The Adobe Experience Design department is conducting exploratory research to learn about the technologies that photography professionals and enthusiasts are using for their workflows. We need your help to continue to grow and produce products that are what our customer demographics need and want.

This research study will be a conversation with the participant about their technology use and what they would like from products in the future to support their professions and hobbies. These conversations will take roughly 90 minutes to 2 hours and participants will be compensated for their time.

To determine qualification for this study, we have created a survey screener to help us quickly obtain information about your work and technology use. If you are interested in being reviewed for participation, please complete the survey located at the link below.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/phototech

Thanks!

Petra Uebel, User Research Recruiter

Adobe Systems, Inc.

I’m looking forward to the opportunity to tell the folks at Adobe the many things I love about Photoshop and Creative Suite, and those things that I feel could use improvement, such as the gradient tool. If you’d like to do the same, follow the link and join the conversation.

On a related note, trial downloads of CS5 Production Premium just became available. Downloading mine now… Click here for other trial versions.

Update:

I’m headed in to Adobe’s headquarters today to see them demo the new features of Photoshop CS5. I’ve been using it for a few days now, and I find the upgrade to be truly amazing… full of great new features, many of which I have yet to put to use. If you’re on the fence about whether to upgrade or not, I strongly suggest going for it.

This question may have helped Herzog & de Meuron – the architects who designed the Beijing National Stadium (dubbed “The Bird’s Nest” at the 2008 Summer Olympics), and closer to home, the bold de Young Museum in San Francisco – develop the wildly innovative design for Le Project Triangle. This is the first skyscraper to be built in Paris for three decades; the French waited to do the job in style. It’s scheduled to be completed in 2014, and as Gizmodo writes, this is “one of those buildings that make us think that we may actually drive flying cars one day.” But this will be science fact, not science fiction.

The design took my breath away. Here’s a render of how the completed building will look, viewed straight-on:

And here’s an edge-on view:

In addition to being beautiful, it’s also going to generate its own electricity using solar and wind generators. Bright idea!

With all of these innovative builds, Herzog & de Meuron are quickly climbing up my list of favorite architects.

If you spend much time in the art, design, or photography worlds, you’ve probably already heard about this sexy little app. And if you’ve already played with Kuler, then you surely know what I’m talking about, because it probably sucked you into a world of infinitely customizable color nirvana and left you gasping with gratitude for those brilliant mad scientists at Adobe.

If working with colors in subtle yet powerful ways sounds interesting to you, and if you haven’t heard about Kuler yet, this just might change your life in a very kick@ss way.

To list a few of the supercool things about Kuler, it enables you to:

- view thousands of color palettes that are submitted and voted upon by members of the Kuler online community,
- view the more than 180,000 color palettes that are currently in the Kuler database, sorting them either by rank or by keywords,
- upload images and easily create custom color palettes,
- and best of all, you can easily import the color palettes into Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator to supercharge your own creativity!

This video, from AdobeTV, provides a more detailed (6:34 long) description of the highlights of Kuler:

If you want to get even deeper into the world of Kuler, check out the stand-alone Kuler Air app called the Kuler Desktop (clicking this link will cause the app to automatically download to your default download location).

Now go get freaky with it!

The first, “The Dragon’s Gift, The Sacred Arts of Bhutan,” currently showing at the Asian Art Museum, features the Buddhist art and sacred objects of Bhutan, the “Land of the Thunder Dragon.” The Asian Art Museum writes:

East of Mount Everest and bordered by India and Tibet, Bhutan is a remote and mystical kingdom, considered by many as “The Last Shangri-La.” A sovereign nation that has maintained its cultural, artistic, and religious traditions intact, it is one of the few countries in Asia never colonized by its neighbors or Western powers.

Many of the 150 objects – intricate paintings, sculptures, textiles, and more – are still used in temple and monastery rituals and never have been accessible to a Western audience. All are on public view for the first time.

This show ends on May 10th.

Coming to the Asian Art Museum on June 12th will be the “Lords of the Samurai” exhibit. The Asian Art Museum describes the exhibit as follows:

The samurai culture and code of conduct, bushido, have long captivated the imaginations and aspirations of young and old in the Western world. More than just fierce warriors, Japanese samurai of the highest rank were also visionaries who strove to master artistic, cultural, and spiritual pursuits.

And then, on June 27th, King Tutankhamun returns to the de Young Museum. The de Young writes about this exhibit:

More than 3,000 years after his reign, and 30 years after the original exhibition opened in San Francisco, Tutankhamun, ancient Egypt’s celebrated “boy king,” returns to the de Young Museum. In the summer of 2009 the de Young presents Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, a glorious exhibition of over 130 outstanding works from the tomb of Tutankhamun, as well as those of his royal predecessors, his family, and court officials.

I’m very eager to visit all of these amazing exhibitions and to soak in inspiration from across the world and throughout the millennia.

If you want to stay current with the exhibits at the Asian Art Museum and at the de Young, I suggest following them on Twitter. Here’s a link to the Asian Art Museum’s feed, and here’s the de Young’s.

Click the logo and go ffffind something that moves you (and if you’re really inspired, email me about it because I’m always looking to be inspired – particularly in unexpected ways, at unexpected times).

Here’s a similar website that you may not have heard of: enjoysthin.gs. [I hadn't heard of it until supercool Twitterer Joshua hipped me to it.] I suggest looking deeper than first squint at this website. When I first landed on this site, it didn’t immediately impress. But when I dug just a little bit, I uncovered a torrent of inspiring images. Another cool thing about this site is that unlike Ffffound, it’s simple to become an editor, so the UGC mojo can easily flow…

My friend Inti recently hipped me to another blog dripping with creative inspiration called “Inspire Me Now,” which feature tons of images that live up to the demand of the title. [The image of the guy pulling the asphalt over Mother Nature is by Erik Johnassen, BTW.]

It truly blows me away how much creativity is going on all around the world. There truly never has been a more exciting time to be a photographer, illustrator, or visual artist, IMHO.

Designers, if you don’t know about this already, you’ll love this slammin’ resource for font identification. Just upload an image containing an example of the font you’d like to identify, tap the letters into the system, and it will give you many suggested font matches, along with links to buy the font, or get it free, if available.

It doesn’t always get it right, but often it’s close enough to be useful… and sometimes the “wrong” matches end up being a better fit.

Click the image on the right to zip over to WTF’s website…

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of international best-seller, “Eat, Pray, Love,” muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses… and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius.

This got me right in the heart. [It starts off slowly. Give it time. Promise it's worth it!]

Here’s how to place a graphic logo at the top of your Wordpress blog:

1) Upload your logo, as a .jpg. I suggest giving your logo a simple, descriptive filename, such as “Company_Name_Logo.jpg”.

2) Copy the full URL of your logo to your clipboard (including the “http://”).

3) Open your “header.php” file (which is located in your Wordpress Admin Panel / Appearance / Editor / Header).

4) Scroll down to near the bottom and find the "<h1 class=", and after the “=”, insert the following:

<a href=”<?php bloginfo(’url’); ?>”><img src=”http://INSERT_COPIED_LINK_HERE” alt=”" /></a>

5) Save the modified PHP file.

DONE!

Note: To update your logo, simply give the new logo the same filename as your old logo, and upload it into the same folder as your old logo, over-writing it. [Which is why I suggested giving your logo a simple, descriptive name.]

http://www.adobe-masters.com/tutorials/how-to-add-logo-to-wordpress-site-and-show-code-in-worpress/

High art hits the streets in a big way.