Ah, but does it use PostScript??
(Name CAPITALIZED to avoid abuse from brand pedants.) [Via]
Monthly Archives: June 2010
CS5 enterprise deployment tool now available
The Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition offers a customizable way to wrap Creative Suite applications as MSI or PKG for silent deployment via industry standard tools. It’s now available for download.
If this kind of thing is up your alley, see also the Adobe installer team’s blog. The CS5 installers continue to make good progress in raising customer satisfaction while driving down support calls, and the installer team welcomes your feedback.
Pixel Bender comes to CS5, adds Oil Paint filter
I’m pleased to announce that the Pixel Bender Gallery plug-in for Photoshop CS5 is now available for download from Adobe Labs. Key points:
- It runs filters really, really fast on your graphics card (GPU)
- The plug-in is not one filter, but rather a harness into which you can drop Pixel Bender files (.PBK and .PBG)
- Pixel Bender also runs cross-platform in After Effects & Flash Player 10
- The filters people write for Flash will also work in Photoshop
In addition, the plug-in now includes a very cool Oil Paint filter that produces some painterly results (see this pair of screenshots), nicely complementing all the painting enhancements in Photoshop CS5.
The plug-in is essentially the same as the version that was available for CS4, but it has been revised for CS5 & 64-bit Mac compatibility. Here’s a one-minute demo movie that shows the plug-in in action. You can download additional filters from the Pixel Bender Exchange, discuss PB authoring in the user forum, and use the Pixel Bender Toolkit to create your own filters.
GPS Data panel now available for CS5
We’ve just posted a GPS Data panel (download for Mac, Win) that extends the File Info dialog in CS5 applications (Photoshop, Bridge, Fireworks, Flash, Illustrator, and InDesign). The panel (see screenshot) offers a simple way to see parameters like latitude, longitude, and altitude.
Installation notes:
- On the Mac, make sure you install into the main Library path, not the user-specific one. (Somehow I often stumble on that one.)
- Please make sure that the package files (“bin” and “manifest.xml”) go into a folder called “gpsData.”
onOne posts free 64-bit, CS5-compatible updates
I’m pleased to see that onOne has released 64-bit-native, CS5-compatible versions of Plug-In Suite, Genuine Fractals, FocalPoint, PhotoTools, PhotoTune, PhotoFrame, and Mask Pro–all as free updates. Check out PM Mike Wong’s blog for more info & download links.
Camera Raw 6.1 now available
Camera Raw 6.1 is now available for Photoshop CS5 & Bridge CS5. The release adds lens correction (see previous demo), improves performance, & fixes a crashing bug on OS X. The release includes camera support for the following models:
- Canon EOS 550D (Digital Rebel T2i/ EOS Kiss X4 Digital)
- Kodak Z981
- Leaf Aptus-II 8
- Leaf Aptus-II 10R
- Mamiya DM40
- Olympus E-PL1
- Olympus E-600
- Panasonic G2
- Panasonic G10
- Sony A450
For release notes please see the Lightroom Journal.
Brief thoughts (and a question) on tablets & styluses
When did my finger start resembling a giant breadstick? More on that in a moment.
Of tablet computers Steve Jobs recently said, “If you see a stylus, they blew it.”
I think he’s right, insofar as he’s talking about requiring the use of a stylus. There’s a big difference, however, between requiring something and enabling it as an option.
Regarding the former, ten years ago I bought and almost immediately returned a big Kyocera-Palm frankenphone. I loved the promise of a phone/pocket computer, but having to pop out a stylus to perform even the simplest tasks was a deal breaker. In contrast, my simple Nokia offered just two soft keys and a rocker switch, but that simplicity led to an efficient UI. Forcing me to use a stylus forced me to ditch the phone.
When it comes to drawing and painting, however, using a finger really sucks for anything precise. Yes, a talented artist can do impressive work, but there’s a reason people don’t use their fingers to draw and write on paper. Have you tried drawing anything with any precision on an iPad? (Don’t just launch an app and screw around; try to draw something very specific.) Maybe it’s just me, but suddenly my fingertip looks enormous, blotting out the area I’m trying to mark. I find myself tipping my whole hand up and down, trying to see what’s underneath my finger.
I don’t know what can be done with the I/O on iPads and future tablets, but I really hope that a vendor can deliver a pressure-sensitive stylus. I think it would be a watershed moment for sketching on the go.
Question: Would you be willing to pay for such a thing? And if so, how much?
PS–Yesterday Steve acknowledged the imprecision of a finger: “The minute you throw a stylus out, you have the [reduced] precision of a finger, you can’t use a PC OS.”
PPS–Somehow I neglected to mention an insight gained talking with artists at Pixar and elsewhere: they find drawing and painting on an iPad interesting, but in a sort of abstract, intellectual way–until you show them the ability to smudge pixels with a finger. That’s when they start lighting up. Pretending that one’s finger is a pencil isn’t that interesting, but using one’s finger as a finger *feels* deeply correct. There’s some kind of lower-brain connection that brings out a lot of smiles.
A note to Fireworks users
Thanks for all the feedback about my HTML layers idea. In the comments I think I can see the exact moment when someone on a Fireworks forum/list linked to the post and suggested that everyone pile on in hopes of getting the feature into FW instead of PS. For what it’s worth, I’ve been asking the FW team for four years to implement some version of this idea. They’ve liked the concept, but for whatever reason the work hasn’t happened.
A request: If you voted in the survey & rated the idea lower in hopes of getting the feature into Fireworks, please revise your vote and assess just the merits of the idea in general. Thanks.
Feedback, please: HTML5 layers in Photoshop?
Let’s start by acknowledging that A) I’m possibly totally crazy, and B) what I’m describing may well never happen. I want, however, to present an idea that you might find interesting. Whether it’s worth pursuing is up to you.
What if Photoshop implemented native HTML as a layer type? Just like the app currently supports special layer types for text, 3D, and video, it could use the WebKit engine (which CS5 already embeds) to display HTML content. Among other things you’d get pixel-accurate Web rendering (text and shapes); the ability to style objects via CSS parameters (enabling effects like dotted lines); data-driven 2D and 3D graphics; and high fidelity Web output (HTML as HTML).
On a really general level, I’m proposing that Photoshop enable programmable layers, opening the door to things like much smarter objects–everything from intelligently resizing buttons (think 9-slice) to smart shapes as seen in FreeHand and Fireworks.
If this sounds interesting, please read on in this post’s extended entry.
Adobe/Wired digital viewer for iPad coming soon for all publishers
I’ve written previously that Adobe is not in the Flash business, or the Photoshop business, or the PDF or HTML5 business. Rather, it’s in the solving customers’ problems business, and any given technology is just a means to an end. Today you’re getting more proof.
As you may have seen last week, Adobe and Wired Magazine have collaborated to bring a richly interactive version of the magazine to iPads. Here’s a 1-minute demo:
I received quite a few questions about how regular Creative Suite customers can tap into these capabilities. Today Adobe announced that the ability to target the digital viewer technology it created for Wired will be made available soon on Adobe Labs. According to VP Dave Burkett,
“We aim to make our digital viewer software available to all publishers soon and plan to deliver versions that work across multiple hardware platforms. It’s safe to say that if you are already working in InDesign CS5, you’ll be well on your way to producing a beautiful digital version of your publication.”
Check out Adobe’s Digital Publishing Platform pages for more background & details.
InDesign CS5 adds a bunch of simple, powerful tools for adding animation and interactivity to documents, and it can export those documents in a number of formats. That is, you can choose PDF, Flash, AIR, XML, etc. based on the needs of your project. Apple blocked AIR conversion on iPads, so Adobe simply built an alternative way to view the content.
It isn’t about one runtime/format vs. another; never has been. It’s about getting results.
PS–I’m really hoping that my inner cynic is wrong, and that this post doesn’t draw a bunch of counterproductive neener-neener jeering from Apple zealots. It would be so, so refreshing to hear instead that people are focused on what benefits them, and that they actually prefer cooperation & pragmatism to ideological finger-pointing.