I spent an hour on line with Paul Trani, Adobe Creative Cloud Evangelist and got a full bore explanation and demonstration of “The Creative Cloud”. If you are not already up to speed on this new service from Adobe let me fill you in and give you my take.

When information first started coming to me through my instructor network, I was a bit confused and somewhat reserved about the whole idea of software in a cloud. Then as I began to understand the flexibility and the power of this concept, I went from cool, to white hot. There is a lot here, so let me explain it as simply as possible.

The Creative Cloud has two major elements:

First, you pay a monthly fee, download onto your computer, and use all of Adobe’s Creative Suite software. I mean all: Photoshop to After Effects to Dreamweaver, Muse, InDesign, Illustrator, and every app they are making for the Ipad, Droids, and so on. I counted 26 programs in all, and its only $29.00 a month—$49.00 a month depending upon your upgrade status. You can use any or all of these programs as long as you pay your monthly membership.

Second, you get a number of Web services including things like Cloud syncing, Adobe’s Business Catalyst Web hosting, storage and online collaboration services that will allow you to sync huge amounts of files with clients, friends, and for teachers we can work with our students in real time through lesson sharing. (I’m really jazzed about that as an Adobe instructor).

This all starts, or goes live on May 7th.

That’s a summary but I’m sure you have questions so here are some of the questions that I and others asked Paul.

Can I just upgrade my suite or individual programs for CS 6 as I always do, or do I have to get on the cloud?

You can do as you always have. Therefore, the cloud is just one more option, but in my view, the most cost effective.

Are the Cloud applications, programs that reside in the cloud and only available via the Internet or do I download them to my trusty hard drive?

They are NOT Web-based. The programs work just like they always did, right on your computer, but instead of installing them from a CD or DVD disc, you download any or all of the ones you want from Adobe’s Creative Cloud site. The term “Creative Cloud” confused a lot of us when talking to Paul but as he explained it’s not cloud based, its cloud download and it stays active on your hard drive as long as you make your monthly payment. It’s like leasing a car; make the payments each month or they tow it away. Unlike a lease though, there is no interest and upgrades are free as they come out.

That much software must cost a fortune— right?

Wrong! You should visit the site for this answer, but if you are already on CS3 and above you can start at $29.95 a month. New subscribers pay $49.95 a month if you sign up for a full year, but it is billed monthly so there is no big cash flow bite on the front end. You can pay month to month and I think that’s about $70.00. Remember this includes more than the software, it also includes the new Adobe touch Apps, online Web hosting and storage space deals, plus there are services that come with your membership such as business catalyst, Edge, and digital publishing tools (which I am soon to be tested on).

Which way should I go for the best economics?

If you already own (are a registered user of) either the CS3, CS4 , CS5 or 5.5 Creative Suites, then this makes sense because Adobe has a special deal for the first 12-months, which is just $29.95 a month! That’s’ the equivalent of six gallons of gas in CA. At this price, you get every program, but if you just want Photoshop CS6 it’s only $19.95 or 31/2 gallons of gas. This price point program will make Photoshop available to folks who could not plunk down the $699.00 to purchase the entire program and then suffer through he upgrades every two years or so.

I did a net present value (NPV) of cash flows using the most recent Creative Suite price, which is financial talk for how to figure the best use of your money. Figuring I have to upgrade every 18 months, the Creative Cloud is a runaway success for your bottom line. So if this is such a good deal why would Adobe do this? I imagine that it’s a good deal for them because it reduces roll out costs, DVD’s, new product planning sequences and so on.

Suppose I have never owned Creative Suite before, does this mean I have to buy it first?

Nope!

There are no up-front costs for joining the Creative Cloud — you pay the $49.95 a month (if you do the annual contract), or $70-something for month-to-month even if you’ve never owned an Adobe product at all.) It sounds too good to be true but several of us pressed Paul many times to make sure what we were hearing was the actual literal truth and it is. I know because I already signed up as a pre signor.

So when CS, 8, 9 etc. all come out, what happens then?

Nothing— and that is the cool part. Instead of waiting for new upgrades and going through the public beta game, and transitioning to new tools all at once, Adobe engineers will release new tools and features to Creative Cloud users as soon as they come out of the oven—warm and toasty.

You wait for nothing! When it is ready for use, you got it!

Do I ever own or keep the software?

No, you’re paying for continuous access, upgrades and new applications as they become available. Again it’s like leasing a car, except you never turn it in. The engineers come out and put on new grills, tires, change your dashboard etc. as these things become available.

Does this mean I have to be connected to the Internet 7-24 when I’m using the cloud?

Nope. Adobe checks your system once a month to make sure you’re still in the plan. You need to be connected to the Internet when you want to sync any of your folders to the Cloud so that you can share your images, designs, etc. with other users, clients, colleagues, and so on. Think of this feature as a giant drop box, only better. Therefore, you can work off line, on line, in a tent out in the Mojave, or in the classroom.

Is Lightroom part of the suite?

Not yet, but soon.

So something in your brain says this is not for you…

No worries! You can pretend that the world is not changing, that tablets and droids don’t exist and you can pay bucks up front and use your cash flow unwisely (my opinion). The Creative Cloud is just one user option — one that makes sense for a lot of people who can’t handle the up-front costs of the regular Creative Suite.

Let’s face it! The entire industry is undergoing a major upheaval. I watched Paul create a web site layout from scratch with Muse while he was showing us how to access and use the Cloud. He did it in about 10 minutes, and he was sitting in a hotel room in Columbia (OK maybe he was standing) while on a road trip for Adobe. If you think about it, tablets did not exist a few years ago— today the future is back to us and it is now. The Creative Cloud will evolve at that same pace I am sure, so we can create content for things like iPads and Android tablets quickly and we’ll see new tools sooner, more services, and new ways to integrate workflows for all these applications and display devices including printers.

As you can tell, I’m down right fired up about this. I make my living with fine art photography and through teaching Adobe software to other folks who want personal enrichment and or professional advancement. This is the first time in my career that I can bring in students to learn Photoshop, Lightroom, Premier, etc, without economic barriers.

I recommend that you check the entire system out at http://adobe.ly/JLd826. You will think you walked into a creative candy store with endless aisles of very cool opportunities. At this site, you can get most of your questions answered and I’m sure if you wander around the Internet that you will see other Adobe information.

This thing has really rocked my world with more access, for more students, and thus more creative opportunities.

Take care,

There are several important reasons: I used Lightroom 3 for the heavy lifting in my workflow but Lightroom 4 does so much more. Integrating the new basic panel into your workflow, assuming that you wish to make exceptional images, is a bit more then pushing sliders around. LR 4 has a delicate touch in the basic module that empowers you to produce images with several voices; sometimes nuanced, sometimes starkly different. It’s still a great heavy lifter but it is also an emery board, and I lead students to use this panel as a tool for personal discovery.

The Adjustment Brush was a useful but limited tool in LR3. In LR 4, this brush has expanded power. I find myself not having to reach for Photoshop as often for detailed image enhancements. For commercial production work, the new Adjustment brush completes 90% of my assignments. Imagine adjusting light temperature under your brush— talk about nuanced art workflow.  Between the new Basic module, the HSL panel, and the Adjustment brush one can create production work or fine art and never see a mask or a layer. In my classes, students spend ample time in this area with exercise files as well as their own images and the creativity flows.

I’ve added print practice to this class, because LR 4 has a great new process, something we call Softproofing.  It’s in this module that one can see their prints on screen and adjust them against known paper profiles so that what you see is what you print. It takes a bit of practice, some time to learn about color gamut, paper profiles, but within a few hours, you will be printing images that express what you feel, prints that match your calibrated monitor.

How about publishing your own pictorial book, wedding album, or portfolio piece. Now you can, and you don’t have to be an ace designer. The book module has fantastic templates, custom capabilities, and a wide range of tactile choices in paper, covers, and dust jackets. It is so good, that you can almost smell that new book aroma and each of our students creates a book project; and who knows, it could be the next Amazon or Apple’s best seller.

Maybe the next destination for your work is online and we practice uploading to web sites, social networks, and quick jumps to e-mail too. Get those images out there with sophisticated web presentations but totally free of coding issues.

And what about video? Yes— video. We will make several short videos in class and learn the basics of video editing. Of course we get through the entire catalog fundamentals, how to further edit in Photoshop, preferences, and lots of little secrets that can make big differences in your creative output and time.

So check out my calendar at http://bit.ly/iF9GFL and join me for three days of creation, education, and inspiration.

I began using LR4 in pre release. By the time the public edition became available I had begun to experience the power of the new Basic Sliders in the Develop module, one of the many productive changes that also appear in Adobe camera RAW 7 which is in Photoshop CS6 Beta. Twelve weeks and two thousand images later I can say unequivocally that this version of Lightroom is a game changer. Early on in the beta release, Scott Kelby proclaimed that with LR4 you could simply make better pictures. That statement was not hyperbole; it is truth. You cannot only make better images; you can make them more quickly.

LR4 sports many new capabilities, but it’s the new Develop module’s Basic Panel that allows you greater control of the tonal range dynamics. This panel of sliders puts the classic zone system and the Photoshop Highlight Shadow tools into a set of sophisticated algorithms.

If you drag your cursor across the histogram panel, you will see five zones: blacks, shadows, exposure (midtones) highlights, and whites. These correspond to the sliders in the Basic panel and as you move these sliders, you will see that you can adjust the data within these tonal ranges. Each slider begins at zero default, which reflects the current state of the image as brought into LR4. One can, and many do, make their adjustments by starting with the sliders at the top and working their way down or starting almost anywhere and rocking the various sliders in different directions until they arrive at an image that satisfies their needs. All of this is fine, but I prefer a more focused approach. (insert basic panel)

In the early days of Photoshop image correction started by setting a black point with curves or levels and through a series of threshold steps we set the white point. LR3 gave us the black slider for black point and the fill slider to open shadows. This worked well but contrast often suffered. In LR 3 the recovery slider, did a good job of restoring highlight detail but it also had an effect on tonal contrast that was not always acceptable. In LR4, this is no longer an issue.

For me, and the teaching curriculum I use, I usually begin with the black slider to set a point for the deepest black shadow detail. In LR4, the capability to lighten or deepen the black detail or no detail, (insert shadow slider detail) provides me with an opportunity to set the emotional base of the image. Next I can adjust the highlight range, and if need be the whites which provides the same effects as LR3 recovery but with far greater finesse. This allows me to arrive at a predetermined emotional key. I can tweak the image with exposure, but if my capture in the camera was right in the first place, I touch this slider for aesthetic tweaks only.

Most of my client work occurs in the field with less than optimal lighting conditions.

Before

Think high noon sun, 11 stops of dynamic range, and you get things such as raccoon eyes, black shadows, blown highlights, and other issues. Fill flash, bracketing, and some great work in Photoshop with smart objects are techniques that I often employ to make hero images from tough capture situations. But with LR4 I find that the shadow slider is the go to tool for pulling the dynamic range into a satisfying emotional range. I rarely go to Photoshop now for detail shadow tweaking and for precise local work the shadow slider in the LR4 adjustment brush answers my needs. Once I have an anchor image with the desired emotional range I can sync other images that share similar issues or time of capture relationships and within seconds hundreds of images now share a new baseline. From here it is a matter of tweaking individual images and then off to the client.

After

As an example, I recently shot Production stills for the new feature film, Scenic Route. On location, I had to use a Jacobson Box, an enclosure device that eliminates the sound of the shutter but it is a pain in the ass because it makes controlling your settings impossible. You shoot AV and think AV. On this assignment, I captured 1100 images, which I edited down to 260 in Lightroom 4. I made enhancements to the remaining 260 images, including crops, virtual copies for special applications, and exported low rez JPEGS, hi rez tiffs, and psd files. These images will work for future promotion and production documentation. From download to client upload 12 hours passed for all tasks, half the time a similar project took in LR3/Photoshop CS5.

Of course, LR4 offers many other powerful tools for creative enhancements and postproduction workflow. But at its core Lightroom 4 simply makes better pictures and makes them faster.

]]> http://bobkillenphotographyblog.com/2012/04/lightroom-4-2000-images-and-12-weeks-later/feed/ 1 http://bobkillenphotographyblog.com/2012/04/blocks-block/ http://bobkillenphotographyblog.com/2012/04/blocks-block/#comments Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:30:30 +0000 Bob Killen http://bobkillenphotographyblog.com/?p=1180 Continue reading →]]> During the opening of the latest student art show at Calumet in Santa Ana I paid particular attention to the comments (as I always do) of the guests as they reviewed the various works. Some found solace in the lonely sequoias, others admired the works of light and images from Zion and then many came to Alan Block’s images of Block’s Block.

His black and white images did not inspire the visceral emotions that viewers display when they see a rich landscape with on point saturation, hue and luminosity. No one said, “Wow look at that canyon,” or “the light in that image is just awesome.” Yet many stood in front of his images, carefully reading the artist statement that described the why and wherefore of his project. From these viewers came quiet comments, “looks like our neighborhood; kinda’ scary; it’s about the nothing that has become the nothing of our own backyards.”

Alan’s work struck cerebral and emotional chords that haunted viewers long after the rich landscapes subsided from conscious to subconscious, and eventually to the unconscious. Block’s stated purpose was to depict the state of a Southern California neighborhood (his) that had fallen ill to economic and community malaise. The recession of 2008 is still very much present in this part of the country; eleven percent unemployment, State, County and City balance sheets flow with blood red ink as liabilities sink previous assets and cash flows. As an artist, Alan brought these facts to light, but as others and I looked at these images, we found a Seinfeld like nothingness to this neighborhood; an inimitable take on life’s most mundane moments, ubiquitously and ironically referred to as personal and family security. The outside of the homes in some cases reflected the loss of income on the inside; personal items tossed to the curb visually connected the desperation of abandoned and repossessed properties. The waiting demolition truck was a contradiction, either a grim reaper who was about to haul the scrap of a life left behind, or perhaps a savior ready to remodel and build life anew. In his statement, he pointed out the changes that his Block has undergone and undergoes today and most likely tomorrow. They are slow and for now regressive, but the subtext is that this has always been a place where folks live, work, and do without recognition, or outward reward. They are the grit of the great mainstream in America, a middle that is suddenly as fractured as the wide and persistent cracks in his streets.

This was a great launch for these artists and now that they have a footing as recognized artists, it is time for them to move forward, expand, grow, and show. I’m proud of each of them and look forward to seeing their work grow and prosper.

Lightroom 4 does not support the new Canon 5d Mark III at this time. Here is a simple workaround while we wait for the upgrade. Import via Bridge to your chosen folder. Next open LR4, and in the import dialogue choose Add and then choose the folder that you downloaded to in bridge. Click on import and CR2 files will come into your catalog with no issues.

I’m sure an upgrade is in the works to include this camera and fix some other issues.

(c) Joe Niehus, Harry Hansen, Ken Schoening, Hank Richards

That is exactly what has happened to my fine art students that completed the Calumet University’s Fine Art Photography program, the photographic and visual arts education division of Calumet Photographic. Now their achievements will be available for all to see as we present “Six Views,” an exhibition of revealing personal themes.

Art Morgan, Ken Schoening, Joe Niehus, Alan Block, Hank Richards, and Harry Hansen present fine art photographs immersed in individual and revelatory discovery. Each artist has investigated a territory that was previously undisclosed or personally abstract until each of them tackled their theme with camera and new postproduction skills. Subject matter differs, but there is the unifying power of light that binds these images to each other. There is also a subtext; all of the images present a yearning for the simplification and peace of times past.

Morgan, a resident of Tucson AZ, delivers the Sequoia Cactus as human form; Richards a resident of Apple Valley, a high desert community, explores man’s abandonment of desert communities with his images from the town of Oro Grande. Niehus, from Riverside CA, and Schoening, Garden Grove CA, explore light and color; Niehus has a baritone visual voice with deep saturation against traditional images, whereas Schoening gives us a tenor’s tonality with nontraditional images. Block explores his San Fernando Valley city block, documenting the slow progression of community decline arising from the recent economic shocks. Hansen, a resident of Irvine CA, explores the closures of military bases, creating a story of glory past.

Context is fundamental to reading images. These are new artists who worked hard to explore a theme and then create images that relate as a body of work as opposed to a series of single images. Thematic approaches require one to explore and find a visual voice that presents something that is often deeply challenging to the photographer as well as to the viewer. As Paul Klee, a painter famous for his orientalism, tells us, art does not reproduce the visible, rather it makes visible. I think these six artists take us there with “Six Views.”

The exhibition will show from March 9th to April 16th in the gallery room at Calumet Santa Ana: 1430 S. Village Way Santa Ana, CA 92705

(c) Alan Block, Art Morgan

A few things stick here and there, this is a beta after all, but all works well enough to understand the major improvements and expanded capabilities. For folks who take my fine art classes you know that I’m a ragged Marine Drill Instructor when it comes to soft proofing and “Ten Hut”— LR 4 has it. For this genre, I can tell you that this addition to the program, something we have been shouting about for a long time, is worth the price of admission.

I’ll go into further details in subsequent blogs, but for now let me say that this tool allows us to see monitor and destination gamut issues, choose our paper profiles and create a side by side comparison of the original and print images via virtual copy. This positions the creator to adjust the print images so that it will match the original image much as we do now in Photoshop (with the exception of making finer adjustments that require nuanced selections).

There are significant controls and overlays to let you determine which colors are in and out of gamut with respect to your particular paper or if working a monitor for the web your SRGB profile. One can make shifts in the HSL panel to bring certain colors within the gamut of the paper profile. For contrast and brightness adjustments, you will find those controls in the print module. However, they are not dynamic, so you cannot see the changes as you make them. Frankly, this is a disappointment.

No worries, LR 4 has several options to cure that issue.

To see both versions side-by-side, choose soft proof and simply type Y to view Before and After side by side. Next I changed the definition of “Before.” In the History panel, I right-clicked on the History step that immediately proceeded my first proof adjustment and selected “Copy History Step Settings to Before.” This workflow is similar to the soft proof process that we employ now in Photoshop.

Alternatively, you may want to have a separate proof copy, so you will choose Make a Proof Copy. Normally you can’t view two different photos (or a photo and its virtual copy) side by side with Before/After, but for soft-proofing, Lightroom has this great command.

Simply make sure you have your proof copy selected in the filmstrip, go to Before/After (Y), and in the toolbar below the photos, choose “Master Photo” from the Before dropdown.

At this point, I found that I was able to refine my soft proof adjustments further using the new sliders in the adjustment brush and work through some of the nuances that often occur in shadows and highlights. Restoring lost contrast is possible with the tone curve or with brush as well.

I’m still playing with the workflow and I will provide a video tutorial soon. However at this point I can see that for fine art or multiple print image runs the new soft proof tool is an exceptional addition to an already great program.

If you haven’t downloaded the beta, here’s the link—

Phil B— In class, you say that Adobe Camera Raw and the Lightroom Develop module are essentially the same except for some layout variances. However, when I use ACR I can choose a preference at the bottom of the window and choose file sizes that will be greater or lesser than the native file size for my camera. I get that in Photoshop and ACR but there is no such preference in Lightroom.

Why?

Yep, that’s what I said in class but under the hood things are a bit different between the two programs.

Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) processes your RAW captures so that Photoshop can work with the file because Photoshop looks for an image file as opposed to a data file. After creative work in Photoshop, we can save our files in a number of different formats (or cancel if it was one of those days when things just did not work).

In Lightroom, you don’t convert your RAW image in the development module. It’s as if you were working in ACR and simply clicked on the done button without opening the image in Photoshop. As you know in Lightroom, there is no ‘done’ button to click. You simply stop and all of the adjustments you created remain as you left them. They are in essence ‘sticky.’ Check your history palette and you can see in detail each step of your work and of course, you can go back to those steps ad infinitum even if you close and then reopen Lightroom.

This type of editing creates instructions for adjustment – rather than adjusting the actual pixels. Software engineers call this parametric editing and we can edit continuously without affecting the RAW file because we are editing instructions, not pixels.

So, how about the image size in Lightroom? The truth is that in Lightroom you can adjust images in the Develop module (working parametrically) ad infinitum until you export the image (or employ one of the sharing processes), which is when you create a new image file. It’s at this time that we can specify the file size or dimensions and LR automatically selects the proper interpolation. Now you have a RAW file as well as a new file in a format of your choice (PSD, TIFF, JPEG).

Keep in mind you can reprocess or repurpose your RAW again and again as necessary either directly or by making a virtual copy for a different variation.

For us older photographers we tend to think in terms of negatives, files, and permanence. Thus, it is a bit of a mind bender to think in terms of editing instructions as opposed to files, but once you wrap your mind around this parametric process you quickly realize that this is a beautiful thing.

In the fine art photography series that I teach, new artists often tell me that they are following my work, but wonder whose work I follow. It’s a great question and one that I can answer easily. But, before I do, let’s examine the concept of followers.

All of us follow someone at some time. In childhood, this is usually our parents or older siblings. In our teen years, it may be a valued teacher and or a sports or entertainment icon. Our individual faiths engender followers with an even deeper faith and commitment to spiritual excellence. Young business people follow other business leaders whose products or services change world values, and artists follow other artists whose works profoundly affect style of thematic revelation.

These are the North Stars of our lives, bright points of light to which we align our own compass and this North Star metaphor, is particularly true in the arts. Art leaders lead through creative influence, skills training, and mentoring. As new artists, we often mimic our leaders until we break out with our own style, story, and themes. Eugène Boudin who was 15 years older than Monet, influenced and encouraged him to go outside and paint, a wild idea in its time. Fred Archer influenced and collaborated with Ansel Adams to develop the zone system, and Willie Nelson will tell you that Bob Wills influenced his country style while Ray Charles’ country album contributed to a broader emotional range.

Unlike religion or business, leadership in the arts does not follow a hierarchal chain of command that creates internal evaluations. Rather it is collegial, influential, at times critical or hypercritical, and from time to time consensus driven to the point of boredom. Overall art leaders crack new social moirés, create exciting learning environments, and besides their creative influence, most are excellent mentors and coaches.

Daily, I learn something new from a wide variety of folks who create photography and digital images. However, learning from or staying in touch is quite different then following. Studying the successful work of others, be they dead or alive, is critical to the learning and development process but when I follow someone, I look for living leaders who execute their ideas, accept their success with grace, learn from their failures, blaze new trails without fear, consistently and persistently create new themes and visual expressions. As teachers, I follow those educators who encourage their students with equal measures of criticism and deep encouragement, who put their own accomplishments aside in order to let a new flower bloom. Teachers at this level often sacrifice time in order to grow creativity and creative outcomes in their students. In my view, these instructor leaders are the north stars of art today and tomorrow.

So, in the world of fine art photography and digital creativity my North Stars are. . .

John Paul Caponigro— JP as his students call him, is a creator of fine art photography that time and again pushes back conceptual boundaries and yet, his work embodies classical construction with 21st century skills and principles. His books, images, and workshops emphasize technical excellence in order that the student may develop and portray an extended emotional range. John Paul’s books, DVD’s Maine Workshops and seminars teach skill sets that encourage expression and an extended emotional range. He is a north star, magnetically and magically true. I recommend that you put him and his work in your learning constellation. http://bit.ly/Rj3hz

Katrin Eismann— I own every book and DVD that she has made, attend her workshops, and cannot wait for her next column in Photoshop User magazine. Katrin is a fine art photographer and the Chair of the Masters in Digital Photography Program at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. While the digital world has many fine teachers, Katrin’s method exceeds knowledge; they stir and inspire the creative juices. In my view, she is the Leggos of fine art creativity, using ideas and methods that allow us to take apart and rearrange fundamental thoughts and images, and then recombine them anew to extend our emotional range, designs, and personal texture. Katrin is creative guiding light, a North Star. http://www.photoshopdiva.com

R. Mac Holbert— ‘Mac’ often teaches fine art printing with JP, but he is a stand-alone North Star for those of us who produce fine art photography in the service of the print. Co-founder of Nash Editions a pioneering digital print house, Mac was present at the dawn of digital printing and worked closely with Epson or perhaps Epson worked closely with him. He is a senior contributor to the Pixel Genius team, the finest third party sharpener on the planet bar none. Mac’s common sense book, lectures and workshops achieve uncommon results in those of us who want every synapse of expression in our prints. http://bit.ly/yDyJqY

Barney Davey— Barney is a pioneer in digital publishing and art printmaking. His daily digests and art print issues blog as well as his plethora of books address a multitude of issues, ideas, and techniques for successful fine art marketing. He has an amazing capacity to create as well as aggregate information for digital artists, painters, print makers, and photographers. He is a true North Star for his work is always a great source of encouragement for art practitioners. http://bit.ly/zwhe1Q

Julieanne Kost— Julieanne is the Senior Digital Imaging Evangelist for Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom at Adobe Systems. She is a true road warrior as well as a North Star. An award winning educator and fine art creator. I recommend that you follow her blog, her AdobeTV.com series, and take advantage of her Window Seat book if you want to see how themes evolve in the most unlikely of places. Not a day goes by that her tweets don’t light up our night with new information and insights. http://jkost.com/

My students—Long after class I continue to encourage those students who continue to pursue their art. Their struggles and success are a source of light and inspiration, for each of them are North Stars. For we have to remember great leaders don’t create more followers, they create more leaders, more North Stars for the followers to come, for the followers who wish to grow.