Photoshop: Export PSD Layers to PNG with transparency

http://www.tranberry.com/photoshop/photoshop_scripting/tips/layerstoPNG.html

A JSX script file written for use in Photoshop to get back one part of the functionality lost when Image Ready went away. There is no other way in the CS3 workflow that I can find to export many layers of a file to transparent PNG24s: not in Fireworks, not by importing the PSD into Flash (there are matte/edge artifacts) and not in the default Photoshop scripts (the closest they come is TIFF with no transparency). Considering how often this comes up in the Flash workflow, I thought the link above was a big time saver. Just remember to reload Photoshop once the script is installed in [program path]\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\Presets\Scripts

Sidenote: Of course nothing is easy: the transparency attribute of the PNGFileOptions object for PSD+JSX doesn’t do what you’d think, not without extra JavaScript, which fortunately is in this JSX file.

I’ll be installing PS CS4 shortly and we’ll see how the Photoshop->Flash workflow is for that system.  Thanks to Jeffrey Tranberry for writing it.

Flash most in demand, according to Adobe Blogs

Flash demand comparison

One graph says a lot! Good thing iPhone SDK and Flash IDE will become a low barrier jump (soon)

NASA spacewalk F.P.Builder using Unity3D

Unity 3D  shows its specialty – hardware accelerated 3D interactive environments. NASA has been on the forefront of using Unity as an outreach and education tool. Check out the Space Station construction game here

Unity 3D is a lightweight browser plug-in/activeX control and a very capable IDE. It is 3D-centric, meaning the IDE looks almost like a single-pane 3D editor with a scene builder area and a behavior (code) editor….

Flash 10.1 for iPhone

You know that feeling when your unrequited first-year university crush suddenly calls you out of the blue 6 years later from her learjet to see if you’re free for a weekend in Paris? Me too, and this feels sort of like that (I bet) – just when you’ve given up hope, and just a little past even that, Stevedobe calls us up with some news: Flash CS5 will provide the capability to write iPhone apps in Flash for the iphone. This is not in-browser flash but iPhone Apps written in Flash CS5 targetted for the device.Whether it is a Projector or AIR-like wrapper around a flash player is not really clear.

Details are still pending, but it opens up that platform to a lot of talented developers who didn’t need to learn yet another platform and IDE, and it’s not at all a bad compromise if the Apps have a good web, system, and GUI connect API (and it seems they will). This meshes with the announcement that 10.1 will also support multi-touch. Exciting stuff: here’s a quick link

More: Adobe Labs Link