Chris Dickman

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Photoshop

2013-05-16T16:28:54Z

So you thought you'd always be a member in good standing of the Photoshop Club, simply by upgrading every second or third version? With the recent announcement of mandatory Creative Cloud subscriptions to Photoshop and the other applications that... Now as you can imagine, many Photoshop users are not exactly excited at being forced to pay more than they have been accustomed to for the privilege of using what is admittedly the world's most advanced image editing application. Just head to Adobe's Photoshop or Creative Cloud Facebook pages to experience the heat. In fact, you have to feel some empathy for the employees that keep bravely posting tips and news, only to be blasted by irate users. To which comments Adobe has given up responding, the word from on high apparently being to circle the wagons and tough it out until the vocal minority give up and go away. But I'm beginning to wonder if in fact they will. Or if instead they'll settle in for a sustained public griping campaign, dousing cold water on each and every Adobe announcement singing the virtues of Creative Cloud.

Now don't get me wrong, I have been convinced of the merit of the subscription initiative since day one, for some BUT NOT ALL customers, and have been covering it on Graphics.com in an ongoing series of Creative Cloud Chronicles columns. But that was before Adobe stopped offering this as an alternative to its perpetually licensed software and decided that all users must walk together into the cold dawn of the subscription model — or else simply head elsewhere. I remain puzzled that the firm decided to go hard core on this and thereby generate such enmity from its customers. But I guess it all made sense on paper. Such initiatives, like New Coke, often do.

Will other developers step up and take advantage of the sense of loss being experienced by many Photoshop users? The developers of Pixelmator, a Mac image editing app, are pretty excited that their 2.2 version has seen more than 500,000 downloads since its release last week, although it's still far from being able to take on Photoshop. But for just $14.99, it costs less than a month's rental. Then there's Corel, which at one time positioned its Photo-Paint as a "Photoshop killer." Unfortunately it's tied up as part of the CorelDRAW suite, which while very capable is Windows only. That hasn't stopped Corel from putting up a page on its site providing special pricing for some of its graphics products, such as the excellent Painter and not so excellent PaintShop Pro, geared to unhappy Adobe CS4 and later customers. Perhaps Xara will come up with a similar offer.

My take? Adobe will respond to some of the concerns of its Photoshop customers, by creating new offers for photographers that include Photoshop and Lightroom, while also providing a way to open and work with files once subscriptions have ended. But will that be enough? The next few months will be interesting, to say the least. What's your position on Creative Cloud? I hope you'll take a moment to cast your vote in the poll currently running on the Graphics.com Facebook page. The last time I checked, the "I have no plans to subscribe" choice was ahead by a wide margin. But this can't last, can it?

Chris Dickman
Founding Editor, Graphics.com

]]>

The Apple iPhone Domino Effect

2013-04-24T08:55:40Z

Apple's transition to a post-Jobs era has to date been a difficult one, marked by a slowing of innovation, a tanking stock price and this week's recent quarterly report marked by the firm's first drop in profits in a... So let's hope Apple is just going through a rough patch and will soon dazzle us anew with innovative, unexpected product releases. In the interim, enjoy the clip below showing 10,000 iPhones employed as dominoes, created by animation studio Aatma Studio, as a metaphor for the NFC (Near Field Communications) technology which might, just might, be incorporated into the next iPhone. Now that would be innovative. And yes, those are CGI phones.

This clip has been viewed almost three million times since being posted on YouTube. Impressive, yes, but an earlier clip by Aatma speculating on possible iPhone 5 functionality has received a staggering 66 million views! Lesson? That piggy-backing top global brands with such clips can provide huge exposure for creative firms. So what are you doing to take advantage of this?

Chris Dickman
Founding Editor, Graphics.com

]]>

Why Don't We All Love Adobe?

2013-04-22T08:30:19Z

After all, designers and developers spend most of their time creating the experiences made possible by Adobe tools, which has been the case for a very long time. On a shelf a few feet away from me sits a... And then there was Adobe's pivotal work in releasing quality digital fonts in PostScript Type 1 format, as well as the ground-breaking Illustrator vector illustration application in 1987 and the introduction of the PDF document format in 1993, along with Acrobat and Reader — all huge contributions to digital publishing. But after that first decade came the Adobe that we know better today, a firm driven more by acquisitions than fundamental innovation, one that reacts more than leads. Aldus, GoLive, Macromedia and many more were all absorbed into the mother ship, with the result being the construction of a formidable array of applications for driving the creative industries. Adobe made a point of updating these applications regularly, often with significant new functionality, and eventually collected them together into first the Creative Suites and more recently Creative Cloud. So after all these years, why don't we love Adobe? Because there is increasingly a coldness, if not outright hostility, directed toward Adobe on the part of some members of its core constituency.

The thought struck me this morning as I waded through the vitriolic comments on Adobe Product Manager John Nack's blog, in response to a form the firm recently posted, ostensibly requesting feedback on its Creative Cloud subscription offering. Entitled Adobe Creative Cloud: tell us what you think, the form is clearly not asking what participants really think about Creative Cloud but rather trying to ascertain why they haven't yet subscribed and then harvest an email address to follow up with marketing material. Rather ineptly titled and executed, yes, but one would think not enough to send Adobe customers off on a rant. And yet that's just what they did. Clearly, these customers do not love, or in some cases even respect, Adobe.

My take on this lack of love is that the firm needs to do more to make a positive connection with exactly these folks, many who are deep, long-time users of Adobe applications. I say, create a new full-time position dedicated to this, if necessary, since it would seem such users are not being listened to. Everything points to Creative Cloud being a success, at least in the short term — five years from now, who knows? With that in mind, Adobe management would be wise to pay attention to the rumblings and not let such potential champions of their products fall by the wayside during the transition.

And as for you — do you love Adobe?

Chris Dickman
Founding Editor, Graphics.com

]]>

Attack of the Giant Drone Logos

2013-03-29T13:44:07Z

Well, in this case just one, but I'm sure more are on the way. The use of our little flying "friends" to promote goods and services became instantly clear when light-emitting drones were summoned to perform at last year's Cannes...

I've been surprised how long it's taken for drone-based publicity to catch on. But this was given a big boost last weekend, when young turks smarter and wealthier than us saw a huge opportunity in crafting a tie-in between Earth Hour and the upcoming release of Star Trek: Into Darkness. Never heard of Earth Hour? It's interesting to note that it was conceived in 2007 as a worldwide event organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and ad agency Leo Burnett. This year it was held on March 23, from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. during participants' local time, during which all but essential external lighting was to be extinguished, as a method to encourage positive action for the environment. And sell stuff.

Or so it would seem, since Saturday night the WWF was only too happy to set aside its principles and have the darkened London sky suddenly lit up by a squadron of light-emitting drones that together displayed... the WWF logo? A call to conservation of the world's diminishing resources? No, the iconic Star Trek federation shield, as a tie-in to the upcoming Star Trek: Into Darkness flick. Okay, the connection was clever, there's no denying it. But what a wasted opportunity to enhance the environmental message of the event.

Kellie Rollings from WWF later went on record saying that, "WWF is delighted that Paramount is supporting this year's Earth Hour event. Millions of people around the world take part in Earth Hour year on year and we're always looking for innovative ways to get our message out there." Right, Captain Kirk is such a well-known environmental advocate, I can see how that helped. Beyond the cash generated for the WWF, of course. The clip below provides a good idea of how things went that night.

The organizers all seemed pretty pleased with themselves, didn't they? Must feel good to hijack a global environmental event to flog a Hollywood movie. Personally, I find the exercise rather distasteful but I'm sure we'll be seeing much, much more of our little flying "friends" as they are deployed skyward, in the historical tradition of blimps and planes towing advertising messages. It's the 1950s all over again. Who needs digital when the skies are there for the taking, right?

Chris Dickman
Founding Editor, Graphics.com

]]>

I'm Buying an HTC One for the Wrong Reasons. And I Don't Care!

2013-02-21T09:07:13Z

I'll admit I'm not a very intense phone user. So until this morning my aging HTC Desire was everything I needed in a smartphone. Or so I thought. It worked reliably, felt good in the hand, had a simple... Those marketing devils at HTC really know how to turn the knife, beginning with the classic "Everything Your Phone Isn't," which immediately makes you begin to question your current state of satisfaction. The One doesn't just add a few features. No, it provides "everything" that your current phone is lacking. I had no idea what that might encompass but as soon as I saw the One's thin aluminum body, that alone was enough to make me immediately see the relatively thick, black casing of my Desire in a new way. And not a positive one.

But aethestics alone are never enough for me to upgrade. You'd know that if you could see some of the old, dusty junk that I keep alive years beyond what the manufacturers had in mind. For example, I still happily use a circa-2007 laptop running Vista. The damn thing won't die, so what can I do? But this was different. Take the dual frontal stereo speakers. I had never pondered the benefit of such a setup but now I could only look with contempt at the tiny excuse for a speaker on my current phone. Then there's that new version 5 of HTC's Android skin, Sense. I've always liked the simplicity of the Desire's interface but the new Sense seduces, thanks in part to the addition of BlinkFeed, which apparently displays feeds from social networks, news and the other usual suspects on the home screen (I'm still using Sense version 3. Why was I not informed?). Then there's double my current RAM, a faster processor, newer Android, updated Bluetooth (admittedly, I don't have any Bluetooth devices but maybe I should? What am I missing?), a bigger screen, higher resolution, and so on. Hard to resist that tidal wave of functionality.

But what really got my attention was the One's truly fresh take on what a phone camera should be. Bravely turning its back on the megapixel march of doom, the One instead employs a sensor constructed with UltraPixels, which apparently can capture up to twice as much light as your garden-variety pixel. Couple that with a large aperture and you have a camera that performs well in low-light situations, which is where I typically seem to shoot. What's even niftier is that each time you click, you automatically also create a full 1080p movie that begins before you clicked, since the camera is always recording and deleting video. The result being that each shot in the so-called Living Gallery then becomes a series of organized shots that you can poke through to pick the best version.

Well, that was the clincher. I suppose I'll be upgrading to the HTC One for all the wrong reasons. But when Desire fades, you have to move on.

Chris Dickman
Founding Editor, Graphics.com

]]>

The Darwinian Evolution of Photoshop

2013-02-18T14:58:44Z

Now well into its third decade of existence, Photoshop does indeed seem to incarnate Darwin's theory of evolutionary adaptation by natural selection, as put forward in On the Origin of the Species. And while Photoshop's rise to dominence has been... You can click here to view a larger version.

Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com

]]>

Paperman: When CGI Meets Hand-drawn Animation

2013-02-02T13:35:59Z

The days are long over when Disney rested on its animation laurels and for some years now it has been successful in releasing a stream of movies that for the most part have been well received at the box office.... A recent short displays this winning combo to perfection. I missed Wreck-It Ralph in the theaters but apparently the Paperman animation preceded it. Now up for an Academy Award, Disney has posted this online to build momentum and it has aleady been viewed 8 million times, so you could say it is a hit. While the storyline is the classic boy-gets-girl, more interesting is its animation technique, which involved Disney artists drawing over a stylized CGI layer. The effect is pleasing and it's one we'll no doubt encounter in future full-length movies. Along with similarly forgettable storylines.

Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com

]]>

Adobe 2012 Design Achievement Award Winners

2012-11-15T14:52:25Z

Adobe recently announced the winners of its 12th annual Adobe Design Achievement Awards (ADAA) during a ceremony held at the DesignThinkers 2012 conference in Toronto, Ontario. The event honored students and educators whose winning projects were selected from 41...
Ainslie Henderson
Edinburgh College of Art
Category: Animation
Work title: I AM TOM MOODY
Country: United Kingdom

Bram Monstrey
Howest (Hogeschool West-Vlaanderen)
Category: Application Development
Work title: Flowtube - Social Music Player
Country: Belgium

Vanessa Li
Sheridan College
Category: Browser Based Design
Work title: The Real Deal
Country: Canada

Mitchell Brien
Swinburne University of Technology
Category: Game Design
Work title: Orpheus
Country: Australia

Richelle Rogers
York University/Sheridan College Joint Program
Category: Packaging
Work title: Kreature Klips
Country: Canada

Yeni Kim
Royal College of Art
Category: Illustration
Work title: City Acrobat
Country: United Kingdom

James Coltman
University of the Arts London
Category: Installation Design
Work title: Butcher's Hook
Country: United Kingdom

Christopher Lavelle
Sunderland University
Category: Live Action
Work title: The Turn of the Screw
Country: United Kingdom

Kirsten Southwell
North Carolina State University
Category: Mobile Design
Work title: Rehearsal: an App for Practicing Musicians
Country: United States

Michael Rigley
California College of the Arts
Category: Motion Graphics
Work title: Network
Country: United States

Soyoung Lee
Hongik University
Category: Non-Browser Based Design
Work title: A Meeting with Hangeul
Country: South Korea

Pablo Jimenez
Academy of Art University
Category: Photography
Work title: A Good Sport
Country: United States

Jeff Han
Art Center College of Design
Category: Print Communications
Work title: COMA
Country: United States

Anna Zyrianova
St. Petersburg State Academy of Art and Design | St. Petersburg Institute of TV, Business and Design
Category: Innovation in Interactive Media in Education
Work title: Composition of Multimedia Presentation
Country: Russia

Hector Herrera
Ontario College of Art and Design
Category: Innovation in Motion and Video in Education
Work title: Typesetter Blues
Country: Canada

Kyuha Shim
Rhode Island School of Design
Category: Innovation in Traditional Media in Education
Work title: Form+Code at RISD
Country: United States

Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com

]]>

Adobe's Change the World Challenge

2012-11-08T09:34:35Z

Beyond simply developing tools that enable people to harness their creativity to communicate across print and digital media, Adobe has a long track record of championing the value of creativity itself. So it's no surprise that this week the... Adobe draws the conclusion from the data that there is a "growing belief that creativity is not just a personality trait, but a learned skill." Based on the study, 85% percent of respondents apparently agree that creative thinking is critical for problem solving in their career and 68% of respondents believe creativity is a skill that can be learned. Nearly three-quarters (71%) say creative thinking should be "taught as a class - like math or science." Creativity as a component for problem-solving in a corporate environment is, of course, an acceptable way to channel the anarchic nature of raw creativity into a more socially acceptable goal than simply creating a work of art. After all, we've seen the broad acceptance of design thinking as a way to approach a wide range of problem solving. However, Adobe makes a point of not using this term, perhaps because the word "design" remains scary to some people — "creativity" is probably less threatening.

So what's the point of releasing the study? Adobe already provides a Student and Teacher Edition for both its applications and Creative Cloud, and hats off to them for that. But it would clearly like to carve out a larger role as a provider of products and services in the domain of education. The study thus provides some justification for courses devoted to the development of creative problem-solving abilities. And I can't see any down side to that.

Which brings us to Adobe's Change the World Challenge, which embodies this fusion of creativity and problem solving. The contest, which is open to students aged 13 and older, as well as their teachers, asks entrants to submit a short video in which they "describe how they might make the world a better place if they had a chance." All very nice. But the Adobe angle is that participants must create their video with the firm's Presenter 8 Video Creator, a free trial of which is available. The prizes are quite substantial, with a top prize of $2000, $1000 for second and $500 for third. Judging from the clip below, the app would seem to be quite flexible, so it will be interesting to see what the contestants come up with. Full contest details are available on the Adobe site. It's worth noting that more than a week has gone by and no entries seem to have shown up in the gallery, so I'd say that if you're talented and eligible, this is worth a shot.

Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com

]]>

The 2012 animago Awards

2012-11-02T14:59:13Z

The animago awards have been spotlighting great work in the digital media production and visualisation domains since 1997. The 2012 awards were revealed last week, chosen from a field of 950 entries submitted from more than 50 countries. I've...
Best Short Film
The Chase
SPACE PATROL
France

Best Visualisation
Ending Overfishing
Uli Henrik Streckenbach (Burg Giebichenstein-Kunsthochschule Halle)
Germany

Best Advertising Production
L'Odyssée de Cartier
Quad Productions
France

Best Young Production
Omerta
Nicolas Loudot, Fabrice Fiteni, Arnaud Janvier, Gaspard Roche (Supinfocom Arles)
France

Best Stereoscopic 3D Production
Time Travel Vienna
FaberCourtial
Germany

Best Game Design
Mass Effect 3
Electronic Arts, BioWare
Germany

Best Character Animation
Sequoia Snail
Quad Productions
France

Best Interactive Production
BMW Individual iPad App (click the image above to view a clip of the app)
Effekt-Etage
Germany

Best Still
Katsumoto
Hasan Bajramovic
Bosnia - Herzegovina

Jury's Prize
The Centrifuge Brain Project
frameboX
Germany

Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com

]]>

Drawing with the Samsung Galaxy Note 2

2012-10-24T08:14:08Z

One tends to think of Apple devices as being the only ones suitable for drawing, but even a humble Android phone can get the job done, it would seem. The clip above is a speed drawing of a character...

Discovering Art the Art.sy Way

2012-10-10T11:32:29Z

The first time you visit the Art.sy site you might think that you've stumbled onto a modest labor of love, created by those with a passion for art. In this you'd be only half right, since it turns out... Yes, this does sound somewhat like the Google Art Project, launched last year to display high-resolution images of artwork from global partner museums and galleries, which now number 151. Visitors can use the site to tour the various institutions using Google's proven Street View technology or simply search by artist name to to view all the works by an artist in the entire collection, which now exceeds 32,000. The approach is useful enough for those with a taste for the classics, and the high-resolution nature of the photos makes it possible to zoom in to the point where you feel your nose is about to bump into the canvas, but for me there's still something missing.

I wasn't able to put my finger on what that missing element was until a recent visit to Art.sy, where it immediately become apparent — discovery. Just as one of the strengths of the Web is its ability to help us discover related content that we didn't know existed, Art.sy is attempting, with some success, a similar approach. It's worth pointing out that the two founders of the site provide a nice balance between the visual arts and technology. Carter Cleveland is a Princeton computer science grad with an art historian and collector father, while Sebastian Cwilich held an executive post with Christie's auction house. The two have managed to attract millions in venture backing, which they've invested in building an artificial intelligence-based system for categorizing artworks that serves as the discovery engine for the site.

Dubbed the The Art Genome Project, this tags works of art from a database of 800 characteristics, creating interesting connections between the 17,000 works currently on the site. In contrast with the Google Art Project, Art.sy sources its images from a broader network that includes private galleries and collections, with an emphasis on contemporary art. The business model of the site is to make a commission on sales, so in wandering through the works you'll find yourself moving from an Old Master to a recently-created work, based on criteria in the database. Some might find that jarring but it felt right to me, since it's the connection between works that really brings them to life. In fact, I'm already spending far too much time on the site, so it must be doing something right.

Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com

]]>

The Watery World of Photographer Markus Reugels

2012-10-07T15:04:59Z

German photographer Markus Reugels has been creating a striking series of high-speed photographs made with just water and ink — image manipulation with Photoshop plays no role in the process. I've shown some favorites here, with many more displayed...]]>

All images copyright Markus Reugels

Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com

Adobe Returns to its Typographic Roots

2012-09-26T09:36:50Z

Decades ago, Adobe was a champion of the use of professional-quality digital fonts, not only by creating its own library but by playing a key role in the development of font formats and fully supporting OpenType within its Creative... If you're not familiar with Typekit, the thing to know is that it's a provider of web fonts, launched way back in 2008, and while part of Creative Cloud, it remains accessible to non-subscribers. It's noted for offering fonts from respected foundries and designers and this week announced the addition of more than 1,000 fonts from Monotype, which will be "available as an upgrade to any Typekit plan." So that's good news about the fonts but the cost is unclear at this point. It's also not clear whether some or all of these fonts will be available to those using Typekit as part of their Creative Cloud subscription.

Typekit has always made available a free level of web font service but this required the creation of an account and a certain degree of technical fiddling to get things working. Part of the Adobe announcement was the launch of a new free service called Adobe Edge Web Fonts. This collection of 500 font families is made up from a selection from the familiar Google Web Fonts library, along with some additions, such as Adobe's open source Source Sans Pro and Source Code Pro. The latter, shown below, was part of the Edge announcement and looks to be a great choice for those needing a legible font when coding.

The announcement also indicated that Adobe will be working with Google to improve the quality of the fonts in both libraries, in such areas as hinting and performance. That's great but by now you may be asking yourself why you'd want to use Edge Web Fonts, rather than Google's collection. First up, the Edge Web Fonts are already integrated into Adobe Muse and Edge Code, with Edge Reflow soon to follow. So if you use any of the new Edge tools, the choice is simple enough. If not, there is some attraction to the idea of using the Typekit-hosted Edge Web Fonts, since Typekit has been doing this a long time, while hosting web fonts isn't really a priority for Google. Finally, the Edge fonts are very easy to implement— just add a line of JavaScript to your site and then use the font's font-family name in your CSS. So if you haven't yet given web fonts a try, this looks like a great place to get your feet wet.

It's good to see Adobe really pushing for widespread adoption of quality web fonts, in much the same way the firm once championed professional-grade digital fonts for print production. Let's hope they keep up the momentum until Arial, Verdana and all the rest of the banal default fonts currently used for displaying type on web pages are just a distant memory.

Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com

]]>

A Colorful Glimpse of the Past

2012-09-18T09:39:11Z

There's something undeniably compelling about the first works created in any medium, which in the domain of film go back to the turn of the 20th century. In this category I'd include the animations of Émile Cohl and the... Apparently Edward Turner patented the first color movie process in Britain in 1899, which involved exposing black-and-white film via red, green and blue filters, with the results being shown using a special projector. Turner shot several short films using the new process as a proof of concept, before his death in 1903 led to its disappearance. The National Media Museum in Bradford had inexplicably been sitting on these films for seventy-five years but thankfully recently completed a restoration project that allows them to be viewed digitally. As is often the case, the clip above is long on talk and short on showing the actual films but at least provides a colorful glimpse into another era, captured thanks to a long-forgotten technique. One can only wonder what Turner would have made of his invention, had he not died at age 29.

Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com

]]>