Intermediate

Apple Computers

Favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 o'clock.

I always loved tablets not only for drawing and retouching but for general navigation. I found them more precise and faster to use than a mouse. The only problem with tablets is their size. Even though I use a small Bamboo I'm reluctant to carry it along every time.

The trackpad for general navigation is a close contender especially if you use one of those new MacBooks or MBPs with large trackpad areas. The only problem with trackpads is that fingertips aren't a very precise tool.

It looks like Inklet may provide a good solution overall giving you the option to have precise navigation and portability. Inklet turns your trackpad into a tablet. It will never be as good as a full size tablet, but good enough for 95% of tasks. Check out the video below.

Have you ever seen an inspiring scene that felt just right for the project you were working on? With the free iPhone app created by Neenah paper Think Ink (iTunes link) you can create multiple color palettes from a picture in a few easy steps. Take the picture, center it on a key color, select the mood, save the palette and get the CMYK and RGB numbers right on the screen. See the screenshoots below.

Adapted from Photoshop CS4 Bible (Wiley Publishing) - By Stacy Cates, Simon Abrams, Dan Moughamian
Version: Adobe Photoshop CS4

Making images or parts of images lighter, or brighter, is a commonly needed adjustment. There are many ways to lighten an image in Photoshop. You can use a lightening process that lightens the light and/or dark qualities of an image (the luminosity or luminance) along with the colors in an image.

Spotlight is great if you have a unique word to search for. But if you happen to search for a common word you will likely find hundreds of hits which makes searching less effective.

Photoshop files tend to be huge. If you want to save disk space both on your primary HD and your backup disks there is a very simple trick that can reduce files sizes by more than 50%. Before you save just switch off the visibility of all layers. With the layers switched off, Photoshop will not save layer previews resulting in smaller file sizes. At times the saving is as little as 10%, but in other cases it can be up to 90%.

As you must have noticed several times in the past (Quark, City of Kelowna, Fallen footware, etc.) it is highly probable that the logo you designed and believe to be original has already been done in a similar form in the past.

There are obvious benefits to spending the extra time and effort grouping your layers into folders and naming them appropriately.

For one you will appreciate the organization if you have to work further on the file after considerable amount time went by. Second, your coworkers or your css programmer will appreciate a neat file as well.

There are some less obvious and immediate advantages to such tidy practices. Design is not done on paper or on screen. Design is something you do in your mind. You continuously evaluate your work and make further design decisions while you work. Design is an internal dialogue and the result is your design work.

If you want to record any video content played in your browser you can use Snow Leopard's QuickTime X screen recording feature. If you want to avoid the need for cropping the video, put the video on full screen before starting the recording.

If you also want sound with your video you need reroute the speakers to the microphone with a software like Soundflower and select this new input source within Quicktime X as an input source for sound.