Claudia McCue

If you’ve ever had to silhouette a girl with windblown hair, you know what a challenge it can be to create the perfect mask. I’ve always used channels, duplicating the best one and using Levels, Curves and judicious handwork to create a mask. As long as the subject has some contrast with the background, there’s hope, but, even then, it can be time-consuming.

The ideal masking solution faithfully captures the shape of the subject, maintains translucency and soft transitions, and can be used non-destructively. It’s not a simple problem to solve, which is probably why I haven’t found a product that fit all requirements — until now. All of the other products I’ve tried erase background pixels rather than creating a separate mask. Some do a better job of maintaining transparency, some aren’t much better than using the Magic Wand. But I’ve found only two products that create non-destructive masks with nice, transitional edges: Power Mask, and EZ Mask, both from Digital Film Tools.

Both products do a great job; EZ Mask is just a bit, ah, easier (natch). When you see a product named “EZ Mask,” it’s tempting to think… well, you know. But trust me: it’s wonderful! Let me show you…

Continue Reading »

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Don’t you just love the tabbed document display in Creative Suite 4 applications?

If you do, you’re in the minority, judging by the number of people who ask “How do I change that?” often followed by “What were they thinking?!” I can help a bit with the first question, but I can’t answer the second one. I guess it’s part of the increasing Macromediafication of the application interfaces: perhaps the flat gray architecture is meant to be chic and soothing, and maybe the tabs are intended to conserve screen real estate. Whatever the explanation, here are some tips for returning to the Land of Floating Windows, as nature intended.

Photoshop

Open Preferences > Interface. UNcheck “Open Documents as Tabs” and “Enable Floating Window Docking.” If you just uncheck “Open Documents as Tabs,” document windows will still insist on docking if they’re dragged near each other.

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InDesign

As in Photoshop, open Preferences > Interface and uncheck “Open Documents as Tabs” and “Enable Floating Window Docking.” Heave great sigh of relief.

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Illustrator

Alas, Illustrator only lets you get halfway there: You can turn off the option to open documents as tabs, but you can’t prevent documents from docking if you move them too close together. Some strange magnetic force compels them to huddle together for warmth.

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Feature Requests

Here’s an idea: if you dislike the tabbed interface, put a note in the suggestion box. Fill out the Feature Request form on the Adobe website and ask that this compulsive behavior be an option, not the default.

I’m sure you’ve seen and heard the flap over the Air Force One NYC flyover photo-op. It may merit the creation of an entirely new word for “stupid.”

But don’t you think it’s a great opportunity for a Photoshop ad?

I received a note today from someone who’d upgraded to CS4, and suddenly half the controls in his Control Panel strip were missing. I thought — preferences? No, that wasn’t it. Wrong tool selected? Nope. Then it hit me: InDesign CS4 launches by default with an oversimplified Workspace called “Essentials,” which hides half the contents of the Control panel. Doh! I slapped my forehead. That was the culprit. Once he switched to the Advanced Workspace, all was well. You should do the same thing, so you’re not missing out on all those teeny little controls.

Also, you may not have noticed, but if you go to the Control panel menu, at the very bottom, there’s an option: “Customize.” You can totally customize the contents of the Control panel, controlling which field are displayed, and thus utterly befuddle the poor guy who uses your computer on night shift. Don’t do this.

At least, not yet: April Fool’s Day is coming up, you know

By the way, Photoshop CS4 also offers an “Essentials” workspace, but it’s not the dumbed-down one! In Photoshop, “Basic” is the oversimplified workspace, and “Essentials” is the usable, fully-stocked Workspace. Go figure.

If you’ve recently upgraded to CS4, you may wonder why you can’t find some familiar Photoshop plug-ins: hey, where’s Pattern Maker? And how about Extract?! A number of our old favorites are not installed by default: you’ll find them on the “Content” disk in your Creative Suite disks. If you obtained your software via download, you can also find the missing plug-ins, presets, and extensions here.

PDF Package and Web Gallery are now accessed through Bridge. I guess that makes sense, but you have to play detective to find the features. Choose the Output icon at the left end of the Bridge Application bar (the strip just under the menu items), or select the “OUPUT” workspace at the far right end of the Application bar to access the “Output to Web or PDF” function:

Output to Web or PDF

You’re probably expecting a dialog box, but instead, the righthand panel of Bridge changes to give you the Output options. At the top of the panel, choose the appropriate option, PDF or Web. The panel changes to display your options for PDF or Web output; they’re fairly intuitive.

(What does this have to do with software? Uh, I had to use Photoshop to clean up my photos…)

At the end of the year, all the travel starts to wear me down: I pack robotically, the flights seem longer, and the hotel food gets steadily worse. But this is my last trip of the year, and it’s a nice way to end the year. I’m doing 4 days of Acrobat training for the United Nations — I’ll bet you didn’t know that there’s a complete printing plant in the basement of the U.N.! They’re a great bunch of people, from all over the world, and they have to run 24 hours a day to keep up with the avalanche of words generated by all the diplomatic missions every day.

I’ll be working in rotating shifts to train everyone, so I’ll be a bit crispy around the edges by the end of the week. But that’s offset by the fun of being in New York City near Christmas. No snow yet, but it’s quite cold. That hasn’t deterred the tourists and locals crowding the streets to ooh and aah at the decorations, the imaginative store windows, and — of course — The Tree at Rockefeller Center.

Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, 2008

It odd when you see something that you’ve seen countless times on television or in movies — it’s a sort of artificial déjà vu. It somehow seems “realer” in person because it’s already familiar. The tree is huge, but the surrounding buildings dwarf it, and you sort of lose your sense of scale. Suddenly, the skaters on the rink below seem miniature.

On another note, I don’t understand the jokes about “rude New Yorkers” — I’ve never had that experience. If anything, I find it a very comfortable city, and never more so than at this time of year. The decorations sort of soften everyone up, and the kids’ excitement is contagious.

Angel decoration (left); giant drummer (right)

Hope that seasonal feeling is starting to take hold where you are, too. We all need a little winter cheer to warm us against the cold (well, not so much in Miami…) and to act as an antidote for the increasingly bitter economic weather.

Onward to Spring.

If you’re a print service provider who’s starting to receive CS4 files for output, you might appreciate the latest revision of the venerable Printing Guide. It’s now available here.

The PDF is fully bookmarked; open the Bookmarks panel (View>Navigation Panels>Bookmarks) to reveal the extensive list of hyperlinked topics. Additionally, the Table of Contents is hyperlinked to internal content, so it’s easy to find your way around.

Designers will find lots of useful content, too. You can select a low-res or high-res version of the 139-page guide, and you’ll also find the CS3 version of the printing guide on the same page. Both offer insights into print-specific features in the Suite applications, and provide cautions and workarounds for each application.

I’m proud to say that I’m responsible for both the CS3 and CS4 revisions, starting with the CS2 version and building on its content. Consequently, some of the content is legacy, some was contributed by other revisers during the early CS3 phase, but the final versions of both are my doing. It was a labor of love, and I’m proud of the finished pieces. I hope you find the guides a valuable resource.

Given recent upheaval at Adobe (600 layoffs yesterday, including some very dear friends), I don’t know if there will be more versions of this resource. If Adobe doesn’t spearhead an update for future CS versions (assuming there will be future CS versions, and I can’t imagine there won’t be), I’ll do it myself.

Photoshop’s “Smart Object” and “Smart Filter” options provide the ultimate in flexibility: in essence, you store an unchanged version of the pixel or vector data in the pantry (embedded in the file), and Photoshop can always use that information as a fresh starting point for edits and transforms. You can designate any layer as a Smart Object via the Layers Panel menu, and when you import pixel or vector content by choosing File>Place, it’s automatically earmarked as a Smart Object.

Additionally, you can use Filter>Convert for Smart Filters to use the Smart Object approach while you apply endless filters to transmogrify a layer (and not always for the better). Continue Reading »

Adobe is presenting a preview of an announcement of a look at Creative Suite 4 features on September 23, 2008.

You can sign up here.

This is not, however, a shipping announcement, just a glimpse of upcoming wonderfulness. The announcement of that announcement will come later.