Interesting possibilities in Photoshop CS5
I remember getting pretty excited the first time I saw the Seam Carving technology from a SIGGRAPH demonstration, which eventually made it’s way into Photoshop, The GIMP and Xara Xtreme. That seemed to happen quickly, and I’m certain because the code was made open to a certain extent. A custom app was built, a plugin for the Gimp was great. Xara and Photoshop integrated Seam carving really well. And it works. It’s actually one of my best new tools I can make use of probably once for every web project I do.
Now things are evolving even more with what may be upcoming features that will help with fixing and doctoring photos. I don’t find doctoring photos that enjoyable really. I love helping customers, but I wish most of this wasn’t necessary. That being the case, if you have to doctor a photo, it might as well be pretty easy to do.
Here is a video of Improved Seam Carving and PatchMatch, both of which were part of an Adobe/Princeton/University of Washington project. To my knowledge, nobody said explicitly this WILL be in Photoshop CS5. But it is shown operating in the Photoshop interface and take from it what you will. As an aside, I like this website I discovered. CS5.org. Despite it’s authoritative look, it appears not to be an Adobe site. Granted I could be wrong, but it’s showing Youtube Videos rather than using an Adobe player, and it’s showing a white paper using Scribd rather than an Acrobat-esque flash paper embedded PDF viewer. Still that doesn’t mean it’s not all great information.
Adobe does have a video from a few members of their user experience UX design team re-published on the CS5.org website. It features some discussion and examples of multi-touch and how they can leverage it for their graphics creation tools.
October 4, 2009 at 5:10 am | computers, design, graphics, media | No comment
Dropbox – the perfect computer utility
Ever get tired of sending attachments to people? You write the email, click “add attachment”, browse, find, upload, wait, AND, send. Blah, that’s annoying just to think about. I got tired of it a long time ago. That’s why I’ve been using this service called Dropbox for probably two years now, as soon as I heard of it. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it in this blog before, but anyway, you want to check it out and get it. It’s truly one of the best online services ever created. And it’s in both free and pay premium versions.
Simple instructions here, visit getdropbox.com and download their utility. It works on Windows, Mac and Linux. Install and it makes a networked folder in your computer that will sync up with the Dropbox server. Files dropped in there are automatically archived on the internet for you. Dropbox let’s you share 2 Gigabytes of files free, and you can pay a small fee for even more storage.
To share a file, move or copy it into your Dropbox public folder (create subfolders inside if you like) right-click and choose to Copy public link. Paste this link URL into your email and you can share the file with somebody without having to attach anything, (and without them needing to detach it.) Here’s an example of the public link you’d be pasting into your email:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/000000/foldername/filename.jpg
As a designer, it’s been a great tool to use because I can quickly update a file on my desktop and it re-synchronizes and my client can just revisit the original email I sent for the link. They will always be downloading the most recent file. Just remember if files are big you’ll watch them sync with the server, the little icon next to the file will indicate when it’s done synchronizing.
Dropbox also archives versions of files and let’s you revert to them. It’s not infinite versioning, but it’s an added bonus that can help you in case of an accident. If your PC goes down, you can also install dropbox on the new or refreshed pc and it will sync it back for you. Those files will only delete if you actually delete them from your folder. I also use it to share files between my PC and Mac, so no worries if I’m on or off my home network.
Just get it, and start taking advantage of this perfect utility’s exquisite convenience. Oh and if you had the idea that you might be able to share files over the internet with a second person, you can definitely do that, you could share your login with a person, (which works but might not be what Dropbox intended) or add users within the service as documented. The free service is great, the pay service is worth it.
September 29, 2009 at 11:19 pm | computers, design, gadgets, mac, tools | No comment
Had a great time at the 2009 Kansas City Japan Festival
Once again, I was fortunate to participate in the Greater Kansas City Japan Festival. For years, I’ve done a lot of the website and communications materials for the event. This year instead of driving across town, I had to drive across the state to attend it. I enjoyed it immensely because I could reconnect with old friends and colleagues. Our friend Carole Owsley was gracious to let Juri and I stay in her lovely home overnight. It was the perfect place to be. She made the best breakfast we could have ever hoped for. She also treated us to a light dinner and her own Strawberry shortcake, from which we can’t wait to steal the recipe.
My friend Fran Lemery is the Executive Director of the festival. He started getting involved in the Japanese community in Kansas City something like ten years ago when he decided to try to put in a smallish Japanese garden his backyard. As with much of the projects he took on, both his garden and his community participation blew up in a way that few people would consider. I’ve admired his attitude, his generosity and his ability to lead so many people to represent Japanese in the community. I just found out at the festival that he was nominated and will receive a special award from the Ministry of Japan for his cultural efforts for so many years. Absolutely outstanding. I can’t wait to know when I can come in and see him receive it. I’m just so happy he’s the guy I can call any time about anything and having him as a special friend.
I’m in St. Louis now, but I still have these strong ties to Kansas City. I enjoy seeing my good friend Fran there, my old colleagues and getting updates on how things are going. I only got to attend the actual Festival for about three hours out of the entire 11 hour day. Despite that, I got to help out with some A/V issues for the more presentation, and to take some photos and video. Both my favorite things. I’d like to extend to the hardworking groups there in the festival my appreciation to them, it was a great time, and the crowd grew by over ten percent because of Fran and other’s attention to detail and their labor of love.
September 21, 2009 at 4:51 am | Japan, inspiration, nostalgia | No comment
Millions of Ideas, questions, strategies
Ever have a raging amount of enthusiasm from ideas, and you need to share them right now? You must get somebody else in on this right away? You can’t rest until something is answered? The idea is just too spacey until you can get another persons mind into it. I’ve been plagued with this for the past few weeks. Sometimes I want to get on the phone and call my friends and clients, even ones I haven’t talked to in a while. Or jump in the car and just drive over to one of their houses unannounced. Show up and say, “Hey I gotta run this by you, see what you think.” Or “I need your help, how do you….?”
I’ve managed to keep it subtle. Friendly and casual emails. Thankfully some of my friends have been responsive too, willing to help. But when it’s 6:30 am on a Sunday morning and you just want to ’strategize’ with people, even on something not that exciting, it’s humorously painful. This need that is terrorizing me, I’m chalking up to being a little too reclusive in my lifestyle. It’s good and bad I suppose. You can’t learn without focusing on your own away from distraction, and if a side effect is a sensation that’s igniting a fire, I appreciate its usefulness. No matter what, you need others at points to build up excitement and carry it through. It takes groups of people more often to invent something vastly important or helpful and rewarding. But it’s 6:30 in the morning! Why must I be so energetic at the strangest hours? Why can’t my friends, for no reason just be up and ring my phone right now and say “Hey I’m listening, what can I do?”
I suppose this could be a cue for me to remember that I can be a source of energy and ideas and answers when my friends and family want to do something new and special, give them support, help inspire it to actually happen for them. See the idea, help flesh it out with them. Get excited about it.
July 19, 2009 at 7:54 am | inspiration, interesting, learning | No comment
What to do on your birthday
There is a speaker guy named Seth Godin. Everybody likes him. Me too. And I read his site today, about birthdays. He was asking, what should we do on your birthday? Because mine is this coming week, it got me thinking about how I’ve been the past few years. Gifts have been really difficult to give and receive. I don’t take giving lightly in most cases. It’s hard for me, because if it’s going to be a thing I give, I want it to be special because it really will represent something, it acts on my behalf when I’m not there. Certainly I’m not better at receiving, because people ask me what I want for my birthday and I really can’t bring a certain object I want. I really just want to be better than I am. I want to see continuous improvement both slow and steady and through wild bursts and revelation. Projects I want finished, objectives I want conquered. Because it seems that when these things have happened, all the other gifts just flow in. But I don’t just want them done. I want to be engaged throughout the process. Nobody can do that for me, can they?
And yet when I think about that. It sounds like I want to rush through a segment of my life to get it where I expect I should be. As if I’m not quite complete yet. Not good enough. Analyzing that is kind of fun at this moment, because it’s a good reminder of how ridiculous it is. I’m happy that I don’t really believe that. And I’d be sad if others did for themselves.
If someone’s birthday is a day to be celebrated, it’s because of a person’s uniqueness and celebrating it because before that date, they weren’t here. The world before them didn’t enjoy their personality and contributions, their silliness, their ideas, and the things they do for others. At their moment, the pebble struck the water’s surface and the ripples began. The sequence of events in our world without their existence is difficult to imagine. Maybe even lonely.
And because they are here, often so briefly, it is one day a year where we remind them that it has been important that they are here, important to us, many of us. That’s the best thing we can probably do for people. And if we are all too distracted on that day to know or remind ourselves of the reason, that’s ok too. Because even if we realize it on another day, it’s that moment we appreciate somebody for who they are, we are bigger, we have grown.
So how do you celebrate someone’s uniqueness? I wish I could give a perfect answer, but I’ll try. I think the best you can do, is knowing them, you know what they like, what they do, want to be, or accomplish. Do your best to imagine what it takes to get there or to do that. And if you find your own personal way to help them do that, that day, I think it would be a hero’s gift, without a doubt. If you are close to them and already doing that, then maybe just a small surprise is something that’s needed. If you are far away, a card sent or a friendly phone call, can encourage and help and just tell them how much you and the people in their world appreciate them. You can also try to engage in their world a little more too. If you only saw them twice this year, try for five times over next year.
July 4, 2009 at 9:18 pm | family, friends, learning, nostalgia | No comment
Xara Xtreme Pro 5.1 graphics software
If you’re into the digital graphics for a hobby or work, you’ve been told that Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator are the industry standard. This is certainly true, but the “standard” doesn’t mean better in all aspects. Xara Xtreme is one of the few lesser-known alternatives that in some areas measurably outperforms Adobe’s offerings. I’ve been using it for several years. I fell in love when I saw the speed and clean interface of the program. Multiple updates over the past couple years have made it even more flexible. I always enjoy telling people about it because it’s simplicity and performance is surprising.
Some notable favorite features for me including some new ones out with the latest 5.1 version:
- Much easier learning curve than Illustrator for drawing and manipulating vector path objects
- Great interface, cleaner menus and simple tool panels, not overcrowded, with easy access to everything for a faster workflow.
- Can handle more intricately detailed vector drawings faster, (Zooms to an insane 25,000%)
- Dead-simple live gradient editing
- Multi-page documents (5.1 now has master page objects too!)
- Beautiful gradient transparency, now multi-stage
- Can utilize Photoshop filters as plugins and has it’s own library for many effects
- Cleaner pathfinder style tools such as cut and combine (Illustrator is simply harder to learn in this area, with little reward)
- Exports and Imports dozens of formats including vector and bitmap. Notably, layered PSDs, EPS, PNG, TIFF, HTML, PDF and more.
- 3D extrusion tools
- Creates Exports Flash Animations
- Complete Web design and creation tools included.
- A variety of bitmap image controls (cropping, feather, built-in filters)
- New Seam-carving / content-aware image resizing. (you need to see this feature to believe it, also in Photoshop CS4 and GIMP as a plugin)
- Reasonably complete PDF print export options
There are limits to Xara’s superiority. Looking at Illustrator, you can tell it has a great deal more features, just look at Illustrator’s Effect menu. But if I had Xara when I was learning vector graphics instead of Illustrator or Freehand, I think I would have enjoyed the process much more. I also believe if Adobe Flash had Xara’s tools for vector drawing it would also be a better program by far. I’ve often composed in Xara just to export to Flash in order to bypass some of Flash’s clumsiness. In short, I want Adobe to be more like Xara, just as much as I’d like a few things in Xara that Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and even the new and free Inkscape has. I have other “underdog” programs that I swear by, but this is the big one that I happily pay for.
Downsides of Xara, first it’s only on Windows. Linux users can use an older open source free version of Xtreme, but is hasn’t been feature-developed since 2007. This free version is fast and certainly good, but it’s missing some terrific features that Windows has. Mac has no Xara and I wish it did. Also there are some file import issues I’ve found. Fore example, sharing SVG and EPS files has given me plenty of frowns. Sure it’s not a big deal when you control everything, but when you need to collaborate with others, or send files to print, you need reliability. Also despite the type features having massive improvements over the past few years, you will find InDesign a little better for you for composing most longer documents. I could think of a few more issues, but I could dig for more in any software.
Xara Xtreme has become over the years a must-have tool. Adobe users have become converts plenty of times, after being hypnotized by its beauty. Even though I really love most of Adobe’s collection, Xara does certain tasks better and faster. You’ll use it for full graphic and page creation, enjoy it’s speed for mockups and maybe as a thinking tool before you’d open anything else. I love working with objects, breaking them apart, modifying shapes. The projects I’ve been able to do solely in Xara such as illustrations and diagrams, I’ve nearly always completed more efficiently than I could with other tools, and with a lot of enjoyment.
June 11, 2009 at 4:23 am | 3D, design, graphics, publishing, tools, webdev | No comment
Apple finally gets a clue on memory cards
I’m happy to report, that Apple finally pulled their head out from underneath them by finally adding an SD card slot to some of its upcoming laptop line. Research revealed to them that their customers liked using digital cameras and didn’t like using the USB cable. What? People don’t like carrying a jumbled mess of cables in their bag?
Do me a big favor. Next time some fanboy Apple enthusiast says something like “Apple drives the industry” you will simply respond, “Yeah like that time they added an SD card slot 6 years after everyone else. Booyah!!!” And of course they will say “That’s because nobody wanted it…blah blah” and at that point they have already shown themselves to be a hairy charlatan.
Apple is brilliant though. Shameless self-promoters. Imagine if Campbell’s soup held big conferences every year where they said things like, “Hey we’re even more awesome because we finally added a pull tab to our cans since we’ve determined that’s where the industry is going to go and we are leading the way.” Meanwhile, the actual smart platform-agnostic critics with a crinkled brows say “Steve, sardine cans have had that style pull tab for 90 years now…” and of course those voices are drowned out by a bunch of blue-jean wearing black shirted sycophants. (Tee-hee I don’t even know what that word means I’m just trying to make my friends mad at this point. You hear me Matt and Susan?)
P.S. This post was written on a very flawed, nondescript, overpriced, feature-limited Mac that has not improved my lifestyle like the commercials said it would. In fact I’ve had just as many annoyances with it as I might expect with other computers. But it’s not all bad and kind of cool in it’s own way. In other words, it hasn’t solved all my problems, and introduced several new ones, which means it deserves very little fan-fare, certainly not the degree it has enjoyed.
P.P.S. Keep my rant in perspective. I’m just providing balance here because I’m being overwhelmed with too many flattering articles about Macs and iPod 3Gs’s today. Sometimes you have to introduce a little blowback and overstate the bad things. All in all, this is a good release for Apple. And I’ll give them a little more positive attention when the rest of the hardworking industry gets their credit when they release great stuff, which they do constantly and they don’t get the tickertape parade. Currently Apple enjoys an enormous mindshare that I feel it doesn’t deserve next to all the other innovators.
June 8, 2009 at 5:57 pm | computers, gadgets, mac | 1 comment
Our last night in Japan
This is the sixth time I’ve been to Japan. This visit has been the longest, nearly two months. I’m a little nervous for some reason the night before the flight. Perhaps the large coffee I made myself, or just jitters for everything to work out ok. But it already has worked out ok. I suppose if my plane goes down in the ocean tomorrow, in my last moments I hope I could remember how great everything has been. We’ve been treated so well. Many outings and terrific meals at home and at various places. There has been a lot of good humor, surprises and interesting conversations. I came here hoping that I would have learned a little more about myself, perhaps came back a changed person. I do feel changed, but I realize now that no visit to another country helps you become the person you want to be. These changes are more involuntary. Nearly too subtle to report or specify, but I can feel them a little bit.
Every other time we have this final night, I always well up with tears at some point. It’s thankfulness you know. The part of me that can’t express properly I internalize and spills out of my eyes I guess. This time I want to hold it together. I’ll be just as thankful, but I want to save it for the plane. We are nearly packed, only a few accessories like this laptop and some trinkets are left to jam into my bag. Tomorrow, I imagine we won’t rush at all being we have a later flight. We’ve done this a few times now, so no real uncertainties.
So what have we done? Well it has been a mix of everything. A lot of mundane activities around the house, which I like. I enjoy spending entire days around the house as a matter of fact. I don’t even mind on some days that Japan is right outside and I don’t even step off the porch. We’ve had many day trips, some for shopping, some purely for scenery. Obsessed with taking pictures, I’ve burned through memory cards and entire camcorder hard disk. I’m happy I haven’t had to copy more than one set of cards and the camcorder because I am out of space on my laptop to backup to. We went to various locations to view cherry blossoms. This was the point of coming this time of year. I went on a run at Camp Zama military base (United States) during their festival. I went on training runs around the neighborhood. I’ve had special moments drinking in the beauty.
Family came over several times and we drove to visit them as well. Recently we went with Grandma and Grandpa to see Mt. Fuji from a secluded lookout point. Juri and I spent a night in a small village of historic build called Shirakawa-go. We went on a picnic bike ride over one of Dad’s long lunches. We played a few putt-putt golf challenges behind his animal hospital. We watched Mom’s favorite concert DVDs of the ultra-popular boy band called Arashi.
Unfortunately, I wasted a lot of downtime too, where I could have been building many new work initiatives. I did work, but I also let go of many proactive work possibilities in exchange for nothing special. On this last day I’d like to be able to say I went down my to-do list, the one that I wrote and rewrote several times while here and did everything on it. I’d like to say that but I can’t. Even if that makes me not bad, but just normal, I’m still regretting it. I did a few things, but not nearly enough. Even though I have a lot of fun working on the design projects I do, I trade that sometimes for letting my ‘Mr. Hyde’ take advantage of time-wasters.
Juri has a fun and unique family here. They appreciated that we spend time with them. They enjoyed even short opportunities to chat and drink tea together. Juri does a fantatic job quickly translating my little quips and jokes into something that works on their end. They are always laughing with us, and that is why we came. As much of a physical burden we must be, I thought that we could bring some happiness with us for them. Winter was long and cold for us and it had been too long. We thought we could bring some variety or some sunshine to the family.
I have a few pictures from the last couple weeks. We are happy for what we’ve been able to take part in. We are thankful to our family here and back home for taking care of us and our things. Stories and humor live on when the moment is over. We look forward to the next chance to come back again. We want it to be an ongoing exchange because it feels right, makes it less sad, and most of all, I haven’t climbed Mt. Fuji yet!
April 21, 2009 at 9:05 am | Japan, family, photography | 1 comment
My New Favorite Pen: Tombow AirPress
My new favorite pen the Tombow AirPress, made in Japan. I picked it up at a bookstore for about 400 Yen ($4.00). They stole my heart by giving it the commercial industrial look, bright orange, rubberized tough design and perhaps most likeable of all, the perfect clip. I know it’s just a pen, who cares. But there is something rewarding about finding something on your own that you’ve always hoped for. Pens are never my friends. I always break the clips, the plastic snaps from too much pressure. I can clip this Tombow pen to a hardcover book if I want to. It’s configured as a spring so it will cling to your shirt, portfolio or booklet and has a small hole if you wanted to put a lanyard around it or connect a cable to your belt. The ink flow is also perfect. As good or better than the Fisher Space Pen. I like a fine point because I always write too small and because of that too many pens don’t work for me. They stop up, perhaps due to the way I create friction on the point. The AirPress feature of this pen, I don’t fully understand (packaging in Japanese) but my best guess is contents are under slight pressure.
A couple pics of the best pen you’ll see today. Damn good pen. A great pen worthy of a great man.
April 18, 2009 at 9:03 am | Japan, gadgets, tools, writing | 2 comments
Name Your Price – Irradiated Software Gets It.
Being a computer power user, you often have subtle needs that can improve the navigating experience. After a lot of time spent in your default environment you think, “I wish I had a utility for that limitation.” or “Why didn’t they foresee this redundant nonsense while making the operating system?” For a long time, my biggest pet peeve with Mac OS X was that you couldn’t resize the app or folder windows without being forced to grab the little bottom-right corner triangle.
For custom resizes, this became a big nuisance, as it requires precision mousing. I’d often argue with people about the inferiority there, even commenting on earlier Mac OS window shade capability. Mac users simply didn’t identify with my problem. No searches yielded any programs. Was I really mostly alone on my window management hassles? Was I just too fidgety for changing my environment? Later, likely due to the surge in Mac purchases and migrations, seemingly enough people were annoyed by this because programs emerged addressing my exact problem.
The first program I found is called Zooom. It’s a commercial utility that allows you to grab or resize a window by holding down a set of keys. Doesn’t even require touching the edges. You can even grab windows from behind others. Despite some cool features, at the time I found it too pricey after evaluating the trial version. Also it didn’t operate properly on all programs. I thought that for a small task like this, there must be a script or freebie out there. Coming from Windows and Linux, hundreds of small single-serving apps like this are free.
One day, I was searching the depths of a web forum and somebody had mentioned a free program written by one guy, called Window Dragon. This program modified your system so all sides or corners of windows and programs were draggable much like Microsoft Windows and Linux. It had some quirks and was programmed for a previous version of OS X. I was too skeptical to try it despite being free. Something in the program description didn’t sit well with me and I felt my system modification might be detrimental somehow with other programs.
Eventually on a day I was really frustrated with the problem, I went back and purchased Zooom. It had updated to a new version and I believed it would work well. Zooom does what it advertises and some upgrades are free. Plus it can be kind of fun. But at $15.99 and the fact that it doesn’t work properly on multi-panel Adobe software (conflicting keys and jitters that I can’t really articulate verbally) I just didn’t feel my problem was fully solved. I phased it out of my workflow. Since I couldn’t depend on it for everything, I decided it almost isn’t worth initiating if I was getting mixed and unexpected results or annoyances.
A couple months ago, I found a little utility called TwoUp by a company called Irradiated Software. This program will pop your window instantly to take up the left, right, top or bottom half of your screen. No small adjustments, just quick reliable action. This is great for copying files from one folder to another, or seeing the contents of two webpages simultaneously. TwoUp is free. YES! After they programmed it, the company got a lot of requests for certain functionality. So they created a beefier version of TwoUp with added features and called it SizeUp. They listened to legitimate requests, kept the free version and asks that people pay for the better version. Many companies have this type of offering, but too many create the good version initially and strategically strip down the LE Lite Edition (Loser Edition). Going in that order, companies tend to take away too much and leave you feeling like, well, a loser.
What I’m very impressed with, and what prompted my comments here is the pricing strategy. I mentioned earlier that Zooom was $15.99. Not that expensive right? Obviously not since I did end up springing for it albeit reluctantly. That’s fine, but a power user often needs 4 or 8 utilities like these for easier computing. A few utilities priced at this level you are approaching the cost of the entire OS X operating system! And when you use little utilities for one thing, and not too often, the popular $19.99-29.99 pricing scheme just looks wrong. That’s why I was so pleased with Irradiated Software’s pricing of SizeUp. They use the pricing scheme called “Name Your Price.” They state that given the cost of sales / download / administration, they need to price it at minimum $1.26. You can own it for that price. They have a suggested price of $7.99 to match what they think it’s worth. And if this is the greatest sliced-bread utility you’ve ever used, you can go above that too and they will be thrilled.
I love this. Their suggested price is very reasonable. Clearly they get it. And they will sell more in volume than if it were $16 or more. Plus, it’s stupid not to buy it at $1.28 if you’ve had the trouble with windows like I have. Plus when you are in the middle of the transaction, you might begin to think, well I appreciate their efforts, so why not throw in a couple extra bucks because I want their continued progress. And certainly among good honest people, many wouldn’t feel right not paying the entire suggested price. Then of course you have the very generous folk pledging even more. There you go.
To wrap up, I don’t want to say that Zooom is bad or TwoUp/SizeUp is much better in all ways. I’m just expressing my appreciation for what I feel is clear, objective thinking and pricing. I think with the iPhone and the app store, there are a lot of people getting used to charging for, and paying for smaller yet useful utlities at lower prices. More might even buy just to try it. Just like you’d spend 75 cents on a video game just to pass the time. These are good tools and I’m glad they exist. See below for links for Mac and for a Windows alternative.
Irradiated Software, TwoUp
Irradiated Software, SizeUp
Zooom/2 by CodeRage
MaxTo for Windows (screen partitioner)
March 31, 2009 at 10:43 am | computers, tools, writing | 1 comment
