Illustrator : Tutorial - Envelopes

I put a new tutorial up, which describes how to use the Envelope in Illustrator to create a banner like effect. This is just one of many uses of the envelope, but the idea is just to give you a taster for using it.

The tutorial is over here.

Photoshop: Quick Tip - Using the dimensions of one image to crop another image.

In Photoshop, you can use the dimensions of one image to crop another image.

Open two images in Photoshop.

Select the image with the desired crop size to make it active.

Select the Crop tool from the toolbox and click the Front Image button on the tool options bar. This enters the image's height, width, and resolution in the respective fields on the options bar.

Switch to the image that you want to crop, and drag out with the Crop tool. The tool will be constrained to the previous image’s aspect ratio as you drag. When you release the mouse button and press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac) to apply the crop, the image will be resized to the desired height, width, and resolution.

Photoshop: Quick Tip – Image Processor

The Image Processor in Photoshop CS2 is a new tool which allows you to process multiple images. Unlike the Barch command, you don't have to create an action before using the Image Processor to process your files. It can do lots of cool stuff that would normally be quite time-consuming, such as:

• Convert a set of files to either JPEG, PSD, or TIFF format; or convert files simultaneously to all three formats.
• Resize images to fit within your specified pixel dimensions.
• Include copyright information.
• Process a set of camera raw files using the same options.
• Embed a color profile or convert a set of files to sRGB and save them as JPEG images for the web.

To use the Image Processor choose File > Scripts > Image Processor

Photoshop: Quick Tip - Removing a Colour Cast

Some images contain color casts (imbalanced colors), which may occur during scanning or which may have existed in the original image, particularly older photographs. You'll find that some of your images look very cold - they have a blue cast, or often photographs taken indoors will look too warm - they have a yellow cast. You can remove a colour cast very quickly in Photoshop.

1. Open an image with an obvious colour cast.

2. Choose Image > Adjustments > Auto Color

Voila!

Illustrator : Tutorial - Using The Scribble Effect

The Scribble effect in Illustrator CS allows you to take a shape or path and make it look like it has been sribbled with a pen or pencil. You can also create interesting painterly effects by combining the scribble effect with different brushes. This tutorial shows you how to do just that.

Photoshop : Quick Tip - Changing the size of the font preview

If you find that the size of the text in the font preview is too small, or too large, you can change this setting in Photoshop CS2. Press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K Mac OS) to open Photoshop’s preferences and choose Type from the pop-up menu. Make sure that the checkbox for Font Preview Size is selected, you can then choose, Small, Medium or Large in the pop-up menu.

Photoshop Tutorial : Using Solid Colour Layers

In this tutorial you'll learn how to generate a solid colour layer in Photoshop. This is a special layer which allows you to quickly and easily change the background colour of images with the colour picker.

Publish

In this tutorial you'll learn how to generate a solid colour layer in Photoshop. This is a useful way to change backgrounds on images. I'm using an image of a purple car which has areas of transparency which lets the yellow background layer show through.

1. In Photoshop, click on the Layer1 layer in the Layers palette to select it.
   
   
   


2. Click on Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer menu.
   
   
   


3. Choose Solid Color from that menu.
   
   
   
   This will open the Colour Picker.
   
   
   


4. I chose a blue colour and clicked OK.
   
   A new layer called Color Fill 1 has appeared in Layers Palette. This layer has two thumbnails and a link symbol associated with it. The thumbnail on the left is a solid color fill. The white thumbnail on the right is a layer mask. You can see the solid color fill through the mask because the mask is set to white. The reason for using a solid color layer is that it gives you the flexibility to easily change a solid fill.
   
   
   
   


5. Click on the new Color Fill 1 layer and drag it down below the Layer 0 (the car layer).
   
   Now the car is at the top of the stack in the Layers Palette and the background appears blue. Using this new layer it is now extremely easy to change the background colour easily and quickly.
   


6. In the Layers palette, double-click on the thumbnail on the left side of the Color Fill 1 layer. This will open the Color Picker again. Choose a new colour and notice the live preview of the colour changes to the layer. This is what makes it so good. Click OK when you find a colour you like.

Web Design: Inspiration - Design Observer has a new look

The Design Observer has recently been redesigned (in fact a lot of re-designing seems to be happening around the web at the moment). The new design is simple and elegant.

On the new design the editors say:

"We've stuck with this design for over two years, despite many complaints that we were 1) not being designers, and 2) that reversed-out type is difficult to read. However, when we started, we were determined to focus on the content first, and the form second, and this default template has served us well."

Very nice, it is too.

Photoshop : Tutorials - Create a simple 3D logo

This tutorial shows you a quick and easy way to create a simple 3D logo using the Distort Transformation in Photoshop.

1. Create a new document – 500 pixels by 500 pixels. Click on the Foreground Colour Swatch and pick a dark green colour. (I chose a green with the RGB value #336633).
   
   
   
   


2. Fill the background with the colour you selected by pressing Alt+Backspace (Windows) or Option+Delete (Mac).
   
   


3. Press "d" to set the Foreground and Background colours to their default of Black and White.
   
   
   
4. Press "x" to set your Foreground colour to white.
   
   
   
5. Select the Horizontal Type Tool () and select the following settings on the tool options bar.
   
   
   
   
   Font Family – pussycat, Size 250 (you will need to type this into the Size field and press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac)), Text aligned Centre and Anti-aliasing set to Strong.
   
   
   Add some type to your image.
   
   
   
   
   
6. Click on the Create A New Layer button in the Layers Palette.
   
   
   
   
   A new empty layer will appear in the Layers Palette.
   
   


7. Select the Elliptical Marquee tool from the toolbox.
   
   
   
   


8. Press Shift and drag out a circular selection that's larger than your type (illustrated below).
   
   
   
   
   
9. Click on the Edit menu and choose Stroke. In the Stroke dialog box, choose 20 for your Width, set the Location to Centre and set the Colour to white. Click OK. This puts a white stroke around the circular selection you made.
   
   
   
   
   
   


10. Press Ctrl+D (Windows) or Cmd+D (MAC) to deselect the circular marquee.
    
    


11. Click on the type layer in the Layers Palette and then Shift+click on the white circle layer to select both layers at the same time. Click on the Link Layers button at the bottom of the Layers Palette. Now that the layers are linked you can merge them together by pressing Ctrl+E (Windows) or Cmd+E (Mac).
    
    
    
12. Press Ctrl+T (Windows) or Cmd+T (Mac) to bring up the Free Transform bounding box.
    
    
    
    
    
    
13. Hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Cmd(Mac) key and click on the bottom-right corner point of the Free Transform bounding box, and up and to the right. (Holding down Ctrl causes the contents of the bounding box to distort.) The logo will appear to tip forward. Do the same thing with the upper left handle of the bounding box until you get a sense of perspective on the logo. Press Enter (Windows) or Return (MAC) to commit the transformation.
    
    
    

(Optional) For an extra effect, add a drop shadow. In the Layers Palette, click on the layer with the merged text and circle to make it active, and then click the Add a Layer Style button () at the bottom of the Layers palette and choose Drop Shadow from the pop-up menu.

Play around with the Drop Shadow dialog box to see which settings work best. I used the following settings:

Your final logo should look something like this:

Photoshop : Quick Tip - See RGB and CMYK at the same time

When you’re working on an RGB document in Photoshop, that will eventually be converted to a CMYK document for printing, it’s possible to see both versions at the same time and see the changes you make on the RGB image appear simultaneously on the CMYK image. Follow these steps:

1. Open an RGB image in Photoshop.

2. Choose Window > Arrange > New Window.
This opens another view of your existing document.

3. Press Ctrl+Y (Windows) or Cmd+Y (MAC) to see a CMYK preview of your image.

4. Click on the original RGB image and start editing. Your changes will be updated on the CMYK image as your work.

Photoshop : Quick Tip - Increase and Decrease the size of your Selection

When you make a selection, you can easily make that selection a few pixels larger of smaller by choosing Select > Modify. To make your selection bigger choose Expand, to make the selection smaller, choose Contract. It works best if you Expand or Contract by only a small number of pixels at a time (i.e. 4 or 5 pixels at most). Otherwise the edges of the selection won’t stay sharp, they have a tendency to go round.

Photoshop: Tutorial - Vertical Type Tool & Character Palette

The Vertical Type tool is used for typing text (surprise!!)vertically on your image. But did you know that you can also rotate the vertical text using the character palette? Here's a short tutorial to show you how to use the tool and also how to change the orientation of the text.

This short tutorial, shows you how to use the Vertical Type Tool in Photoshop and how to rotate the Vertical text using the Character Palette menu.

1. Open an image file. I'm using a portrait shaped picture of two boats.


2. Choose the Vertical Type tool from the tool box.
   
   
   
   Select any font you like, preferably something that looks quite heavy, choose a large size and set the anti-aliasing to strong. It's also a good idea to use capital letters when you're working with Vertical Type because each letter is the same height and therefore there won't be large gaps between the bottom of one letter and the top of the next letter.( I selected Arial Black, size 72)
   


3. Type some text onto your image.
   
   Your typing will appear vertically on the screen.
   
   
   
   Click on any tool on the toolbox to commit the type OR click on the Commit Any Current Edits button () on the Options tool bar to commit the type.
   

Change the orientation of text by 90 degrees with the Character Palette

1. Select the Vertical Type Tool again and highlight the words you have typed on your image.


2. Choose Window > Character to open up the Character palette menu
   
   
   


3. Click on the small triangle in the upper right corner of the Character palette menu and then click on Standard Vertical Roman Alignment. (It will initially have a check mark beside it indicating that the option is selected).
   
   
   
   When you release the mouse button, the text will change direction.
   

Illustrator: Quick Tip - Rotating

When you're using the Rotate tool (R), you might find that when your mouse is too close to the rotate bounding box, that you're getting strange results. To gain more control over rotation, move your mouse cursor a little bit away from the bounding box and you should find you have more control over its positioning.

Photoshop & Illustrator : Quick Tip - Get more from your Zoom

It's important when you are editing an image in Photoshop or Illustrator that you can zoom in (to work on a pixel by pixel basis if necessary) and then zoom out again to see how your changes look. To speed up your workflow enormously, try using keyboard shorcuts rather than clicking on the Zoom tool in the tool box or using the View menu.

Here are some keyboard shortcuts to try:

• To quickly view your image at 100%, double-click the zoom tool in the toolbox.
  
• With any tool selected, press Ctrl and + (Windows) or Cmd and + (Mac) to zoom in, or press Ctrl and – or Cmd and – to zoom out.
  
• Press Ctrl+spacebar (Windows) or Cmd+spacebar (Mac) to temporarily select the Zoom In tool from the keyboard. When you're finished zooming, release the keys to return to the tool you were last using.
  
• Press Alt+spacebar (Windows) or Option-spacebar (Mac) to temporarily select the Zoom Out tool from the keyboard. When you're finished zooming, release the keys to return to the tool you were last using.
  
• Hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac) to change the Zoom In tool to the Zoom Out tool.
  

Design: Most Commonly Used File Formats in Digital Design

When you are creating designs digitally, you will come across many file formats. Here’s a brief explanation of what they all mean.

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
Probably the most common of all file formats. It is used extensively on the web for photographic images. It has a small file size and can be good quality, but the downside is that it’s a “lossy” format – quality is lost when image compression is used to decrease file size. Repeated editing of JPEG’s results in a softening of the image and loss of detail. JPEG format supports CMYK, RGB, and grayscale colour modes.

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)
Again, this is a very popular format for web graphics. It is limited to 256 colours (8 bit palette). They are more suited for images such as logos or images using blocks of colour. They do not work well with photographic images but their advantage is that they use lossless data compression, thus reducing the file size is possible without a large loss of quality.

PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
Often pronounced “PING”, this is probably the third most popular file format for web graphics. It uses a lossless data compression method known as deflation. Like the GIF format, images can be edited without many of the problems linked with “lossy” file formats.

TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)
This format produces excellent results and offers “lossless” compression. However the problem with TIFF’s is that they produce a very large file size. Some digital cameras are now shooting TIFF files, which are favoured over JPEGs by professional photographers. This format is often used when sending artwork to printers. TIFF is a flexible bitmap image format supported by virtually all paint, image-editing, and page-layout applications.

EPS (Encapsulated PostScript)
This format is closely associated with desktop publishing programs. EPS files can contain both vector and bitmap graphics and is supported by virtually all graphic, illustration, and page-layout programs. When you open an EPS file containing vector graphics created in another application, Photoshop rasterizes the file, converting the vector graphics to pixels.

PDF (Portable Document Format)
This is used widely both for print and internet distribution. It is a flexible, cross-platform, cross-application file format. PDFs are device independent and resolution independent. PDF files accurately display and preserve fonts, page layouts, and both vector and bitmap graphics. In addition, PDF files can contain hyperlinks and even sound and video.

PSD (Photoshop Document)
This is the native file format of Photoshop. PSD is the default file format for newly created images inside Photoshop and the only format supporting all available image modes (Bitmap, Grayscale, Duotone, Indexed Color, RGB, CMYK, Lab, and Multichannel), guides, alpha channels, spot channels, and layers (including adjustment layers, type layers, and layer effects).

AI (Adobe Illustrator)
This is the native file format of Adobe Illustrator.

INDD (InDesign Document)
The native file format of Adobe InDesign.

Photoshop: Quick Tip - Smart Objects

Smart Objects are a new Photoshop CS2 feature. They allow you to perform non-destructive transformations (scaling, rotating, warping) of raster and vector graphics. You can select a layer and turn it into a “smart object”. This allows you to shrink and then enlarge a graphic without any loss of quality. Normally when you shrink a graphic, it is virtually impossible to return it to its previous size with losing quality. By creating a smart object you can “tag” a layer and it becomes immune to the damage caused by resampling and resizing.

To turn a layer into a smart object, highlight the layer and choose Layer > Smart Objects > Group Into Smart Objects. An icon will appear in the Layers palette indicating that the layer has changed.



This new feature seems to be somewhat overlooked but I think it’s a great time saver and gives you some of the advantages you’d have working with vector files.

Photoshop: Tutorial - Spot Healing Brush

Using the Spot Healing Brush tool is a great way to quickly get rid of zits, blemishes and other imperfections from photos. It's a new feature in Photoshop CS2 and it works by painting with sampled pixels from an image or pattern and matches the texture, lighting, transparency, and shading of the sampled pixels to the pixels being healed. The Spot Healing Brush doesn't require you to specify a sample spot, you simply click where you want to remove a spot and it automatically samples from around the retouched area. It is absolutely incredible.

In this example I'm using the Spot Healing Brush to remove some orange spots from a butterfly’s wing.

1. In the toolbox, select the Spot Healing Brush tool (J).
   
   
   
   
2. On the tool options bar, click the Brush pop-up menu and make the brush larger, about 32 pixels and set the hardness to 25%.
   
3. Using the Spot Healing Brush, click once over the orange spot at the top of the butterfly’s wing. When you press down with the mouse, the shape of the brush will appear black or dark grey

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Once you release the mouse button, the area will be “healed” and the spot will disappear.

Here I've used the Spot Healing Brush to remove all four orange spots on the butterfly.

Photoshop: Tutorial - Removing Red Eye in CS2

The Red Eye tool in Photoshop CS2 removes red eye in flash photos of people and white or green reflections in flash photos of animals. It's incredibly quick and easy to use.

1. Open an image of a person with red eye.

2. Select the Red Eye tool from the toolbox.



3. Click in the red eye area on the image. The eye should change to a dark pupil.



If it doesn’t work out as you expected, set one or both of the following options in and click in the red eye area again:

• Pupil Size sets the size of the pupil (dark center of the eye).
• Darken Pupil Sets the darkness of the pupil.

Severe Red Eye
Even when the red eye is severe, Photoshop still does a good job of removing it. Occasionally it will make the person look like they have cataracts but generally it's a huge improvement.



Even when the red eye problem is reminiscent of The Terminator, as in this photo, it still does a good job. The results can be seen below.

Design Inspiration : Photoshop in Action - Greg Apodca

This site has some great before and after images of work done using Photoshop. Greg Apodaca is a digital artist in California who does some wonderful work as digital image retoucher. The portfolio includes many examples using rollovers which allow you to view the image before Greg works his magic and the results afterwards.

Illustrator: Quick Tip - Using the Effect Gallery

When you are trying out different effects in Illustrator CS2, the Effect Gallery is a great way to see all the various effects using one dialog box instead of going up and down through the Effect menu to preview each one individually. It's also a great place for playing.

The effects gallery lets you apply Photoshop-like effects to your paths and bitmaps. Effects will ONLY work in RGB mode.

To use it choose Effect > Effect Gallery.