Photoshop How -To: Tame the Beast

Tame the Beast

Photoshop has so many different work areas and tools that it can confuse digital photographers. Here's how to set up your workflow so you're efficient, not intimidated.

Photoshop practically seethes with menus, palettes, and tools. If you get confused by how they work -- much less how they should work for your needs -- this article is just what you need. After you set up the general workspace so it's efficient, using Photoshop will be a more pleasing experience.
Photoshop opens a second window of your active image when you select Window > Arrange > New Window. It's perfect when you want to do detail work and see the entire image at the same time.
This article is taken from a book that isn't due to be on shelves until July. We hope you enjoy the sneak peek!
We've posted this excerpt as a PDF file. To open the PDF file in your Web browser, click "Workflow." You can also download the PDF to your machine for later viewing.

Icons (World Cup)

Icons (World Cup)

15 июня 2006 | принт

Icons (World Cup) | (*.ico + *.png 256*256)

download | Скачать иконки чемпионат мира в германии

ACROMEDIA LAUNCHES MACROMEDIA LABS TO PROVIDE EARLY ACCESS TO EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

MACROMEDIA LAUNCHES MACROMEDIA LABS TO PROVIDE EARLY ACCESS TO EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

Alpha versions of Flex 2 product line and Flash Player 8.5 now available for download

Macromedia MAX 2005 – Anaheim, CA – October 17, 2005 - Macromedia, Inc. (Nasdaq: MACR) today announced Macromedia Labs, a new site on macromedia.com for developers to download early versions of Macromedia technologies, share feedback and insight, and help shape the direction of new products and technologies. Beginning today on Macromedia Labs, developers can download the public alphas of Macromedia Flash Player 8.5 and Macromedia Flex Builder 2, part of the Macromedia Flex 2 product line announced earlier this month. The Flex 2 product line and Flash Player 8.5 are the foundation for building effective rich Internet applications that blend the responsiveness of desktop software, the cross-platform reach of the web, and the breathtaking expressiveness of the Flash Platform.

"Macromedia Labs represents an important shift in our development process, and is a great opportunity for developers to participate early in the rapid innovation of new technologies," said Kevin Lynch, chief software architect, Macromedia. "We can now involve our customers earlier and more deeply than ever before, while fostering an even stronger community in which developers everywhere can share their vision and expertise."

By sharing early releases of emerging technologies and products, Macromedia Labs enables developers to help shape development, provide feedback sooner, and begin to build expertise and reputation within the broader community. Documentation, samples, and technical articles make it easy to get up to speed quickly. Forums and wikis encourage discussion and collaboration, while podcasts and chats give everyone insight and updates in a casual developer-to-developer format. RSS notifications enable developers to stay current with Macromedia Labs activities. Developers can inspire their peers by sharing their work based on these early releases in the Showcase Gallery.

"There's much said about the long tail of the market. But for developers it's the long snout, if you will, the shape of products and technologies before they're packaged and shipped, that matters," said Rael Dornfest, chief technology officer, O'Reilly Media, Inc. "Early access to technology and the development behind a product or technology – like Macromedia is doing with Macromedia Labs – sets up a virtuous circle: developers inform the shape of what they get, products and technologies are vetted and improved sooner, and, of course, developers expedite their learning curves."

As part of the Macromedia Labs debut today, developers can download an alpha release of Flex Builder 2 and Flash Player 8.5. Flex Builder 2 is a new Eclipse-based environment for developing rich Internet applications and includes the Flex Framework. Previously code-named Zorn, Flex Builder 2 can incorporate rich media content from the recently released Macromedia Flash Professional 8, the leading authoring tool for creating rich interactive content.

Flash Player 8.5 adds industrial-strength programming power on top of the expressiveness introduced in Flash Player 8, creating a state-of-the-art, cross-platform runtime. It includes a new virtual machine that offers faster runtime performance, full runtime error reporting, improved debugging, and ActionScript 3. Flash Player is currently installed on over 600 million desktops and mobile devices globally.

"Macromedia has always been deeply involved with the user community, and their developer relations constantly impress me. But Macromedia Labs takes the company's open, collaborative spirit further than ever before," said Colin Moock, author, Moock.org. "Macromedia Labs lets everyone with an interest or passion get involved in product development, and it levels the playing field for newer developers trying to stay ahead and help contribute new ideas. Product quality and developer knowledge are sure to improve with such a fantastic means of communication available."

For more information and to download Flex Builder 2 and Flash Player 8.5, please visit Macromedia Labs at: http://www.macromedia.com/go/mmlabs.

ABOUT MACROMEDIA

Experience matters. Macromedia is motivated by the belief that great experiences build great businesses. Our software empowers millions of business users, developers, and designers to create and deliver effective, compelling, and memorable experiences — on the Internet, on fixed media, on wireless, and on digital devices.

source: adobe.com

joke: Worries While Flying

Worries While Flying

Two statisticians were travelling in an airplane from LA to New York. About an hour into the flight, the pilot announced that they had lost an engine, but don't worry, there are three left.

However, instead of 5 hours it would take 7 hours to get to New York. A little later, he announced that a second engine failed, and they still had two left, but it would take 10 hours to get to New York.

Somewhat later, the pilot again came on the intercom and announced that a third engine had died. Never fear, he announced, because the plane could fly on a single engine.

However, it would now take 18 hours to get to new York. At this point, one statistician turned to the other and said, "Gee, I hope we don't lose that last engine, or we'll be up here forever!"

FIFA World cup 2006 : Video] Germany - Costa Rica.

[Video]: Germany - Costa Rica

Here are 6 goals in the first match of World Cup 2006 - a fantastic match. I recorded them from TV, so maybe the quality is not so good. Enjoy it!!! rapidshare

Web Design Tips: Lock Down that Layout!

Web Design Tips: Lock Down that Layout!
Dreamweaver's Layers let you position images, text, movies and more with the same drag-and-drop ease print designers enjoy. Here's how to use them.

Excerpted from "Ten Ton Dreamweaver" by Geoff Blake.

Follow this link to find out more.

Type Tips for Print and Web, Mac and Windows

Type Tips for Print and Web, Mac and Windows
Want to find fonts that look good onscreen? Or do you need to find specialty fonts fast? And what do you do when your old platform-specific fonts must work on today's Macs and PCs? We've got all the answers.

Based on an article originally published in the DesignGeek e-zine.

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Cool Tool for Previewing Web Fonts
Anyone who's designed a Web site or any other sort of screen-based presentation knows how difficult it is to find good-looking text styling that works cross-browser and cross-platform.

Web designer Marko Dugonjic created a neat Web application that will save you hours of time. His free TypeTester lets you see how various sizes and styles of "Web-safe" fonts (Arial, Times, Georgia, etc.), OS standard fonts, and any additional fonts active in your system will look on screen (Figure 1).

Figure 1. TypeTester gives you a wealth of viewing options.

In each of TypeTester's three side-by-side columns, you use convenient drop-down menus to choose a typeface and its CSS attributes, such as size, leading, decoration, color, and background. Your choices are immediately applied to sample text below the settings area. You can type in your own sample phrases.

Two separate drop-down menus per column divvy up just the typefaces. One typeface menu contains a list of common screen fonts in three categories: "Safe" (installed on both Mac and Windows, such as Verdana, Georgia, and Arial); Windows OS default; and Mac OS X default fonts.

The other typeface menu lists all the fonts you have installed on your system. This is great if you'd like to see how your Web page might look in Futura Light, for example. I have no idea how the app knows what fonts you have. Must be some JavaScript magic.

Quickly Find Specialty Fonts
Recently, I was looking for a font with credit card logos. The main online resource I use for locating, previewing, and buying fonts is the Web site for Adobe's Type Library. If I want to search the collections of multiple foundries for the same typeface, I try Fonts.com or MyFonts.com.

Neither Adobe's site nor MyFonts.com turned up any hits on "credit card logo." The Fonts.com site found one Type 1 font with credit card logos, called CreditCardsPO1: http://www.fonts.com/findfonts/detail.htm?pid=204893. But the site was too slow, and all the information was jammed up in the left side of my browser window, so I turned to Google instead.

After a bit of Google searching, I found a possibility that was linked to by numerous web sites. Rick Mueller's True Type font, Credit Card.ttf, can be downloaded from his specialty font portfolio site ($5 shareware fee): http://moorstation.org/typoasis/designers/mueller/a_f.htm

One of the Google hits that linked to Rick's font, DaFont.com, caught my eye. DaFont.com is cleanly designed and fast. Its collection is not nearly as comprehensive as the usual font sites I turn to, but it comes in first when you're looking for inexpensive specialty fonts -- anything other than a traditional body text font (Figure 2). Most of its collection are TrueType freeware or shareware fonts designed by smaller companies and individuals, and the ones I've downloaded and tried work fine in all my latest design software programs.

Figure 2. There's an entire DaFont category for dingabts that relate to TV or movies. Now that's a specialty font!

I like that you can enter your own text for a custom preview of all the fonts that match your search term, too, and that the preview comes up amazingly fast.

You can download the fonts from DaFont.com, or you can go to the designer's Web site (if available) via a link next to the search result and peruse the designer's other offerings. Purchase terms for each font are listed next to their names. Most of them are free or under $10.

A couple weeks after the credit card logo search, I was looking for a handwriting font that resembles real handwriting, not a script font. I went back to DaFont and looked at the tidy list of linked categories and sub-categories that appears at the top of every page. Clicking on Script > Handwriting, it was only.05 seconds before I arrived at the first 20 out of almost 200 matches. Wow!

Sample Any of Your Active Fonts
After spending a couple hours exploring the world of Mac OS X widgets, I was happy to find at least one that is of immediate use to designers: Type Cast, from Code Line Communications.

Type Cast gives you a fast way to see sample type in any of the fonts active in your OS X system. Just jump to the widget and use your keyboard (or mouse) to flip through typefaces, sizes and styles. It tells you the name of the font, its family, and has a shortcut to reveal the font's location in the Finder. And Type Cast is free!

The developer, Code Line, is the same company that developed the Illustrator collect-for-output utility, ArtFiles, and the uber-cool color picker, Color Consultant. Links to both of those products are on the Type Cast page.

DIY OpenType Conversions, Part I
Some fonts work only on Macs, and some work only in Windows. When you want an OS-specific font to cross the great divide, you either have to hope a cross-platform version exists -- and then buy it -- or you can convert it yourself.

You probably already know that the answer is OpenType. It's the only cross-platform font format immune to slight kerning and tracking differences that occur when a font is used in the same document but different platforms.

You can upgrade to the OpenType versions of the True Type and Type 1 fonts you already own -- assuming they're available -- and benefit from the additional glyphs (characters) that are often included with them. You'll have to purchase an upgrade for each typeface family.

But did you know that you can make one purchase and then convert all your existing typefaces to OpenType? Just use TransType Pro 3 from FontLab, the same people who develop and sell the professional font creation program, FontLab 5. The DIY conversion won't magically add cool swashes or anything else to the resulting OT file, but you will end up with a single file containing both bitmap and outline code that works on Macs and Windows.

TransType always had the ability to convert Type 1 and TrueType fonts from one platform to another; the $179 Pro version recently added the ability to convert those formats to OpenType, as well. Download the demo if you want to check it out.

DIY OpenType Conversions, Part II
Thomas Phinney, formerly Program Manager, Fonts and SING Technologies at Adobe, says that TransType maintains almost all the hinting in a font converted to Open Type. It doesn't support flex hints, though -- what some fonts with shallow, slightly cupped serifs contain so these particular serifs are imaged as straight lines at low resolutions.

To test the quality yourself, your best bet is to lay out a test document using your converted Open Type font(s). Use some dense passages and custom kerning at different sizes to really put the app through its paces. Then open the same layout on a Mac and PC, print them on the same printer, and carefully compare the results.

Even if the quality passes muster, there's still the issue of legality. Is it legal to convert your fonts? As you probably know, you don't really own these fonts -- you just license them (for X number of seats or printers) from the developer.

At least for Adobe fonts, it's kosher. Dov Isaacs, Adobe's Principal Scientist for the Publishing Technologies Group, says it's okay "per section 14.7.4" of the EULA (End User License Agreement). For more information, go to EULA central and scroll down to the ones for Type products to download the correct PDF.

However, you do have to comply with the restrictions as spelled out in the EULA. Simply put, the converted fonts have to be used in-house and can't exceed the total number of licenses you originally purchased.

If you need to convert your Type 1 fonts to OpenType so, for example, your InCopy users on PCs can work with the InDesign layouts your Mac designers created, and you purchased enough licenses, no problem. But you can't legally distribute the converted fonts to off-site freelancers who are on a different platform. The fonts must be used on-site.

Adobe's EULA only applies to Adobe fonts, of course. Review the licensing documentation for each font foundry before you start fiddling with its fonts.

Finally, if you have any trouble using TransType Pro, FontLab has one of the most robust support forums around.

source:creativepro

What Is Design ?

What Is Design ?

This question can only be answered by saying that design is what it means to you. Each of us has our own likes and dislikes as they relate to film, cars, furniture, fashion, etc.
Understanding why you like what you do and how a designer created a combination of forms and function that appeals to you is the first lesson in understanding design.
I will now digress to a boring definition first and then go on to some very exciting examples that might put things into perspective...

“To create, fashion, execute, or construct according to plan.” The definition of design is incredibly broad because it permeates everything, everywhere, and all of us. It is applied to our world through methods like industrial, graphic, production, and environmental design, filmmaking, lighting, fashion, architecture, photography, cinematography, and the list goes on forever. Even though each of these design applications varies greatly by trade and application, they have one thing in common: problem solving.
Much like a 3D animated element must address specific requirements like story, composition, lighting, interaction, movement, and so on, almost all things that are designed have been fashioned to solve a specific problem. For instance, let’s say you’re working on a very dramatic film and the script calls for an atmosphere of fear. Your first problem would be to define what aesthetic elements you need in order to create an atmosphere of fear. The solution could be dark contrasted lighting, characters in silhouette, low scary music, and edge-of-your-seat camera movement. Or the solution could be a super-saturated, grainy colored image with only the sound of a heartbeat and blurry chaotic camera movement.
Solutions to the aforementioned problem are as varied as there are people in the world —there is no perfect solution, nor is there only one solution. This is where you can really start to learn the definition of design because it’s all very personal.

Not only does design differ according to its chosen discipline, such as architecture vs. graphic design, but even within each discipline, let’s say just architecture, there are a variety of techniques, styles, philosophies, and applications. For instance, Frank Lloyd Wright and Santiago Calatrava are two very famous architects and both have designed countless structures ranging from bridges to skyscrapers, apartment buildings to museums, and music halls to terminals. They are both architects and they both address the same problems, but their solutions, styles, and philosophies differ drastically. Wright is known for designing the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, which could be described as a giant ribbon that spirals toward the sky, almost spring-like in its appearance — it’s a magnificent structure.
Calatrava is known for designing the Quadracci Pavilion at the Milwaukee Museum of Art, another magnificent building. This structure could be described as having giant 250-foot multidirectional sails that tower high into the air like the wings of an albatross and are held together with sailboat-like rigging. Both structures serve the same purpose and both are considered incredibly beautiful, but what makes them different is style.
Personal style is what separates all designers and all people, because personal style is your own unique expression through whatever medium of design you choose. For some it’s through the way they dress or decorate their home; to others it’s a hobby like ceramics, painting, or model making. For those who make design their profession, it becomes a lifelong pursuit of innovative problem solving and the wisdom that unique design can make someone’s life better or more exciting.

Other good examples of the same discipline but different personal style can be seen by looking at works by Syd Mead and Moebius, both industrial design futurists but with distinctly different visions of the future. Mead is known for designing some of the greatest production sets of all time, like Blade Runner, 2001, and even Tron, and could be considered the godfather of slick, organic futuristic functional and social industrial design. Works by Moebius look like some kind of retro- future world filled with oddly colored exotic characters, flying animals, and earthy-organic buildings. Moebius’ work is by far more surreal and dreamlike, but has the same grounded quality of reality and style that Mead shows in his work. Mead’s polished, clearly delineated, huge beasts and giant futuristic cities respond to the same design challenges, yet envision the future in a completely different way. Jesse James of Monster Garage and Paul Teutul of American Chopper are both vehicle designers. James blends old school hot rod with a contemporary thread, and Teutul designs
themed choppers akin to sculptures on wheels.

George Nakashima and CharlesEames were furniture designers. Nakashima used the cracks and knots to his advantage to reveal a single piece of furniture that embodies the soul of the tree. Eames, on the other hand, supplied our nation with some of the most iconic modern industrial furniture by using bent wood technology and revealing the tree in a technological fashion. Each designer was a powerful contributor to our world; they just differed in their approach and solutions.
John Lasseter and Martin Scorsese make films that have a lot of heart. Lasseter, whose expression through animation has redefined modern animated storytelling with some of the most funny, heartfelt, whimsical moments in animation history, is truly a gift to our world.
Scorsese, who tells it like it is through gritty, dramatic live- action tales of human struggle and perseverance, is one of the most influential and highly revered directors ever.
What draws us into the work of these designers? Is it their use of shape and color or could it be the metaphors about life and passion that are woven into the fabric of their work?
Whether it’s based on a vision of the future or a reaction to our current world, each designer examines problem solving with a personal touch. Understanding that personal style is nothing more than one person’s take on design brings you one step closer to understanding
what design is.

I’ve given you plenty of examples of designers that I think represent the best work in their chosen field, but what do you think is the best in any of those given fields? Maybe you think Blade Runner is kind of old school and really like the designs from Unreal Tournament.
Perhaps a bronze Cadillac Escalade with 24" spinners is your cup of tea, while to me a bright green 1970 Plymouth Barracuda 440 is the baddest thing on the street. Maybe you admire the work of a certain video game designer or love collecting a specific comic book.

Who are these designers? What do you like about their work? How do you go about defining the elements that make a design good? The answer to these questions is observation.
Observation is the first step in training your design eye. Your design eye is what distinguishes the difference between good and bad design and, like anything worth pursuing, can only benefit from training and proper application. Start the training with observing the things in your life that you feel are examples of good design. Ask yourself why. Why is this a good design? Could it be the colors, shapes, size, or function? Then ask yourself what could be improved. Does it feel cold and uninviting, and if so, why? What makes it cold and uninviting? Could it be its hard- edged steel exterior? Maybe this design could benefit from softer edges and warmer colors. Through the process of observation, you’ll learn to decipher the good and the bad in design and make mental notes that will eventually apply to your work. Observation means to be interested and open to everything and learning from everything. As a designer you cannot limit yourself; you have to walk into the world with your eyes wide open and learn from other designers and your own experiences.

source:Design First For 3D Artists

How to Buy a Graphics Board

Introduction

Do the large graphics files you work with take a long time to display on your monitor? Do the 3D games you play look like a stuttering slide show? Do you want to hook up two LCD displays to your PC? Adding a new graphics board might be just the boost you need. A faster board can speed up your system's ability to process 2D images, render the 3D graphics used in games, and give you multiple monitor ports. Some models even give you the kind of video inputs and outputs required to hook up your camcorder or cable TV to the PC.

More..