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and enter each week to win:
On1 Photo RAW and a Wacom Cintiq 13HD Interactive Pen and Touch
12.9 inch Silver 128 GB Apple iPad Pro
$1000 B&H Photo Gift Card
Sony Alpha a6300 Mirrorless Digital Camera with a 16-50mm lens
$1000 Amazon Gift Card
DJO PHantom 4 Qudacopter with 4K/12MP Camera
And, in the meantime, click ON1 Effects 10 FREE to download a free version of the On1 set of Photoshop plugins
As an avid Photoshop user, as well as teacher, I’ve become enamored of a few of the best plugins available for various purposes. One of my main Go-To plugin suites is the On1 set. I’m planning on doing quite a few tutorials on this set, and will be speaking a lot about it in the coming months.
They’re about to release a brilliant new RAW processing app, which will complement their suite. It can be used as a replacement or adjunct to your normal Photoshop or Lightroom workflow, and it promises to be terrific.
To encourage people to check out their software, On1 is going to be launching a new SWEEPSTAKES this Sunday, September 18th. They’ll be giving away all sorts of things – iPads, cameras, drones, software… and I encourage you to enter the sweepstakes! To do so, please click the banner on this post.
In the meantime, I also suggest checking out their ON1 Effects 10 FREE plugin for Photoshop
You know how I like FREE!!!
Click this banner to enter the On1 Sweepstakes this Sunday!
One set of my favorite plugin developers, MacPhun, has released an article on their blog about the expected changes in the upcoming MacOS Sierra. While I’m usually quite hesitant to upgrade my OS (I don’t like buying software upgrades for my existing apps – and what happened with Mavericks and it’s lack of video codecs is inexcusable), some of the revelations about the new Mac native photography apps are intriguing.
I skipped Mountain Lion, I’ve skipped El Capitan – but I might consider Sierra (after a good, long, healthy wait to the .2 update version).
Check out their article at: MacPhun
As my Photoshop students have already learned, brushes can be made using any set of pixels and can be manipulated almost unendingly with the Brush panel. But sometimes, it’s very helpful to have a starting point. Grutbrushes.com provides some beautifully made starting points! The detail and settings of his brushes are unique in their realism and detail in use. They work well with just a mouse, but like any brush, take on their real strengths when using a pen tablet like the Wacom brand of tablets.
Normally, I pass by a lot of the ads I see on Facebook, but a few months ago, I decided to click on one and found an excellent resource.
At Grutbrushes.com, the (very responsive) developer Nicolai has made sets of brushes, ranging from inks to calligraphy, to natural media, and more. He even provides a Photoshop Extension to open a panel in which you can organize your brushes into sets as you like them. Just recently, I used just one of his cloud brushes in a project, and created very realistic clouds. He offers a LOT of freebies, and if you sign up for his email list, you can get even more. He sells sets of them as well. His full set is a VERY reasonable $22.
Remember, all of the brushes are just starting points – Presets – from which you can use the Photoshop Brushes panel to manipulate them, resize them and alter how they work.
You all know, I LOVE Free stuff – and here, there’s a plethora of freebies along with the paid content. I think any Photoshop user will find a great deal of use and enjoyment of these. Plan on seeing some lessons on this within a few weeks.
As I mentioned, I’d be discussing some Photoshop plugins. One of the first I’ll be discussing is a set of plugins from Topaz Labs. This software has a zillion modules and excellent tools, from Image Effects, to retouching to masking. I’ll be reviewing a bunch of these shortly, but in the meantime, here’s a link that’ll get you a $20 credit for whatever product you buy. I own the whole set, and one of my favorite things about these guys is that once you buy a plugin, the upgrades are FREE for LIFE. Check them out HERE!
For students who plan on attending classes using trial software, this notice is extremely important. Please note that if you intend to do so, you’ll want to hold off on installing the necessary application until just before your class is scheduled to begin. Otherwise, you’ll be required to enter their Subscription Program to continue usage throughout your class time.
On May 9th, Adobe posted:
Adobe provides free trial periods for Creative Cloud in order to allow individuals to download, evaluate and try Creative Cloud before deciding to become a Creative Cloud member. In order to ensure that trial lengths align more accurately with how trials are being used, we are making some adjustments to the program.
Beginning May 9th, 2016 the length of the trial period for Creative Cloud will be standardized worldwide to 7 days.
Individuals currently evaluating Creative Cloud via a trial will not be impacted.
You can find more information on Creative Cloud trials, including how to sign up on the Creative Cloud trials page.
To see the original post, please visit: http://blogs.adobe.com/adobecare/2016/05/09/update-on-creative-cloud-trials/
Download.com has negotiated a deal with Adobe for the Adobe CC Photography Plan (Photoshop CC and Lightroom). Instead of $9.99/mo the first year of the plan, they’re offering 20% off the first year of the plan, so your first year is $7.99/mo (and will go up to $9.99/mo after that). This offer is valid through June 30th, so take a look!
https://creative.adobe.com/promo/downloadccpp
By the way, this may be more important than you think… Adobe seems to have just announced that their Trial versions will no longer be valid for 30 days, but for only 7 days. See a future post for more info on that one!
As most of my design and graphics students know, I’m a bit of a type geek. In almost every class, even if it’s not in our regular syllabus, I try to include at least a brief introduction to Type as Design – or, Typography.
And, you probably also know how I stress the idea of kerning – the way individual letterforms fit together, as a method of refining your work, adding a cohesive look and confirming that you’ve taken some time and put in some effort at making your type look good, as well as read well.
Today, I found an excellent infographic at Digital Synopsis.com, that may help you to make better decisions about how to improve your Headers, your Titles, and all display type. Take a look!
Today, Google announced that their excellent Photoshop Plugin “The Nik Collection” is going to be free to everybody.
This excellent collection includes: Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine – professional level controls to refine your images. I’ve been using it for several years (along with some other plugin sets) for efficient control over my effects, sharpening, noise removal and more.
For those of us who use Photoshop on a regular basis, getting this (previously $149) plugin for FREE is a boon!
Check out their post at: https://plus.google.com/+NikCollection/posts/AFGsG2Di7EK
So, I’m a sucker for alliteration. That’s what first drew my attention to the article, written on Postlight, entitled Fun Photoshop File Format Facts.
As a Photoshop geek since version 2.5 of the program (before they even invented Layers), this discussion of the inner workings of how a Photoshop .psd file retains it’s backwards compatibility, along with it’s potential and power is of massive fascination to any Photoshop geek.
Upon first looking at the article, I was brought back to a simpler and easier time, with the help of the first image – Photoshop, as it looked when layers were still almost brand new in Photoshop 4 (version 3 actually first introduced them). There’s a fun retro-splashscreen quiz (for those of us with memories of Photoshop going WAY back – image G was the first one with which I worked), reference to a really interesting commentary by a programmer from 2009, about his utter hatred of the .psd technology (which, by the way, is what gives us ALL the power we have now), and some technical background on what really makes up a .psd file.
As Photoshop users and designers, we really don’t need to know any of this. For us, it just works, and we’re grateful for the power it gives us. But for me, it makes me happy I’m not a programmer working with Photoshop files from a coding perspective!
Just for fun, I’m including the splashscreen from Photoshop CC2015, and what the interface looks like, now!
