News, news, news..

For those of you with a bit of time on your hands (or want to check out just how bad some people’s Photoshop skills are), check out PhotoshopDisasters.com.

Here you’ll find some really shoddy Photoshop work. So bad in fact that it’s really rather amusing…such as this Hungarian ad for Red Bull.

Red Bull: Gives You Nightmares

Comment: Red Bull in Hungary makes you wish you had never seen this image. Scrubbing your eyeballs doesn’t work, I tried.

EEEK!

Most of the posts seem to have been made by Cosmo7…but aside from a web mail form, there’s really no way to know who’s behind the site. The main intro says: “Have you seen a truly awful piece of Photoshop work? Clumsy manipulation, senseless comping, lazy cloning and thoughtless retouching are our bread and butter. And yes, deep down, we love Photoshop.”

Here’s another unforgivable disaster…

Zoo: Adolf Hitler Is A Babe And She’s Melting

Comment: Gemma Atkinson gets some rough treatment from this tawdry babeblog. It looks like her right hand is a flip of the left, or would have been if the artist hadn’t quietly given up. I have no idea what they were trying to remove, but the unfortunate shadow under her nose suggests a whiff of the third reich.

I guess there’s still room for schlock in the marketplace, but it would be useful for some of these “professionals” to take a Photoshop class…

Original post by Jeff Schewe

Mark Hamburg, founder of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and former architect of Photoshop is leaving Adobe for a post at Microsoft. Mark, who was the second engineer hired to work on Photoshop after Thomas Knoll, has been at Adobe for over 17 years. He joined Adobe in the fall of 1990–the year Photoshop 1.0 shipped.

He left the Photoshop team after Photoshop 7 shipped and spent time in Adobe’s Advanced Technology Group (ATG) where he worked on a “sandbox project” originally called PixelToy which was later renamed Shadowland. Adobe changed that name to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom when it was released as a public beta in January, 2006. See the PSN story The Shadowland/Lightroom Development Story for more info.

Since Mark has been a good friend and co-conspirator over the years, I decided to use some miles and fly out for his going away part at Adobe last week. Mark’s last day at Adobe was Wednesday, April 23, 2008.

Mark’s office was littered with boxes–it’s unclear if those were his boxes or left over from the recent move to 10 West. The Lightroom team was recently moved onto the same floor as the Photoshop team. Right: Mark explains that he needed to work on one more Lightroom 2.0 bug before going to the video conference with the Minnesota team, his last such conference.

Here we are in one of Adobe’s video conference rooms on the 8th floor. One the screen is the Adobe Minnesota office’s Frostbite Falls conference room. See this story about the Minnesota office on PSN titled A Visit to the Adobe Lightroom Engineers for an explanation of conference room naming.

The two teams, one in San Jose and the one in Minnesota reminisced about working with Mark. Some of the stories were funny, some poignant and some were melancholy–but all were good natured.

In an ironic twist, Minnesota actually had some pretty good wine while San Jose only had beer to toast with. I say ironic because most of the time the drink of choice would be reversed (since Mark and George are a bit wine snobbish).

I lucked out and got a Pilsner Urquell…

Mark and Kevin Conner (right) joke about “life with Mark”. Kevin stated his most memorable aspect of Mark’s career was his pure refusal to accept anything but the best. Mark joked that it was “never to late to change a feature”.

My main comment represented the general consensus of the alpha testers who have worked with Mark over the years; “Be careful what you wish for because you just may get it”–and Mark will make it completely different than you thought it would be.

The last goodbye from Minnesota wishing Mark well.

Mark’s last walk down the Adobe halls (on his way to his Adobe HR exit interview).

We walked out of 345 Park Avenue on the way to the Paragon restaurant where Mark’s going away party was to be held.

VP of Engineering for the Digital Imaging Group, Winston Hendrickson (left) and Kevin Connor, Senior Director of Product Management for the same group (right) hosted the party (and paid for the first two rounds–well, I think they paid for every round actually–there were a lot of rounds).

Here’s Kevin saying a few “words” about Mark’s tenure at Adobe…

…and Mark listening carefully.

Kevin presented Mark with a going away present. A 3D print made by Russell Brown.

On close inspection you can see it says “Mr. Microsoft”. But the 3D part actually shows more…

Here’s the 3D arrangement of image planes (below) showing the Mark is actually holding a sign saying Mr. Lightroom that turns into a sign saying Mr. Microsoft. With fire below of course.

Another parting gift was a guitar (I believe from a Photoshop World keynote or party) signed by the “Photoshop World Dream Team” instructors including Scott Kelby, Dave Cross ad others.

If you don’t know, Mark is a bit of a guitar buff (spending a lot more money on guitars than camera equipment).

Winston said a few words, claiming he will always go down as the guy who was Mark’s boss when Mark left Adobe.

Bryan Lamkin, former Senior VP of Adobe’s Creative Solutions Business Unit showed up to say a few words as well. Bryan had retired from Adobe in March of 2006 (see the PSN story)

Sean Parent (center in red: researcher at Adobe Systems and manager of the Adobe Software Technology Lab) recounted the time he had spent working with Mark on Photoshop, including the time he wrote a script on Mark’s computer to turn every iteration of the word Photoshop to be spelled PhotoShop (the intercap was a pet peeve of Hamburg’s).

Russell Brown also talked about the importance of Mark’s contributions to Photoshop.

Mark didn’t seem to mind all the attention.

But Mark’s son Gavin didn’t like so much attention–people with cameras…

Gavin decided to hide.

Gavin was pretty much done (he was hungry). Here is Ann, Mark’s wife getting ready to go to McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurant for a last supper.

Kevin was melancholic. Obviously Adobe would have preferred not losing Mark, but Mark had already “made his mark” at Adobe and was looking for a new challenge. Mark on the other hand characterized his departure as the scariest thing he had ever done (and mentioned something about RAIN).

At the restaurant, Winston points out that Mark was missing. Seems the long goodbyes took a long time. Finally Mark showed up.

Zalman Stern (from the Camera Raw team) pours some wine for Ann. I think George picked the wine (he usually does, otherwise he tends to complain about the wine).

Mark was eating oysters (left) while Gavin got his fav grilled cheese.

In a more serious moment, Winston wishes Mark well.

Mark’s now defunct Adobe ID–pretty well worn out.

The next morning, Mark and Ann were due to fly up to Seattle to start house hunting. The prospects were daunting–Mark noted that Seattle had just had snow the previous weekend (April 19/20) and that housing costs in Seattle weren’t a lot cheaper than San Jose. And there’s this thing called “RAIN” up there…

As for Mark leaving Adobe, I wasn’t surprised. Mark had talked about leaving the Lightroom team after 2.0 shipped for the last few months. Mark felt he had pretty much done what he wanted to at Adobe: 11+ years on Photoshop and almost 6 years on Lightroom. And while Mark is a brilliant coder and conceptually creative in the digital imaging/processing realm, he felt a strong pull to do something completely different. For somebody like Mark, there’s really very few options; a startup or going someplace where there are few if any limits. He was heavily recruited by Microsoft and given an unbeatable opportunity to work outside his normal digital imaging field. Mark was invited by David Vaskevitch to come lead a team working on the future of OS User Experience at Microsoft.

This is the way Mark phrased it:
Now, given that I find the current Windows experience really annoying and yet I keep having to deal with it, this opportunity was a little too interesting to turn down. I can’t imagine doing serious imaging anywhere other than Adobe, but, I needed to do something other than imaging for a while.

Mark is leaving the Lightroom team at a time where 2.0 is pretty much done except for the bugs (which Mark was literally working on his last day) and the future of Lightroom is really no longer in doubt. The team that Mark has helped assemble for Lightroom’s development and engineering will now actually be able to step out from underneath Mark’s rather large shadow and take Lightroom where it needs to go.

The raw processing pipeline that Lightroom uses is in the capable hands of Thomas Knoll, Zalman Stern and new hire Eric Chan (and a few others). So there will be no let down there. And Mark has long been gone (but not forgotten) when it comes to Photoshop (although the Photoshop team aways seems to get Mark to try to “explain his code” when come across something he wrote).

The one thing I noted was the gracious manner in which Mark left and the way everybody at Adobe honestly wished him well. Yes, there was a sense of melancholy and a degree of sadness at Mark’s leaving. But no bridges have been burned and Mark will always have a home at Adobe (hey, Adobe even has a Seattle office if the Microsoft thingie doesn’t work out).

Good luck Mark and best wishes. To Microsoft I’ll only say “be careful what you wish for, you just may get it”…

:~)

Original post by Jeff Schewe

Source: Time Magazine
Written by Josh Quittner

This might surprise the millions of fans trying to guess who’s the genius behind the hit Web series, You Suck At Photoshop, but no, it’s not the comedian Dane Cook. It’s not Will Ferrell, either.

So who is responsible for the success of the 10-part serial? The series features a hapless, angry, cuckolded, mad-Photoshop-skillz-enabled narrator named Donnie Hoyle and does three things amazingly well: it gives a terrific overview of some key Photoshop techniques; it has an oddly compelling narrative; and it’s wildly funny. It started in December 2007 and ended earlier this month when Donnie suddenly disappeared. Some eight million page views and two Webby Award 2008 nominations (Best Comedy and Best How-To Series) after it launched, a mystery remains: Who is Donnie Hoyle?

You’re probably assuming that the series is the work of a pro, a well-known stand-up comedian…

Wrong! You suck at guessing. (Most of you, anyway.) The auteurs are two ad agency refugees from Covington, Kentucky. And today, they’re unveiling a sequel to their magnum opus: Snatchbuckler’s Second Chance. You can watch the first episode here. Then come back, and I’ll tell you who’s behind it all…

Ready? Troy Hitch, 37, and Matt Bledsoe, 39 — the guys responsible for YSAP and its sequel — met a few years ago while producing a radio ad in Cincinnati, which is 10 minutes from Covington. Bledsoe was the ad’s creative director and Hitch, a polymath, was doing the voice-over (he’s also the voice of Donnie and a real Photoshop expert). They quickly became buddies, started writing funny bits together, and partnered up at a creative agency Hitch later started, Big Fat Institute.

Read entire article

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

File this under; EEEK!

The poster above is supposedly done by the Katholieke Universiteit Brussel (English: Catholic University of Brussels). I say “supposedly” because according to this Wikipedia entry, last year the university merged with a number of institutions in Brussels (see European University College Brussels), and now has a separate existence only as a legal fiction for accreditation and funding purposes.

But aside from that, do we really need to see an Obama/Clinton mashup? EEEK!

Original post by Jeff Schewe

Source: Telegraph
Written by Sophie Borland

Liz Hurley has risked the ire of children’s health campaigners by admitting she likes having her body airbrushed in photographs.

Liz Hurley likes ‘a certain amount of retouching’.

Miss Hurley, 42, who two years ago vowed never to be seen in a bikini, conceded she didn’t mind being made to look a “bit thinner and a bit younger” as she modelled her new swimwear range.

Launching her new Elizabeth Hurley Beach line, the model and businesswoman said: “I like a certain amount of retouching, like anybody.”

“We all like to get rid of spots and shadows under our eyes. I’ve always been quite particular – I don’t like my face to be retouched. Often, people will want to correct one’s face, and with me, they always want to change my nose and I’m like, ‘No, no, no, I can’t look like that. I don’t mind if you want to make me a bit thinner and a bit younger, but you can’t give me a different jaw or eyebrows.’

“But the vanity retouching – well, who wouldn’t?”

Her comments come as British magazine editors are considering a ban on the use of digitally-enhanced pictures over fears over fears that they are promoting unrealistic body images.

Read entire article

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

Recently listed on the Photoshop Support Center are the following issues;

Error “Could not initialize Photoshop because the file is locked” on Mac OS 10.5 (Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Elements 6)

Photoshop CS3, CS2, or Photoshop Elements fails to start after installing a scanner

Adobe Setup initializes then disappears in Creative Suite 3 or Photoshop CS3

Error “License has expired” when you start Adobe CS3 applications, including Design and Web Suites

Error “Installing Creative Suite 3 / Adobe Photoshop CS3 results in a conflict with Adobe Photoshop CS3″

Even small files take a long time to open or save (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign CS2 and CS3 on Mac OS)

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

New, Open Format Intended to Bring Predictability and Consistency to Digital Cinema Workflows

Press Release: SAN JOSE, Calif. and LAS VEGAS NV — April 14 , 2008 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that it plans to lead an initiative to define an industry-wide open file format for digital cinema files to streamline workflows and help ensure easy archiving and exchange. Adobe intends to leverage its successful Digital Negative Specification (DNG) file format as a foundation, and Adobe plans to work with a broad coalition of leading camera manufacturers, including Panavision, Silicon Imaging, Dalsa, Weisscam, and ARRI—along with software vendors, including Iridas and The Foundry, and codec provider CineForm—to define the requirements for an open, publicly documented file format that it plans to call CinemaDNG.

Adobe is currently working to develop the requirements of the CinemaDNG workflow and intends to subsequently publish a specification for the file format based on collaboration with companies throughout the industry.

“With the CinemaDNG initiative, Adobe is extending its leadership in developing open, interchangeable formats for digital still cameras into the realm of digital cinematography,” said Jim Guerard, vice president of Dynamic Media at Adobe. “By taking a proactive role and working collaboratively with leading digital cinema manufacturers, Adobe is helping to define an industry-standard approach that benefits the entire filmmaking ecosystem. Filmmakers will be able to adopt digital cinema cameras with confidence, and camera manufacturers will be able to provide specialized functionality while ensuring instant file format compatibility with existing workflows.”

Many filmmakers are foregoing film in favor of digital cinema cameras and workflows that offer improved creative flexibility, lower costs, and significantly faster turnaround times. However, those new workflows involve complex hardware and software, with projects passing through multiple vendors along the production pipeline. The proliferation of disparate, vendor-specific raw file formats has the potential to erode some of the advantages of digital cinema. By proactively leading the development of an open, public, and enduring standard that can be adopted throughout the production pipeline, Adobe and other companies through the CinemaDNG initiative are helping to solve an important, emerging workflow issue.

Advantages for Filmmakers
As a publicly documented and open file format, CinemaDNG would offer several advantages for filmmakers. They could avoid roadblocks caused by incompatibilities in workflows that involve multiple devices, vendors, and file formats. They could adopt digital cinema cameras while minimizing the risk that proprietary or camera-specific file formats would be unsupported in the future, because CinemaDNG would provide an open, durable, standard format that would be available for many years to come. Filmmakers could also rest assured that they have access to a robust archival standard for the new generation of raw-capable digital cinema cameras. CinemaDNG would also provide the foundation for an editing workflow that would allow filmmakers to use the highest quality source material.

Advantages for Manufacturers
For camera manufacturers and software developers, CinemaDNG is intended to help remove a key obstacle to the adoption of new products by providing reliable, instant compatibility with existing workflows. Manufacturers may be able to reduce development costs by eliminating the necessity to develop proprietary formats and conversion utilities. CinemaDNG is also planning to deliver support for proprietary metadata, helping manufacturers to differentiate their product offerings from competitors’.

“Experiencing a smoother, more streamlined workflow is, without exception, a good thing and open standards are a great way of accomplishing it,” said Bruno Nicoletti, chief technology officer at The Foundry, a leading visual effects software developer in London. “The Foundry supports Adobe’s plan for CinemaDNG, which will make the adoption of raw digital camera data much easier for everyone in our industry.”

“We are working hard on establishing a realistic and workable method of getting raw data from the camera to post,” said Marc Shipman-Mueller, product manager for Cameras & Lenses at ARRI, a top digital cinema camera manufacturer in Munich. “An industry wide standard for raw data can only help in this future oriented process that will provide multiple benefits for the users of raw data.”

About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information - anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com .

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

Wow, that’s a relief. I was getting a bit worried.

It seems that even Matt Drudge was reporting the story of the “naked woman in Dick Cheney’s sunglasses” but McClatchy exposes the real truth. It’s reported that the Office of the Vice President wasn’t amused.

“Clearly the picture shows a hand casting a rod,” grumbled spokeswoman Meagan Mitchell.

Now, if we can just get to the truth of that artificial heart…

Original post by Jeff Schewe

The WrestleMania banner on the side of the Lynx building in downtown Orlando shows wrestlers without their nipples. A Lynx bus still sports wrestlers with nipples. (GEORGE SKENE, ORLANDO SENTINEL / March 27, 2008)

Source: OrlandoSentinel.com
Written by Scott Maxwell

Anybody who’s ever seen a professional wrestler knows their bodies don’t look like most folks’. But the wrestlers featured on a massive sign in downtown Orlando look even more unusual.

They’re missing nipples.

Yep. John Cena, Triple H, Randy Orton and even Big Show. All nipple-less.

It’s rather unsettling.

And Ken-like.

Even more unsettling is the fact that government is partly responsible for the missing areolas on the banner that hangs on the side of the Lynx office building, facing Interstate 4, and promotes this weekend’s WrestleMania.

Mayor Buddy Dyer claimed to have the, um, skinny.

“Apparently there’s an ordinance that prohibits them from being displayed,” he said.

“For men’s nipples?” I replied, immediately becoming uncomfortable about discussing such a thing with Buddy.

He shrugged, saying, “It does seem a little overboard.”

It turns out, it was.

There is, in fact, no city law that bans the display of male chests. In fact, the exact same image can be spotted — with nipples aplenty — on Lynx buses.

Comparing the two pictures is like playing a disturbing game of “Spot the Differences.”

Banner detail.

Original image.

Read entire story

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

Adobe has released updates to the Photoshop Lightroom and Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in to correct for issues found in Lightroom 1.4 and Camera Raw 4.4. The Lightroom and Camera Raw teams apologize for any inconveniences caused by the issues presented in the initial updates.

The Lightroom 1.4.1 and Camera Raw 1.4.1 updates are available immediately as free downloads at http://www.adobe.com/downloads. Senior Photoshop Lightroom Product Manager, Tom Hogarty, has included a complete list of the corrections on his blog at http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal.

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff