Photoshop has grown and changed over the last two decades, becoming something new and unexpected. That’s great: it means new functionality and (in theory) better performance. But if, like my dad, you’ve been using the app from the beginning, when it was a tiny village that did one thing and did it well, you might be suspicious of all this change. Or at least wonder what it’s good for. Photoshop today seems basically feature complete, and totally unassailable. It's more than just the best professional image editing app: it's kind of the only professional image editing app. It’s the city that, to do your job, you have to live in.
The PC isn’t ready to die, it’s ready for a rebirth
Desktops sales have slowed because manufacturers have let their designs stagnate, but the need for a comfortable machine you can work on hasn’t gone away. Who will reinvent the PC and reap the rewards?
Every other week, there seems to be story about the PC dying. This week, it was because Intel is planning on exiting the motherboard business. The screwy thing is, I think the exact opposite is about to happen. Not only is the desktop not dead, it’s about to go through a resurgence. We’re just waiting for that visionary vendor who realizes that bigger is still better, and this Lemming-like agreement that the desktop is dead is holding people back. Here’s why.
I want to scream this from a mountain top. I hope, beyond hope, that Apple pulls it's head out of it's consumer driven ass and makes a great new PC. I need a new desktop like you would not believe.
Pocket Wizard update
A number of enhancements have been made to the MiniTT1 and FlexTT5’s HyperSync feature. These changes can improve the performance of HyperSync and make it easier to configure. This new method adjusts HyperSync timing in two separate places – on the transmitter and on the receiving ControlTL radio. The transmitting or on-camera MiniTT1 or FlexTT5 automatically adjusts HyperSync to compensate for changes made to shutter speed. Photographers can further refine HyperSync via the PocketWizard Utility.
New Pocket Wizard update 6.0for the MiniTT1 and FLexTT5
Inkling by wacom
To which I can only say.
Drag-and-drop on applet broken in Safari 5.1
So with the new Safari upgrade Apple broke Java on all browsers. This affects how the Danklife Client Area works as it breaks drag and drop functionality. If you run into this problem as well just hold down Command & Shift and you can drag the applet out of you browser window and then it will work.
I have just upgraded to Safari 5.1 and I notice that drag-and-drop from the Finder to my Java applet does not work anymore (as it is already the case with Firefox 4 and Google Chrome). Now Safari 5.1 acts as Google Chrome : instead of handling drag-and-drop, it displays the dropped file in a new window.My applet worked fine before upgrading Safari. I have also tested on Safari 5.1 on the Windows platform : drag-and-drop works perfectly.
This is very annoying because, until now, Safari was the only browser on Mac OS X that allowed drag-and-drop on an applet (if I except Firefox 3.6 - which is not the last version of Mozilla browser - and maybe less known browser...). Does anybody know if there is a workaround ?
Unfortunately this is a known issue with Plugin2, which has become the default applet plug-in for all browsers on Snow Leopard and Lion as of yesterday. We have not found NPAPI to have sufficient facilities for us to replicate Java's external drag-and-drop services, and are looking for other technical avenues to pursue.
As a workaround, you can detach the applet from the web page by holding down Cmd-Shift and dragging. The detached applet should respond correctly any DnD operations.
So there you go. You will have a floating Java window that looks like it's own Application.
High speed tests with sound triggers
Wanted to try out some high speed tests using a sound trigger to pop the strobes and these are the test files. Last one is a screen grab from 100% which shows that there is no blur at all going on in those drops. I was really wailing on the cymbal as well. Fun stuff.
Apple disregarding Pro Users?
My computer is getting a bit long in the tooth so I wanted to track down some reading about the direction Apple is taking regarding it's Pro Line of gear. It seems fairly obvious that the iOS devices is the direction the company is going and I have been getting closer to switching to a Windows system since the price point for the gear is waaaaay off once you get to the Mac Pro line versus what you can get in a Windows tower. I already will never buy another Apple monitor again since they are all glossy now so I think it's only a matter of time till I have to get a Windows machine for any kind of serious work. This forum has a nice 25 page long thread of speculation.
Is Apple still serious about the professional market? Mac Rumors
Two items of note on the front page alone:
"Jobs says Apple is a Mobile Device company now, and I guess he would know. "
"However some are speculating that by 2012 Apple will be dropping the Mac Pro."
CS5, holding the spacebar shortcut not working?
Blame Firefox... No shit.
I have a brand new imac intel i7 27" and have installed photoshop cs5, but the spacebar hand tool is not working. any ideas? the hand tool and all other tools work, just the shortcut key of holding the spacebar doesn't work."I've been having the same problem and by accident discovered that my spacebar short cut didn't work if I had my Firefox browser open. So if you are running Firefox by any chance while working in Photoshop CS5 - close it. I ran Safari instead and the hand tool works if that browser is open."
OMGWTFBBQ!!!!111111ELEVENTY!!!11
More on the facebook
For us it comes down to two things: fair choices and best intentions. In our view, Facebook doesn't do a good job in either department. Facebook gives you choices about how to manage your data, but they aren't fair choices, and while the onus is on the individual to manage these choices, Facebook makes it damn difficult for the average user to understand or manage this. We also don't think Facebook has much respect for you or your data, especially in the context of the future.
It's getting closer for me. The fact that I have the business and can sort of use that as a front to more people is what is keeping me there. But they really are being quite evil.
Very close to doing this
How to Permanently Delete a Facebook Account - wikiHow
Facebook normally allows users only to "deactivate" their accounts, leaving their information intact. This can simply be done by going to Facebook Home, Account, Account Settings and then Deactivate. But what if you want to permanently delete your account? Facebook does not publicise the method, we wonder why? Here's how:
Facebook has been getting very sketchy as of late. I am pretty close to killing off my account.
Downfall hit the nail
Hitler, as "Downfall producer" orders a DMCA takedown from Brad Templeton on Vimeo.
LOL, good stuff....
Puppet warp in CS5
Interesting to see how this works with high resolution files. Content Aware Scale introduces way to much artifacting so I have no faith in Content Aware Fill. This might be useful though.
On a side note, how long till we have a icon which denotes a picture as a Illustration versus and real Optical Photograph?
Print is dead, long live Print.
Popular Science+ – Blog – BERG
Working with the Popular Science team and their editorial has been wonderful, and we’ve been working together to re-imagine the form of magazines. Art direction for print is so much about composition. There are a 1,000 tiny tweaks to tune a page to get it to really sing. But what does layout mean when readers can make the text disappear, when the images move across one another, and the page itself changes shape as the iPad rotates?We discovered safe areas. We found little games to play with the reader, having them assemble infographics in the act of scrolling, and making pages that span multiple panes, only revealing themselves when the reader does a double-finger swipe to zoom across them.
Bad content will not work in this context. I think we may be able to merge what was great about old media, great art, design and well written content with the instant always on internet culture.Very interesting to see how this plays out.
Soon to be.
The iPad Launch: Can Steve Jobs Do It Again? - TIME
It is possible that the public will not fall on the iPad, as I did, like lions on an antelope. Perhaps they will find the apps and the iBooks too expensive. Maybe they will wait for more fully featured later models. But for me, my iPad is like a gun lobbyist's rifle: the only way you will take it from me is to prise it from my cold, dead hands. One melancholy thought occurs as my fingers glide and flow over the surface of this astonishing object: Douglas Adams is not alive to see the closest thing to his Hitchhiker's Guide that humankind has yet devised.Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1976935-4,00.html#ixzz0jsoyT6fS
As soon as you stop thinking of it as a computer, you kinda realize that this thing is gonna be awesome.
St. Francis Dam
Three minutes before midnight on March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam catastrophically failed. There were no eyewitnesses to the dam's collapse, but a motorcyclist named Ace Hopewell rode past the dam and reported feeling a rumbling and the sound of "crashing, falling blocks," after riding about a half-mile (800 m) upstream. He assumed this was either an earthquake or another one of the landslides common to the area, not realizing he was the last person to have seen the St. Francis Dam intact, and survive.
Dam keeper Harnischfeger and his family were, most likely, the first casualties caught in the floodwave, which was at least 125 ft (38 m) high when it hit their cottage in San Francisquito Canyon, approximately 1/4 mile (400 m) downstream from the dam. Forty-five minutes before the collapse, Hopewell, the motorcyclist, also reported seeing a light in the canyon below the dam—the dam itself did not have lights—suggesting Harnischfeger may have been inspecting the dam immediately prior to its failure. The body of Harnischfeger's wife was found fully clothed and wedged between two blocks of concrete near the broken base of the dam; their six-year-old son's body was found farther downstream, but Tony Harnischfeger's body was never found.
As the dam collapsed, twelve billion U.S. gallons (45 billion liters) of water surged down San Francisquito Canyon in a floodwave, demolishing the heavy concrete walls of Power Station Number Two (a hydroelectric power plant), and destroying everything else in its path. The flood traveled south down San Francisquito Canyon, flooding parts of present-day Valencia and Newhall. The deluge then turned west into the Santa Clara River bed, flooding the towns of Castaic Junction, Fillmore, and Bardsdale. The flood continued west through Santa Paula in Ventura County, emptying its victims and debris into the Pacific Ocean at Montalvo, 54 miles (87 km) from the reservoir and dam site. When it reached the ocean at 5:30 a.m., the flood was almost two miles (3 km) wide, traveling at a speed of 5 miles (8 km) per hour. Bodies of victims were recovered from the Pacific Ocean, some as far south as the Mexican border.
Was talking with the Chimney repair guy up here about this the other day. Pretty interesting story. Here is a NPR story about it The St. Francis Dam Disaster on NPR as well.
Adobe on Mac Gripes
Yes, I do hate to bag on software developers, but, Jesus. If I were one of Adobe’s Mac guys (and, obviously, if I had the resources and mandate to do so) I’d do any of four-ish things (And yes, I realize trying to do all of them at once is paradoxical and impossible. Pick one.):1. Start over. Not really exactly start over. But stop acting like these iterations around shuffling product lines and bolting on new bits of functionality is getting you anyplace good. Act like you’re inventing new apps for what people need today. For the OS people use today. Learn from the indies. To use a word that I’m allowed to invoke exactly quarterly: innovate. (See also: Lightroom) 2. Strip the shit out of everything. Cut down on cruft, chrome, gold plating, menu diarrhea, and all the other things that make Adobe apps feel like a carnival ride you’d NEVER put your kid on. Yes, be an auteur, but also be a mensch. Apply your own version of 80/20 rules to everywhere it applies. Viz: Does anyone use “Plastic Wrap” as much as “Unsharp Mask?” Okay. Then why are they on equivalent menu levels? Make it clear what’s really important but then (ala Quicksilver) also learn to bubble up what we each use the most.1 3. Stabilize. You know. The slow launches? The long saves? The crappy performance? The crashing? Yeah. Stop that. 4. Be nicer to us. Man, if you make software, you never want to be on my “Groan Pile.” That’s the apps that make me Groan as soon as I realize I have to launch them. MS Word is not only the President of Groan; it’s the 4-term FDR of Groan. But, Adobe makes some promising dark horse candidates for the next election cycle. Because, with Adobe apps, everything from installation through activation through re-activation through software updates through more re-re-reactivations through (HEY! more updates!) is like a giant rectal exam. That I paid for. Or maybe more like a weekly trip to the DMV where I’m confronted by a manic-depressive clerk who always thinks I’m lying about my age and eyesight. Swear to God, guys; I bought the fucking apps. See? And the updates? Wow. You should check out this new thing called “Sparkle.” It’s a Mac thing. Really catching on. Apps update and you don’t even have to go to the DMV every week to do it. Cherry. One (sometimes one of the extremely few) of the benefits of the annoyingly rabid Mac community is that we do talk to each other a lot, and we do absolutely have equivalents of pro wrestling’s faces and heels. Right now, Adobe is not regarded as a hero. No. Right now you’re the heavy guy from some country we don’t like who’s always with the folding chairs. Maybe you don’t want or need to be a hero to a bunch of portly men in Daring Fireball t-shirts. That’s understandable. And, in which case, yes, this is all beyond irrelevant. But, I’m assuming you want to do the right thing and that you want to reclaim your rightful place of honor within the community that, frankly, helped make you (yeah, I know you’re big competitors now, rah rah).
Holy crap, if you only knew how much Photoshop crashes on me everyday, you would weep. Everything I want to say is summed up in this link.
Snow Leopard, The Ars Review.
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: the Ars Technica review - Ars Technica
This was a risky strategy for Apple. After the rapid-fire updates of 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 followed by the riot of new features and APIs in 10.4 and 10.5, could Apple really get away with calling a "time out?" I imagine Bertrand was really sweating this announcement up on the stage at WWDC in front of a live audience of Mac developers. Their reaction? Spontaneous applause. There were even a few hoots and whistles.Many of these same developers applauded the "150+ new features" in Tiger and the "300 new features" in Leopard at past WWDCs. Now they were applauding zero new features for Snow Leopard? What explains this?
It probably helps to know that the "0 New Features" slide came at the end of an hour-long presentation detailing the major new APIs and technologies in Snow Leopard. It was also quickly followed by a back-pedaling ("well, there is one new feature...") slide describing the addition of Microsoft Exchange support. In isolation, "no new features" may seem to imply stagnation. In context, however, it served as a developer-friendly affirmation.
If you have the time this will sum up a lot of what is going on with the new OS X update, Snow Leopard. It's all about the back end and making things more stable. My take on the new upgrade?
Don't.
As always, wait till the first patch a month or two down the road before installing this on any workplace based machine. So far I have seem reports of it not working well with Xrite color monitors (Eye One Match), Wacom preferences, Quicken and others. Any Pref Pane app that is 32 bit will cause some problems as well.
Sadly, the pissing match with Adobe continues as Apple blames Adobe and Adobe blames Apple for the problems. People are reporting CS4 is unusable with Snow Leopard which I find amusing as CS4 is unusable in 10.5.8 anyways. The Open GL GPU bugs really rear their heads in Snow Leopard and I imagine the old Carbon Photoshop just hates everything about 64 bit and Cocoa (Yes, I just simplified the hell out of this fight. Not dipping my toes into that flame war thankyouverymuch.)
So this update is all about the back end and unseen revisions to how the OS actually works. It makes the programming for the Mac all the easier and programs work faster, provided they are programmed to take advantage of these new changes. Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) is the key to this if you want to read up. So the real benefits to Snow Leopard will start to show when programs start updating to take advantage of the changes (Possibly with "Snow Leopard Only" programs coming down the pipe feeding into the Mac "upgrade every two years or die" product cycle they are so fond of now a days).
Snide aside, could be a interesting update down the road especially if Adobe plays nice for once. But as I said before, wait on any updates to your work stations.
Maybe if I get some free time later in the week I'll do a post on how Adobe is the new Quark itching for some company to make a functioning Photoshop clone and clean their clock with it. Does anyone under 25 even know what Quark is? Under 30?
Twitter versus Blogging.
Who ever thought that blogging would now be thought of as "long form" writing? Thanks for making us bloggers feel all grown up Twitter, we all owe you a big thanks. Plus, you have siphoned off the diary bloggers who can now Tweet about their breakfast without the need for a web browser. Not that I have anything against Twitter or blogging about breakfast for that matter. I have been the "single link" poster boy here for awhile now as well, so there ya go. But the difference between these two are what is interesting to me. Twitter is a mobile app in that it is made to be written and read on cell phones and the like. Blogging to me is like being in the Library. I want to roam and find new stuff and generally wander. As a young lad I spent many a afternoon in the Public Library wandering the aisles looking for poetry and art books. The nature of the internet constantly reminds me of this and the good blogs being a signpost to more interesting stuff.
Twitter on the other hand is direct personal updates often with no connection to anything else. Often of a very personal twist. A blog can link to other articles to numerate on a point and all sorts of other goodness. The nature of a Tweet is just that, "TWEET!" and gone. Which is great, not my thing mind you, but I think it's great.
Of course the pink elephant about this discussion is Iran and what has happened there. The very mobile nature of Twitter and the tie into phone communications makes it impossible to just shut off. This has proven it as a great documentary medium for current events that would otherwise be lost. It has also been key in organizing protests and the like. This has proven Twitter transformative without a doubt and defines it as something "New That No One Expected".
See this Onion piece for example (and lulz):
"SAN FRANCISCO—Creator Jack Dorsey was shocked and saddened this week after learning that his social networking device, Twitter, was being used to disseminate pertinent and timely information during the recent civil unrest in Iran."
Which is all amazing and insane and people much smarter then me need to parse this information and tell us what it all means. But getting back to the Twitter versus Blogging point here, I think it could possibly be the application that makes using the internet "Old Fashioned".
"And then, oh mah gawd, he like, sat down at a desk and opened a browser?! I mean who does that?!"
Is the computer desk / laptop the nostalgic "Dad at the table with breakfast and a newspaper" for the early internet folk?
Of course, 95 percent of blogs are essentially abandoned and 10 percent of the Twitters users account for more than 90 percent of tweets. So this is all hot air anyways and I am going to make a egg sandwich.
I'll post pics on my Photolog after I get done updating my Facebook profile.
Pocket Wizards at 1/8000th of a sec!
So I received my Mini TTi and Flex TT5 yesterday and have been testing and testing and testing. Here are some pretty exciting results all shot at 1/8000th of a second! I am using Profoto ComPact-R 300r's with the Flex TT5 plugged into one of those with the Mini on top of a Canon 5d Mark 2 to trigger it all. Then just for kicks I put up my old Vivitar 283's with some old 1970's era Wein slaves in the mix as well. As you can see from the behind the fan shot, all are being captured at 1/8000th of a sec. Feel free to check out the files and see for yourself if you don't trust my screen shots. They are also on the Pixelrust Photostream as well if you want more data. There does seem to be a touch of fall off on the camera right side of the frame but nothing that is a deal breaker.
I was chatting with the esteemed and accomplished photographer Mike Powell (they won't know I'm lying Mike!) and his thoughts on it are that the gear I am using is crappy (thanks Mike you jerk!) which means the flash duration is way longer then with good gear. So the actual strobes themselves are probably at around 1/500-1/800th of a second in duration which makes it easier for the Pocket Wizards to be in the sweet spot during the shutter release at 1/8000th. Go go crappy gear!
Also, this fan is called "Finga Choppa!" for good reason. This little guy moves at a good clip.
Also, these are test pics man, cut me some slack on the crappy lighting!
Click on the pics to see them bigger.
[gallery link="file"]
Photomatrix HDR studies
I have been doing HDR work for some time now, but after this weekends studies I thought I post some of my thoughts on it. Here are some screen grabs of a side by side comparison between a 'conservative' use of Photomatrix and one done with hand masking. Photomatrix is on the left.
Notice how on the overall view you may be fooled into thinking this actually looks good? Notice all the artifacting in the views at 100%? To me, that is ugly as hell and not something I am into. Plus, the HDR appears smeary because of the slight breeze at the time. The plants move and the software can not cope with that. But this also brings up why I think HDR is such a blight upon Flickr. No one prints their HDR shots. They process the shit out of them in Photoshop and then post them with no intention of printing.
Of course, I could be dating myself by saying I print my work. For all I know, that is a very old timey concept.