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Archive: 2006 February
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Loading External MovieClips in Flash
Loading external MovieClips is one of the easiest ways to keep your SWF file size down and and load times low. For example, if one were creating a portfolio in Flash, one could make a main movie, and then another movie for each piece of work to be loaded. Then when a user browses the portfolio, they need only wait for the pieces they’ve selected, rather than wait for all pieces to load. One can also apply the
loadMovieaction to non-progressive JPGs. -
The Halftone Pattern filter can make activate your images from the mundane to the exciting! Here’s how to recreate an old comic-book style with it.
The Halftone Pattern filter (Filter –> Sketch –> Halftone Pattern…) is a really cool filter, evoking memories of old comics books and Sunday funnies. For art buffs, it is also a reminder of the work of Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997), a major figure in the Pop Art movement which was prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s. In this How-To, I will show how to make an ordinary image look like it’s been printed in one of old comic books.
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How-to: Designing and Printing Envelopes and Mailings
Have you ever had to design a project which included envelopes? You most likely had to choose the type of envelopes as well. Taking the right decision isn’t always straight forward as there are many things you need to take into consideration.
Read more on How-to: Designing and Printing Envelopes and Mailings…
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Don’t like the keyboard shortcuts Illustrator provides? Want to use the same shortcuts you use in another program, or maybe you just find other keyboard combinations more convenient? Perhaps you want a keyboard shortcut for a command Adobe didn’t provide one for. Whatever the reason, Illustrator makes it easy to customize your shortcuts.
Read more on More Illustrator YOUR Way: Customizing Keyboard Shortcuts…
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I Like Curves: An Opinion
A recent discussion over my recent duotone tutorials have made me think about my attraction to Photoshop’s scintillating Curves.
I like Curves. I used to be a Levels kind of guy, and I still use Levels for some tasks, but for me Curves makes up the total package.
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iPods: They’re All Dressed Up and Steppin’ Out
Don’t you just hate it when someone else wears the same dress to a party? So does your iPod. No, really. Dress up your iPod with iPod Tattoos!
HP has come up with a way to make your iPod truly your own: printable adhesive tattoos you design and print. You can choose from designs on the site, or you can use your own images.
Read more on iPods: They’re All Dressed Up and Steppin’ Out…
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Type Slugs 2005-02-24
In this edition: Archive Type, FontHaus, and MyFonts all have pretty new things.
Archive Type Debuts Three New
We’ve written about Archive Type before, and we admire thier work. Archive Type preserves the past in modern digital form; to look at their type one gets a feeling of Victorian posters, showbill posters that have raucous combinations of big and small type, handbills from old letterpress printers. It’s with pleasure, then that we note the addition of three new members to its growing collection: Archive Egipt Compressed, Archive Kludsky and Archive Tale.
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Map Keys 2005-02-24
In this edition: Magnetic North on the move; Moble GPS sets as bad as cell phones for driving?; Not the real thing in Shanghai; Google Earth for Panther.
Transit of the Magnetic North Pole, 1600-Present (source http://geo.phys.uit..../articl/magnorpe.gif) -
Hamstrung Page One design
Page One design faces the design challenge of being the most important page in the newspaper: It’s the jumping off point for the rest of the paper, the place to showcase the big stories, and faces the constricts of above-the-fold design. Are you tired of your Page One marching orders?
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Converting a full color (CMYK) EPS file into a one-color or two-color image can be tricky in Photoshop, but there are a couple ways to do it right. We’ll also show how to lose a white background in order to create transparency.
Read more on Ask Designorati: Converting CMYK To Spots + Transparency…
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Freeware Friday: Ron and Joe’s Freebie For The Month
Those two cut-up beanie-boy cut-up cutups, Ron and Joe give you twelve free images
Ron and Joe are two fellows who don’t seem quite right in the head. But that’s okay–it’s in the good way.
Read more on Freeware Friday: Ron and Joe’s Freebie For The Month…
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Every other Friday, I will be telling you about two freeware programs I like to use and where to find them. Usually there will be one Mac program and one Windows program, since I use both platforms daily. All you will find on D:Illustration is real freeware: no nags, no adware, no shareware.
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Xara Day: Using the Bevel Tool in Xara Xtreme
The Bevel Tool allows you to interactively add a bevel to an edge of an object giving depth and shape. Because Xara Xtreme’s bevel tool is totally resolution-independent, it adds bevels that are completely scaleable without losing quality, and they remain editable even after you’ve saved and closed the file.
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Markzware Releases Flightcheck 5.8
PDF preflight pioneer Markzware jumps ahead releasing Flightcheck 5.8 with Ghent PDF Workgroup PDF/X-Plus specifications
SANTA ANA, California – February 21, 2006 – Markzware, developer of preflighting, data extraction, & conversion software, is pleased to announce the immediate availability of FlightCheck Professional v5.8. This update is available for both FlightCheck Professional and FlightCheck Designer for Macintosh and Windows platforms.
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CariJansen.com
Cari Jansen is, like Nick Hodge, based in Australia and maintains a great website.
Cari Jansen is an Adobe Certified Instructor and Print Specialist who maintains a good website at carijansen.com. It’s interesting to hear her discuss changes in printing and print technology in Australia and New Zealand, and she often has excellent tips and tutorials—lately she has been making them as movies available by podcast. Her latest tutorials show how to use Next Style in InDesign CS2 and brushed opacity masks in Illustrator CS2. There’s also some cool tutorials for Photoshop, including this one about creating a gradual blur.
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Extensis Achieves Desktop Fusion
Extensis melds two popular type managers into one: evolved application or FrankenTypeManager?
Once upon a time, in the land of Macintosh OS X, there were two stalwart guides who provided the typographically inclined effective font management in the new and confusing geography of the Macintosh OS X file system. The were known far and wide as Sir Suitcase and Sir FontReserve, and they served their constituencies well. Their patrons, Queen DiamondSoft and King Extensis of the West, charged them well, and they competed but still coexisted.
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Cartography Word of the Day: Portolan
Crossing the Rubicon in the journey from the fantastical to the real.
With a look defined by a network of converging and diverging lines, “portolanos” instantly suggest sea travel in the great age of exploration.
Read more on Cartography Word of the Day: Portolan…
He was about 102º off. Why would such a brilliant navigator make such a huge mistake?
Perhaps the most significant event in the spread of Europeans thoughout the world, the credited discovery in the 13th Century by Christopher Columbus, the renowned Italian navigator financed by the Spanish royal house of Castile. Despite contemporary source that suggested otherwise and the work of Eratosthenes some centuries before, he firmly believed that Cathay only lay 3900 miles west of Europe. Why was he so convinced of this?
- Rapid Adoption of Adobe Creative Suite Spurs Conference Growth
Capitalizing on the success of its recently-concluded CS Power Tour, Event Producer Barrycon announces expanded Creative Suite and InDesign Conference sessions for this May 15-20 in Chicago, featuring an expanded speaker line-up.
Read more on Rapid Adoption of Adobe Creative Suite Spurs Conference Growth…
- Freeware Friday: PDF995
Create and manage PDF documents easily for free
Those who can’t afford the fully fledged version of Acrobat Professional will be happy to know that they can create PDFs with the free PDF995 suite.
My How-To tutorial this week showed how duotones, when created with the right curves, can combine a full range of values with extra tonal depth. This tutorial will show how Photohop duotone, tritone and quadtone techniques can be stretched even farther to create designs that look like they came right off the letterpress.
Read more on Tutorial: Using Duotone To Add Art To Your Designs…
- Textorize Photos with Textorizer
Small, web-based utility applies text / graphic effects to an image, and exports it to SVG.
I always thought SVG was a really cool graphic format. Scalable Vector Graphics that can be delivered over the web. It hasn’t been very long that SVG has been supported in web browsers, very few right now actually. Firefox 1.5 is one, but IE can with the Adobe SVG plugin. Adobe Illustrator has been able to export these vector graphics for a while now however. One vector graphic software Inkscape operates fully in SVG too.
Read more on Textorize Photos with Textorizer…
- ArtRage 2.0 for the Painter in You
A free painting program to free your creative mind
I remember back in 2004, I was browsing a graphics forum when I saw someone had mentioned this “really sweet free painting program called ArtRage.” Since I’m obsessed with both graphics and free stuff, I had to check it out. ArtRage 1.0 was available for MS Windows and let you paint on a big canvas with brushes that rendered realistic paint in the way the strokes would feel and paint would mix. I hadn’t really painted since elementary school, but I was pretty sure this paint was like real. I spent hours playing, blending and even saved out a few PNG files for showing off. It was a nice freebie to have in the toolkit. Finally a graphics program my mom might actually want to use.
A client has taken your concept design and hired someone else to execute it for less money. The client is reaping the benefits of your talent and skill, but you’re still eating generic mac n’ cheese. What recourse do you have?
Adobe’s answer to Apple Aperture was announced only a month ago, but it has already been upgraded to Beta 2 and has some new features and fixes.
It was last month that Adobe Systems announced the beta release of Lightroom, a new application for pro photographers to organize their photo libraries, pitting it fist-to-fist with Apple’s Aperture, which was released last year. I downloaded the Beta 1 version and had hoped to review it soon, but those Adobe guys must keep busy because Beta 2 has already been released. You can download it here.
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