A reflection on 'photoshopping' on Photoshop's 20th birthday
February 19, 2010
Adobe's 'documentary' on the 20th anniversary of Photoshop's release makes the briefest nod to what the most of the general public call 'photoshopping' -- allegedly-photorealistic manipulation of photos in news reporting or advertising for political gain or to propel models and celebrities closer to some idealized (and often anatomically impractical) notion of beauty.
The ethics of this is briefly mentioned at the beginning, but is quickly countered with the argument that Photoshop is about art not ethics. This is true -- though for Adobe it's clearly a matter of branding not 'truth' -- but the subject does bear thinking about in more depth. Has 'photoshopping' made our world a better or worse place? I'd say better and I'm about to argue that unethical use of Photoshop in news reporting is a good thing, but before you start sharpening your pitchforks and lighting flaming torches, hear me out.
Design Language | Neil Bennett | Read more...
When it's time to leave...
February 12, 2010
As a business, you strive to create a workplace that hangs onto its talent. You believe wholeheartedly that it’s a great place to work, can give your team what you need and frankly, the grass isn’t greener on the other side.
So it’s always disappointing when you lose somebody, let alone those that have woven themselves into the fabric of the agency. You take it a little personally, but still understand their reasons and want the best for them. The fact is, the agency can’t give its people everything they need in life. Work is a major chunk of it, but so are other passions, family, and life itself. Sometimes, these trump you and there’s nothing you can do about it.
The Engine Room | Huey Nhan | Read more...
Photoshop turns 20
February 10, 2010
Adobe Photoshop is so intrinsic to our daily digital lives these days, you might find it hard to believe that the program is just two decades old. In the 20 years since its introduction, Photoshop has changed the way we see the world, altered our sense of reality, and transformed the way we express ourselves.
Stop for a moment and take a look around you. Nearly every image you see today--in ads, on billboards, in magazines, on websites, and in newspapers--has been touched in some way by Photoshop. Its influence is so great that the program has even earned a place in the vernacular: The verb to photoshop has become shorthand for the act of altering digital images. (Adobe bristles at such usage of its trademarked application name.)
Digital Arts | Pamela Pfiffner | Read more...
InDesign tip: tinting grayscale photos
February 7, 2010
Changing the colours of photographs in your InDesign project requires Photoshop, right? Not necessarily. If the photo is black and white and saved in grayscale mode in a compatible format, you can tint it directly in InDesign. You can even assign it two colours for an attractive duotone.
A duotone is an image with two colours or tones, effectively a grayscale image, but more accurately one that substitutes a colour for black and another colour for white or negative space. For example, sepia, a popular effect wherein the main ink is a shade of brown atop a yellowed or off-white background colour, is a duotone. While there are varying definitions for the term that have evolved over time, the technique I demonstrate below reflects this interpretation.
Digital Arts | Pariah S Burke | Read more...
Did Photoshop get Flash onto the Apple iPad?
February 1, 2010
It looks like Apple's iPad really is magical after all. Marketing materials for the iPad mysteriously morphed overnight following complaints that they misleadingly depicted the device showing Flash-based content. As of Saturday morning, presto-change-o: The Flash is gone.
The iPad Flash Controversy
Digital Arts | JR Raphael | Read more...
Will the iPad save the media? Not just yet
January 28, 2010
Over the past few weeks, there has been plenty of buzz about how an Apple tablet would be print's savior, and how Apple would revolutionize the way we read. Now that the iPad has been introduced it's clear to me that the iPad takes this vision of a revolutionary way of presenting news only halfway.
A Potentially Good E-reader
Digital Arts | Nick Mediati | Read more...
Apple's tablet will make online news and magazines better
January 26, 2010
Should Steve Jobs introduce Apple’s tablet (the iPad, iSlate, iTablet, or perhaps iBook) at the company’s press event tomorrow, the device will likely contain a number of features: users will be able to play games on it, surf the Web, read e-books, and much more. But perhaps the most important feature it may contain will be the ability to save the press from its demise -- and will hopefully increase the quality of what we read.
At the end of a failed 15-year experiment in giving away its product, the press (newspapers and magazines) has begun to renounce free. It’s slow in starting, because of the inertia of this decade and a half, but the New York Times announced recently that it would begin charging for its website, and others are sure to follow.
Digital Arts | Kirk McElhearn | Read more...
Gadgets: LG goes retro, introduces new CRT TV
January 26, 2010
Do not adjust your screen! Yes, it is 2010. And yes, this is an all-new CRT display from electronics giant LG.
The cutesy 14-inch set, known as the Serie 1 Retro Classic, makes use of the now-outdated cathode ray tube (CRT) display technology.
Digital Arts | Chris Brandrick | Read more...
Adobe Illustrator tip: Live Trace over photos
January 14, 2010
Adobe Illustrator’s Live Trace feature is a phenomenal way to transform a raster image into a vector image -- or to put it more plainly -- to turn a photograph into a drawing.
Placing a raster image into Illustrator CS2, CS3, or CS4 via File -> Place and access the Live Trace Options from Object -> Live Trace -> Tracing Options, or use the button on the Control panel.
Digital Arts | Pariah S Burke | Read more...
Storage industry tackles making sense of your projects
January 7, 2010
How many of us created a project, took a photo, captured a video, or downloaded a stock image and have no clue where it's hiding today? Maybe it's buried somewhere on your PC or Mac's hard drive or in one of dozen external drives.
The explosion of digital content and the increasing digitization of our day-to-day lives (music, photos, and video) is keeping that demand for evermore storage high. But it also means we're left with a messy morass of data that needs to be organized. For this reason, I find it encouraging that, in advance of the start of the Consumer Electronics Show, the discussion at the Storage Visions conference here in Las Vegas has turned to the issue of metadata. It's about organizing your personal media at home, not your creative project files at the studio, but anything that makes it easier for consumers is bound to help you out at work too.
Digital Arts | Melissa J Perenson | Read more...
Why 3D will fail in 2010
December 22, 2009
James Cameron's hotly anticipated 3D movie, Avatar, hit cinemas in the UK last Friday. Besides stunning computer generated imagery and a predictable-but-appealing storyline, the movie will become well known for high-quality 3D.
Although an early review of Avatar famously said the 3D effects were "literally vomit inducing," most will be impressed. It's likely that actual nausea will be experienced by only a small minority of viewers. Avatar is prompting armchair prognosticators to predict that the film will mainstream the use of 3D in the movies.
Digital Arts | Mike Elgan | Read more...
Learn the secrets to Apple's design success
November 23, 2009
All big companies have their critics. But what's interesting about Apple's detractors is universal surprise. Their disappointment often stems from finding out that Apple isn't the company they thought it was. So I'm going to do all you would-be critics a favour, and explain some fundamental aspects of Apple's culture. Next time, you won't be blindsided and confused.
Here are four things that Apple believes that explain the unexplainable:
Digital Arts | Mike Elgan | Read more...
Playing with Adobe's new toys
November 18, 2009
This just in: Adobe Labs has some new toys up for grabs. As part of Adobe's poorly-named Open Screen Initiative to put Flash on every popular platform known to mankind, Adobe has released beta versions of Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Flash Player 10.1 doesn't appear to do much, if anything, for Mac OS X, but a thorough look at the release notes (written in PDF format, naturally) reveals some interesting details. This is an Intel-only pre-release, although it appears there will be support for PowerPC in the final build. It does feature support for audio input, likely to act as a bridge for Flash 10.1 Web apps tailored for mobile phone users. For fans of smarter error handling, Flash is now able to shut itself down and ask the browser to restart if it runs out of memory, which is a very dandy improvement over simply crashing.
Digital Arts | Nicholas Bonsack | Read more...
Apple Tablet rumours reignite
November 17, 2009
What mythical product will simultaneously kill off the Kindle, iPod, Zune, iPod, Nintendo DS, and a whole slew of cheap netbooks? Oh, and during recharges, it'll save newspapers and magazines, reinvent TV viewing (and maybe deep-six the cable guys), and make mobile Web browsing a lot more enjoyable with a lot less finger dragging and pinching.
The answer, of course, is the mysterious and as-yet-unannounced Apple tablet, which reportedly will ship next year, according to ongoing rum ors from numerous sources. Steve Jobs himself is said to be spearheading the project.
Digital Arts | Jeff Bertolucci | Read more...
Transform your iPhone into a photo assistant
November 13, 2009
The App Store is overflowing with great tools that can turn a photographer's iPhone or iPod touch into a photo assistant (though it falls short in the heavy lifting department).
Taking pictures of children? Use the PandaCam app to make them smile. If you're working with models, bring up the iPoseU app for posing inspiration. Still-life photographers can take advantage of the A Level app to make sure their images are properly aligned.
Digital Arts | Heather Kelly | Read more...
Photoshop tip: How to use Global Light
November 11, 2009
Think of Global Light as a workshop light -- one of those caged light bulbs with the hook at the top that mechanics use.
While working on your car's engine, you'll typically hang the shop light somewhere under the hood to illuminate your work space. As you move around the engine compartment, you'll often relocate the hanging light. What happens then?
Digital Arts | Pariah S Burke | Read more...
How to: Directly set screen-sharing image quality
November 11, 2009
If you use OS X 10.5 or 10.6's built-in screen-sharing feature to work with other Macs on your network, you can control (somewhat) the quality of the image from the remote Mac by using the View > Adaptive Quality (or Full Quality) menu item. Adaptive quality adjusts the image based on the speed of the network connection, and should be the preferred choice in most situations.
But what if you want more direct control over the image quality? In early versions of 10.5, you could modify the screen sharing application to add an actual quality slider to the program. That trick no longer works, but Terminal can still give you more control over screen sharing quality, albeit with less flexibility than before.
Digital Arts | Rob Griffiths | Read more...
How to: Find your photos online
November 10, 2009
Recently, a friend of mine congratulated me for selling one of my wildlife photos. When I asked him what he meant, he sent me a link to a site that was prominently using a shot I had taken of some wolves. The problem? I had never given the site owners permission to use my photo, which they had 'borrowed' from my Flickr page.
I asked them to remove the photo, and they did -- but not everyone out there is so reasonable. You can watermark your photos to prevent this sort of thing from happening -- for more on how to prevent your work from being stolen in the first place see this feature on how to beat the copyright cheats. But is there any way to find your photos online to see they're being used inappropriately?
Digital Arts | Dave Johnson | Read more...
Life goes on
November 4, 2009
I recently returned from 3 months adoption leave. As a dad, 3 months away from the office is so rare in agency-land, but with a generous adoption policy as well as a sabbatical program, this is rather commonplace now at my agency and everyone knows to pitch in to cover and make it work. After all, the favour will no doubt be returned in time.
So I left with all the usual apprehensions any manager has for their team. Are they sufficiently staffed? Can they cover my responsibilities as well as their own? Have I overburdened them? Will things simply fall apart?
The Engine Room | Huey Nhan | Read more...
How to fix the Photoshop CS4/Snow Leopard 'multiple images' bug
October 29, 2009
Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) generally play well together, but there's been one bug that has been really annoying me -- almost on a hourly basis. Well, I've just found a solution and if it riles you like it does me, you're going to want to hear this.
Since installing Mac OS X 10.6, when I drag multiple images onto the Photoshop CS4 icon on the Dock, often only one will open. Occasionally they'll all open in multiple tabs like I want them to, but mostly I'll have to drag them individually - or hit Apple-O and navigate to where they are like I'm using Windows in the 90s again (shudder).
Design Language | Neil Bennett | Read more...
