Augmented Reality (AR) combines the physical and interactive 3D world. It’s not a new technology, but it will definitely make you jump up and down. I know I did when I first saw this back in March at an Adobe event I attended. Simply wave a piece of paper at the camera and some video is projected on your piece of paper in virtual reality.

Want to know more?

Read “Augmented Reality using a webcam and Flash” on Adobe’s Developer Connection or watch some of the Max 2009 videos on Adobe TV:

• Designing for Augmented Reality. What is it, how is it being used? how can you use it yourself inside of Flash?
• Augmented Reality within Flash Player. (FLAR), superimposing graphics over video…

The preference setting hasn’t disappeared in Photoshop CS4… Press Ctrl+Alt or Cmd+Option on startup of the application and you should see:

I’m guessing that the reason why this preference setting is now hidden is the fact that most of us editing images in Photoshop are working on workstations with 4+Gb RAM, which would mean that Photoshop would hardly be using the swap file for memory usage.

Fall of Autumn’s Alan Lastufka is the producer of the following video on Letterpress.

Letter Press

From job case, leading, quads, coppers & brasses, guide pins, chase & furniture to inking and printing.

Deconvolution sharpening in Photoshop

Mike McHugh did this really cool & funny video on Deconvolution Sharpening. I have to admit I’d never heard of this before… you might not have either. Watching his video, I’m thinking “aaaaahhhh… so that is how they do that on NCIS, CSI etc.” the blurry and invisible become visible.

If you’re looking for some background information on deconvolution:

• Wikepedia provides additional (technical) info.

ePubs from InDesign

David and Anne-Marie recorded back in September a cool InDesign Secrets video on creating ePubs from InDesign. A nice accompanyment to Gabriel Powell’s Essential guide to making and editing eBooks published in the last edition of InDesign Magazine.

Modified: 13 September 2009 – Added “Note”.

Super quick tip. A  practical example. I’ve been writing Technical Documentation the past weeks, and am processing an awful lot of screenshots. Sometimes they are kind of big and I really only want to focus on one part, but would love to see a fading edge and I crop the images so they don’t take up too much room. Photoshop CS4’s Mask panel helps be produce the desired effect.

Photoshop CS4 makes this a 3 second task… I’m not kidding ! Don’t blink, you might miss them.

Quick Steps 1-2-3

Create a Selection, with the Rectangle Marquee tool, roughly the size you want the final image to be.

Note: If you want to feather the bottom half of an entire screenshot, don’t select the entire canvas. Instead, just select an area that falls a few pixels within the canvas area at the feathering point.

Click Add Pixel Mask in Masks Panel.

Click Mask Edge… The Refine Edge dialog appears.

Play with Feather and Contract/Expand settings (and others if preferred) until you get the edge just right

Click OK

and you’re done.

Video Tutorial

[apologies, 2nd video upload... I goofed up on the first one...]

Web-reference: deke Pod (2008, O’Reilly Media Inc.)

This tip is Part 3 of a three-part tip and generates the masked text. Part 1 describes how the Photoshop artwork is created and Part 2 outlines how to apply Live Trace and maintain colour editing ability.

I’m adding my standard “Bogus” text. Select Text and Background (shift-click each with Selection Tool, or click drag Selection Tool around both objects). Ensure the Transparency panel is visible. From the panel menu enable “New Opacity Masks are Clipping” and “New Opacity Masks are Inverted”, then select Make Opacity Mask.

I’m not entirely happy with the result here.

I would have liked to trace a darker image. Fortunately I retained the Link to the original Photoshop file that Live Trace was applied to… so let’s go and edit that…

Edit the original Photoshop file

In the Transparency panel, ensure the graphic (not the mask) is selected. Display the Links panel, then select Edit Original.

The image that is being traced in Illustrator opens in Photoshop.

Double click the Filter Gallery layer in the document, and make preferred adjustments. Click OK and Save and Close the Photoshop document.

When you return to Illustrator, Illustrator will notices you’ve modified the original Photoshop file that was placed and asks if you’d like to update the linked Photoshop file. Click Yes to enforce the update and view the new result.

The cool thing about this technique is that you can:

a)  edit the original Photoshop file that is being “Live Traced”, as long as you retain a Link to that file when placing it in Illustrator. This way you can take advantage of using Photoshop’s Filter Gallery, which I prefer to use over the more limited version that Illustrator has.

b) edit the Live Trace options…

c) edit the global colours generated by Live Trace

d) edit the text.

Edit Text

To edit the text ensure the Mask is selected in the Transparency panel. Next select your Type tool and make the text change.

Well, that completes a long overdue tip with lots of extras…

This tip is Part 2 of a three-part tip. Part 1 describes how the Photoshop artwork that is placed into the Illustrator file was created and Part 3 will create the Text Effect that will give our finished result.

We’re ready to place the previously created Photoshop graphic in Illustrator now. But let’s create a New Illustrator document first that has the same width and height as the Photoshop file.

File > Place. Enable the Link option in the Place dialog. This will allow further editing of the Photoshop file at a later stage.

Tracing the Graphic

From the Live Trace menu in the Control panel select Tracing Options…

What I’d like to do is generate two colour swatches that I can easily edit, whilst retaining Live Trace ability. To generate these swatches on the fly as part of the Live Trace functionality, change the following Adjustments settings:

Set Mode to Colour, Set Max Colours to 2 and Enable Output to Swatches. With the Preview box ticked you’ll be able to see the Live Trace result. Feel free to make additional adjustments.

Click Trace to apply the settings and generate the swatches.

To make it a bit easier to identify the two swatches that are generated, shift-click the swatches in the Swatches panel, then select Create Colour Group from the Swatches panel menu. Name the Colour Group and select Create From: Selected Swatches.

Click OK.

Amending the colours

Editing the colours of the Colour Group is as easy as double clicking the colour and amending the settings.

We’re now ready to get the text part of this three-part tip happening, let’s continue at Part 3.

A month or so ago I demoed a masking technique that works well with text in Illustrator during an Adobe eSeminar I delivered. At the time I promised to write this technique up as a digitip, however, an extremely busy workschedule meant I’d not yet gotten around to posting the tip. But a promise is a promise. To make up for the delay in posting this tip, I’ve spruced up the tip with Adobe Photoshop CS3 artwork creation, and that’s where I’ll start Part 1 of this three-part tip.

There are many different ways of achieving this end result, some much quicker than my tip, purely using Photoshop or Illustrator. The tips uses Photoshop’s Filter Gallery, Illustrator’s Live Trace, Colour Groups and Opacity Masks…  and will show you how you can still edit each of those components at the end…

Part 2 of the tip will take the Photoshop artwork we’re creating here into Illustrator and trace it, and Part 3 will create the Text Effect.

Creating the trace graphic

We’re starting in Photoshop CS3 and are creating a new graphic. As I’m imagining this might become a header of some sort, I’ll stick to A4-width and about 8cm height. (File > New).

Because I want to limit the colour effects for the final result I’m restricting myself to creating a greyscale image.

Fill the image with 100% Black (Edit > Fill). I want to be able to edit the Filter settings after initially applying them. In order to do this the Background must be converted to a Smart Filter Layer. Select Filter > Convert for Smart Filters.

With the use of a few filters the scattered look is generated. Select Filter > Filter Gallery and expand the Sketch filters and click Graphic Pen.

A diagonal pattern appears. Let’s stick to the default settings for now. We’re going to add apply another Filter. Click the New Effect Layer icon .

Question for Adobe: why is this caled a New “Effect” Layer and not a “Filter”Layer?

Two Graphic Pen Effect Layers appear in the Filter Gallery dialog.

The top one is the newly created one. With this Layer still selected, expand the Brush Strokes Filters and click Accented Edges.

Click OK.

Now let’s look at the Layers panel. It displays our Smart Filter layer, and in addition shows us the Filter Gallery that’s been applied to the image.

To further edit the two Filter Gallery effects or add additional Effect Layers, double click Filter Gallery.

The previous dialog appears again, and you can make changes to the settings for the two Effects Layers. I’m pretty happy with my default result at this stage, so will leave things as they are.

Time to save the image and bring it into Illustrator…

I’m saving as a Photoshop file with Layers in tact.

Part 2 of this tip will bring the graphic into Illustrator…

This tip succeeds the previous tip, and show cases how the dotted patterns created earlier can be faded, whilst retaining their vector and spot colours.

Spotted dots

The dotted patterns created in tip 53, can also be spot colours, by ensuring that the colour of the circular component that forms part of the pattern is filled with a spot colour.

Add Black and White Gradient

Draw a rectangular shape over the top of the dotted pattern object and fill this with a Black and White Gradient.

Turning Gradient into Mask

Using the selection tool, select both objects by roughly click dragging with the selection tool over one of the corners. This will ensure the top and the underlaying objects are both selected.

Ensure the Transparency palette is visible and select “Make Opacity Mask” from the palette fly-out menu.

The gradient effect is now complete. Spot colours are retained. When saving this file as an Illustrator file and placing it in InDesign, spot colours are also honoured.

For more information on Opacity Masks, please also refer to tip 007. Although this tip was written for an earlier version of Illustrator, the technique is valid today.

Video Tutorial

I’m especially excited, as I’ve also just received another XMas present: A brand new MacBook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo And yep… the mac version of the Photoshop CS3 Beta release certainly is Universal Binary Which means the application will take full advantage of the Intel driven architecture.

Web Reference: Photoshop CS3 Beta (2006, Adobe)

This is part 3 in a 3 part tutorial on Vector Smart Objects.

Previous tutorial: Part 2

Replacing the content

So, if we edit an individual smart object, that has been copied, all related objects are also updated after the edited object has been saved…

So what happens when instead of editing we select the Replace Contents.. command from the Layer > Smart Objects menu?

Well, it’s kind of obvious by now I guess , so let’s just go ahead and do it. We’re locating our replacement Illustrator file — in my case coffee bug number 2.. –

Placing this and returning back to Photoshop…

Wow, I love this stuff. A different bug for all copied instances

So the tip for today really is to start looking at how you work with Photoshop? We’ve been using layers for many years, but have never been able to work with them in a non-destructive manner, and smart objects can do even more than what I’ve just shown you in these three short tutorials.

Video Tutorial

This is part 2 in a 3 part tutorial on Vector Smart Objects. .

Previous tutorial: Part 1

Replacing the content

So, if we edit an individual smart object, that has been copied, all related objects are also updated after the edited object has been saved…

So what happens when instead of editing we select the Replace Contents.. command from the Layer > Smart Objects menu?

Well, it’s kind of obvious by now I guess , so let’s just go ahead and do it. We’re locating our replacement Illustrator file — in my case coffee bug number 2.. –

Placing this and returning back to Photoshop…

Wow, I love this stuff. A different bug for all copied instances

So the tip for today really is to start looking at how you work with Photoshop? We’ve been using layers for many years, but have never been able to work with them in a non-destructive manner, and smart objects can do even more than what I’ve just shown you in these three short tutorials.
Continued: Part 3 of Tutorial

Video Tutorial

This is part 1 in a 3 part tutorial on Vector Smart Objects.

An Illustrator file as a smart object

Illustrator files that you have created can be added to Photoshop as Vector Smart Objects. The Illustrator art is nested inside its own layer in Photoshop when the smart object is created.

Creating the object

To create a Vector Smart Object, either copy and paste art from Illustrator, or use – as I’m doing here – use the File > Place command.

Navigate to your Illustrator file, then click Place and in the Place PDF dialog box, se the Options “Crop To” setting to Art Box, then click OK.

Your Illustrator art is now placed in Photoshop.

A transform bounding box appears around your artwork, that behaves a bit like Edit > Free Transform. Shift-dragging one of the corner handles will scale and moving the cursor outside the corner handles enables rotation.

And moving the cursor outside the corner handles enables rotation. Press the Enter or Return or return key on the keyboard to apply these settings.

With the Move Tool selected I can further position this newly created layer, which indeed is a Smart Object layer.

I’m enabling Auto Select Layer as my move tool options, so I can automatically select my bug layer.

In addition I will enable the Show Transform controls option which allows me to easily apply transformations to selected layers without having to access the Free Transform command.

Clicking the bug, now displays the transform controls and automatically selects the appropriate layer in the layers palette.

Clicking the text “Xpresso” automatically selects the Xpresso layer. B.t.w this word is by no means associated to “that other page layout applications”

With both these settings enabled I can now use my Alt or Option key to drag a number of coffee bug copies on my graphic and at the same time scale, rotate them as I am creating the copies.

And yes, the graphic is no literally littered with coffe bugs

Continued: Part 2 of Tutorial

Video Tutorial

In addition to the PodCasts which are dependent on audio, I have added three written tutorials as well.

Web Reference: Geographic Imager (2005, Avenza.)

My dad asked me a question on how to blur an image, whilst having the blur occur gradually. The following tutorial provides one method you can use to achieve this.

About the tip

Ok, this is the first quicktime tutorial I’ve recorded. I must apologize in advance for the bad sound quality: lack of a head-set So I had to use the internal microphone on my Mac I hope to purchase a new head-set over the next week or so and add more of these tutorials.

A quick tip on how to create digital tear-offs using Photoshop’s default chalk brush.

Preparation

In order to easily edit the tear-off edge after you’ve created it, I’d advice the use of a layer mask that can be edited by painting with black or white (or tints of black).

To create a layer mask, launch the Layers palette and double click the Background thumbnail. The New Layer dialog box appears. You can alter the layer name (I’m being lazy and will leave the name as ‘Layer 0′.

Now that the layer has been created a blank mask can be added, by clicking the Add a Mask button at the bottom of the palette.

Picking the brush

Select the brush tool and ensure that you’ve reset the foreground/background colours to black/white (press ‘D’ on keyboard).

Next access the brushes palette (normally placed in the palette well) and from the Bursh Presets select a Chalk Brush. Chalk brushes are pretty good brushes to use as a tool for creating false tear-off edges on images.

Hover the brush over the image to assess its brush size and use the [ and ] keys on the keyboard to enlarge the brush, until it’s a decent size (see below). Before you start painting away, check that you’re indeed painting the mask and not the image ( mask icon is displayed in the layers palette next to the show/hide layer ‘eye’ symbol).

Paint away your edge…

As you are painting with black you are generating transparency in Photoshop. When you’re happy, place the file in your InDesign document, and if needed from within InDesign Alt (Option) double click to open the file in Photoshop again for further editing. To add bits of edge back, paint with white, to remove bits of the edge paint with black.

The added drop shadow (in InDesign), lifts the image of the page a bit.

(revision 1.1)

During a Saturday training session, one of the trainees asked a question about creating a layer mask based on an existing greyscale image. A solution was found, that seemed too much like a work around. The following tip uses a copy-’n-paste approach.

The images

Start by opening both images. The image that will be masked and the greyscale image.

The destination image.

The greyscale image (grayscale if you’re in the U.S.).

If your image is inversed then use the Image> Adjustment>Inverse command to swap the black and white colours around.

Converting Background to Layer.

Next, convert the Background into a layer by double clicking the Background icon. The New Layer dialog box will appear.

Either enter a new layer name, or keep the default “Layer 0″. Don’t amend any other settings. Click OK to convert the Background to Layer 0.

Creating a layer mask.

With Layer 0 selected, click the “new layer mask” button at the bottom of the layers palette . A blank mask is added to the image. Click the mask icon in the layers palette to select the mask. Then access the channels palette. The mask channel is automatically selected.

With the layer mask selected click the view mask icon, then paste the copied greyscale image. (Edit > Paste).

To view the image without the “red” maske overlay deselect the view Layer 0 Mask icon again.

The finished result provides transparency for black maske areas and semi transparency (opacity) for grey areas in the mask. Use the painting tools to expand the mask if required (when placing over larger image files), and move the mask to preferred position over the image (remember to UNLINK first when doing this, as you’d be moving both image and mask simultaneously otherwise.)

Save the file as a native Photoshop file (retain layers) then place it into your favourite page layout appliation … InDesign CS

Ta-daaaaaah!

There are a number of methods to create the above generated affect, and this tip merely outlines one of the many methods available in Photoshop. Thanks for asking the question Josh!

Updated 1-Feb-2010 (few typos fixed).

After seeing the new shadow/highlight Image adjustment command recently I got pretty excited. I’ve compared this new command against a more conventional selection and curves based technique used for (shadow) contrast and detail enhancement and found it to be much less distorting on 8-bit images.

The conventional curves method

To ensure that only shadow ares of the image are colour corrected, the first step in this process is to isolate those shadow areas by creating a selection. I’m using the Select>Color Range command here.

Once the shadow areas are selected it is wise to soften the edges of the selection, so that major pixel adjustments blend in smoothly with uncorrected parts of the image.

The Select>Feather command does just that…

Next step is to ”rip” the “heck” out of the curve in an effort to increase the brightness and contrast in the shadow areas of the image.

(thank you to Steve D. from the West for originally introducing me to this technique!)

The new Shadow/Highlight command

So how does the Shadow/Highlight command compare to this? Well, pretty amazing. When only looking at the shadows (as in the above example), it seems to cleverly isolate the shadow areas, without the need to create a selection first.

The command seems to shift the entire bundle of shadow pixels towards a lighter gamma range, resulting in a brighter shadow range. In addition to this, the “amount” value brings down the number of “dark” shadow pixels in the image.

So how do the two methods compare?

The comparison

Overall my vote goes to the shadow/highlight. The shadow/highlight option might give slightly less contrast, but this is easily fixed by adjusting the tonal width value (more options… feature), using the same shadow/highlight command.  The biggest difference is displayed when comparing the various histograms:

No clipping in the shadow areas using the Shadow/Highlight command.

No “spiking” and pixel distortion in the shadows, resulting in higher quality imaging (Shadow/Highlight Command)

And above all ANOTHER MAJOR TIME SAVER.

Conventionally speaking, highlights, midtones and shadows would require individual adjustments to be applied (i.e. selecting, feathering, curving, ok-ing x3)… The Shadow/Highlight command is a major GIFT provided to all of us who enhance dozens if not hundreds of images a day.

Thank You Adobe!

How do I create one of those nice looking soft edge transparency effects on a photo? There are dozens of methods of creating this effect in Photoshop. The following is a quick ‘n easy method, that not only retains the original image information, it also allows for quick ‘n easy image updates at a later stage (even when already placed in InDesign). 

Start by creating a layer for the image that is to have the soft edged transparency effect. If the image opens with only a ”background”, then double click the Background to make a layer.

Layer Mask

Next, select the layer and click the Add Layer Mask button in the layers palette.

A blank layer mask is added.

Gradient edge technique 1

To create an even looking soft edge on one side of the image, select the gradient tool, then select the black, white gradient from the gradient presets.

Select the layer mask, then using the gradient tool , click-drag from point 1 to point 2. Everything North of 1 will become transparent, everything South of 2 will retain original image information. Between point 1 and 2 a transition occurs from transparent to original image information.

If you are not happy with the result. then simply repeat the click-drag motion, until you’ve got a result you can smile about.

Increasing the distance between point 1 and 2 will give a wider gradient (soft) edge, decreasing will give a shorter gradient (soft) edge.

Save the Photoshop file, and place in InDesign.

Using soft edged brush – technique 2

Select the blank layer mask and use a soft edged brush (paint with black) and “paint” transparency.

A reasonably sized brush works best here.

Tip: Set foreground/background colour back to Default (press D on keyboard), use the [ and ] keys on the keyboard to decrease or increase the brush size, add the shift key and you decrease/increase the hardness of the brush. To remove transparency press “X” to swap foreground/background colours, and “X” again to recreate transparency.

Save the Photoshop file, and place in InDesign.

Placement in Adobe InDesign and automatic update

Place the image above a coloured background or other image to see the transparency effect. If the effect isn’t quite like you’d wanted, select the image and right mouse-click Graphics>Edit Original in InDesign.

This will re-open the image in Photoshop. Make the required change to the mask in Photoshop, then save and close the Photoshop file. On return to InDesign you will immediately view the amended result.

Pretty cool integration of Photoshop and InDesign I reckon!

P.S. thanks for reminding me to add this tip Bob!

Building on Nick Hodge’s spot colour Photoshop / InDesign tips I thought it would be nice to show a way of creating a simple cartoon, using one(spot)colour and black in Photoshop. It includes using a layer effect to spice-up the look a bit and calculations to extract the different colour channels to new documents which can then be used in InDesign (as in Nick’s tip).

The black outline

For the artist: Create a new CMYK document with a white background, and set the foreground colour to 100% Black (set other colours to 0%) . Then using the brushtools create the cartoon drawing.

When hardcopy artwork supplied: scan in as greyscale and copy content to black channel of a CMYK document with identical image size settings.

Separate this Black overlay in a layer, with the blending mode set to Multiply.

Add colour

Check the channels palette to assure that only the Black channel contains “content”. Then create a second layer in which you add the cartoon colour. Pick either Cyan or Magenta as foreground colour.

NOTE: you can not work in layers if you are trying to work in Multichannel mode using spot colour channels. This makes the creation of the cartoon more cumbersome and is the reason I choose to use the old “work in CMYK mode” trick.

Spicing up the colour

To spice up the colour area, you could add a Layer Style. Use Screen and Multiply blending modes with white and black colour settings to avoid adding colour to channels other then “Cyan” (in my example) and “Black”.

In my example I went wild with a Soft Chisel, Inner Bevel emboss and a shading effect that uses a customised Gloss Contour. Oooh, and I added a texture to the colour (overall creating a very wrinkley look!).

Notice that when the colour specifications are measured, only the Black and Cyan channel contain colour. The other two channel measurements read 0%.

Extracting the colour and black channels to new images

You can generate the 2 images required for overlay placement in InDesign using different methods. I thought I’d use the Calculations command for a change. Calculations are seemingly underused nowadays. Layers, layer masks etc have brought easier ways of mixing & matching images. They remain however a great way of creating new alpha channels (used for masking for instance).

(Just reminiscing: I remember struggling with calculations in Photoshop 2, when creating the black&spot covers for a publication containing a frame with inner “dropshadow”, which required a different image insert each edition; we’d use the Magenta channel for the “spot” colour simulation and calculations).

Combine a blank-channel (such as Magenta or Yellow) with Cyan (the Colour), and create a New Document. The document will contain a single Alpha-channel.

Convert the document to Greyscale and save for placement in InDesign. Repeat this action for Black. Then use Nick’s method for placement and positioning in InDesign (Colour image below Black image, setting black’s blending mode back to multiply and assigning appropriate spot to Colour).

Maybe this cartoon tip is useful to some people. I enjoyed trying out my mini wacom tablet for the first time, which I’ve had for months but only plugged in recently (Thank you to Nathan for his generous gift!).

When you view the image contents of a new folder using the File Browser, you must have experienced a delay in the viewing process at times. As you open a (new) folder, Photoshop looks “into” each file and extracts its metadata (file information) and a thumbnail (the preview).

If you opt to rotate thumbnails, the thumbnail information that was originally extracted will be updated accordingly.

This metadata and thumbnail information is kept in the …Application Support /Adobe/FileBrowser/Photoshop7 folder (Mac) [...Application Data /Adobe/FileBrowser/Photoshop7 for PC]. Although the filesizes of these documents are relatively small, the number of files can increase drastically if you happen to be viewing lots of different image folders.

Purge Cache

If at any stage you experience problems using the FileBrowser, you might consider cleaning out the cache by using the Purge Cache command from the File Browser fly-out menu.

The Index.dat file and possibly 2 files (metadata & thumbnail info) will remain.

After Purging the Cache each image folder opened will once again be indexed by the File Browser.

Export Cache

The “Export Cache” command can be used to export the metadata and thumbnail information for a folder. Regardless of whether the cache files have been created locally or not, the File Browser appears to look at the saved Cache files first, thereby speeding up the previewing process.

The “Export Cache” command stores a metadata file (AdobePS7.md0) and a thumbnail file (AdobePS7.tb0) in the images’ folder.

Why add these files?

(1) If you burn your images to CD for archiving purposes, the addition of these files will speed-up the previewing of the CD content by the File Browser at a later stage and on any computer .

(2) If a folder name is amended the File Browser will recreate the cache the next time the folder is viewed, unless the cache had been exported.

(3) One last usage could be for storage of image files on a server (access by various people from different workstations).

P.S. If you know of any other usages let me know, and I’ll add them to this page.

Do you find that when the File Browser is docked to the palette well you can’t make the browser window wider only deeper? Use the following workaround to make the browser window wider.

If the File Browser is docked to the palette well, start by “undocking” it.

From the File Browser fly-out menu select “Show in Separate Window”, the browser will now be displayed as an individual window for which the size can be amended. Set the browser width to the preferred width, and select “Dock to Palette Well” from the fly-out menu, to place the File Browser back in the well.

The width for the File Browser window has changed accordingly.