The Graphic Mac

Alien Skin has released Bokeh2, thier easy to use tools for creative blurring, including spiral motion blur. New support for Adobe Photoshop CS5 64-bit and Lightroom is in the mix, as is an improved preview feature which is now much faster and more interactive, making experimentation easier.

Bokeh 2 gives photographers and designers a wide range of tools to focus attention where they want it. The focus region is easily placed over the subject and then the fun begins. Every aspect of the lens blur can be customized, from highlight intensity and shape to motion blur and vignette.

Focus attention where you want it with Bokeh 2

Bokeh 2 now works in Lightroom, including batch processing. The 64-bit version of Photoshop CS5 works great with Bokeh on both platforms. Bokeh provides multiple techniques for non-destructive editing in Photoshop, including Smart Filter support and rendering effects on a duplicate of the original layer.

Bokeh 2 sells for $199. Owners of Bokeh 1 may upgrade for $99. Online or physical delivery is available through the Alien Skin website. Free upgrades will be automatically sent to purchasers of Bokeh 1 who purchased in April 2010 or later.

Bokeh 2 is a plug-in and requires one of the following host applications:

• Adobe Photoshop CS3 or later
• Adobe Lightroom 2 or later
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 or later

I’m a huge fan of Bokeh, and I plan on putting it through its paces and post a review as soon as I get my hands on it.

Keeping up with Mac-related news can be a daunting task. Apple has never been so popular, so news portal sites that offer Apple/Mac-related news can be a great way to keep up with the latest goings-on.

Below are a few of the sites I tend to go to when I’m looking for news on any particular Apple/Mac related news. The Mac Observer is a daily visit for me, and MacNews is a favorite forum hangout.

Apple / Mac-related news portals keep you up-to-date

Mac.Alltop

Alltop is a site which allows you to view the latest topics on virtually any subject you wish with a customized MyAlltop page. Mac news is pulled from numerous sites, including some more obscure places that even I didn’t know about.

The Mac Observer

The Mac Observer, a site that’s been around for many, many years is one of the best Mac news portals out there. They have an extensive list of sites they pull news from. Generally speaking, if there’s news about Apple, The Mac Observer has you covered.

MacNews

MacNews, part of the AppleCentral group of sites, brings together top headlines from a variety of RSS feeds. The site also offers a great group of discussion forums.

Addict-O-Mattic

Addict-O-Matic provides the latest headlines on topics such as entertainment, politics, shopping, sports, and of course, Apple. You get all the feeds from the best sources in each category. And like your search results dashboard, you can personalize the layout of the headline boxes, delete ones you don’t like and bookmark your personalized page. I love the clean layout of this site.

MacDailyNews

MacDailyNews is great because you’re presented with a long list of headlines and one-line summaries of the articles, making it quite easy to find what you’re looking for.

MacNN

MacNN offers a news portal page, collection all the latest headlines for you. I’m not a huge fan of the site, but it has been around for many years and offers plenty to read.

AppleLinks

If you’re looking for volume, AppleLinks is the place to visit. Over 2,000 pages of Mac news awaits you. They also have an interesting way of presenting the news that you really have to see because it’s difficult to describe.

TechMeme

Techmeme pulls together tech news of all sorts, but features quite a bit of Apple news at any given time. I like the site because it gives a great overview of all the hottest geek news, regardless of what OS you prefer.

If you have a favorite Mac and Apple-related news site, feel free to share it in the comments.

If you’ve never heard of Brand New (part of UnderConsideration.com), you’re missing out on some fantastic conversation about companies who re-brand or at least re-design their logos.

Logo and brand makeovers featured at Brand New

Recently, I read two great reviews at Brand New, the first covering the new Girl Scouts of America logo, and the second dissecting the latest brand makeover of the YMCA logo.

Brand New is a great site for designers, offering intelligent design discussion along with the analysis of corporate re-branding. Definitely worthy of bookmarking!

Click to view original

The infographic, How Apple is Revolutionizing Education, uses simple graphics and a small color palette to get its point across. I think they pulled it off quite well.

You can view the full size graphic here.

I love working on infographics, and found a great place for inspiration. You can check out what other designers are doing with infographics by visiting The Infographics Showcase.

Alien Skin Software, one of my favorite Photoshop plug-in vendors, has released Exposure 3, the newest version of their photography effects plug-in. With this latest version, Exposure grows beyond just film simulation, and dives into being a creativity tool with the addition of Lo-Fi and vintage effects for your images.

Exposure brings all of the creative tools of film photography to the world of digital, such as discontinued films, dark room tricks, and lo-fi camera quirks. New in version 3 are vintage looks like Technicolor movie film and old Kodachrome that are distressed with dust, scratches, and vignettes to complete the illusion of age. Lo-Fi cameras like Holga and Lomo are simulated with lens blur, warped vignettes, and funky colors from cross processing.

Exposure 3's infrared simulation provides an ethereal glow

The most significant new features in Exposure 3 are:

• 64-bit support for Photoshop CS5 on both Macintosh and Windows
• Tight Lightroom® integration that does not require Photoshop
• Aging effects and vintage films such as Technicolor and old Kodachrome
• Simulation of Lo-Fi toy camera photography
• Hundreds of new settings in all categories, including more films, color toning, and aging
• User interface improvements such as a much faster preview and hover help

Exposure 3's Lo-Fi toy camera effects have been greatly expanded

Exposure 3 sells for $249. Owners of any version of Exposure may upgrade for $99. Online or physical delivery is available through the Alien Skin website. Free upgrades will be automatically sent to purchasers of Exposure 2 who purchased in April 2010 or later. Exposure 3 works with Photoshop CS3 or later, Lightroom 2 or later, and Photoshop Elements 7 or later.

For the most part, designers don’t really think about bit depth when working in Adobe Photoshop. Bit depth tells Photoshop how many colors an image can contain. As of Photoshop CS5, a maximum of 32-bits can be used. It’s important to have at least a small understanding of what bit depth is and when you should use different bit depths when working with your images.

2-Bit

2-bit images are typically called bitmaps, and they contain only two colors – black or white. This is because the pixel is either turned on or off. For the most part, 2-bit images aren’t used much anymore, but when they are, it’s usually a case of a solid black piece of artwork (such as a logo) that will be colored in a layout program like Quark XPress or Adobe InDesign.

2-bit images can be used to enhance an 8-bit image, or used by itself simply as a graphical element in your design

8-Bit

With the exception of some high-end photographers, 8-bit is the most popular bit depth to work in because it provides 16.7 million available colors – which is far more than any human can see. And quite frankly, no inkjet or commercial printer can produce anyway. In 8-bit mode, you can use all the features available in Photoshop.

16 and 32-bit

Photographers typically shoot in camera RAW mode, offering them a higher bit depth. This essentially offers more color information to be stored in the pixels; so when they go into the RAW editor, they have much more flexibility in bringing out the detail in shadows and highlights. The problem with working in 16 and 32-bit images is that you have a very limited set of filters that will work above 8-bit.

In general, you shouldn’t have the need to ever work in anything but 8-bit. But I certainly encourage you to explore color correcting RAW images, and playing with the effect you can achieve using a 2-bit image.

With the release of Creative Suite 5, Adobe brought with it a new set of icons for all their applications. Now I won’t get into the whole debate about whether or not they’re better or worse than the previous ones, but they are different. And if you’re like me, you may have an interest in altering them a bit, and creating similar ones for other folder and applications in your OS X Dock.

Icon Generator is a website and a companion Adobe AIR application, both free, that allow you to create your own CS5-style icons with little effort.

Create your own CS5-style icons easily

As you can see in the screenshot above, you can type in your own letters (up to 15, but it looks bad beyond three), choose a face and font color, and even add or remove icon shadows and glare. I should also note that if you preferred the Adobe CS4-style icons, you can choose that style instead.

But it Icon Generator doesn’t stop there. You can choose to use an image on the face of your icon, rather than letters. You simply upload a 512×512 pixel JPG or PNG file. As you can see below, the results are pretty darn good!

Icon Generator allows you to use images instead of text on your icons

Once you’re finished customizing, Icon Generator allows you to download a .zip file containing various sized PNG files of your icon, and even update your Twitter profile icon if you wish.

Icon Generator is free, so if you like the Adobe CS4 or CS5 icons and want to customize more icons to match, this little AIR app is just what the doctor ordered.

I’m amazed to find there are still designers out there that struggle with Adobe’s tabbed document interface when trying to get objects from one document into a second one, rather than copy and pasting them. The process is a simple drag and drop operation in both CS4 and CS5 apps.

Document tabs offer simple drag & drop convenience

Select your objects and drag them from the current document over to the second document’s tab and hover there for a second or two. The second document will come to the front, allowing you to drop the objects on the page.