Prezi is a Flash-based visualization, storytelling, and presentation tool that allows you to create nonlinear presentations. Using the simple editor, you can place text, images, video, Flash files, and draw lines to show relationships between each item. The final result is a visual map that lets users zoom in and out and navigate to content in a clickable environment.

It takes a while to get used to Prezi’s interface—especially the Zebra, which allows you to position and resize objects. The site offers excellent support with an online manual, tutorial videos, examples, and a blog. Perhaps the best feature is that it allows designers to focus on designing. Using Prezi, you can present a concept and supply multiple branches to supporting media without writing a line of code—it’s like sketching an idea on a napkin!

As a hosted solution, Prezi has three pricing structures: Free, Enjoy (approximately $58/year), and Pro (approximately $176/year). The Free version gives you up to 100 MB of storage on their site, includes the Prezi logo on your presentation, and makes your presentations public. For an annual fee, the Enjoy and Pro versions let you create private presentations and access additional online storage space. Pro allows you to download a desktop version of their editing software. Free and Enjoy users design online by uploading content to the Prezi server. All versions allow you to use the simple editor; download your presentations and show them from your computer; create groups to share and collaborate with; import images, videos, PDFs, and Flash files; and embed presentations into blogs and websites.

Prezi is easy to use but when putting together a presentation, I found it sometimes took several seconds to respond while moving or resizing an object. Even with its few glitches, Prezi is a unique tool you’ll want to consider adding to your toolset.—Cyndy Cashman

Company: Prezi
Price: Approx. $176/year (Pro)
Web: www.prezi.com
Rating: 4.5

Hot: Innovative; easy to use; affordable
Not: Occasional slow response

The new professional-level Quadro FX 4800 with 1.5 GB of memory brings a much-needed performance upgrade to the Mac Pro lineup. But why do you need a $1,799 graphics card? If you’re not a full-time design/graphics professional with a large budget, you probably don’t. But if you are, the timesaving and quality precision you’ll get with this card pays for itself in no time.

Where this card shines is the NVIDIA’s revolutionary new CUDA technology and Elemental Technologies Elemental Accelerator, which lets your system use all 192 GPU processor cores instead of just the typical eight cores in a Mac Pro CPU. Not only will your system benefit from the increased performance, using the GPU will speed up your workflow by freeing up your CPU to do other tasks. So, what does this mean for the Adobe Creative Suite professional?

Imagine being able to view After Effects’ nested compositions or rendering effects such as Bilateral Blur, Turbulent Noise, and Depth of Field Blur three to five times faster, or even seeing those effects in near real time as you make adjustments? Not to mention rendering the Cartoon Effect 38x faster with the GPU rather than CPU rendering. And it doesn’t stop there! You’re looking at massive speed increases in Photoshop CS4 vs. non-GPU accelerated computers, and the image’s interpolation quality far exceeds that of non-GPU-accelerated systems. In addition, the Elemental Accelerator allows Adobe Premiere to render H.264 movies using the GPU at faster-than-real-time speeds, which is pretty much unheard of with CPU rendering. Plus you’ll be able to render resized movies in half the time.

If you need a professional choice when it comes to workstation-level graphics on the Mac Pro, then look no further than the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800.—Eric Kuna

Company: NVIDIA Corporation
Price: $1,799
Web: www.nvidia.com
Rating: 4.5

Hot: GPU acceleration; CUDA technology; Elemental Accelerator
Not: Limited GPU support outside Adobe Apps; cost

Terry White’s New Iphone App
Terry white over at his techblog is usually covering all sorts of technology and letting us know what his favorite apps are for the iphone. He’s taken that love and mixed it with his wildly popular Creative Suite 4 podcast and turned it into an iphone app of it’s own! Now, you can go to the Itunes Store and for 1.99, you can download his app. The app not only gives you access to his podcast over the iphone (no download needed, but you can if you want to), you can ALSO check out free content available to it.

Click on this link to get more information on the new app from Terry White!

Printing From Lightroom 2
Take a look at my quick video on how to print from Lightroom.

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The MAPublisher plug-in for Illustrator CS3 and CS4 is not for the timid: You should be familiar with GIS (Geographic Information System) data and have a need to publish that data in a visual format. Simply put, the plug-in uses GIS data to create maps in Illustrator. You first create an Illustrator file and import the GIS data (in popular data formats such as AutoCAD, ESRI, MapInfo, and USGS) to create maps up to 200″ square. After importing, you can manipulate the resulting map in a number of ways.

Last time I used MAPublisher, it was version 4; it’s come a long way since then. Exciting new features include the ability to export maps to an interactive Flash file (this alone could expand the user base); automate the labeling of map features (as an optional add-on); use stylesheets for consistent formatting; work with GPS data; crop maps without messing up the overall map coordinates; and use CS4’s multiple artboards. Some of these features take time to set up and use properly; however, most of the setup work can be saved for future use.

The only fault I found was not with the MAPublisher plug-in, but with the tutorials. They certainly showed how to work with the plug-in’s features well enough (and perhaps that’s all you might expect) but I’d have liked more information on how the data could be used after manipulating it with the tools. I suspect Avenza didn’t want to insult their more-experienced audience by telling them how to do their jobs because, as mentioned above, you need to be familiar with GIS and its use. But a section on “why you might need and how you can use this data” might be useful for beginners in the GIS arena.—David Creamer

Company: Avenza Systems Inc.
Price: $1,249 (Upgrade $549)
Web: www.avenza.com
Rating: 5

Hot: Creates maps from GIS data
Not: Cost

Click here to download the files to follow along with this tutorial.

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GridIron Software’s Flow cannot be fully explained in this amount of space—it’s too vast and too valuable. Instead, I’ll tell you what it does and what it’s good for. In my testing, it works as promised, and beyond.

Flow is a “visual workflow manager” that keeps track of the relationships between all the files you use and gives you access to that data whenever you need it. You need Flow because even though applications such as InDesign and Illustrator remember the locations of the pictures and other assets you place into each document, they can’t keep track of every document that uses an individual asset. For example, if you create a logo, image, animation, movie, sound, etc., and then use it in 245 documents, only Flow can tell you which documents use that asset—even if it was exported to a PDF or PowerPoint file, or rendered to a movie. Without Flow, how could you possibly update every document that uses a specific logo or image?

Flow keeps track of every file placed within every other file, and every exported file generated by a file. And every version. So, it can answer the question, “Where did we get the text that was placed into the InDesign document that created the PDF I’m looking at right now?” It can even show you all the other PDFs that were generated from that InDesign document, and all the assets within those PDFs. It also keeps copies of files every time you save, so you can recover files from several revisions back. Of course, you have control over how many older files it saves to prevent your hard drives from filling up.

Flow tracks the time you spend actually using each application. Because it also tracks the relationships between files, it knows how much time you’ve spent on an entire project—automatically. You can manually or automatically export this data to any database or spreadsheet for billing calculations.

It’s almost universal: Flow works with every common creative app, including the Adobe Creative Suite, video- and sound-editing applications from Adobe and Apple, Microsoft Office, 3D apps, AutoCAD, CorelDRAW, Painter, text files, and any other file you choose to associate with a project—just drag it onto another document in Flow’s map to connect them. Version 1 doesn’t track QuarkXPress or Adobe Photoshop Lightroom files, but GridIron promises to support them soon. It works on Mac OS X 10.5 and above, and Windows XP or Vista.

Given its complexity, Flow’s interface is as simple as I could imagine. The main Map window displays a flowchart that connects all the documents a file is related to. If you click a connected file, the map changes to show all the connections for that file. You can then click any file to open it.

There’s an optional floating Dashboard window that keeps track of files you move (or delete!) that are being used by other documents. This display updates in real time as you move files around on your hard drive. You can also display a similar window in any CS3 or CS4 application as you work on documents. This window shows all the assets that depend on the current file, all the versions of that file, time spent working on that file, etc.

Amazingly, workgroups can even share a Map so that everyone sees changes to all the files in a project as they’re made. For $133 per member of your workgroup, Flow will quickly repay you many times over.
—Jay Nelson

Company: GridIron Software
Price: $299
Web: www.gridironsoftware.com
Rating: 4

Hot: Completely new solution to a timeless problem
Not: Doesn’t yet support Lightroom or QuarkXPress

The Digital Photography Book Volume 3
Scott’s Digital Photography books are those books that I keep in the trunk of my car, or in my camera bag – often going back to them to find a quick tip or trick to get me out of a photographic bind. To me, they are indispensable – the tips ranging from the “Duh, I should’ve thought of that” to the “So THAT’S how they make this kind of image” – everyone can get something. To this day, the Digital Photography Book volume 1 has not left my backpack- which shows how much I value this series. If you know another photographer and want to get them something they will enjoy, you cannot go wrong with this book.

The Hot Shoe Diaries
McNally’s Hot Shoe Diaries is another story altogether. Through some amazing storytelling, Joe takes you through a journey into small flash photography. You’ll laugh out loud, giggle to yourself, and find yourself in meditation about all of the different ways to use your flash. Most importantly, you get to peek into the mind of another photographer and see -how- they thought of a scenario in order to make the picture. I know tons of photographers out there that say “I learn best by watching someone else do it.” If you fall into that category, and want to learn from one of the masters behind the lens, this book will deliver like Dominos!! (Look for a cameo from my wife Jennifer. She the ballet picture kicking off Part 1. Oh, and you can also see her on the front cover of Nikon World magazine! Go Jenn!!)

Within The Frame
Last but certainly not least is Within The Frame. I say it to pretty much anyone who listens: one of the things that I love about this book is that it really dives into the concept of developing that inner eye needed for your photography. Without sounding esoteric and out of reach, David really takes you through the process of honing your vision, talking gear, intent, mood, color and meshing it with a good dose of inspiration. The book is a savory read, and leaves you really wanting to go outside and -look- at things – something that I think really is missed these days with the Spray and Pray mentality of cameras. An awesome, awesome read.

Again, congratulations to all three here.. totally deserved! An extra congrats goes out to our friends over at Peachpit for recognizing amazing authors and making sure their voices are heard. You guys rock!

Next Stop on our CS4 Unleashed Tour – San Diego! Nov 20
Now that Dave Cross is back, he and I are both gearing up for the next stop in our CS4 Unleashed Tour, coming to San Diego, CA on November 20. Come spend a day with us talking about how to use applications in the Creative Suite to create cool stuff. From interactive PDFs to AIR apps, you’ll get to laugh, cry, wince, and rejoice at all of the tips Dave and I get out there to you. Cool part? its 49 bucks (39 if you are a NAPP member) and you get a FREE DVD. Come on.. you know you’d love to hang out with us… we’ll see ya there!

Contest Time
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:
On the Peachpit.com website, there is a blog section called Author Talks, hosted by Nancy Aldrich-Ruenzel. What did she cover on October 28, 2009?

The Prize:
How about this. Since we were talking about all three books being in the Amazon Top 5, how about I give you ALL THREE of those books! That’s right, you can have the Peachpit Amazon Editors Choice Collection! (my name.. I just thought it sounded cool )

Have a wonderful week everyone!

Script faces

For example, very few script faces can be set in all caps. Most just weren’t designed to be used this way, and some of the more exotic forms used for script capitals can be unrecognizable without the accompaniment of more familiar lowercase forms to provide some context. Exceptions to the rule are faces such as Impress and Dom Casual, which were designed as advertising faces and derive from the kind of lettering—often in all caps—that you see in hand-painted supermarket signage.

Joining script faces

So-called joining script faces—whose characters actually connect—are the trickiest to deal with, even though they’d seem to all but eliminate the use of most of your typographic armaments, such as spacing adjustments. Roundhand faces, which imitate elegant formal handwriting, are a good example of joining faces. The connections between characters in these faces effectively make the entire word a single ligature, which means that you can’t adjust their tracking very much, if at all. If their spacing gets too loose, the letters disconnect; if you tighten tracking too much, adjoining characters will overlap instead of merely abutting. For the same reason, you can never set joining scripts with justified margins—the stretching and squeezing needed to fill justified lines will make hash out of these faces’ carefully calibrated spacing.

Consequently, there’s no need to kern lowercase characters in joining script faces. On the other hand, you’ll almost always need to kern the spaces between capitals and the lowercase characters that follow them (shown in this album cover). Because all the lowercase characters connect, the gaps after capital letters look extra large, as seen in Prokofiev’s name. Romeo and Juliet were thoughtful enough to have initial caps that have connecting forms, at least in the face used here, Embassy.

Before ©COLORBYTES 1992

after kerning type

The often loopy, flamboyant forms of script faces also oblige you to look for spacing problems in places you’d normally ignore, such as around the ampersand in the album cover type. The swerving shape of the Embassy ampersand makes it appear to lean away from Romeo and reach out to tickle Juliet. Restoring typographic decorum demands kerning the ampersand away from the latter and toward the former. You don’t normally have to worry about kerning against word spaces, but in script settings it happens all the time. Script faces play by their own rules and we’re all obliged to follow along.

Get that calligraphic slant

Most typeset characters are content to contain themselves within the bounds of the normal em square in which they’re constructed, but not joining script characters. To get that calligraphic slant and have all the characters “link hands,” one character has to overlap the next. Here, we’ve selected a single character to highlight the bounding box of such script characters and show how peculiar the spacing of these faces really is.

Snell Roundhand (top) and Lucia (bottom) samples

For a joining script face, the inclined characters have been constructed to overlap each other in order to connect. Because typesetting programs align characters at the margin according to the edges of their bounding boxes, tricky alignment issues arise in flush-left or -right settings. In midline, this overreaching doesn’t have much practical impact for the typesetter, but at either end of the line, this method of constructing characters can affect margin alignments.

Typeface designers have two possible strategies when it comes to accomplishing this overlapping. For example, Snell Roundhand (the top sample) could be called left-handed because the overhanging parts of its characters occur on the left side of their bounding boxes. By contrast, Lucia (the bottom sample) is right-handed: The overhanging parts of its characters extend beyond the right-hand side of the bounding box. Both accomplish the same end, but with the result that Snell will hang out beyond the left-hand margin when it starts a line, and Lucia can be a struggle to align flush-right if a line ends with a character (such as one with an ascender) that leans far out of its bounding box. In such cases, you’ll be obliged to manipulate the horizontal position of such lines using left and right indents to get them to appear properly aligned.

Lastly, most roundhand script faces don’t work well in small sizes. Many of these faces started life as engraver’s faces and were never meant to be used in tiny sizes. In computer settings, they become spindly as their point size decreases, and any kind of competition with the background (tints and patterns, for example) makes them very hard to read. Even in the large sizes used in the sample album cover, I chose to stroke the characters in black to give them some contrast against their busy photographic background. Reversed script type (set white on black) in small sizes tends to break up, as the black ink invades the super thin strokes. In this, they’re like italics, only worse!

Director 11.5 will be familiar to users of previous versions but some additions improve productivity, for example: multiple undos/redos, stage docking, enhanced user interface, Sprite, channel naming, and a new Help System. But the hot addition in audio is 5.1-channel surround sound that, along with real-time mixing ability, means you can add a mixer to your movie to import audio files and cast members.

Of prime interest to game developers is the new, advanced-physics that’s based on the NVIDIA (registered) PhysX engine, so you can simulate gravity and other “real-life” effects. Other new features include H.264 support, which means that developers can now include HD content. Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) lets you stream audio or video in web-based applications. And now Director supports more than 40 video, audio, and image file formats—SWF, FLV, F4V, DVD-Video, bitmaps, vectors, 3D, and text, to name a few.

What’s user-friendly and pretty slick is when you open a project created in an earlier version of Director. You can select the encoding applied and choose to re-create the project in a subfolder of the original project folder or to a custom location. I sometimes run across multiple versions of a project created for what I thought was a good, “Oh, I’ll remember-that” reason. But then I don’t remember why I have two versions; so the option to save in the same folder is a terrific addition for me. I’ve upgraded several projects and both the upgrades and the originals do what they’re supposed to do.

Two issues for me are the lack of AS3 support as referenced in the Help file: “Flash 9 movies with AS3 or Flex components may not work as intended in Director.” And the price point for Director 11.5 is a little steep.
—Tamara Fry-Pietsch

Company: Adobe Systems Incorporated
Price: $999 (upgrade $299)
Web: www.adobe.com
Rating: 3

Hot: H.264, FLV, SWF, Surround Sound, Google SketchUp 3D support
Not: Lack of AS3 support; price

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