LAdobe :: Los Angeles Adobe User Group

Join LAdobe on Thursday night, February 23rd at 7pm at our newest venue, the Mary Pickford Studio at 8885 Venice Blvd., Suite 203 in Culver City. Parking is available on their lot which will fit approximately 30 vehicles. There is also parking on the street for free after 6pm.

To start our evening off, LAdobe’s own Adam Bell of dataTV, will continue his focus on the new interactive features regarding InDesign with ePublishing and the Digital Publishing Suite. How are magazines from Wired to Vanity Fair moving from the print space to the iPad? In this session, Adam will continue where he left off from January’s presentation and actually show how to get the Folio Builder and why you need i. Then he’ll create a live working version of an interactive DPS app created.directly from InDesign! No Flash, Dreamweaver, Edge or any interactive tool will be used. Just InDesign only.

The second portion of the evening will come from California State University, LA instructor Gary Coyne. Now normally, Gary’s job at CSULA is that of ‘Scientific Glassblower’ in their Chemistry dept. What does that have to do with Adobe? Well, he’s also a Photoshop expert. In particular of the usage of High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging in Photoshop. In Gary’s session you’ll see why HDR is so important in Photoshop, how to take HDR photos, how to use Adobe Bridge for full HDR benefit, how to process in Photomatix into 32 bit images and then tone map the image into a 16 or 8 bit image, what’s taking place during tone mapping to the image (so the user has better control on what’s happening), followed by post-processing in Photoshop. This promises to be one of the most unique and informative presentations we have ever presented in Photoshop featuring a tool most Photoshop users never think about…but should.

Well have prizes from our various sponsors and another prize pack from NewEgg. Remember, our next meeting will be in Culver City so make sure you make a note of it and we’ll see you on February 23!

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Join LAdobe on Thursday night, January 26th at 7pm at NextSpace at 9415 Culver Blvd. in Culver City. Parking is available on the street for free after 6pm (on some streets) and you can also park for free at various indoor parking lots located throughout Downtown Culver City. Remember, all LAdobe events and meetings are always free to attend with no RSVP required.

For our first meeting of 2012,we will focus on a program we haven’t looked at in a long time. And one of the programs that has seen some of the greatest amount of change in the entire Adobe Creative Suite. That program is InDesign. A program known mainly for print designers, but it is starting to offer unique, interactive features as well.

The majority of our presentation will be from noted Photoshop and InDesign authority, Beverly Houwing. Beverly runs the Squid Gallery and is a noted photographer and artist. She has had her works shown in galleries throughout the Los Angeles area and beyond. For this presentation, Beverly will show off many of the unique effects and styles available to InDesign users and how to get the best results out of them.

Her topics will include how to apply styles creatively and efficiently: Demystifying complex styles: Next Style, Nested Styles, Smart Text Reflow, Keep Options, building a table of contents, bulleted & numbered lists, creating Cross References & using GREP with Styles and Conditions. She’ll also cover working with Photoshop files and Illustrator files in InDesign to manage layers, layer comps and edit content and creating “layer masks” in InDesign. Using Effects and transforming type for cool styles. Finally, she’ll look into how to create a fantastic Preflight Profile for the way you need to have publications printed and sharing it with those who need to build their documents using the same guidelines.

From there, LAdobe’s own Adam Bell of dataTV, will focus on some of the new interactive features regarding InDesign with ePublishing and the Digital Publishing Suite. How are magazines from Wired to Vanity Fair moving from the print space to the iPad? In this session, Adam will show examples of this and then explain how they accomplish this…directly from InDesign! No Flash, Dreamweaver, Edge or any interactive tool is required.

Well have snacks from our new sponsor, Gamer Food, as well as book prizes from our various sponsors and another prize pack from NewEgg. Remember, our next meeting will be in Culver City so make sure you make a note of it and we’ll see you on January 26!

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As we do every year, LAdobe is once again planning a holiday gathering on Tuesday evening, December 20th starting at 7pm. This year, we will be hitting one of the newest hot spots in LA for some cool holiday cheer as we invade Sunny Spot at 822 Washington Blvd (intersection of Washington and Abbot Kinney) in Venice. Sunny Spot is Chef Roy Choi’s (Kogi, A-Frame, etc.) newest venture in the old Beechwood space. It promises to be a great place for food and drink.

We’ll be bringing along a lot of surprises from our ‘Santa Sack’ and a lot of merriment as we recall the great events and news we had this year. Not to mention discuss 2012 and all the changes that are rapidly approaching and how it will change our workflow.

All LAdobe members are welcome to attend. The only costs will be the food and libations you plan to purchase. There is no admission fee and no need to RSVP. Parking is either valet at Sunny Spot or street parking in and around the neighborhood.

We hope you can make it to share your holidays with ours!

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LAdobe: the Los Angeles Adobe User Group along with the various Los Angeles area Adobe User Group are pleased to present a special event on te new Adobe Touch Apps which will take place Sunday, December 11 at a special ‘brunch’ time of 11am at Indie Desk on 816 South Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles. Admission to the event is totally free and parking will be available at meters as well as various parking lots and garages in Downtown Los Angeles.

NOTE: In order to attend this special event, you must RSVP here at our Eventbrite page –>

This event will allow you to experience first hand the new Adobe Touch Apps for Android tablets (and coming soon for iPad’s in 2012). If you’re unaware, the Touch Apps were first introduced at the Adobe MAX Conference in Downtown Los Angeles back on Monday, October 2nd. These apps include:

• Adobe Photoshop Touch
• Adobe Ideas
• Adobe Collage
• Adobe Debut
• Adobe Proto
• Adobe Carousel
• Adobe Kuler

Expand where and how you work …. after the presentation We will take a break and go out to take pictures in the area, once we are back in the studio we will upload images via Adobe Creative Cloud and create. Whether you use a stylus or just your fingertip, intuitive touchscreen features provide easy, precise control for a variety of creative tasks. Adobe Touch Apps, you can purchase the apps in advance of the event for Android via the Market, or for iPad via the iTunes store.

Our presenter for our brunch event is Rick Miller. Rick is a Senior Solutions Engineer for Education at Adobe Systems where he helps Adobe’s education customers find the solutions they need to enhance the pedagogical experiences of their students. Before working at Adobe Systems, Rick taught Photoshop/Digital Imaging at the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, and Digital Design at Cal Poly Pomona University, so he’s cognizant of the unique challenges that face educators. Rick is an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop, Lightroom, Acrobat X, and Acrobat Connect. Additionally, Rick is an expert in color management. Moreover, Rick is a professional photographer who is certified on the Leaf and Phase One digital backs, and trains users on the Hasselblad digital back. Rick continues to consult with Law Enforcement agencies in the Forensic application of Photoshop.

Since this is a ‘brunch’ time event, we’ll have coffee as well as cookies from Gamer Food and Nana’s Banana Bread. There may be additional food and drink offered at the event as well. Prizes include a copy of Creative Suite 6.6 as well as other prizes to be announced at a later date.

This promises to be a very special event and we hope you can come downtown and attend this event two weeks before Christmas!

NOTE: In order to attend this special event, you must RSVP here at our Eventbrite page –>

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Join LAdobe and the entire Los Angeles Tech community for a very special event on Monday, November 14th at the Barnsdale Gallery Theatre located at 4800 Hollywood Boulevard in East Hollywood. This event will be our November meeting and it cumulates on a number of our talks presented in the past year.

REGISTER HERE FOR THE NEW WEB – HTML5 –>

As HTML5 becomes more and more the next phase in web design and development, you need the right tool and learn the proper methods on how to use it. For this event, we’re bringing in three of the best people to explain it all to you.

Greg Rewis is the Pricinpal Worldwide Evangelist at Adobe Systems.focusing on Adobe’s open web products and technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript. With over 20 years of computer industry experience, Greg spends in excess of 200 days of the year on the road, talking with customers, giving product demonstrations at seminars, and speaking at industry conferences.

Stephanie (Sullivan) Rewis runs W3C Conversions in Phoenix, AZ and is a prominent front-end developer, corporate trainer, and noted champion of web standards. Author of Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS4 and other books, she’s a driving force in WaSP, as their Industry Evangelist to Adobe. A born teacher savvy about both business needs and the web, she’s a highly regarded, in-demand trainer of corporate web teams of all sizes; a Web Designer Magazine columnist; and a prolific tutorial writer.

Elliott Sprehn works for Google as a Tech Lead on Google Feedback. He also contributes with the AngularJS project. Elliott has worked on a variety of projects from network services, to realtime messaging systems, as well as most obviously web applications. I’m a strong advocate of web standards and have participated in the HTML5 WG and WHATWG. He also works closely with groups at Google working on the related standards.

Neville Spiteri, is Founder and CEO of Wemo Media, a next-generation digital studio developing a collaboration platform for peer-produced art and entertainment products on the web. Neville is a digital media professional credited on critically acclaimed franchises including True Lies, Apollo13, Terminator 2/3D, Final Fantasy, and Medal of Honor. He held leadership positions in video game, feature film, theme park, and online media productions. Neville started his career as a software engineer on 3D animation software at Wavefront, then as a technical director and digital effects supervisor on feature films, commercials and video games at Digital Domain and Square. He served as Director of Product Management on the ground floor team of venture-backed Greenplum|EMC. Most recently Neville was a Producer and Senior Development Director at Electronic Arts, where he led technology and production teams since 2004. Neville earned a Bachelors degree in cognitive science and computer science, summa cum laude from Brandeis University, Massachusetts in 1992.

For this special evening, the three of them will delve into the future of HTML5 and CSS3 and how it will pertain to your workspace. New Adobe products like Edge and enhancements to products like Dreamweaver will be discussed.

In addition, there will be a host of door prizes including a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, a Blackberry Torch smartphone, a Blackberry Playbook tablet, a Motorola Photron 4G Android Phone, a Barnes and Noble Nook Color device and much more. Food and drink will also be provided for the evening as well.

Thaks to the generosity of our sponsors, this is now a free event to attend. If you register now, you will be able to go see the entire program, at no cost to you at all.

REGISTER HERE FOR THE NEW WEB – HTML5 –>

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Join LAdobe on Thursday night, October 27th at 7pm at NextSpace at 9415 Culver Blvd. in Culver City. Parking is available on the street for free after 6pm (on some streets) and you can also park for free at various indoor parking lots located throughout Downtown Culver City. Remember, all LAdobe events and meetings are always free to attend with no RSVP required.

For this meeting, we will focus on all the various announcements from Adobe MAX earlier this month at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Both managers of LAdobe, Adam Bell and Michele Weisbart, were at the conference and have a lot to share first-hand. What is the Adobe Creative Cloud? How will that affect how we work? What sneaks did they see? What sessions were first-rate and which failed to keep us awake? You’ll find that out and more on the 27th. In addition, we have an extra-MAX tote bag and the USB 4 gig Flash Drive (and it’s really tiny!) to give away to a lucky attendee. So even if you didn’t attend MAX, you still might score some sweet swag!

From there we’ll look at two of the new web applications, Adobe currently has in Labs. Muse allows InDesign users to easily convert their creations into full-scale websites and Edge offers HTML5 based animation and now interactivity to users who have experienced a difficult time grasping how HTML5 works. We’ll spend a little time on Muse and focus heavily on Edge and how it offers great features to your web design toolbox. Especially if you’re used to Flash or even After Effects.

Well have drinks from as well as book prizes from our various sponsors and another prize pack from NewEgg. Remember, our next meeting will be in Culver City so make sure you make a note of it and we’ll see you on October 27!

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LAdobe: the Los Angeles Adobe User Group along with the Los Angeles Photoshop User Group, the Los Angeles Illustrator User Group, the LA/Pasadena Designers’ Group and LAFlash: The Los Angeles Flash User Group present Sidekick 2011 which will take place Saturday, October 1 at 6pm at Indie Desk on 816 South Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles. Admission to the event is totally free and parking will be available at meters as well as various parking lots and garages in Downtown Los Angeles. We’re starting early so you can attend Sidekick and also have a great night out afterwards whether in Downtown LA or elsewhere.

NOTE: In order to attend Sidekick, you must RSVP here at our Eventbrite page –>

Sidekick is presented as a special event for the Los Angeles area Adobe Community and features presenters who are in town for the Adobe MAX conference at the nearby Los Angeles Convention Center. For those of you still on the fence about attending MAX, this night will offer a small taste of the conference while you can still make up your mind whether to attend or not. For those of you who cannot afford to attend MAX due to financial or work-related conditions, this night offers a chance to hear from some of the top minds in technology while they are in the area.

Our presenters are as follows:

ALEX LIEBERT, JOSHUA GRANICK-The HAXE Framework

He’s worked as an animator, software engineer, and producer for clients including The Gap, Meez.com, and Blend Films.  Alex started Milkman Games, LLC in 2010 with a mission of bringing  fun, beautiful and accessible games to the mobile space.  Milkman Games’ debut title, Aqualux, launched on a variety of phones and tablets earlier this year. Follow Alex on Twitter: milkmangames

Joshua Granick has a passion for great games, functional design and tools that make life easier.

He has twelve years of industry experience; three as a small business owner. He has produced applications and games for brands like Adobe, Apple Jacks, Disney and Eldorado Stone.

From his former selection of TI-series calculators to his current selection of phones and tablets, Joshua loves developing for mobile devices, especially as the skill set for mobile, desktop and web development continue to blur.

He has three kids and a beautiful wife, and currently works in HP webOS Developer Relations. Follow Joshua on Twitter: singmajesty

DAVID POWERS-I Didn’t Know Dreamweaver Could Do That

David Powers of Foundation PHP in the UK is an author and trainer, who’s passionate about web standards. He’s written or contributed to 15 books and video series about Dreamweaver, PHP, CSS, and other web-related technologies. His most recent titles are HTML5, CSS3, and jQuery with Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5: Learn by Video, and Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 Studio Techniques: Designing and Developing for Mobile with jQuery, HTML5, and CSS3 (both Adobe Press). David’s articles are among the most popular tutorials in the Dreamweaver Developer Center. David is an Adobe Community Professional for Dreamweaver and specializes in developing web solutions using PHP and the MySQL database. Prior to his career as an author, David was a BBC radio and TV journalist, and spent many years working in Japan. He has translated several musical plays from Japanese into English.

ROBERT REINHARDT-Comparing Web Video Technologies, from Flash to HTML5 to Silverlight

Robert Reinhardt, VP of [the MAKERS] in Portland, OR, is internationally regarded as an expert on multimedia development, particularly in Adobe Flash and online video. Selling over 200,000 copies in over 13 languages, Robert’s books include the Flash Bible (Wiley) and Video with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Studio Techniques (Adobe Press). As an Adobe Community Expert, he develops workshops for schools and corporations, and he creates tutorials at DesignProVideo.com. Robert has spoken at industry events since 1998, including Flashbelt, FITC, SIGGRAPH, and Adobe MAX. Robert is currently building a professional video encoding and hosting service, VideoRX.com. Follow Robert on Twitter: flashfreaker.

STEFANO VIRGILLI-Is It Photoshopped?

Stefano has an Italian degree in communication design. His experience in the training and education sector has been growing since 2000. Stefano started teaching 2D graphic design and photography post production. Later on, he further specialized in video editing, 2D and 2.5D animation.

In 2006, Stefano brought his expertise and experience to Singapore. His years in training were augmented by his work in a design studio in Italy, which he built from scratch. He directed both Ultimate Video Fx as well as VOX. The experience placed him in a solid position to combine theory and practical hands-on work.

Today, Stefano is the director of LAB School, where his knowledge and insight are in demand across the island, from several government bodies, institutions, and private enterprises.

Stefano is certified competent in the WSQ Advanced Certificate in Training and Assessment (ACTA) Trainer®, Assessor® and Developer® Facilitated Learning.

We will have beverages from Zenify, Function Drinks and other surprises as well. Prizes will include a copy of one of the bundles of Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, books from O’Reilly, Peachpit and other book publishers and much more.

NOTE: In order to attend Sidekick, you must RSVP here at our Eventbrite page –>

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Join LAdobe on Thursday night, August 25th at 7pm at NextSpace at 9415 Culver Blvd. in Culver City. Parking is available on the street for free after 6pm (on some streets) and you can also park for free at various indoor parking lots located throughout Downtown Culver City. Remember, all LAdobe events and meetings are always free to attend with no RSVP required.

For our first presentation at our new location, we’re pleased to be bringing back one of our best speakers, Stephen Burns, the president of the San Diego Photoshop Users Group and most recent instructor to the Light Photo Workshops. He has written the books, Photoshop CS5 Trickery & FX, The Art Of Poser 8 Pro & Photoshop CS5, The Art Of Poser & Photoshop, Author of Advanced Photoshop CS4 Trickery & FX, Author of “Advanced Photoshop CS3 Trickery & FX, Author of “Advanced Photoshop CS2 Trickery & FX and also Photoshop CS Trickery & FX for Charles River Media.

Stephen will be returning for part two of his ‘Concept to Creation’ presentation he started back in January at our meeting in Hollywood. Since that time, Creative Suite 5.5 has been released and Stephen will be expanding his presentation to include new features from the upgrade. As usual, Stephen is open to all Photoshop related questions throughout his presentation. So don’t feel shy about asking any type of question.

Well have drinks from Function and Zenify as well as book prizes from our various sponsors and another prize pack from NewEgg. Remember, our next meeting will be in Culver City so make sure you make a note of it and we’ll see you on August 25th!

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Join LAdobe on Thursday night, July 28 at 7pm at Border Stylo at 729 Seward St. in Hollywood. Parking is available on the street for free after 6pm and the agency also has a private lot they may open for members to park as well. Remember, all LAdobe events and meetings are always free to attend with no RSVP required.

For this meeting, we’re pleased to bring in another great presenter from Adobe. Kevin Schmidt is a Solution Engineer with Adobe focusing on Enterprise RIA’s (Rich Internet Applications) and mobile application development utilizing the Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform for the public sector in Washington DC. It’s not Kevin’s first time speaking in LA. Back in 2005, he was part of the panel at MiniMAX 3 in Venice, CA that October.

Enterprise RIA’s are hot! And Adobe has the best in class tooling for building Enterprise RIA’s! For our July preso, we’ll focus on that as Kevin will explain and inform as you’ll get the chance to  learn about building Enterprise RIA’s with Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 and the new Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform.

The evening will feature free drinks courtesy of Function, Zenify, as well as Groundwork Coffee courtesy of Border Stylo. We also plan to give away a couple of Adobe Flash Catalyst in addition to Alien Skin plugins and a variety of books from our usual book sponsors. If you’re into mobile web development and Flash and Flex Rich Internet Apps in general, you need to come out to this event on July 28 in Hollywood.

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