So one of the things I saw demo-ed at Adobe max earlier this week was the new Pixel Bender plug-in for  Photoshop CS4. The plug-in allows you to collect a bunch of very cool filter effects and access them through your Photoshop Filters menu. It's pretty dang cool as you can see from my groovy effect (CircleSplash) applied to this photo from Monday's keynote.

Read more » 

Just back from two days at Adobe MAX (I know MAX is a fake acronym and Deke and I toyed with making it "Max"; But I apparently got brainwashed by the giftbag, t-shirt, and MAX logo everywhere I turned for the past two days). Despite is unfortunately capitalized name, MAX  going on in beautifully useasonably warm San Francisco. The theme for the show this year: Connect. Discover. Inspire. MAX is traditionally a developer heavy show, but this year many of the sessions were geared toward design-types. The keynote featured Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch, and the First Lady of California, Maria Shriver. This shot does not feature either of them.

While Adobe MAX can be a bit developer-focused, I did find an enclave of design types at Russell Brown's ADIM@MAX (whatcha gonna do with those caps, Deke?) ADIM, as some of you may know, is Russell Brown's notorious Art Director's Invitational Master class where creativity and sometimes clothing run free. The ADIM@MAX version was a little tamer, only naked 3D dinosaurs running free, while the people remained clothed, perhaps in 3D dinosaur shirts they created during the two day class. The real benefit was of course that everyone in the seminar got a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS4 One-on-One, and the five people who accurately told me what object I am holding in the book (no, I am NOT that lady with the paddle at the end, sheesh!) won copies of Adobe InDesign One-on-One hot off the presses to-day. (I haven't even removed the shrinkwrap on my copy yet.) Read more » 

Hey all. We found out this week that there is a flaw on the DVD that contains the practice files for Photoshop CS4 One-on-One. (Thanks for letting us know, leachr and RobertJ!) On page 23 of the book, step 2, you are instructed to open the Balloon Thief folder.

Unfortunately, the folder's contents did not reproduce correctly on the DVD. (How's that for passive, non-accusatory language that doesn't place any blame?) Please download the zipped file you'll find here and use it to replace the existing subfolder in the Lesson 1 folder you got from the DVD. Your pilfered files will be restored, unlike poor Sammy's balloon.

Read more »