Make Vector Splashes
Get all Jackson Pollock and make a splash -- literally. Then use Photoshop and Illustrator's easy Live Trace feature to bring your art into the digital world.
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Review: Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional
Even with so many applications exporting decent PDF files, Adobe has pumped just enough new features and online services into
Acrobat 9 to keep it useful, and perhaps even compelling.
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Add Strokes to Placed Images in Illustrator
Because placed images in Illustrators aren't vector shapes, you have to know these insider tricks if you want to apply a stroke, or keyline, around the images.
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Photoshop Smart Objects Mean
Never Having to Say You're Sorry
How many times have you made an edit or applied a filter in Photoshop, only to realize later that your "improvement" destroyed pixels you needed? After you read this how-to, you'll never be in that pickle again.
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Photoshop Fundamentals:
Create a Comic Book Effect
In this tutorial, you’ll give a regular color photo a comic book effect by using the Threshold adjustment layer to convert it to a high-contrast, black-and-white image and generate an outline. You’ll also use a variety of tools, including Burn, Brush and Magic Wand.
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Creating a Layered Threshold Effect in Photoshop
Using the Threshold command in Adobe Photoshop can create a neat one-color effect. A full-color photo can be turned into a black outline. This technique involves creating a different shade of color to four different layers, all increasing levels of threshold.
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Give Your Tables Some Style!
Like paragraph, character, and object styles, table styles gives you the flexibility of defining a consistent look and feel across the tables in your documents.
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How to Cool a Hot Photo
When your photo can't be changed, surround it with cool color.
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Photoshop CS3:
Get Your First Look at the Beta!
While pigs aren't flying and hell hasn't frozen over, Adobe has released a free beta of Photoshop CS3 publicly (kinda), months and months before the final version ships. Read our take on the new features.
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The Best Brochure Fonts
Learn how to choose and use the right typeface for a brochure, flyer, or small booklet.
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Think Outside the Font Box
Some typefaces are only for text and some are only for display, right? Not necessarily. Follow these tips and you'll be able to extend your type library.
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Color Legibility:
Designing With Warm and Cool Colors
When warm and cool colors are juxtaposed on a 2-D surface, be it print-based, interactive, or any other 2-D surface, a 3-D illusion is created. This illusion can also be utilized in a 3-D environment in order to enhance the dimensionality of the surroundings. This dramatically affects the design options for architecture, and for packaging, industrial, landscape, interior, and textile design. The environments in which we live shape this color illusion.
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Duotones and Photographic Reproduction
Single-color halftone reproductions of photographs don’t fully imitate the tonal range of a black-and-white photographic print. Blacks and whites are sacrificed and turned gray in order to hold detail in both the shadows and highlights. Duotone, tritone, and quadtone reproduction allows for up to four printing plates and ink colors to be used to print a black-and-white photograph.
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Master InDesign's Tabs and Tables
We live in a world of lists: the Top Ten this, the 100 greatest that, 50 ways to leave your lover. Tabs and tables are invaluable tools when it comes to working with anything list-like -- from a simple bullet list to a complex financial table.
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The Reality of Resizing:
Changing Image Resolution Without Changing Quality
Possibly one of the most confusing aspects of dealing with digital imagery is resolution-specifically, what it really is and how changing it affects an image. You'd be shocked at the number of brilliant designers who don't know how to change an image from 72 dpi to 300 dpi-without turning it into a pile of pixel mush. That is, until now.
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Setting Up An Efficient Photoshop Workspace
Photoshop has so many different work areas and tools that it can become confusing, or even intimidating, to use Photoshop in a production environment. Fact is, there are only three particular zones or areas that you really need to become familiar with: Tools, Menus, and Palettes. Setting up your workspace for efficient production will create a more pleasing experience, allowing you to focus on the main objective: getting your work done.
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Slanted Communication
Italics can either help designers communicate or get in the way. Using them correctly separates the pro from the amateur, so read this primer if you don't want to look like a design beginner.
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How To Map Artwork
onto 3D Objects with Illustrator
Using Illustrator symbols, you can map artwork onto 3D objects you create. Here's how!
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Eliminating Image Banding in Photoshop
When banding occurs in images, it can be mistaken for posterization, but it’s more complex than that. Banding is caused by the failure of an algorithm during an image conversion, such as switching to a new color mode. If too many near-identical image tones spread out farther than its computational area, the algorithm can fail, and the conversion may produce tonal edges called bands. To eliminate banding, use the Add Noise filter to add pixel variation to adjacent tones.
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Photoshop How-To: Very Special Special Effects
Photoshop's Displace filter moves around the pixels of one layer to make it look as if they're following the curves or texture of the layer below. The image on the bottom layer is called a "displacement map." In this tutorial, I'll teach you in plain English what you need to know about displacement maps so you can take advantage of the stunning effects that can be created only by using these maps.
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Reduce PDF File Size
Distributing documents as Adobe® PDF files can reduce the problems that may occur when you exchange large presentation or page-layout files. In many cases, you can make your Adobe PDF file even more compact without compromising the document's integrity. The PDF Optimizer in Adobe Acrobat® 7.0 Professional gives you easy access to several options that can help you reduce the file’s size, including compression options that are comparable to the ones available when you create an original Adobe PDF file by using Adobe Acrobat.
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Filter Basics in Photoshop
Let’s take a look at some key strategies to using filters in general—then you can explore the wonderful world of filters on your own.
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Photoshop Fundamentals: Customizing Brushes
It’s time for a little brush-up on Photoshop customizing. Photoshop allows you to create your own brush if you feel the set of default brushes lacks a certain style. Possibly the most common type of customizing is to modify brush size. In the Brush palette, you can specify Size, Angle, and Roundness of Jitter under Shape Dynamics. The term ‘jitter’ indicates an effect with no specific pattern to add randomness.
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Magnetic Lasso Tool Selection
Techniques in Photoshop
Does it seem like the Magnetic Lasso tool loses its way around the simplest selection? Surprisingly, just setting an anchor point or varying the tool size can get this tool on track again. Once you understand the value of the tool’s options and use a few keyboard shortcuts, the Magnetic Lasso will actually become a real time-saver.
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Making Wraps Sing
One of the most important things about any layout program is how it handles the interaction of text and graphics.
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Illustrator How-To:
Create Collages with Blending Modes
When you create a digital collage, you don't always have to do it in Photoshop. All you need is a program that supports transparency, blending modes, and masks. Adobe Illustrator fills that bill -- in fact, when text and vector graphics are important parts of your composition, Illustrator can be a better choice.
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Paper Tips: Uncoated Speaks Softer
If you've been using only coated paper for your designs, you've been missing out on a whole world of choices. Take another look at uncoated paper.
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Quick Tips for Acrobat 7
Acrobat isn't as complex as some other Adobe apps ([cough] Photoshop [cough]) but you've got to admit that Acrobat is getting deeper with every version! That's why we've compiled a bevy of quick tips to give you back control.
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Commercial Printing with Microsoft Publisher
Yes, it's possible to produce press-ready files from Microsoft Publisher. We'll help you sidestep the snags.
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Creating Image Composites
in Photoshop with Smart Objects
When making a composite, anything you can do to edit nondestructively keeps you out of trouble when making changes later. What layer masks do for editing, Smart Objects do for transformations.
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Sharpen Photos Smartly
What's the best time to sharpen your photos? And what's the best tool -- Camera Raw, Photoshop's Smart Sharpen, or something else? We answer these questions and more.
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Photoshop Tips: Burning Questions Answered
Learn how to export layers to individual files, create an image with a transparent background, and remove red eye painlessly.
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Controlling Type with Nested Styles
In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at how to use nested styles to generate some of the most popular text formatting looks used in many magazines and books on the market today.
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Getting the Most Out of Your Paintbrush Tool
Illustrator’s Art Brush is truly a multiple use tool. Sure you can choose from calligraphic or hand-drawn brush effects, but don’t stop there. Found under Window>Brush Libraries (or from the Brushes palette’s flyout menu) are Arrows, Artistic, Decorative, and Border brush styles, too. Illustrator also lets you create your own brush and save it with the other brush presets. But even though the Art Brush looks like a brush and acts like a brush, beneath those bristly edges hides a one-stroke image tool.
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InDesign How-to: Fill Type with Artwork
Last week, we showed you how to fill text with images in QuarkXPress. This week, it's InDesign's turn.
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Fill Type with Artwork in QuarkXPress
How would you fill type with artwork or imagery? Would you do it in Photoshop or Illustrator? If the artwork-filled type is going to end up in a QuarkXPress layout, why worry about transparency, clipping path, or image preview issues? Instead, you can fill the type
directly within XPress.
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Photoshop Fundamentals:
Discover Gradient Layer Masks
The gradient layer mask is one of my secret weapons. This is one of the most popular techniques used by graphic design pros, and is often seen in movie poster design. Even beginners can create professional results by mastering this process.
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Getting Started with Actions
Mention actions to many Photoshop users and they either don’t know what an action is, think actions are only useful for major projects, or they tried making one and had a “bad experience.” We’ll attempt to dispel any fears as we look at creating an action.
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Working With Transparency
Everybody’s doing it (or wants to). So what are you waiting for? The water’s fine—c’mon in. Although InDesign is the only page-layout app to support transparency to date, transparency is not a new concept. You’ve been working with transparency since Photoshop 3. The only difference is that when it came to print, you flattened that transparency BEFORE bringing it into your page-layout app. While this flattened workflow of the past still works, it’s not the most convenient use of your time.
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When Vector Meets Photo
Mixing vector and photo is one of the hottest trends in the illustration industry today. We’ve seen this effect used in national ad campaigns from Anheuser-Busch to Hawaiian Tropic. In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at how to create this effect in Illustrator.
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I See iPod People
If you're crazy about those iPod ads and want to make one yourself, it's actually pretty easy. The first thing you'll need is an image of someone that you can extract from the background without too much work.
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Image Editing With
Photoshop CS2's Spot Healing Brush
When your image has a major flaw that can’t be masked or cropped, the new Spot Healing Brush tool in Photoshop CS2 will paint away entire foreground elements and replace them with interpolated background data—all with just a few swipes of the brush.
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Brochures That Get Noticed
You don't need metallic inks or tricky die-cuts to create a brochure everyone wants to pick up. Just offset the folds and work a little design magic. It's easy -- we even give you templates!
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Synchronizing Color
Across Adobe CS2 Applications with Bridge
When Color Settings are different in Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator, these applications will have disjointed and often confusing color behavior. Choosing the right settings and synchronizing across all Adobe CS2 applications is important in managing your sanity and getting consistent results.
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Adobe's "Digital Negative" File Format
Adobe Systems, Inc. is on a crusade. The company wants to unify the concept of the "Raw" file format. Taking the lead (and for now, at least, going it alone), Adobe has rolled out a brand new version of Raw, one it hopes will be adopted by all camera manufacturers. Here's a look at the new "digital negative," the .dng file format.
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Transition Environments in Photoshop
Robert Carter shows how to use a gradient and the Lighting Effects filter to move smoothly between two images.
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Make Type and Photos Play Nice
When text and images are battling for the same space, you don't have to give up one or the other. Here are practical techniques for bringing the two together.
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Removing Things in Perspective
Before Photoshop CS2’s introduction of the Vanishing Point filter, cloning away things in perspective was one of the hardest removal tasks of all. Luckily, this incredibly cool filter not only simplifies removing things in perspective, it actually makes it fun. In fact, this is one of those filters that’s so amazing, you can wind up spending hours cloning away things that have no business being cloned away.
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Brand-New Tool in CS2
The new LiveTrace feature in Adobe Illustrator CS2 is an incredible timesaver for illustrators -- and a gift for those of us whose drawing skills are sub par. Here's how to quickly and effectively convert a photographic image into a stylized vector drawing.
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Creating Silhouette Illustrations in Photoshop
Silhouette illustration is a trend in today’s design community that has become very popular. This form of illustration is focused on using and extracting the most basic forms of an object and turning them into art. It can be seen everywhere from Web graphics, Flash movies, and magazine ads, to full-blown TV ads. Although simple, silhouette illustration can reduce an object to its most simplistic form and still convey an emotion, style, and energy with little actual color and definition.
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Using the Lens Correction Filter
in Photoshop CS2
The Lens Correction filter in Photoshop CS2 is truly amazing, being able to repair all kinds of distortions. Not only can it remedy the bulging created by a wide-angle lens and the weird distortion created by taking a photo too close to a subject – such as the bulging nose of a friend – but it can also straighten images taken at angles and make them appear as if they were shot straight on.
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Design How-to: A Better Newsletter
Before & After magazine is renowned for its practical yet beautiful advice on laying out pages. This excerpt from the book "Before & After Page Design" is no exception. Here's all you need to know -- from the basics to the refined detail -- to design successful newsletters.
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Using Photoshop to Create a 3D Look
The following tutorial can be completed by anyone who is familiar with Photoshop. You don't have to be an artist and only Photoshop's basic tools have been used. No tablet or digital pen is required.
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Make a Logo Flow in Illustrator
When does 1 + 1 + 1 -1 = 1 great image? When you use the Subtract from shape area command in Illustrator CS's Pathfinder Palette. It all adds up in this how-to drawn from a real-life logo design.
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Design How-to: Endless Pattern Possibilities
Just one simple step-and-repeat technique is all you need to create striking background patterns perfect for the covers of books, annual reports, brochures -- you name it.
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Color Picker Versatility
The vast majority of the time, the vast majority of us use Photoshop's Color Picker in the default configuration. Perhaps we use Custom Colors to select a spot color, but when using the Color Picker itself, we ignore the eight optional modes. (What? You didn't know that the Color Picker has different modes?)
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Confused Over Brightness and Whiteness?
Ever wonder why your printed pieces are not popping like you planned? Maybe you're choosing the wrong paper brightness or whiteness. Did you know there's a difference?
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Create a Color Scheme Using
Grayscale Tonal Ranges in Photoshop
Grayscale images, desaturated process color images, over-saturated RGB images…they never seem to mix well in a project. One way to tie a group of disparate images together is to create an overall color scheme by applying specific colors to different points on a Grayscale tonal range. It sounds complicated, but it’s easier than you think!
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Illustrator How to Wow!
Going Negative with the Opacity Mask
When does negative become a positive? When you apply Illustrator's opacity mask. In this exclusive preview from the new and revised "Adobe Illustrator CS WOW! Book," to be published by Peachpit Press, see how to add an antique effect to type using this hidden feature.
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Lens Blur with Alpha Channels
It's an effect every photographer appreciates from time to time: showing a sharply focused subject against a blurry, out-of-focus background. Instead of playing with aperture settings, you can achieve similar results using Photoshop CS's Lens Blur filter. Here's how.
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Mysteries of Unsharp Mask
What's one of the very last things we do to an image before sending it to print or to the web? We sharpen it. What tool do we use? The Unsharp Mask filter, of course. Anybody know why? I didn't, until I did a little investigating in the world of sharpening. In fact, I learned that the filter is named for a technique employed by professional astronomers for years to enhance fine detail and image structure that would otherwise be hidden by a standard processing method. How cool is that?!
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Design a Calendar for Every Occasion
Electronic organizers are a great way to manage your calendars—when what interests you is data. But to tell a story, present a product or stir a memory, you’ll want a good, old-fashioned paper calendar—the kind with the beautiful picture and an appealing design. A good calendar will be kept and used. It’s a great way to bring people together—get your group on the same page, so to speak.
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Using Metadata in the File Browser
Wouldn’t it be nice to describe a photo just once in a way that can easily be shared and understood? Using metadata in Adobe® Photoshop® CS, you can do just that. Metadata communicates information about your images, such as the date they were taken or the resolution of the images. You can also add metadata to include information that helps you organize and find your photos. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to work with metadata, including adding and editing metadata, how to create a metadata template to copyright your photos, and how metadata is used in the File Browser.
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InDesign CS Tips: Creating Layout Standards
Few things are as tedious as numbering pages by hand. That's why page-layout applications have master pages -- only one of the ways in which you can standardize the look of your documents in InDesign. Here's what you need to know about master pages, templates, and libraries.
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Format Type with Character and Paragraph Styles
For more than a decade, Adobe® Illustrator® has set the standard for typographical excellence. Now, Illustrator CS introduces character and paragraph styles to help you ensure consistent text formatting. Whether you’re formatting entire paragraphs or shorter type segments, character and paragraph styles save you time by letting you to apply formatting attributes with a single click. Follow along and learn how to put character and paragraph styles to work for you.
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Designing Text to Flow Around Objects
Wrapping text around objects—from basic shapes or frames to images with clipping paths—can give any publication a unique look and feel. In this tutorial, you’ll learn several ways to work with text wrap in Adobe InDesign® to achieve the look you want.
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Design a Name
Here's how to create a good look out of nothing – just a name on a shape – but there's a secret.
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Get the Most Out of OpenType Fonts
Adobe® Illustrator® CS ships with 83 OpenType fonts (in 24 font families). These OpenType fonts include expanded character sets that allow you to substitute one version of a letter form for another. Depending on the font, alternate characters can include ligatures, fractions, titling characters, swashes, ornaments, ordinals, contextual and stylistic alternatives, superior and inferior characters, and old-style figures. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to view and apply several kinds of alternate characters.
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InDesign How-To:Applying Paragraph Formatting
You'd expect InDesign's paragraph-formatting features to give you precise control over text alignment, indents, tabs, line-spacing, and so on. But InDesign CS ups the ante by providing expert features like nested styles and multi-line composition.
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Mastering Clipping Groups in Photoshop
Clipping groups are an underused and interesting effect, although just the words "clipping groups" sends fear down the spines of novice and intermediate Photoshop users alike. The concept is really not as hard as it sounds.
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Softproofing PDFs with Acrobat's Preflight Tools
Even as PDF is becoming a preferred format for final delivery of print-ready files, many creative professionals experience the technical glitches that can arise in this relatively unfamiliar workflow. That's why Adobe built preflight tools into Acrobat 6 Professional. Here's how to spot common errors.
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Photoshop Tips:
Increasing Image Resolution to Make Large Prints
Making images is easy. Printing them at the right size at the right resolution is tricky. If you don't have access to a multi-megapixel camera, is it still possible to make large prints that don't suffer from the degradation caused by increasing image size? Yes, it is.
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Making Two Ends Meet
When half the image is blown out and the other half falls in deep shadow, typical correction methods don't work. Photoshop CS's Shadow/Highlight command helps, but for maximum flexibility, try a blur and a blend.
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InDesign CS Tips: Working with Pages
Creating a document in Adobe InDesign isn't that dissimilar from doing so in other page-layout applications. But InDesign differs somewhat in how you add, remove, rearrange, and number pages.
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Explaining "Image Resolution" & View>Print Size
Here's a different way to consider the term "image resolution." It's nothing more than an instruction to a printing device about how large to replicate each pixel.
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Illustrator CS - 3D Effects and Wireframes
A Wireframe effect outlines the contours of an object but leaves each surface transparent. Since the tech boom in the late 1990’s, Wireframe effects have been extremely popular and synonymous with technology. However, creating these effects usually involved the use of a 3D modeling program. It was possible to fake this effect in Illustrator but, as with many “faked” effects, the results are usually unpredictable and not top quality. Illustrator CS has changed all of that with 3D effects though. You can now reduce any 3D object you create to a wireframed object. In this exercise, you will learn, not only how to accomplish this, but a highly used technique for incorporating wireframe objects with other artwork
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Using Illustrator CS's 3D Tool
This week, we're going to use Illustrator CS's 3D tools to create a beach ball. This is one of my favoriate new features in Illustrator CS and is worth the upgrade price by itself.
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InDesign How-To: Creating Tables
Tables are one of the most powerful features in Adobe InDesign CS, allowing you to make complex, sophisticated-looking tables quickly and easily. And you don't have to be an Excel wiz to do it! Olav Martin Kvern and David Blatner show you how.
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A Quick Color Quiz
With 16.7 million unique colors to choose from on your monitor, it's likely that you've overlooked the primary colors that in combination are responsible for all these colors. Let's take a trip back to school and review the basic colors from which all others are derived.
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Photoshop How-To: Weaving Layer Content
Artwork that's on separate layers doesn't have to appear as a simple stack. Here's how to weave layered elements together.
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Share and Share Alike
From Photoshop to Illustrator (Part 3)
With the introduction of Adobe Creative Suite, you can easily move artwork from Photoshop into Illustrator -- and continue to edit it in the illustration application. Here's how to transfer Photoshop art into Illustrator along with how to find everything once it's there.
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The Art and Type Tango
You buy them separately, but art and type are two sides of the same coin—and there’s magic in making them work together! Here’s how they relate.
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Design How-To: Mixing Ink Tints
When do two ink colors equal millions? When they're combined into tints. See how you can expand your palette -- and maximize your budget -- by mixing ink tints.
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Adding Contrast with Color Complements
Contrast is one of the most important factors in color quality, and optimizing contrast is one of the first steps in color correction. But first, it's important to distinguish between two kinds of contrast – brightness contrast, such as the overall contrast between the highlights and shadows in an image and color contrast, the sometimes significant difference between adjacent hues, especially complementary hues.
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Advanced Color Correction with Levels
This technique is a contrast/tone and color correction technique all in one. Once you run through this, you will see how just about any image can be improved and you will use this technique many times over.
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Printing Separations in Color
It's easy to see individual channels in color in Photoshop's Channels palette--simply select "Color Channels in Color" in Preferences> Display & Cursors. But what if you want to print the channels in color, say as samples for a screenprinter? That takes a few more steps.
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Ten Ways to Tame a Long Name
Short, perky names are preferable to long, but what if you’re stuck with a whopper? A short name is a designer’s delight. Time. Life. Vogue. A short name has punch; it’s easy to read and easy to say. It’s easy to design, too; a short name can fit any space, any style, and wear any color. A long name, on the other hand, is an octopus. It sprawls. It crowds the space, dominates the graphics, and controls the look of a page. A long name has no natural focal point. It swamps typographic detail. It is a many-tenacled challenge.
Here’s what you can do:
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Moving Custom Bits & Pieces to Photoshop CS
You've recorded a lot of custom Actions in Photoshop 7. You're a fiend for a good layer style and have collected dozens and dozens of them. You make a custom brush for just about every job you do. And you don't want to have to start over now that you've upgraded to Photoshop CS. Not a problem! Most of your Actions and all of your layer styles should work just fine in Photoshop CS. You just need to get them over there.
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Dragging and Dropping into InDesign CS
Using the Place command is the usual means of putting text and graphics into an InDesign layout. Cutting and pasting via the Clipboard is another tried and true method. But did you know that you can drag and drop text and graphics from many popular applications directly into InDesign? Here's how.
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Controlling Layer Blending Modes
Using layer blending modes is a quick and easy way to composite images. Copy one image over the other and change the upper layer's blending mode and/or opacity, and you've got a great image! But you can finesse the appearance of the composite by using multiple blending modes.
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Understanding the Zen of the Pen
Illustrator can be a maddening program to learn, and even those who have mastered the application may struggle with it at times. What's required is entering what author Sharon Steuer calls the "Zen of Illustrator" in which working with Beziers and control points becomes second nature.
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Making Natural Color Schemes for Your Graphics
Sometimes it's difficult to come up with a bright, interesting color scheme for original art which looks "natural". This article will give you a technique for creating your own set (or palette) of natural colors.
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Creative Suite How-To:Collaborating on a Project
with Illustrator, Photoshop, and Version Cue
You're doing layout on PC, your artist is editing images on a Mac, and now you have to coordinate your work. Which file is the current one? What change did you make to that file anyway? In this story, see how Adobe's Version Cue makes sense of the madness.
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InDesign How-To:
Using PageMaker Templates for a Corporate ID
With the PageMaker Plug-in Pack that now ships with InDesign CS, Adobe provided several handy templates for a variety of design solutions. See how to create a corporate identity with a hand from the design firm of Gee+Chung.
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How to Build Artwork in 3D Relief
We used Macromedia FreeHand to create this article, but similar results can be achieved with Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW or another vector-based illustration application.
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A Few Preconceived Notions about Type
Arial? All Caps? Small Margins? John Berry explodes a few common ideas about how to use type.
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Packing Up InDesign Layouts for GoLive Pages
With the Creative Suite, Adobe application integration has never been tighter, especially between InDesign CS and GoLive CS. See how you can turn an InDesign layout into a GoLive Web site in a few steps.
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See-Through! Make Your Type Translucent
Nothing marries words to image more beautifully than transparency, which Adobe’s three big programs can achieve in one click. The transparency function is the same in Illustrator, Photoshop and In-Design — and so simple! Select any image (type, photo, object), change its Opacity, and just like that you can see through it! Atop a dark photo, white is the most neutral color choice, and our favorite, because it doesn’t add anything. Different amounts of opacity yield different amounts of see-through.
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InDesign How-To:
Adding Custom Sizes to the Page Menu
Of course making custom page sizes if nothing new. But here's a handy InDesign CS trick for adding those custom page sizes to your Page menu so you can call it up at anytime.
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Creative Thinking in Photoshop:
Using Layer Comps to Create Variations
Layers in Photoshop let you work with different image elements. Layer Comps in Photoshop CS, on the other hand, let you experiment with different compositions. Sharon Steuer shows how this powerful tool can unleash your creativity.
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Restoring Photos with Photoshop CS: Part 2
Adding Missing Elements
Often in old photographs, large areas have been scratched beyond recognition or are missing completely. Based on the severity of the problem, you'll have to decide the best approach to restoration. In many cases, Photoshop's tools and commands can be combined to remedy these problems, but some parts of photographs might be too damaged to restore. If, for example, the face of a person is missing from an image, I recommend that you avoid trying to paint it back in, because this will prove to be a virtually impossible task to accomplish with any credibility. A better approach might be to composite the face from another photograph or, if that's not possible, fill the area with neutral gray.
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Restoring Photos with Photoshop CS: Part 1
Since the introduction of the box camera by Kodak in the late nineteenth century, photography has become a popular pastime, practiced by countless people. If your attic is anything like mine, there are no doubt hundreds of photographs sitting in envelopes or boxes that haven't been looked at for years. We don't throw these images away because they are valuable to us and are part of our legacy. Many of these images are of relatives who have passed on and are the only living reminder we have of their lives.
Unfortunately, few of us have the time or money to create an environmentally safe archive for the original images, and so, with the passing of time, many of these photographs remain neglected and begin to fade or collect dust, scratches, and abrasions. This series of extracts is about restoring those long-neglected pictures
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A Beautiful Abstract in Two Clicks
In the old days, posters were made by hand and generally silkscreened onto paper or board. To do this efficiently meant that an image could have only a few flat colors, not the unlimited gradients of a photograph. This limitation resulted in a lot of innovative artwork—bold images that were often stylized or abstract, and visually arresting. Photoshop’s Posterize feature is designed to mimic the flat colors of the silkscreened poster. It does this by reducing a photograph’s many gradients to just a few. The key to an excellent result, however, is to first apply a Gaussian Blur, then Posterize the blurred image.
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Best Practices for Page Layouts
Page-layout applications let you perform miracles. But you'll undermine its derring-do if you ignore simple mistakes like using unnamed colors or keeping a cluttered pasteboard. Here's a good reminder about what to do and not to do when making pages.
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Anti-Aliasing and Resampling Artwork - Part 2
In the first part of this series, you took a look at anti-aliasing from the standpoint of how it works and what it can mean to the refinement of your artwork. This month, let's examine exactly how anti-aliasing works (hint: it's interpolation).
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Anti-Aliasing and Resampling Artwork - Part 1
Anti-Aliasing. It's a fair enough topic for beginners and it's not a bad read for those of us who've been around the pixel once or twice.
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Ten Type Tips: Part 2
In the last episode, tips for creating fonts, using fonts, arranging fonts, and holding the door open for fonts when they are carrying large packages, were discussed. Ready for some more?
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Ten Type Tips: Part 1
In two installments, I'm going to arm you with ten indispensable tips about the art of typography, not only to make you an ace designer, but also to help revive the art of typography by spreading some traditional guidelines for type use out to the internet and into the next magazine layout you create.
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Adding Color to Black & White Images
in Photoshop 7
There are quite a few tutorials online dealing with removing color from images to gain crisp black and white versions. I've written a few myself. The thought occurred to me this morning that there really isn't much that I've seen showing how to add realistic color to a black and white image. This takes some time, patience and a bit of savvy, using tool and blending mode combinations, but it can produce some very realistic results. I'll be showing you how to colorize an image in Photoshop 7, but you should be able to replicate the effects in earlier versions or other image editing applications.
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How to Make a Duotone
The invention of the halftone in 1883 was a technical and artistic miracle. Ink, which previously had been applied in solid sheets, could now be printed in tiny dots that the eye perceived as shades of gray. The result was an illusion of dimension that made the printed photograph possible and changed the way the world communicates.

But the modern halftone could use some improvement. Shades of gray are no match for the sheer variety in our natural color spectrum. Contrasts of hue, saturation and intensity, for example, do not even exist in black and white. What the halftone could use is greater tonal range.

To achieve this, a duotone is made of two halftones, not just one, and printed in two inks.
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Working with Layers in Photoshop 7, Part 1
To understand Layer Sets, you first need to understand Photoshop layers. Photoshop layers can hold non-transparent designs or photographic elements held in place by transparency all around, so you can see the non-transparent contents of a layer underneath.
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Sharpening, Blurring, and LAB
Digital photography often is excessively noisy. It turns out that this digital noise is often color only. It can best be attacked in the space that separates color from contrast—the same one that's also often best for unsharp masking.
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Hyphenation
The difference between “just okay” typography and professional-level typography is usually in the details – like hyphenation. Often overlooked, proper hyphenation is essential for optimum readability and getting your message across.
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Making PDF/X Files in Acrobat 6 Professional
PDF files can wear many hats, depending if your final destination is print output, onscreen viewing, or Web download. While that versatility is what makes the PDF format so popular, it can also lead to file-preparation nightmares. The PDF/X standard was created to help head off common prepress mistakes like missing fonts and incorrect color. Yet how to make PDF/X files isn't a well-known practice outside the professional prepress community.That's about to change with the inclusion of and support for the PDF/X standard in Adobe Acrobat 6 Professional.
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Design Inside the Box
Applying borders to a layout is an art form, one that has sadly been abused in this era of automatic frames and rules. Thankfully, examples of elegant ornate borders do exist, as Gene Gable shows. In this installment: Gene pieces together how borders are constructed, or how to frame an issue.
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Top Ten Digital Photography Tips
The truth is that you can make great photos with a simple consumer point-and-shoot camera, or take lousy shots with the most expensive Nikon. It's not the camera that makes beautiful images; it's the photographer. With a little knowledge and a willingness to make an adjustment here and there, you can squeeze big time photos out of the smallest digicam.
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Thoughts on a Sharpening Workflow
Sharpening is a critical step in digital imaging, yet few of us are satisfied with the results. Using research he conducted for a commercial sharpening product, Bruce Fraser argues for a new approach to sharpening that's based on three imaging phases: capture, creative, and output.
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Jolt your Thinking on the Purpose, Design,
and Delivery of Business Cards
The business card--many of us use it more than any other single marketing item, yet it very often demonstrates the least marketing smarts. A conventional card includes a logo and some basic information--the name of the organization, the name of the employee, their title, phone numbers, and street address. What can you do to make your business card generate business? That requires a little "jolt thinking."
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Better Selecting in Adobe Illustrator
Selecting objects in a complex Illustrator file can sometimes be frustrating. George Penston shares his favorite techniques for homing in quickly on just the objects you need.
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Acrobat How-To: Compression Session
Converting graphic files to PDF with Adobe Acrobat is a great way to reduce file size and minimize network and printer overhead. But are you squeezing out every last drop of data? Here's how to use Adobe Acrobat Distiller to optimize PDF file size.
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The Artist's Palette of LAB
Need to pep up some lifeless colors, to eliminate a gross cast, or to make a sunset suitably brilliant? LAB techniques can make these things happen, and they're surprisingly easy to use. Often, a straight line is all you need.
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Adobe photoshop CS:
The New Color Replacement Tool
Among the many new features of Adobe Photoshop CS is the Color Replacement tool. You'll find this tool nested with the Healing Brush and Patch tool in the Toolbox. In it's most basic form, it applies the foreground color while you paint, while retaining the pixels' original lightness values.
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Acrobat Tips: Fonts Can Make or Break PDFs
Acrobat's intelligent font substitution is a godsend for office documents, but it can be a nightmare in situations where font fidelity is important. If you're a graphic designer, then you need to know how to work with fonts in PDFs.
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InDesign Tips: Making the Most of Rulers and Guides
Using rulers and guides is so engrained in the design process that most of us take them for granted. But Adobe InDesign has a slew of guides- and ruler-related features that are worth uncovering. Here are 11 of them. For entire article, click here

Typography Basics: Typeface Classifications
To create a good typographic layout, you need to know when to use and when not to use different styles of type. It is, therefore, important to understand the differences between typeface classifications. Typefaces are classified by appearance and most fit into one or more of the categories listed in this guide.
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Font Fatigue: Pruning Excess Fonts in Mac OS X
Managing your font libraries in Mac OS X is a multi-step process. The first of these was knowing where to look. The second, covered here, is getting rid of duplicates and stashing them in places where they can do no harm. OS X-transition consultant Chuck Weger shows you how.
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Font Fatigue: How Fonts Really Work In Mac OSX
You've heard the stories about the font boogeyman in the closet of Mac OS X, but as with all urban computer legends, most of what you hear isn't true. In this first part of a series on font management in OS X, Chuck Weger confirms some tales and dispels some falsehoods.
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Acrobat Tips: Graphics in PDFs
Ever wonder why the graphics in some PDFs look better than others? PlanetPDF shows you how to create the best-quality PDF artwork, from saving files from your graphics application to setting up Acrobat preferences.
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Graphics File Formats
Why you should care about graphics file formats, the difference between vectors and bitmaps, and the common formats and software used to edit them.
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Mastering InDesign's Master Pages
Learning the ins and outs of InDesign's master pages may not bring you inner peace, but it could save you countless headaches .
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Seven Principles of Typographic Contrast
In a seminal booklet that he both designed and wrote, Carl Dair showed how in typography, as in music, harmony and contrast are the keys to composition.
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Essentials of Photoshop Color Correction:
Highlights and Shadows
The key to correcting color images in Photoshop lies in understanding basics like how to set highlights and shadows. From these tonal ranges the rest of the image falls into place...."
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Duotone vs. Multichannel, Round 2
In the first installment of this series, we looked at duotone color mode, how it works, and how you can control it. Now let's explore the multichannel color mode, a mode designed for storage of masks and for specialized printing...."
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Duotone vs. Multichannel, Round 1
A great way to save on your printing costs is to use two inks instead of four. You can also produce some incredibly striking images, and some cool effects, for print, Web, and artistic purposes. But which color mode is right for your project, Duotone or Multichannel?
Let's do a comparison...."
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Acrobat Tips: Applying Custom Distiller Settings
If you use Acrobat Distiller to create PDF files, then you've probably made custom settings. This overlooked feature of Adobe Distiller will add efficiency and accuracy to your PDF production...."
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Introducing Photoshop 7's Brushes Palette
The key to using Photoshop's new painting engine is the new, high-powered Brushes palette. Let's take a look at the basic workings of the palette...." for entire article, click here"

Essentials of Photoshop Color Correction: Curves
Mastering Curves is a cornerstone of color correcting images in Photoshop. Learn the logic of curves and how to make them work for you...." for entire article, click here"

The Creative Toolbox: Back in Time
Discovering the Power of Photoshop's History Brush
In the movie "Back to the Future" Doc Brown builds a time machine out of a DeLorean. Of course, calamity ensues and Doc's friend Marty McFly ends up back in time. Marty's visit to the past inadvertently ends up having an impact on his future. He then must find a way to put everything back to how it was before he ever showed up.

Sound confusing? Time travel stories usually end up this way. And it's probably one of the reasons Photoshop users steer clear of the History Brush as well. Although the tool does not truly cause temporal paradoxes to occur a la Back to the Future, it does allow you to go back in time (so to speak) and paint back a previous state of your Photoshop document. Sound powerful? Well, much like a time machine, it can be if used in the right way...." for entire article, click here"

Design Basics: Increasing Image Impact
Want to make the mundane look magnificent? Transform ordinary pictures into images with impact through cropping, colorizing, sharpening, and other tricks of the trade. Here are the top techniques for adding punch to pictures in your layout...." for entire article, click here"

Design Basics: Using White Space
By incorporating white space into a layout you let text and graphics breathe. As a result your piece will be more meaningful to the reader. Here's how to add white space to your design using Adobe PageMaker...." for entire article, click here"

Design How-To: Using the Color Wheel to Find
The Right Match
Your choice of color palette can change the intent and impact of an image. The folks at the design magazine "Before & After" show you how to find the perfect colors to complement your photos and create harmonious designs...." for entire article, click here"

InDesign Tips: Replacing Gradient Swatches and
Improving EPS Previews
Adobe InDesign 2.0 works seamlessly with its cousin Illustrator. It even borrows some of the drawing program's features, such as the ability to replace color swatches in a gradient fill. Here are two quick tips that let you tap into InDesign's Illustrator-like capabilities...." for entire article, click here"

How To Get Spot Color In A Process Color Print Job
When printing a four color job all colors are created by mixing only four basic colors of inks - cyan, magenta, yellow and black. One of the advantages of using spot color is that areas of solid color (such as those for text and line art) will appear crisp and distinct. In process color print jobs, these areas will often appear fuzzy and indistinct. This is because all the colors in a four-color job have to be mixed from the four process color inks (cyan, magenta, yellow and black). Anything less than 100 percent of any one ink will be rendered as halftones. Halftones are composed of tiny dots of ink. These tiny dots are the cause of the fuzziness.

If you want a crisp appearance of text and line art in a four-color job, you can either make it a five-color or six-color job and use a spot colors in combination with the four process color inks, or you can work around this limitation by using variations of the cyan, magenta and yellow color inks which use 100 percent of each ink...." for entire article, click here"

Bit by Bit: Why Your Photoshop Color
Separations Are Wrong -- and How to Fix Them
For many years now, Adobe Photoshop has been capable of producing accurate color separations. The question is: accurate for what? Many Photoshop users produce color separations using the wrong settings. Brian P. Lawler says it's time to SWOP out one profile for another...." for entire article, click here"

SEYBOLD REPORT Acrobat 6:
Long-Awaited Features for Professional Publishers
A new version of Acrobat introduces internal color separation, layer technology, preflight checking and comprehensive support for PDF/X. Although it has features galore for other markets, too, publishers will find it a boon to their production workflows...." for entire article, click here"

Controlling Line Breaks With the Hyphenation
Penalty Slider
Adobe InDesign 2.0 introduced a new feature that you can use to fine tune the way lines break in any given paragraph. You’ll find the hyphenation penalty slider in InDesign’s hyphenation dialog box. This document is meant to serve as an introduction to this feature so that you’ll understand exactly how it works and how you can use it to control the way your lines break within paragraphs...." for entire article, click here"

Using Guides Effectively
Adobe InDesign 2 has some incredible features that aren't found in any other page-layout application and that's why so many designers are migrating to it. What's often overlooked, however, are the cool, subtle, yet powerful features for everyday production work.

Take Guides for example: We've have been pulling Ruler Guides into our documents since the days of PageMaker 1.0. It's become second nature so we don't even think about it any more. Every designer at one point or another has to lay out business cards and InDesign has a very cool Create Guides feature...." for entire article, click here"

Photoshop Tips: Make Your Own Document Presets
This little tip could save you hours of production time. If you regularly create Photoshop documents at custom sizes and resolutions, you may be tired of re-entering those values every time you start a new file. You can add your custom settings to Photoshop's new document Presets pop-up menu. Here's how...." for entire article, click here"

Customizing Transparency Flattener Styles
When you print transparent artwork from Adobe® InDesign® 2.0—or export it to a format other than Adobe PDF 1.4 (Acrobat 5.0)—the artwork is “flattened”. That is, InDesign cuts transparent artwork into multiple pieces, some that remain vector objects and some that become rasterized areas. Using transparency flattener styles, you can optimize the way InDesign prints transparent artwork to get the best results...." for entire article, click here"

The Form and Function of Folds
Folds are as important to your brochure design as illustrations, typefaces, and color. A smart layout heightens the drama with which your message is revealed to the reader.
 
How do you do it?...." for entire article, click here"

The Creative Toolbox: Share and Share Alike
'Twixt Illustrator to Photoshop (Part 2)
Illustrator and Photoshop are like characters in a digital Patty Duke show: They act alike, but they're different as night and day. Still, these cousins are quite a pair that work together seamlessly. In this sequel to an earlier story, learn how to transfer compound shapes and image maps from Illustrator into Photoshop...." for entire article, click here"

Add Pizzazz To Your Text With OpenType Fonts
Jazz up any document with the latest in font technology—OpenType fonts. These fonts are smart: they apply high-end typograpy features just where you want them. They’re also flexible: the same font files work with either Mac OS or Windows operating systems. In this tip, we show you how to access all that OpenType fonts have to offer when you work in Adobe® InDesign® 2.0...." for entire article, click here"

Acrobat Tips: Insert text anywhere on page using
TouchUp Tool
While the TouchUp Text and Object tools are useful for small edits in Acrobat 5, there is an additional, lesser-known function that can at times come in handy when you want to quickly add a note (a short piece of text) to a particular area on the page...." for entire article, click here"

Illustrator Tips: Exporting Print-and Web-Ready PDFs
Adobe Acrobat isn't the only application for making PDF files. You can also make PDFs in Adobe Illustrator, although the resulting file won't be as robust as that created in Acrobat. Here's how to get the best results from Illustrator's PDF features...." for entire article, click here"

Acrobat Tips: Creating Prepress-Ready PDF Files
Preparing pieces for output these days often means distilling them as PDF files. If your usual mode is to simply "Save as PDF" out of your current application, you may not be getting the best possible results available to you. Straight from the source, here some important things to know about creating PDF files and using Acrobat Distiller...." for entire article, click here"

Multiple Image Picture Packages
Photoshop 7's Picture Package feature enables you to easily print multiple images on a single sheet of paper. In addition to printing multiple copies of the same image, you can print different images on one page with Picture Package...." for entire article, click here"

InDesign How-To:
Creating and Printing Transparencies
In this transparency two-fer, learn how to create transparent effects in InDesign using the Transparency Palette. Then learn how to use InDesign's transparency flattener styles to make good-looking output, whether in print or onscreen...." for entire article, click here"

Photoshop How-To:
The Power of Hue and Saturation Adjustment
Photoshop's Hue and Saturation controls are tools that help with color correction, but they can also be used to create special photographic effects. In this tutorial, learn how to affect the color of an entire image or just one element in a larger composition...." for entire article, click here"

QuarkXPress How-To:
Add Dashing Design to Lines and Frames
Adding interesting borders to boxes and unique styles to stripes gives a page layout a distinctive look. QuarkXPress ships with a large library of dashes and lines, but it's easy and fun to make your own. Here's how...." for entire article, click here"

Color Guidelines for Business Presentations
Although the means of delivering business presentations and support material has changed in recent years, the basic rules for utilizing color have not. And today, with improved technology for delivering accurate and unlimited color choices, it is even more critical to apply them. Used correctly, color can reduce error of interpretation, identify salient features, trigger associations and highlight trends. Studies show that visual color images help the presenter convince an audience, encourage involvement, peak and maintain interest levels while improving understanding and memory retention...." for entire article, click here"

Unlocking the Hidden Power of the Photoshop Crop Tool
We all use the crop tool, but do you know its hidden power?...." for entire article, click here"

Illustrator Tips:
Organizing Colors and Palettes
Mixing up colors in Illustrator is lots of fun -- that is, until you spend precious time digging through swatches to find just the right variation of the color you specc'd much earlier in the project. In this story learn how an Illustrator pro organizes her colors and creates custom color charts...." for entire article, click here"

InDesign How-To:
Creating Sophisticated Drop Shadows
Once a hallmark of Desktop Publishing 101, drop shadows have gained respectability, thanks to today's sophisticated shadow effects. But the process of applying them has been clunky at best. See how InDesign 2.0 simplifies incorporating drop shadows into your layout...." for entire article, click here"

Illustrator How-To:
Turn Bitmap Images into Vector Art
Transforming the jagged edges of raster images into the smooth curves of vector art isn't hard to do using Adobe Illustrator's Auto Trace feature. But the end result can look simplistic. For more sophisticated images, you'll need additional help from Illustrator's path-editing tools and from your image editing application. Here's what you need to do...." for entire article, click here"

For Position Only: OS X Font Foibles
In this second of two parts about migrating to Mac OS X, we learn that finding fonts is only half the battle to managing them. Anita Dennis shares her hard-won tips for working with fonts in Jaguar...." for entire article, click here"

For Position Only: Stumbling Toward Mac OS X
In this first of two parts, we learn just how disruptive it is to business when upgrading an operating system and hardware platform simultaneously, especially when you don't have your own IT department...." for entire article, click here"

Acrobat How-To: Using Overprint Preview for Soft-Proofing
Before you commit that file to an expensive print process, try soft-proofing your PDF file. Adobe Acrobat's overprint preview lets you see the most-minute details of your print job before it's too late. Here's how...." for entire article, click here"

Find/Change Power Techniques in XPress and InDesign
If you think that Find/Change commands in page-layout programs are just a step above word processing, think again. The replace controls in QuarkXPress and InDesign, when used in conjunction with style sheets, can streamline production in ways you didn't think possible...." for entire article, click here"

Understanding Channels In Photoshop-Part Two
When you make a selection mask in Photoshop, the mask is an 8-bit grayscale image. When you save a selection in the file, Photoshop has to put it somewhere, so it is stored as a channel...." for the conclusion of this article, click here"

Understanding Channels In Photoshop-Part One
An image is basically a "channel sandwich" with one channel each for red, green and blue in an RGB image or cyan, magenta, yellow and black in a CMYK image. There would be 3 channels in an RGB image and 4 in a CMYK image to start with...." for entire article, click here"

InDesign How-To: Using OpenType
OpenType fonts give page designers greater typographic flexibility than ever before. Now with a new onslaught of OpenType fonts coming onto the scene and with support for the format built into Adobe InDesign 2.0, it's a good time to learn how to use them in your page layout...." for entire article, click here"

Out of Gamut: Don't Underestimate Photoshop's Auto Color
Imaging professionals tend to veer away from Photoshop's overly simplistic automatic color-correction tools. But version 7's Auto Color mode is a horse of a different color, if you know how to use it. Color guru Bruce Fraser shows you how...." for entire article, click here"

The Creative Toolbox: Share and Share Alike with Illustrator and Photoshop
By now we know that sibling applications Illustrator and Photoshop are designed to work together, but do you know the best way to export Illustrator files to Photoshop? Part one of a two-part how-to gives you an overview of the steps necessary to move your Illustrator files into Photoshop with all their coolness intact...." for entire article, click here"

Replacing the Preferences File
Few things can be as big a headache as a misbehaving Photoshop. Thankfully, replacing Photoshop's preferences file can do wonders when the program is acting up. Think of it as "Photoshop Aspirin." Here's how to do it, and a tip that makes it easy to do regularly....." for entire article, click here"

Combine objects into editable compounds
Adobe® Illustrator® 10 adds new support for compounds, making it easier to build intricate designs by combining simple shapes. Now, when you use the Pathfinder palette to create compound shapes, the original objects remain fully editable. Making modifications—whether you’re editing the individual paths or including new elements in the compound—is easier than ever before....." for entire article, click here"

Real World Tips for QuarkXPress 5: Ready for Output
Collect for output is a godsend for professional publishers who prepare files for printing in QuarkXPress. Version 5 adds some new capabilities to this essential feature...." for entire article, click here"

QuarkXPress How-To: Working with the Bézier and Freehand Tools
The ability to draw Bezier curves has been in QuarkXPress since version 4, but many layout artists still use a dedicated drawing program for even the simplest shapes. There's no need, once you learn the ins and outs of drawing in QuarkXPress...." for entire article, click here"

Working with Spot Color Channels in Photoshop
Spot colors can be used with CMYK or Multichannel documents intended for print to add additional colors, create "bump plates," and to control varnishes. They can add a bunch to your printing bill. Or they can reduce your print costs - think about using black and a single spot color for some projects...." for entire article, click here"

Designing a distinctive table
When you’re working with complex data, a table may be your best option. Often, a logical series of rows and columns can communicate more clearly than paragraphs. Adobe® InDesign® 2.0 introduces a robust table feature that makes it easy to line up those rows and columns—and to format them in striking ways. Here we show you how you can make an easy-to-read table while using the graphical power of InDesign to integrate it into the style of your document...." for entire article, click here"

Real World Tips for QuarkXPress 5
Type is the lifeblood of a page layout, but font management can give you a heart attack. This week's QuarkXPress tips include working with fonts under OS X Classic mode and doing global font replacement the David Blatner way...." for entire article, click here"

Photoshop How-To: Quick-and-Easy Collages
There are many ways to make composite images in Photoshop, but using layers is your best bet. Here's how to craft a digital collage with layers, layer masks, and other collage-specific effects...." for entire article, click here"

Acrobat How-To: Using Comments Effectively
The PDF format is an efficient and compact way to send design comps around for review, but comments from scores of reviewers can be difficult to manage. In this step-by-step from Adobe's Acrobat team, learn how to export comments from one file...." for entire article, click here"

Everything You Wanted to Know about Sharpening in Photoshop but Were Afraid to Ask
It's a sad but undeniable fact of life: Whether you scan, shoot, or capture, the process of digitizing images introduces softness, and to get great-looking results, you'll need to sharpen the great majority of digital images...." for entire article, click here"

dot-font: Putting OpenType Through its Paces
As Adobe converts its type library to OpenType format, and other foundries follow suit, how does switching over affect the workflow of design and production? Here's one experience...." for entire article, click here"

Using Clipping Paths In Photoshop®
A clipping path is a vector path which allows part of an image to show while hiding the rest (usually its background) effectively rendering part of the image transparent. A clipping path in an image editing program is functionally equivalent to a mask in an illustration program...." for entire article, click here"

Quick Tip: Layers in Adobe PageMaker
Adobe PageMaker Using layers creatively Adobe PageMaker 7.0 includes a powerful Layers tool with countless applications. We'll show you three in this quick tutorial: multiple versions, quick arrangement of layers from top to bottom and layered communication with "stick-on" notes...." for entire article, click here"

Photoshop 7.0: Top-7 Tips & Tricks
So by now, you've probably heard all about the major features of Photoshop 7.0. You've been awed by the Healing Brush and Patch tool, impressed with the File Browser and Painting engine, thrilled with the enhancements to Liquify and the ability to easily create seamless pattern with the Pattern Maker. Not to mention the ability to define tool presets and workspaces, automatically correct color and publish images to both print and web with terrific ease. You're no doubt speechless. Well, the reality is that, as with any new version of Photoshop, there are far more features than you'll find on the box. You just know the Photoshop engineers have adjusted and tweaked, honed and shuffled. But wait, how can you possibly learn them all before your next major deadline? Simple...." for entire article, click here"

Every Picture Tells a Story
A woman stands up in a crowded city council meeting and reads the research. "We recently asked a random sampling of 250 citizens how often they use the new toll road. Five percent say they use it four or more times a week, eight percent say they use it one to three times a week, 12 percent say..." and continues on. The point she would eventually get to, could have been stated in a simple declarative sentence, in half the time, with twice the effect: "We completed some eye-opening research this week--over one third of the people in the city don't use the new toll road because they can't afford it!" The same is true on paper. Instead of getting mired in statistical detail, you can make your point with a simple, declarative image--an information graphic...." for entire article, click here"

Type on the Tarmac
Anyone can dump a message on top of their artwork. Why not make it visually interesting? Incorporate your text into the design itself. Make use of unusual textures in your images...." for entire article, click here"

Color Theory Basics Part 4 - Undercolor Removal & Gray Component Replacement
Under Color Removal UCR and Gray Component Replacement GCR are techniques used for making color separations work better in the printing process...." for entire article, click here"

Color Theory Basics Part 3-
Key Color Imaging Terms
In practice, color images and portions of color spaces are often described by three terms: Color professional typically use, (1) neutral gray (neutrality), (2) tone reproduction (contrast), and (3) color correction (hues of an image)...." for entire article, click here"

Color Theory Basics Part 2-Creating Black with CMY & K
In the color separation process the Black Printer is used to cover up impurities of the CMY inks. Theoretically when Yellow, Magenta & Cyan are added together they create Black. These colors of printed ink are supposed to subtract out all the white light on the paper and leave only black. Unfortunately in the real world it does not work this way...." for entire article, click here

Color Theory Basics - Additive and Subtractive Color
"Color is a sensory perception and can be identified and explained in a variety of ways. Businesses like printers use the tri-stimulus color theory as the basis for explaining the phenomenon of color in imaging applications...." for entire article, click here

Photoshop 7's Improved Type Capabilities
"Photoshop 7 adds several major new capabilities, such as the File Browser, the Healing Brush, and Tool Presets. But you'll be quite pleased with some long-awaited improvements in the type department...." for entire article, click here

Photoshop 7's Tool Presets
"What if Photoshop had a separate tool for every variation of every option? Photoshop 7 offers the convenience of pre-set tools without the clutter of a giant Toolbox..." for entire article, click here

Don't forget layer blending to Perk up B&W Clip...
"Too many times we receive black and white art (whether clip art or otherwise) to use in a color publication -- but we don't have time to colorize or rebuild the art..." for entire article, click here

Build complex designs quickly with symbols
"Symbols may have been developed to keep file sizes small, but with Adobe® Illustrator® 10, they’re the building blocks for exciting and intricate designs. You can turn any graphic element into a symbol. Then use duplicates of the symbol to build repeating patterns, or apply the symbolism tools to manipulate the duplicates interactively..." for entire article, click here

Add Depth of Field to Perk up Dull Photos
"The life of a designer is often complicated by customer supplied photos. Many times there's little you can do to save them. One rule you can always count on is..." for entire article, click here

Newsletter Design Clinic: 3 Cs
"Have you ever looked at a newsletter — yours or someone else's — and couldn't quite put your finger on what was wrong? The key is good design..." for entire article, click here

The Blending Modes, Part 4
"The second and third parts of this series looked at the standard blending modes available for layers and painting tools (and a number of commands). We'll close out the series with a discussion of the "other" blending modes, Behind, Clear, Add, and Subtract..." for entire article, click here

The Blending Modes, Part 3
In the previous installment of this series we began a look at the specific layer blending modes and how they affect various color combinations. Let's finish up the list...." for entire article, click here

The Blending Modes, Part 2
When two or more colors overlap in an image you can get one of two results. The top color can block the lower color or the two colors can interact. Photoshop's blending modes allow us to control the interaction....." for entire article, click here

The Blending Modes, Part 1
"Want to win some bets at Photoshop World? Ask your buddy to name all of Photoshop's blending modes. Odds are, he or she won't know all 21 of them....." for entire article, click here

When Image is Everything
"The Internet's major attraction, apart from information shared among authors, scientists, government agencies, and businesses, is its rich offerings in terms of sounds and graphics. Although looking at the original...." for entire article, click here

Things you need to do to get great digital color!
"If you do nothing else, you need to profile your display. What you see on screen is inaccurate unless the way in which your display produces color is known....." for entire article, click here

Photoshop Selections and Masks, Part 2
"Selections and masks are used to isolate parts of an image for editing. Masks offer far more flexibility and creative power than simple selections...." for entire article, click here

Photoshop Selections and Masks, Part 1 "Using masks rather than the selection tools is somewhat like working in grayscale instead of bitmap mode. Masks offer much finer control of how filters, effects, and colors are applied..." for entire article, click here

Creating an Isometric Package in Adobe® Illustrator® "The word "isometric" is just a fancy way of saying "same length". When you create an isometric package design, you start with flat panels, then skew them using the transformational tools in Illustrator..." for entire article, click here

Limited to two colors? It may be an opportunity in disguise "Try two-color printing with duotones to enhance your concepts, create mood, and save a buck or two. It's a great alternative to full-color printing..." for entire article, click here

How do we see color? " The human eye and brain together translate light into color. Light receptors within the eye transmit messages to the brain, which produces the familiar sensations of color..." for entire article, click here

Wrapping a Graphic "'tis the season to think about wrapping. Not just presents for Christmas, Chanukah, and Kwanzaa, but wrapping graphics on design elements as well..." for entire article, click here

Embedding QuickTime on the Web "Here are six easy steps to loading a QuickTime movie on your web site. Plus some options to change the way the movie appears and plays..." for entire article, click here

Typefaces: Open your eyes and listen "Of the hundreds of typography books I've read, I've gleaned hundreds of different opinions but no 'simple' solutions. Only one hits the bull's eye -- Jan White, author of Editing by Design, said: Open your eyes and listen..." for entire article, click here

The Creative Toolbox: Photoshop Cosmetology "We know: Every client is beautiful. But your subjects will be better-looking still with a little subtle touch-up work. George Penston reveals how to retouch your less-than-perfect headshot with a few simple steps..." for entire article, click here

Layer Navigation made easy "Lightning fast Layer Navigation in Photoshop courtesy of Eyewire..." for entire article, click here

What can we do to make it look better? "Sometimes the most simple techniques can really dress up your publication. One of the most popular sections of the Creative Layout Techniques workshop is on “Typography”. Today, let’s take a look at yet another of our “101 things you can do with Type..." for entire article, click here

The mysteries of Photoshop's Magic Wand "The principle behind Photoshop's Magic Wand tool is simple: You click in an image, you make a selection. But did you know there are hidden features in the Magic Wand, nowhere to be found in the Magic Wand Options palette, that can give you widely varying results..." for entire article, click here

Tips for Type "Adobe gives 5 useful tips for spicing up your documents..." for entire article, click here

Contrast Fast: Photo Retouching with Burn and Sponge in Adobe Photoshop "Challenge: You have to drop a light-colored or white graphic (in this example, the EyeWire masthead) on an image with a lot of bright highlights. How do you make sure the graphic doesn't get lost in the background..." for entire article, click here

Out of Gamut: Five Cheap Tricks in Photoshop 6 "With Photoshop you can never be too fast or too smart. Bruce Fraser reveals his five favorite image-editing tips for novices and experts alike..." for entire article, click here

The Digital Dish: Kill the Widows and Orphans! "It's a sad thing to see lines and words abandoned by their surrounding paragraphs in page layouts. Sandee Cohen advises killing these lonely orphans and widows with kindness..." for entire article, click here

Getting Started with Photoshop Plug-Ins "HELP!! I have looked everywhere for BASIC information on how to access a "plug in" from within the PhotoShop filter menu without any success! I just want to know how to download and use a flippin' plug in!!!..." for entire article, click here

Simple Shape Secrets in Illustrator "Find out about shortcuts for drawing in Illustrator...." for entire article, click here

How to use noise in computer art and photo-retouching "Noise is a very important filter for the computer artist and photo retoucher. Noise Can Be Used To:
- 1 Simulate and replace film grain
- 2 Add a natural sparkle to skin
- 3 Prevent gradients from banding when printed..." for entire article, click here

Good Hair Day "TUTORIAL: Maintaining fine hair details when cropping images..." for entire article, click here

Selecting Color to be Transparent in Photoshop 6 "Hello, Do you know how I can make a background transparent by choosing the whole color?  For example, you know how you can change any color to a different color in any part of an image by using the REPLACE COLOR command (Image>Adjust>Replace Color).  Well, can you choose what you want to be transparent by similar means..." for entire article, click here

A Client's Guide to Design "If you represent a corporation, institution, advertising agency, investor or public relations firm, or individual in need of graphic design, you've landed exactly where you need to be. Welcome..." for entire article, click here

Everything you ever wanted to know about dpi, ppi, and lpi! Adobe® gives an introduction to digital halftones and the importance of resolution "Desktop publishing and PostScript technology have opened a way to reproduce images digitally..." for entire article, click here

Photoshop Tip of the Week: "After a brief inspection of these flowers here, it seems there is nothing one could do to make this photo [flower1] any better. However it is a perfect candidate for colorizing the petals and B&W (grayscale) the rest...." for entire article, click here

Inside QuarkXPress: Working with Embedded Paths "It isn't really a big deal that QuarkXPress can read the embedded paths of imported images--most design applications are capable of that. Not so common, though, is a desktop publishing application having the ability to create and edit simple paths..." for entire article, click here

Trapping? Dangerous Subject "What is 'Trapping' all about?..." for entire article, click here

Fonts: A Tale of Two Systems "Although Macs and Windows PCs handle fonts in fundamentally similar ways, there are some key differences. But first, let's look at their similarities..." for entire article, click here

Out of Gamut: Color geek extraordinaire Bruce Fraser gets to the bottom of rendering intents, and when to use each to get the best results "Choosing the right rendering intent in Photoshop and other applications is important if you want accurate, predictable color..." for entire article, click here

The vocabulary of color "An understanding of color terms and standards lends to consistently pleasing color. The management of color in the graphic arts is a critical issue for any format, whether it be PDF, PostScript, or other..." for entire article, click here

dot-font: New Fonts for the Web "Adapting typefaces from print to the screen is a thankless task, but we all benefit from the results...." for entire article, click here

Adobe explains basic color theory and how it relates to desktop publishing "Reproducing consistent color can be the most difficult part of the design and production process. Yet it's often something that gets taken for granted until a proof or the final output reveals that you didn't get the colors you expected..." for entire article, click here

Scanning 101: An article on how to preserve image quality and how to avoid moiré patterns when scanning previously printed images. "In your career as a graphics pro, sooner or later you'll encounter a moiré (pronounced moa-ray) pattern..." for entire article, click here

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