You are looking at the brand new logo for 2012 London Olympics.
Yuk! I wonder who designed this abomination of a logo!
The olympic commitee has even loftier goals
“It will become London’s visual icon, instantly recognisable amongst all age groups, all around the world. It will establish the character and identity of the London 2012 Games and what the Games will symbolise nationally and internationally.”
Google has released a new version of Sketchup, adding a few effects/features (see new feature list). Sketchup is a great 3D modelling tool even before Google bought it last year. In typical google fashion, it bought this commerical tool and made it FREE. I have been using to build some sample models, and even some storyboards (for short films).
A self explanatory video:
The July 4th fireworks was sure impressive. Spectacular display of synchoronized pyrotechnics coordinated with computer precision.. computer? Well, you didn’t think that little midgets set off the fireworks with such precision by hand, running around a carefully arranged maze of stacked fireworks waiting to be lit – did you? If so, sorry to burst your bubble – while we are at it…Santa Claus is not real either 
How to effectively blow taxpayers money up in the air? It takes 3 things.
($8000)Dont have a budget for all these? Well, you can do it all yourself in the computer you are reading this on…
Unfortunately due to rain, I was scared to bring my camera out (well, not really, I forgot it in the car 
– so no pictures except from my phonecam.
Sharp has introduced a 3D Lappie. Wow!
What are the big boys up to, a company roundup:
I guess it would be great for advertizing – mmm… pizza
How usable is Home Depot? These two frogs review it
Adobe buys Macromedia for $3.4 billion. I didnt see this coming – I am shocked as I was shocked when AOL bought Netscape.
I wonder what happens to competing softwares – Photoshop v/s Fireworks, Dreamweaver v/s GoLive, Flash v/s LiveMotion(?) – but it would be too stupid of Adobe to kill MMs software – no, not in a million years. Except possibly Photoshop and Illustrator, Macromedia trumps Adobe flat with its killer Flash and Dreamweaver. My guess is that Adobe will let MM do its own thing in SFO’s Landsend while it does its thing in San Jose. I cant figure out why this doesn’t violate Anti-trust laws, by this merger they flattened out the field.
Photoshop – the bread and butter software for any graphic artist, has gone through a new version upgrade.
Photoshop CS2 – a wierd name… hmm… also for a software that is so perfect in all aspects – what is left to improve ?
HD of course more and more resoultion! It seems it can handle 32-bit images now (HDR – High Dynamic Range). It also has a new tool (gimmick ?) ‘Vanishing Point’ which lets you paint to prespective. Will it die like the useless ‘Paint History’ , ‘Art History’ and Audio Annotation, which was forced into CS to make the users ‘want’ and upgrade ? Not sure, and too early to say without playing with it.
Vanishing Point
HDR Support
It looks like the above picture effectively compresses the dynamic range of a series of photos into a single photo. Current digital cameras cant shoot a picture like the one above. Why ? Because the CCDs cannot resolve such a wide dynamic range. Well, what is a dynamic range ? It is the distance between blackest black and whitest white – the farther the better. So, a 2 stop dynamic range will look black and white with no greys. A 12 stop dynamic range will look like the picture above, where you can see bright sky and also the dark shadows.
Looks like CS2 takes a bunch of pictures and extracts such a picture automatically (?) Previously, we used to do it with a trick called ‘digital-stitching’. Tho I’d not like to admit, a few of my photos in http://www.andshoot.com are digitally stiched to preserve the dynamic range.
Will I upgrade ?
I have to…right ? and so will thousands of fellow graphic designers. Nobody wants to be a freak…nobody wants to be left out… its after all Adobe – will they ever let us down ?
