil (Sjællands Symfoniorkester) surprised the passengers in the Copenhagen Metro by playing Griegs Peer Gynt. The flash mob was created in collaboration with Radio Klassisk. All music was performed and recorded in the metro.

[Via Margot]

LayerVault is a PSD-savvy service for versioning & collaborating on design work, and it’s just added a swath of cool new features (the “Wormhole” mechanism for inspecting changes being especially neat).  News site BetaKit writes,

Users can now view edits happening in real-time, and open compatible files directly in the browser, meaning less popping in and out of apps just to make a few minor tweaks. Tools added now let them pick colors and create transferable palettes on the fly, for instance, as well as measure design components with a click.

Here’s a 1-minute tour of what’s new: 

How pitch-perfect is this parody of speeds-and-feeds-based marketing?

[Update: Non-US folks, try this link. (Via Peter Steeper)]
The other day I heard some carrier/handset combo boasting about “wielding the Android 2.2 platform.” It’s so weird: they burned airtime noting a detail that would confuse most people while (I would think) alienating those geeky enough to grok it.

The Waves project from Daniel Palacios “is made up of two turbines, supported by a tuning fork structure between which the waves are created.” The strings whip through the air, creating both sound and visuals, and they react to passersby:

[Via]

The NAPP guys are hosting live demos/Q&A’s all week (all at noon Eastern time):

• Tuesday: Photography
• Wednesday: Design & JDI Features
• Thursday: Video
• Friday: 3D & Performance Features
• Saturday (all day): Week in Review

Check out the site for complete details.

Poor form to blog Phantom Flex ultra slow-mo two days in a row? Not when the images are this lovely:

I do kind of wonder whether even my staring into my monitor could look epic & meaningful if captured through one of these fly-bys. [Via]

The Fremont troll makes a cameo to help demonstrate this new tech:

I’ll be speaking at the RE:DESIGN/UX conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, May 1. It should be a really interesting show, featuring a lot of savvy designers & creative directors. Each session lead speaks for about 10 minutes, followed by 30-40 minutes of group discussion.  Here’s my idea in brief:

TheFuture of Creation

Everyone’s a maker; everyone’s a sharer.  Great design software costs a buck.  When things are common, we value them less. (No one celebrates breathing.) How do we keep creation special?  Let’s talk about what it all means to designers & their tools.

Is that a conversation you’d find interesting? Feedback & ideas are most welcome.

Photoshop PM Stephen Nielson will be presenting CS6 at Adobe Seattle on Tuesday the 17th Monday the 23rd [please note change of date]:

Photoshop CS6 is one of the biggest releases yet, and there is truly something for everyone. The team has been working hard on new features like Blur Gallery, new Content-Aware tools, the Mercury Graphics Engine, new and re-engineered design tools, and so much more!

We’ll have pizza at 6:30, and the meeting will start at 7:00.

• PM Stephen Nielson will be showing off the CS6 beta at Adobe San Jose Tuesday evening starting at 7pm. The registration list is already full (200+ signed up), but you can join the wait list.
• PM Zorana Gee will be presenting CS6 at Adobe San Francisco Thursday evening starting at 6:30. Looks like a few spots remain open on the registration list.

If you’d like to develop amazing tech like Content-Aware Fill & bring it to millions of people, the Photoshop team may have a job for you.  They’re looking for an experienced imaging engineer to fill the role of Senior Computer Scientist (req. #13612).

I love working with brainiacs like this, and we have a great track record or productizing research (off the top of my head in the last couple of revs of Photoshop: Content-Aware Fill, Content-Aware Scale, advanced blurring, improved sharpening, Puppet Warp, Auto-Align/Auto-Blend Layers, adaptive wide-angle lens correction, and more).  I think you’d really enjoy working with the Photoshop team to put cutting-edge ideas into practice.

Friday’s demo/Q&A (recorded here) was a hit, and more than 400 people have already RSVP’d for this session at noon Pacific on Thursday:

Downloaded Photoshop CS6 beta and got questions? Join Sr. Product Manager Bryan O’Neil Hughes this Thursday, 4/5 for a LIVE demo! He’ll take you on a tour of the new features and share expert tips and tricks. If you have any specific questions for Bryan about the beta, leave a comment below – you may see it answered during the demo session! Sign in as a guest for a special tour of the new features and some expert tips and tricks.

In this Ask A CS Pro session, Photoshop PM Zorana Gee shows every major feature in the new public beta release. She not only provides detailed tips, but also addresses common questions from the large live audience. Dozens more questions are covered in the interactive chat pod. [Via]

I’m delighted to see that the Photoshop CS6 beta has been downloaded more than half a million times in less than a week!  The response I’ve seen so far has been overwhelmingly positive.

Nice press quotes:

• Gizmodo: “Photoshop CS6: The Best Update In Recent Memory“
• PC Magazine:
  • “The future of creative image editing is upon us.
  • “You would think that after a program has been the leader in its field for over 20 years, there wouldn’t be much to add. But quite the opposite is the case with Adobe Photoshop CS6.
  • “The new version will thrill nearly all categories of users, from photographers to designers.
  • “All of this adds up to a superb upgrade that should make anyone serious about image editing salivate over Photoshop CS6.”
• Wired: “Content-aware brushes, Liquify filter and new Blur tool will amaze. In-app search is a huge time-saver for sifting through giant stacks of layers.”
• USA Today: “We’ve been testing CS6 for the last week, and having lots of fun with the new tools. The new interface is a huge improvement — the images really do look sharper and more pronounced.”

And from some designers I follow on Twitter:

• “I’ll use it for a few days so I can give a better assessment, but so far: ball out of the park.” — Neven Mrgan
• “I’ve been using PS CS6 for a while, and it’s been sweet… The truth is that CS6 has a bunch of changes that make my life a lot better but may piss off some users. Which is great. Adobe did well.” — Sebastiaan de With
• “I think the community at large agrees: PS6 is an incredible update.” — Cameron Moll

Thanks for the kind words, guys!

Straight from the show floor. (I can vouch for background saving drawing cheers.)

Unfettered creative impact; yep, seems about right.

I know it’ll seem odd, but Photoshop CS6 supports Windows XP and not (officially) Windows Vista. It’s all about spending finite resources wisely, and Jeff Tranberry explains the thinking in “Photoshop CS6 Operating System Support…and beyond.”

• Scott Kelby & his crew have created a terrific CS6 learning center, featuring a couple of dozen videos plus a one-page summary of all the new stuff and a summary of “What to Expect if You Skipped CS5 & Now Want CS6.”
• Deke McClelland goes deep with 27 video tutorials Lynda.com.
• Jeff Tranberry is maintaining a list of tutorials, reviews, and other resources.

More great content is going live all the time, so feel free to mention good things we may have missed.

Artificial intelligence + your intelligence = good things.

How’s that for a salacious, click-baiting title? But this bit from the US Army is eye-opening:

A real-world example from 2007: When a new fleet of helicopters arrived with an aviation unit at a base in Iraq, some soldiers took pictures on the flightline, he said. From the photos that were uploaded to the Internet, the enemy was able to determine the exact location of the helicopters inside the compound and conduct a mortar attack, destroying four of the AH-64 Apaches.

[Via John Dowdell]

“The better the web, the better tools we can build, and the happier our customers.” With that in mind, Adobe’s putting more & more muscle into advancing HTML standards & helping rendering engines support them.

Adobe’s WebKit Contributions group is improving the web as a platform for applications by implementing features that enable new classes of applications, new levels of application richness, and by improving the tools web developers use to create, debug, profile, test and maintain applications. Features are developed in the open and contributed to WebKit trunk. This group works closely with web application developers and the web standards community to identify opportunities for improvement.

Currently open positions:

• Engineering Manager – WebKit Development — 11843
• Sr. Computer Scientist – WebKit Development — 11836
• Computer Scientist – WebKit Development — 11835
• WebKit Engineering Intern — 13714
• QE developer for WebPlatform/WebKit — 13989

Just type in the corresponding job number, or simply search for “WebKit.” Hope to meet you soon!

On Monday at Pixar (where the lobby is adorned with giant Lego Woody & Buzz), I overheard not one but two groups of fellow nerds excitedly discussing Bricks By The Bay, happening this weekend in Santa Clara.  Our boys have been counting the days ever since. Hope to see you there!

So great.

[Via]

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it. — Not Jack Handey

If you’ve had trouble backing up your Mac via Time Machine–as I did once I installed Lion–do not, for the love of God, push your luck and try to use Time Machine to migrate data from one Mac to another. Just don’t.

Details if you want ’em:

Post-10.7, I couldn’t update my backups on my Drobo and Time Capsule, nor could I get one to work on the new USB 3.0 drive I bought for the job. When I tried a fresh FireWire drive, however, everything seemed cool. Thus when my new Mac arrived, I tried transferring apps & data via the Migration Assistant.

And now begins the screamin’ & the wailin’: The apps that made it over were all zero KB, and files never transferred. Not a big deal, I thought: I can just re-install apps & move files manually.  The trouble is, when I tried to install Apple Motion, I got a series of errors about missing files (ProKit). I tried various work arounds, including installing the FCP X trial.  Soon, though, all the Apple apps, as well as iPhoto, were crashing on launch.  It seems that the failed app migration stomped a bunch of critical libraries.

Here’s the excellent part, though: Lion’s airbag works great.  At the advice of my exhausted Apple friend (who’d been supplying would-be fixes), I finally reinstalled the OS. Fearing the worst (bare-metal, nuke-from-orbit, dogs-and-cats-living-together stuff), I backed up my files and blocked off a bunch of time. I still cannot believe how well it went: restarted the machine, held down Cmd-R, okayed a couple of prompts, and half an hour later 10.7.3 was up and running as if nothing had happened.  Everything (open docs, browser history, passwords, etc.) was restored.  I’m still kind of holding my breath, but so far, so amazingly good.  Hats off to the Apple folks behind this capability.

So, how does one become a Photoshop product manager, and what does one actually do? Bryan briefly tells his story:

Via his Pixar colleague Michael Johnson:

In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale. If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.

This guy.

[I find myself making this joke when I actually do connect people who wouldn’t otherwise talk (different teams, engineers with customers, etc.). Still, it’s an odd job where one doesn’t often *build* anything specific.]

Oh yes:

Does anyone know what software produces animations like these? [Via ]

Mark Lindsay will be presenting at Adobe San Francisco tomorrow night starting at 6:30. Mark will discuss:

• Ink Gamut: Knowing the limitations of printed color
• Soft-Proofing: How to anticipate print appearance before printing
• Print Options: Photoshop workflows for inkjet, digital, and offset lithography
• Sharpening: Advanced sharpening techniques for fine printmaking
• Paper Profiles: How to make them, where to get them, how to use them
• Color Management: The best color settings for Photoshop
• Color Correction: Solving basic and tricky color problems
• Special Print Problems: A bag of tricks for a world of problems
• CMYK: The other color space
• Paper: Best selection for outstanding prints
• On Press: Effective press checks

A few years ago, John Penn was invited to attend the Internet Crimes Against Children Conference and share his knowledge as a Photoshop engineer. The experience changed his life. Now he’s a Senior Solutions Architect helping law enforcement agencies around the world use Photoshop to combat the exploitation of children.

Looks interesting:

Browser UI is an action that creates a browser window around any size Photoshop document you can throw at it. Simply install the action, choose a browser and play it. Check out the quick screencast if you don’t believe me.

[Warning: Probably of zero interest to non-nerd bloggers, and even then…]

I like sharing links quickly via Twitter (and thus Facebook), and later–time permitting–I copy, paste, and sort those links into groups that I can share here. Other times I’ll use Instapaper to capture links that I’m not quite ready to share.

Trouble is, it takes a non-trivial amount of time to scan back through either list, then copy/paste/etc. Thus my sharing of links via the blog has dropped dramatically. (Sorry/you’re welcome, depending.)

Would you by chance know of a way to automate converting tweets and/or Instapaper (or similar) links into blog-ready form, making it easy to sort them into piles? Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Meet the Photoshop hall-of-famer with his own fan club:

[Via Andrew Kavanagh]

I know, I know: you need another username/password combo like you need a hole in the head. There are real benefits to having an Adobe ID, though (e.g. keeping track of your serial numbers). Jeff Tranberry quickly lists details. [Via John Dowdell]

Pixelapse promises “Visual version control done right”:

Hit save in Photoshop. Your artwork will be on the Web, ready to be shared in seconds.

Share and get feedback from your team members, or anyone you share the design with.

[Previous/similar: LayerVault.]

Check it:

Learn how to create mobile apps or websites using Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium software. Join Evangelist Paul Trani and discover the latest tips and tricks on Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Air for going mobile fast. We’ll cover how to customize content for different screens, create galleries, optimize graphics, and more.

Prior to joining Adobe, Paul led a team of interactive designers and developers at Starz Entertainment producing multimillion dollar web and mobile campaigns.

Join Ted Schilowitz, one of the founders of RED Digital Cinema, and Adobe’s Wes Howell, 10AM PST:

Adobe and RED have collaborated to bring a truly native, color-rich, 4K tapeless workflow to Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5. Join this webinar to learn how you can enable a robust workflow for editing, grading, and delivering native R3D footage in real time using Premiere Pro.

Now I’m kind of tempted to get a QR code tat that links to “un gato vomitando.”

[Via Bruce Bullis]

“Rotting misery pumpkin”? “Catify” command? Where can I get this version?? [Note: Contains a little off-color humor]

I mention it A) because I just ordered a new machine*, and B) people seem not to know about this capacity. Adobe’s Jason Levine says the upgrade is fast, easy–and now cheap.

I’ve always been a sucka for tons of memory, having jammed an eye-popping 512MB into my first PowerBook at Adobe (2000!). When I priced an 8GB upgrade on Apple.com 3 years ago, it cost $1200–as much as a MacBook + Apple TV. Now Apple will let you go from 4 to 8GB for $200. Strangely, though, they don’t list a 16GB option–which OWC offers for $249.

*This is part of my perverse effort to bring you high-DPI laptops: by ordering a current machine now, I ensure the arrival of a better option moments later. (See also my sales of ADBE and pretty much any other stock or commodity, ever.) I am, if nothing else, a man who *gives*.

• Thursday, February 9 Event Meetup: Hosted at the School of Visual Arts with special guest SVA alum and pro photographer Sarah Silver. Bryan O’Neil Hughes, Photoshop Sr. Product Manager, will demo.
• Saturday, February 11 Event Meetup: Hosted at pro photographer Sarah Silver’s NYC studio.  Bryan will demo.