Monthly Archives: November 2013

Rendering real-world 3D content in real time

3D, User Interface

MIT is making pure magic:

Check out some below-the-table stills on Colossal.

inFORM is a Dynamic Shape Display that can render 3D content physically, so users can interact with digital information in a tangible way. inFORM can also interact with the physical world around it, for example moving objects on the table’s surface. Remote participants in a video conference can be displayed physically, allowing for a strong sense of presence and the ability to interact physically at a distance. inFORM is a step toward our vision of Radical Atoms. 

[Vimeo]

Profile: Artist James White

Illustration

I’ve long admired the highly graphical work of James White (e.g. his poster for No Country for Old Men), and now he’s featured in a new piece from Lynda.com:

https://vimeo.com/80101893

Designer James White spent a decade working for other agencies before he founded Signalnoise, a one-man design studio in Nova Scotia. He was determined to explore his own aesthetic: “Fascination, wonder, and imagination made visual.”

The move was creatively productive and financially lucrative. But when he decided to dedicate a year to his passion project—taking his own bright, pop approach to iconic movie posters like Jaws and Indiana Jones—he ran into licensing roadblocks.

In this Creative Spark, James explains how he dealt with the setbacks and found new opportunities for Signalnoise.

[Vimeo]

A giant tot points skyward

Uncategorized

British Airways (the first really big site I ever helped design) is running a clever new campaign. Per Engadget,

[T]he new advertisement, installed front and center at London’s Piccadilly Circus, uses “custom-built surveillance technology” to track incoming BA aircraft, prompting the screen to display a child pointing directly at the plane as it passes overhead. The adjacent text offers up the flight number and its origin or destination, along with a custom message, such as the lowest fare for that route or the current weather where that plane is headed.

[YouTube] [Via Al Mooney]

Demo: Use Camera Raw as a Smart Filter in Photoshop CC

CC, Photography

Julieanne Kost puts one of the most popular features in PS CC through its paces: 

In this episode of The Complete Picture, Julieanne demonstrates how to take multiple exposures and combine them into a single 32-bit HDR file that can then be edited nondestructively using Adobe Camera Raw as a Smart Filter in Photoshop. In addition, you’ll discover how powerful using Camera Raw as a Smart Filter can be when working with layered files.

Nokia enables Lytro-like refocusing

Mobile, Photography

Nokia Refocus creates interactive, refocus-able images. ZDNet writes,

The Nokia Refocus app performs similarly to the Lytro camera. The application allows you to shoot between two and eight photos, dependent on available focal planes in view of your shot.

You can share your captured image to SkyDrive with a unique page at refocus.nokia.com being created. This site hosts the image where people can interact and change focus themselves, right from their web browser. Try it out on the Nokia website, it’s pretty slick.

Adobe showed off homegrown plenoptic imaging tech 6+ years ago (“Why is a wild-haired Eastern European guy walking around our floor carrying a medium-format camera & a hot glue gun?”); Apple has apparently been working in this area; and of course Lytro came and… went? This stuff is undoubtedly cool; whether it addresses problems that people really care about solving remains a more open question. [Via Allen Jeng]

Adobe XD, now designing in the open

Mobile

“It is better to design with than simply for,” writes Adobe VP of Experience Design Michael Gough. He talks about how the team wants more community participation in the creation process:

We call them The People’s Apps. Although we are pretty good at designing for professional creatives, we aren’t always as confident when we are designing for the masses. […] So we decided to kick off the design of The People’s Apps in public. What that means right now is that we will post our designs on a regular basis on Behance.

Check out the projects here. For example, Marks is a new sketching & ideation app, and Rough Cut “aims to reinvent video editing by rethinking the traditional video timeline.”

What do you think?

Wait, what part of Adobe's new photography deal is "limited time"?

CC, Lightroom, Photography

The sign-up window is limited; the price is not.

  • Everyone (regardless of whether you own previous Adobe apps) can sign up by next Monday (Dec. 2) to get Photoshop CC & Lightroom 5 the $9.99/month price.
  • Anyone who owns Photoshop CS3 or higher can sign up by Dec. 31.
  • The price itself isn’t limited. That is, it won’t be going up in a year. (Adobe has no plans to raise the price at all, but we can’t say that it’ll never go up—e.g. for inflation—or down.)

Profile: Erik Natzke, Generative Artist

Illustration

Erik kinda makes me sick—with jealousy. He’s that exceedingly rare combination of a great artist & great technologist. His work has inspired me for more than a decade (I still keep a folder of his ancient SWF “toys”), and I’m so happy he’s now creating some groundbreaking touch tools at Adobe.

https://vimeo.com/77185119 

“What if?” Erik Natzke, generative artist and principle designer at Adobe, uses this question to constantly test what is possible at the intersection of art and technology.

In this lynda.com Creative Spark, Erik explains his quest to build tools that improve people’s ability to be creative—and to make them forget they’re using a tool to begin with.

By combining interactivity, remote collaboration, touch input, and gestures with the real-world behavior of paper, ink, and brushes, he hopes to build applications that lead to a more organic, playful, and inspiring creative experience.

[Vimeo]

Industrial design students explore Surface "blades"

Mobile, Tablets

“How ironic would it be if the iPad becomes the dominant mass market computer and the Surface becomes the one for artists?” John Gruber once asked. I have no crystal ball, but I love seeing Microsoft exploring new hardware to push the tablet form factor. Here they asked students at Art Center in Pasadena to design new “blades” that snap onto & extend a Surface tablet:

You can find more info on The Verge, plus a longer version of the video here. [Via Jerry Harris]

Get your own drone

Uncategorized

…now cheaper, thanks to Russell Brown. If you’ve enjoyed his aerial photography tutorials from the last couple of days, check this out:

I teamed up with my friends at DroneFly.com to give you the special Russell Brown deal of the day. If you use my name “Russell Brown” as a discount code then you get $40 dollars off the price of a DJI Phanton 1, and you get a FREE battery! How cool is that?! My name is worth $40 dollars + Battery Power! This offer is good until November 28th and it is only good for the DJI Phantom 1 model, not the DJI Vision. I personally guarantee friendly service and great products from DroneFly.com. Be sure to enter the DJI Photo Contest.

A new deal for all photographers: Photoshop CC + Lightroom 5 for $9.99/mo.

CC, Photography

I’m delighted to say that for a limited time, Adobe’s Photoshop Photography Program is available to everyone. The team writes,

By “everyone” we mean EVERYONE! Sign up before Dec. 2 to get Photoshop, Lightroom, 20GB of storage, and Behance ProSite for $9.99/month

As before, the intention is not to get you in at $9.99/mo., then crank up the price after a year. $9.99 is the expected ongoing price. The difference is that you now don’t need to own a copy of Photoshop or Creative Suite CS3 or higher. Please do note that this is a limited-time deal, so you’ll want to jump in before December 2.
999

Russell's aerial tour continues

Panoramas, Photography

Building on yesterday’s video:

In the second video, Russell Brown will guide you though the process of taking an aerial panorama. This video is taken on location along the California coast and will demonstrate Mr. Brown’s technique for aerial tripod rotation.

Lean how to stitch aerial photographs together with the help of Adobe Camera Raw profiles combined with the Auto Alignment, and Blending features, in Adobe Photoshop CC.

[Adobe TV 1, 2]

Pencil, a new stylus from the makers of Paper

Illustration, Mobile, Tablets

Looks lovely:

Per TechCrunch:

Pencil unlocks new features and enables new types of creation. When connected, the app rejects palm movements against the tablet, allowing users to draw smoothly — just as they would if they were holding a pencil, pen, or paintbrush. They can also blend colors directly on the page using their fingers, or fix mistakes with Pencil’s eraser.

[Vimeo]

Phones adding raw image support

DNG, Mobile, Photography

Exciting news for all of us who love wringing maximum dynamic range & quality out of our images:

  • “For the better image quality and flexibility of raw photos,” writes CNET’s Stephen Shankland,
    “Nokia’s Lumia 1520 will shoot with Adobe’s DNG format. Similar raw support will come to the Lumia 1020 in early 2014.” Check out the Nokia blog for more details. Nokia’s head of imaging Juha Alakarhu notes, “If you shoot with RAW, you can take benefit of the continuously developing algorithms in the future. Who knows what these tools will offer in 10 years!”
  • Meanwhile Google is working on a new Android camera API that features raw support. (And sorry, I’m not going to call it “RAW,” as it’s neither a proper name nor an acronym. I can’t read it without hearing “RAW is WAR!!” ;-))

At what point will it seem silly & archaic to call these things “phones,” instead of highly programmable cameras that just happen to make phone calls?

Batkid, as seen by the SF Chronicle

Uncategorized

Absolutely charming:

In case you’ve been living under a rock (or in a bat cave):

Make-A-Wish foundation grants 5-year-old Miles wish to become Batman. Turning San Francisco into Gotham City, Miles shows the community just how strong of a fighter he is. After being diagnosed at 20 months-old with Leukemia, Miles has beat cancer and is now in remission.

Here are more photos & coverage from the Chronicle.
[Vimeo]

An Illustrator artboard trick I didn't know

Illustration

My colleague Rick Borstein asked,

One thing I like about Photoshop is that I can create a new document at the dimensions of the item on the clipboard.

It would be great to have this feature in Illustrator. I am often extracting logos and want to create a new AI file with an artboard of the same dimensions as the clipboard item.

It turns out you can paste an image into Illustrator, then double-click the pasted image using the Artboard Tool. That’ll automatically create the art board at that size. Alternately, you can make an action: Select All > Object menu > Artboards > Fit to Selected Art

[Thanks to Rufus Deuchler & Ton Frederiks]

A 72-megapixel, tossable panoramic camera

Photography

Looks like a ball (heyo):

From the project’s Indiegogo page:

Now the Panono Camera makes it possible to capture everything in every direction in a very high resolution image. Through your Panono Camera, you can freeze the surprise birthday party, the wedding dance floor, the football game, the best concert ever, or that amazing sunset in a whole new fascinating way.

The results are viewable a la Google Street View.

Adobe Muse gets new Library, social chops, & more

Uncategorized

Great upgrades to the highly popular visual page-design tool:

  • Access the new Adobe Muse Exchange providing downloads to over one hundred design elements submitted by the Adobe Muse community to-date. Includes starter templates, prototyping tools, interactive widgets, and more.
  • Collect reusable design elements like icons, buttons, headers, footers, styles, and grids using the new Library panel. These elements can also be shared with teams or other designers.
  • Easily connect sites to social media with a dozen new drag-and-drop social widgets including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google maps, Vimeo and YouTube videos.
  • An updated Scroll Effects panel offers more options including the ability to apply opacity and fading to scroll elements, and add scroll effects to Adobe Edge animations and slideshows.
  • Set a full-screen slideshow that adjusts to the width of the screen, whether viewing on a desktop or mobile device.
  • Plus additional enhancements and ongoing code improvements.

[Adobe TV]

Russell Brown's new Layer Namer for Photoshop

CC, Photoshop Generator

Speed up graphics production:

This new panel is designed to work with Adobe Photoshop CC and a new feature called Generator. This new HTML panel will automatically name a layer so that Generator will automatically create, and export a PNG, GIF or JPEG image. Install this new panel with Adobe Extension Manager CC. On a PC, be sure to install this panel in the Administrator Mode.

 

Let me know what you think!

renamer_sm

Amazing quadrocopter ballet

Uncategorized

There’s no way these aren’t CGI:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0v1BgzUdc

And yet, somehow, they’re real*:

Gizmodo writes,

The ad was made possible by the folks at KMel Robotics who’ve developed a whole suite of tools to program and control the swarm of quadcopters. They’ve even adapted an infrared motion capture system—typically used for computer animation—to keep track of all the drones mid-flight, and individually direct them to where they need to be.

*I’m still skeptical about the last portion.

Pixelstick helps you make incredible light paintings

Photography

Days of miracles & wonder:

From the Kickstarter project page (where they’ve totally blown past their numbers):

Pixelstick reads images created in Photoshop (or the image editor of your choice) and displays them one line at a time, creating endless possibilities for abstract and/or photorealistic art. Taking this one step further, Pixelstick can increment through a series of images over multiple exposures, opening up light painting to the world of timelapse, and allowing for animations the likes of which have never before seen.

Demo: Backup strategies in Lightroom 5

Lightroom

Important info from Julieanne Kost:

In this episode of The Complete Picture, Julieanne discusses backup strategies for the Lightroom catalog, incremental backup catalogs, photographs, presets, preferences, and additional supporting files. Of course there are many ways to manage files – this tutorial is intended to help you identify the best approach for your workflow.

AppXen: PSD-to-app compiler

Mobile

“AppXen compiles your Photoshop PSD’s into ready-to-use Native UI Code so you can get on to doing what you love,” promises Christian Sullivan’s Kickstarter project.

AppXen analyzes your Photoshop file, parses out the necessary data, slices your images into retina & non-retina versions, and generates the UI code for the platform of your choice.

"The industry's first integrated editing & color grading pipeline"

CC

Check out the badass new connection between Premiere Pro & SpeedGrade, live Thursday at 10am Pacific time:

Direct Link allows you to move projects seamlessly between Adobe Premiere Pro CC and SpeedGrade CC, providing the industry’s first integrated editing and color grading pipeline. Join product managers Al Mooney (Premiere Pro) and Patrick Palmer (SpeedGrade) for this lively interactive session on how to get the most out of the new Direct Link workflow. You will learn:

  • How Direct Link works
  • How to apply color adjustments in SpeedGrade
  • Use the Lumetri effect in Premiere Pro
  • Best practices for starting and finishing projects

The session is both for aspiring and established editors and colorists and will be followed by a Q&A.

Camera 8.3 RC for Photoshop CC & CS6 available on Adobe Labs

Uncategorized

Camera Raw 8.3 is now available as a release candidate on Adobe Labs for Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CC on Adobe Labs. For both versions it includes the new camera support mentioned below, and for Photoshop CC includes the following new features:

  • Whites and Blacks now support Auto Levels-like functionality via shift-double-click on the sliders.
  • Separate Auto Temperature and Auto Tint feature. Shift-double-click to invoke “auto temperature” and “auto tint” separately.
  • Ability to option-click shortcut in Synchronize, New Preset, Save Settings, and Copy/Paste (Bridge) dialog boxes. Option-click a checkbox to check that box exclusively. Option-click again to toggle previous checkbox state.
  • Set the background color of the work area. Context-click outside the image in the work area to select a background color from a popup menu.
New camera support:
  • Canon PowerShot S120
  • Fujifilm XQ1
  • Fujifilm X-E2
  • Nikon 1 AW1
  • Nikon Coolpix P7800
  • Nikon D610
  • Nikon D5300 (*)
  • Olympus OM-D E-M1
  • Olympus STYLUS 1 (*)
  • Panasonic DMC-GM1
  • Phase One IQ260
  • Phase One IQ280
  • Sony A7 (ILCE-7)
  • Sony A7R (ILCE-7R)
  • Sony DSC-RX10 (*)

* denotes preliminary support [Via Jeff Tranberry]

Create guides in Photoshop with the new GuideGuide panel

Suite Development

Cameron McEfee has released a public alpha of GuideGuide 3 for Photoshop. It’s now built in HTML5 instead of Flash/Flex & lets you save presets & more.

GuideGuide 3’s major new feature is GuideGuide Notation (GGN), a language that makes it possible for you to “write” a grid… [It] allows you to create any combination of guides you can think up. Sidebars, baselines, golden ratio, you name it. If you can think of it, GuideGuide can create it.

[Via Pierre Courtejoie]

Most profane. Photoshop plug-in. Ever?

Uncategorized

“Built by slave fairies and unicorn horns, this Photoshop Plugin couldn’t possibly be any more f___ing amazing.”
That—and more—are the promise of the cheeky mofos making the Perspective Mockups Plugin for Photoshop. Check out the demo:

(“It really couldn’t be any more f___ing amazing,” notes PS UI designer Tim Riot.) [Vimeo]
PS—Apropos of profanity (hey, why not?), I dig the light projections in the video for this great Nada Surf track.

Adobe Inspire: CSS 3D, Ideas->Illustrator, and more

Uncategorized

Lots of good stuff in the November issue of Adobe Inspire Magazine: