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Archive: 2006 May
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Beware of Faux Bold and Faux Italics
It’s so easy to just press that “b”
We all know that DTP is done with WYSIWYG applications. Aside from the colours of your images which might shift if you used the wrong colour mode or didn’t properly colour manage them, not considering the font reflows which happen if you don’t provide the font files to your printer and without mentioning those lines that don’t come up right because you chose the airline setting instead of a weight .25 pt, well… We all know that DTP is a WYSIWYG affair.
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Ad dollars, Google and independence
I just had an interesting conversation with Scott Karp over at his Publishing 2.0 site regarding the role of Google, niche sites trying to get noticed and how they feed Google’s profits.
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Free newspapers are our future
Twenty-four hour cable news shows, Internet news sites, Google and Yahoo news home pages, Internet news aggregators, news magazines, entertainment news, financial news shows, financial Web sites, sports shows, ESPN, your local and national newspapers: There is an avalanche of news coming at us every day. And almost without exception, it’s all free.
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Utilities for Budding Digital Typefounders
Ever wanted to create your very own fonts or play with the ones you do have? Here are four tools that will let you do it.
In these days of do-it-yourself, people are assembling thier own versions of things from houses to cars to, well, computers. Within every typophile (including ourselves) there’s a digital typefounder that may (or may not) be trying to come out. At the very least, there’s someone who wants to break open the fonts and play with them, to see what makes them tick.
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Scribus Team Announces Version 1.3.3.2, Redesigns Website
Open Source Layout App Team announces bugfix release
In the wake of our report here on Scribus 1.3.3.1 “Printemps”, the Scribus Team have set Scribus 1.3.3.2 loose in the wild. From thier online announcment (readable in full here):
Read more on Scribus Team Announces Version 1.3.3.2, Redesigns Website…
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Secrets of Adobe Bridge
Terry White’s Secrets of Adobe Bridge is a fine primer for learning Adobe Bridge, but true secrets are conspicuously absent.
Just got done reading Terry White’s Secrets of Adobe Bridge: Making The Most of Adobe Creative Suite 2. One of my new goals for this year is maximizing my production with Bridge and Version Cue, and though I’m pretty familiar with Bridge and how to use it I decided any book offering “secrets” would raise my skills. Unfortunately, I was somewhat disappointed.
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Typography Word of the Day: Counter
Going negative with the space
Checking in with the fundamentals this time, we come to the counter, which is, as all experienced typophiles know, is the hole in, if not the doughnut, in some of the roman glyphs that make the word up: the empty space in the d, the o, and however many are in the version of the g you’ve used.
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Cartography Word of the Day: Metre
The international standard for distance measure, except for the USA
Views of the physical standard metre, a platinum-iridum bar (Courtesy NIST, Dept of Commerce, USA)In America, when talking lengths and distances from there to here, we typically speak feet and miles, of course. As is well known even by us parochial Americans, however, nearly everywhere else in the world, they speak in terms of what we incorrectly call the “metric” system, the Systeme Internationale.
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Webshots Debuts Fast, Free Picture Upload Service
Want to post an image to a blog or website for sharing in a hurry? AllYouCanUpload.com is open 24/7/365, with no registration needed
There are many services that will house your online pictures that are free or of some low cost. Sometimes one might not choose to use them, however, needing a fast, right-now way to do it, or have to deal with limits.
Webshots (www.webshots.com), a leading online photo-sharing community, has debuted a new, free uploading service: AllYouCanUpload.com (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/). This service is as close to free and unfettered as can be: There’s no registration required, and no limit on the size of the images you can upload, and you can upload up to 10 images at a time.
The service is an answer to the evolving needs of bloggers, web media mavens, eBay auctioneers, and anyone who wants to display whatever you have, right now, with the absolute minimum of hassle. As James Park, Director of Product Development at Webshots, said in a recent press release:
Webshots understands the variable needs of photo uploaders and is providing AllYouCanUpload.com as an answer to those seeking a tool for fast, easy, free uploads
I gave it a shot myself and was quite pleased with the quick and straightforward operation of the site. Cleanly designed, the entire operation of the upload can be intimated from the home page. Browse your drive, select the image, choose resizing (if any–a range of sizes are available, or none) and click Upload. That’s it. The very next thing that springs up in your browser is a list of six links to the now-hosted image which can be copied and pasted, three to thumbnail versions and three to the original image, tailored for blogs/websites, message boards, and email/IM applications. Just copy and paste it (replacing the brackets as appropriate).
Simple, Fast, Powerful
This is a real “right-now” application; go there, use it, you’re done, and your image is hosted, just like that. If you don’t want to bother with registering and learning a given interface, it couldn’t be simpler.
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Nike + iPod
Have you seen this yet? Nike and Apple have teamed up to put together a Nike + iPod kit that transmits running data from your Nike shoes to your iPod. Sounds cool, but I have some reservations.
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Font Haus: The Carpenters Live On!
It’s all about script fonts this month at Font Haus
Just like me…they long to be…close to you!
Say what you will about the 70′s, there’s a cheerful warmth in the songs of those days, especially The Carpenters. Well, the musical group no longer exists, of course, but at Font Haus the Carpenter family is available, in eight weights as well as Win/Mac Type 1, TT, and OT, from $29.00.
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Why I Like PDF
Is PDF the perfect file format? It seems to be everywhere, do anything and hold the key to everything we do as designers. I do think it’s the (almost) perfect format—here’s why.
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Stroking and Filling Text in QuarkXPress 6.5
Text can’t be stroked natively in XPress but a quick trick will let you whip up this effect
Strokes and fills can be had in QuarkXPress…just resort to the dependable old “Text to Box” command. -
How To: Images from a Digital Camera or Card Reader into Adobe Bridge
Did you know you can use Adobe Bridge to import your digital photos directly from your camera or card reader? You can, and here’s how!
You can import your media files from your camera or card reader into Adobe Bridge in a few easy steps.
Read more on How To: Images from a Digital Camera or Card Reader into Adobe Bridge…
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Sometimes when designing a logo, an apt piece of clip art will speak to you. Should you heed its call? Is there ever a right time to base logo design on clip art?
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Straighten Buildings With The Lens Correction Filter
It’s new to CS2: the Lens Correction filter, which allows you to straighten buildings and fix perspective within an easy-to-use interface.
Some time ago I wrote an article on straightening buildings with the Crop tool, and I’m following up with this How-To on doing the same thing with the Lens Correction filter (it’s in the Filter –> Distort menu). Lens Correction is new to CS2 and it’s a robust interface for fixing various distortions and color changes created by the use of a camera lens.
Read more on Straighten Buildings With The Lens Correction Filter…
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Freeware Friday: Free Animals From Ron & Joe
The em-beanie’d ones give you free animal images
Ron and Joe, they of the Art Parts and the sublime humor, are back with another Freebie for May. This time, it’s images of animals. They love animals, and to celebrate this they give us access to eight images, such as the woodcut-style aquarium illustrated. They are from various Art Parts collections, all of which are also available from Ron & Joe.
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Google SketchUp Free puts 3D tools in the hands of the novice and makes it possible for anyone to draw along the Z-axis. Merge your new 3D models into google earth, share them online, or export image files to show off your work.
Read more on Freeware Friday: Google SketchUp Free…
- Freeware Friday: The Filter Factory Page At PhotoshopFilters.com
Filters can be overdone sometimes, but when you need a special effect they often come in very handy. PhotoshopFilters.com is a great resource for all kinds of filters, from the useful to the superfluous.
Read more on Freeware Friday: The Filter Factory Page At PhotoshopFilters.com…
- Freeware Friday: SmartCurve
Got the blues because there are no curves in Photoshop Elements? Thanks to SmartCurve, you can get that functionality back, even in Photoshop Elements 4!
SmartCurve (for Windows)
In Photoshop Elements 4, Adobe blocked the curves function so it doesn’t work in the add-ons that were previously out there for free, like Grants Tools and Shipley’s Extras, or those you paid for like Richard Lynch’s Hidden Power.
- Top Ten XML Myths
My half-day XML tutorial at the InDesign Conference shed light on the “mystique” behind XML, both good and bad. Here are ten things to remember about XML that will demystify the technology.
- InDesign Conference, Day 2
The second of my two days at Chicago’s InDesign Conference was the more intensive one, thanks to the strong XML half-day seminar I attended.
Large, half-day seminars at conferences like the InDesign Conference have a good and a bad side: you are given the opportunity to immerse yourself in a subject for several hours, but you miss out on all the other speakers and subjects—and there were a lot of good ones:
- InDesign Conference, Day 1
I’m in Chicago attending the InDesign Conference, which started on Monday, May 15 and will last through Thursday, May 18. I’m here only on Tuesday and Wednesday though, so I will miss some of the specialized training for InDesign, InCopy and Creative Suite 2 but these two days are going to be stuffed with great tips and techniques!
The best power tips from the conference. The instructor and seminar are listed after each tip.
25. Keyboard shortcuts for applying styles can only be composed of a modifier key (Cmd/Ctrl, Opt/Alt, etc.) plus a number from the numeric keypad.
Sandee Cohen, Supercharged Style SheetsRead more on Top 25 InDesign Tips From The InDesign Conference…
- QuarkXPress 7 Will Launch in June
Earliest launch in the UK, followed by the US and the rest of Europe
The final version of QuarkXPress 7 is ready. Everybody run. Whether you will decide to run to the counter and get your copy or run away where nobody can reach you is up to you, but the first launch will be on June 2, in London, so you need to make up your mind before then.
- Freeware Friday: The Filter Factory Page At PhotoshopFilters.com
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