Rufus Deuchler

Experimenting with Adobe Edge

Sharing a little experiment I've been working on to see how easy it is to get creative with Adobe Edge Animate. I animated the text (Edge Web Fonts) and published it using Adobe Muse, the result can be viewed here: rufus.li/YmmMNY.

This project is leveraging the CSS Blur Filter (which not currently supported by Firefox, IE, and Android browsers). But, because it is HTML it'll show nicely on you iOS devices.

Remember that my background is in print design. So, if I can do it, you can do it too. ;-)

Create Now World Tour 2013

Time to hit the road again. This time around it will be all about Adobe Creative Cloud. The Create Now World Tour will hit over 40 cites worldwide so make sure to check if there's one near you. [http://bit.ly/CreateNow_SM]

As far as I am concerned this is my travel plan:

Together with Jason Levine and Paul Trani.

• Mar 1, Warsaw, Poland (Create Now Stop Warsaw)
• Mar 4, Oslo, Norway (Create Now Oslo stop)
• Mar 5, London, UK (Create Now London stop)
• Mar 6, Stockholm, Sweden (Create Now Stockholm stop)
• Mar 7, Copenhagen, Denmark (Create Now Copenhagen stop)
• Mar 8, Helsinki, Finland (Create Now Helsinki stop)

Together with other great people:

• Mar 11,  Boston MA,  USA (Central MA Adobe User Group - Boston)
• Mar 14,  Amsterdam,   Holland (Create Now Amsterdam stop)
• Mar 20,  Portland OR,  USA (Portland Digital Designers and Artists)
• Mar 22,  San Diego CA,  USA (AIGA Y-Conference)
• Mar 23,  San Jose CA,  USA (Creative Suite San Jose User Group)
• Apr 2,  Miami FL,  USA  (ADC Awards and Creative Festival)

This list is still open, so I may be adding Create Now events that I'll be presenting in the near future. Stay tuned.

Creative Cloud Training, now available for members

It was announced last week, and here it is: a special section  in your Creative Cloud - Creative Cloud Training, which includes exclusive videos from experts at Kelby Training, video2brain, Attain and Adobe.

The Training area is divided into the following areas:

Specific Workflows.

• Editing & compositing photos
• Publishing magazines for the iPad
• Creating animation, vector artwork & multimedia for the web
• Developing mobile applications
• Sketching & wireframing on your tablet
• Editing audio & video
• Developing a website
• Packaging mobile applications
• Impoving your productivity
• Creating interactive games
• Geting started with Creative Cloud
• Working with web fonts & colors
• Creating responsive web designs

Create Now Keynote, December 11, 2012

For those of you whom missed the Create Now keynote, here it is:

During this keynote presentation I got to show new features in:

 

• Adobe Photoshop – Big feature updates including Retina Display support, Smart Object support for Liquify, Copy CSS, and Conditional Actions.
• Adobe Muse – Now, you can create mobile versions of your website without writing code.

And here's a little extra that I have prepared:

New features for Adobe Ideas 2.5

Adobe Ideas lets you capture and explore ideas in vector format anywhere you go. In this new update there are quite a few features that will make many of you very happy. Let's see what they are:

Three new drawing tools: pencil, brush, marker, and pen tool.

• The new brush tools lets you create marks that vary in thickness depending on the speed you apply to your brush stroke.
   
• The marker (70% transparency by default) lets you draw as if you were working with felt tips.
  
• The pen tool lets you draw as if you were using a calligraphic pen.
  

The ability to rapidly fill closed regions with the paint bucket. Do you remember the times when you had to feverishly paint into larger regions to get them filled with a color? Well, no more.

• The bucket tool lets you fill closed areas with a single click.
  

Ability to duplicate, merge, and flip layers.

• You can now duplicate any layer
• New buttons let you flip selected layers horizontally or verticaly
• A layer can be merged with the layer just below it
  

Ability to compare previous and current colour selection with the eyedropper.

• The eyedropper now shows you the currently selected color and the one you are about to choose from your image, so that you can quickly understand which color you are choosing in context. A neat feature is that the color picker is offset from where your finger/stylys is so that you get a full view.
  

So go to your iOS App Store app and update Adobe Ideas to get all of these cool new features.

Remember that you Adobe Ideas, or *.idea files can be synced over the Adobe Creative Cloud so that you find them on your desktop computer when you get back to the office. Also remember that *.idea files open as vector art in Adobe Illustrator.

2013 Calendar with InDesign CS6 and Liquid Page Rules

So it's this time of the year again... many of you will be producing calendars for yourselves or for your Clients. So I have set myself a little project to make your life easier. But, you will need InDesign CS6 (which is also part of your Creative Cloud Membership) to be able to work with my files, because I am using Liquid Page Rules so that you can easily modify my document to format you like. This is a great example of how Liquid Page Rules can be very useful in your print design projects, and not only for producing layouts for tablet devices. Print FTW! ;-)

Download the InDesign source file here: Calendar 2013 Folder [6.1Mb, ZIP archive]

Here's what I did to create the layout so it is as flexible as possible:

Fun with 3D in Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended

In my presentations I always talk about 3D in Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended and how easy it is to create extrusions of selections, type, or paths directly in the application. What I did here was to go under the menu item 3D > Get more content... (Adobe® Photoshop Extended® 3D content) and got myself a 3D model of a hot air balloon. 

Then, simply by changing textures and lights (colour and position), I was able top create that rather realistic image of a hot air balloon peacefully hovering over the Pilanesberg National Park at sunset.

[Click on the image for a slightly larger version]

Try it for yourself and let me know about what you come up with.

Learn new InDesign CS6 features in a click!

Created with Adobe Configurator 3 (from Adobe Labs), the InDesign Features panel lets you easily explore, try out and learn the new and enhanced tools and features in InDesign CS6. Arranged in a series of tabs, from the panel you can check out the new tools and features.

The panel is free and exclusively available on Adobe Exchange. To download it you will need the Adobe Exchange panel which currently works with 9 different CS6 applications.

Enjoy!

Keep Calm and Content Aware Move

Unlimited Publishing to iPad with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition

The Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Single Edition enables designers to easily publish content created with Adobe InDesign as an app 
on the iPad without writing code.

As of today (September 18, 2012), Adobe Creative Cloud Members can create an 
unlimited number of Single Edition 
apps at no additional cost. For those of you who are not Creative Cloud Members, Single Edition is available for purchase as a standalone product. Here's the original Blog post on Adobe.com.

Digital Publishing Suite Single Edition offers:

• Streamlined workflow tailored to Designers Rapid preview and testing directly to iPad, including all interactivity, via the USB port.
• The ability to design and build one App that is optimized for High Definition (new iPad) and Standard Definition (iPad 1+2).
• The ability to update Single Edition App after it has been submitted to (and approved by) App store.

In short, you can now use Adobe InDesign to author layouts, add interactivity, preview and create Folio files (Folio files are a series of Articles). Then you use the new DPS App Builder to create a cutom viewer for the iPad, and then you can download a developer App for testing and a distribution App to submit to Apple App Store.

Check this out for more information on Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition.