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A friend picked up this pack of Camel lights in London. I was shocked to see the size of that warning sign. However, apparently smokers don't even care. No matter how big the warning is, the effect wears off quickly. This makes me wonder, how come proper visual communication can make us do anything, except to kick smoking.

Many times you are stuck with a washed-out photo from digital camera or scanned photo. Most people who try, find that quick adjustments in Levels or Curves will certainly boost the colors up, but they also destroy all the details in the photo.

Fortunately, Photoshop offers layer modes! Make a duplicate of the photo on another layer, the easiest way is hitting Command + J. Then, set the layer mode of the newly created layer to Overlay. This should really boost the color & contrast, but not mess with your highlights and shadows.

In all my years using Illustrator I never had a need to use the brush pallet. Lately I have had a need for it while making calligraphy style icons.

When I sent the artwork to the printer I did not want to leave the Illustrator brush strokes applied to a single stroke. In my experience this was a nightmare for the pre press operators. I knew I needed to convert them to an outline. I first tried the Object >> Path >> Outline Stroke however that only outlines the stroke without the brush applied.

If you read the forum, you might already know this tip. Thanks Gloria and sPECtre for the quick solution!

You may have noticed the recently added feature of CB off to the right called "Book of the Week."

Young Woman or Old?
That depends on your interpretation. Young people tend to see a young girl; older people, an elderly lady. With effort, you can switch from one to the other: the young woman's chin becomes the old woman's nose; the old woman's mouth, a band on the neck of the young woman.
By American psychologist E.G. Boring

If you don't read The New York Times, here is the most important double page spread ad from it! More here...

In the digital age, copyrighting is a hot topic, and more important than ever in protecting your work.

With Photoshop, it's quite easy to add copyright information to your files. You may have noticed the little © (copyright symbol) in the title bar of Photoshop documents (see image below)

You may need seamlessly tiling textures for website backgrounds, 3D mapping and other design project. To create these tiles you will need to match the edges of your images, so that when you repeat the individual image by putting it next to itself you shouldn't be able to tell the pieces from each other.

Most images in Photoshop need sharpening when you reduce them, or importing from a scanner or digital camera.

There are two ways (which generally provide the same results) that you may find useful.

Change the image into Lab Mode and only sharpen the Luminosity Channel is one way.