Dreamweaver beta, Fireworks beta and Soundbooth beta are now available for download on Adobe Labs (labs.adobe.com). Now is a great time to try out these new products and take them for a test run!

Here are some links to get you started:

Flex/AIR on the Adobe.com home page:
http://www.adobe.com/

Flex Builder 3
http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/

Adobe AIR
http://www.adobe.com/products/air/

Flex 3 SDK
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=flex3email

New Rich Internet Applications site
http://www.adobe.com/resources/business/rich_internet_apps/

Re-launched Adobe Open Source Website
http://opensource.adobe.com/

Buzzword is Adobe’s new Flash/Flex based online word processor that is certainly a lot more fun and convenient than the ones we have all been using! It should make online collaboration a whole lot easier, and instructors at a number of colleges are integrating Buzzword into their courses. You can sign up for a free trial at http://www.buzzword.com.

To all, we wish you a very happy holiday, and will see you after the new year! No meetings will be planned for December as we all enjoy time with friends and family. Many thanks to all of you for a great year, you can count on more techno cool stuff in 2008 with the Charlottesville Adobe User Group.

Seven years ago I passed by Wil Rourk’s office and my eye caught a glimpse of a beautiful and amazing 3D Model of a Tibetan Temple, I immediately became a fan of Wil’s work.

Come join us today and talk with Wil Rourk as he demonstrates some of his magic with Flash, zoomify, Photoshop, and more. Wil will review a recent project using these technologies and discuss Flash and 3D technologies with us. If you are a flash enthusiast or want to be, join us for this demonstration followed by an open discussion about Flash technology. Come bring your Flash questions, ideas, and enthusiasm!

• MEETING: Zoomify, Flash, Photoshop and Wil Rourk
• WHEN: Today, Wednesday Nov 28th, 2:00pm - 3:30pm
• WHERE: UVa Clemens Library, classroom 407 (see map)
• WHY: Because Flash is very cool and Wil has been doing it for over 12 years!

Looking forward to seeing you at this meeting.

NOTES FROM WIL:
“I will demonstrate and discuss how I used tools to produce a high resolution web presentation of a mural in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery that was difficult to photograph. Tools that helped me produce the image found at http://ibot.lib.virginia.edu/~ibot/tibet/MeruNyingba/MNmurals/mnmuralpano/MNmural24/MNmural24.htm
include Photoshop for image editing and Flash for presentation. Photoshop techniques will cover the use of the de-warp tool, image enhancing with Levels, Hue Saturation and Brightness/Contrast and image composition using Layers. Flash techniques will cover Flash video and Zoomifyer.”

The image I’ll be focusing on today:
http://ibot.lib.virginia.edu/~ibot/tibet/MeruNyingba/MNmurals/mnmuralpano/MNmural24/MNmural24.htm

This image is part of a series of images that can be accessed from here:
http://ibot.lib.virginia.edu/~ibot/tibet/MeruNyingba/MNmurals/mnmuralpano/mnmurals_intro.htm

And the whole project of which these mural images participate can be accessed here:
http://ibot.lib.virginia.edu/~ibot/tibet/MeruNyingba/MNportal/MNportal.htm

Due to a conflict of scheduled lunch events, the WAYWO lunch will be skipped this month. But if you want your Adobe fix, don’t miss the Fireworks Jam Session on Thursday, November 15, at 2:00pm EST. Don’t miss this online experience!

A common question that comes up from new users is, “How do I decide whether to use Fireworks or Photoshop for a project?”

It’s a good question. In fact, the answer may not be completely black and white (or RGB).

By answering the 5 questions in this article, you will be better prepared to decide not only what software application is best suited to the job at hand, where Fireworks can reside in your creative or production workflow.

Some of these questions you can answer yourself, while some may need to be posed to the client, or even other production partners.

Are you ready? Sharpen your pencil and let’s go!

More …

This is a very helpful article published on Community MX by Jim Babbage on October 25, 2007

The designer lunch chat today was excellent. Thank you all for your individual participation. A special thanks to Todd for setting up, Jama for reserving the space, and Paulina for organizing. Another big thanks to Todd and Trey for showing us their great projects!

We will arrange for formal presentations every other month and our alternate monthly meeting will be reserved for “mini shows” by us. This will also be a great place to pose any design related question to the group.

From today’s meeting here are a few things that we discovered:

1. Kinko’s is a great place to get graphics project printed.

• Delivering your graphics in pdf format to Kinko’s is the way to go.
• Remember to included you ICC profile when saving your PSD files. This will help the printer. I am not sure if you can include the ICC in the PDF?

2. Illustrator works great for creating scaleable graphics and has a cool select feature:
Select > Same (Fill Color, Blending Mode, Opacity, ….)

3. A good way to deliver email news is use a email service which delivers the graphic or text version based on the given email client.

• On grounds you can contact UVa’s Interactive Media Department in the Development Office: http://www.virginia.edu/publicaffairs/staff.html#im

4. You don’t have to use “drop shadows” to do drop shadows! Use the Gaussian blur trick taught by the iTunes Adobe PhotoshopUser TV guys. If anyone knows what episode it is shout it out please.

5. The natural “white border” around pictures looks very authentic and apparently getting popular.

Flex Builder 3 Beta and the new Fireworks extension for Adobe Fireworks CS3 are on Adobe Labs. The extension helps automate skinning using the New Import Wizard in Flex Builder 3 and generating the CSS for you.

Flex Skin Design Extensions
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flex_sdext.html

Come one, come all! Our first WAYWO Meeting is set for Wednesday, October 17th.

WAYWO stands for What Are You Working On. These meetings will be a really cool way to get Photoshop people together to talk about, and demonstrate, the Photoshop that is used everyday.

Just bring an image that you have been working on. Did you find a cool new technique you’d love to share? Hit a road block and need help? This is a great opportunity to get feed back from a group of Photoshop enthusiasts for a working project.

Bring your work on a USB, and we’ll have the computer set up.

See you there!

WAYWO LUNCH
DATE/TIME: Wednesday, October 17th from 12:00pm – 1:00pm.
WHERE: UVa Clemons Library, room 407