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The Newsletter of Things Deke: May 4, 211

Hello friends:

Say goodbye to 2D illustration and hello to a new realm of possibilities. Deke’s latest video course for industry leader lynda.com, 3D Objects, shows you how to create original, photorealistic artwork from scratch in Photoshop. Want to mix colors, paint, and control Photoshop with your fingertips? Check out Deke’s videos for Adobe’s new iPad apps. And then there’s my in-depth article, which spells out things in black and white. We’ll look at powerful methods for converting color images into rich monochrome, duotone, and polychrome images.

Here’s a sampling of what’s in store for you today:

 
• Part 2 of Deke’s Photoshop CS5 Extended One-on-One series, 3D Objects, goes live.
 
• Deke’s Techniques shows you how to chart data in Illustrator and make it 3D in Photoshop.
 
• Learn how to render rich black-and-white and colorized photographs at dekeOnline.
 
• Coming soon: In six free movies, Deke will demonstrate how to use Adobe’s Photoshop Touch apps for the iPad.

And, as ever, Deke sends all his virtual love.

Best regards,

Lou B
Speaker of the Deke, dekeOnline

Enhance Your Creative Chops with Photoshop CS5 Extended One-on-One: 3D Objects
With Photoshop CS5 Extended, you don’t have to learn how to draw art in perspective; the program does that for you. After you create and assign materials to a 3D object, you can capture it from any angle and incorporate it into your photographic compositions. Photoshop’s brand of 3D is not particularly welcoming to the uninitiated. But it is wildly powerful. And with Deke’s help you will, as usual, know more than anyone around you about this deep and compelling set of features.

In his 6-hour video course, Photoshop CS5 Extended One-on-One: 3D Objects, Deke shows you how to work with the six varieties of 3D objects available to you in Photoshop: postcard, shapes, imported models (like the one above from ZBrush artist Ryan Kittleson), depth maps, volumes, and Repoussé extrusions.

Deke isn’t stopping here. This course is Part 2 in a four-part series, which includes Part 1, 3D Fundamentals
, as well as the upcoming 3D Scenes and 3D Type Effects, all for lynda.com.

Deke’s Techniques: Rendering a Plain, Drab Pie Chart in 3D
      Graphs and presentations are not generally the most engaging of projects. But it seems every creative professional, at some point in time in his or her career, has to create one. So why not make it gorgeous? This week, Deke shows you how to create a 3D pie chart so colorful and lustrous, you’ll want to reach out and touch it. (You’ll need Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop CS5 Extended to follow along.)

The previous Deke’s Techniques shows how to create a seamlessly repeating pattern (such as gift wrap) with the help of the Offset filter and a smart object. A bonus video in the lynda.com Online Training Library demonstrates how to repair seams in a repeating pattern when the wrap-around elements don’t line up.

Tip: From Ordinary Color to Dramatic Black & White and Beyond
Photoshop’s Black & White and Channel Mixer commands are powerful   methods of converting the color photos (that nearly all digital cameras are hard-wired   to produce) into rich monochrome images. You can then take those images several steps   further by colorizing them to produce extraordinary duotones and polychromes. In this tip, we’ll look at these commands, as well as other ways to create   black-and-white and faux-color images in Photohshop.

Today’s tip comes from Chapter 18, "Black & White and Colorize," part of Deke’s video course Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Advanced for lynda.com. Read more »

Coming Soon: Six Free Movies on Photoshop Touch Apps for the iPad
      Yesterday, Adobe shipped Creative Suite 5.5. While this means new features for InDesign, Dreamweaver, and Flash, Photoshop and Illustrator users can (thankfully) ignore it.

The exception is iPad owners. Free to registered users, Photoshop CS5.1 offers the ability to communicate, entirely wirelessly, with mobile apps. For now, that means apps running on an iPad. Many third-party apps are on their way. In the meantime, Adobe will shortly release three proof-of-concept apps under the name Photoshop Touch. They are:

       
• Color Lava, which lets you mix colors as pigments
       
• Eazel, which lets you create digital finger paintings    
       
• Adobe Nav, which lets you organize tools, select open images, and even offload Photoshop art to your iPad 

In just a few days, Deke will not only offer a timely video course on Photoshop Touch (from lynda.com, naturally), but all six movies in the course will be free.

Above we see Deke putting Eazel through its paces. While he was in production, our intrepid instructor was forced to endure the rigors of the hand model. Deke literally bared his skin to demo the apps.

Featured Image from Fotolia
      This week’s image, ©tiero, is file #2817752. Not only is it a work of 3D imagery, it also happens to be one of the most popular Fotolia downloads in the last 6 months. Wrap your own logo or slogan around the 3D surface and you’re good to go. Log on to Fotolia to view and download today’s image.

Fotolia protects its artists and offers competitive commissions while keeping prices low, so that everyone can afford and enjoy high-quality artwork.

Visit Fotolia »

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