Photoshop's New Hover Hand Tool

By

Owen Parsons

          COMPUTER SCREEN

          Photoshop is open on a photo of a guy and a girl at a party.
          They are posed with hands around one another, but his hand
          is subtly hovering a few inches from her shoulder. Onscreen
          title: "Hoverhands Tool Sneak Peek - Devin O'Neil -
          Photoshop Project Manager." The title fades as Devin speaks.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    Hi, I'm Devin O'Neil. I'm a Project
                    Manager here on the Photoshop team.
                    In the past, I've shown you
                    features like the Content Aware
                    Fill, Red-eye-reduction, and Darth
                    Maul makeup features. Today I'm
                    going to show you the newest
                    development we're working on: the
                    Hoverhands Tool. To start, let's
                    look at this photo of my friend
                    Lewis at a party. We see here that
                    his sissy balance is a little
                    higher than I'd like.

          He zooms in on Lewis's hand.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    Here's the problem: his hand is
                    hovering above the girl's shoulder,
                    almost as if he's never ever
                    touched a lady before. Now in the
                    past we might try cutting and
                    pasting this, we could use the
                    rubber stamp tool, but those are
                    both kind of messy.

          He moves the mouse over to a new toolbar on the right.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    So instead, we'll use our new
                    Hoverhands Toolbar. You can select
                    it here under tools, or hit control
                    shift alt H to bring up the menu.
                    For now we'll select the basic
                    corrector. Just lasso the negative
                    space between the hand and the
                    girl. Now we'll let the tool chew
                    through that distance and...

          A beat, and the girl is suddenly wearing a big thick parka.
          Just big enough to close the distance of the hoverhand.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    There we go. Pretty dramatic
                    difference. Before...

          He clicks back to the previous photo, then back.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    ...and after. We also have some
                    other options to fix hoverhands.
                    Let's try another photo.

          A new guy/girl photo comes up; hoverhand is more dramatic.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    Since this hoverhand is more
                    pronounced, we're going to want to
                    employ a subtler fix. Not a
                    problem. I just have to lean a
                    little more on my Hoverhands Tool.
                    Just select our problem area here,
                    and bring up our camouflage menu.

          He selects the hoverhand, then opens a "camouflage" drop-down
          menu on the Hoverhands Toolbar.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    Here we can conceal the hoverhand
                    entirely. Just... like... this...

          He checks the camouflage box. A random dude awkwardly
          appears behind the girl so that his shoulder fits into the
          nerd's hand

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    Much better. And there's a lot of
                    flexibility here. We also have a
                    sliders to adjust the situation
                    depending on how much attention you
                    want to draw to the hand.

          His mouse grabs a slider and starts moving it. As he does,
          the described situations appear to cover up the hoverhand.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    We can go from subtle fixes, like
                    pushing away some drunk jackass, or
                    handing a first-aid kit to a nearby
                    orphan; to higher profile scenarios
                    like spinning a DJ table at the
                    club, or protecting the girl from
                    angry bees. Lot of options here.
                    Let's move on.

          Another photo comes up, of a really super doofy-looking nerd
          clearly posing with a booth babe at a con. He's wearing an
          Adobe Systems shirt & his con badge reads "Devin."

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    Now, this is tricky. Here we see
                    the hoverhand is greatly
                    exaggerated by both the physical
                    appearance of the nerd and the
                    clear discomfort of the girl. Now
                    we finally have tools that address
                    these problems directly. We can use
                    our Napkin tool to remove the sweat
                    sheen from the man's forehead...

          He clicks on a napkin tool & dabs away the sweat sheen.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    Our Popeye tool can give him a big
                    manly arm...

          He clicks on a bicep tool and warps the arm to be full of
          muscles & cool sailor tattoos.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    And our Slimmer can get rid of that
                    baby fat. Let's just let it chew
                    through this...

          He lassos the nerd's torso and waits. The tool takes an
          embarrassingly long time.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    Few more moments. Lot of stuff to
                    remove there. And... bingo.

          Nerd's torso is now svelte & muscular.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    That looks great. Let's put a quick
                    Bond filter on that... Great.

          He opens a filter drop-down menu, selects "Bond." Nerd's
          shlubby polo is replaced with a Bond-esque tuxedo.

          The cursor draws a lasso around the girl's hand.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    We can also have the girl give the
                    man a hoverhand, making it look
                    like a cool inside joke instead of
                    a virginity litmus test.

          He clicks her hand and drags it out so that both of them are
          hoverhanding.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    We can also make it look like the
                    girl is enjoying herself, rather
                    than merely tolerating this
                    contact. We can bring her all the
                    way from active disgust, to
                    indifference, to excitement, to
                    happiest day of her life.

          Mouse clicks a tool submenu and adjusts a slider. She goes
          from looking grossed out, to bored, to excited, to smiling &
          wearing a wedding dress.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    And we're good. If we want, we can
                    even add additional scene filters,
                    like Motorcycle... or Beastmaster.

          He clicks another filter & both are seated on a motorcycle.
          He clicks another filter & the motorcycle disappears, but
          now the ex-nerd's free hand is petting a snarling tiger, and
          a majestic hawk rests atop his hoverhand. He has long,
          flowing Beastmaster hair.

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    Perfect. No one looking at this
                    photo would question this guy's
                    suaveness. Let's just send this
                    around and see what people think.

          Mouse saves the photo as-is to his desktop & opens up a mail
          client. He uploads the photo into a new message from
          DevinONeil@adobe.com, subject line: "Check out pics from our
          honeymoon!" & sends it out.

          A moment later, emails start popping back into his inbox
          saying things like "Wow, looking good, Devin!" and "She's
          sooo lucky!"

                              DEVIN (V.O.)
                    There we go. As you can see, we've
                    fixed a really difficult editing
                    issue with the Hoverhands Tool. Now
                    you can use Photoshop to live the
                    life you want.
                         (sadly)
                    Instead... instead of the life you
                    were cursed with.

          END