Creative Notes Tips, tricks, and news for creative professionals

First Look: Photoshop CS6 Beta is dark, swift, and content aware

Posted by Jackie Dove on

Adobe has announced, for the second time in its history, a free public beta of Photoshop. Photoshop CS6 will be available to try for the next few months as Adobe readies its Creative Suite of applications for launch alongside the brand new Creative Cloud online hub, targeted to creative pros. The Photoshop beta is available now on Adobe Labs. The new Photoshop version works only on 64-bit Mac systems, and no longer in 32-bit mode.

Various under-the-hood improvements promise to make life easier and protect long hours of labor intensive operations. The highest profile of these include Background Save and Auto Recovery, Preset Migration and Sharing, and the new Mercury Graphics Engine.

Simply selecting some program preferences lets Photoshop automatically save and recover your work in the event of a power interruption. When you upgraded from previous versions of Photoshop, you often lost painstakingly applied presets that automated many repetitive tasks. The new version lets you apply your presets, tools, and workspaces to the new upgrade. While the Mercury engine is familiar to users of Premiere Pro, Photoshop's new Mercury Graphics Engine is mostly a software-based implementation of multicore functionality.

The dark side

The changes in the new version of Photoshop are immediately apparent. The program has gone over to the dark side by default, opening to a sophisticated-looking dark gray interface. This is intended to complement themes of some of Adobe's other creative programs—specifically Lightroom 4, Premiere Pro, and After Effects.

See more like this:
creativepro,
photo editing,
photoshop

Software

Creative Suite 6 or Creative Cloud: Which one is best for you?

Posted by Jackie Dove on

Adobe has its head in the cloud and it wants you to, as well. That's because Adobe sees the cloud as the future—its primary delivery system for software, services, social networking, community, and ultimately, increased value to its customers.

The buzz around Creative Cloud, which began last fall, has gained momentum as its designated launch time approaches—within the first half, and before the summer of 2012, at a date yet to be announced. Meantime, Adobe has also confirmed that a new upgrade of its massive Creative Suite will also be released at the same time.

With the launch of Creative Suite 6 now on the horizon, Adobe is tying its major product line into its overall cloud strategy. Not only will Adobe CS6 be released simultaneously with the new Creative Cloud, it will constitute the main component of Creative Cloud.

With Adobe is gearing up for a fresh Creative Suite extravaganza, there’s an open question for all creatives: Stick with Creative Suite or take a chance on Creative Cloud?

See more like this:
creativepro,
photoshop,
photo editing

Software » Multimedia » Video Software

How to create an animated GIF from a video clip

Posted by Chris McVeigh on

Animated GIFs have been around for almost two decades, allowing users to create and share simple animations online. The file format has persevered despite its shortcomings (e.g., no sound), and in fact, it’s recently seen a resurgence in popularity. People have taken to converting short, often comical video clips into animated GIFs, which they then post to blogs and social networking sites.

There are a number of ways to create video GIFs using your Mac, including uploading a video clip to Gifninja.com or manually assembling an animation using Adobe Photoshop. However, the most efficient way to create a video GIF is with Patrick Roger’s GIFBrewery ($3, Mac App Store), which I'll use to demo the concept. Apps such as Total Video2Gif ($5, Mac App Store) can tackle the job as well, but with less finesse than GIFBrewery.

Step 1: Pick a video clip

Finding a video file to convert should be straightforward. You can choose an existing video file on your hard disk, or make a video yourself with your iPhone, iPad, or digital camera. Once you’ve chosen your video file, you’ll need to sift through it and find a short segment of video to convert to GIF. (There is no need to trim your video; in this step, you simply want to identify the clip that will be converted.)

A few recommendations:

See more like this:
creativepro

Software

How to give your artwork that grungy, weathered look

Posted by Chris McVeigh on

Clean, crisp artwork may sometimes be the artist's goal, but the pursuit of perfection can also lead to artwork that looks clinical, and perhaps even a bit corporate. Clients these days seem to favor a worn, even grungy look in which the art looks a bit roughed up, with subtle scratches, mottled patterns, or even paper fold lines. One way to produce is effect is by a process, known as distressing, which can add a surprising degree of character to your artwork.

Distressing can be done either with a textured image or by textured brushes, and I’ll show you how to do both using Adobe Photoshop CS5. (Note that the process is nearly identical with Photoshop CS4.)

Step 1: Prepare your file

Open an illustration or photo in Photoshop CS5. In order to prevent saving accidents and preserve your original file, choose File -> Save As and then save a new copy of the file somewhere convenient (such as the Desktop). Choose Window -> Layers to open the Layers panel, if it’s not already.

Now you’ll need to tidy up the file a bit:

Software

First Look: Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3 restores professional features; adds notable new ones

Posted by Gary Adcock on

The June 2011 release of Apple’s new Final Cut Pro X set off a firestorm that reverberated across the globe—at least in video circles. The hotly anticipated new version of Apple's flagship video software was unexpectedly accompanied by the immediate removal of the previous version—Final Cut Pro 7—along with the company's Final Cut Server and Final Cut Express apps, from retail distribution. That alone had longtime users jumping ship from the only nonlinear video editor many of them had ever used.

But that wasn't the only bad news. The reviews of the new app were almost universally critical. To longtime videographers who had built careers around Final Cut workflows, the new FCP X lacked the pro-level power features they considered essential.

A new environment without connectivity to broadcast monitoring and networked storage, without the ability to assign audio outputs, and without the ability to open archives of previous FCP 7 projects, caused the industry to respond with shock and outrage. Apple’s competitors meanwhile, rejoiced in vitriolic glee at the prospect of gaining back years of market share they had lost as a result of the FCP’s dominance.

Then something astonishing happened: Cupertino backed down. Apple sent its product managers out into the editing community to reassure video pros that it and FCP X were indeed committed to supporting the product's working professional base, and that Apple would soon restore multicam editing, broadcast monitoring and output, the ability to assign audio tracks in a specific order, and the ability to import and export to and from their favorite third-party applications for audio, color correction, and finishing—as well as connect to Xsan or other networked storage volumes.

Software » Video

Creative audio workarounds in iMovie for iOS

Posted by Jeff Carlson on

iMovie for iOS is an amazing video editor for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Its ability to work with audio, however, is quite limited—but the limitations aren’t impossible to overcome, especially with a little creativity. Here are a trio of issues and workarounds to improve the audio in your mobile movie projects.

Problem: The song list in iMovie’s Audio pane is tedious to navigate.

Each built-in project theme has its own custom background music, but you may want to pick something from your own music library. If your collection is sizable, it can take a while to sort through the songs, especially since any tracks that still contain Apple’s FairPlay DRM appear in gray text with “(Unavailable)” appended.

Expect a lot of scrolling in iMovie’s song list.

Also, when I’m editing in iMovie ’11 on the Mac, I frequently like to sort the song list by time so, for example, I can easily find a song that’s two minutes long.

Audio

Hands on with the DigiTech iPB-10 guitar effects pedalboard

Posted by James Galbraith on

DigiTech's iPB-10 is a programmable guitar effects pedalboard that uses your iPad or iPad 2 as an interface to select, arrange, edit, and configure 87 guitar effects pedals, 54 amps, and 26 speaker cabinets in innumerable ways.

The iPB-10 is not a toy and at $500, it’s not priced like one. It is sturdily built and weighs in at a hefty 11.5 pounds. Setting up the iPB-10 is easy, but there are a number of steps. First, you must download the free iPB-Nexus app to your iPad from the App Store. Next, check to see if the correct docking tray for your iPad is installed. The tray for the first generation iPad was in place when I opened my unit, but replacing it was simple. Push in two buttons that release the protective frame, lift it up, and remove two, easy-to-access, Phillips head screws. Swap in the new tray and replace the two screws. Then, plug the power supply to the iPB-10 into a wall outlet, connect the dock connector to the iPad, close the protective frame, and power up the pedalboard.

Using the app

After installing, powering up the iPB-10, and launching the iPB-Nexus app, a message popped up on the iPad's screen saying that I needed to install a firmware update. Updating requires connecting the iPB-10 to your Mac (or to a PC), downloading an updater program from the DigiTech website, and selecting your product. All available updates are then applied. The update took several minutes and I was warned that any custom presets and settings might be erased by the process. Since I hadn't started anything, I wasn't worried, but I could see how this could be a problem if you'd been working with the unit for a while.