Posts Tagged ‘lesson’
Pen Tool [p] and Fignütts : no#3 : Symbols of Power! (ghugga ghugga ghhaaaaan)
Posted on: January 29, 2010
Pen Tool [p] and Fignütts : no#2 : Illustrator Revolve Tool To Evolve You
Posted on: November 24, 2009
Introducing a new form of education tool. This will be a series of helpful tips for software / design etc that I’ll continue until I get the correct legal documents or bribe needed to stop it…
I am starting off with an easy one…
Pen Tool [p] and Fignütts : no#1 : DYI Illustrator Patterns Rated R (for Really mature designers over the age of 18 will hate this)
Custom brushes in Illustrator in the time it takes you to leave the toilet seat up
Posted on: September 24, 2009
Bam! You have got exactly point three of a second to make a custom brush in illustrator!
Make a splotch, a scribble even scan in your favourite pet and vectorize it… then just select it and throw it onto the bushes palette… it’ll ask you what kinda brush choose New Art Brush on a whim and then bam! (thats two bams in one post) you have your own brush…
You can use this in many many ways… go explore.. scan in some scribbles, ink splotches, spray paint, crayons, whateva… Trace them in illustrator…Enjoy…
Hello boys and girls, today we are going to rap / rant about Photoshop Droplets…
What are they? … what aren’t they?! Imagine a photoshop action that;
instead of loading up the files in photoshop and then clicking on the action…
You set up the droplet (and have it maybe on your desktop or in a folder) and you just drag and drop files onto it and then it opens photoshop and does it all for you… very cool…
The Droplet function has got some pretty complex commands you can play with from saving files names, to doing your personal taxes… I won’t go into too much detail as that would take all day (and i have a day job….still)
How to set up a Droplet:
Make up a action (for instance: adjusting light levels, resizing and making a sad looking photo frame on a bunch of woefully lame family photos)
Go peruse File\Automate\Create Droplet
This will bring up a dialog box where you can select your action to execute when you drop stuff onto your droplet…
You can suppress all the opening questions etc too which can be handy…
Play around with all the features… just make sure you don’t save over your original files or photos…
Now go and drag entire folders of yawn fodder onto the droplet icon and enjoy super automatic lazy action!
- Note: this is a handy thing to set up for family members who are technophobic etc but want to set up stuff for there Facebook (etc) page… It’s easier to tell them to drop files onto a icon than tell them to open Photoshop and then do ‘this’ and then ‘that’ and then “re-save” it etc blah blah…
Enjoy…
Pantones in Illustrator
Posted on: September 22, 2009
Pantone spot colours in Illustrator can be as illusive as…(insert favorite similie here… you can add your fav metaphore if you want but people will yell abuse at you for being wrong)
If you need spot colours in Illustrator it can be a bit of a mission to find them…
Here is how i do it:
From your Swatches palette click on the mystical icon of the arrow and three lines (its obviously Aztec…) and head to the bottom of the list it brings up hover over Open Swatch Library
and then choose Colour Books and woopah they should be staring at you with that startled “how did you ever find us?! quick collapse charlie tunnel!” look…
Enjoy…
Got Indesign?
Got frequent work with clients with a lot of fiddly adverts that chop and change a lot meaning you have to open multiple versions (I’m sure we used that star burst in last weeks ad?) and cut and paste etc?
Well here is a little tip that if used creatively could help you out and make you look like some kinda Graphic Design Ninja…
Now focus on this… I can feel your mind wandering… (It’s been like more than four lines and this freak hasn’t even got to the point… GET TO FREAKIN’ THE POINT MAN….)
In Indesign you can make libraries of objects text, whole ads etc even random groups of crap… using a well hidden libraries file…
Goto FILE > NEW > LIBRARY
This will open a panel (just like a library in flash etc) which lets you grab groups of content and throw it into it like a digital cork board…
You can name this content, give it a description, even search for it etc…
Then when it’s needed you can just drag and drop it onto the page..woo!
You can make multiple libraries and open multiple libraries at once, these can be saved like a normal file and saved to any place.
The libraries can be viewed as thumbnails or as descriptive lists… Libraries will probably remove the necessity of having huge layered files with alternatives and different graphics etc. They may even bring a new dawn to humanity and remove the need for places like Starbucks…
Possible uses:
- Ads with content that change weekly etc eg. Car adverts that chop and change cars and deal graphics
- Keeping an Illustration library - if you are odd and use indesign for illustration etc keep a library of facials or backdrops etc…
- Alternative ideas for ads
- If you have a need for a huge library of graphics…
There are a thousand time saving reasons to use this neat little feature… it may take you a while for it to sink into your beer soaked mind but you will get there and pump your hammy fist in the air and praise the mighty Library feature…
That is all… back to whatever it was you were doing with that paper clip…
10,006 layers in your 300DPI photoshop file?
Computer smoking from its vents?
Here is a little tip that can help Photoshop move past snail speed…
If you have not already got a second hard drive… do so! hard drives are now officially cheaper than water… get three even!
So the idea is to set up one drive as just for your OS and the second for your personal files… (even this is a great help for your poor computer)
Now go into Photoshop > Preferences and change the “scratch disk” to your new disk (You can select multiple drives here put the biggest / fastest one at top)
With my own system i have noticed a great improvement moving my files and changing the scratch disk preference to my new disk (it now has hundreds of gigs to play with 
)
If you are building a rig why not use a more expensive faster / smaller hard drive for the OS and then a few large ones for your files etc)
Hey there,
First tip of many…
Productivity Tip for Indesign / Graphic design
This tip is to help you speed up the monkey work so you can get on to the fun stuff
Do you frequently have work that involves a lot of typing out of long names / places / mechanical terms etc…
Maybe for a book / car advert / medical brochure etc?…
Here is a tip that may help you speed up your workflow substantially…
Write a list of these annoyingly long, tricky or repetitive words…
Now open Indesign’s Preferences > Autocorrect…
Enter in your tricky words and then enter a shortcut for this. This could be the start of the word, or a special code anything that isn’t a typical typed word (you don’t want the autocorrect feature to change your everyday words all the time)
Example:
“Productivity Lesson”
“PL”
Something quick to type out is a good idea 
Now make a huge list of time saving shortcuts.
maybe your full name and address, phone numbers, clients business names etc…
If you, say create a computer component catalogue for a client you could set up all the computer terms that are annoying to type or you are prone to spelling incorrectly…
Also make sure no file is open when you do this as or else Indesign just makes this a preference for the file that is open not as a default for all new files etc…
Now when you type in the shortcuts the full word will replace it automatically…
There you have it… just a little tip to start you off
Peace,
o0OdemocrazyO0o
