Adobe TV has a photography channel

Have you looked at Adobe TV yet? This is a great resource for video tutorials if you want to learn more about Adobe’s digital imaging products. There is a good combination of programs including content from Lynda.com, Adobe, Software Cinema, X-Train, Peachpit, and more. Some of the people presenting or being highlighted include Julieanne Kost, George Jardine, Russell Brown, Sarah Silver, Bert Monroy, and Ben Wilmore to name a few.

My blog 2.0

This blog is having a bit of a facelift today. Until now it has been focused on providing useful information on how to learn many of Adobe’s creative products. That focus is about to become finer. From now on, I’ll mostly be giving you information on great learning resources for our digital imaging products (Photoshop, Lightroom, Photoshop Express). I’ll probably throw in a post or two about Illustrator here and there since so many people use Photoshop and Illustrator together for their illustration work. I will keep the old posts archived since some of my old posts are still very popular. For today, I’d like to share a link to a really interesting article I read in yesterday’s New York Times. Virginia Heffernan discusses the effect that Flickr has had on the art of photography.

Lightroom 2.0 beta launches

Lightroom 2.0 beta launches
Are you ready for the next generation of Lightroom? Here it comes! How do you get it? Go to AdobeLabs.

Who is eligible for the Lightroom 2.0 beta? All Lightroom 1.0 customers. Lightroom 1.0 customers can download and install Lightroom 2.0 beta for use throughout the beta program. What about customers new to Lightroom? Anyone can download the Lightroom 2.0 beta and try it for 30 days. And here’s something that you rarely get with beta software: video tutorials! Lynda.com will have Lightroom 2.0 beta video tutorials so you can learn how to use the new features.

You can get a list of the new features on the Lightroom team blog.

Funny Photoshop; Photoshop Express

Photo by Charlie Cohen

Funny Photoshop Tutorials
Can you learn while laughing? Of course! Humor is a very effective teaching tool, and the folks at MyDamnChannel.com know it. If you aren’t offended by a bit of crass humor and foul language, you can learn some good stuff from “Donnie Hoyle” in his “You Suck at Photoshop” series of videos. I highly recommend them.

Photoshop Express launches
Want to do some quick online editing and share your photos? Check out Photoshop Express. You certainly don’t have all the functionality that you get in Photoshop, but it is pretty handy for posting snapshots for friends and family. Have a peek at two different albums that I created. I processed the images in Lightroom and then exported them as jpgs before uploading them to Photoshop Express. To download a free chapter of a new book on Photoshop Express, go to the Peachpit Press site. You can also find out what Matt Kloskowski’s favorite Photoshop Express features are. If you want to learn from videos, NAPP has 19 video tutorials to help you learn to use Photoshop Express.

Preview options and selecting objects in Illustrator

My brother-in-law sent me an Illustrator file the other day with a plea to help him delete an object that he couldn’t figure out how to get rid of. It was visible, but he could not select it because it was stacked beneath other objects in the file. Every time he would click on it, the uppermost object would highlight. There are a couple of ways he could have gotten rid of the unwanted object.

First, look in the Layers palette. If you see the object there, you can select it by clicking the blank area to the right of the target circles. Clicking there selects all objects on that layer. This is a good way to select objects that are “buried” under other objects. Think of Illustrator files like piles of painted acetate or clear film. If you stack them on top of each other, even though you can see through parts of them, you may still have trouble grabbing the one on the bottom. Using the Layers palette can help with this problem. But if you have too many layers or objects, and you still cannot select that object, try my second method.

Clicking the Selection area in the Layers palette selects all objects on that layer.

The second method for selecting layered objects is to change the preview mode. Once you are viewing your image in Outline mode, you should be able to select that object. For a good explanation of the different previewing options, see this post on the DesignGeek E-Zine by Anne-Marie Concepcion. As I read her article, I was wishing it had illustrations, so I made some to accompany the text. The illustrations below go with the three different situations she describes. Enjoy!

Choose Window > New Window and display both side by side. Then choose View > Outline to view one window in Outline mode next to the one in Preview mode.

Choose Window > Navigator to display the Navigator palette. Enlarge the view in the palette by expanding the window size from the bottom right corner. Note that the red rectangle in the Navigator palette corresponds to the section of the illustration visible in the main window. Choose View > Outline to view the illustration in outline mode.

Display the Layers palette and Command-click (Mac OS) or Ctrl-click (Windows) the eye icon for the layer to toggle between Preview and Outline modes.

Sharpening and Smart Filters

Controlling sharpness in an image (or specific areas of an image) is extremely important. One of my favorite bloggers, Veerle, has a new tutorial for people who want to try out sharpening with the Smart Filter feature in Photoshop CS3. It is simple and clearly written. If you haven’t tried out Smart Filters, this is a good introduction to it. For other tutorials on this topic, look at How to Apply a Smart Filter in Photoshop CS3 by Steve Patterson. Al Ward gives you Adobe Photoshop CS3: A Filter-Freak’s Dream for a more involved sharpening effect. If you prefer learning from a video tutorial, try watching Michael Ninness’ tutorial called, “Applying Smart Filters.” Matt Kloskowski has some cool tips on using Smart Filters on his Photoshop Killer Tips site. Check out his Dragging Smart Filters.

Three Fantastic illustrators

If you haven’t looked at the Gallery on the Adobe Design Center yet, you should check it out. It is full of great work by designers, photographers, illustrators, and animators. The latest entries are quite inspirational. Three talented women, from three different continents, show their stuff. Illustrator Anastasia Gubar, aka LimKis, is a young illustrator from Russia. Canadian Christiane Beauregarde is an illustrator and animator who has made the transition from traditional media to digital tools. Singapore-based designer and illustrator Lim Si Ping combines illustration, photography, and handwork to create her collage-style illustrations.

If you have a suggestion of an artist that belongs in the Adobe Design Center Gallery, you can add your suggestions to the Submit to Our Gallery page of this blog.

New Lightroom Help available

Finally! A project I’ve been working on for several months is live and ready for you to look at. The Learning Resources group at Adobe has been working on several different experiments pertaining to the idea of community help. The Lightroom LiveDocs Help is one of those experiments. It has been converted to a wiki to allow users to not only comment, but to add content as well. The wiki is moderated by experts from both outside, and inside Adobe. You’ll find all the basic Help pages along with the “Learn More” pages. The Learn More pages are aggregated lists of great tutorials, videos, and other resources for Lightroom users and digital photographers. All the list items have been vetted by our experts. I hope you find it useful.

Brushes: a real time-saver in Photoshop and Illustrator

Have you used brushes yet in either Illustrator or Photoshop? You need to try this! They aren’t especially new, but they are very handy and can save you loads of time. I have collected up some tutorials for you to learn not only how to use brushes, but also where to get some really great brushes online. Most of them are free to download. I’m warning you, once you start using them, it can become highly addictive! Your spouse or partner may begin to call himself, “Photoshop Widower”, as the husband of a friend of mine recently signed his email.

For Photoshop look at this tutorial:

• Paint with the brush tool or Pencil tool

Then look at our collection of Photoshop brushes links:

• Photoshop brushes collection

For Illustrator look at these tutorials:

• Brushes in Illustrator
• Add realism with custom Pattern brushes
• Creating calligraphic brushes in Illustrator

Then look at our collection of Illustrator brushes links:

• Illustrator brushes collection

Hey, I’ll not be posting again until after the new year. I’m wishing you all a happy and safe holiday season.

New Lightroom Resources

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been out of the country. (See one of the images I took on my trip to Romania and Austria at the top of this post.) While I was gone, Peachpit Press has been very busy on their new Photoshop Lightroom Resource Center. Here you will find some excellent tutorials, videos, and book excerpts from the likes of Martin Evening, Chris Orwig, Matt Kloskowski, and Scott Kelby to name just a few. For more information about keywording, check out Martin’s chapter, “Using Keyword Tags and Keywording Panels in Lightroom.” Chris Orwig has a nice article on a professional sharpening workflow for Lightroom. There is a lot more to look at here and it is being updated regularly so take a peek.

Another good resource worth mentioning is Julieanne Kost’s excellent set of video tutorials on the Project Photoshop Lightroom site. The videos are very well done. Julieanne speaks clearly and in detail—nothing is glossed over. This approach is especially valuable if you are a beginner Lightroom user.

I’m sorry it took so long for me to post this month. I’m working on a really exciting new version of Help for Lightroom that we will be revealing in January. Keep checking this blog for more news about that.