dekeBlog

This week's visit to the dekeLounge comes with party favors. Yes, dekeOphiliacs, in addition to spending an hour with the man---shoes off and drinks in hand---you get to go home with a little token of Deke's affection, his handy dekeKeys shortcut file.

Haven't you ever thought it would be great if someone would automagically make your Photoshop shortcuts make more sense and serve the commands that you use most often? For instance, who needs Cmd-Shift-L (Ctrl+Shift+L) to control something as seldom-used as Auto-Levels? Wouldn't it be so much better applied to, say, creating a Levels adjustment layer? The dekeKeys file is chock full of sensible remapping of the Photoshop keyboard shortcuts that is guaranteed to save you time, effort, and brain cell storage.

Here's how it works: Read more » 

Hello deKats and deKittins, coming to you from a very relaxed place this week. I have no idea why. I guess it's just because it's me and my good buddy Deke, in a show where Deke does what Deke does best, go all-nerdy on some obscure issue related to graphics. This week it's trapping, that technique of building in a buffer zone in a CMYK print that's there just in case (inevitably) that the plate registration doesn't quite line up. And it's a good thing one of us is relaxed because you know how this kind of stuff gets Deke going.

But as (ahem) much as that sounds like print-nerd geekery, it actually turns out to be a very informative discussion. We cover print methods, color separation, and how you get what you pay for. We've had such exhilarating conversations with notable renegades lately, on what's ahead for Photoshop and Lightroom, and the future, and and living on the moon. I gotta tell you though, it's pretty nice to discuss old school craftsmanship with the man. Deke that is. Read more » 

You may know Russell Preston Brown as that "Adobe guy" (as Steve Jobs once dismissed him) who either: 1) brought Thomas Knoll and Adobe together to create the product we now know as Photoshop or 2) wears silly wigs. He is, of course, both: serious thinker and blithering goofball. Which is to say, he's one of us: A creative thinker and a child at heart.

It's been a couple of weeks since this happened, but on February 18---at an internal Adobe/NAPP event celebrating the 20th anniversary of Photoshop, which you may remember from a recent Martini Hour---Russell proffered one of the best examples of digital-imaging performance art I've seen. Read more » 

In the words of Photoshop PM John Nack, "We swear because we care." If we weren't using Photoshop everyday, reveling in its amazing almost magical powers, we wouldn't notice all those little annoying things that make our work just a teeny bit irritating. Or a lot irritating if we have to repeat certain activities often. Regular loungers know that Deke and I even have a recurring segment of Martini Hour dedicated to our "pet peeves," in which we discuss those behaviors that just seem inexplicable or unneccesarily arduous to us. Well, it looks like we may have a little less fodder for that particular segment in the future.

In this week's show, we have a delightful time with our old (younger than us) friends from Adobe, John Nack and Bryan O'Neill Hughes, who share with us the "Just Do It" list of everyday requests from users that they're working on for potential future (code: next) versions of Photoshop. The idea here is that while they're making sure Photoshop keeps up with cutting edge software possibilities, they also take some time to go back and fix smallish if long-standing irritations and work on suggestions that come from experienced users of the product. 

Here are some of the JDI improvements you may see in the not-so-distant Photohsop future:  Read more » 

What does it take to get invited back to the 'lounge in short order? Well, we invited Tom Hogarty, Adobe Project Manager of Lightroom, back because a) he knows how to order a martini, and b) he knows a thing or two about a cool application that you can download yourself and check out. We talked with Tom a few weeks ago about Lightroom, Camera Raw, and DNG, but this week, we quiz him directly about some of the new features inside LR 3 beta (which, by the way, you can download and test drive for yourself here).

And Tom, that suave gin-martini-sipping guy he is, deftly navigates us through the new features and improvements: Read more »