The Best Photo Editing Software Digital artwork and editing has become so much more popular in recent years. As the power of digital art starts to overtake that of normal hand-drawn art, it’s much easier for people to get into the artwork industry and actually start...
My Thoughts on the Negativity Surrounding the Adobe Creative Cloud I was online this morning, reading more ridiculous comments about why the Adobe Creative Cloud is so bad. Quite frankly, I am sick of hearing about this, and I had to get a few things off of my chest....
Saving Tons of Time with Automator (Mac) I was recently working on a project that was a bit of an odd one. A company had a bunch of product images that were high resolution, but they were embedded on one of the most unconventional file formats... and Excel...
Mac Vs PC-Which is Better For Design? This has been an age-old debate for the longest time. What platform should designers use for their work? Why do we care? Can the equipment you choose make a difference in your work? There are many questions to ask and plenty of...
Review of OSX Mountain Lion Forethought I want to start out by saying that I have always been an Apple customer, since I started using computers 20 years ago. The imac was actually my first computer. I am not biased to Apple, though, as I have used and owned both...
Tools for Designers Here is a great list of tools for designers. You can do things much quicker, and these tools can help you to create colors schemes, help you create code, and more. Stripe Generator This is a really great time saver for creating stripe patterns for...
I am always looking for neat ways to keep track of things. I am the type of person that likes to make checklists and check them off as I go. I am forgetful sometimes, that is just part of my personality. However, that doesn't work so well when having multiple clients,...
Glow effects can really add drama to your designs and really make them stand out. Contrast is key here, so it is always a good idea to use a really dark, or even black background. You can add these types of effects to anything such as text, lines, shapes, etc.To do...
We have all had this problem when making a web site - You are creating a mock-up of your web site, and you have a distinct number of menus. You want to create buttons that are the same width across as the header and that are spread out evenly across your site....
Image size really makes a difference in the look of your documents. The size of your document and its resolution are determined by where your image is going to be viewed. Print This includes magazines, flyers, posters, and anything else that is printed. The higher the...
You can control the opacity of each individual color of a gradient inside of Adobe Illustrator. This is fantastic for flexibility with colors. Simply click on the color swatch of the gradient, and there is an opacity setting on the gradient panel. You can also double...
You can easily control the opacity of colors in Illustrator. You can Control the opacity of the stroke and the fill individually by using the appearance panel. Directly under each stroke and fill layer in the appearance panel, there is an opacity section, where you...
This is a great method to get great masks in Photoshop. You can actually have 2 masks on an image at the same time. You can use a vector mask and use a custom shape to mask out an image, creating a clean mask for sharp edges. The pixel mask is great for creating...
Red Giant Software has announced the newest version of Knoll Light factory, Version 3.2. This is great because the new version supports Photoshop CS5. It also supports 64-bit systems and it even includes a few new custom lens presets. They have included Blue Halo,...
First off, I want to thank everyone that participated for their invaluable comments for this post. There are many aspects to branding and corporate identity, and I think each comment touched on a different aspect. Branding is a vital part of marketing and building a...
For those of you that love good plugins, Knoll light factory is a very cool time saving addition to After Effects. The new edition works with CS5, and has a few new features as well. if you own an older version, you can upgrade for a reasonable price of $99, but if...
The masks panel is a big help, because you can easily edit and refine your masks via a handy panel. From the masks panel, you can define the density of your mask, which is very handy. Instead of having a black and white mask, the density setting lessens the affect, as...
I really like to create my own image galleries, but let's face it, in the real world, we can't always have things how we want them. Sometimes we need to get the job done in the best possible manner, as quickly and effectively as possible. When I need a quick image...
Opacity has a lot of uses for different types of effects. We like to see certain things bleed through in some areas, while in others we want a shape or text to be a certain color. Recently, I was playing around with opacity in the appearance panel in Illustrator, and...
This is a neat trick that is easy and creates a subtle painterly effect with just two filters. First, find an image and open it inside of Photoshop. Then, hit Command +J (Ctrl + J on the PC) to duplicate your background layer. Do this twice, because we are going to...