John Nack on Adobe: FreeHand no longer updated; moving to Illustrator
After a long and storied career, Adobe (neé Altsys, Aldus, and Macromedia) FreeHand has reached the end of its development road. The application has not been revised since Macromedia released MX nearly four years ago, after which the company removed FreeHand from the Studio product line. Adobe has created an FAQ (PDF) that explains the details of the decision not to rev FreeHand, talks about Illustrator CS3 features added to make FreeHand users more comfortable, and more. Here are the highlights:
Adobe and FreeHand
Adobe does not plan to develop and deliver any new feature-based releases of FreeHand, or to deliver patches or updates for new operating systems or hardware. Adobe will, however, continue to sell FreeHand MX, and will offer technical and customer support according to our support policies.
FreeHand Upgrade Path
A special upgrade to Illustrator CS3 is available to all registered owners of FreeHand for $199 U.S. This upgrade is available worldwide through the Adobe Store and through the Channel. There is no direct FreeHand to Creative Suite 3 upgrade, but FreeHand owners who also own Adobe or Macromedia products that are eligible for upgrade to the Suite can use that path to move to the Suite.
Support for Customers Making the Move
A number of materials are available at no cost to help customers make the move from FreeHand to Illustrator. All of these materials can be found on the Switch to Illustrator pages on Adobe.com and on the Illustrator Design Center.
John Nack on Adobe: Guidance on migrating from ImageReady
The vast majority of what debuted in ImageReady (slicing, N-up optimization, multi-layer selection, variables, animation, frames to layers, etc.) has, by popular demand, been integrated into Photoshop. A few remaining things (image-based rollovers, Web content palette, SWF export) haven’t made the journey. Therefore Adobe tech support has created a document that details what is & isn’t in Photoshop CS3, noting where to find things & suggesting alternate ways to get certain functionality (e.g. rollovers).
John Nack on Adobe: CS3: Switching platforms, free upgrades
Q. Can I switch my product from Windows to Mac or vice-versa?
A. Yes. Just call Adobe Customer Service (800-833-6687 in the US; 020 7365 0733 in the UK; more country-by-country numbers here) for assistance. The process, as I understand it, involves signing an agreement stating that you’ve destroyed the product on one platform, and in return Adobe will send you the product for the other platform. According to the service folks, there may be a cost involved; verification of product is required; and restrictions apply.
Add more snap to your photos with this verve-filled postproduction toolkit.
Adobe Photoshop slices, dices, and in the hands of an expert, it can turn photographic water into wine – or so it would seem. True, Photoshop has been the catchall application for digital-photography enthusiasts and pros, but it was designed for editing individual images, not for processing, organizing, and outputting tens, hundreds, or thousands of photos at a time. Like Apple’s Aperture, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom fills this role, giving photographers a full box of tools to handle large-scale image adjustment, batch processing, photo management, and more.
Photoshop Lightroom review from MacLife
from Computer Arts
Inspired by the best of Japanese toy design, these characters are just waiting to entertain you. Bring them to life in suitable style with 3D World’s guide to the fundamentals of keyframe animation In this tutorial, we’ll be showing you how to bring to life two simple but effective characters inspired by the style of classic Japanese toy design – and in the process providing a guide to the fundamentals of keyframe animation.
The animation is only five seconds long, so we had to think carefully about how to communicate the moods of the characters. The short narrative sees our sad, blue character, RainBot, suddenly spotting a rainbow and being transformed into a happy, bouncy bot. A small black character, UndergroundTot, wants to know what’s happened and eagerly tries to copy RainBot’s bounces to find out. Over the next three pages, we will explore how to recreate UndergroundTot’s movements. His shape suggested that he’d move quite slowly, so that was a given; but by animating his antennae, we could also give him a suitably inquisitive look.
For the purposes of the walkthrough, we’re going to assume that you understand how keyframe animation works, and have some familiarity with the Maya interface, but nothing more. We’ll be showing you where to set keys, how to use the Graph Editor to manipulate animation curves, and how to set up secondary motion: the way that other parts of the character wag and jiggle as he bounces up and down. As a finale, we’ll explore how to animate RainBot’s antennae using Bend deformers, and how to keyframe shaders as a quick way of animating a character’s eyes. Scene files corresponding to each stage of the walkthrough can be found online: if you get stuck, load the next one in and start from there.
Click here to download the tutorial for free from Computer Arts (pdf)
CGSociety Technology Focus
by Paul Hellard
Jos Stam, Autodesk’s resident Principal Scientist, had three hours spare in a Paris airport after a plane home was delayed. With this time, he decided to nut out a problem that had been plaguing him for some time. He sat down with his laptop, a notepad and some brain cells, and invented yet another one of Maya’s new technologies, nCloth. I asked Jos to explain what led him to this epiphany in generating a new unified simulation framework.
Jos Stam talks about Maya 8.5, nCloth, Nucleus, and waiting for planes in airports.
Improve your photography with classical art.
When Photoshop entered the CS series it included a new tool called ‘Match Color.’ This tools was made so that you could match a series of photos to one another.But there is another thing you can do with ‘Match Color’ that is much cooler: You can match the colors in your photos to those in famous paintings.
I keep a directory of about 30 of my favorite paintings and anytime I need to do color correction, I just scan through them to find the one that gives the photo I’m working on the best look.
This technique can be used in other ways. For example, use the color from a scanned-in 1970’s Kodachrome snapshot to give a recent photo a vintage look. Need to make a picture more menacing? Use the color from a picture of a storm.
Keyframes: Frame One
On an otherwise forgettable day, a small thing happened. A co-worker stopped by my desk and gave me a new piece of software. “Hey, I heard you know about multimedia. Take a look at this software. Tell me what you think”, he said.The word ‘multimedia’ should date the conversation like red Reebok pumps and fanny packs. It was 1993 and I was working as a designer in the creative services department at Aldus. Revolutionary publishing wasn’t a blog or even a web page. It was a CD-ROM that came in the mail.
I installed the software and played with it all day and nearly all night. When my co-worker returned, I told him I wasn’t giving it back. Sorry. It’s mine. The software was CoSA After Effects 1.0 and I was hooked.
The next day I found out that Aldus would be aquiring CoSA and soon I became co-workers, friends, and literally neighbors with the team that created this amazing software.
The experience was powerful enough that my career pivoted around these events. I left Adobe (which had aquired Aldus) to take on a career in visual effects & motion graphics. In 1999, I returned to Adobe to be the user interface designer for After Effects and the lead user experience designer for the Adobe Production Studio.
I now find myself lucky enough to be the product manager for After Effects. And you know, I think I might just have the coolest job in the world. I’ve created this blog to reach out with news, tips, and thoughts on After Effects and related topics. To the community of After Effects users, I hope you’ll enjoy what I have to share here. Feel free to drop me a line and contribute your thoughts and suggestions. My name is Michael Coleman and my email address is mcoleman {at} adobe.com.
They say all big things start small. To that I would add: Every movie begins on frame one.
Welcome to Keyframes.
The Genesis Project: Wacom: Got Good Gear?
Wacom makes about the coolest piece of hardware you’re likely to find if you’re a pen and paper kind of designer. Wacom would state (and they’re probably right) that there is still a great need for intuitive tools that augment and tap into the physical abilities that some people have when drawing/designing. So, they’ve made a business out of patented technology that allows them to have an accurate and fast surface that you draw on. That’s right – draw on… To compare Wacom products to a typical computer input device would just be plain wrong – ‘I don’t need no stinkin’ mouse!’ Instead, it’s the closest thing to actually having a pen do what you want it to do in the digital domain.
Anyway, if you’re looking for a piece of hardware to connect you more intimately with some Adobe apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash or After Effects, this is on my personal picks list.
Looking Perfect, One Pixel at a Time – New York Times
Many problems, though, demand more dexterity, more sophisticated software and a deeper understanding of how a computer represents an image.
Removing the wrinkles from under the eyes requires outlining the area and using a blending filter that eliminates the ripples by replacing each pixel with an average of the surrounding pixel. While the averaging is done automatically, it takes a deft hand to outline the area and choose the correct amount of blending.
Many professionals turn to Adobe’s flagship product, Photoshop, and the aftermarket offering a range of plug-in enhancements. The newest version of the product, CS3, was just released and sells for around $700.
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