Adobe Create Now Tour

Two weeks ago I attended Adobe's Create Now Tour event (use this if you're on a mobile device). I took notes and thought I'd share some of the things that caught my interest.

Behance/Prosite looked like it might be a decent option for a portfolio site. I've been ignoring it for some time, partly because the name "Behance" kinda bugged me.

Photoshop
The Image Size command has been updated. It does an amazing job of upsampling. The new algorithm is called Preserve Details. The default is Automatic, but who knows what that means?

The Patch tool was another that struck me as immediately very useful. Worth checking out.

Vector shapes can now have changes made to them (like rounding corners) live.

Camera Raw is now a plug-in. The should increase its usage, I imagine. You can have multiple radial filters, non-destructive healing, and lens correction.

You can copy the CSS from a type layer or folder. You can also generate Edge Reflow projects.

And I almost (did) forgot the Generator plugin. I used it later the same day after hearing about it. Perfect for generating images of multiple sizes (like when you're doing iOS icon work).

Illustrator
You can now paint with raster images. The guys on stage were pretty excited about this, but it seemed more like a feature for demoing. Reminded me of Painter's "image hose".

The most exciting enhancement was the Touch Type tool. You can alter individual letters without breaking the text apart. Rotate, scale, etc. How many decades have I waited for that? (I started with Illustrator 1 in 1987).

InDesign
The guys said something interesting about the dark interfaces with the Adobe apps, that dark means the app has been completely re-written. InDesign now has a dark UI. It is 64-bit, does background processing.

I liked the new smarter search for fonts and the ability to favorite fonts.

There is a feature for generating QR codes.

You can also output as an app for iPad. That looked interesting in the demo, but I wonder what the real world experience is. App development is not trivial and performance is key.

Edge Reflow
This is a tool for creating CSS. They showed creating a page from an open PSD. It also support CSS regions. An interesting menu was for "shiney" new features to use that are on the bleeding edge.

Muse
Muse is for creating small HTML sites without coding. It looked pretty decent. They played up the similarities to InDesign. TypeKit is built-in with access to 400+ fonts. It does not support responsive design, but it does make it easy to create different sized versions of a site.

Edge Animate
This tool has been percolating for a couple years now. It becomes more Flash-like all the time. Now it has symbols. You can bring the .OAM package into InDesign.

Kuler
They have a Kuler iPhone app, which reminds me I should download it. It was very cool (no pun intended) when they took a picture and got a color set from it. It also has Idea integration (Idea is a very nice vector iPad drawing app).

A Blender Quickstart is my first Udemy course (my 8th Blender course). It is available for free. This course is a quick tour of many Blender features, it is in real-time (only about 1.5 hours). It is not long on explanation, but it will give you an introduction to:

• Modeling
• UV unwrapping
• Texturing
• Rigging
• Animating
• Rendering

All done in the form of a project. From scratch you'll build and animate a pencil. I hope you enjoy it.

CBUG Meetup

Join us:

Colorado Blender User Group meetup.
Oct 30th, 6:30-8pm.
Fika Coffeehouse in Parker.

https://www.facebook.com/events/590684804312404/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming&source=1

Four Rules for Recruiters

I have four rules for recruiters, usually (but not always) I delete a recruiter email immediately if they violate any one.

1. Address me by name (many recruiters do not bother such a simple courtesy).
2. Talk to me about the position (many recruiters say in their first contact "do you or someone you know..")
3. The position offered is actually inline with my current skill-set.
4. Recruiter is respectful in each contact.

Simple, aren't they? You'd be surprised at how few can meet this criteria. 

JSFL Rocks

I've always loved being able to automate repetitive tasks. Whether using AppleScript with Quark or Lingo with Director in the 1990s, to shell scripting Solaris and OSX, Illustrator with JavaScript, or Python with Blender.

For some reason, I've neglected JSFL with Flash (JavaScript automation for Flash Professional). It's been in the software since 2004. Recently I started looking into it, given the amount of documentation on the subject I think I know why I waited, but now I wish I didn't. The thrill of being able to type a few lines of code to save you time and drudgery is addictive when it hits.

I just had a small but practical real world use of my newfound JSFL skills on a FLA I am building. I'd created 9 symbols and set there base class to flash.display.Sprite as I made each one. After the fact, I decided that the 9 symbols that I'd made sprites should really be flash.display.MovieClip. In less time than it'd take to open up each one's property dialog and reassign its base class, I was able to type run the following in my script:

function changeBase(){
for each( var i in fl.getDocumentDOM().library.items){
i.linkageBaseClass = "flash.display.MovieClip";
}
}
changeBase();

If you've never tried JSFL before, here are some simple steps to get started.

1. Create a text document with the JSFL extension.
2. Add your code.
3. From Flash, select Commands -> Run Command...
4. Find your JSFL file (from step 1)

Start simple with a file like this, hello.jsfl:

alert("Hello, world!");

Then wrap it in a function:

function hello(){

alert("Hello, world!");

}

hello();

The code outside the function is what actually executes. This makes it easy to add additional functions and test. Eventually, you can create a gui for your code in Flash and create your own tools that appear under Window -> Other Panels, but that's a post for another day. In the meantime, here is some more info from Adobe's site as well as a PDF reference.

iPad Art

I finally have my own iPad and I broke it in with a first for me, a sketch entirely created on an iPad. The sketch features the star of four of my Blender training courses.

I did the initial line work in Adobe Ideas, then brought it into ArtRage for some painting, finally I imported that into Photoshop Express to do some adjustments. Drawing and painting with your finger takes some getting used to, but it can be fun.

Astra Itinera on Facebook

I have a Facebook page for my game Astra Itinera. Check it out for the latest news and tips. Note: You do not have to be a member of Facebook to browse the page.