Movie Review: Welcome to Macintosh

Posted on August 7, 2009 by Mike Rankin

Do I smell popcorn?

Hey film fans, welcome to the first ever Publicious Movie Review. There aren’t a heck of a lot of movies that feature publishing technology, but last week I did catch one: Welcome to Macintosh.

Written and directed by Robert Baca and Josh Rizzo, this film is a documentary take on the history of Apple Inc., not just Macintosh, so the title is a bit of a misnomer.

I was really excited to see this film since I have been a MacHead for more than 20 years. My first Mac was a 512k-e in August of 1987, though I’m sure I used them briefly at school before that. The 512 lasted me until 1994 when I got a Performa 630 CD. CD-ROM baby, yeah! After the Performa came a parade of iMacs, a G5 tower, 3 laptops, and the current top dog in the household (more of a chihuahua), a 2.26 GHz 13″ MacBookPro. Since I use them at work too, I figure that for the last 15 years I’ve spent the majority of my waking hours sitting in front of Macs. So I was totally ready to love this film. But I didn’t.

sadmac

Welcome to Macintosh felt like a TV special. And a missed opportunity. Apple is a huge subject to cover, with an impact on technology and culture that people are passionate about. Maybe the filmmakers bit off more than they could chew. Or maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I’m one of those hardcore Mac geeks that wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than a Ken Burns 12-part Encyclopedia Macintoshia, complete with full-color booklet, and scratch-n-sniff pix of Woz’s garage.

The film starts out strong, with juicy details of the formation of Apple. Original logos. Lots of shots of ancient, wooden(!) hardware. But then it quickly dawned on me that the voices I most wanted to hear: The Steves, Jobs and Woz, were silent. There are no interviews with the two men who brought the Mac to life, and the film suffers as a result. It’s also missing input from lots of other folks who had a hand in the Mac magic. People like Susan Kare. She gave the Mac its face, designing the icons and graphics for the original Mac GUI. Susan designed the Mac city fonts, Monaco, Geneva, New York, Chicago, etc. and everything from the Happy Mac to the Command key icon. Wouldn’t you like to see her sketches or hear her stories and thoughts? BTW, Susan now does icons for Facebook. And you can buy sticky notes with her original Mac icons at MoMA store.org.

Another voice I want to hear is Jonathan Ive. He’s the principal designer of the iMac, Powerbook, iPod, and iPhone. He’s the guy who brought Jobs’ modern visions to life and helped resurrect Apple over the last decade. He’s responsible for Apple stores being mobbed with people who see little shiny things and must have them NOW.

Who we get instead are the affable Andy Hertzfeld, the BS artist/evangelist Guy Kawasaki, and Ron Wayne (the original 3rd co-founder of Apple) along with Jim Reekes (made the Mac startup chime) and Leander Kahney (author of  Cult of Mac). They provide some interesting anecdotes, but in the history of the Mac, they’re the supporting cast. The stars are missing. Reekes is pretty entertaining, though. He comes across like Apple’s version of Dwight Schrute. Sardonic does not begin to describe this guy. He seems completely unimpressed by Apple and the people who love their products. He is the sour antidote to the saccharine MacWorship that is always lurking when Apple is discussed.

My other main problem with the film is that it’s too hardware focused. People love the Mac because of the experience of sitting down and using it. Since it’s inception, it’s been the coolest, most beautiful, most fun way of interacting with a computer. We love it mostly because of the operating system and software. What about MacWrite? MacPaint? What about System 7? Mac OS X? I don’t think the word “Finder” is never even mentioned in the film. With apologies to Mr. Ive, you could stick the Mac OS in a boring beige case, and I’d still use it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that Ive makes it sexy, but I love this thing for it’s brains, cleverness, and sense of humor. Maybe the movie I’m looking for is Married to Macintosh.

Despite my objections, I’m still recommending anyone who likes and uses Macs to see Welcome to Macintosh. It’s worthwhile, but it could be soooo much more.

Welcome to Macintosh is available on DVD for $19.84. Cute.

You can also follow Welcome to Macintosh on Twitter or Facebook.

So to sum up,

Pros: Great subject. Good early history of Apple. Reekes channelling Schrute.

Cons: No Jobs, Woz, Ive, Kare. No Mac OS!

Rating: 2½ Macs 2-half-macintosh

Filed under: Apple, Movies | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Publicious Links: The Birth Surfer Ticket Edition

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Mike Rankin

3 o’clock – roadblock

Hey Mr. Cop, ain’t got no

(what you say down there)

Ain’t got no birth surfer ticket on me now

-Bob Marley, Rebel Music

In recent weeks, a growing mob of “birthers” has besieged Publicious World Headquarters, demanding to see my paperwork. They claim certain irregularities in my published documents call into question the legitimacy of my right to blog. Well, to them I say, phoooey!

However, you the loyal readers have a right to know, so to end this controversy once and for all, I am posting a scan of my original, unaltered, notorized blog certificate. I hope this will serve to prove beyond the shadow of any reasonable doubt, that I am the legitimate owner of this blog.

plish-birth

Feels good to get that out in the open. Now, on to the links!

Some things are OMG, others are WTF, most are somewhere inbetween. Here’s the OMG-WTF Spectrum to help you sort things out precisely.

New Era Cap has a fun Flash RIA for designing your own baseball cap. It’s also a contest and if your design wins, they’ll manufacture the cap (there goes that crowdsourcing again. lazy bastards). Anyway, if you really want to trick out your design, you can download PSD and AI templates and go to town.

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Speaking of RIAs, Sitepoint has the 18 Coolest AIR Apps for Designers.

The Graphics Fairy has a free vintage (Victorian) clip art and a fun idea/project for the kids, making a game of concentration out of your favorite graphics. My kids would probably prefer the Creative Suite icons…or SpongeBob.

Smashing Magazine has the A-Z of Free Photoshop Plug-ins and Filters

Tutorial Lounge has 25 Astounding Typography Tutorials.

Deke McClelland is posting a Top 40 Photoshop Features Countdown over at Lynda.com.

Now that people have had a chance to use Flash Catalyst, they’re starting to uncover some glitches in the Creative Suite-RIA connection. I stumbled on an interesting post about gradient fidelity and FXG generation tools.

Inkscape is a free, open source vector graphics tool (that I haven’t had a chance to play with yet). If anyone has tried it, please let me know your experience and opinion of it.

Divine is a tool that gives you the ability to convert Photoshop documents into WordPress themes. Sounds interesting. too bad it’s PC only, or I’d be trying it at this moment.

Digital Photography School has a basic tutorial for how to use textures to enhance photographs. Very simple technique that can yield great results.

Finally, after spending the better part of a weekend like a dog chasing my digital tail, I posted the Top Ten Reasons to Quit Out of InDesign and Call It a Day (or Night). Know when to say when, my friends.

That’s it. Till next time, be well, and if a birther jumps out of the bushes and demands to see your paperwork, hand ‘em one of these.

Filed under: Flash, Flex, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, RIA, Web 2.0, cats, graphic design | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Publicious Links: The (Insert Theme Here) Edition

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Mike Rankin

Crowdsourcing is all the rage nowadays, so I thought I’d make, er, empower you all to come up with your own theme this week. Yeah, that’s it.

Here’s your template:

Intro paragraph citing some current event, 
    with possibly strained metaphor to publishing technology.
    Jokey second paragraph with parentheticals (galore).
    <<insert goofy Photoshopped graphic>>
    Closing paragraph, ending with a one-word sentence. Really.

Adobe is taking this crowdsourcing thing seriously, with a few new initiatives that seek to tap the power of the hivemind. First, Adobe Community Publishing is a rich internet application that allows/requests/begs you to write and upload content related to Adobe applications to their site.

Adobe CommunityIcon

It’s like a blogging tool where your content is published directly to Adobe’s site. After you sign in with your Adobe ID, you pick a template:

Picture 3

And have at it.

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Secondly, Acrobat.com is also looking for a few of your good ideas. Got a feature or functionality request? Go over to ideas.acrobat.com and make your voice heard.

Also in a nod to crowdpower, Serna has make its Syntext XML editor open source.

Back in the day, the only people who could see music were in psychiatric wards and Grateful Dead shows. Now any shmoe with Photoshop can see music, edit it, and save it back as a sound file. Head over to Photosounder for info on editing audio files as images in Photoshop.

Design Science, makers of MathType, Math Flow, and Kraft Matharoni and Cheese (jk), has a useful guide to Math in eBooks, in the ePub standard.

While we’re on the XML subject, might as well point out the XML in Practice Conference coming up at the end of September in D.C. I learned a ton at the one in Boston a couple years ago. And I got a MarkLogic t-shirt, which catapulted me to a level of geek usually unseen in the Boston area outside the MIT campus. Maybe I can get Johnny Cupcakes to hack the design, and we can sell ‘em for $40 a pop.

Don’t touch that PDF if you don’t know where it’s been. Especially if it has a trojan virus embedded in a tiny Flash video.  Apparently we still have to be suspicious of PDF from unknown sources.

Typophile has a neat Flash tutorial on Typography 101.

Laughing Lion Design has a tutorial on achieving a letterpress effect in Photoshop.

Finally, over at my home away from home, InDesign Secrets, Steve Werner has posted tips and tricks for interactive Buttons in PDF (via InDesign).

Till next time, (insert closing).

Filed under: Acrobat, Adobe, Flash, InDesign, Mark Logic, PDF, Photoshop, RIA, Web 2.0, XML, ebooks | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

When You Click Upon A Star…

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Mike Rankin

The 9-year old just pointed out to me that I should be leveraging WordPress ratings to further engage the Publicious core audience, and gather quality metrics to establish an authoring feedback loop. He also said they’re wicked cool. On that point, I have to agree with him. So now you will notice underneath the byline of each post, a clickable 5-star rating widget. Think of it as a one-click commenting system. What it lacks in semantic richness, it makes up for in instant gratificationabilty.

The widget only appears when you navigate directly to a post. In other words, you have to click on the post title first, for the widget to appear.

Comments can also be rated up or down, so you folks can rate each other’s thoughts as well.

So please, click away, and let us know what you think.

Whether it’s good…

plish-ratingTA

so-so…

plish-ratingMeh

or ugly…

plish-ratingTL

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Update: Publicious To Go, New and Improved!

Posted on July 23, 2009 by Mike Rankin

This is why you never proofread right before bedtime. Last night I uploaded the inaugural editions of Publicious To Go, with great fanfare (OK, one cat lifted his head). Too bad I didn’t notice the utterly craptacular hyphenation in (of all things) the article on typography.

I am teh FAIL!

P6221034

After resigning myself to a life unburdened by credibility, I uploaded new and improved PDFs, this time without any hyphens whatsoever. Take that, lousy H&Js!

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Announcing: Publicious To Go!

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Mike Rankin

I know in this day and age, no one is disconnected from the Web for longer than they can hold their breath. Still, I have heard from some people that it would be nice if Publicious content were served up in a PDF package, for viewing offline or just sans browser. Being the media-agnostic guy I am, I heard and obeyed. So now you can get Publicious To Go. Just pull up to the drive thru and grab yourself 18 pages of the tastiest publishing tech content anywhere.

You can download either the “Big Gulp” (48.7 MB), which contains an awesome bonus Easter egg, or the “lite” version (3.67 MB). Both versions have the same Publicious content.

Publicious To Go, vol. 1 July 2009 (lite version 3.67 MB PDF)

Publicious To Go, vol. 1 July 2009 (with Easter egg 48.7 MB PDF)

Picture 12

Enjoy!

Filed under: Acrobat, Adobe, Easter Eggs, Flash, Flex, Fonts, Illustrator, InDesign, PDF, Page Layout, XML, ebooks, graphic design | 1 Comment »

Publicious Links: The Whiteboard Massacre Edition

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Mike Rankin

Some time ago, I was walking to work along one of the seedier streets in Boston, and passed by an alley which was the scene of utter devastation. I wanted to turn away from the carnage, but my eyes were glued to the horror before me.

There, lying against the grimy graffiti-covered bricks was a pile of…discarded whiteboards. But discarded is not the right word. These whiteboards were not discarded. They were murdered. Ripped from the walls (screws and chunks of drywall still hung from the hooks) and destroyed. Crushed. Smashed and torn. Stomped into oblivion. Thrown from the windows above. Someone had even impaled one of the whiteboards on its own metal frame.

Yes, this was a rage killing. A whiteboard massacre. Al Capone’s hitmen had nothing on the perpetrators of this crime. Somewhere, there is a group of middle managers with their fingers stained red with dry erase dust that just won’t wash off.

I tried to picture the scene of the crime: what kind of a presentation could be so horrible and offensive, so endless and tiresome, so stupid and dull, that the enraged audience rose up out of their swivel chairs, tore the whiteboards down, and stomped them to bits? I closed my eyes and saw the melee. Muffins and bagels were trampled into the carpet like innocent bystanders. Handouts flew through the air like frightened chickens. The walls of the meeting room were scalded with Starbucks. A venti vendetta.

The presentations were still on the whiteboards, though the violence had left them fragmented, unintelligible hieroglyphics. All I could make out were disjointed circles and arrows, dates and dollar signs, and a few three-letter acronyms.

Mind you, I have been in meetings where the thought of “getting medieval” has crossed my mind. But I never got above an angry doodle. Though I once rolled my eyes so hard that I hurt them. Perhaps our muffins were laced with sedatives to gain our acquiescence.

So to those dearly departed whiteboards, who could not be blamed for what someone presented on them, I dedicate this week’s links.  And to you, dear reader, may you never come up with an idea that gets stomped. Literally.

Photoshop Roadmap has a boatload of tips, tricks, and tutorials (OK, 64 to be exact) that will keep you busy for a while.

Not to be outdone, Web Design Ledger has 22 Adobe Illustrator tutorials.

Seattle Social Media Examiner has a review of 12 Twitter Desktop Clients.

The New York Times (are THEY still in business?;) has an interesting interview with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen.

Our awesome InDesign Guru Down Under, Cari Jansen has a short and sweet tip for Photoshop masking screenshots.

Gizmodo has a pretty funny Photoshop set of Totally Impractical Gadgets. It kills me that I never have time to play like this.

Core77 is an industrial design magazine/website that’s chock full of inspiration and information.

Type in Photoshop: Good or Evil? I tend to think evil, but it’s not going away anytime soon, so you might as well be good at it. Check out Sitepoint’s 5 Type Tips for Photoshop.

Sensacell is a company selling “modular sensor surfaces” I call them Giant Pixel Fun Factories. Imagine painting a mask in Photoshop with your hands, using pixels as big as your head, and you’ll get the idea. Or just watch the video. .

DesignFreebies.org has more resources than you can shake a creative stick at.

Adobe is continuing to embrace Open Source as a path to glory, releasing TLF (Text Layout Framework) and OSMF (Open Source Media Framework) to the world.

Graphics-Illustrations.com has yet another smorgasbord of resources for Illustrator and Photoshop. You’ll be so busy collecting all these goodies, you won’t have any time to use them.

While you’re at it, you might as well collect some of those oh-so-trendy painting with light brushes for Photoshop.

See you next time, kids. Till then, if you see any flying whiteboards, duck!

Filed under: Adobe, Flash, Fonts, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, RIA, Twitter, Web 2.0, Web Design, graphic design | Tagged: , , , , | 5 Comments »

Publicious Links: The Eagle Has Landed Edition

Posted on July 17, 2009 by Mike Rankin

As I wrote before, I am eight kinds of geek. Kind number 4 is space geek. I am an unabashed fanboy of the Apollo astronauts. Among my space geek collection I have Neil Armstrong’s autograph and a lunar module pencil sharpener. ’Nuff said. This week’s anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission has brought a ton of space goodies to share. So tear open a bag of freeze dried ice cream and read on.

John Nack has a nice set of space links, including my favorite, We Choose the Moon, where you can follow along with the mission in real time. For those of us too young to remember or experience it for ourselves, this is as close as we’re going to get to the feeling of witnessing the moon landing.

Spacefacts has a nice map of the roamings of Armstrong and Aldrin.

Astronautix (aka Encyclopedia Astronautica) is a great resource, boasting over 25,000 pages of content, including day-by-day accounts of the space race, astronaut and engineer bios, detailed breakdowns of hardware, and a Paths Not Taken section of canceled designs and missions to make you wonder what if…

Ninfinger has a huge collection of space models, as does Apollo Maniacs. You can even to try your hand at making a papercraft lunar module.

BoingBoing has links to newly-restored video of the One Small Step.

In fairness, not everyone saw Apollo 11 as mankind’s greatest moment. Witness, Gil Scott Heron’s Whitey On The Moon.

OK, on to the publishing tech links.

Adobe Genesis is an attempt at taming the tangled desktop via Flex. It allows users to create persistent personal portals (try saying that three times fast). It’s newer than new (you can’t get it even a beta yet), but as I understand it, the idea is to break applications and web services into tiles and assemble just the piece you need for your workflow in one window. Fill your plate from a workflow salad bar, if you will. Here’s a better explanation.

Need to learn (or deal with) TeX or MathML in a browser? Check out the MathML browser test, where you can see examples of rendered math and click on them to get the code.

Would you like to create a custom blog theme, without the coding chores? Check out Artisteer. Thanks to her geekness,  Anne-Marie Concepcion for the tip.

The 80′s pretentious-pop band the Fixx once asked “Are We Ourselves (And Do We Really Know)?” It’s a real question now as the importance of social media continues to rise. When anyone can grab any username, how do you KNOW who’s who? Protect your name/brand, and claim your name. You can check the availability of usernames/IDs on tons of social media sites at Knowem.com. You may also discover new social media sites you want to join. Thanks to PrepressPilgrim for the idea.

Francesomugnai.com has the 30 Most Interesting Photoshop Tutorials of 2009 (so far).

I leave you a trio of posts from InDesign Secrets (none of which is mine…I’ve been sitting in a tin can, far above the world).

Fritz posted about the amazing folding calculator. If you need to set up InDesign templates for folded publications, you really should check it out. It’s also a very cool example of what you can do with an interactive PDF.

David posted a fun 2-part series on A Trip to Adobe, in which we get to see InDesign in its native habitat of Seattle. Beware the Fremont Troll!

Till next time, take your protein pills and put your helmet on.

P4250623

Filed under: Adobe, Flex, InDesign, MathML, Photoshop, RIA, Web 2.0, XML | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Publicious Links: The Bailin’ Palin Edition

Posted on July 7, 2009 by Mike Rankin

If you somehow were able to pry yourself away from the wall-to-wall, King of Pop coverage this week, you may have noticed a little news item: Sarah Palin is quitting her job as Alaska governor. There’s plenty of speculation about her motives (run for higher office, impending scandal), but the main reason she cited was to protect her family from mean-spirited attacks. Specifically, she cited the straw that broke the camel’s back was a Photoshop job done to her son, Trig. Initially, it was a pretty innocuous bit of satire about a right-wing radio jock on a blog called Celtic Diva. It wasn’t even directed at Palin or her family. But when Palin got so upset, calling it a “malicious desecration,” well, that was like pouring gasoline on the fire. A meme was born. Now every pixel jockey with a copy of Photoshop was replacing Trig’s face with just about anything you can imagine.

Regardless of what you think about the soon-to-be-former governor of Alaska, I think it is remarkable that publishing technology, in the form of Photoshop and blogs (two subjects near and dear to my heart) may have directly contributed the resignation of a national political figure. Just imagine if Photoshop had been around in the past. Our history could’ve been a lot different.

leeharvey

Poor Lee Harvey. I always knew you were set up.

By the way, the source of the Life cover here is Coverbrowser.com, an incredible resource/time suck archive of book, magazine, and comic book covers.

Last time out I wrote a bit about Gridiron Software dropping da bomb, with Flow. If you’re interested in a detailed breakdown on why Flow is the coolest thing since ever, check out my post on InDesignSecrets.com, Let the Good Times Flow.

I let my Lynda.com subscription lapse when I had to make a budgetary choice between online video training and cat food. Well, I just re-upped with Lynda. Sorry, kitties. I’m sure there are plenty of tasty squirrels on the back yard. I need access to stuff like David Blatner’s 10 Things to Know about Interactive PDF.  While we’re talking about David, you should also check out the Adobe white paper on Accessible PDF that he authored.

Codefear has 30 insanely beautiful and inspiring Photoshop Text Effects.

Pantherkut has a Worth 1000-like set of Photoshopped mutant animals. Disturbing stuff, but you can’t stop looking at them.

Abduzeedo has inspirational examples of 3D typography.

Design Mag has over 200 Photoshop paper brushes.

Potato Project has a nifty tutorial on how to create a 50′s retro poster look.

There, I Fixed It.com isn’t so much about publishing tech as duct tape and bailing wire tech. See if you can spot the real low tech fixits from the Photoshop fakery. My personal favorite TIFI, harkens back to the days of Quark XPress 4.11. A bunch of us production types would suffer through the updating of hundreds of pieces of “modified” art every time the clocks changed due to daylight savings. We’d have to hold down the Enter key to say “OK” hundreds of times. Then an ingenious co-worker named Jim Haggerty placed his stapler on the Enter key and went to lunch. When he came back, all his art was updated. Thus the Haggerty 2000 was born.

In the tradition of Ahmadinejad Sucks at Photoshop, The Epoch Times has a send-in-the-clones job that appeared in the China People’s Daily.

I have heard of folks struggles with Adobe customer service, but Consumerist.com has a nice story about some great customer service by Adobe.

If you’re a Photoshop brush hound, check out Brush Pilot, a $15 app for previewing your brush collection.

VLC is an open source media player that can play just about anything, and it’s just been released in version 1.0. I’ve been using beta versions for years and love it.

That’s it for now kids. Till next time remember, wield those pixels carefully. You never know when you might change the course of history.

Filed under: Acrobat, Adobe, InDesign, PDF, Photoshop, Quark XPress, cats | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Publicious Links: The Moonwalking In Threes Edition

Posted on June 30, 2009 by Mike Rankin

They say celebrity deaths come in threes. I say, you see what you want to see. But this past week was pretty hard on 20th century cultural icons. If you’ve lost track of who’s still with us, consult Dead or Alive? Oh, nevermind, I’ll save you the trip: Abe Vigoda still walks the earth.

First off, poor Ed McMahon. The guy spends decades in the public spotlight as Carson’s sidekick. Night after night, and with Memorex precision, he delivers the chiseled-in-the-collective-memory line, “Heeeeere’s Johnny!” For a side gig, he props up a molten Jerry Lewis every Labor Day for the final timpani. He even has the cartoonish celebrity second act with Star Search and the thing that wasn’t quite Publisher’s Clearinghouse. And when he dies, he gets two seconds of attention.

Next up, poor Farrah. I never quite got the obsession with her or her bodacious hair. Yes, Farrah was incredibly beautiful. But I had only one true love during my single-digit years, and that was Lindsay Wagner, aka Jaime Sommers, the true, be-scarfed Bionic Woman. Still, the impact of Farrah’s locks and teeth is undeniable. And happily, she earned major props for her acting craft as well as her looks. So she got four seconds of attention this week.

Which brings me to the King of Pop. What more can anyone say about the Curious Case of Michael Jackson? I was a teenager in the 80s, but it never occurred to me to actually buy Thriller. It would be like buying air. I watched MTV for about four years straight, without blinking, from 1982-1985. I heard Thriller on a daily, if not hourly basis, for years on end. It was like life in a prison in the Phillipines. Now I watch this video of him auditioning for Berry Gordy at age ten, channelling James Brown with such precision that it freaks me out. For his otherworldly talent, this ten year old kid got his childhood replaced with showbiz, and became the most famous person on the planet. The unraveling that occurred afterward, is amazing to me, only in that it took so long.

So to Ed, Farrah, and Michael, I will picture you three moonwalking off the stage together. Rest in peace.

Oops, in my self-indulgence, I forgot this is a blog about publishing technology. How about some links?

First, GridIron Software has just released Flow. It is way cooler than sliced bread. How would you like for your files to know how they are all related? Images know which InDesign layouts they’ve been placed in. PDFs know which documents they were created from. You say you only remember the name of a layer in a Photoshop file? No problem, you can find it. And so on and so on. I don’t like to throw around the word “amazing,” but Flow really is A-freaking-mazing. I’ve installed the trial version and I think living without it is going to be impossible from here on out.

From the how did we ever live without Photoshop category, part 1: Gizmodo has 65 Ancient Video Games I Wish Existed.

From the how did we ever live without Photoshop category, part 2: Wonkette has Sarah Palin’s quixotic and hopeless war vs. Photoshop.

Ever wonder how Adobe came to be? Wonder what it might have to do with Xerox? Check out a nice little bio of founder John Warnock.

Here’s a couple of my recent posts from InDesign Secrets: Honey, I Blew Up the Color Panel, Bridge Font Blind Spot, and Eye Candy, Part 5: Blending a la Mode.

As the digital revolution comes full circle, the phrase “Web to Print” is going to be heard a lot. Bitstream’s Pageflex Storefront uses InDesign Server to power its piece of the Web to Print pie.

GREP Master Peter Kahrel has posted a brilliant tutorial on Dealing With Long GREP Expressions. My advice: caffeinate heavily before reading.

At work, I was asked to evaluate someone’s choice of 100c70m drop shadows. My evaluation was “um, no.” Here’s how to make a blue shadow in real life.

Brian Lawler (author of the Official Adobe Print Publishing Guide) has posted an interesting idea for using Photoshop’s Count tool.

From the It’s A Small World, But I Wouldn’t Want to Print It Dept: How about a digital archive that contains all the peer-reviewed mathematical literature ever published? That’s about 100 million pages. No sweat, say the folks behind the Digital Mathematics Library Project.

Print and prepress guru par excellence Steve Werner is giving a eSeminar on InDesign Best Prepress Practices on July 1. If you miss it, you can catch the recorded version.

Thomas Silkjær has posted a nice set of highly-organized pre-defined styles for InDesign, which you can modify to suit your own needs.

ShapeCollage is a nifty, free tool for making collages out of your photos. You can arrange any number of pictures into any shape.

Popular Science has a prototype color-picking pen, that mimics Photoshop’s eyedropper. It’s supposed to scan the color of any real life object and then recreate that color with ink. Too bad the desinger needs a remedial lesson in the physics of subtractive color and CMYK. Still, it’s a mind-blowing concept.

Filed under: Acrobat, Adobe, GREP, Illustrator, InDesign, MathML, PDF, Page Layout, Photoshop, prepress | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

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