VerveCast

Sometimes we give you a “Behind the Scenes” view of things after they’re done, but this time I thought I’d give you a sneak preview of our latest endeavor.

I won’t get into too much detail right now, but this is probably the largest prop we’ve built yet for any of our shoots.

Look for some nice BTS photos/video to show up soon…

Our friends at The Pfister Hotel are in competition with the folks over at Koss in a Battle of the Brands… and to help them out, we made a little video featuring Charles Pfister as you’ve never seen him before.

So with all that, please head over to The Business Journal and cast your vote for The Pfister!

Charles thanks you. :)

And when I say “baking” I mean “cutting…”

And when I say “cookies” I mean “cucolorises…”

This isn’t as much a Photoshop Tutorial as an insight on human nature.

We all settle in to a certain workflow, no matter what your job. You reach a comfort level and with deadlines, client demands and The Daily Grind it becomes difficult to shake yourself out of that routine.

Which brings me to the other day. I was working on a video project for PORON® Cushioning with Jason, our video intern. We needed to take the photo below and clip out the hiker, replacing the clipped area with the background that would appear if he were not there. The result would be an animation effect that would hopefully be more interesting than a flat stock photo.

My usual approach would be to make a clipping path around the hiker, create a new layer with the hiker on it, and use the clone tool and various other techniques to try to seamlessly fill in the area. Then, something occurred to me.

Before Photoshop CS5 was released, a YouTube video of one of its new features started floating around. This feature was jaw-dropping and I remember counting down the days until I could give it a go and incorporate it into my workflow. Unfortunately, The Daily Grind took over and I never took an opportunity to use it, until now.

The feature is called Content-Aware Fill; what it does is analyze the contents of the image to figure out what the photo would have looked like if the unwanted object or area had never been there. Let’s have a look at the hiker.

First, I’ll use the lasso tool to draw a selection around the area I want removed; in this case, the hiker.

Then I’ll hit the delete key and a dialog box will appear asking me what I’d like to replace the deleted area with. I’m going to select; Use: Content-Aware, Blending: Normal, Opacity: 100% and click OK.

Eureka! Granted, results vary from photo to photo and a perfectionist would still take the time to clean up the rough spots, but Photoshop has given us a great start on accomplishing what we set out to do.

Lesson learned, no matter what your line of work, it pays to take a time-out and attempt to learn something that may be out of your comfort zone, no matter how small. In this case, I saved a ton of time and now I have a new trick.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some deadlines to meet.

Photo by Victor on Flickr

There’s this concept of “Aunt Tilly” in the world of software and technology, where people often use the argument of “Aunt Tilly wouldn’t understand it!” to explain why some new idea/concept/software won’t work.

Aunt Tilly is sometimes the reason things become simplified and easier to use, but I also think the Aunt Tilly argument is used inappropriately.

For instance, you could say “Cameras are too confusing! Aunt Tilly can’t figure out how to use them!” as an argument that an easy-to-use camera is the the camera everyone should have. My complaint here is that while an easy-to-use camera is, easy to use, it’s not always the best camera for the job. There are point-and-shoot cameras, and there are DSLR cameras, and there are cameras like the Flip Video (or the Kodak Zi8) and there are cameras like the RED ONE. The DSLR and the RED ONE are not as easy to use, but they are powerful tools, and sometimes powerful tools have a learning curve, and that’s OK.

I can hand a point-and-shoot camera to someone and explain it in less than a minute, while a DSLR takes a bit more time to learn and become familiar with. This is fine. There should be a spectrum of knowledge and skills for such things.

This recent Advertising Age story We Tried to Resolve the Google+ Issue on Google Wave but… uses the Aunt Tilly argument, and I think it’s flawed:

Dear Aunt Tilly isn’t on Google+. She’s too busy playing “Farmville.” Sure, she signed up for Twitter, but she never used it. There was so much going on! Google+ confuses her. Is it Google Plus or Google Plus Sign?

While I’m often called an early adopter in the technology world, I’ve seen plenty of people who started on networks like Twitter or Facebook (or even Google+) not exactly sure what it was, or why they were there, or what they should do, and over time some of them “got it” and became experts, utilizing every aspect of these services, and becoming so comfortable with them, it’s like they’d been using them since the beginning of time.

If Aunt Tilly doesn’t use Google+, and just stays over at Facebook playing games, that’s fine with me. If she sends me a message via Facebook, I’ll probably still get it. Personally though, I’m finding way more signal than noise on Google+, and way more noise than signal on Facebook. Will that change in the future? Maybe… I’m willing to stick around and find out, and if the Aunt Tillys of the world don’t join me, I’m fine with that.

(And for the record, I’m one early adopter who thought Google Wave served no real purpose. Then again, I still believe email is useful.)