Category Archives: Tools

Articles on Peripherals and Software

How to Set Up a Consistent Baseline in InDesign

February 15, 2008 – 9:00 am

I’ve talked about setting up a consistent baseline before, but I realized I’ve not explained exactly how to do it; I’ve only mentioned it briefly at best.
First, you should be familiar with the points and picas system, and also how to use them.
It will require a bit of planning, but your documents will turn out much more […]

By LaurenMarie | Also posted in How To | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (7)

InDesign Help: Speeding Up Formatting and Changes

February 13, 2008 – 9:00 am

The Help files provided with your Adobe software should be the first place you turn when you are trying to figure out how to do something. Don’t waste time searching through countless websites, trying to figure it out on your own or creating a horrible work around that only actually works half the time.

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Review of Wacom Intuos and Graphire Pen Tablets

January 30, 2008 – 9:00 am

First things first: it’s pronounce Whack-um, not Way-com. Weird, I know.

I began using a Graphire3 4x5 (I think that’s the equivalent of the A6 in Europe) tablet a few years ago when I was learning Photoshop. It was recommended to me by my professor and at $99, I thought I’d try it.

I really loved the feel of working with a pen instead of a mouse and it made controlling art tools in Photoshop so much easier! In this article, I present you with my personal review of this must-have peripheral.

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Experimenting with Photoshop Brushes

January 23, 2008 – 9:00 am

Last time, I showed you most of the different options in the Brushes Palette. If you haven’t read that yet, go check out Customizing Photoshop Brushes.

These last few features can also be found in the Brush Palette (F5, or Window>Brushes, or find it in the quick palettes in the upper right hand corner of the program window). They do not have any options, they are merely in an on or off state. Remember to select the Brush Tool (B) going to the Brush palette or the options will be greyed out.

By LaurenMarie | Also posted in How To | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (9)

How to Customize Photoshop Brushes

January 21, 2008 – 11:13 am

Photoshop brushes can be intimidating to use for the first time. First, you don’t know where to go to download them. I would suggest BittBox, Brusheezy and Obsidian Dawn for starters. But then once you get to those sites, there is an overwhelming amount of brushes to look through!

By LaurenMarie | Also posted in How To | Tagged , , , , | Comments (22)

How to Match Colors and Styles Across Multiple InDesign Documents

January 16, 2008 – 9:00 am

always love sharing little tips and tricks I’ve learned while working on a project. This is a quick little InDesign tutorial on loading swatches and paragraph styles from a previous document into a new one.

First, it’s important to set up paragraph and character styles. These changes I’m going to talk about are impossible without the styles as a base. It’s a good idea to always create styles anyway, because it makes document-wide changes almost instantaneous.

By LaurenMarie | Also posted in How To | Tagged , , , , | Comments (6)

Quick Ways to Change Up Logo Backgrounds and Colors

December 12, 2007 – 9:00 am

Have you ever been sent a logo to use in your projects that has a background color? Isn’t it frustrating to try to get rid of?

Layer mask can be jaggy, too soft and inaccurate for fine detail.

What the client doesn’t consider is that you have to somehow make it work within your project, with your colors. You don’t always have a large black or white area to place the logo in. If they would just give you the logo on a transparent background, your problems would be solved!

So what do you do with this logo that has a background color? And what if you need to change the color?

By LaurenMarie | Also posted in How To | Tagged , , | Comments (4)
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