I love Photoshop. I do not love this logo. It reminds me of something I’d throw together if someone gave me two minutes to come up with a logo and was holding a gun to my head the entire time. And insisted that I use something other than Photoshop to do it.

How un-Adobe is this cheesy abomination? Whoever designed it probably thinks, “Get it?!? You see, some people will see a ‘P’ as in ‘Photoshop’ *snark*snark*, while others will see a camera shaped object. Plus, I got to use all those canned 3-d filters that were included in my old Fireworks MX!!”

To me, it looks like a comic-book speech bubble; which just matches perfectly with the “See What’s Possible” tagline.

Well, at least the theme for the logo isn’t a highly overused cliche.

H/T: BrandNew

Funny stuff.

Link

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I found myself imagining what a methane lake would look like from the shoreline… frigid, viscous liquid; hissing a drizzly mist as Titan’s strong winds rolled over it; with Titan’s yellow mist blurring the sky and scattering sunlight everywhere:

If you want the image for desktop wallpaper, choose your size and download:

• 1280 x 1024 resolution (234 KB)
• 1024 x 768 resolution (163 KB)
• 800 x 600 resolution (109 KB)

Note: to find out which version to use, right-click on your desktop and select Properties. Click the Settings tab, and note the setting in the Screen Resolution box.

If you are using Internet Explorer, once the image appears, you must mouse off of the image. When you mouse back over the image, an Expand box will appear in the lower-right corner of the screen. Click it. After the image returns to 100%, right-click the image, and select Set as Background.

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What they don’t realize is that fake sharpness is not real sharpness. The goal of sharpening should be to bring out fine details that are already present in the image. Too much use of the sharpening filter doesn’t bring out existing details, it creates them. And creating things isn’t enhancement, it’s retouching.

Consider the following picture of some Lunar craters (extremely zoomed):

See those black semicircular lines around the craters? Those aren’t shadows, they’re artifacts caused by oversharpening. Any delicate detail that was inside those shadows has been blown out by the image editor and lost forever.

There is a technique to sharpen images that is very powerful, but doesn’t destroy delicate features. We’ll creatively use Photoshop’s High-Pass filter to bring out tons of detail, while leaving the image completely intact.

Let’s start with this image, the crater Gassendi:

1. First, duplicate the background layer, by dragging the layer to the New Layer icon at the bottom of your Layers palette.



2. With the new layer selected, click Filter > Other > High Pass…



3. Enter a small value in the Radius field, and click OK.
   
   I used 1.7, you’ll probably end up with a value between 1.5 and 2.5, depending on the size of your image.

Yes, I know; your image now looks like crap. Don’t fret. Now comes the cool part.

4. Change the Blend Mode of your background layer copy to Soft Light.

Presto! A beautifully sharpened image. Notice the difference in the texture and details of the crater floor:

It seems subtle, but it’s a very important enhancement. The best part of this technique is that the sharpening effect is confined to its own layer – and therefore, not destructive to the image at all. Don’t like what you did? Just delete the layer. No harm, no foul.

Another benefit of this technique is that you can always add a Layer Mask to the high-passed layer, and use a brush on the mask to highlight features of the image that you don’t want sharpened. You have complete control, and it’s totally non-destructive to your source.

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Two years ago, information design guru Conrad Taylor had a fascinating conversation with John Warnock, founder of Adobe Systems. They discussed Warnock’s history with Adobe, and the evolution of type design and desktop publishing.

Mr. Taylor has published an edited transcript (68 KB PDF) of the interview at the Electronic Publishing Specialist Group site.

Reading Warnock’s take on the history of information design, and his frustrations with current paradigms, is fascinating. Here’s a snippet from the transcript:

John: And I think right now – well, you read an HTML manual, and the author will proudly say that you have no control whatsovever over what the consumer of the HTML will do with your stuff; and they say that with a kind of pride like, that’s the way the universe should be. And I just think that’s nonsense.
Conrad: I see it both ways. For example I’m involved with some BCS initiatives doing work on disability, and we need for some people to be able to transform documents so they can make sense of them because of their special needs. But you want some kind of welldesigned norm from which to deviate.
John: You need to have it both ways. You want to make it possible for people to see it the way the designers wanted it, à la PDF files; or, if you want to say, Gee, here are the rules of engagement, you can deviate from those design rules, only to the extent you have to to get to disability functions, and to other things.
For instance, in the world of the Web today there’s no concept of scaling. Photographs don’t scale on the Web; nothing scales. And the world needs that. I mean, really – for accessibility, for reflow, for re-layout, for all of those things. And right now it’s a shambles. And that needs to be fixed.

Quoted material credit & copyright Conrad Taylor, EPSG

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Mixing faces and good photography with vector shapes, abstract items, and text is the hallmark of this style. Here’s my first crack at it:

Click to embiggenate. (170 KB JPEG)

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More Photoshop imagery. I painted a large, dry, double-planet, orbiting an unseen star. In the distance, a typical binary star system shines. I used the LunarCell engine to render the planet’s surface, and my own processes for the other objects.

If you want the image for desktop wallpaper, choose your size and download:

• 1280 x 1024 resolution (360 KB)
• 1024 x 768 resolution (260 KB)
• 800 x 600 resolution (190 KB)

Note: to find out which version to use, right-click on your desktop and select Properties. Click the Settings tab, and note the setting in the Screen Resolution box.

If you are using Internet Explorer, once the image appears, you must mouse off of the image. When you mouse back over the image, an Expand box will appear in the lower-right corner of the screen. Click it. After the image returns to 100%, right-click the image, and select Set as Background.

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I gots me some new Photoshop filter/rendering tools via the FilterForge beta. Its HDMI lighting engine is spectacular.

I based the water part of this painting on a couple of Vladimir Golovin’s textures, which I modified through FilterForge. The planets and stars were created using my own process.

If you want the image for desktop wallpaper, choose your size and download:

• 1280 x 1024 resolution (168 KB)
• 1024 x 768 resolution (120 KB)
• 800 x 600 resolution (83 KB)

Note: to find out which version to use, right-click on your desktop and select Properties. Click the Settings tab, and note the setting in the Screen Resolution box.

If you are using Internet Explorer, once the image appears, you must mouse off of the image. When you mouse back over the image, an Expand box will appear in the lower-right corner of the screen. Click it. After the image returns to 100%, right-click the image, and select Set as Background.

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