Tag: Adobe

Posted on

Don’t Copy and Paste or Rebuild, Place those InDesign Documents Instead

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqfJMjXKbbM

 

Adobe InDesign can place a lot of different graphic formats. However, one that users usually forget about is Placing other InDesign Documents in your main document. This gives you the advantage of reusing or taking advantage of work that's already been done. It also allows you to more easily collaborate with others on a larger project by placing the InDesign documents done by your colleagues in a master InDesign document. This is also great for Ads that were created as single page documents to go in a larger publication.

See more of my Adobe Creative Suite Videos on my Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and get the App here. It features EXCLUSIVE CONTENT that no one else gets to see:

Learn Adobe Creative Suite with Terry White - Wizzard Media

 

Posted on

Review: Nvidia Quadro 4000 for the Mac Pro

I never really used to pay much attention to graphics cards in the past. I figured that the stock video card would be more than enough for my needs. I'm not into hardcore gaming where I would need a high frame rate or rendering lots of 3D work. I've also never really had any complaints with the standard video cards that came with my systems in the past. However, this year when I upgraded my 4 year old Mac Pro to a new 12 Core Mac Pro system, I knew that I was going to replace the stock video card. With the introduction of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 and the Mercury Playback Engine I knew that I would want a compatible video card to take advantage of it. With Mercury Playback Engine in Premiere Pro it has support for the Nvidia Card's CUDA chips and GPU acceleration. This means playing back multiple layers of HD video with effects in real-time without having to render first. Sign me up!

 

The New Nvidia Quadro 4000

Although I had a loaner Nvidia Quadro 4800 card (their older discontinued card) that worked fine in my new system, I was anxiously awaiting to see the next card they were working on for the Mac Pro. The New Quadro 4000 for Mac (yes it's for PC too) is better in just about every way over the older card. First off it only takes up one slot instead of two like the previous model and the stock ATI card that came with my Mac Pro. Secondly there is a built-in DVI port and a second port in which you can plug in either one of the two supplied dongles. One dongle gives you a Display Port for Apple's and other manufacturers newer displays and the other dongle provides a second DVI port to drive a second display.

Although I'm perfectly happy using this card to drive my existing 30" Cinema Display, it's nice to know that if I ever have to go to a new display with a Display Port connection, I'm all set. Installation was pretty easy. Install the Driver first! Then just open the case unplug the old card and plug in the new one. It did leave an "open" hole (the old card took up two PCI spots) in the back of the machine as Apple doesn't ship a spare cover. I was going to scrounge around my house looking for one (as I'm sure I have a few), but decided to stick an OWC USB 3.0 card in that slot instead.  

This new card is not only slimmer, but also better on power consumption while providing a 30-40% speed improvement over the previous model in intensive graphics work and has more onboard RAM. Again my main concern was more around Video Editing than scientific computations. So my first question to Nvidia was "how much faster is it in Premere Pro CS5 over the previous model?" The answer was "about 10% faster." What this means to you is that if you have an existing Quadro 4800 card, there is very little reason to buy this one! However, if you're in the market for a NEW card to replace the stock ATI card then this is a great choice. It's less expensive than the previous model and like I said it's faster, uses less space and consumes less power. Full Specs Here.

 

Putting it to the test

People that do video editing know what it's like to have to render an effect or scene first to preview it before you can move on to the next edit. If you didn't have to render the scene/effect then your editing is going go much much faster. Although the built-in "Software" Mercury Engine in Premiere Pro CS5 works well on a fast system. Having a compatible Nvidia card with CUDA support simply blows away everything else out there on a desktop system!

I recorded this quick video to show the Mercury Playback Engine in action. Rather than do a typical screen recording using software, I wanted to show the real performance without the screen recording software processing in the background. So in this case I setup a video camera pointing at the screen to show the playback in real-time. Enjoy!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foLxsL5RU6k

 

You can get the Nvidia Quadro 4000 for Mac here for $1,195 or here (thanks Brian Stone for this incredible find) for only $761.78!

 

You can get Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 here.

Download the 30 day trial here and play.

Posted on

YouTube Eliminates the 15 Minute Video Limit (for some)

I'm definitely a fan of "shorter is better" when it comes to video. However, sometimes you do need more time. Earlier this year YouTube raised the limit from 10 minutes per video to 15 minutes per video. Now it seems that at least for some accounts they've done away with the time limit all together. There is still a 2GB limit per uploaded movie, but your movie doesn't seem to have a time limit. One user uploaded a 4 hour looping clip just to test it and it worked. 

 

Another nail in the DVD coffin

Before you get your feathers ruffled, I'm not saying that DVD is dead. I certainly realize that some users still have a need to produce and distribute video DVDs. Not everyone has broadband and DVDs offer a way to watch videos OFFLINE. However, the trend is definitely moving away from optical media as a distribution format. Blu-rays and DVDs will be around for a while, but this move by YouTube certainly makes it MUCH EASIER to distribute your flick to friends and family around the globe without burning a single disc. Keep in mind that YouTube also allows you to share clips privately as well as "unlisted". 

 

A gift

I've shared these videos before via my Creative Suite Podcast. However, now that YouTube has virtually eliminated the time limit on my account (I think someone hit the wall at 4 hours), I can share them with you for the first time via YouTube. These are my complete walkthroughs of Adobe Photoshop CS5, InDesign CS5, Illustrator CS5 and Flash Catalyst CS5 in HD. Enjoy!

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8WZjdEtkIg

Adobe Photoshop CS5

 

Continue reading “YouTube Eliminates the 15 Minute Video Limit (for some)”

Posted on

Creating an HTML 5 Website for Photographers in Adobe Lightroom 3

This one is for the Photographers out there!

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom has had web galleries since day one. You can either export out an HTML gallery of your images or a Flash Gallery of your images. Each one of course having its advantages and disadvantages. I find that photographers in general like Flash galleries because of two things: 1) they're (pardon the pun) flashy. You get transitions, animations, zooming, automatic slideshows etc. 2) they offer one more level of image protection by making it harder for people to just right click and download the images. The disadvantage is that not every device can display Flash galleries. If you go with an HTML gallery it can be seen on just about any device, but you lose the flashy appeal. 

 

What about HTML 5?

Up until yesterday my photography website was all Flash with an HTML fallback. I loved the features of my template. I loved the animations, image fading and slideshows and while I did have an HTML fallback for those that couldn't see the Flash site the biggest problem was keeping them BOTH up to date. The Flash site was driven by XML and was pretty easy to update with new images.. The HTML part was driven by a Lightroom web engine (more on that later) and required a separate export and upload each time I needed to do an update. It wasn't the end of the world to update them both, but I found myself updating the Flash site more often (because it was faster), which meant that people on non-Flash devices/computers wouldn't see my latest images. Not good!

What's this HTML 5 thing anyway? HTML 5 is next standard of HTML and it's still very much a WORK IN PROGRESS. This is why you don't see a ton of tools for it yet. Also and probably the biggest thing to note is that HTML 5 may never do all the things that Flash can do. This means that it's not a direct one to one replacement. At least not today for sure. HTML 5 authoring isn't just one thing. It's using HTML 5, CSS3 and Javascript. . Actually it's CSS3 that's the really interesting part. If you're really interested in developing in HTML 5 Adobe has already released the HTMl 5 pack for Dreamweaver and Illustrator. Check them out on Adobe Labs. More tools are in the works! Back to the photographers…

 

My goal

I started thinking about my site and the fact that it was a pain to update and therefore I wasn't updating it as often as I'd like to. Then I started listing the ideal things that I would want to have to make it easier:

  • I'd want as much of the site as possible driven by Lightroom since that's where my images live anyway.
  • Until HTML 5 is further along I still want Flash galleries for those who can see them.
  • The site has to be viewable on devices/computers not running Flash
  • I only want to update ONE set of images. In other words, both the Flash and HTMl version would use the same images.
  • I want Video that plays on everything <-this is not as easy as you think!
  • I don't want to write any code! Writing a line here and there during setup is fine, but I don't want to have to code the thing with every update.

 

The Turning Gate To The Rescue

Once again The Turning Gate has come through for me. You might remember my post on using one of their web engines for my client review galleries. Since that review went live I've been working with Matthew Campagna at TTG on the ultimate solution to my goals. After countless emails back and forth (he's a great guy!) on what I wanted and tweaks to his engines based on my feedback I was able to create my entire site from scratch using Lightroom 3 and three TTG plug-ins. 

Continue reading “Creating an HTML 5 Website for Photographers in Adobe Lightroom 3”

Posted on

The Adobe CS5 Pharaohs Tour in Cairo – Photo Trip Report

I'm headed back from Cairo as I write this quick post to thank everyone who showed up and supported the CS5 Pharaohs Tour in Egypt! It was an amazing turnout with standing room only. I had a blast, took lots of pictures, met some great new friends and was photographed more in one day than I have been in 10 years 🙂 I'm totally wiped out and therefore I decided to wrap this trip up with more photos than words. Enjoy…

click the images to enlarge

 

Yes I managed to work in a Fashion Shoot 🙂 – ok back to work!

 

The turn out was absolutely incredible with some traveling as far as South Africa to see this event!

 

They treated us like Rock Stars! I was floored by the number of fans that were on hand to have the photos taken with us and to take photos of us. I'm truly humbled by the response!

 

Yes we made it to Historic Old Islamic Cairo. This is a "must visit "if you're in the area.

 

Special thanks goes out to the Adobe User Group Managers in Cairo! You guys are awesome. Thanks for making me feel so welcomed.

 

That's all I have time for now, I'm about to board my next flight. See more of my photos here and once again THANK YOU CAIRO! I shall return 🙂

Posted on

I’m headed to Cairo next week!

It's time to head to the Middle East/Africa for my CS5 Masters Tour! Of course I'm looking forward to seeing all the Adobe Creative Suite users in Cairo as well as the numerous photo ops. So I'll be blogging on location throughout the week with a hectic schedule. If you're in Cairo I look forward to seeing you there. It's my first time back to Egypt since 1990.

If you're going to be in the area register here.

Posted on

Thanks for a Great Adobe MAX 2010!

I wanted to take a few minutes to thank those of you who attended my "Creating Interactive Content Without Writing Code" session at this year's Adobe MAX. This session was sold out and I apologize to those that wanted to attend that couldn't. Based on the evals this content was right on the mark. I must admit that MAX isn't necessarily a show that I look forward to based on its traditional "Developer" focus. However, as a Design Evangelist I was jazzed by the creatives in the crowds and I was really inspired by everything that was shown during Monday's keynote! If you want to see where Adobe is headed around publishing to multiple devices, Flash, AIR, HTML 5 and more, you definitely owe it to yourself to watch the Keynote replay here.

I've taken the liberty of embedding my favorite part of the keynote below. We had a surprise guest Martha Stewart and she took the wraps off her NEW special digital edition of Martha Stewart Living running on an iPad and created using the NEW Adobe Digital Publishing Suite:

 

Posted on

Adobe Project ROME is here! All-in-one Content Creation & Publishing Tool

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtm3Ahx_paY

In case you missed the announcement over the weekend Adobe released a public beta of Project ROME. Project ROME is unlike any other app out there in that it's an all-in-one content creation tool for vector/raster images, video and animations as well as web sites. On the surface ROME appears to be a simple easy to use basic program and that's a good thing. This product is aimed at casual users. However, unlike most basic programs, ROME allows you to go deep if you need to. I was floored with the number of options available.

You can download your copy of ROME here or just use it in your browser! That's the beauty of ROME, it was built entirely as an AIR app.

 

To get you started I recorded these 5 very short videos:

 

Working with Vectors

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LRoEBV9NAY

 

Working with Photos

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tcm55I0ZWYo

Continue reading “Adobe Project ROME is here! All-in-one Content Creation & Publishing Tool”