illustration

Users of the next Adobe Creative Suite may be able to mix and mash up the applications with online content and third-party tools.

In a bid to make workspaces more nimble, Adobe Systems is considering making parts of Photoshop and other Creative Suite applications available for users to manipulate within Flash widgets, according to a blog post Monday by John Nack, product manager of Photoshop.

The capability to bring tools from the Creative Suite to the desktop or the Web with Flash or Flex could lead to novel ways of exploring Adobe's expensive, hulking software. Users have mashed up … Read more

The folks who chose the winners for the Web Awards at this year's SXSW Interactive are on a roll. One of the winners named Viscosity has sucked away any semblance of productivity I had going for me today. The tool lets you create wonderfully colorful (or colorless if you so choose) pieces of abstract art without any skill, and you get great looking results.

Each creation gets a maximum of 10 colors that can be chosen either by using color presets or one at a time. To start out, all you need to do is chose your color scheme … Read more

I really enjoy Web-based comic strip tools. I once had ambitions to be a comic illustrator, although I lost interest about the same time I discovered video games. I still enjoy a good doodle here and there, which is where sites like Toonlet can offer a great deal of fun for the creatively inclined. Toonlet is a comic strip builder. We've covered several others like it before, although it's somewhere between that build-your-own Simpsons character maker and Mr. Picassohead. You're given a wide (and I do mean wide) array of body parts to fit together, letting you … Read more

The math is incontrovertible: at $2,500, Adobe's Creative Suite 3 Master Collection non-upgrade is extremely expensive. However, once you start looking at the cost of the individual pieces of the suite, getting more than two of the major components--say, Photoshop and Illustrator--on their own isn't cost effective, either.

Just those two applications together cost $1,600 for their non-upgrade editions, and that same chunk of change will get you the CS3 Web Premium, which contains Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, Acrobat Pro and all the little ancillary apps that Adobe has been giving away.

But let's say you're only interested in editing photos, or you think your copy of Illustrator CS2 will work just fine with Flash CS3, but you need that Flash upgrade? Is there more going on than a new palette layout? Let's break down Adobe's powerhouse gestalt and take a look at the more popular parts that make up the whole: Photoshop for image manipulating and printing, Illustrator for drawing, Flash for animating, and Dreamweaver for designing Web pages.

… Read more

The public release for Joost is very close. Today, the makers of the media service announced a content distribution deal with Turner Broadcasting, and forthcoming content from big names like Sports Illustrated, the NHL, and Sony Pictures Television (makers of Seinfeld and The Shield). Hasbro is also pitching in with the now classic series: G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero, as well as the original series of Transformers.

What may be the most interesting announcement though, is that current Joost beta testers will soon be given unlimited invitations to send to friends. This is typically a move that indicates … Read more

There's been a lot of teeth-gnashing of late about photojournalists for the Toledo Blade or Reuters doctoring photos, but photo manipulation is alive and well--not to mention perfectly legitimate--in artistic circles as a way to dramatize. One compelling message is delivered in a batch of photos is by Chris Jordan.

Jordan created several images for an exhibit called Running the Numbers--An American Self-Portrait that could be considered a brute-force approach to the visual display of quantitative information. Each image is a montage of a gargantuan number of various objects that people in the United States consume.

One shows the … Read more

Now's the time for early adopters who can afford Adobe Creative Suite 3 to break out their credit cards. The professional interactive design software is officially for sale online. If you can't plunk down upwards of $1,000 for a suite (more in Europe--or buy a plane ticket from there to the States if you want to spend less), then check out some freebie Web-based and downloadable alternatives.

Thanks to Adobe's work to incorporate its staple software with its Macromedia acquisitions from 2005, integration throughout the applications is the biggest news to report with this upgrade. There … Read more

So, you need to finish up a design project that requires the image-editing capabilities of Photoshop along with the vectorized lines of Illustrator, and it needs to be animated in Flash with documentation in a PDF. However, you blew your budget on bling and a sweet alpaca-skin bongo set.

Take your head out of the microwave. There is indeed a way to save your project and your wallet from the $2,500 price tag of Adobe Creative Suite 3. You just have to be a bit...creative.

Photoshop is arguably the most powerful and certainly the most well-known of the Adobe set. Heck, the term "photoshop" is now a slang verb that describes altering an image. The program's popularity is well-deserved, with an array of features that is mind-boggling. Unfortunately, that incredible feature set comes with associated bloat, and Photoshop is quickly becoming the military tank of image editors: yes, it gets the job done, but no, the job description should not include cruising down Highway 101.… Read more

Adobe has learned that it's hard to keep a secret these days. It seems that the announcement date for the third version of Creative Suite (aka CS3) has been leaked.

The company has now officially said that it will announce the details of the product on March 27, at a press event in New York City. The event will be Webcast at 3:30 p.m. EST. Details on the Webcast will be posted on the Adobe Web site later this week.

Adobe doesn't plan to ship the new version of Creative Suite until this spring. Previous versions … Read more