Photoshop and Web Design – We, Geeks Podcast Ep. 24

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Listen to the Podcast here!

Taylor Swift’s Concert Photo Contract Changed to Be More Photographer-Friendly

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Taylor Swift and her legal team came under some heat a few weeks ago when her contract was released by a few different concert photographers who didn’t like what it said. It had sharp restrictions on what photographers could do with the photos and even at certain points allowed for her staff to break or destroy the photographer’s equipment. Her new contract for concert photographers has been revised to state that photographers who violate the agreement “may be asked to delete those images,” and that publications and photographers will be able to publish the photos more than once as long as it’s not for news/editorial/commercial use. Check out the story here.

It seems that Taylor and her team saw the outcry and responded in a way that seems fairly positive. I’ll be interested to see what the tried and true concert photographers have to say about the new contract.

Sigma’s 24-35mm f/2 Art is Like a Prime Lens that Zooms

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I saw FroKnowsPhotos’s video on the unboxing of the brand new Sigma lens and I also saw the insanely sharp RAW files that he has for download on his site. This looks essentially like three prime lenses in one. 24mm, 28mm, and 35mm at f2, and a very sharp f2. The Sigma ART lenses are incredible; this new one looks to be every bit as incredible. It costs $999.00.

Mountain Biking Extreme with Brandon Semenuk in One Shot

To celebrate the release of unReal on iTunes Teton Gravity Research and Anthill have released an incredible short film piece on YouTube that I have linked below. Widely recognized as the best slopestyle mountain biker in the world, Brandon Semenuk has become the first mountain biker to film a full segment in a single continuous shot. This continuous film shot was taken by an awesome gyro-stabilized camera, the GSS C520, which was mounted onto a truck driving on a custom road which took three weeks to build running alongside the mountian biking path.

Anti-Drone Combat Systems

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With the rise of drone usage comes the rise of idiot drone users. Drones have been occasionally disrupting sporting events for a little while very recently we had an incident in San Bernardino county, California where firefighters fighting a forest fire said that they couldn’t drop the flame retardant that they normally would have due to a few drones being flown above the legal altitude and into a restricted fly zone that the firefighters had separated off as they battled the blaze. US Forest Service says that incident alone cost them $10,000.

Enter the Anti-Drone systems. Blighter Surveillance in the UK has developed a system designed to use radar to automatically detect, track, and disrupt/take down unauthorized drones. The catch is that the system costs about $1,000,000.

There are also some really sweet looking systems that use laser technology to destroy drones in midair from over 500 yards away. Check out the video below from the Wall Street Journal.

Samsung continues to rule over Apple in the smartphone market.

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Samsung’s market share fell a bit over the past quarter and Apple’s gained steam, but Samsung still shipped almost 30 million more devices than the Apple iPhone did during the second quarter of 2015. As the two super-heavyweights duke it out to see who is the ruler of the smartphone marketplace, Samsung still rules over Apple, but the iPhone is gaining steam. My hope is that the battle remains neck-and-neck, then we both get better and better phones. That’s a win for US. Read the CNET article here.

DopplerLabs Earbuds

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Doppler “here” is a set of earbuds that allow you to put a volume knob on the world around you. You can raise or lower the volume, add or subtract different sounds, hear subtle sounds you’ve never heard before and more! You can choose to cancel out different sounds as well. Imagine being able to virtually shut the sound off on the world around you, or maybe just the train’s wheels on the track, or that screaming baby on your twelve hour flight. Check out their products here. Or watch the video below:

What is the future of Photoshop in Web Design?

Skeuomorphic is out, flat and simple is in. AI will really cover all of your graphical needs. Photoshop needed for photos.

Websites seem to be VERY heavy with rich media and photography these days.

Photoshop is still great for building a general layout and visual of what you want the finished product to look like.

Adobe Animate: This application allows us to create complex animated pieces that work as web applications run on HTML, CSS, and Javascript. I haven’t done much with Animate, but it is another tool in Adobe’s web toolbox. Something worth looking into if you’re interested in creating rich flash-like experiences on your website. I’m only really talking about this because I feel obliged to, it’s an  application that I honestly see Adobe phasing out in the coming years. Check out Adobe Animate.

Adobe Edge Reflow: This application is a responsive design tool. Adobe Edge Reflow helps you create a layout of responsive boxes that will adjust themselves as the browser window gets larger or smaller to create the optimal website experience for your users. Essentially you can use this to create a responsive website layout. Check out Adobe Edge Reflow.

Edge Reflow provides you with a simple, easy to use environment where you can work with a grid system and even drag elements around in your mocked up page and they will have the correct code written for them and changed automatically. The catch with Edge Reflow is that right now it doesn’t actually create a full responsive website for you, only responsive, fully functioning mock-ups.

Edge Reflow is also joined with Photoshop which allows for extended usage of the assets library. I kinda hate assets libraries though. I don’t know of any really great designers who get hooked into the Creative Cloud system, the shared asset libraries, and all the quirky non-conventional ways of sharing that Adobe has provided. I’m just not sure it’s all caught on yet. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.

There are heaps of amazing looking features on Edge Reflow that I am not nearly as familiar as I should be with. The ability to use Adobe’s Edge Fonts (over 500+ Web Fonts), CSS3 filters, and all kinds of little features, including outputting CSS for individual elements are all things that you can do with Edge Reflow. I really should do some tutorials on this rather new application.

Adobe Muse: Adobe Muse promises to allow designers to create and publish amazing and dynamic websites without writing any code. These kinds of WYSIWYG editors always scare the crap out of me. Muse will let you create menus, slideshows, trigger animations as a user scrolls through a page and much more. It also has a bunch of widgets like blogs, calendars, video players, and more that are available to be attached to any web project you’re working on. Once you have your site designed, you can FTP right from Muse to your web host. It’s an intriguing application for someone who doesn’t know how to write code and has no interest in writing code. Personally I like to know what I’m writing and how it’s affecting the website that I am working on. Check out Adobe Muse.

Adobe Dreamweaver: Dreamweaver is the mother ship of the website design and HTML editors. Developed years ago by Macromedia and purchased by Adobe some years ago, Dreamweaver was always the go-to website editor for folks who wanted a nice balance of code writing ability and a visual design editor as well as a great system to manage the content going into that site. Check out Dreamweaver now.

MACAW: There is also an application call MACAW which is NOT an Adobe product, but seems to be an amazing design and code application all in one. In MACAW you can build a responsive design to your particular tastes and publish out semantic, standards compliant HTML and CSS instantly. It’s a worthy adversary to Adobe’s tools and something that you should really check out. See MACAW here.

How they all fit together: Dreamweaver is not the responsive layout builder that Edge Reflow is, but you would take the responsive mock-up from Edge Reflow and write the code for it here in Dreamweaver. Adobe Muse seems to work independent of any other tools. You can theoretically create your website entirely in Adobe Muse by dragging and dropping elements that you have already designed or built in Photoshop.
Photoshop has been and will continue to be where websites are born. Your initial designs will start there. You may end up using Edge Reflow or even Macaw. Listen to the podcast for my entire analysis and ranting about the mash up of products and the future of Photoshop and Web Design.

Listen to the Podcast here!

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