Add Depth and Dimension in Dreamweaver CS4
Janine Warner has got a really cool tutorial on Dreamweaver CS4 that’s worth checking out:

“In the early days of the Web you could only use background images that filled the entire screen or tiled down and across the page. Thanks to CSS, now you can control how background images appear by creating CSS rules that define alignment and positioning. In this tutorial, we’ll explore a few examples of how you can use backgrounds with CSS to add depth and dimension to your pages. (Note: This tutorial works for both Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 and CS4.)

1 [COMBINE BACKGROUND IMAGES TO ADD DEPTH]
Background images are a great way to add decorative elements—such as textured backdrops, gradients, and borders—to your webpages. You can create rich, seemingly layered, designs by combining background images in the body, as well as div and other tags. Keep in mind, these aren’t really layers like you’d find in Photoshop, and I’m not using the Layer tag that was included in earlier versions of Dreamweaver. What you see in this example is a background image positioned in a div tag with an ID style that centers it on the page.”

Click on the link to see the rest of the tutorial

That’s it for me! See you guys on Monday!

Worldwide Photo Walk is TOMORROW
Everyone here at the office is full speed ahead for tomorrows Worldwide Photo Walk. We’re doing several places here in the greater Tampa Bay area, but have to say that we are still completely overjoyed that there are close to 30,000 people that will be shooting and socializing tomorrow in cities around the world. I am a very very big fan of the ‘community’ aspect of the walk.. so to see that many people getting together to shoot and share is awesome.

If you are going to the Photo Walk, I cant stress going to Scott Kelby’s blog and logging into the Worldwide Photo Walk page enough before you go. There is a TON of information there for you to check out before you head to the walk, and things to do once the walk is completed – and it’s better to be prepared. Most importantly, Its best to be SAFE.

If you are on Twitter (Like me, you can follow me here), make sure that you send some pictures and tweet using the #skphoto hashtag. Oh, and make sure you get your group to take a group shot BEFORE the walk. It be great to see everyone!

Spatial Controls in Premiere Pro by Franklin McMahon
Punch up your video clips and get your video moving with spatial controls and motion effects. Franklin McMahon’s got it.. and you can see it by clicking on the video link below:

Spatial Controls in Premiere Pro by Franklin McMahon

So have a great weekend everyone. If you’re walking, be safe!!!! Have a wonderful time, and we’ll be back here Monday morning!

I haven’t Changed Much, Really.
If you were to run into me in person (and depending on how tired I am), I may have a propensity to tilt my head to the right. You see, when I was a kid I had Chicken Pox. As much as I was told by my mom not to play with anything (and I really don’t think I did), I was left with a small Pox scar on my face.. like a crater. It’s one of those things that I almost always point out in the middle of a funny story or playing around with kids – so I dont have any deep seated resentment or psychosis about it.
However, if you met me, you probably would say hi, chat, and leave without even knowing it was there. I’ll tell you what IMMEDIATELY picks it up – Photoshop. There’s nothing more “WHOA THERE IT IS” like a 100% zoom of a 12 Megapixel image in Photoshop. My Wacom pen in hand, it almost instantly moves while I desperately fumble to hit the letter J (Hmm.. why J). I am addicted to retouching that spot. That spot is and isn’t who I am. Depending on the day I either want to flaunt it proudly as a sign of foolish youth, or hide it in my desperate reach to look like Antonio Banderas. I am a Retoucher.

This is a debate that has gone on for a while out on the media – who retouches what, and how much – so I don’t expect to win over hearts and minds any time soon. I figured i’d add my position on the retouching landscape.

I Think We Need More Retouching, not Less
I think that it is very naive of us to believe that the general populous out there does not know of the existence of Photoshop. Much in the same way you can hand off your computer to your grandkid/neice/son/daughter and they can show you 100 things that they can do that you never thought of. Here’s a good example: Go to myspace, and see how many kids pictures you’ll see with a black blob or blur in an area where someone should have been standing next to them. Image manipulation is also in their repertoire. It just may not be as refined as someone who does it for a living. Photoshop has gotten to a point that it’s in the pop culture – often with people “Photoshopping” this or “Photoshopped” that or mentioning how something has been “Photoshopped”.

Rather than take up the entire site page here, i’ll break it up with a jump. If you want to hear more about this from me, feel free to go and click on the jump for more! Have a wonderful weekend everyone. We’ll see you guys back here on Monday!

so.. where was I… ah, yes..

Go to Itunes – check out “No Photoshop” by Monteloco – yes friends, Photoshop has made it into Hip Hop lyrics (Run DMC somewhere is yelling at a computer screen). So rather than deny the fact that this is something that is happening, how about we actually have more of it out there in the open so that as a populous we all generally understand that this is a commonly accepted practice – an artistic interpretation that’s seen for what it is, and nothing more. When a kid says “Hey, nice retouching work” when they see that next perfume ad, then we know we’ve arrived.

We Need the Best To Teach The Rest
I’d venture to say that whenever you stumble onto a picture of a person who’s size 22 waist begins just under the rib cage there’s one of 2 things that have happened here. Either the Retoucher/Art Director is still trying to hold on to the era of Heroin Chic (unfortunately a lot of that is still out there), or you have a retoucher that’s just really bad at retouching and the client just didn’t know better. When talking about the process of retouching, few talk about anatomy and physiology. Few talk about why posing an arm in a certain way can make it look fat. Few talk about how posing can help you look like either fat or nonfat depending on the angle. There are many out there that see retouching as a combination of Liquify, Gaussian Blur, Clone Stamp, repeat and don’t take into consideration the bigger picture hee. The entire retouching process may just be that, but just because you’re doing those steps does it mean that you’ve become the next Pascal Dangin. It’s about knowing much more than the tools, and I think that it’s important that the pioneers in our industry continue to produce good students (Prob one of the people that I have a great respect for in this space is Katrin Eismann over at The School of Visual Arts in NY. Her books are absolute must haves. Check them out here). Those students will then take the lunch of the really bad retouchers, and bring some cool stuff to the surface. Those bad retouchers? Well.. they’ll just go back to school. (And i say this knowing that the lot of you could learn so much from the classes we have on Kelby Training. Don’t let the bad retoucher be you in this story.. go register)

Retouching Just Enough
I was sitting at lunch with Scott Kelby yesterday, talking about a shoot we did not too long ago. He asked me something that I wasn’t really ready to answer.. and that answer gave a lot about where to draw the line.

Scott had asked if I had seen the amount of (mole/blemish/spot/mark.. its not important) on the subject that we shot. I immediately said “No! Really? I didn’t see that this person had any of those things at all.” Scott replied “Exactly.. they were there.. but you didnt notice them. In Photoshop it all pops out. Now, you should retouch the image to look the way it did when you saw that person.” There a lot of things that the human eye forgives when see a person in front of us. NAPP Executive Director Larry Becker has got a cool post on this on his new blog – Phaim- talking about the camera as an unforgiving instrument. Truth be told, I think that’s part of the problem. In the end, its part camera, part eye, part psychology. The epitomy of the “Nice Personality” syndrome. A person’s personality animates their physical appearance.. and as that happens, your mind spends its time dropping the distracting elements in the priority scale. When you go back to the image, you don’t have that conversation immediately handy.. but you should remember it. Retouch to -that- and you’ll come back with a realistic representation of where you can draw the line.

Then what about the people who hate to take a picture because of a bad XXXX or a malformed YYYY or a too dark ZZZZ. There are so many people that I run into that feel completely comfortable in who they are, at a great point in their life, but would just love to see a picture of themselves that makes them look a little better than what they are. Erase some time lines here.. push back some skin that only surgery would remove there.. The result is someting that still -very much- looks like them, but gives them a sensible tribute – so to speak. They don’t look different.. they just dont have to focus on the thing they don’t like when they stare at the picture anymore. Those are the retouches that I love the most.

Battle Royale: Photoshop vs. The Corset vs. Mabelinne vs. Sit Ups
I saw something that I thought was pretty interesting not too long ago. On YouTube there’s a video talking about the Photoshop Controversy and how Sarah Dussault deom diet.com goes ‘behind the lines’ to get a Photo Shoot and retouch. Sarah’s standing at the shoot looking at the camera confessing both her excitement and concern for the results of the shoot. “.. I also dont know if I want to see what I could/would look like 15 pounds lighter. Does it actually serve as what I could be or is it still unrealistic. I don’t know.”

I know! Shes standing there in a bathing suit with a pretty flat stomach and very defined arms- the result of what looks like a great deal of working out for the website (congrats to her). The Retoucher goes in to fix sunspots under the eyes to which she replies “I look so much prettier in Photoshop” This could have also been taken care of with the presence of a MUA (Make Up Artist) at the shoot. Does that mean that we should ban makeup too? The retouch maybe takes about 10 pounds off based on some liquifying (which I couldnt help but notice when he resized her waist with too big of a brush and started making the forearm big.. I mean, come on.. Freeze/Thaw in Liquify.. its RIGHT THERE on the left!) but the results werent so far from they started with. Fact is Sarah was a very pretty, very fit girl to start. The Retoucher removed and moved.. but the movements were not drastic enough to take 60 pounds of of her. So, does -this- example serve as a measure of unrealistic beauty? When the changes are so minimal in that video, we’d have to assume that she was ‘unrealistic’ when she started which totally wouldn’t make sense.

It’s More Than Photoshop – It’s Less than Photoshop
Before the lynch mob appears at my door, I COMPLETELY agree that negative body image is something that totally affects us men and women. However, I believe that there are other forces that are here at play, and as a society we have just as much of a responsibility of chasing them too. Photoshop isn’t responsible for the amount of bullying that’s done in schools. Photoshop isn’t discussed when cliques are formed in the lunchroom. Photoshop isn’t the topic of conversation when a family finally gets together to have a meal and talk about their problems. Photoshop is not talked about when kids fire up the Xbox Live connection for a 6 hour marathon game session, instead of going out and playing baseball. And Photoshop is the last thing that is talked about when you drop the kids off at the mall with a fistfull of 5’s while you do everything -but- spend that time with them.

I like to think that the populous out there is smarter than we think them to be. I believe that they are smart enough to know when something has been airbrushed. They are smart enough to know that we live in a world that has airbrushing makeup, butt shaping jeans, corsets (They are still here.. over 200 years old and we’re still slimming down the waistline.. do they contribute to the problem?), and hair dye. They are smart enough to love Beyonce, fall in love with the Kardashians, Keep Oprah at the top of the heap, and fall in love with an ‘ugly’ girl named Betty. They are also protected by people like Andy Roddick, Kate Winslet, Jessica Biel, Jessica Alba, and Peter Lindbergh- photographer for the Stars Sans Fards for the French Elle magazine.. taking pictures of stars without any makeup. I think that the more we bring the conversation out into the open, the more we’ll get to the root of it, or create a systems of checks and balances where bad retouching will be kept at bay.

Hey.. The Dove “Real Women” shoots were retouched… and they dont look like the picture perfect stereotype that we’re rallying against.. it can happen… we just need to keep talking about it!

Links for you guys to check out are listed below. Let me know what you guys think on Twitter or on the contact page. I am always known to change my mind, or to want to talk things through for a better perspective, and i’d be happy to!

Links to Check Out
Time – The Business of Imagemaking
Who Is Pascal Dangin
Smile and Say ‘No Photoshop’ – New York Times
Andy Roddick and the Photoshop Arms
Stars Without Fards – The French Elle Magazine (Commentary)
People – Stars Without Makeup

Free Bogen Seminar June 19

Register and Join Our FREE Webinar on Friday, June 19th from 2 pm to 3 pm EDT! Listen to our special speakers, David Fisher, webinar host, and Julie Maher, Wildlife Conservation Society Staff Photographer.

During this session David & Julie discuss:
- Best practices for shooting through fences, wires, and glass partitions
- Selecting the best gear for a day trip
- Best times to visit and developing a unique perspective

Also, learn about Julie’s recent trip to South America and a report on the ongoing Conservation photography efforts at the WCS.

For more info on this, check out the following link: Free Bogen Webinar June 19

Adobe Unveils BrowserLab in Free Preview for Web Designers
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today unveiled a free preview of

Adobe BrowserLab, a new hosted service that enables Web designers to quickly view and test their sites on a wide variety of browsers and operating systems. Previously code‐named Meer Meer, Adobe BrowserLab provides Web professionals with real‐time accurate screenshots of browser renderings and includes multiple viewing and diagnostic tools to help designers pinpoint compatibility issues that can compromise the design and layout integrity of a Website or page.

“Cross‐browser testing has been one of the biggest challenges for Web designers because it is such an arduous and time‐intensive task,” said Lea Hickman, director, Creative Solutions Business Unit at Adobe. “Now with Adobe BrowserLab, designers have a simple solution that enables comprehensive browser compatibility testing in just a matter of minutes, leaving Web designers with more time to be creative and deliver the high‐impact sites customers are demanding.”

Fore more info on BrowserLab from Adobe, get the whole press release here or check out the following link: Adobe BrowserLab Site

SEO Tips for CS4 Applications, Part 1

This four-part series from Geoff Blake explores some of the tools in CS4 that will help with web search engine optimization. Click on the link below to get to the tutorial:

SEO Tips for CS4 Applications, Part 1 by Geoff Blake

Things I Wish Flash Did Without An Programming Degree
When Flash originated, it was built to do animations and some interactivity for the web. There was a time that a good amount of designers could get out there and learn the innards of Flash, and in a relatively short amount of time produce a web project that did what they needed it to do. Those, IMO, were happy days. The Flash machine moves forward and the wishes for Flash increased, the language that underpinned everything it became more complex. In this complexity came a lot of redundancy and inefficiency, and the new Actionscript 3 came to make programming in Flash modular, efficient, and very extensible. One problem came with all of this.

Many designers that used Flash were left collectively scratching their heads as the design tool for the web was kidnapped and taken into the land of the Propellorheads.

Yes, Yes, I Heart AS3
Now, I agree that learning Actionscript 3 is a good thing. I agree that the evolution of the language can let you do cool things. But seriously.. try and find another application thats created such a rift between a set of users and I’ll buy you a coffee. I’m often put in a supportive/defensive position for the evolution of Flash, as the simplest of questions arise. Questions that I myself ask and wonder if the powers that be would ever address. Below are a few things I wish i saw a lot easier in the Flash world:

Preloaders – A necessary component for a Flash site, a preloader let’s you know how far along a SWF file is from completion. Preloaders vary from the straightforward 0-100% to cute whimsical animations that engage a user while the project loads. Why couldn’t this be something that could be built a lot easier in Flash? There are many things that you need to understand in order to understand Preloaders.. you would think Adobe would give you an easy way to say “Click this, adjust this, enter values for this, and save this as a library item. Bam, you have a preloader.” Not the case at all. Its the first thing you see on a site, and the first thing you’d probably build.. but you dont learn the tech of it until way later.

Flash Galleries - Yes Adobe Bridge comes with Flash galleries, complete with headers, scrollbars, and site information. Most of the galleries that come with the program are pretty bland. The obvious exception here being some of the stuff that Airtight Interactive did for Adobe. Those are cool.

I’ve always argued that the Flash gallery should do some basic things: Give people a set of thumbnails on a small area, with previous and next buttons. When you click on them, another portion of the window should load these with an effect. When you click on an info area, you should see some information – maybe even a link to a recorded WAV file. You should be able to then close that file and move to the next thumbnail. It doesn’t have to have a header/footer area. it doesnt need scrollbars. It needs to be a ‘headless’ component. Build it that way, and let me plop that SWF file into an existing Dreamweaver layout. Right now, places like Digicrafts make components that let you do this by referencing external XML files, so why couldnt Adobe jump in the fray and build a couple of kick butt components to do this as well?

Buttons and Actions- When designing something in Flash that’s web based, you’re invariably going to make a button that takes you from one Flash file to another flash file, or one scene to another scene. Why then is it important for me to understand listeners, events, instances, variables just to get a button to click to another scene. Surely you can drudge up the old behavior functionality that says “highlight this button, tell it where you want to go, save and publish” from somewhere. Yes, it’s nice if we learned the AS3 to be able to make this happen.. but come on.. at least admit that theres a bunch of people out there that wouldnt -want- to spend the time doing so, and that they’d like to believe that technology would help them do this one thing – technology that’s done it previously at that!

Heck, take that same behavior mentality and move it forward. Let me put a button on a stage that says “When I click this, run this section of frames (from frame label to frame label, THEN go to the following scene/swf file” Then people can actually use it to build an interactive site (At least a very basic one) and justify to themselves the spending of cash for the suite.

Some time ago, there was talk of a project called Bordeaux that would work on things such as this.. but that conversation faded as the new Flash Catalyst program started coming out. Flash Catalyst looks like an incredibly promising tool to build these kinds of experiences and the solution for my worries may be just to jump and move to the Flash Catalyst world. This is all in its early stages however, and only time will tell how this will all work out. I just thought it important to make mention that these are things that MANY people struggle with, and not many people voice. Kinda like that elephant in the room. Tons of people left out in the cold, and wanting some answers. Over the next couple of months, i’ll be spending some time working on getting some of those answers for you, in training, videos, posts, or other cool projects. Stay tuned!

3D Space Project with Adobe Flash CS4
Tom Green has been doing some previous posts on the Layers Magazine website concerning the 3D tools in Flash CS4. This time around, he’s taken all of the techniques that you’ve learned and put them all together in a NASA themed project. I love it when all small pieces come together.. click on the link below to get to the tutorial:

A NASA Flash Project with Tom Green

We’ll see you guys back here tomorrow morning!

The HDR Conundrum
For the past couple of weeks, there’s been this brew of comments popping up on the Interwebs concerning the topic of HDR. For quite some time now, we’ve been seeing HDR crop up in popularity, and with any rise in a technique, there is almost always an equally rising backlash for it. This year’s HDR was last years “Dave Hill” technique/ Lucis Art phase. Last year’s “Dave Hill” tech / Lucis Art phase was the year before THAT’s “Infrared Photography” craze. The fever has long since died on THAT! (And, for the record.. I happen to -like- Dave Hill’s work.. I make it a mention as how persnickety we can be as a group, and not a critique of his technique).

What’s HDR
So, let’s talk the basics for those of you who dont know. HDR is short for High Dynamic Range photography, or High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI). The premise is simple – the human eye can see more of a tonal range than a camera can see. Let’s say for example, you can stand in a room with a window on a somewhat sunny day. If you have a normal eye, you should technically be able to see stuff outside the window, and see dark and light areas in the apartment – the couch thats partially in shadow, and the shoe you left under the couch not being hit by any of the light outside at all (well.. not really). A regular camera would have a problem – expose for the sky outside, and you’re losing the entire room. Expose for the room, and all you will see is white where there should be windows. What do we do when the range that our eye sees cannot be captured through a camera?

One solution would be to take a series of exposures of a scene and blend them together, creating an image with a higher dynamic range than the previous image. Sounds like a great idea, right? Well.. kind of.. and that’s usually where the arguments start..

Tonemapping = Weirdo Art
You see.. most of the processing of these images are done with a process called Tone Mapping and in the process of creating your HDR work of art you usually walk into the land of “wow.. this looks really artsy/surreal/harry potter/lord of the rings” with your image. Gone is the idea that you wanted to create a greater range of tone for a user. Gone is the desire to bring out the subtle nuances that your camera couldn’t seem to pull out. Now, all you want to do is make weirdo art.. and you’re just fine with that.

While you’ve settled into your weirdo art status, out come the droves of people: “HEY HDR is about expanding the tonal range! You’re supposed to be doing it to faithfully preserve the range! This is supposed to help you retain those shadow areas! It’s about reality! It’s not about garbage! True to the last couple of conversations.. both are correct.

Here’s my take on it: The human eye is capable of producing a tonal range impossible for a mere camera to produce. I’m going to go out on a limb and say the LCD screen in front of you cant do the same either.. nor can the printer, no matter how much HDR ink we throw at it (can you get close.. sure! I mean, look at Epson.. amazing stuff coming from printers there). Point of the matter is, All of the technology that we have at our disposal makes for an approximation of what that scene looks like- so why focus on it’s authenticity so much. Like all of the other phases, people become of the process, and forget about the intention.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the special effect portion of HDR work. Prob the best quote i’ve heard about this topic was from Matt not too long ago “The only people tired about HDR are Photographers.. the general public LOVES it” This suits me just fine from a selling point of view. If I can take a picture, and sell it with a technique that has mass appeal.. guess what, I can buy another SB900.. I’m not so in love with my passion that I wouldnt forsake a print for a speedlight.. School will be open on my birthday.

What Not To Forget
You went into that image -wanting- to create a great image. Why are you now getting lost in the debate of the process. Focus on what you wanted that image to do, and use whaetever process you think brings that out. If that means it’s a Harry Potter produced image, then that’s what -you- wanted. If it’s a closer representation of the natural scene.. great.

When you focus on the Process rather than the Intent, you start deluding yourself to think that if you master the workflow – ‘When done Properly… no Defense” type mentality. That’s when you hurt yourself. Out goes your knowledge of composition. Out goes your knowledge or light and exposure. You even forget camera technique, or tripod stuff because hey.. you have a Process.. the process wont fail you.. will it?

Pretty soon, HDR becomes your “Hail Mary” pass when you take a horrible photo, rather than just deleting it, and working the image again.. Don’t be that person. Look at the technology as a way to realize your Vision (whoa.. isn’t that a Within The Frame moment right there.. that book’s rubbing off on me) rather than the workflow that’s going to replace it. A cool HDR of a junky picture is still a junky picture..

Resources
Now, below are 3 people that stand out for me in the land of HDR (and yes.. there are TONS more.. equally as important.. these are just the three that I find very meaningful to me, and that you will get the most from)

1. Ben Wilmore: Right now, probably considered the godfather of the HDR movement.. at least in my eyes.. you can learn an AMAZING amount from him.. so wherever he is.. follow him. I want go check out his HDR Mastery DVD. When I do, i’ll let you know!

2. Terry Reinert – Terry’s a buddy, and has a blog over at TKRPhoto. He did an amazing piece on HDR photography, explaining the process in a lot more detail that I did, and giving you a WEALTH of information on getting started with all of this. He’s also someone I would put in the “This is what you could do, if you got the technology and camera craft part right” Definitely a must read. Click this link to get to the post.

3. Matt Kloskowski and I are doing a Photoshop World Pre-con called “Real World HDR” where we go on a shoot, and talk about the HDR process from start to finish. I’m really excited t o get out there with you guys and do some shooting. All day… photography and photoshop.. who could ask for anything more You can also get up to speed with Matt’s Real World HDR class online at Kelby Training

Contest Winners
Congratulations to Sherry James for winning this week’s blog contest as well as to Michael Wise II for winning the Layers TV contest. Monday is Memorial day, so we will continue the giveaways on Tuesday next week, while I take some R&R…

Enjoy the Memorial Day everyone.. and take a moment of silence for those we’ve lost in our Armed Forces.. we owe so much to them..

Want to chat about this? Make sure you follow me on Twitter!

How do you guys feel about e-readers? Any good? Find it too much tech for what it’s worth? Let me know on The Twitter Page.. I’d be interested to hear what you think.

Premiere CS4 Text Tips
Franklin McMahon goes over some cool text tips in Premiere Pro CS4 and how to play around with it to make it a little more compelling and easy to read. Simple things like tracking and kerning help with legibility – and it will definitely show that you’ve paid attention to the details. Click on the link below to get to the tutorial.

Text Attributes in Premiere Pro by Franklin McMahon

Terry White and Scott Kelby on location shooting
As I was shooting over the weekend, I immediately thought of a couple of blog posts from Scott Kelby and Terry White that I thought really needed a honorable mention. Scott posted not too long ago a post that talked about the process of shooting Indy races here in Florida. Whether you were interested in Indy racing or not, the post talked about the process of shooting a live event, warts and all. It was candid, informative, and full of behind the scenes knowledge that is sometimes necessary when shooting events.

Click here to read Scott Kelby’s Blog Post in Indy coverage

Terry White just got back from a shoot in AZ, and he also did a big blog post talking about all of the positives and negatives (including some great photography) about his experience. For anyone going to shoot Slots, Monument Valley, or if you are thinking on going on a Photo Expedition, this is a must read to give you some extra things to think about before you head out.

Click here to read Terry White’s blog post concerning his AZ photo trip

Monday Tutorial Goodness
There are a couple of cool tutorials on the Layers website that are totally worth mentioning. Take a look at them below:

Using the Next Style Paragraph Feature in InDesign by Jeff Witchel
Graphic Styles in Adobe Illustrator by Corey Barker

Contest Time
Before I begin, I want to congratulate George Spanondis for winning this weeks Layers TV contest and Jerry Harper for winning last weeks’ contest. Now, onto this weeks contest!

Go to the Contact page, select the Layers Blog drop-down, then fill in your name, email address and answer to this week’s following question. Remember, the contest will end Thursday 5PM,. and the winner will be announced Friday morning.

The Contest Question: Who is the author of the Think Tank Photo’s Airport Security V2.0 Rolling Camera Bag review on the Layers Magazine website.

The Prize:A copy of Joe McNally’s Hot Shoe Diaries!

Well.. I’m off to get ready for the flight… we’ll see you guys back here tomorrow morning!

The specs for this project are a square-pixel composition of 800×450 pixels (16:9 aspect but intended for Flash video), 29.97 frames per second, 5 seconds long, with a background color of white, and named “Army Comp”.

STEP 1 Set up New Shape Layer Group
Let’s start out by taking a look at how to successfully build shape layers. You can use the shape tools in the Toolbox but I find it better to create them using the menus because it’s easier to organize all the “extras” we’ll need. First, go to Layer>New>Shape Layer. Twirl down the Shape Layer 1 that appears in the Timeline, then twirl down Contents—it should be empty. Go to the Add menu under the Switches column, and choose Group (empty).

STEP 2 Add Path; Fill with Gradient; Edit Gradient
Go back to Add and choose Polystar. A new shape appears in the Group and you’ll also see a star path in the Comp window—but no color. Go back to Add, choose Gradient Fill, then click the gradient swatch next to Fill in the Toolbox to access the Gradient Editor. Make the color changes you desire, then click OK. Using the Selection tool (V), you can drag the gradient points around inside the shape to define the direction and length of the gradient fill. Good so far.

STEP 3 Add & Edit Stroke; Add Repeater 1
For good measure, go to Add>Stroke, twirl down Stroke 1, and set the Color to black, the Stroke Width to 6 pt, and the Line Join to Round Join. (Just as an aside here: The stroke was created above the fill, which means it can also be dragged down below the fill.) So, we have our first (and only master) shape. How do we get more—lots more? Making sure either Stroke 1 or Group 1 is still selected, go to Add>Repeater. Suddenly, we have three stars!

STEP 4 Adjust Repeater 1
Twirl up the Stroke, and select the Repeater. Press Return to rename it and call it “Five Long,” as we’ll be adding another Repeater later, and this makes it much easier to identify. Twirl down its options and change Copies to 5 and Offset to –2. Now twirl down Transform: Five Long, and change the Position value to 200,0 to add more space between the duplicates. Now that you see how easy it is to make extra shapes, we’ll use a similar technique to add hundreds more.

STEP 5 Add Repeater 2; Adjust Settings
Twirl up all of Five Long, then go to Add>Repeater again. Press Return to rename it, calling this one “Twenty Deep.” You can imagine what’s coming up. Twirl down Twenty Deep, and change Copies to 20 but leave Offset at 0. Twirl down Transform: Twenty Deep, and change Position to 0,0, then set the Scale to 90%. How cool is that? Each duplicate (from the first set of duplicates) now gets progressively smaller into the distance—and all this from one original star-shaped path.

STEP 6 Use Custom Shape
Stars are okay, but using a custom shape is much more desirable, and very easy. Twirl the Repeater(s) up, select Group 1, then go to Add>Path. Twirl it down and you’ll see the word “Path” (note that it has a keyframe stopwatch). You can use the tools to create your own shape here but if you have an Illustrator shape ready, simply copy its path (in AI) into memory. Back in After Effects, turn off the visibility icon for Polystar Path 1, then click the word “Path” under Path 1, and simply paste—very cool indeed!

STEP 7 Import Green Screen Footage
Potentially, barring a few keyframes here and there, this is where your exploration of shape layers might fizzle out. Static shapes are cool if you animate their repeater values, but how about using static repetitions with animated shapes? Perhaps, an outline of someone running? Call the Energi hotline! Locate and import a piece of footage, such as someone walking or running against a green screen background, then drag the clip onto the Create a New Composition icon at the bottom of the Project panel.

STEP 8 Garbage Matte; Apply Keylight
In this case, the footage has too much “garbage” visible beyond the green screen, so use the Pen tool to draw a mask area around the person to “matte” it—but be sure not to cut off any parts of them as they move around—always scrub the Timeline and double-check. When done, go back to the Selection tool, then go to Effect>Keying>Keylight. In the Effect Controls Panel (ECP), click the eyedropper next to Screen Colour (yes, English spelling!), and click on the green background in the footage.

STEP 9 Show Keylight Status
Initially, it might look like the key is good; but it almost always isn’t—and we want ours to be sharp and strong for the vector process coming up. Keylight has some great options to really get the best result, so in the ECP, go to the View pop-up menu and choose Status. This shows a simple analysis of the key in three areas: white is opaque, black is transparent, and gray is any transparency between. In this case, you can see that almost the entire matte is transparent, and not defined.

STEP 10 Adjust Keylight; Check Matte
Twirl down the Screen Matte options, and slowly start to drag (increase) the Clip Black value until you see the outside, original green area become black and reveal the person. Then, decrease the Clip White value until the person’s outline becomes more opaque. When done, you can go to View and choose Screen Matte to see the results, but be sure to choose Final Result in the View pop-up menu when finished.

STEP 11 Pre-Comp Keying; Auto-trace
We now want After Effects to create a vector-based animated trace of this alpha channel we’ve created, so first select the movie clip layer and go to Layer>Pre-Compose. Check Move All Attributes Into The New Composition and click OK. Now go to Layer>Auto-trace and in the Auto-trace dialog, be sure to select Work Area, and ensure that Alpha is visible in the Channel pop-up menu. Finally, select Apply to New Layer and click OK to start the Auto-trace procedure.

STEP 12 Reveal and Copy Mask 1
When it’s finished, you’ll see a new Solid in your composition, with a many-pointed path around the outside. Select the solid and scrub the Timeline, and you can see that an animated mask has been created—perfect! Press M to reveal all the masks and you’ll see there’s more than one—any compound shapes have also been traced; however, Mask 1 (the outer shape with the most keyframes) is the one we want. Click on the words “Mask Path” below Mask 1 to select all the keyframes, and copy them (Command-C [PC: Ctrl-C]).

STEP 13 Paste Mask Keyframes
Here comes the cool part! Switch back to the main Army Comp we started with and make sure you can see the Shape Layer options. Ensure that the Polystar Path 1 item is still turned off (you could even delete it), then twirl down Path 1 again, and click on the word “Path” just like we did in Step 6. Now, press Command-V (PC: Ctrl-V) to paste the animated mask keyframes into the path—and you now have 100 completely animated shape layer outlines!

STEP 14 Final Tweaks
From here, you can make various adjustments to the shape layer, the Repeaters, and the values to achieve many different effects. Try playing with the Anchor Point, Position, Scale, and Rotation settings within either (or both) of the Repeaters, and feel free to add keyframes to those to change them over time.

The result here is incredible: the effect of 100+ 3D layers, arranged in perfect alignment and all moving at the same time—something that would have been nigh-on impossible before. Enjoy!

Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Certified Adobe® Training Provider.

Select the dark blue Frame and go to Object > Fitting > Fitting Options. When the dialog opens, in the Crop Amount section, type -.25 in for Top and click the Link button to set up an equal “inset” (instead of a crop) all the way around the Frame. For Alignment, press the Center Reference Point so that the logo is placed from its center out. In the Fitting on Empty Frame section, choose Fit Content Proportionately and click OK. To use this “style” of Fitting again and again, select the Frame and save it as part of an Object Style under the Option menu of the Object Styles panel (Window > Object Styles).

Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Certified Adobe® Training Provider.

One of the nice things about Blends, in CS2 or CS3, is that they act like Effects, which can be very easily changed at any time. To alter the number of Steps in a Blend, select the Blend with the Selection tool (V) and go to Object > Blend > Blend Options. In the dialog that opens, press the button in the Spacing section and choose Specified Steps from the pop-up menu. Type in the desired number of Steps and press OK.

Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Certified Adobe® Training Provider.