Adobe Creative Suite 6—The Preview
New shoes, at least the kind that are made of leather and have hard soles, never seem to be comfortable until you've worn them for a while and often that's the case with software upgrades. Knowing that the CS6 version of Adobe's Creative Suite includes more changes than in any recent upgrade, it was with no small amount of trepidation that I opened the various applications. The look is distinctly better—cleaner, maybe more compact—but, even better, the applications fit like a comfortable old shoe.
Any attempt to review the entire suite at once would be a disservice to you and to the many components of the suite. By "many" what I mean is a menu with 19 entries. Granted, a few are essentially duplicates with 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Bridge, Illustrator, and Photoshop but it's clear from the array of applications that Adobe intends to maintain its prominence in photography, design, website development, publishing, video, and audio.
In addition to the 3 applications that have 32- and 64-bit versions, 2 applications (Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects) run only on 64-bit systems. This trend has been clear for several years as both Microsoft and Apple developed 64-bit operating systems. Adobe doesn't provide many hints about future versions of the creative suite but it's probably a safe bet to assume that the other applications will be migrated to dual-platform support or to 64-bit support only. These are powerful applications and they operate most efficiently when they are run on powerful computers with a lot of memory.
This week I'll fill you in on the overall suite, touch on Adobe's Creative Cloud, and explain what I've heard about the company's plans. That should be enough for one day!
The Suite
One thing that's important to realize when thinking about Adobe is that the company takes a long view. There is a bureaucracy at Adobe and, if you think that I mean that in a negative way, you're wrong. Bureaucracies exist to ensure that everything that should happen does happen. Nothing gets left out. When you say that something is ready for people to use, it's ready for people to use.
The Adobe bureaucracy has outlined a long-term view that is designed to ensure that Adobe's products will continue to be at the forefront of Web, print, video, and audio communications.
Adobe's Creative Suite 6 builds on the existing applications and adds applications that will resonate with individuals and businesses that are trying to find the best ways to communicate with their clients, customers, and prospects.
Whether you choose to use the traditional PC-based applications or move to the functionality that Adobe offers "in the cloud", you'll probably find that you're dealing with CS6. If you're a print designer, you may have noticed that few people are talking about Quark Xpress these days.
I couldn't remember Quark Xpress when I was writing this article and I performed a Google search for "desktop publishing". Quark Xpress didn't show up on the first page of results, although the open source Scribus did and so did Microsoft Publisher. All of the other links were about Adobe InDesign.
Creative Suite 6 reduces the number of packages available to just 4 and this is largely a response to CS5 and CS5.5 sales. Two products (Prelude and SpeedGate) are new and two applications (most notably Acrobat) have not been updated in this version.
If you currently use Acrobat and you upgrade to CS6, it's important not to uninstall Acrobat and the same holds true for Flash Builder.
Adobe's Creative Cloud looks like a good choice because it includes all Adobe products and makes new versions available early for $50 per month. That's slightly more than the $550 upgrade price for the Master Collection but it also provides access to features that aren't in the Master Collection.
Adobe Creative Cloud
The Adobe Creative Cloud is probably the most remarkable new feature of CS6. If you choose this $50/month option, you have access to every application Adobe creates, period. You also have access to Adobe's online capabilities to share the content you create. The ability to publish content that can be used on Apple or Android tablets or phones is included, too.
If Internet presence providers aren't nervous about this, they should be.
Adobe Senior Marketing Director Scott Morris explained it this way: "The creative cloud offering gives subscribers access to the tools they need to create content that they can store and share during development and publish anywhere."
The Future
In the coming weeks I'll talk with you about new features in many of the Adobe applications and show you how some of the new features work.
I am working with the PC-based applications instead of the Adobe Creative Cloud applications but I can tell from what I've seen so far that Adobe will continue to lead in a market segment that's changing quickly.
Nik's Silver Efex: When Color Is Not Enough
More years ago than I'd like to remember, my wife and I were at Highbanks Park. As usual, I had a camera. A film camera. Yes, this was a long time ago. When I mentioned that I'd loaded the camera with black-and-white film, Phyllis was astonished. Why would anyone use black-and-white film to take pictures of trees in a forest? But when I processed the film and made prints, we both liked them enough that I made large prints and framed them. I still see them every day because they are in frames and on the wall. Sometimes black-and-white is better than color.
Monochrome images don't confuse the eye with color. Composition is the key. But digital cameras record color images. You can convert these images to monochrome in Photoshop or PhotoPaint or Paint Shop Pro. If you know enough, you'll be able to create a striking monochrome image but if you have the Nik Silver Efex plug-in, you can create a striking image in just a few moments and, with a little additional effort, you can create a WOW! image.
Here's a picture that I created at the Habitat for Humanity building. It's just a broom with some things in the background. It's an OK image but I think it might be better on black and white.
Let's see what Nik's Silver Efex can do in Adobe Photoshop CS6.
As with other Nik Photoshop plug-ins, Silver Efex comes with a lot of default effects and each of them is an exceptional starting point.
The original image was, of course, in color.
I liked the image because of the receding lines of the broom handle.
NEUTRAL
This is the basic starting point. The color image has been converted to a good monochrome image. The contrast provides acceptable detail throughout the image, from dark to light.
UNDEREXPOSURE
This effect controls the entire image and reduces the overall exposure. This isn't normally a look you would want but not all photographic needs fit into what is considered "normal". Sometimes underexposure is what's needed to achieve the proper look and this effect is a very convincing underexposure.
HIGH CONTRAST
As with underexposure, high contract is not a "normal" look and I think that it it doesn't work at all with this image although it might work if the image had been limited to a study of just the bristles on the broom.
HIGH STRUCTURE
Structure defines an image's contrast in the mid-range tones. Adding structure is a way to increase an image's apparent clarity. Compare this image in particular to the neutral image. The neutral image looks good but this image with high structure seems to pop right out of the screen. Consider a visit to your ophthalmologist ("Which looks better, #1 or #2?") when one view is distinctly clearer and crisper than the other.
HIGH KEY
High key and low key are specialized treatments. In a high-key image, everything is light but nothing (or very little) is overexposed to the point that detail is lost. The high key effect doesn't work well with this image.
LOW KEY
The opposite of high key is low key. Everything is dark but not underexposed to the point that detail is lost in the shadows. The classic low-key image is a black cat or dog on a dark background. It's tricky to maintain detail in the shadows and Silver Efex has done a remarkable job here.
SOFT SEPIA
Sepia offers an old-fashioned look and the Silver Efex out-of-the box sepia is delightful. You can, of course, modify the effect to make it more or less pronounced as you desire.
NEUTRAL WITH SELECTIVE COLORIZATION
One of my favorite effects is selective colorization so I decided to try that with Silver Efex and what I learned is this: It's absurdly easy. If I had to do this on my own, I would need to painstakingly create a mask that included the broom head and the broom stick. With Silver Efex, all I had to do was place a control point in the yellow area and increase the color setting.
NEUTRAL WITH ADDITIONAL COLORIZATION
Then I decided that I wanted the bristles to be colorized, too.
MY FINAL IMAGE
And here's the final image.
I'm certain that the Professional Photographers of America will not award it a merit, but I like the effect and (as I like to say from time to time) if the image you create pleases you, that's all that matters.
This is a versatile plug-in that offers nearly 20 film emulations. As with all Nik products, you can customize any of the standard settings and save them as presets for future use. Nik and others offer presets that you can download.
Monochrome can be powerful as photographer Joel Tjintjelaar of Holland explains in the video on this page at Nik's website.
This is a $200 program but Nik has many other worthwhile applications and the complete collection of all Nik products ranges from $300 to $500, which makes each component a true bargain. Compare Nik's programs to filters that you would buy for a camera and you'll realize that the prices are more than reasonable.
Nik's Silver Efex Pro Opens Up the Colorful World of Black and White Photography
Eliminate color and the photographic image you're dealing with immediately takes on a more abstract appearance and, because the viewer's eye won't be distracted by color, composition and tone become more apparent. It's possible to convent color images to monochrome in most image editing programs, but if you want a conversion process that's feature rich and that gives you choices about the final image, you won't find anything better than Silver Efex.
For more information, visit the Silver Efex Pro website.
Laptop Computer? You Have Walter Mossberg's Permission to Wait.
The Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg is on of the best and most reliable technology journalists in the business and I'm taking this opportunity to quote him: "Unless your laptop is on its last legs and you have to move quickly, there are compelling reasons to wait." This is true "especially if you are looking for a Windows PC, but even if you are in the market for a Mac." I happen to agree with Mossberg on this but, even if I didn't, his point of view would be worth considering.
Why does Mossberg recommend waiting? "Windows 8, the most radical new version in years, will likely be out this fall, accompanied by new PC designs."
I've been running Windows 8 on a couple of notebook computers for nearly a year now and, although the Start Menu will be gone when Windows 8 comes to town, I'm more than a little excited by the new operating system. Mossberg again: "While Windows 8 will work with a mouse or touch pad and a keyboard, it will be heavily oriented toward tablet-type touch-screen navigation. Many PC makers are planning convertible Windows 8 models for the holiday shopping season that can act as either tablets or regular clamshell laptops."
If you buy a standard computer now, it will probably upgrade without serious problems, it probably won't have the hardware features that will be particularly important for Windows 8 systems. Mossberg says (and again I have to agree), "it is always better, especially with Windows computers, to buy a new machine if you want a new version of Windows."
My current desktop computer is 3 years old and thus about ready to be retired but I plan to wait until Windows 8 is shipping even though the touch-centric features are largely meaningless to desktop users. And I don't plan to replace my desktop system (with about 4TB of storage and the ability to process photos, audio, and video) with a notebook computer that has considerably less storage space and limited abilities to deal with media files.
On the Apple side, Mossberg says that MacBook Pro computers are due for an overhaul. "Current Macs will likely be upgradable to Mountain Lion," says Mossberg, "but if you buy now, you'll miss out on the likely new hardware."
In April, Mossberg wrote about Intel processors that "are used by most Windows PC makers and by Apple." Intel will release new "Ivy Bridge" chips that will offer faster graphics performance for notebook computers without sacrificing battery life. IvyBridge computers will start showing up in limited quantities soon.
Mossberg offered what he calls a "cheat sheet" to use if you need to replace a computer now. If that's your situation, be sure to check out his column here.
Short Circuits
Zuckerberg In, then Out, of the Bloomberg Top 40 List
If Mark Zuckerberg cared about money, the past week might be distressing but he claims not to be interested in money so the 25% drop in his net worth might not mean as much to him as it would to you or me. At the end of the week he was still worth nearly $15 billion. It's easy not to care about money if you're sitting on a cushion like that.
Shares of Facebook stock fell below $29 this week, also known as $10 below the IPO price. Zuckerberg's 503.6 million shares are now worth $14.7 billion and that means that he's no longer in the top 40. Top 40, that is, as in the 40 wealthiest individuals in the world according to Bloomberg news.
The Facebook founder lost $2 billion in the 2 weeks following the IPO. Still, that's not bad for a 28-year-old Harvard drop-out. Initially Facebook shares were valued at $38 each, which placed Zuckerberg as the youngest person on Bloomberg's rich list. But now he's nearly $1 billion below Colombian banker Luis Carlos Sarmiento, whose $15.6 billion value, places him at number 40.
Flame: State Sponsored?
Antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab says that the Flame virus, which is now spreading through countries in the Middle East, has all the earmarks of state-sponsored cyber attack. The likely suspects are Israel and the United States. Of course we don't engage in cyber-warfare just as we don't torture prisoners because by our definition it's not cyber-warfare or torture when we do it.
US State Sponsored Cyber Warfare?
"Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet."
Source: New York Times, 1 Jun 2012
Symantec has sent a message to its users saying that they are protected from Flame and security experts are examining Flame's code. The virus is far larger than most viral applications and it appears to be designed to collect data from any computer it is installed on. Although the virus was clearly intended to attack computers in the Middle East, it has spread well beyond there.
According to Kaspersky, Flame appears to be related to the state-sponsored viral campaign that was designed to attack Iran's nuclear program in 2010.
Previously Iran was attacked by viruses known as Duqu and Stuxnet. Kaspersky Lab has conclusively linked the Duqu virus to programmers who work in Jerusalem and other researchers say that Stuxnet was tested at an Israeli facility that is thought to be the headquarters of the Israeli atomic weapons program, which Israel says does not exist.
Flame is an uncommonly robust virus in that it can spread via Bluetooth devices even if an infected computer has no Internet connection. This kind of sophistication is generally considered to be beyond the capabilities of individual virus creators.
The Annual Site Redesign Starts Early This Year
Normally I start thinking about what I want to change on the site for the coming year around the middle or end of November. It's different this year because, although I don't plan to make many visual changes, I'll be gutting the interior and rebuilding it from the ground up. Website design has changed a lot over the past decade and there's far too much legacy code embedded in the site.
You probably care more about the content than about what happens in the background but it really is time for some major maintenance work.
In the 1990s, the site design was based on tables (rows and columns such as in Excel). The various cells could be joined and the result was good. At least it looked good. Behind the scenes, the code was a mess and, worse still, it was virtually impossible for anyone who needed to use a screen reader (a device and converts the text to speech) to get any meaning out of the site at all.
Cascading style sheets helped and now that large parts of HTML5 are supported in all current browsers, it's time to make the switch. The 2012 design implemented some CSS3 and HTML5 but far too much outdated code and methods remained. My goal for 2013 is to improve the site's overall standards compliance without abruptly changing the appearance.
There will be a new menu at the top of each page. The footers have been redesigned and somewhat decluttered. Those who use tablets or phones to read the site should have better results. But you'll see only minimal changes in the main part of the site, where the articles are. So consider this the first and (until near the end of the year) the last you'll hear about it.
The author's image: It's that photo over at the right. This explains why TechByter Worldwide was never on television, doesn't it?
