Hanoch Piven's bright, colorful, minimalist and witty collages were immediately snatched by the American publishing world upon their first appearance in 1992. Ground meat, underwear, boxing gloves, bananas, chicken fat and smoked fish are a small sample of 'found objects' Piven utilizes to create likenesses.

As fellow American caricaturist Steve Brodner wrote in his introduction to Piven's 2001 collection of portraits, "Faces": "His pictures fill the viewer's eye with strong graphic statements while powerful commentary, deeply ingrained in the graphics, stimulates the mind..."

Between the years 1996 and 2001 Piven lived in Israel where his work for the daily Haaretz established him as the country's most visible illustrator. Born in Uruguay, raised in Israel, and schooled in New York City, Piven currently divides his time between Barcelona, New York and Tel Aviv.

Well this is just what I was looking for. I've just finished reading Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind, which explores and promotes right-brain thinking. The book suggests that to trigger the right brain into activity you should try doing things you don't usually do.

So I thought, why not learn more about Piven and his work and try making one of these dimensional portraits myself. I've been stuck in my Photoshop brain for so so long now, and wanted to jump out of the computer and out of the screen. That's exactly what I did, and I've been having an amazingly inspired and happy time creating my own object caricatures, and I will post some soon.

I have huge admiration for this humble genius and his beautiful and inspiring work. So we sent some questions to hear more about his creative process and career.

Read the full interview Hanoch Piven.

posted by Jennifer Apple | permalink | send comments

MONDAY - NOVEMBER 13 2006

Christmas & Holiday Photoshop Brush Set From Janita

The IceFlowers brush set is a collection of very delicate and beautiful hand-drawn brushes that will add a nice impact to any holiday design project.

The snow flakes and ice crystals were done up in the shape of flowers and will give a subtle, uplifting decorative touch to a letter or greeting card. Perfect for the winter season. And they come from our very own brush angel, Janita, who's many free brushes you can find on our brushes page.

Download the Christmas & Holiday IceFlowers Photoshop brush set (ZIP - 80 KB)

For more brushes, see our Photoshop Brushes Page.
posted by Jennifer Apple | permalink | send comments

'Vintage Christmas' Photoshop Brush Set From Kirsty

Kirsty sends this in: "Hey everyone, it's a little early (even for me!), but I figured an early start to Christmas cards and graphics couldn't hurt.

"So here you have it, a Vintage Christmas themed brush set! This is also the last in the Vintage Holidays brushset series :) Hope you enjoy it! The brush set can be found at the usual address 500ml Brushes."

The Vintage Christmas Photoshop brush set contains 11 Christmas themed brushes. You'll find more of Kirsty's super beautiful brushes on our Photoshop brushes page.

For more brushes, see our Photoshop Brushes Page.
posted by Jennifer Apple | permalink | send comments

Hard Drive Data Recovery Tips From DriveSavers

Since 1985 companies around the world have relied on DriveSavers to recover lost data from hard drives that have crashed, failed mechanically, become physically damaged, or are logically corrupted. IBM, Dell, HP and Apple all refer their customers to DriveSavers when they've lost access to critical files, and all major drive makers allow DriveSavers to open and recover from their drives while preserving the original warranty.

Sadly, drives often arrive that are unrecoverable because of what transpired after the initial crash. So this list is to help anyone who suffers a crash. These are the best things to do before getting it to DriveSavers. You'll also find some tips on what to do to avoid data loss, along with some basic backup strategies.

Read the DriveSavers tips.

For more on Photo Backup & Recovery, see our Photo Recovery Resource Center.
posted by Jennifer Apple | permalink | send comments

FRIDAY - NOVEMBER 10 2006

Total Training Releases CS 2.3 Premium & Acrobat 8 Pro HD DVD Training Packages

Total Training has announced two new products following the newest software releases from Adobe. Total Training for Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 Premium includes helpful tips and tricks from industry professionals, and features indexed lessons on DVDs that cover important topics in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive, and a workflow series.

This updated training series also adds tutorials for Acrobat 8 Professional software, a new component of Creative Suite 2.3, as well as lessons for Dreamweaver 8, which is now bundled with the Suite.

Total Training for Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional is a 12-hour video series in HD presented by Tim Plumer, Jr., an Acrobat Evangelist. Plumer shows viewers how to unlock the full power of Acrobat 8 Professional. Users will learn how to collect different file types into a single, unified PDF package and then leverage Acrobat 8 Professional to drive a collaborative, shared review process involving multiple participants.

"Total Training continues to offer dynamic, valuable content to professionals with the new training series on Acrobat 8 and Creative Suite 2.3," said Ricky Liversidge, a director of product marketing at Adobe. "The company's video-based training enables our customers to set their own pace and work along with projects that enable them to take more complete advantage of the softwares' comprehensive capabilities."

Pricing and Availability
Total Training for Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 Premium Bundle is priced at $499.99 USD, and Total Training for Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional is priced at $129.99 USD.

Exclusive 20% Discount
To redeem our exclusive discount coupon, use promotion code save20pss in your shopping cart. You could save hundreds of dollars. Use this special link to see the full offer.

posted by Jennifer Apple | permalink | send comments

Photoshop Site Octopussy-World Updates To Version 5

I love Octopussy-World and have for a long time (I guess it helps that I'm bilingual). If you speak French, you'll want to know that Octopussy-World vient de passer en version 5. De nouvelles fonctionnalités, un nouveau design, le site se perfectionne et offre pleins de nouveautés à l'internaute...

So what was that? The site has been improved and has lots of new features and a brand spanking new design. Make sure to check out the tutorials.

Thanks Vivien for sending that in. There's lots of good stuff over there, and you can always zap it with the Google machine and see the whole thing in Borat English. Go on, try it, it's fun.

posted by Jennifer Apple | permalink | send comments

THURSDAY - NOVEMBER 09 2006

Free Photoshop Lightroom Training Videos

If you're looking for some instructional videos to help you navigate through Photoshop Lightroom, we've discovered a very nice collection for you at the RawWorkflow.com site. Photo expert Michael Tapes has put together a little series of Lightroom tutorial videos.

These videos scattered all over the web are really starting to add up to a substantial body of free training — now it's just the time to view them that's hard to find. Here's the current breakdown for the Lightroom videos:

01 - Introduction and Greetings - 1:30
02 - User Interface - Overview - 18:34
03 - Importing Files (Quick Tour) - 5:27
04 - Develop Magic: Quick Tour - 3:50
05 - Develop Module: Basic & Tone Curve Panels - 12:31
06 - Develop Module: Copy/Paste and (the Kitchen) Sync - 5:40
07 - Develop Module: A Bunch of Crop - 7:08

View the Free Photoshop Lightroom Training Videos

For more on Lightroom, see our Lightroom Resource Center.
posted by Jennifer Apple | permalink | send comments

Apple: Aperture Plug-in Interest Exceeding Expectations

From Jim Dalrymple at Macworld:

Apple made some significant improvements in Aperture 1.5, but perhaps one of the most important decisions the company made was to allow third-party developers to extend the application through a new plug-in architecture. While only available for about a month Apple said the response by developers has exceeded their expectations.

"We knew that there would be a lot of interest, but we received 150 emails from individuals, companies and organizations that all want to develop plug-ins for Aperture," Richard Kerris, Apple’s Director of Professional Photography Partnerships, told Macworld. "We are all pleasantly surprised with the companies that want to develop plug-ins. It really makes this a powerful application for whatever type of photographer you are."

Apple launched its Aperture API with several big name partners including Getty Images, iStockphoto, Pictage, Flickr, PhotoShelter, DigitalFusion, Soundslides and Connected Flow.

Read the full article.

For more on Aperture, see our Aperture Resource Center.
posted by Jennifer Apple | permalink | send comments

Winners Of The 2006 O'Reilly Photoshop Cook-Off

O'Reilly's 2006 Photoshop Cook-Off offered Photoshop enthusiasts and newbies an opportunity to exercise their imagination and ingenuity — and win great prizes, too. Entrants took their original digital photographs and "cooked" them with Adobe Photoshop, using recipes from O'Reilly's five Photoshop Cookbooks. The contest was judged by a panel of A-list Photoshop and industry experts, who based their decisions on five key criteria: image quality, composition, originality, the appropriateness of the applied technique, and the use of color and/or tone.

SEE PREVIOUS POSTS FROM THE NOVEMBER 2006 BLOG...

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Skin Retouching Tips In Photoshop CS4
Transforming Smart Objects In Photoshop CS4
Find more Photoshop CS4 tutorials on our Photoshop CS4 Tutorials Page.

Read 2 free sample chapters from the Adobe Photoshop CS3 version:
Adjusting Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw CS3
Photoshop CS3 Tutorial High Dynamic Range

Find More Adobe Photoshop Books at Amazon.com
Find all the latest bestselling Photoshop books at discount prices at Amazon.com.


PHOTO CREDIT: Apollo 11 Images — Earthrise sequence - Earth emerges over lunar horizon.
© NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Scanning credit to Kipp Teague.