From Evan Williams, of Twitter & Blogger fame:
Here’s the formula if you want to build a billion-dollar internet company: Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time…Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.
The whole thing is worth a read.
Totally fun, concise work from Sincerely, Truman:
[YouTube] [Via]
The team at Sagmeister & Walsh gave themselves 24 hours to design Adobe’s MAX identity, working with simple natural media & making the process part of the story. The project was live broadcast onto a billboard in Times Square. Check out how it went:
[Vimeo]
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” — George Bernard Shaw
[“One certainly hopes.” — Everyone trying to develop new products from scratch]
Heh—cool:
Our very own Russell Brown will be on the Travel Channel this Sunday!
Set your DVR to record “Making Monsters” this Sunday, September 29th 8/7c. You’ll see how Distortions Unlimited created a gigantic zombie podium for Russell’s ADIM13 Conference.
The project started with a sketch created in Photoshop by Rayce Bird and ended up as a giant sculpture. This is a must-see show!
Check out a quick video preview.
Hmm—this sounds promising:
BlendMe.in is a Photoshop extension that allows you to quickly find a high-quality icon that you can simply drag and drop and then easily continue your ideation. All of the icons are vectorial and have been inserted as smart Photoshop objects, meaning that you get all the icon components as layers (vector objects, adjustment layers, etc.) so that you can easily tweak them to match your creation. [Via]
What do you think?
I had no idea that Gaudi’s masterwork might actually get finished (hey, it’s only been 120 years) in 2026. Check out this nicely rendered 3D visualization:
Margot, hearing the slightly cheestastic music just now without context, said, “Oh boy—what are we getting motivated about this morning?” [Via]
Things you may or may not know (seems like a lot of people don’t just yet):
Now Behance designer Eric Snowden & team are posting daily updates as they redesign the Behance mobile app. Just today they debuted a design for the long-requested iPad version of the app. Designers are weighing in with their comments, and the team would love to hear your thoughts, too.
Ronald Blakey, illustrator of Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, creates some interesting visualizations:
I actually forget when I first started with Photoshop — probably in the mid-1990s. When I found that, I just thought, wow: the power of this is incredible. I quickly learned how to use the cloning tool, so that I could clone modern topography onto ancient maps, and that made things even simpler yet.
Check out the whole piece on The Atlantic.
- F5 deletes layers instead of opening Brushes panel
- Intermittent crash using Generator
- Issue running actions with Generate>Image Assets enabled
- OpenGL functionality disabled on some Windows systems with both NVidia and ATI cards
Installation is simple:
- Look for the update in the Creative Cloud application and click “Update”. (Quit and restart the Creative Cloud application if you don’t see the update)
- If you don’t have the Creative Cloud application running, start Photoshop and choose Help > Updates.
- The Adobe Application Manager will launch. Select Adobe Photoshop CC and choose Update.
Oh God that’s cool. Just stick with it for a minute:
According to The Creators Project,
The team has pioneered the use of robots that are normally used for manufacturing vehicles, and instead developed software to interface the robots in 3D system Maya.[…] Designed to control camera movement, activate lights, and shift set pieces with ever-repeatable motion, this precision allows the virtual and physical worlds to unite and CG elements to match in real time.
Project creator Gmunk offers more behind-the-scenes perspective on his site. [Vimeo] [Via Nicholas Felton]
Check out the latest Photoshop enhancements from screen designer Marc Edwards:
Main changes:
- Added iPhone Icon Template.psd
- Added iPad Icon Template.psd
- Added quite a few scaling actions (xxhdpi etc)
- Improved the new iPhone/iPad document actions
- Improved names for many actions
- Removed the Bjango Tools panel
- Removed lots of iOS 6 legacy stuff
As always check out Marc’s invaluable iOS & Android Photoshop Actions & Workflows.
Good tip from Julieanne Kost regarding the latest PS CC update:
Three really helpful improvements were made in Photoshop CC (v14.1), with regards to anchor point selection:
- Path point selection is no longer retained when switching among layers.
- Clicking on a selected anchor point will select that point and deselect others.
- With anchor points not currently visible on a path, clicking on the location of an anchor point will select that point without any extra clicks.
According to the team blog,
Finger drawing is fast, but when artists want precision, they reach for pressure-sensitive styluses. It’s why the Adobe Ideas team was so excited to announce Pogo Connect Bluetooth Pen support back in July. And it’s why today we’re thrilled to announce support for the new Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus.
Now, when drawing in Adobe Ideas, there are two great stylus options.
You can grab Adobe Ideas here, for free.
Developer Mike Swanson has created a new utility for icon creators:
Early on, I noticed that the rounded rectangles I was making in Photoshop didn’t match the screenshots of my app running on iOS 7. Further investigation revealed that the underlying functions that create rounded rectangles in iOS 7 were all-of-the-sudden creating these new, smoother corners. […]
The script includes presets for common iOS icon sizes, but all values and options can be modified.
Occipital is Kickstarting a way to “capture models of rooms, 3D scan objects, play augmented reality games, and develop mobile applications with 3D sensing.” Check it out:
Maybe stuff I wrote about five years ago will finally become broadly possible. [Via]
Lightroom team member Ben Warde jokes,
I’ve conceived of this month’s meeting specially to punish you. After I subject you to the technical nuances of building custom profiles, you’ll never ask for advanced topics again! Only the most unashamedly geeky among you need attend!
On Thursday evening at Adobe HQ, Ben will break down techniques for building both lens profiles & camera profiles. Pizza & socializing will start at 6:30pm, and the presentation will run roughly 7-8pm, followed by Q&A.
Dang, the camera-equipped drones weren’t the only cool thing I missed. Looks like people had a ball:
[Via Bryan O’Neil Hughes]
Pretty impressive, even without the Inception horns:
[YouTube]
From Design Taxi:
To commemorate the passing of 1 million subscribers on its subscription-based service Creative Cloud, Adobe—with the help of ad agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners—has released a new, eye-catching ad that pays tribute to “the new creatives”.
“Creatives today do a little bit of everything, from illustration to filmmaking to Web design,” said the agency’s associate creative director Will Elliot. “We wanted the spot to celebrate how all these different disciplines are coming together.”
[YouTube]
Design VP Michael Gough writes,
Adobe is moving our cloud pen, Project Mighty and our digital ruler, Project Napoleon, from a technology exploration to a planned product. We are teaming up with Adonit… to manufacture and ship Mighty and Napoleon in the first half of 2014.
He also hints at forthcoming drawing apps:
Today we are unveiling two sneak peaks in this realm that we think really move the combined hardware and software experience forward: Project Parallel, a drafting iPad app designed and developed from scratch for the Project Napoleon hardware. The second, Project Contour, is essentially Kuler for shapes – take a photo of a favorite object or shape on an iPhone and access it with Napoleon on the iPad to simplify architectural line sketching, drawing and ideation. [See brief Instagram video.]
In case you missed it the first time around, here’s a quick demo of Napoleon & Mighty:
Flash will be out & HTML5 is in as the cross-app, cross-platform foundation for extending Creative Cloud apps:
When Creative Cloud was launched in June 2013, we added support for HTML5-based panels in several Adobe products… Since June, support for HTML5-based panels has been added to more Adobe products. As of now Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, Premiere Pro CC and Prelude CC support HTML5-based panels.
A preview of Adobe Extension Builder 3, a new developer tool that supports creating HTML5-based extensions, was launched in June at Adobe Labs.
Starting in the middle of 2014 we will begin removing Flash-based extension support in Creative Cloud products, starting with Photoshop CC. We encourage all developers to start planning and migrating to the new extensibility framework based on HTML5.
Here the excellently named Hallgrimur Th. Bjornsson shows how to create a couple of panels. You can follow more from his team via their blog.
I’m pleased to say that the $9.99/month limited-time offer for owners of Photoshop CS3-CS6 is now available. With it you get:
Per the original announcement, “To be clear, $9.99 is not an introductory price. It is the price for those of you who sign up by December 31, 2013.” (That is, the price is not set to rise after 12 months.)
Lightroom 5.2 and Camera Raw 8.2 (for use in Photoshop CS6 & CC) are now available for download. Each includes a number of feature improvements & bug fixes (please see the respective posts for details) as well as new lens profiles & support for the following cameras:
* denotes preliminary support
“Extracting my design intent from PSDs felt tedious and repetitive,” writes Photoshop UI designer Tim Riot. “I conceived of Adobe Generator as a means to empower people to quickly and easily access the design data within PSDs. With Generator, anyone who knows JavaScript can create their own way of working with Photoshop.”
With that in mind, Tom Krcha has posted a guide on how you can Script Your First Adobe Generator Plugin For Photoshop. On a related note, developer evangelist Lee Brimelow has created a really deep look at the new feature:
[YouTube]
From the show floor at IBC in Amsterdam:
Al Mooney and Steve Hoeg explain what Just Do It (JDI) means and how Adobe can deliver features faster in Adobe Premiere Pro via Creative Cloud.
Before joining Adobe, my teammate Bianca took a cross-country bike tour in which she recorded an intense, gripping audio story that’s now featured on Radiolab:
Reporter Bianca Giaever brings us a story of forgiveness that’s nearly impossible to comprehend — even for the man at the center of it, an octogenarian named Hector Black.
It’s a difficult subject (I had to take a break) but a fascinating one.
Who the heck welcomes a new baby by slimming down, dressing better, and spending more time making bits of art? Our designer Dave, apparently. During his just-ended paternity break he started surprising us with unexpected looks at his domestic life. It started simple & totally unannounced:
And now he’s getting way more ambitious:
Check out the recent clips in his Instagram feed for more. And yes, we’ll try to wring some easy–to-use tutorials out of him. (Dave’s got a little time before the new one starts crawling.)
Hasselblad portraits -> After Effects -> pixie dust: A “person” ages 65 years in 5 minutes.
Last Thanksgiving, Cerniello traveled to his friend Danielle’s family reunion and with still photographer Keith Sirchio shot portraits of her youngest cousins through to her oldest relatives with a Hasselblad medium format camera. Then began the process of scanning each photo with a drum scanner at the U.N. in New York, at which point he carefully edited the photos to select the family members that had the most similar bone structure. Next he brought on animators Nathan Meier and Edmund Earle who worked in After Effects and 3D Studio Max to morph and animate the still photos to make them lifelike as possible. Finally, Nuke (a kind of 3D visual effects software) artist George Cuddy was brought on to smooth out some small details like the eyes and hair.
It’s sort of the anti-Instagram: Deliberately slow, old-school image-making, but augmented with one’s smartphone.
From the Kickstarter Indiegogo page:
Enfojer bridges almost 200 years of photographic history, from the first camera to the most recent hybrid camera phones that made photography ubiquitous. It is our hope and desire that with this little gadget we preserve the old art of photo development and help you, and you, and you rediscover the magic that happens in a darkroom.
[Vimeo]
I just bought a Canon 70D largely on the promise of finally capturing good-looking video thanks to its new autofocus prowess. Unfortunately noise from the lens (a 24-70mm L series) is very audible (here’s a bit I just recorded). I suspect the problem is common to other cameras/lenses, though I’d welcome suggestions about quieter glass.
In the course of researching how I might nuke this crap via Adobe Audition, I stumbled upon the oddly named VideoZizzle, technology that profiles lens noise & scrubs it from recordings. Here’s an unglamorous but effective little demo:
It seems the tech has been around for a while, and while I’m disappointed that it apparently isn’t integrated into my camera, hope springs eternal that it or something similar will proliferate.
The first fruits of independent developers extending Photoshop’s new Generator feature are starting to arrive.
“Much more than image extraction,” writes Photoshop’s Tim Riot, “Stand In takes positioning, styling, state, even motion data, from PSDs and creates prototypes that feel like real apps which you can view on your iPhone. This capability, to fluidly create in Photoshop and seamlessly output designs to any context, is at the heart of the Generator technology.”
Nerdy, but interesting for those who really care about the details of Web/UI graphics production:
The Photoshop Generator feature offers great flexibility in the ways you can rename layers/layer groups to specify size and quality parameters. Stepping beyond the recommendations in the Help article, this blog post looks at some valid variations that you can use while tagging layer/layer group names.
This update addresses a couple of urgent issues:
- User preferences reset after applying 14.1 update
- Inadvertent disablement of Graphics Processor Settings with some hardware configurations
There’s also the problem (introduced with Monday’s 14.1.0 update) of layers being deleted when you use the keyboard shortcut F5. The team is working on a fix. Meanwhile the workaround is to choose a different key command for showing/hiding the Brushes panel (via Edit->Keyboard Shortcuts). Sorry for the hassle.
Joining us from IBC in Amsterdam for this session, Jason Levine will present some of the cool new features coming to the pro video tools in Creative Cloud.
Eddie Codel used a GoPro Hero3 on a DJI Phantom with an Arris CM2000 motorized gimbal (which… all sounds very impressive) to create an interesting look at Burning Man 2013:
Check out more examples & time lapses here.
Michael Chaize offers tips for setting up one’s PSD to export assets efficiently via the new Generator feature.
Check out his post for screenshots & more.
Take two minutes & check out how the newly released Generator technology for Photoshop CC helps you kickstart a responsive Web layout in Adobe Edge Reflow:
If you’d like a more detailed look, check out this tour from Terry White:
You can tweet your vote for one of these candidates to be live-coded at IBC in Amsterdam this week (include “#myJDI”). Voting’s open until 6pm Pacific time tonight.
Yes, this is damn cool. Thanks to the approximately 300k people who mailed me the link. 🙂
Somewhere Canoma is spinning on its grave’s Z-axis.
Web designers, screen designers, and anyone who needs to extract image assets out of a Photoshop document: I think you’ll dig this.
Generator allows you to create image assets in real time as you work, eliminating the tedious steps of copying, slicing and exporting each layer manually, and saving you hours of time. Simply add a file extension to the name of your layer or layer group, and Photoshop will automatically create a JPG, PNG or GIF from the contents of that layer. If you make a change to that layer, the file is immediately updated. This means that you now have a folder of images that are always up-to-date with your Photoshop design.
This update is available right now (via the CC app or by choosing Help->Updates within Photoshop). Check it out:
Here’s the crazy part: Generator is open-source (right here on GitHub), based on Node.js, so you can extend it (and Photoshop) in all kinds of interesting ways. Check out this video from the The Engine Co., who used Generator to write a plug-in for their Loom gaming engine that allows game designers to change the UI of a game in Photoshop while the game is being played:
Check out the Photoshop team blog for additional details. [YouTube vid 1, 2]
Creative Cloud is all about continuous innovation. The CC apps that debuted just a couple of months back are already getting a ton of enhancements, and Adobe’s rolling out a brand-new iPad app, Prelude Live Logger. Highlights of this round of updates include:
- Direct Link integrated color pipeline between Premiere Pro and SpeedGrade
- Expanded native support for 4K and higher resolution, RAW, and UltraHD content
- New mask tools – new Mask Tracker in After Effects and multiple masks in SpeedGrade
- A smoother editing experience with new editing features, improved multicam and closed captioning
- Faster on-set production workflows, including a preview of the new Prelude Live Logger iPad app
- Powerful image upscaling in After Effects
- Performance optimizations
- Media Browser in After Effects
- Sync Settings in Adobe Media Encoder
- Better production planning with Adobe Story Plus
Check out this quick demo from Jason Levine:
More videos are here. For complete details on what’s new just in After Effects, check out Todd Kopriva’s very thorough post.
At last week’s Photoshop world, a small group of engineers tried something new & fun: applying small bits of polish & picking off little annoyances in the app, all coded live at the show. After taking suggestions via Twitter and Facebook, the engineers whipped up the following:
- On a background layer, one click on the lock icon unlocks the layer
- Set custom background color in New Document dialog
- Set the background color in File -> New
- Curves adjustments support negative numbers
- See recent colors in the Swatches panel
- Add more than 4 color samplers in Info panel
- Change all color samplers in Info palette at the same time
Look for these tweaks to arrive in Photoshop CC later this year. In the meantime, Adobe’s video team is soliciting JDI requests. Let ’em know what you’d like to see!
[Via]
From Luminous Landscape:
In early June 2013, Michael Reichmann & Kevin Raber sat down with Thomas Knoll, co-inventor with his brother John, of Adobe Photoshop. Thomas tells the story of two young brothers and the beginnings of Photoshop.
Later in the video, Thomas talks about the controversy surrounding Adobe’s Creative Cloud and the solution he proposed for photographers.
I can’t embed the clip, so check it out on Vimeo.
“Along with amazing imagery,” writes director Alex Horner, “you get to learn how cranberries are harvested.” True enough, and lovely:
“No berries were destroyed while making this,” Alex notes. “Cranberries are tough as hell, there was zero waste of food. As far as sanitation goes, it’s an open body of water. A few dudes in wetsuits won’t hurt a thing.” [Vimeo] [Via]
I’m deeply intrigued by the new Sony QX10 & QX100 cameras, which use your smartphone as a viewfinder:
[YouTube]
Big zoom plus real bokeh from an iPhone, especially during video? You have my strict attention.
DPReview finds the cams “a bit underwhelming,” and a bunch of questions remain unanswered for me (e.g. can one transfer video wirelessly? how long does it take to transfer stills?). Even so, I’m optimistic, and I’ve asked Photojojo to let me know when they’re ready to order.
In other Franken-phone news, “Hasselnuts is an Adapter that Turns Your iPhone into a Medium Format Digital Back.”