In this external tutorial Steve Patterson demonstrates how to use dual views while editing in Photoshop to zoom in closely for working on file detials while seeing the effects in real time on an image viewed at 100% or smaller.
Jul 242012
At one time or another, every designer will run into the problem: A client sends in a file that is bad – so bad that words don’t quite do it justice.
An image that’s too light or too dark? Often, we can work with that. What do you do though, when the image is too small? When there’s simply not enough detail to enlarge it to say, 400% or 500% and even when you try, the compression applied to their “cell phone image” is so bad that enlarging actually increases the problem?
While you’ll never get a great image out of such a file, there’s still something that can be done to improve them and sometimes, you may even surprise yourself with what you can do to one of these “hopeless” images.
Jul 242012
In the right hands, the Background Eraser tool in Photoshop can work magic. Unfortunately, its settings can be very confusing and when not understood, cause the tool to produce poor results. This tutorial by Steve Patterson will walk you through all the details on how to get the most from this amazing but often over-looked resource in Photoshop.
Jul 202012
InDesign offers two automatic kerning methods:
- The Metrics setting calculates letter combinations of commonly kerned pairs found in the font itself. Some of these are: LA, P., To, Tr, Ta, Tu, Te, Ty, Wa, WA, We, Wo, Ya, and Yo. This is InDesign’s default setting.
- The Optical setting considers the composed shapes of the characters and applies kerning to even out spacing.
To see the difference between the two methods view the video tutorial attached.
Jul 202012
The Indent to Here command, cmd+\, is extremely useful at Valpak because so many bulleted lists are created on coupons and flyers.
Jul 182012
That are over 20 scripts that ship with InDesign. Automating some of the more arduous tasks, like rearranging a list in alpha order.
Normally when working in InDesign, placing .ai files should work exactly the same as placing any other file. On rare occasions, though, you may experience an issue where when sized to fit, the artwork or logo appears very small with a lot of empty space. This is because InDesign is cropping to the artboard (that white rectangle you see when you start a new document) rather than to the artwork. This article will discuss how to fix this issue.
Jul 142012
This tutorial is intended for franchise artists that wish to protect their files from being tampered with from their clients.For example, a PDF may contain high resolution and stock imagery that the franchise artist does not wish their client to have access to or “steal” from their PDF.
Jul 142012
It is best to split your PDFs into separate files when providing them to Valpak.
For example, “MariosPizza_Page1.pdf” and “MariosPizza_Page2.pdf”.
Jul 112012
Listed are a few of the more used Typography default keyboard shortcuts + video tutorial from Creative Sweet TV [8:47]
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• Font Sizes & Leading |
• Change Keyboard Increments |
• Forced Line Break |
• Baseline Shift |
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• Tracking & Kerning |
• Right Indent Tab |
• Text Frame Alignments |
• Indent to Here |
Jul 112012
Cheryl Graham reveals the time saving advantages of using appearance attributes through the appearance panel for the Adobe® Creative® Suite Learning Center.
Jul 112012
The Paste Into, Cmd+Ctrl–V, function allows taking an existing graphic or grouped graphics and pasting into a frame, which can create a masking effect.
Jul 112012
The smart guides feature in InDesign helps you precisely place, size, and rotate objects as you work with them by popping up alignment indicators as you work. Video Tutorial: 04:05
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Terry White of Adobe Creative Suite demonstrates how to place multiple images quickly. He also discusses one of the more powerful collaboration features in InDesign. The ability to place InDesign documents inside of other InDesign documents. Place the document(s) already designed or designed by others in your new document as a solo image without the need to rebuild.
Jul 112012
Review RC Concepcion’s video tutorial covering:
1. InDesign’s ability to automatically translate different units of measurement.
2. Selecting & cycling through images.
3. Proportionately drag and drop images in perfect alignment using Smart Guides.
4. Autofit CS5 when resizing frames and images.
Jul 112012
The Eyedropper tool is used to copy type attributes such as character, paragraph, fill, and stroke settings, and then apply those attributes to other type or objects.
Jul 112012
CS5 and later versions of InDesign allow you to include a headline across a columned text frame and add multiple columns to a single column text frame.
Terry White’s podcast demonstrates a method of removing a complicated background from an image using edge detection features.
Jul 092012
Jul 062012
Gradient feather – Fade an object into the background by applying a mask. Apply a linear or radial gradient, adjust the rate of change across the gradient, and edit the angle of a linear gradient.
In this tutorial by Derek Burgress with Vector Tuts, you’ll learn how to use Styles when formatting type in InDesign to improve both your speed and consistency in design.
Adobe’s Creative Suite of applications are capable of creating some truly jaw dropping designs. Unfortunately though, when they’re acting up, the frustration felt trying to get them to work can be equally jaw dropping. In this post, I’ll reveal a quick little tip for fixing many such problems.
In this tutorial from Vector Tuts, Lucian Marin discusses the use of Hidden Characters, Glyphs, Superscript, Special Characters and more.
Jul 032012
A great free online resource for editing your own images can be found at pixlr.com. There, you can check your image sizes and make adjustments before uploading the files to Valpak. The following videos will give you a walk-through of some of the most common edits required when preparing images for Business Profile Pages. Continue reading »
Jul 022012
Unfortunately Photoshop CS5 and versions below do not offer a simple solution to “Crop” to a fixed aspect ratio without affected the DPI of the image. However there is a very simple workaround using the rectangle selection tool.
Jul 012012
There are times you may receive a PDF from a client that contains security restrictions, therefore you cannot edit the PDF. It is best if you can have the client provide you a new PDF without security restrictions. However, if you are having no success with that and you need to remove security settings, this free online utility works rather well.
