Photoshop

Some of you have been asking when my Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Advanced series is coming out. And I was all prepared to tell you this Friday. But lynda.com, being the incredible juggernaut of a video publisher that they are, began releasing it today. Chapters 13 thru 18 are up this very second. That's more than 100 movies, so it should keep you occupied for now. (If not, I totally suck.) The remaining Chapters 19 thru 24 will be up in 10 days.

Here's a live-action frame from the series. My director told me that, in retrospect, my spendy Elie Tahari shirt "looked a little disco." Let me assure you that this is one of the best shirts I've ever owned. It's a matte forest green with some excellent under-collar and inner-sleeve highlights. In the video, I don't look disco, I look positively wet. Meaning that I glisten. Like someone is misting me. Which is not necessarily what you want in a training video. But it's what you get.

That said, who gives a tinker's gumph what I look like? Read more » 

When the awesome fashion photographer, Photoshop expert, and bestselling author Martin Evening honored us by stopping by the dekeLounge, we seriously considered dropping the i from Martini in his honor. Instead, we decided to take advantage of having his considerable expertise and quiz him on what he thought was significant for photographers in Photoshop CS5. Our questions served two purposes, 1) it's always good to hear what savvy, notable photographers have to say, and 2) Martin is one of those guys that Deke thinks is smart enough to steal tips from. 

Of course, the exchange of ideas betwixt two luminaries is never really outright stealing. Here's where Deke and Martin took the "reciprocal exchange of ideas" this week, and why Martin thinks CS5 might be one of the best versions of Photoshop to come along for photographers: Read more » 

Did you ever do that thing where you blew off two weeks of college/university, and then you struggled to figure out a super-nonchalant/casual pathway back into the classroom? All the while thinking the professor was going to grind your butt to beanmeal? And then once you had the balls to reemerge, you did so with a vengeance? Well apparently me too. Only I didn't do it in school; I did it on my own website. And in response to a mild-mannered, cursing-and-swearing doodle post.

Thus, after a prolonged delinquency, I'm back. Which may be good or bad. I mean a deke.com without a Deke is, at the very least, harmless. A deke.com with a Deke results in this:

I really haven't the vaguest idea what is happening in this lightly pastoral tableau. I only drew it.

(And as any court reporter knows, you never question the scene. You merely capture it.) Read more » 

Holy yoiks, I've been remiss in my blogging duties. In fact (and it gives me no pleasure to confess this), I've been absent for more than two weeks. And from my own site! I mean, why even have a blog site if you're not going to blog? Fortunately, I've been careening my efforts in some positive if helter-skelter directions. That is to say, I've been working my mother-father ass off. Just take a look at my bicep!

Okay, so that's not actually mine. Nor is that my photograph. Or my tiger drawing. But I did put the two together using an array of Photoshop's most advanced features.

Here's the skinny on this and other news: Read more » 

In this week's Martini Hour, you'll meet Graphic Recording Artist Extraordinaire, Sunni Brown, who also happens to have joined the ranks of book authors this week. More on that in a minute, but in the meantime, during our conversation, I was reminded that I took this "video" of Sunni graphically recording the keynote at SXSW 2010. Really, it was a haphazard series of shots from the fourth row without a tripod, but I aligned them in Photoshop and then turned the layers into a Quicktime movie. It was actually my first, on-the-fly experiment with such things. Read more »