Monthly Archives: August 2012

Photoshop CS6 13.0.1 available; update on Retina plans

CS6

The Photoshop team has updated CS6 to version 13.0.1, addressing a number of functional, crashing, and performance problems discovered in the app. To get the update, choose Help->Updates within Photoshop. For more details on what’s been changed, check out this post.

Updating Photoshop to offer native support of Mac Retina displays is a big task & remains a work in progress. Maria Yap provides some info:

To enable HiDPI display support in Photoshop requires the replacement of 2500 icons and cursors and other engineering work which will be complete and ready for customers this fall.

It’s important to distinguish bug fixes (like the 13.0.1 update) and compatibility changes (like the Retina update & regular Camera Raw releases*) from new feature releases (like yesterday’s Illustrator update). Maria notes:

We will continue to release security patches, bug fixes and support new hardware changes, like HiDPI display support, to all of our customers outside of our regular development cycles just as we have always done.

So, at risk of over-explaining: The arrival of the subscription-licensing option doesn’t take anything away from what’s always been available, and it doesn’t force you to subscribe just to get fixes & compatibility updates. Instead, it’s just a new option providing a benefit (periodic new features) that wasn’t available previously.

*Like Retina support, these updates provide the same features with new hardware.

New Illustrator features now available to Cloud subscribers

CS6

“When we launched Creative Cloud,” said my boss Jeff Veen, “we said that one of biggest benefits was early access to Adobe innovation. As soon as our engineering teams can finalize new features, like the ones we’re seeing for Illustrator today, we will release special Creative Cloud editions of our desktop software, only available to Adobe Creative Cloud members.”

New features in this Adobe Illustrator release:

Package Files – a long-requested feature that allows designers to automatically collect all the files used in an Illustrator project, including linked graphics and fonts, into a single folder helping make handoffs and sharing of projects more efficient and error-free.

Unembed Images – a new capability that enables production artists to quickly unembed images that have been embedded into an Illustrator file by other designers or customers, eliminating much wasted time in day-to-day production work.

Links Panel Enhancements – a new feature enhancement that allows users to access and track information on any artwork placed in an Illustrator file much quicker. What used to require multiple clicks to ensure all placed graphics meet necessary requirements for output is now surfaced up front.”

Important: Files remain fully compatible between copies of Illustrator CS6, whether those copies are acquired through subscription (and thus able to take this update) or through traditional licensing.

For more info on what these updates mean, please check out my recent post (which includes lots of back-and-forth in the comments).

[Via]

Make a Monty Python animation, win Adobe apps

After Effects, Illustration

 Adobe’s sponsoring an Animate Chapman contest, open ’til October 22. As CreativePro explains, 

The contest is being run to celebrate and promote the upcoming 3D animated film A Liar’s Autobiography – The True Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman.

Ten winners will be chosen and in addition to the software prize, will receive the honor of having their animation included in the DVD box set of the film and on the Python’s YouTube channel.

Lightroom 4.2 release candidate adds camera support, fixes bugs

Lightroom

Lightroom 4.2  is now available as a Release Candidate  on Adobe Labs.   The “release candidate” label indicates that this update is well tested but would benefit from additional community testing before it is distributed automatically to all of our customers.

New cameras supported:

  • Canon EOS 650D / Rebel T4i
  • Canon EOS M
  • Fuji FinePix F800EXR
  • Leaf Credo 40
  • Leaf Credo 60
  • Panasonic DMC-FZ200
  • Panasonic DMC-G5
  • Panasonic DMC-LX7
  • Pentax K-30
  • Sony DSC-RX100

For a complete list of other changes (bugs fixed, etc.) please see the Lightroom Journal.

Yet more Adobe HTML goodness: New Muse, Shadow releases

HTML5
  • Release 4 of Adobe Shadow, which helps you preview & inspect content across your devices, is available from Adobe Labs. The release offers a range of improvements, and Shadow now lives in the menu bar on OS X and the task bar on Windows. Check out the team blog for more info.
  • Adobe Muse (visual page creation, no code required) has been updated to enable creating interactive forms. Check out the video below for a tour.

 

A 3D print of your head, delivered by flying drone

3D

Really? Really: 

[I]t’s all part of an interactive art experience by ReAllocate called Project: Blue Sky.

Before looking up to see a UAV, festival-goers will have previously visited ReAllocate’s ‘dome’ to complete the first part of the art experience. At the dome, visitors can interact with a photo booth fitted with Kinect cameras, where with 3D software, their photos will be turned into 3D models. Instead of waiting for the models, attendees can leave the dome with a GPS transponder, free to enjoy other aspects of the festival.


By the way, in case you’ve ever wondered what my Twitter avatar is (and, oddly, some have), it’s a pair of 3D prints of my head. #oddJobPerks
[Via John Dowdell]

Adobe Revel 1.5 arrives on Mac, iOS

Adobe Revel, Mobile, Photography

Adobe’s photo-sharing & -editing tool, Revel, introduces a range of features in the new version 1.5:

  • Albums to organize photos:
    • Create an album on one device and it is automatically updated and accessible everywhere you have Revel.
    • Share albums on AdobeRevel.com as web galleries.
  • Captions – Add context to memories with text descriptions.
  • Library grid view – Browse photos in track or grid view.
  • Sign in with Facebook or Google ID – New Revel users can skip the hassle of remembering a new password by simply signing in with an existing ID.

Check out how Revel is great for families, and browse a sample gallery here.
Get the app from the Mac App Store and the iTunes App store and start your free 30-day trial. (Even if you’ve done a trial in the past, you can start a fresh one today.)

Edge Animate preview 7 arrives

HTML5

Adobe’s HTML5 animation tool has just released preview release 7, available for download from Adobe Labs. Key improvements:

Resizable Layouts: Enable your compositions to adapt to multiple screen sizes.
Rulers and Guides: Design with more accuracy using on-stage rulers and draggable guides.
Shadows: Apply and animate text and box shadows for richer effects.
Adjustable Timeline Grid: Gain greater animation precision by adjusting the time granularity where the playhead snaps.
Enhanced Text: Create multi-line text and control leading, indentation, and spacing with added text properties.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Check out the features page for a full list of improvements, and watch this tour from product architect Mark Anders:

Happy animating!

LA Mobile Arts Festival happening now

Mobile

Sounds like a fun event, running now through Aug. 26:

iPhoneArt.com and the Santa Monica Art Studios presents the LA MOBILE ARTS FESTIVAL. Los Angeles celebrates pioneers of iPhoneography and the underground mobile arts movement with nine days of interactive digital art–iPhone imagery, sound- and video-based works, sculptural and performance art installations at the historic Santa Monica airplane hangar turned cutting-edge arts community.

Our friend Dan Marcolina will be speaking Friday evening:

Dan Marcolina, author of the critically acclaimed book/ iPad series “iPhone Obsessed” will be closing our show on Friday night August 24 appearing at the Coloft, 7-10pm 920 Santa Monica Boulevard  Santa Monica, CA 90401. He will be showing you how the combination of picture choice and multiple app processing can turn a simple snapshot into a statement.

Using Kinect to turn objects into puppets

Image Science, User Interface

Fascinating!

KinÊtre is a research project from Microsoft Research Cambridge that allows novice users to scan physical objects and bring them to life in seconds by using their own bodies to animate them. This system has a multitude of potential uses for interactive storytelling, physical gaming, or more immersive communications.

“When we started this,” says creator  Jiawen Chen, “we were thinking of using it as a more effective way of doing set dressing and prop placement in movies for a preview. Studios have large collections of shapes, and it’s pretty tedious to move them into place exactly. We wanted to be able to quickly walk around and grab things and twist them around. Then we realized we can do many more fun things.” I’ll bet.

Pretty darn cool, though if that Kinect dodgeball demo isn’t Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy come to life, I don’t know what is.

Here’s more info on using a Kinect as a 3D scanner:

[Via]

New Mixel for iPhone promises "the easiest collage tool ever"

Mobile, Photography

I was enthusiastic about the “social collage” tool Mixel when it launched last fall, and I was sad to hear last week of its impending demise. It didn’t stay down long, though, reappearing today as an iPhone app:

The previous incarnation emphasized more open-ended creativity, and in many users’ hands it often produced ugly results. This new version emphasizes more constraint & automation (“It does all the hard work of making your collages for you”), producing more attractive (if less flexible) results.
The notion of visual conversations has changed as well. It seems the team has moved away from the notion of remixing others’ artwork & is instead supporting replies (e.g. you share a collage, & I and others can add on our own–but we don’t start those by messing around with your creation). That’s probably a smart pivot, though some part of me still wants to think that when it comes to collaborative art-making, there’s a “there” there.
All in all it’s great to see Mixel continuing to evolve, and I like what I’ve been able to make so far.

Adobe Shadow (mobile device preview) demo today

Mobile

Noon Pacific:

Streamline Your Mobile Web Workflows with Adobe Shadow Labs Release 4

See solutions to some of today’s most frustrating and time-consuming problems faced by mobile web developers and designers. In this 45 minute web conference led by Shadow team engineer Mark Rausch, you’ll see an in-depth demo of Adobe Shadow. Mark will show you how you can save time and improve your workflow. The demo will be followed by a Q&A session where you can give feedback and get your questions answered.

[Time zone calculator]

Demos: Using Adobe Ideas & Illustrator together

Illustration, Mobile

If you like to sketch out ideas while on the go & then refine them further, Adobe Ideas + Illustrator is a great one-two punch. Here’s a short series of quick demos that show the process & offer some best-practice guidance.

1. Starting a sketch in Adobe Ideas
In this video, we’ll go through a brief tour of the features of Adobe Ideas, before creating a sketch and prepping the workspace for our final illustration.

2. Creating a finished illustration in Adobe Ideas
Next, we’ll take our sketch and turn it into a multi-layered colored illustration. We’ll also cover some techniques to facilitate a smooth transition into Illustrator, allowing for maximized editing ability.

3. Modifying an Ideas file in Illustrator
Finally, we’ll use Creative Cloud to bring our Ideas file into Illustrator CS6. From there, we’ll learn some techniques on how to clean up and edit our artwork.

Coming soon to Illustrator: Package Files

CS6

Creative Cloud subscriptions carry a key advantage: Apps will get periodic feature enhancements (i.e. early access to functionality that would otherwise have had to wait until the next major product release).  Here’s a peek at what’s coming soon to Illustrator subscribers: 

I suppose someone will make a comment like “You are telling me that you are punishing customers who have purchased a license the way it has always worked.” No, actually: no one is getting punished. You now have a way to get early access to new features, but that’s up to you.

If you want to buy a license the traditional way, that’s perfectly fine, and you can wait until the next major version release (CS7) to get these & other improvements. If you subscribe, however, you get an additional advantage.

We should also differentiate these periodic feature enhancements (which are a subscriber benefit) from bug fixes & compatibility updates (which will go to all customers, same as always). We’ll work on being clearer on the latter (believe me, I share your frustration at the pace of info-sharing). The key point, though: nothing is being lost, and something cool is being gained. 

A Rather Magnificent Seven

Idle Philosophizing

Seven years, 3,395 posts, 27,286 comments… It’s been quite a ride since I started blogging here seven years ago today. The blog has been a terrific way to share ideas, engage with customers, wrestle tough issues, and occasionally start (well-intentioned) trouble. Thanks so much for reading, writing, and even ranting. I couldn’t do it, and wouldn’t do it, without you.
Have I learned anything interesting along the way? Nothing too profound, I think: Love it, or don’t bother faking. Respect your readers’ time & attention, rewarding steady visits while omitting anything you wouldn’t want to read. Be loyal to them & they just might return the favor. Don’t try to be a kamikaze social media hero over weekends & holidays, unless you absolutely must. Remember that your writing, even your comments, lives forever, and someday someone (let’s say a lawyer) might present you with an inch-thick printout (flattering!). Like I say, you’d better love it. But remember, too, how insanely lucky we are to have the time & tools to connect like this, and hopefully to illuminate one another’s lives just a bit.
Thanks again, and please keep those cards & letters coming,
J.
[From the archives: Turning 1,000]

Adobe's Proto wireframing tool gets new features

Mobile, Tablets

Adobe Proto lets you create interactive wireframes of websites and apps right on your iPad or Android tablet. Check out what’s new in today’s v1.5 release:

  • New Features
    • Email interactive wireframe (html.zip) as attachment
    • Share interactive wireframe via Dropbox and other Apps
    • Copy & Paste objects to different pages
    • Paste and Pin objects across selected pages (i.e. share objects across pages)
    • Pin wireframe objects across all pages
    • Global Menu (By default, Menu bar objects are pinned across all pages)
    • Z-order change via Context Menu
    • Lock and Unlock object for editing
    • Show current page number while previewing a project in the App
    • Rename project name in the action bar (title) of the editor
    • Show undo/redo count
  • Enhancements
    • Objects should snap to both CSS Column and Design Grid
    • Better Code Generation
      • Code generated is now ordered according to the appearance in the page and so is now more structured hierarchically
      • All pinned objects generate a separate common CSS file (common.css)

The Olympics via TRON

Illustration

The Chemical Brothers teamed up with Crystal CG to create this piece. It’s slow to start, but hang in there a bit. “Played in the Velodrome before every session,” the creators say, “the video shows the Velodrome as never before, literally pulsating with excitement. ‘We’ve created sweeping contours and sleek surfaces as the backdrop for an intense, futuristic cycling ‘duel’ as two animated riders power round the track,’ said Darren Groucutt, creative director at Crystal. ‘It truly brings the Velodrome to life.’”

[Via]

"(Re)touching lives" in the wake of Japan's tsunami

Photography

Self-proclaimed “pale, gray creature” (i.e. photo retoucher) Becci Mason spent three weeks helping in Japan in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami. Soon after she turned to restoring photos lost & found in the wreckage. PetaPixel writes,

Within 2 weeks after putting out a call for help, she found herself with 150 volunteers willing to offer their time and services. Half a year later, the Photo Rescue volunteer count had ballooned to 1,100.

In the end, Mason’s efforts led to over 135,000 photographs being cleaned, and hundreds were retouched and returned to their owners.

Fantastic work.

Adobe & MIT team up on Halide, a new imaging language

Image Science, Scientific & Technical Imaging

Last month I broke the somewhat sad news that Adobe’s Pixel Bender language is being retired, but for a good cause: we can now redirect effort & try other ways to achieve similar goals. To that end, Adobe researchers have teamed up with staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to define Halide, a new programming language for imaging. It promises faster, more compact, and more portable code.

According to MIT News,

In tests, the MIT researchers used Halide to rewrite several common image-processing algorithms whose performance had already been optimized by seasoned programmers. The Halide versions were typically about one-third as long but offered significant performance gains — two-, three-, or even six-fold speedups. In one instance, the Halide program was actually longer than the original — but the speedup was 70-fold.

Hot damn. #progress

Adobe Muse demo/Q&A tomorrow

Ask a Pro

“Oh yeah, Muse–that looks cool; I keep meaning to learn more about it…” Well, Friday would be a good time to grab a sandwich & check it out; noon Pacific.

You’ll see how to quickly lay a smart foundation for your site using site maps and master pages, learn how to combine imagery, graphics, and beautiful typography using web fonts served by the Adobe Typekit service, and engage your audiences by adding interactive elements including custom navigation, slide shows and accordions. When you’re ready to take your site live, learn how to publish using a third-party hosting provider or with the Adobe Business Catalyst service, our flexible, all-in-one hosting solution.

Adobe Configurator 3.1 now live

Configurator, Suite Development

I’ve gotten a lovely birthday gift from the Configurator team, as they’ve souped up my Photoshop-and-InDesign-extendin’ baby with a range of great enhancements. PM Jonathan Ferman writes:

  1. Button Icons: In CS6 panels, you can associate your own images with a button object as icons for different states (button up, button down, and mouse over). You can have icons for Command, Script, Script file, Action, and Popup buttons.
  2. Panels for Adobe Exchange: This release offers additional support and features that help you create panels for Adobe Exchange.
    • New attributes allow you to specify the Author and a Description for a panel that is exported as a CS Extension, and attribute names have been simplified from “Extension ID” and “Extension Version” to “ID” and “Version.”
    • MenuName and Author values are required; if they are empty or invalid, you cannot export the panel as a CS Extension.
    • The Create Certificate dialog has been simplified.
  3. Scripting Support: The HTML widget now allows you to invoke predefined and developer-defined functions and scripts, which gives your panel access to the JavaScript API for Photoshop or InDesign.
  4. Additional Color Theme Support: The HTML widget can now detect the user’s change of color themes in Photoshop CS6, so that you can provide light and dark versions of any panel content.

With Adobe Configurator 3.1 your panels can be more customized than ever before and you can distribute them as either free, paid, or private products via the new Adobe Exchange.

Thursday in SF: "Lightroom 4 to CS6 Workflow"

Uncategorized

The San Francisco Photoshop Users Group will be meeting at Adobe SF Thursday evening starting at 6:30:

With the advent of Lightroom 4 a new Develop Module has been introduced with completely renamed sliders. Fine art photographer William Palank hopes to clarify some of these changes and propose a workflow completely different than in Lightroom 3 or its predecessors, bringing forth even more control with Shadows and Highlights on a single image.

Check out the event page for more details.

New Instagram actions for Photoshop

Instagram, Mobile, Photography

From photographer Casey Mac:

After the success of my Lightroom Instagram Presets, which led to multiple requests for Photoshop actions, they’re finally here! All 17 of Instagram’s filters are available to simulate the Instagram filters. They’re easily applied and just $5, the price of a latte or an app on your phone. Any money that I make from these sales will fund my travels to photograph beautiful places around the world.

And no sooner did I queue up this post than I saw that Petapixel has created their own set of Instagram presets & templates. Truth be told, I haven’t had a chance to try either set of tools, so I can’t speak to their relative strengths.

New painting presets & video for CS6

CS6
Digital painting pioneer John Derry makes & sells excellent Artists’ Brushes & Dry Media brushes for Photoshop, and you already can get some of them for free: go to the Tool Presets panel in Photoshop CS6 and load up “Airbrushes” and “Mixer Brush Pencil.”  (There, I just doubled the number of people who know about these hidden gems!)
 
Somehow brushing features always remain kind of obscure, but in a bid to change that John has just released the new Lynda.com title Photoshop CS6 New Features: Brushes.  Here’s a sample in which he covers the brush types (Angle, Fan, etc.) that Photoshop now enables.

Introducing Source Sans Pro, Adobe’s first open-source type family

Typography

These days Adobe is releasing more open-source applications (e.g. the new WebKit-based code editor, Brackets). The Adobe type team felt they–and the community at large–needed a better option for on-screen work.

Thus they’ve created Source Sans Pro. As the Verge notes, “[T]his family of fonts is intended primarily to be used in user interfaces, meaning it has to be legible at low resolution yet also readable enough to support long streams of text.” Designer Paul D. Hunt explained some of his process & considerations for the project, adding:

Besides being ready for download to install on personal computers, the Source Sans fonts are also available for use on the web via font hosting services including Typekit, WebInk, and Google Web Fonts. Finally, the Source Sans family will shortly be available for use directly in Google documents and Google presentations.

#progress

Thank God "E.T." sucked

Idle Philosophizing

The stars aligned Monday, and two of my favorite creative people, Russell Brown & Panic founder Cabel Sasser, got to meet. Cabel (who commissioned Panic’s awesome homage to 1982-style video game art) was in town for a classic games show, and as we passed Russell’s office, I pointed out the cutout display for Atari’s notorious 1982 video game “E.T.” Russell had worked at Atari back then, and I rather gingerly asked, “Uh, didn’t that game kinda suck?”

“Oh yes!” said Russell–and thank goodness it did: if it hadn’t, Russell (and hundreds of others) wouldn’t have gotten laid off, and he wouldn’t have gone to Apple (where he met his future wife) and from there gone to “this little startup called ‘Adobe.'”

If that hadn’t happened, he wouldn’t have snatched my neck off the chopping block in ’02: I was days from being laid off post-LiveMotion, and it’s because Russell saw my “farewell” demo at his ADIM conference that he called the execs to say, “Really–we’re canning this guy…?” And, of course, had that not happened, I likely wouldn’t have met Cabel, wouldn’t have been introducing him & Russell, wouldn’t be talking to you now.

Of course, we joked, if it weren’t for the three of us talking just then, we’d be off experiencing some wonderful life-changing strokes of serendipity right now–but so it goes. 🙂