Greetings from Las Vegas! Today was the first open schedule day including three session slots and the ever-popular keynote address by Scott Kelby, NAPP President and Johnny L., Adobe Systems VP. 
While this is Scott’s convention, the keynote is really Johnny’s show. Starting by showcasing the new Photoshop Elements 7 (coming soon) and Adobe Lightroom 2 (along with John Knack, product manager), he also brought the crowd to their feet by showing off the newest version of Adobe Photoshop.
Some of the features have already been leaked, but another feature that really oo-ed and ahh-ed the crowd was channel splitting, which allows you to create lenticular prints (the print moves when you look side to side) or a 3-D image. Now how much does this shot remind you of Jaws 3-D?
Finally we ended with the NAPP Guru Awards (darn it – I didn’t win) and the Photoshop Hall of Fame induction ceremony. A big personal congrats to John Knack on his induction.
Today’s sessions included a packed room for Burt Monroy speaking about painting in Photoshop and Ben Whitmore’s standing room only presentation on “Jaw Dropping Photoshop Techniques” and let me tell you – they were.
The tech expo hall featured presentations from Cannon, Adobe, and more. Be sure to check out this week’s “Deke Pod” starring Deke McClelland. Watch behind him as someone familiar walks past…
Well thats it for day one, but judging from everything going on here – we will have to have an event soon to bring you up to speed on all the latest info.
Blog you tomorrow! – Kevin
This week I am attending Photoshop World in Las Vegas. Stay tuned to 100% Fresh for updates, information, and photos on the latest developments from the conference as I plan to blog daily from the Strip. Wish me luck and please be sure to comment on the posts with any questions or requests!
Tracking is the process of changing the space between a selection of letters. In QuarkXPress people are used to tightening up the space by changing the amount to -1, -2, or -3 and most people are comfortable with these amounts. If you have been using Quark for awhile and then jump into InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop and try to use tracking, you may run into some issues. Quark and Adobe measure tracking differently.
Ok I’m not one to geek out, but Fritz brought this to my attention a while ago and I just saw a live demo of this and it blew my freakin mind…
Check out a demonstration by the folks at 
Find out more 
You probably already know that when you find the file you are interested in, in Adobe Bridge, you can double click on that file and it opens in the program that made it. And that’s great. But what if you want to place a PSD file into InDesign or Flash (or After Effects or Illustrator)? The fast, convenient way is to do the following: select the item or items you want to place into another Adobe program, go to the File menu, go Down to “Place” and choose the program you want the files to goto. Voila!
Have you ever wanted to copy across multiple layers in photoshop without flattening your image? Try the “Copy Merged” from Photoshop’s Edit menu. It acts as if the document is flattened and grabs everything under your selection no matter what layer it’s on – if it’s visible in your selection, Copy Merged will grab it. Once you have it on the clipboard, paste the composited copy anywhere you like.
The wait is almost over. Ever since Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen’s announcement last September of an online version of Photoshop, the web has been a buzz about what this will look like, what will it feature, etc. Adobe since this announcement has already launched an online version of Adobe Premiere, called Premiere Express. (You can try it out here on 
You will be able to use familiar items, such as the healing tools, crop, and liquify commands. This also has a limited history so there are undos! The one downside is that it has a lot of “auto” corrections instead of the familiar menu options. The way this will work is you choose what you want to change in your photo, such as saturation, then the application gives you a drop down with several options of varying degrees to click on. Convenient but limiting.
So not only is today the birthday of James Fritz, one of our Rockstar instructors, but it also marks the 25th anniversary of Adobe Systems, Inc. 25 years ago, John Warnock and Chuck Geschke left Xerox to pursue a new computer system that would incorporate graphics and text into printable pages called Interpress. Interpress and another program called JaM would evolve into the Adobe Postscript language we have all used in our graphics applications today. This was the launching point for the desktop revolution.
Stephanie Shimerdla creates some of the best quality work I’ve seen in a while for brushes. You may recognize her “swirls” series as something right out of the Adobe.com website. She also has a link called “tip the brush maker” where you can donate $10 and she will create your own custom brush set!
You have always been able to add keywords to images in Adobe Bridge but new in CS3 is the ability to apply sub-keywords and their parents in one simple click, assuming you have made a series of keywords that are related. I created an “animal” keyword that applies to all animals, a “dog” sub-keyword for dogs and a “Labrador Retriever” sub-keyword for just that breed of dog. If I click on just “Labrador Retriever” I apply only the keyword “Labrador Retriever”
But why wouldn’t I want to apply the parent keywords of “animal” and “dog” to this image also? I can do so with 1 click, not 3. If I shift-click on “Labrador Retriever” it adds that keyword and all its parents which is very frequently what I want
