Google news reader

With the Google News Reader you can add the site you like to visit regularly, and keep yourself updated with its news and updated content. The Google News Reader has a simple interface and takes no time to customize. Visit the Google News Reader at the following link:
http://www.google.com/reader/view/

Reviewing Flash Professional 8 Beyond The Basics (Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy)

The Flash Professional 8 Beyond The Basics for Shane Rebenchied is a practice book that includes some useful tutorial for both Flash designers and developers. About 50 step-by-step tutorials cover many needed techniques to create a professional Flash application. Such as, formatting dynamically loaded text using HTML, CSS and nested images, building preloader with the MovieClipLoader class, adding a progressively downloading multi-track MP3 player and using component to create a feed back form.

For the first time I looked at the book index, I felt like the tutorials are not very well organized, but with another deep look, I realized that the tutorials are pinpoint the problems you may face when creating a Flash application in a professional way.

The book also includes a CD-ROM with exercises and training videos. To know more about this book you can visit http://www.peachpit.com/title/0321293878

Product Details:
Reviewing Flash Professional 8 Beyond The Basics
Publisher: Peachpit
ISBN: 0-321-29387-8

Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy

Photoshop CS2 RAW from Oreilly

In March, Oreilly has published Photoshop CS2 RAW book, which concern with the RAW extension. This extension gives you more control on the images created from your digital camera as it does not affected by the camera process and deliver you that data captured in an uncompressed format. Read more about this new book at the following link:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/photoshopraw/

Photoshop TV

Photoshop TV is a Photoshop Podcast produced by the NAPP. the www.photoshoptv.com includes nice updated Podcasts for Adobe Photoshop tips and tricks. you can subscribe through iTunes by adding the following URL to Subscribe Podcast list (Advanced > Subscribe Podcast ):

http://feeds.feedburner.com/photoshoptv/

Network for professionals

I was just getting recovered from my latest surgery when my friend Greg Hamer invited me to join Linkedin.com network. I think it is a great network to connect professionals, friends and old colleges. It keeps you updated with your contacts info changes and lets search for jobs within this network and link you with other companies. Visit http://www.linkedin.com/ and join this great community. you can add me to your contact too (Rafiq Elmansy, email rafiqelmansy (at) yahoo (dot) com).

New Cookbook for Flash 8

Oreilly has published a new Cookbook for Flash 8. As the rest of the series, Flash 8 Cookbook is a practice book for both developers and designers. read the following link for more info about this book:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/flash8ckbk/

Submit your work for the 2006 Adobe Customer Reel

You're invited!

Submit your work for the 2006 Adobe Customer Reel by June 30. http://www.adobe.com/motion/customerreel.html

Adobe invites you to submit your work for possible inclusion in the 2006 Adobe Digital Video and Audio Customer Reel! This is a chance to showcase the work you produce using Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Encore DVD, Adobe Audition, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and other Adobe products! We want to see your work and show it to others in the industry so they can see how creative our users are—and see the possibilities of Adobe's Digital Video and Audio products.

Adobe plans to introduce the reel at SIGGRAPH in Boston this August. Over the next year Adobe will also present the reel at tradeshows, seminars and industry events worldwide. This reel also proudly plays in the lobby of Adobe's headquarters—reminding all that some of the coolest products at Adobe are the ones that make images move.

If you are able to grant us the additional right to distribute your materials as part of the Reel for the purpose of promoting Adobe products and services, your work may reach an even wider audience! To be included in versions of the Reel that are played on the Adobe web site and shared with customers and partners, be sure to check the option on the last page of the Non-Exclusive License Agreement.

NTSC Beta SP is our preferred format, but we can also accept Digibeta, miniDV, miniDV (DV, HDV, or HD), and uncompressed movie files (QuickTime and AVI) on data DVDs. We cannot accept PAL, and would prefer to use authored DVDs only if no other option is available, as compression means the finished quality will be less than ideal. This year, we plan to produce the reel in 16:9 format as well as 4:3, so if you have both options available, please send them both to us.

Please tell us which Adobe products you used and a little about the project(s) you're submitting by filling out the contact sheet. If your work has audio, please make sure that you have the rights for Adobe to use the audio or indicate that we need to use copyright free music.

To submit your work:

1) Print and fill out t he Contact Infosheet : http://www.adobe.com/motion/pdfs/2006_dvreel_contactinfo.pdf.

2) Print and complete 2 copies of the Non-Exclusive License : http://www.adobe.com/motion/pdfs/2006_dvreel_license_agreement.pdf

3) Send your reel, both copies of the Non-Exclusive License (one copy will be sent back to you), and the Contact Info sheet to:

Attn: Adobe Customer Reel

Meredith Yeary

Adobe Systems, Inc.

801 North 34^th St.

Seattle , WA 98103

We can't guarantee that your work will be included but we make every effort to include as broad a range of work as possible. Submissions in past years have come from Istanbul, New York, Tokyo, LA, Paris, Poland and virtually everywhere in between, and have represented everything from experimental films and self-promotions to commercials, broadcast graphics, and film compositing projects. We'd love to see what you've been working on, so please send your reel to us!

If you have any questions, please email us at customerreel@adobe.com .

Remember, the submission deadline is June 30. Thanks again for your support!

Sincerely,

The Adobe Digital Video and Audio Product Teams

Cartoonsmart.com video about IE changes

Cartoonsmart.com added a new video tutorial with samples for how to Flash using Javascript after the IE changes, visit the following link for details and free downloads:
http://www.cartoonsmart.com/change_code.html

Adobe Photoshop CS2 review

I remember when I first started to learn Adobe Photoshop, 7 years ago. I started with Photoshop 4; life was not so much easy as it is today. We had to go through a lot of steps to do effects we can do now with fewer steps and less time. Adobe Photoshop goes through a lot of enhancements and improvements since then.

Workflow improvements:

The new version of Adobe Photoshop is part of the new Adobe Creative Suite 2, which provides more workflow with the integration between Adobe applications using Adobe Bridge (figure 1). The new version is more users friendly, saves much time and gives you the ability to create professional outputs in fewer steps with its new features.

In addition to the Adobe Bridge, The new Adobe creative suite includes improvements in the color management by providing a simplified printing interface for color management. As well as Version Cue 2.0, which enable you to manage files either by one user or in workgroup.

Figure 1. Adobe Bridge browser

Photo editing improvements:

Photoshop CS2 includes many new features to improve the photo editing process such as The Camera Raw plug-in, which enable you to apply your setting to a batch of images, The High Dynamic Range, Optical lens correction, noise reduction, Smart Sharpen filter and Spot Healing tool.

With the new Photoshop, you do not have to worry about the red eye problem any more because it removes this problem with the new red eye correction feature. Also, The Blur effects are enhanced with new Blur filters like Box Blur, Shape Blur and Surface Blur.

Design enhancements:

The new Adobe Photoshop CS2 includes great improvements for designers. For example, you do not have to create a perspective to your image manually or relay on third party plug-in to create the perspective effect you need, the new Vanishing Point do it for you.

Also, you do not need to worry about image distortion when you transform your image; the new Smart Object feature creates multiple instances of your image or vector, and updates them all at once (figure 2). As well as the ability to control multiple layers.

In addition to the above design features, which I think it is the most useful for designers, there are some other new features like image wrapping, the ability to create animation, Japanese type features, smart guides and integrated online service.

Figure 2. Free transforming Smart Object

Also, Adobe Photoshop CS2 includes other new features such as customizable menus, batch image processing, new PDF engine, Scripting and action event manager, UI font size customization, Update Manager, Variables as in Image ready, Video preview, WYSIWYG Font menu.

Some old features have also changed such as layer grouping, merging layers, loading selections, clipping mask visibility, file browsing and placing files as smart objects.

As we see from the above brief of the new features in Adobe Photoshop CS2, it provides photographers and designers with some great tools to enhance their work. I think this feature really worth the upgrade, which costs 169$. The new version of Adobe Photoshop CS2 costs 649$.

And to know more about this great product, visit Adobe site at the following link:

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/