A big ding for Apple and Apple customers I think ’cause Flash already works on Google’s phone, Andriod, which is looking sweeter and sweeter with each passing day (:

Another program The Adobe Ones that embraces Social Computing is Adobe Wave. It’s awesome! Imagine, you’ve put together an evite.com invitation and you’re on deadline and don’t have the time to sit around humping the refresh button, waiting for that special someone to report whether or not they’re coming.

Thus, instead of visiting the website again and again, you can see a little icon appear at the bottom-left of your monitor relaying responses in real time. Very cool stuff!

I’m in the beautiful San Francisco, CA at the Abode MAX conference! w00t!! Aside from my pants getting some extra strawberry jam during breakfast (and well, that brief panic attack trying to findthe company laptop) I’m having a stellar freakin’ time! We’re about to learn a lot about Flex, Air, and my next A.C.E. challenge: Flash CS4!!

This show is going to freakin’ rock!!!

I just received an email from The Mothership (well, The Mothership’s PR people, A&R Edelman) and starting today, Adobe CS4 products are available. I’m doing backflips ’cause I’ve been focusing on Photoshop CS4, but lemme tell ya what, once the forklift drops off that Master Collection to me, I’m heading straight for Flash CS4! I was checkin’ out Lee Brimlow’s website (and have been for awhile, you should go visit www.gotoandlearn.com and say “hi!”) to see what’s cookin’, and I was extremely impressed with what they’ve done with Flash…almost to the point I’m jealous. Okay, yes, I am jealous. (Dude, they got the Bone tool with IK and stuff! Meh, we did get an extremely robust upgrade in the 3D area.) Anyway, go head over to www.adobe.com to get all the latest. Leave a comment and let me know what your favorite Adobe CS4 program or Premium package (Master, Production, Web, etc.) is and I’ll see if I can get a hold of the most popular one and give it away here! You’ll be tough out of luck if it’s Production Premium ’cause that’s my favorite (: (Just kidding!)

Man, all this after Apple’s announcement yesterday? How will our credit cards ever survive? Forget trying to get a credit limit increase until Congress, the Fed, and Treasury get their heads outta their third point of contact. ::sigh::

Well, everybody have a great Wednesday! I’m gonna head over to Adobe.com and see what’s going on with those other red-headed stepchild programs. Yes, that’s right, anything but Photoshop is fodder (:

~Issac

Sorry for the late post this week…no good excuses either, just the usual craziness (:

So I found this seriously cool new thing to do with Photoshop this morning. This really bright (assumably) former student of USC figured out how to use Photoshop and Java script to decode blurred words. I know, right?! That’s insane! Imagine the possibilities if you could figure this out! Conceivably, you could decode the blurry words on your nightly news and put all your paranoid delusions about the cops lookin’ for you to rest! (Oh wait, that’s probably my delusion…um, yeah….) The guy’s page is also VERY cool in itself, but I hope the guy doesn’t get sued by Steve Jobs over Dock-like appearance of his uhh…dock, at the bottom of his website: http://tlrobinson.net/. Here’s his blog post on Recovering Censored Text: http://tlrobinson.net/blog/?p=52.

Scott Kelby’s guest blogger this week is from one of my all-time favorite Photoshop Instructors, Ben Willmore. The guy’s just brilliant. But what makes him really special is his graciousness and willingness to share his knowledge without sounding superior. If you ever get the chance to check out one of his seminars, Do It! You’ll learn so much about Photoshop it’ll blow your mind. Anyway, check out his post on Scott’ blog here.

Photoshop doods and doodettes, do you have skillz? I mean, maaaaadddddd Photoshop skillz? Then your time to shine is almost here! Beginning November 1st, NAPP Headquarters will begin accepting entries for one of the most respected—and most coveted—awards in the digital arts industry, the Photoshop User Awards. Go check it out and get your submissions ready. Good luck to all!

John Nack, Product Manager for Adobe Photoshop, has finally won a battle he began many, many years ago. Check out the debut of the Adobe Configurator. Folks, Photoshop will never be the same after this (literally lol).

Well, I think that wraps is up. Y’all have a great week and a wonderful weekend. All the best!

I hope you’re doing well. It’s just another day in paradise here and, on top of that, today begins the first day of my family’s favorite month: October! Woohoo! Don’t worry, I’m not gonna go gushy over the whole leaves-changing thing ’cause I’m in Florida and for the most part we don’t see that stuff down here lol

So remember that post I did awhile back talkin’ about the print lab Mpix? Well, I sent them some of my images last Monday afternoon at around 3 pm. I ordered what I thought might be some of the most challenging pieces to put together: canvas wraps, standouts, foam backing, double-matte, and more with various print styles to boot. Besides the mind-blowing speed (I had the stuff in hand the next day by 2pm—less than 24 hours after I hit the order button), their cost-to-quality ratio is exceptional, and their staff are really patient and helpful. I finally found the right combination to display my HDR images. The Mpix folks have this metallic print process that is utterly freakin’ stunning—especially when used with High Dynamic Range imagery. Color reproduction is exceptional and they were able to retain all shadow and midtone detail (highlights were great too, but I’m all about sucking people in with shadow and midtone detail, so that’s where I place the most scrutiny). Even if you’re not shooting HDR and you just want a lab to print your stuff, or even see what your work would look like on canvas, give these guys a shot, hands down, they’re the best lab I’ve ever used and they’re really good people over there. If you are shooting HDR, go to www.mpix.com, upload your images, click the “Specialty Products” tab, select Standouts, and follow the instructions from there. Once you’re done with your adjustments, click the “Add to Cart” icon, go visit your cart and you’ll see your image. Click the thing that says “E-Surface” and select Metallic from the New Paper Type menu. I have no idea why I’ve busted out into a tutorial about a process that’s so intuitive, but I wanted to make sure you knew where to find the metallic print processing lol hopefully it’s just obvious that I’m really stoked about this discovery and I want to share it with y’all…they just do some awesome freakin’ work!

Man, I couldn’t be more thrilled to finally have a way to get my stuff printed and have it communicate the way the scene captured my imagination. Look at me…I’m gettin’ all misty <sniff> q: I wish you guys could see these things in person ’cause there’s just no way to relay the visual impact and how they command your attention. Maybe we can get something put together for Photoshop World…hmmm. Wow, okay I’m going on a bit too much here, but go check them out, you will not be disappointed if you do: Mpix.com.

In other news, my Chief, Scott Kelby, and his best-bud Terry White from Adobe Systems Inc., are almost done updating their most-recent co-authoring endeavor: The iPhone Book. To celebrate they started a photo contest! Check out that link and read how you could win a $500 Apple store gift card or many other prizes—there are lots of chances to win. While we’re talkin’ about Scott and Terry, you gotta check out their blogs. Scott’s “Photoshop Insider” blog will keep you in the loop on what’s going on worldwide in Photoshop and photography. And Terry White’s Tech Blog will keep you in the loop on all the latest technology—I visit his blog at least once a week to salivate over the latest and greatest in movie tech (and to snoop around for what’s going on at Adobe ’cause he’s really high on the food chain over there).

And finally—last but certainly not least—I just received my registration confirmation for the Adobe MAX Conference taking placing in San Francisco November 16–19. My buddy Chris Main, Managing Editor for Layers magazine (our sister publication…but don’t say that to Chris ’cause he gets miffed lol), and I are heading out to San Fran to get some killer CS4 training—plus we’ll get sneak peeks and the future of Adobe technologies while rubbing elbows with a unique cross-section of some of the brightest creative minds in various industries. As I’m sure you’re aware, I’m all about Photoshop, but the next victim on the stuff-I-need-to-learn-before-I-kick-the-bucket list is Flash. I’ve been studying ActionScript 3.0 here and there—watching quite a few of Lee Brimlow’s tutorials at www.gotoandlearn.com—while waiting for Flash CS4, which received some serious attention this upgrade cycle. So I’m gonna check out those classes and others on integrating Photoshop CS4 with Illustrator CS4 (admittedly, I’m a bit weirded out by Illustrator—not much patience for paths—so it’s time for me to get over it and learn more about that little vector-based freak lol).

Okay! That’s it folks, have an outstanding week! (:

I’m so excited I can barely type: Welcome to a SuperGoodCraziness Day! What the heck does that mean? It means The Adobe Ones just announce Creative Suite 4! Now wha’chu wanna do is RUN over to the Layers magazine website and get the scoop on all the latest features in ALL of the Creative Suite programs, like Flash, Fireworks, InDesign, Illustrator…each program has a special Learning Center devoted to it. Go ahead, click it: www.layersmagazine.com. I’m watching the new Flash features and I’m going Freakin’ Ga-Ga! Yes, I’m a Photoshop magazine editor by day, but by night, I’m learnin’ ActionScript 3 so I could take command (ha!) of Flash CS4 once it came out. I can’t wait to learn that stuff!

That’s your whole Creative Suite coverage, now we want to zoom in and get closer to Photoshop, don’t we? You will be utterly, freakin’ amazed at what Photoshop can do now. Your clients will be gushing once you take the reigns of this new beautiful beast and carry their brand into the next dimension—and we’ll show you how to do it. How? Well, remember how I was vacant for awhile and it seemed I fell off the planet? Well, I was exhausted because we were back here putting together a whole EXTRA issue of Photoshop User devoted exclusively to teaching NAPP members all about Photoshop CS4. Very cool stuff! We even put together a Learning Center for the public this time! But NAPP members have more in-depth training, and their very own Learning Center, which they can visit here. I’m totally guffawed folks, so I better beat feet.

Oh, and in other news, I finally submitted some of my work to the folks over at Mpix so I could try out their lab. I got an email this morning telling me that my stuff would be here TODAY. Now that is freakin’ fast! I ordered some stuff that I imagined would be the hardest to put together and the most challenging to reproduce—they didn’t miss a beat. I even got an email from one of the honchos over there, one Mr. John Rank, who complemented my stuff and said that the metallic print processing that they do really made the HDR shots pop. Perhaps this will be my lab for printing those hard-to-reach colors in HDR? Well, we’ll see when the shots get here this afternoon!

Well, I guess that’s it for now folks. Enjoy SuperGoodCraziness Day!!