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Future of Photo, part II
In part 1 I discussed some of the habits that may or may not develop. Now I’m going to talk technology. While at the Digital Imaging conference a few technology things kept coming up… Cameraphones,...
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5 Stars and a Hot Pick From Photoshop User
3D Invigorator, our Photoshop plugin for creating 3D logos and objects, just got 5 stars and a Hot Pick from Photoshop User. Dave Huss loved the plugin, but took exception with the name, which he...
View ArticleDo you share?
No… not your wife/husband, sheesh… the dirty minds of you people. Your info. Your techniques. Tips and tricks. I had an interesting tech support call yesterday with one of our users. He’s a...
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I hate HDR
Ok, well I only hate one common use of it. That surreal, oversaturated look that seems to be the first thing everyone does when they try the technique. You don’t even need to use HDR, there’s a...
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Shooting video with the 5D Mark II
My biggest frustration with the 5D is the lack of AutoFocus. You get very use to AF on traditional camcorders and not having really affects how you shoot. You definitely can’t move around as much as...
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Beauty Box: Make everyone look beautiful.
And we’re back. Digital Anarchy is once again making plugins for After Effects and Final Cut Pro. Our first new product is Beauty Box 1.0, which was released yesterday. In a nutshell, this plugin...
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Why 3D TV Is A Gimmick
Potential 3D content? I sat next to the manager of the CBS station on a recent flight. Among other things we chatted about 3D TV and it’s purpose (if any) and whether it was just a fad. Particularly...
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Super-charged plugins, that’s us!
Nice mention of two Digital Anarchy plugins in the Flashcriminals roundup of ‘super charged’ Photoshop plugin. This list summarizes “30 Plugins to Supercharge Photoshop” and says, “I have compiled a...
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Are DSLRs The New Point-And-Shoots?
It’s no secret that digital cameras have been big business this, er… last decade. However the Financial Times reports a new wrinkle. DSLR sales have slowed significantly less than point-and-shoot...
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What Material To Use For Greenscreen?
When we first launched Primatte, we tested a variety of ‘greenscreen’ backgrounds to determine what to recommend. Paper backgrounds turned out to be worst and we had the best luck with a velcro/foam...
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9 1/2 Most Frequently Asked 3D Invigorator Questions
3D tends to be a new thing for most people, so we get a lot of questions about it. Here are the most frequently asked ones, the basic answers, and links to our video tutorials that explain the answers...
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Portrait Illusions – Green Screen and Other Tricks
I recently came across a blog post by Fuzzy Duenkel, a photographer over in Wisconsin. He makes a pretty passionate case against using scene swapping (e.g. the type of stuff you do with Primatte and...
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Are You A Photographer Shooting Video? Go to NAB.
NAB is a huge three letters in the film and television world. However, most photographers will never have heard of it. It stands for National Association of Broadcasters, which is the film/tv industry...
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Keeping A DSLR Steady For A Video Shoot?
Ever since they started shooting motion pictures one of the biggest questions have been… How do you keep the damn camera steady? And what do you do about it if it’s not? If you’re a photographer just...
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Privacy Law Does Not Protect You Online
There has been a great deal of commotion over a web site called Spokeo. Spokeo aggregates personal info about people. So all the info that’s in public records is combined with all the info you’ve put...
View ArticleGreen screen is everywhere.
Since one week is a decade in internet time, I’m seeing this February post about green screening an eternity too late. But I still think it’s interesting, as is most of the stuff that I find through...
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Pencil vs Camera and ToonIt!
I came across this great photo series on Flickr, entitled Pencil vs Camera by artist Ben Heine. It is always interesting to see how different mediums can be combined, especially when it comes from...
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Styled Icons
Here at Digital Anarchy we are the middle of redesigning our website — stay tuned for a new look very soon! — and in our search for interesting ideas, we came upon these summaries of gorgeous and FREE...
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Good Design. Bad Design.
Still in design mode as we revamp our Digital Anarchy website, here is a comparison of good and bad design techniques. Two designers give their opinions and share easy to fix mistakes that can turn bad...
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Toonit! Photo 2.6 – 64bit/CS5 Update Released!
We are so happy and excited to announce the releasing of Toonit! Photo 2.6 which is compatible with 64bit and CS5! The best part about it; it’s FREE if you already own the product. Go to this Update...
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Beauty Box Photo is a Smash!
Beauty Box Photo has been out for only a few weeks now but we’re really excited by the response from people and the press about it. Angie Taylor gave a great review on her blog, Creative Pro Therapy,...
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Piracy
I recently ran into a friend who mentioned she’d just bought a $1000 lens for her relatively new DSLR. She then proceeded to ask me if I could get her a copy of Photoshop CS5. I said, no, but that...
View ArticleTeaching Creativity
Excellent blog post on Fast Company’s web site called Death of Creativity = Death of Innovation. It brings up some excellent points about creativity and how the teaching of it is getting pushed out of...
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Post magazine on greenscreen.
In late July, we released Primatte Chromakey 3.5, a terrific update for using our greenscreen masking tool in Adobe Photoshop CS5 and 64-bit native operation. Also in July, a terrific article appeared...
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The Many Faces of ToonIt! Photo
I was recently running a test in ToonIt and rendered out about half of the 70 presets that ship with ToonIt. For something that’s _just_ supposed to produce cartoon’d images, you can get a surprising...
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Beauty Box Video 1.2 Released
The CUDA/OpenGL speed update for Beauty Box Video is now available. This dramatically speeds up Beauty Box Video and improves the workflow in Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro. You should see between a...
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DSLRs vs. Consumer HD Camcorders
I recently finished up shooting a side project DVD on Humpback Whale Photography… watching them and photographing them (facebook: Exploring Maui). A little different from my usual gig of wrangling...
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Sometimes Commercials Are Good
Seen a lot of commercials over the last two weeks watching the NCAA tournament. Here are the outstanding ones (yep, just two… the rest were crap): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qf8OGLqE1s Brilliant...
View ArticlePrivacy in a Social World
I’m on a technology rant today, just the way it goes some days… There’s been a number of interesting privacy things happening lately. The most interesting is the FTC’s smack down of Google. Here’s a...
View ArticleTech Support in an Anarchist World
It’s interesting to see how other companies offer tech support and relating that to our philosophy on it. Not only other software developers, but places we buy from (like Amazon) and hardware that we...
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Wedding Photography and Money
For all the talk about cheap cameras and everyone becoming a photographer, there certainly seems to be a fair amount of money still being spent on Weddings. Although judging from the success of WPPI...
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Argh, Matey! Pirates!
Once every year or two something happens to make me get a bug up my shorts about piracy. Generally I don’t care much about it… most piracy is done by college students, software ‘collectors’ (people...
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Photography Capturing Changes in the World
Photojournalism has always been a huge part of photography. It has been capturing pain and suffering of conflicts for most of the last 100 years or so. What’s somewhat new is the prevalence of cameras...
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Graphics in Asia
So… what country do you think releases the most films? US? India?… Nope, Nigeria! This was one of the interesting tidbits that came out of the presentation Jon Peddie did at Siggraph Asia. Now, they’re...
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Why doesn’t Hollywood get it?
NPR recently had a story about Silicon Valley vs. Hollywood. Hollywood suffers from a lot of piracy and the Valley enables some of it. Sort of. I get the feeling that Hollywood would rather the...
View ArticleCongrats to Rob Legato for Winning Best Visual F/X
Psunami, our old product for creating realistic water, was originally developed for Titanic. Rob was the visual effects supervisor on that film and played a key role in Psunami coming into being. Arete...
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The Distortions of Retouching
Did you see the before and after shots that Britney Spears released? Can’t say I’m a huge fan and I would never have imagined I’d be mentioning her in the Digital Anarchy blog, but, yet, I just did....
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Joy of Photography
One of the great things about running DA is that it gives me an excuse to buy fancy camera equipment and play with it. The latest subject I’m infatuated with is stars. No, I haven’t joined the...
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Why You Shouldn’t Shoot Video with a DSLR
There’s a myth going around that DSLRs shoot great video footage. They don’t. They are not video cameras and as such, usually result in sub-par video. If you want to shoot video, go buy a video camera....
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Sony Makes a Funny Video Making Fun of DSLR Users
Sony has come out with a pretty funny video about DSLR users who really shouldn’t be using a DSLR. The campaign is called: DSLR Gear, No Idea. One has to ask… What is Sony going for here? This is only...
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Great New Tutorial on Shooting Greenscreen/Chromakey Photos
We’ve wanted to do a training video for awhile that touched on all aspects of Greenscreen photography. From the photo shoot to the file management and, of course, the keying. We recently had the...
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Don’t be a Grumpy, Old Photographer
I recently was chatting with a photographer who pretty much blamed all the ills of the industry on Moms in hot pants. Yep, that’s why he no longer goes to WPPI and why the photo business isn’t what it...
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Using Plugins on Multiple Computers
So you’ve got two (or 20) computers and you want to use Beauty Box (or whatever) on all of them. This is always a tricky thing for software developers. On one hand we realize many folks have multiple...
View ArticleThe Future of Photography
CES/PMA is having a mini-conference called the Future Imaging Summit. I’m on the panel on software, so I’ve been pondering what software is going to look like in five years, at least as it pertains to...
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Greenscreen Tips for Shooting Video
There was a question the other day on the After Effects List about tips for successfully shooting greenscreen. A couple good links were suggested (see below), but one that stood out was rotating the...
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Beauty Box Video 3.0 Released!
The new version of Beauty Box Video for After Effects, Premiere, and Final Cut Pro 7/X is available for purchase or you can download the trial version. We’ve added a number of great new features, first...
View ArticleAll Installers are Updated for Creative Cloud
We’ve finally got all of our installers updated to recognize Adobe’s Creative Cloud. All of our plugins worked in CC, but you needed to point the installer to the right directory. We weren’t finding it...
View ArticleCreative Cloud from a Software Design Perspective
The Creative Cloud has gotten mixed reviews from users. Many users don’t like the idea of ‘renting’ software and feel Adobe is forcing them to pay more or gouging them. While this may or may not be...
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Beauty Box Video or Photo Crashing Problems – How to Fix It
Beauty Box makes extensive use of your video card’s GPU (graphic processing unit) to speed the plugin up. Usually this works great and results in the plugin working quickly. However, it can cause...
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Live Video Streaming on the Cheap
I’ve been live streaming various events for small organizations for a while. Most recently for the Against the Stream Meditation Center in SF (if you’re into mindfulness meditation and dharma talks...
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