I’m eager to check these out:
Brave talk, but given Astute Graphics’ impressive track record, maybe it’s not so crazy. Check out their new VectorScribe 2, available for download as a public beta. The tools for making smart rounded corners & extending paths look especially promising to me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx0sAROY2dQ
[YouTube] [Via]
Google today unveiled a new “Auto Awesome” feature that’ll stitch together video montages with zero effort from you. It’s said to work like this.
By coincidence, Magisto got another $13 million in funding today to do essentially the same things, and they claim to have 13 million users. Plenty of others (Ptch from Dreamworks, Qwiki from Yahoo, etc.) are playing in similar territory.
My question: If this stuff is so great (and free), why don’t we see anyone creating & sharing it? (Or do we and I’m just old/blind?)
You can read studies—not that you need to—that list the top reasons people say they don’t share videos: Watching it takes too long, it looks bad (shaky, poorly colored), and it sounds bad. Unsurprisingly, services like Google’s go after these problems: Automate everything (no creation time commitment), chop it into short segments (lower viewer time commitment), slap on some color looks, blow away the recorded audio, and apply stabilization.
Are the results something you value? What would you care about more? (I know what I want, but I’d like to hear your thoughts.)
[YouTube]
Great news from down south: Students & faculty get Creative Cloud free of charge, and we’re talking about more ways to support their initiatives.
Using the Adobe Creative Cloud as the centerpiece, the literacy effort has big plans to make headway in the technology-laden field of contemporary communication and journalism.
“Students will be able to become certified professionals in Photoshop and other tools, and can add this on their resume. We are also setting up a ‘genius bar’ in our new building for students to get software and hardware questions answered.”
I recently got to spend a weekend in the desert with USC’s Animation & Digital Arts students, and I’m excited about how the new tools we’re developing can be used in their curriculum. More on all that soon.
Project Kronos is a documentary-style short film written and directed by Hasraf “HaZ” Dulull, following a mission to achieve interstellar space travel. 6 months later, it has been picked up for feature film development.
How did he get a green light? This should be an interesting talk (Thursday at 10am Pacific time):
Join HaZ to learn how he got his start in filmmaking, how he made Project Kronos, and how, as a first time filmmaker, he used the creative approach of pitch trailers to get the attention of studio executives and producers. Learn how to use Creative Cloud to create an impactful 2-minutes trailer that sells your idea, including:
- Assembling your material and block out a pitch trailer.
- Using After Effects to demonstrate the VFX ideas featured in the film concept
- Using Speedgrade to create a finished Hollywood feature film look.
- Using Adobe Premiere Pro to put it everything together, including additional secondary effects, and temp sound design
“Man,” said Cabel, shaking his head when he stopped by last summer, “I had a ‘John Nack Moment…'”
I was at once flattered & horrified: I’ve become synonymous with something—and that something is total existential breakdown. Damn… was that my special purpose?
I really enjoyed Cabel’s talk about starting small, freaking out vs. selling out, and doing what you love. I think you’ll enjoy it, too. (The big-company sad trombone effect after the 14-minute mark alone is worth it.)
My wife notes, “I like that he rated his own meltdown scene as ‘1-star.'”[YouTube]
Yesterday I mentioned Specctr for facilitating designer/developer hand-off. Reader Rick Johanson suggested SpecKing as an alternative:
Making the design specs in Photoshop can be a real time consuming task. SpecKing simplifies this process and lets you instantly measure any sizes, margins, and font properties in any PSD file. Your design specs can be ready in an instant, with just a few clicks.
[YouTube]
Redlining print-outs of Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fireworks docs (specifying exact pixel dimensions, etc.) isn’t anyone’s idea of fun, yet I still see it done frequently. Specctr is plug-in that streamlines the process, adding a margin around your artwork & automatically writing out object dimensions. Check it out:
[YouTube] [Via Jeff Tranberry]
If my career is doing society any good at all, it’s probably in democratizing access to magic—that is, helping more people get tools to express themselves beautifully & effectively.
Now that I work in Adobe’s video group, I’m thinking hard about what kinds of awesomeness we could bring to the world. Think “high-end effects for the rest of us.”
What do you want to do with video? What would get you excited, make you want to create & share more, help you blow your friends’ minds?
For example, I wish I could…
…and on & on. Yes, things like this can all be done in high-end tools, but I want to make it drop-dead easy for anyone to do, on any device.
What sounds good to you? Dream big & we’ll dream with you.
Thanks!
Adobe and Apple have worked closely together… All Adobe CC and CS6 products are compatible, but a few products require updates to the latest builds to work properly. Adobe Photoshop® CS5, CS4 and CS3 were also tested with Mac OS X Mavericks and there are currently no major issues known.
Notably After Effects requires an update (CC, CS6) to be compatible. If you see any weirdness, please let us know.
Update: If you see a message about “Adobe Creative Cloud” (the management/desktop sync app) being incompatible with Mavericks, you’ll need to reinstall it. [Via Keith Lang & Fergus Hammond]
This Quick Look extension sounds useful (sort of like Adobe Bridge being more built into Finder):
- Makes Quick Look Compatible with Graphics Documents (including .ai, .indd, .ase, .fh11)
- Works with Adobe Illustrator Docs Saved with or without PDF Compatibility
- Display Fonts, Images and Swatches used in CS3+ Documents
- Reveal Font Files and Linked Image Files in Finder
It’s $25 in the Mac App Store. [Via]
Let’s build you some better tools:
The Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator teams need your help! We’ve been thinking about some ideas that could benefit all of our customers, but before we can move forward with these ideas we need to know more about how you, our customers, are working with our products now.
We have prepared a short questionnaire (should take less than 5 minutes) that will help us gather the information we need to get started. We would greatly appreciate your time in helping us by filling it out! As a special thank you, you’ll be eligible for a $50 Amazon Gift Card for taking the survey!
The October issue of Adobe Inspire magazine is online and available for download on iPad. Deke McClelland talks Photoshop layer management, Ryan Kleeman talks high-quality audio recording, and more.
Rather brilliant. (“Time to F with some customers.”)
[YouTube] [Via Dave Werner]
Happening worldwide November 4th–11th, 2013:
Behance Portfolio Reviews bring members together at events in cities and towns around the world—organized by members, for members. Attend a Portfolio Review to present and get feedback on your work, hear from experienced professionals, and meet your local creative community.
- Welcome & Spotlight (20 minutes): Short and inspiring presentation, curated by your host.
- The Portfolio Reviews (60 minutes): Attendees break into small groups to have their work reviewed.
- Mingle, Network & Drinks: Stick around to mingle and connect with your peers and industry leaders.
Adobe Research is investigating ways to help people tell great stories through video. If that sounds interesting to you, please take just a minute to fill in this survey. [Note: The idea is to bring more video storytelling power to people who aren’t using pro tools, so if you’re producing video professionally, you can skip this one.] Thanks!
That’s the promise of Flaticon. You can check out a demo online, download the Photoshop extension panel, and download icons via your browser.
[YouTube]
[Previously: BlendMe.in]
Master landscape photographer Stephen Johnson will be presenting his work & techniques Thursday evening at Adobe San Francisco:
Steve will concentrate on digital photography’s capabilities as a set of tools to capture and decode the visual wonder of the real world. Photoshop will be explored as a tool of revelation of our camera’s light capture, using raw processing and Photoshop as straightforward photo processing tools rather than instruments of image alteration.
This talk concentrates on the tools within Photoshop critical to Photographers for straightforward photography. It is a great chance to explore digital photographic finishing with Steve, and his use of interpretive and editing tools, which he works hard to execute with restraint and finesse…
ALSO: We’ve got 2 copies of X-rite’s ColorChecker Passport as raffle prizes. So be sure to bring your business cards in order to get your name in the raffle.
PM Stephen Nielson writes,
With the release of Photoshop CC, we’re able to address customer feedback more frequently than ever before. To demonstrate just how quickly we can respond to customer feedback, we stationed Photoshop team members, including three Photoshop engineers, on the Photoshop World show floor. The assignment: speak to customers, gather their feedback and enhancement requests, and code as many customer-requested Photoshop enhancements as possible during the show, in real-time. We called this event our “Photoshop Live Codeathon.”
Check out the team in action:
[YouTube]
This is so tremendously bizarre (in the most unassuming, DIY way), I kind of can’t get enough:
Girl Walk // All Day is essentially a 71-minute music video set to Girl Talk’s album All Day. There’s a loose story about three strangers who are inexplicably possessed by the spirit of Girl Talk’s music, presumably, and wander New York City dancing all the while, occasionally joined by passersby and sometimes crossing paths with one another. The most memorable of these is The Girl, performed by Anne Marsen, who clearly has some talent but is far from a technically perfect dancer; her go-for-broke moves are relatable, and what make her so compelling to watch.
[Vimeo] [Via Bianca Giaever]
Eh, why? Well, Webdesigner Depot says this “can be incredibly useful if you’re checking out the grid or other geometry of someone else’s website and don’t feel like pouring through the source code to figure it out.” Check out RulerGuides.js, available as a browser bookmarklet.
Nix is an interesting smartphone accessory meant to accurately scan the colors of objects you encounter. The paint-color tie-in is clever, even if some of the examples (banana freshness detection?) are pretty wacky:
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.
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?
Dang, the camera-equipped drones weren’t the only cool thing I missed. Looks like people had a ball:
[Via Bryan O’Neil Hughes]
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]
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
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.
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.
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.
Who says that absurdly high-res televisions won’t change the world? Not LG, whose little prank walks the brilliant/brutal line:
[Via Chris Regan]
Conceivably related: Store mirrors can now be programmed to make your prospective purchases look better—and make you look happier holding them up.
Lots o’ tips for Illustrator & beyond from Justin Seeley, tomorrow at noon* Pacific time:
- Setting up Illustrator for a web workflow
- Designing for mobile responsive layouts
- Using & setting up grid systems
- Web graphic optimization
- New CSS & SVG features of Illustrator CC
Streaming starts at 9am Pacific. You’ll get to hear about Adobe’s vision for the future of photography workflows. There will be news I think you’ll find interesting.
The Micronaxx & I make up bizarre, freewheeling bedtime stories nearly every night, just as my dad did with me. Unlike in the old days, we at least occasionally record the stories, but it’s rare. What would change that, giving us a better archive of family memories? I’d like a mobile app that would:
I think the key thing is in the recording/transcription: Without that it’s dead in the water, even for a guy like me. Prompting & organization would be good, but I really want to see the output (even if rough).
I won’t get to build such an app anytime soon, if ever, so I’m throwing the idea into the ether in case you’d find it interesting (either as a user or as a developer). Maybe the “bedtime story” angle seems too niche-y, but you might be surprised: RapGenius started just by annotating rap lyrics & is now very well funded to socially annotate any kind of document. “Do one thing well” instead of starting with ocean-boiling.
If you’d pay for such an app, please speak up—and if you’d build it, I’ll happily be your first customer.
Nicolas de Toth changed from skeptic to convert while editing a new commercial featuring Mario Andretti:
I was aware of Premiere Pro for a long time, but I hadn’t given it a fair shot…
Overall, it was very nimble and I never found myself waiting for anything like I do on occasion with Avid… Editing is somewhat like writing. If your process is interrupted you can lose your train of thought, and with it your overall creativity. Premiere Pro was more fluid than I expected.
Check out the full interview here.
On a related note, this line from a DV Magazine review by Oliver Peters caught my eye:
Premiere Pro CC is definitely the best direct replacement for Final Cut Pro…It’s fast, handles a wide range of native media and is versatile in many situations…Adobe definitely has a winner in Premiere Pro CC.
Adobe PM Lex van den Berghe makes me look pretty damn boring:
From fending for himself in the bush of Kenya during Survivor, writing in his local newspaper, being a motivational speaker and starting a new National Geographic reality television series, Lex has had a diverse career, to say the least.
Check out his offbeat career. (As he notes, “In a hundred years we’ll all be dead…what’s the worst that could happen?”)
Sounds like a really interesting event, September 18-20th in New York:
We’re curating a killer program around three skill sets that should be in every creative’s arsenal: career development, entrepreneurship, and brand + digital strategy. Each day will feature an incredible lineup of talks and master classes from creative visionaries like Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Adobe’s own Scott Belsky, and Facebook designer Ben Barry […]
We’re building out an incredible interactive space called the Playground that will feature a hand-crafted lineup of mentorship sessions, skill-building booths, interactive workshops, and creative tool demos.
Register by Sept. 4 with promo code “adobeschool99code” to get 30% the regular ticket price.
Beautiful stuff—”creative work with a story behind it”:
The Inspiration.Is Gallery is devoted to great projects from the portfolios of Behance users that showcase the story behind the work.
Oh, humans…
Epic. I spied this monster at the Lego store Monday & had to know more. “‘Considering it took engineers eight years to figure out how to make the real Opera House sails, I feel quite proud that it only took us three,’ [creator Jamie] Berard says.” I love the evident pride & joy these folks take in their work.
And hey, as long as we’re screwing around with Lego-related links…
Exciting news from our friends at Wacom: According to their site,
I can’t help but think of John Gruber musing, “How ironic would it be if the iPad becomes the dominant mass market computer and the Surface becomes the one for artists?”
We’re working to start a new business within Adobe, and to that end my partner Chris Prosser has been reading books you might find interesting:
As an entrepreneur/intrapreneur you have to be able to lie to yourself a little. Otherwise you would just stay at home and not pursue the new idea that you have. But lying to yourself until you ship your product to the marketplace can be expensive and emotionally devastating.
For those of you new to the Lean Startup Methodologies, they are tools that help you stop lying to yourself and check in with reality at all phases of developing your business. My own path with these tools has been somewhat backward. I originally thought we were further along with our business when I picked them up. But as I applied a tool that I thought was appropriate for the phase of development (for instance a retention graph for our private beta), reality would come through and we need to go a step earlier in the chain to find the problem. We finally ended up all they way back at the beginning.
I really enjoyed this short, affirming story from Casey Neistat. I was immediately transported back to discussing faith & morals late one night with a great cabbie en route to Brooklyn. It’s those little moments, those little human connections—rare as they sometimes may be—that make city life possible.
[Vimeo] [Via Bianca Giaever]
