Archive for February 19th, 2007
I’ve been using Apple Logic for a good many years now, since version 3, if memory serves. In fact, I go back even further with MIDI sequencing, starting with what used to be called Steinberg pro-12 on the Atari ST (mine had the huge 1024kb memory upgrade), then upgarding to the 24-track version. After spending a year on an almost completely sequencer-driven project, staying up until the small hours tweaking Quantise values, I more or less gave up on the whole MIDI thing for maybe six years, concentrating on playing ‘real’ instruments.
By the time I came back to computer-based music, things had changed pretty much beyond recognition. Hard-drive recording was by now commonplace, and software instruments were beginning to make racks of keyboards and other outboard hardware redundant. I could buy a £30 Mellotron plug-in that sounds just like the real thing, and combine effects and intruments in ways that would be essentially impossible in the ‘real world’.
So, about Logic. Logic is a very powerful piece of software (it’s now in version 7), and I like to describe it as being to digital music production what Photoshop is to digital imaging. It’s just as complex and deep, and presents you with many ways of achieving a result. Now, I teach people how to use Photoshop for a living, along with several other topics. I think I know Photoshop pretty well, and this knowledge has been acquired through what must, I suppose, be hundreds or maybe even thousands of hours of exploring and using the software.
How many hours have I spent with Logic? I have no idea, but it must be into triple figures. Sure, I have a ‘proper’ job these days, I’m not a freeloading musician any more, so I can’t sit around all day making music (I wish…), but I still spend a major part of my time with it. But, am I anywhere near the expert I am with Photoshop? No way. I can produce good recordings, but I still have trouble with basic things like adding or deleting tracks without messing up the track assignations. I still don’t really understand the Environment, or why I need to randomly press key combinations until the Track Mixer actually shows me the tracks I want. And there’s loads of other stuff I don’t even use. What I do know, is that this is all down to me simply not having the time to learn how to use the software properly, or if I’m being honest, the inclination.
What I want to do is be creative, so I tend to just use the tools I do have, and get a result. Of course, I could be doing things more efficiently, quickly etc., but it just seems to get in the way of actually playing, so I never get around to picking up the manual (which is pretty dense anyway), or looking around for online help - well, hardly ever.
Of course, this is how most people use software. It’s the comments that people make during an advanced Photoshop course, like: “I wish I’d known that technique a month ago, I would have saved myself half a day’s work”. When a deadline’s looming, who has the time to figure out how to save time?
I could go on a course and learn how to use Logic, but that would be too easy - after all, it’s not like it’s my job or anything. I don’t have deadlines. Ocassionally I get asked to compose some music for someone, maybe for a short film or a play, but there’s never that much pressure. So, for now, I’ll just keep muddling through, and maybe I don’t need all those extra features that I don’t know about anyway. In fact, maybe I’ll just go back to playing my acoustic guitar, put the recording gear away for another ten years, and see what happens then.
Probably not.
By the way, some of my music can be found at:
http://www.audiovert.com
or
http://www.myspace.com/audiovert
Your thoughts on Logic (or maybe you’d like to give me some tips), music production or anything else that’s relevant or at least interesting are more than welcome.
February 19th, 2007
While teaching a Photoshop for the Web course recently, I was asked for a method of creating content boxes. The specification was quite exact in terms of sizes and appearance, including rounded corners, tinted outlines and various graphical elements.As is common with web page elements, the idea was to be able to quickly and easily generate multiple boxes using different colours and text. I came up with a pretty efficient method, using a combination of different features, including:
- Shape layers
- Solid Color layers
- Blending modes
- Clipping masks
- Layer Groups
- Smart Objects
Here’s an example of a finished box:
The box is designed to be exactly 235 x 150 pixels. The stroke is 5 pixels wide, and is set to a lighter tint of the box fill colour.
Step by step instructions
Begin by creating a document which is larger than the intended size - you can always trim the document down later on. Around 500 x 500 pixels is fine.
Draw the initial box using the Rectangle vector shape tool. Don’t worry about the exact size, or color of the rectangle.
It’s not obvious, but you can resize elements to a fixed width and height in Photoshop without using Guides. Draw the object first, then use Free Transform (Free Transform Path in the case of a vector shape layer), and type in the desired width and height values, adding px instead of % into the w and h value boxes in the Options palette. Accurate resizing!
Important - In this case, resize the box to 225 x 140 pixels. The stroke, added in the next stage, will add the extra 10 pixels to the width and height.
Set the color of the box layer to around 80% black.
Now turn on the Stroke layer style. Set the the colour of the stroke to around 50% black (these are suggested values only - use whatever you like, but make sure it’s less than 100%, or the following won’t work).
Set the Stroke to Outside and set the width to 5 pixels, bringing the box up to the required width and height.
We now have our basic box. Note the guides indicate the size before the stroke is added:
I wanted to add a small semi-circle white cutout at the top right of the box. This is where it made sense earlier to draw the box inside the stroke. Duplicate the box layer, and move this copy above the Color Fill layer.
Remove the stroke effect from this layer, and set it’s fill color to White.
Now select the Oval drawing tool, and set the drawing mode to Intersect.
Draw a circle at the top right of the box, so the intersection of the two shapes creates the area you want.
For the sake of clarity, in the screenshot below, I’ve used red instead of white as the fill color. (The other layers are switched off. You can see the way the intersection of the two shapes is displayed, while the rest of the layer is masked.
Now it’s a simple matter to add a small arrow to a new shape layer, using the Polygon drawing tool, with the number of sides set to 3. Again, set the color of this layer to a shade of grey.
Once you have your three shapes, your layers should look something like this (screenshots from PSCS3):
Next, we’re going to create a Solid Color layer, to set the color of the fill, arrow and outline (not the semi-circle though).
Add a Solid Color layer above the box layer. Pick the color you want, and set the blending mode of this layer to Color.
The Color fill layer applies to both the fill and stroke of the underlying box (color overlay styles only apply to the fill, hence the need for a separate layer). The percentage tints of the fill and outline are retained.
Note that as the colour of the semi-circle callout area is white, it isn’t affected by the color fill layer. Nor is the background. Color mode has affect on white or black pixels.
Add any text elements you want, and you’re done.
Making things more efficient with Smart Objects and Groups
I decided that having gone this far, I should try to make the routine work better with multiple boxes in the same document. I could then use Slices to export several boxes at once. I decided to use a Smart Object for the basic box, keeping the Solid Color and text layers separate. I could then place the whole structure in a Group, and duplicate the Group for each new box:
First, select the three Shape Layers (as in the previous screenshot), and select Layer, Smart Object, Convert to Smart Object. The resulting object can be edited by double+clicking on the SO layer icon. Any changes made to the content of a SO will apply to all instances of the object.
The Solid Color layer now needs to be ‘clipped’ with the Smart Object layer, otherwise it will apply to underlying layers. Highlight the Solid Color layer, and select Layer, Create Clipping Mask (alternately, Alt+Click between the two layers).
The text layers are placed above the Solid Color layer (assuming we don’t want them to be affected by it).
Now the entire set of layers can be grouped - select all the layers, and drag them onto the Layer Group icon at the bottom of the Layers palette.
To make another box, duplicate the Group (drag the group onto the New Layer icon). Change colours by double+clicking on the Solid Color layer.
Make sure you name your Groups, so you know which is which.
The final structure should look something like this (I have three boxes with different colours):
Summary
I think this works pretty well, and it’s nice to put features together like this without things getting too complex. On the other hand, it’s almost always the case with Photoshop that there are as many solutions to any problem as there are ways to cook a potato. If you have any improvements to this technique, or alternative methods, I’d love to hear about them.
February 19th, 2007
People are always commenting on the lunches at Ubiq, and more often than not, the comments are superlative. We’ve always believed that food is more than just fuel, and people deserve something more than a sandwich and a bag of crisps when they attend a course… For a lot of people, this is the first intensive learning-type situation they’ve been in since they left the education system, and it can be a bit of a strain on the brain, to say the least. A plate of food that looks like it belongs in a very good restaurant is a great way to take your thoughts away from CSS, Photoshop or whatever the day’s topic happens to be, and relax the mind while feeding the stomach. We’ve provided a two-course lunch right from the start (in fact, we used to do three courses, but people were struggling to stay alert in the PM).
Now that this Blog is up and running, I’ll be posting occasional menus, recipes and stories from our kitchen, with Gill’s help of course. Maybe we’ll even put a recipe book together…
February 19th, 2007
The Photoshop CS3 pre-release software has been available for download from Adobe for several weeks now. I’ve had some time to experiment with it, and have been using it for day to day imaging tasks with no real problems. There are a few known bugs - for example, brush sizes don’t display properly on the Intel Mac, but no big deal. I’m going to use this post to describe some of the new features, changes to the interface and so on, and hopefully give you a feel for what to expect when the new version is released. I won’t cover every single new feature in detail, but will concentrate on the stuff I consider to be of importance for the majority of Photoshop users. I’ll no doubt be revising this as I discover new things, and I’ll also be asking our trainers to add their own comments (particularly with regards to the improved Camera Raw dialog), so stay tuned…
New Features
Revamped toolbox and palettes
The toolbox, fundamentally unchanged for years, gets a new single-column look, although you can easily expand it back to the classic two-column configuration if you prefer.
The palettes get a more radical makeover, which apparently will apply to all the Creative Suite applications. The palette well has gone, superceded by an overall ‘docking’ system. You can now create as many palette ‘docks’ as you like, and these can be collapsed/expanded and positioned to the right or left of the screen. Collapsed docks appear as icons (with or without labels). Clicking on an individual icon reveals the palette, which remains onscreen until another palette is selected. You can still separate palettes and have them floating if you like, thus ignoring the docking system.
Although it takes a little getting used to, I find the new interface to be reasonably intuitive, and certainly an improvement on the current interface, not to mention InDesign’s sidebar tabs, or Illustrator’s multitude of floating palettes.
There’s also a new screen mode called ‘Maximise Screen’, which I really like. It automatically resizes the image window to fit according to the width of your palettes.
Non-destructive ‘Smart’ filters
This will obviously be one of the big selling points of Photoshop CS3. Users have been asking for some kind of editable filter layer feature for years, and this pretty much does the trick. Before applying a ’smart’ filter, you must convert your layer to a Smart Object, but there’s a handy new command under the Filter menu for exactly that purpose. Having done this, filters can be applied, edited, switched off and on, or removed dynamically. Smart filter objects have their own masks, which work just like standard layer masks, and even have their own blending modes and opacity settings. Many processing tasks that previously would have required multiple duplicate layers and masks, can now be achieved with a single layer and a few Smart Filters. This will potentially transform the way people use the program.
Improved Vanishing Point filter
The Vanishing Point filter has been revamped in two ways: Firstly, new planes can now be extruded from existing ones at any angle. Previously, only right angles were possible. Secondly, the filter now allows for pasted images to be positioned across multiple planes simultaneously. This is pretty impressive. For example, you could position artwork across three sides of a package at once, with the artwork mapping correctly to the angles of the perspective planes. Here’s a vaguely surreal example:
The Black and White command
Initially this seems to overlap with the Channel Mixer, as the primary function of this command is to convert images to black and white. However, this works differently. Unlike the Color Mixer, where the RGB percentages must generally add up to 100%, this command provides access to all the primary colours (R,G,B,C,M,Y,K) and lets you do more or less whatever you want percentage wise for each primary. This allows for very specific conversions, with the ability to target particular colour ranges. Another nice feature is the Tint option, which works a little like the Colorize option in Hue/Saturation, but more usefully, allows you to specify colours accurately via the Color Picker. A useful addition.
The Quick Selection tool
At last, another tool alongside the Magic Wand. The Quick Selection tool selects areas of interest based on some pretty nifty analysis on Photoshop’s part. Exactly how Photoshop knows what an area of interest is, is another question, but it seems to do a pretty good job of figuring out what should or should not be included in a selection. This is a significant time saver, and although it’s unlikely to produce a perfect selection in complex situations, it can certainly be used in conjunction with say, Quick Mask, or the new Refine Edges command (see below) to produce accurate results.
The Refine Selection command
Basically what this does is to take the contents of the Select, Modify menu (i.e. Contract/Expand, Feather etc. plus a new option called Radius), and make these commands available in one dialog, with variable controls and continuous previewing. Cleverly, the preview can be set to a range of options which include amongst others Quick Mask mode (rubilith overlay), white or black background and alpha channel. The ability to dynamically improve selection edges is invaluable, and takes much of the guesswork out of making selections. Experienced users will still want to continue using Paths, density masks, and other tried and tested techniques, but this is a worthwhile addition to Photoshop’s masking features. Highly recommended.
Improved Curves command
Another classic Photoshop feature, but one that often seems less intuitive other methods of adjusting Contrast, the Curves dialog has been revamped, and now sports several additional features, including an optional Histogram display, channel overlays and a clipping preview. On a more basic level, the overall layout is now more visually intuitive, and there is a now a list of standard presets, to which you can add your own custom settings. Overall, Curves becomes easier to use, and may now lose it’s ‘experts only’ label.
In Summary
This is a significant new realese for Adobe, not least because of the new interface. As usual, there are new features that have the ‘wow’ factor, but there are also many small improvements like enhanced Cloning and Healing, that will generally make things easier, and speed up your workflow. Is this a crucial upgrade? Well, you can do fantastic work in any version of Photoshop, but there are certainly features here that are indispensible. I recommend that you download the Beta and make up your own mind. You’ll need an existing serial number by the way.
Download Photoshop CS3 Beta here.
February 19th, 2007