DISPLAY UNTIL JULY 6, 2010
[
CONTENTS]
] J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 0 ] VOL. 6, NO. 4 ] WWW.LAYERSMAGAZINE.COM
[ T U T O R I A L S ] 42 ] Digital Photography: Overview of New Features in Camera Raw 6 —Sean McCormack
48 ] Adobe Photoshop CS5: Happy Accident—Dave Cross
54 ] Adobe Illustrator CS5: Clipping Masks of Love—Corey Barker
60 ] Adobe InDesign CS5: Setting Up Live Captions—Terry White
66 ] Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro: Interactive PDFs—Taz Tally
75 ] Adobe Dreamweaver CS5: Six New Features—Janine Warner
80 ] Adobe Flash CS5 Professional:
HENK DAWSON
Text Layout Framework—Lee Brimelow
[ C O V E R
S T O R Y ]
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www.layersmagazine.com
30 ] Fifth Annual Layers 100 CS5 Tips
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As you’ve probably heard (or at least saw on the cover), included in this issue of Layers are 100 “amazing” CS5 tips. That’s right, what you’re about to witness is a whole slew of amazingness that you’ve probably never seen or heard before packed into 100 amazing tips. (Did we mention they’re amazing?) We’ve covered all of the usual suspects from Photoshop to InDesign to Premiere Pro, and think you’re going to be thoroughly impressed. So turn the page to get started and have fun exploring CS5!
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05 L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
[ D E P A RT M E N T S ] 8 ] Letter from the Editor 12 ] Layers News 16 ] Designer Spotlight 18 ] The Digital Canvas 92 ] Creative Suite Q&A 102 ] The Back Page
Page 18
[ C O L U M N S ] 20 ] Design Makeover: Caught Between Cultures—Jake Widman
26 ] Artistic Expressions: Needlework—Bert Monroy
58 ] The Art of Type: Out of Scale—James Felici
[ O N
T H E
C O V E R ] Henk Dawson is a master of 3D illustration and animation, creating everything from photorealistic to conceptual illustrations. He has gained extensive experience creating visual assets for large corporations such as Microsoft, Apple, Crayola, and ESPN. Look for Henk’s unique 3D art throughout this issue of Layers. [Henk Dawson]
[ R E V I E W S ] 86 ] Canon EOS-1D Mark IV—Kevin Ames 87 ] Aperture 3—Dave Huss 87 ] Digimarc for Images 4—Jay Nelson 88 ] URL2hyperlink—David Creamer 88 ] Eos Converge—Chris Main 89 ] Lensbaby Soft Focus—Mike Mackenzie 89 ] modo SLIK—Bruce Bicknell 90 ] booq Python blur—Chris Main 90 ] Holomatrix—Marcus Geduld 91 ] Ricoh CX3—Daniel M. East Whenever you see this symbol at the end of an article, it means there’s either additional material or a download for that story at www.layersmagazine.com. So be sure to visit the website and check it out.
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[ON
THE WEB]
] J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 0 ] VOL. 6, NO. 4 ] WWW.LAYERSMAGAZINE.COM
[TU TORIALS] We’re always adding new tutorials to the Layers website, so be sure to visit often. And don’t forget to sign up for our graphics tip of the day and to keep an eye out for the latest episode of Layers TV. Here’s a small sampling of some of the tutorials that you can find at the site now:
[PHOTOSHOP] www.layersmagazine.com/category/photoshop Compositing Images Using Channels in Photoshop, Parts 1 & 2 (Video): In this two-part tutorial, you’ll learn how to apply advanced compositing techniques in Photoshop to transform a city skyline.—Stephen M. Burns 3D Bump Maps in Photoshop Extended (Video): Stephen shows you how to set up your Wacom tablet properties and also how to distinctly paint bump map textures by creating and using various brushes.—Stephen M. Burns
[ILLUSTRATOR] www.layersmagazine.com/category/illustrator Getting Aligned in Adobe Illustrator (Video): Learn how to use the Align panel to its full extent by exploring all its options through the different sections of the panel—Align Objects, Distribute Options, Distribute Spacing, and Align To.—Jeff Witchel
HENK DAWSON
[INDESIGN]
www.layersmagazine.com
[ LAYERS
06
TV ]
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Hosted by Corey Barker and Rafael “RC” Concepcion www.layersmagazine.com/layers-tv Be sure to join Corey and RC for another season of Layers TV. This weekly video podcast offers killer tips and tricks to full-blown tutorials, and it covers all of your favorite print, Web, and video apps from Adobe.
[ S O C I A L
N E T W O R K ]
http://twitter.com/LayersMagazine www.facebook.com/LayersMagazine Want to stay up to date on everything happening at Layers? Of course you do. Just follow @LayersMagazine on Twitter and be sure to join our Facebook fan page, as well.
www.layersmagazine.com/category/indesign Secret to Combining InDesign Documents (Video): After arranging your documents accordingly and navigating to the Pages panel, Jeff shows how you can combine multiple documents into one editable InDesign document in just one click.—Jeff Witchel
[FLASH] www.layersmagazine.com/category/flash Motion Tools in Flash CS4, Parts 1–4 (Video): Learn how to use every aspect of the motion tools in Flash through this four-part series as Tom teaches three ways of tweening motion, how to navigate around the motion guides and paths in the Motion Editor, how to transform motion into ActionScript, and much more.—Tom Green
[PREMIERE PRO] www.layersmagazine.com/category/premierepro Animation in Premiere (Video): Franklin teaches how to add simple animation to video clips in Premiere Pro by adjusting positions, scaling images, and changing blend modes.—Franklin McMahon
[
FROM THE EDITOR] S C O T T
{
}
K E L b Y
the hottest tips for you
100 TIPS FROM ADOBE PRODUCT MANAGERS If you subscribe to the premise, “He who dies with the most tips wins,” then this is the issue for you—our annual 100 Hot Tips issue. This is always our most popular issue of the year and once you start digging into the tips, you’ll immediately see why. Of course, each time we do this issue, we want to raise the bar a bit and get a juicier collection of insider shortcuts, workarounds, and tricks than we had the year before, so we thought who would have more of these little-known gems than the people who actually make the products themselves—Adobe’s own Product Managers. We went straight to the source for this year’s collection of tips to make you more efficient, more effective, and more importantly, to make
[This is always our
your friends totally jealous. In a Hot Tips issue like this, the tips get all the cover attention, but of course we still have loads of in-depth articles covering all your favorites, including a look
most popular issue of the year and once
at Camera Raw 6 (new in Photoshop CS5) by Sean McCormack on page 42, along with Dave Cross’s discovery of a new technique using Photoshop and Illustrator (Dave tries to play it off as more of an experiment or accident with very cool results, but we know better) on page 48. If you’re an InDesign user, my good friend Terry White has an article on setting up captions (p. 60), and Janine Warner shares her
you start digging into the tips, you’ll
top six features in the just-released Dreamweaver CS5 (p. 75). Our own in-house Illustrator wizard, Corey Barker, does a very cool type masking tutorial based on an effect from the movie poster for John Travolta’s latest movie From Paris with Love (p. 54), and Lee Brimelow is here showing off some of the new text features in Flash CS5 (p. 80).
immediately see why.]
Finally, this issue the featured artist in our “Designer Spotlight” is 3D artist Henk Dawson. If you’ve got a quick minute, go check out more of his work at www.d3d.com. Beyond this issue, make sure you stop by LayersMagazine.com because we
have loads of tutorials on all the Adobe products, including lots of videos on all the brand-new features in Creative Suite 5. All my best,
www.l ayer smagazine.com
Scott Kelby Editor & Publisher
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All contents © COPYRIGHT 2010 Kelby Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Any use of the contents of this publication without the express written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. Layers magazine is an independent journal not affiliated with Adobe Systems, Inc. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Dreamweaver, Flash, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, and Photoshop are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Some of the views expressed by contributors may not be the representative views of the Publisher. ISSN 1554-415X
[layers news] graphics design news • new products • digital video news • other stuff
Adobe adds HTML5 support to Dreamweaver CS5
Don’t worry, this isn’t an exposition about the whole Flash vs. HTML5 or Adobe vs. Apple thing. We’re sure you’ve had your fill of that by now. This is just to let you know that at Google I/O, Adobe announced the availability of a new, free extension for Dreamweaver CS5 called the Adobe HTML5 Pack. According to Adobe, this new extension is the direct result of positive customer feedback that started back at Adobe MAX 2009. Here’s part of the description that appears in Adobe Extension Manager CS5 after you install the extension: “This extension provides initial support for HTML5 and CSS3 in Dreamweaver CS5. While HTML5 and CSS3 will not be finalized for some time, the extension provides support for a set of currently implemented features.” The HTML5 Pack includes HTML5 starter layouts, code hinting for HTML5 and CSS3 capabilities to help users make use of new HTML5 tags, and WebKit engine updates and improvements to support video and audio in Live View in Dreamweaver CS5. And with new CSS3 capabilities, users can more easily design multiscreen webpages with previews of how they will render across multiple browsers and devices. “Adobe prides itself on delivering industry-defining tools and being compatible with the most popular Web programming languages, formats, APIs, and libraries,” said Lea Hickman, Senior Director, Creative Solutions at Adobe. “We continue to move forward to support the leading edge of work in HTML, enabling our customers to deliver creative content taking advantage of the latest in HTML capabilities.” For more information and to download the Adobe HTML5 Pack, visit http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/html5pack.html.
PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM
www.LAYERSMAGAZINE.COM
gets PLUS-sized
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Pantone LLC, an X-Rite company, has released the “next generation” of its PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM, the PANTONE PLUS SERIES. This new series not only offers more colors but it also organizes all the new colors plus previous colors in chromatic arrangement, making it much easier for designers to find and select colors. (But even though the arrangement is different, the previous colors still use the same reference numbers [the new colors begin at 7548]). All the new books in the PLUS SERIES are printed on text-weight paper stock to more closely reflect the majority of current printed work and to meet the certification standards set forth by the Forest Stewardship Council. The new colors are formulated with the same 14 ink bases that make up the foundation of the previous colors, along with consistent ink film thickness to make it easier for printers to match the new colors on press. The PANTONE PLUS SERIES FORMULA GUIDE and SOLID CHIPS include 224 new colors for a total of 1,341 colors. The new CMYK guide offers a smoother progression of 2,886 CMYK colors for four-color process printing, and PASTELS & NEONS and PASTELS & NEONS CHIPS offers 156 pastels and 56 neons. And the new PREMIUM METALLICS and PREMIUM METALLICS CHIPS provide 300 nonleafing, high-luster metallics. All guides in the PLUS SERIES also ship with a really cool new tool: The ColorChecker Lighting Indicator. Pull out the Indicator when you’re ready to evaluate colors and it will let you know if the current lighting conditions are suitable or not—very handy. At this point, you may be asking, “Since Adobe CS5 shipped before the PLUS SERIES, how can CS5 users take advantage of the new system?” We’re glad you asked. Every PLUS SERIES purchase also comes with COLOR MANAGER software. This allows you to update your Adobe Creative Suite applications with the new PANTONE PLUS Color Libraries, as well as convert spot colors to CMYK simulations based on loaded ICC profiles. For more on other PLUS SERIES products and pricing, visit www.pantone.com.
Get mobilized! It’s no surprise that the world has gone mobile mad, including Layers! In May, the magazine launched the Layers Text Alerts program to give readers a chance to stay in the know even when they’re not in front of the computer. That means staying connected with “The How-to Magazine for Everything Adobe” is now easier than ever. From special promotions and important reminders to breaking news and can’t-miss Creative Suite tips and techniques, our text alerts will give you exclusive Layers content and information available solely to opt-in mobile subscribers. To sweeten the deal, if you sign up to receive our special text alerts, you’ll automatically qualify for one of four special offers that we have in place for new subscribers. Simply text LAYERS to 32075 to register today and unlock the key to some great enrollment deals. [Please note: Standard text messaging rates may apply.]
Web Watch
[more cool sites for creatives]
www.stockphotorights.com Helpful information about copyright and licensing stock imagery
Changes to the Layers website;
a note about our tutorials; and Layers on Facebook
In late April, we launched the redesign of our website (http://layersmagazine.com) to coincide with the launch of the Layers Creative Suite 5 Learning Center (http:// layersmagazine.com/cs5). The new Layers site offers a more streamlined overview of the wealth of content we make available online every day, but with that change came a few minor adjustments that we wanted to address here. We’ve made all our Creative Suite tutorials easier to find by placing the most recent ones on the main page and clearly indicating which application is being covered in each tutorial with a banner in the upper-left corner. Want to see all the tutorials for that application? Just click on the banner, or hover over the Tutorials drop-down menu in the top Navigation Bar. Speaking of our tutorials, with the launch of CS5, now is as good a time as any to restate our approach to teaching the Creative Suite in our magazine and online. We’ll always use the most current version of the Creative Suite in everything we teach. When we do switch versions, we’ll always create a comprehensive online learning center about the latest version to get everyone up to speed on all the latest changes. And while we’ll create tutorials that feature new Creative Suite tools, once the fervor of a new version dies down, we’ll revert to what you’ll always find within the pages of Layers magazine and on the Layers website—amazing techniques, tips, and tricks that can usually be performed in prior versions. And finally, we’ll never remove old tutorials from our site! In fact, our tutorials go all the way back to CS2 online. As part of the changes at http://layersmagazine.com, the Layers forum has been removed, but don’t fret, we’ve invited our Layers forum mods to help us continue the conversation on our Layers Facebook fan page (http://www.facebook.com/LayersMagazine). We hope that you’ll join us there under the Discussions tab. You can also find us on Twitter as @LayersMagazine.
http://tdc.org An international organization for all people who are devoted to excellence in typography
www.logodesignlove.com Dedicated to logos, this blog is regularly updated with news, features, and opinions from the world of brand identity
www.dcross.com A blog on Photoshop, photography, and more by our very own Dave Cross
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Upcoming Events PHOTOSHOP CS5 CREATIVITY TOUR Baltimore, MD (July 9, 2010) San Diego, CA (July 27, 2010) Miami, FL (August 16, 2010) Charlotte, NC (September 27, 2010) www.kelbytraininglive.com
PHOTOSHOP LIGHTROOM 3 LIVE TOUR Ft. Lauderdale, FL (July 12, 2010) Boston, MA (July 16, 2010) New York, NY (July 19, 2010) Los Angeles, CA (July 21, 2010) South San Francisco, CA (July 23, 2010) www.kelbytraininglive.com
PHOTOSHOP CS5 FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS TOUR Orlando, FL (July 14, 2010) Virginia Beach, VA (August 30, 2010) Indianapolis, IN (September 20, 2010) www.kelbytraininglive.com
LOCATION LIGHTING TECHNIQUES TOUR Islington, London, UK (July 23, 2010) Hartford, CT (September 15, 2010) www.kelbytraininglive.com
SIGGRAPH 2010 July 25–29, 2010 Los Angeles Convention Center Los Angeles, CA www.siggraph.org/s2010
PHOTOSHOP CS5 DOWN & DIRTY TRICKS TOUR Nashville, TN (August 6, 2010) Austin, TX (August 18, 2010) Kansas City, MO (August 25, 2010) St. Louis, MO (August 27, 2010) Covington, KY (September 17, 2010) Pittsburgh, PA (September 22, 2010) www.kelbytraininglive.com
MAXIMUM PHOTOSHOP CS5 TOUR San Jose, CA (August 23, 2010) Cleveland, OH (September 13, 2010) www.kelbytraininglive.com
PHOTOSHOP WORLD CONFERENCE & EXPO September 1–3, 2010 Mandalay Bay Convention Center Las Vegas, NV www.photoshopworld.com
n e ws
]
Graphic Authority releases sequel to their Rockstar collection Graphic Authority, who has been providing design elements and templates to photographers and digital artists around the world since 1994, recently announced part 2 of their popular Rockstar collection. As with the original version, Rockstar 2 targets the senior photographer and is a 3-disc collection containing complete 20-page photo books (including covers) in both 12x12" (scalable) square format and a complimentary landscape format for the widescreen effect. The new version contains more than 40 animal printed themed templates, as well as a selection of folded cards, business cards, and press-printed products. All templates from Graphic Authority are fully editable, layered, 300-dpi TIFFs, so you can move, resize, add, delete, and change the color of any element. Rockstar 2 retails for $179.95. For more info and to try out a free template, visit www.graphicauthority.com.
New Lightroom plug-in available from Jeffrey Friedl Lightroom plug-in developer Jeffrey Friedl has released a Snapshot on Export plug-in compatible with Lightroom 3 Beta 2 and later. Snapshot on Export allows you to create Develop module snapshots automatically upon export. Why do you need this? If you make additional changes to a photo in the Develop module after export, whether intentionally or accidentally, you can revert back to the export state. This plug-in is available for free (donationware). Unless users register the plug-in (which costs $0.01), the functionality will be somewhat reduced after six weeks. For more information, including a complete overview, installation instructions, and configuration instructions, visit http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/snapshot-on-export.
Get three-dimensional with Carrara 8 DAZ 3D–Gizmoz has released Carrara 8, an all-in-one 3D solution for figure posing, modeling, landscape design, rigid and soft-body dynamics, animation, and rendering. Carrara 8 is available in both a standard and Pro edition. Upgrades to both versions include multithreading for Mac and Windows, improved FBX and COLLADA data exchange, improved plants and vegetation, and render time optimizations. The Pro version adds 64-bit support for both Mac and Windows, the Bullet Physics Library, network render optimizations, normal maps, editing of posed meshes, and Puppeteer from DAZ Studio. It also includes enhanced lighting tools: negative lights, God rays, barn doors on spotlights, and the muchrequested capability of photometric (IES) lighting. The Bullet Physics Library is an open-source, advanced physics toolkit allowing users to create rigid and soft body dynamics. With the updated FBX export capabilities, game developers can transfer custom figures, environments, and animations directly into the Unity game engine. And with the editing of posed meshes, users can complete clean-up and detail work on conforming objects while the model is posed or conformed so results can be seen immediately. Carrara 8 is available for $249.95 and the Pro version retails for $549. For more information, visit www.daz3d .com/i/software/carrara8.
[h e n k
[
dawson]
DESIGNER SPOTLIGHT] C H R I S
{
}
M A I N
Henk Dawson
works out of his home office in Seattle were he’s lived most of his life. He earned a degree in graphic design from the University of Washington more than 20 years ago. After a short stint at an ad agency doing desktop publishing, Henk discovered his love for 3D. He used the payment from his first 3D job to purchase the software he was using to graduate from demo mode. Specializing in illustration and animation, Henk uses Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premier Pro, and Luxology’s modo for 3D rendering to create everything from photorealistic to conceptual illustrations. Since he started his business back in 1989, he has gained extensive experience creating visual assets for large corporations, ad agencies, design firms, and startups, including Microsoft, Apple, Crayola, and ESPN. He loves his work and his goal is to continue to stay small and focused on creating quality 3D illustration and animation.
www.LAYERSMAGAZINE.com
Layers: You recently purchased a lot of digital photography equipment with the intent to integrate photography into your 3D illustrations. How is that working out for you?
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Dawson: The new equipment has improved the quality of the photography that I do for my 3D work, mainly texture maps and background plates. I am, however, working at getting my skills to a level where my photography stands on its own. Layers: We see photorealistic art all the time that was created in Photoshop that looks three-dimensional, but no 3D tools were used. Is there a difference between photorealistic art and 3D art?
Dawson: The final result can be the same but the creation process is different. A 3D program has a virtual 3D space with geometry, lights, and textures. Using Photoshop without the 3D tools is like painting on a flat canvas, but a skilled Photoshop artist can achieve a similar 3D result. Layers: You’ve been working with 3D for quite some time now. How easy is it to work with today’s 3D apps? What do you think about the 3D capabilities in Photoshop CS5? Dawson: 3D applications have come a long way. Today’s computers are fast enough to display real-time previews (for most things) and the user interfaces are friendlier than they used to be. Photoshop 3D
17 l AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
is basic but powerful. You don’t need all the bells and whistles of a high-end 3D program to do sophisticated work. Layers: These days, it seems like it’s not enough to be just a designer or just an illustrator. Do you think your skills in 3D and animation give you an edge over traditional artists trying to make it in today’s industry? Dawson: Yes. I find it important to specialize. The good paying jobs are the ones that require a skill that’s in demand and difficult to learn. 3D animation fits that bill, and I would recommend it as a career. It can take many years to learn to do it well, but if you like it, it can be rewarding. Layers: Can you tell us about your process for creating one of your 3D illustrations? How much Photoshop and Illustrator are involved? Dawson: I spend more time in Illustrator and Photoshop building texture maps than I spend in modo, my 3D program. I also use After Effects and Premiere quite a bit. Most of my work is photorealism, so I generally build my 3D models directly from photographic reference. Occasionally, I get a more conceptual job and I’ll sketch it out in Photoshop using my Cintiq monitor. Layers: You’ve taught at the School of Visual Arts in Seattle, and you’ve been a speaker and lecturer at many conferences and events. What types of questions do you receive at these events? Dawson: I get asked what software I use. I use modo for 3D and Adobe’s Creative Suite Master Collection. Also, I get asked how do you build a creative career. I think that it’s important to balance practicality with passion. It’s practical to take jobs that pay the bills but it’s also important to do work that you’re passionate about. You’ll starve or get burned out if you’re too passionate or too practical.
[CONTACT] Henk Dawson www.d3d.com ALL IMAGES BY HENK DAWSON
[
[
the digital canvas
gallery]
]
showcasing the design work of our readers
www.l ayer smagazine.com
Design: 1016 W. Fulton Market ] [ Client: Personal Work ] [ Designer: Steve Somen ] [ Software: Adobe Photoshop CS4 ] [ www.stevesomen.com
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Design: The Thought Garden ] [ Client: Personal Work ] [ Designer: Jeff Langevin ] [ Software: Adobe Photoshop CS2 ] [ www.jefďŹ&#x201A;angevin.daportfolio.com
19 l AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ][ ju ly / au g u s t 2010
Design: 2010 Calendar Cover ] [ Client: School Project ] [ Designer: Alex Gomez ] [ Software: Adobe Photoshop CS4
Design: Toucan Air ] [ Client: Toucans Bar & Grill ] [ Designer: Nick Babb ] [ Software: Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator
Design: Cover NCRS The Corvette Restorer ] [ Client: National Corvette Restorers Society ] [ Designer: Vinnie Peters ] [ Software: Adobe Photoshop CS4 ] [ www.ncrs.org
The staff at Layers magazine appreciates the time and effort involved in the creative process, no matter how large or small the project. With this in mind, we offer you the opportunity to display your work on The Digital Canvas. Please submit your print, Web, or packaging design (jpeg or eps format) to: letters@layersmagazine.com. Please include name of piece, client name (if applicable), applications used, and any website where our readers can view more of your work.
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DESIGN MAKEOVER] J A K E
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}
W I D M A N
before
client: Joe Blondo caught between cultures
S
eattle writer and poet Joe Blondo first met Milton Wan at the Chinese restaurant where Wan worked. Their many conversations about how the Vietnam-born Wan wound up behind the counter of a Seattle restaurant eventually turned into Caught Between Cultures: A Story of Milton Wan and Viet Nam. In the book, Blondo traces Wan’s journey from a difficult childhood in ’40s and ’50s Saigon, through a risky escape via tramp steamer from Cambodia, to his sister’s house in Seattle. Soon enough though, Wan found himself back in Vietnam—this time as a soldier in the U.S. Army. When it came time to design a cover for the book, Blondo turned to a longtime friend and collaborator, illustrator Frank Morgan. “I wanted the cover to convey the cultural elements inherent in Milton, both in his personality and the world he grew up in,” he says. Frank feels the cover communicates those elements with its use of the red and yellow of the South Vietnamese flag and the red, white, and blue of the American flag. He also appreciates the way the bold colors placed against a black background should help the book stand out on bookstore shelves. “I find this cover very conversational in the way it ‘shouts out’ to the passing book buyer,” he says. Blondo agreed to let us assign his cover to three designers to see what others would do with the personal and political elements of the photos that appear inside the book, courtesy of photographer Peter Mumford. Here, then, are three alternate covers for this book about one American immigrant, but also about every immigrant’s experience in an adopted country.
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I wanted the cover to convey the cultural elements inherent in Milton, both in his personality and the world he grew up in.
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Jake Widman is a writer and editor who lives in San Francisco. He’s been covering the intersection of computers and graphic design for about 20 years now—since back when it was all called “desktop publishing.”
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makeover submissions We’re looking for product packaging or labels, print advertisements, websites, and magazine covers that are currently in the marketplace for future “Design Makeovers.” So if you or someone you know has a design that you’d like us to consider making over, or if you’re a designer and you’d like to be considered for a future “Design Makeover,” drop us a line at letters@layersmagazine.com.
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DESIGNER: Kristine Stallman ] [www.thedesignscompany.com
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he main thing the client liked about his current cover was the flag theme, so I decided to carry that aspect over into my design. I wanted to create a cover that the author felt still “shouted out” to book buyers but could also communicate a little more about the book’s content. I started by searching for images of flags from the two countries that frame the story, the United States and Vietnam. I didn’t want just flat drawings of flags, however, I wanted pictures that showed movement to help bring a more 3D aspect and some life to the cover. Once I found the images I wanted to use, I brought them into Adobe Photoshop. I wanted to show both flags overlapping, almost merging into each other, to portray the blended cultural elements of Milton’s character. I positioned each flag in an opposite corner of the cover and then applied a vector mask to each one. Using the Gradient tool with the Foreground to Background option, I faded out one side of each flag and then overlapped the flags to merge them into each other. To lend a personal touch to the design, I added in a couple of grayscale photos from Milton’s past—you can see these through the flags in the bottom corner. This helps to communicate to a book buyer that it’s not just about two countries but that it’s a personal story as well. Choosing a clean serif font (Adobe Caslon Pro), I placed the book’s title slightly to the right to keep the focus on the background images. I used white for the text and applied a slight shadow to help it pop off the background. Setting the word “between” smaller than Caught and Cultures not only makes it visually appealing but it also plays upon the words themselves. Placing the short description of the book in the bottom-left corner draws the eye down from the title and toward the black-and-white photos in the background.
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To lend a personal touch to the design, I added in a couple of grayscale photos from Milton’s past.
D E S I G N E R ]
Kristine Stallman ] [ www.thedesignscompany.com Inspired by designing a cereal box in a high school marketing class, Kristine decided early on to pursue a career in design. She attended Sheridan College and graduated with a diploma in advertising. Since then, she has worked in several business environments, and with her schooling and natural design talent, she brings a unique perspective to design that her clients have come to rely on. She started her own home-based graphic design business in 2004, focusing on working with small businesses and startups, so that she could stay home to raise her children. With a little word-of-mouth advertising, her client base has steadily grown. Kristine specializes in print design but also dabbles in a little Web work as well. She relies heavily on the K.I.S.S. theory of design. Kristine currently resides in Waterford, Ontario, Canada with her husband and their four children. She can be reached at kristine@thedesignscompany.com.
APPLICATION USED: Adobe Photoshop CS3
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after DESIGNER: Keith Gillespie www.jonevan.com
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wanted my cover to both tell and sell. “Tell” by foreshadowing the story inside; “sell” by using colors and design to attract shoppers’ eyes to store shelves and webpage listings. Such a cover would work its hardest to get noticed, pique a prospective reader’s interest, and drive impulse sales. The book is about Mr. Wan’s cultural and family pressures during the time he served as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam. So my cover likewise focuses on Mr. Wan, while using design to depict his being “caught between cultures.” I represent his cultural past by placing the pre-1975 South Vietnamese flag behind him. The U.S. flag is in front of him, much as our culture was in front of him when he left Vietnam in his youth. Mr. Wan is trapped between the two flags, as if in a vise clamp. The word “cultures” presses in on his head, which is his mental and emotional center. And I use an old photo of his family and an image of Vietnam-era U.S. soldiers to grip him within yet another visual vise. Finally, I chose Aachen Bold for the headline font, because its capital “C” echoes the shape of a clamp, and its letterforms are squeezed as well. The parallel lines in the flags provide even more visual stress, serving as fencing. Yet despite all these restrictive design elements, the flags stand brightly, boldly, proudly. Their parallel lines symbolize the parallel cultural allegiances that tug on Mr. Wan’s heart and soul. And Mr. Wan—the only vertical element on the page—rises like a phoenix, further foretelling the story inside. Mr. Blondo’s name recedes in the design much as an author recedes behind his words. He’s not caught between cultures, appearing only within the American flag.
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The parallel lines in the flags symbolize the parallel cultural allegiances that tug on Mr. Wan’s heart and soul.
D E S I G N E R ]
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Keith Gillespie ] [ www.jonevan.com
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Keith served as creative director for one of America’s largest marketing agencies, overseeing five offices across the U.S. In 2001, he began his own agency, JonEvan Marketing Group. With clients ranging from major corporations to small businesses, he delivers the strategic planning, concepting, writing, designing, website programming, and search-engine marketing himself, using outside support sparingly. His multiple skills let him work efficiently, with a deep understanding of how each skill affects the others while working toward specific project objectives. He has sold products and services in a wide range of industries, with work in print advertising, direct mail, radio, TV, consumer activation, in-store displays, websites, email, banner advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising, and more. Keith has degrees in both design and writing, and is the featured crossword puzzle constructor for Every Day with Rachael Ray magazine. Keith resides in Princeton, New Jersey, with his wife, two sons, and dog.
APPLICATION USED: Adobe Photoshop CS4 continued on p. 24
[ des i gn make ov e r ]
after DESIGNER: LuAnn Arena www.funkykittyproductions.com
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fter reading the synopsis of the story, I had a clear image of the visual for the cover and I knew I wanted to do the illustration myself rather than use any stock photography or stock illustration. My goal was to show, simply and powerfully, the drama of Milton Wan’s unique struggle at a glance. And, of course, the cover clearly needs to draw readers to pick up the book and want to know more. The original cover, predominantly black, with portions of both the Vietnamese and American flags in the text, needed a stronger visual component. I felt the human piece was missing, leaving it to look a little more like a textbook or something similarly impersonal. The author did state that he felt black would get the book noticed on the shelf, that he liked the bold colors, and wanted to convey the cultural elements. That seemed to fit right in with my plan. I created a composite using multiple images that provided the structure to work from—a lone soldier looking out over a Vietnam landscape. I can only imagine the incredible internal conflict of returning to your home country to fight as a soldier of another. I made a couple of sketches and then scanned my final choice, adjusted the scan in Adobe Photoshop, and rendered the final art in Adobe Illustrator. For the landscape, I used red and varying tints of yellow—the colors of the Vietnamese flag. This provided a striking backdrop for the stark black silhouette. I resisted using the distinctions of the flags as literally as the original cover, because the story, in addition to the historical context, is about the personal challenges of familial relationships. Finally, I used Eurostile for the font, as it gave a clean, tight look for the title, tag line, and author.
My goal was to show, simply and powerfully, the drama of Milton Wan’s unique struggle at a glance.
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D E S I G N E R ]
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LuAnn Arena] [ www.funkykittyproductions.com
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Originally from Rochester, New York, LuAnn made her way to the Hudson Valley after regularly traveling the U.S. playing her original music to anyone who would listen. After thousands of miles on the road, it was time for a new challenge. With a B.F.A. in Graphic Design, LuAnn has more than five years’ experience in print and Web design, starting with an on-campus job in the SUNY New Paltz Publications Department and continuing through her current work on SEGD, an international environmental design magazine and 2009 SNAP (Society of National Association Publications) Award winner. Along the way, she has also worked on numerous freelance projects for print, Web, and logo design. LuAnn has also produced hundreds of event posters, many including her original artwork, for the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock, New York. LuAnn writes a design blog at her website focusing on interviews with designers, sustainable practices, and the sources of creativity. She’s currently working on a limited-edition poster series including a special poster donation to The Haiti Poster Project.
APPLICATIONS USED: Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Illustrator CS4
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needlework Some things can be so complex. Isn’t it great that Photoshop makes them easy? All you need to know is how things work and you can do whatever your
I M A GE S: © I STO C K PH OTO I LLU STR ATI O N : TA F F Y C LI F F O R D
imagination conjures up. One of the billboards in my Times Square painting contains a model wearing an intricate, crocheted top. I have no doubt that making this garment was a time-consuming, laborious task. Fortunately for me, using Illustrator and Photoshop took a lot of the grunt work out of it. It was just a matter of using some of the features in Illustrator combined with others found in Photoshop. And, unlike the real garment, I didn’t have to go to China to get it made!
[Fortunately for me, using Illustrator and
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Photoshop took a lot of
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the grunt work out of it.]
STEP ONE: It all starts in Adobe Illustrator. Select File>New to create a new, square document (we used 10x10" at 150 ppi). Turn on the Rulers by pressing Command-R (PC: Ctrl-R), click-and-drag a vertical guide from the left to the center of the page, then clickand-drag a horizontal guide that crosses the vertical line through the center of the page. Where these guides meet will serve as the center of our circular design. Create two additional vertical guides equidistantly on either side of the original vertical guide and create two horizontal guides at the top of the document. These four guides will be used to create the overall shape of a single strand of the pattern. If you find the Rulers to be a distraction, press Command-R (PC: Ctrl-R) once more to turn them off. STEP TWO: Now, using your guides to ensure symmetry, click-anddrag to create a path that forms an arc using the Arc tool that’s nested with the Line Segment tool (\), generating it far enough away from the horizontal center guide so that the arc will form the outer edge of your crocheted shape. Shift-click with the Selection tool (V) to select both parts of the arc. Note: If you inadvertently use the Direct Selection tool (A), you won’t select all the points, which will prevent the next step from working properly.
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center where the vertical and horizontal guidelines cross. While holding down Option (PC: Alt), click at the center to bring up the Rotate dialog. In the Rotate dialog, set the Angle for rotation to 15° and click the Copy button. (Note: Your choice of Angle value will depend on the size of your document.) This makes a copy of the original arc that is rotated at the specified angle, rotating around the central point selected. Press Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D) to repeat the last action performed. This next arc will be 15° from the previous arc. Press Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D) several times to duplicate and rotate the arc until a full circle has been created. You’ll know if it’s going to work once you get halfway around. If
variety. Note: Clicking on the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel (Window>Layers) and creating each set in its own, separate layer will make it easy to select them and move them around independently of each other. This will become an obvious necessity with the next step.
your bottom arc doesn’t align exactly with the top arc and center guide, start over at Step Two.
STEP FOUR: Repeating these steps with other shapes, each placed closer to the center, will give you the ability to create some unusual designs. In two separate layers, generate two additional sets of shapes using the same techniques but alter the arc shape to add
STEP FIVE: Duplicate the shape various times and place all of the shapes together to form a pattern. They should touch each other as if they’re all connected into a single crocheted pattern. Hide the guides to inspect your work undistracted by pressing Command-;
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STEP THREE: Choose the Rotate tool (R). Place the cursor at the
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(PC: Ctrl-; semicolon), or remove them by going under the View menu and selecting Guides>Clear. Click-and-drag with the Selection tool, to encompass the entire work and select all the paths. Copy them to the clipboard by selecting Edit>Copy. Now it’s time to put Photoshop to work.
STEP SIX: Open Photoshop and press D then X to set your Background color to black. Go to File>New, choose the document’s sizes and from the Background Contents menu, choose Background Color. Click OK and go to Edit>Paste to paste the paths into the file. Note: We’re given a few choices for how these paths can be imported in the Paste dialog; they should be pasted as paths, so click the Path radio button and click OK. We didn’t assign any color or shape information in Illustrator because all these attributes will be created in Photoshop. Also, a smart object isn’t necessary because we’re only dealing with paths. These paths will be used to guide the brush to generate the stitches of the crochet.
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STEP SEVEN: Choose the Brush tool (B). Open the Brush panel (Window>Brush). In the Brush Tip Shape section, select a circular, hard-edged brush tip with a Size of 9 px, and disable all checkboxes except Smoothing. Then increase the Spacing slider to 74% so the circular brush tips slightly touch each other. Click the Foreground color swatch at the bottom of the Toolbox, and in the resulting Color Picker, choose what color you want your threads to be (in this example we used white), then click the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel to create a new layer to contain the crocheted pattern.
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STEP NINE: Check to ensure your crochet looks good by placing it against a skin color: With Layer 1 selected, Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) the Create a New Layer icon to create a new layer below Layer 1 (Layer 2), click the Foreground color swatch, pick a skin-tone color (we used R:188, G:133, B:111), click OK, then press Command-Option (PC: Ctrl-Alt) to fill Layer 2 with the color. The final touch to make the threads come to life is a little layer style application. Double-click the Layer 1 thumbnail in the Layers panel to bring up the Layer Style dialog. Click to choose Drop Shadow from the list of layer styles on the left; we want to make the threads look as if they’re laying over the surface of the skin below. To do this, click-anddrag down on the pattern to pull the drop shadow out from below; release it when there’s just a slight bit of space between the needlework and the drop shadow. Then click Bevel and Emboss. Increase the Size to 4 px, change the Angle to 122°, and the Altitude to 30°. Since the threads used in this article were white, we clicked the color swatch for the Highlight Mode, changed it to a medium gray (R:100, G:98, B:98) color, clicked OK, and set the Highlight Mode to Multiply. This gave different dark tones to the outer edges of the white threads, thus making them look three-dimensional. When you’re satisfied with the way your needlework looks, click OK to close the dialog.
Remember, the important thing being shown here isn’t the end result,
STEP EIGHT: With the Brush tool still selected, open the Paths panel (Window>Paths). Click the Stroke Path With Brush icon at the bottom of the Paths panel. The results should create a look that resembles threads of a crochet pattern. If yours doesn’t, simply press Command-Z (PC: Ctrl-Z) to Undo, adjust your setting in the Brush panel, and try again.
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but rather how that result was achieved. You may never have to create a crocheted pattern but a little change in shape here, and a different style there, could be the answer to the particular problem you’re being faced with. It’s a question of understanding how things work and how you can make Photoshop do what you want. Photoshop and Illustrator are very accommodating. Play with them and most of all—have fun!
Bert Monroy is considered one of the pioneers of digital art. His work has been seen in many magazines and scores of books. He has served on the faculty of many well-known institutions, written many books, and appeared on hundreds of TV shows around the world. ALL IMAGES BY BERT MONROY
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Annual Layers
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L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
th “Four r u o r ar, fo icked ast ye 100 W s r e y odl La the pr d Annua e k s e to we a t Adob Tips,” a s r e s, anag est tip b uct m y r e eir v we ers t h c job, i d t a s e a t r ur fan hey g i v e o did such a year. T r s i h t y te e ain ods af o it ag and th o d g o e t h them r the e up t asked to giv CS5 fo t n i a o w k n’t cloc ifled could ing st nd the e u b o r e l a i h ns g workin al months w so that mea ver zle, CS5 last se A muz tips for the D N , ’ l o th pages g by the brimmin’ wi n i w follo op just otosh n the we’re I h . P s r n o f atio atips Illustr applic azing , d m a e d d fin xten ew to you’ll hop E yst (n l s a o t t a o al, C h Flash ession and P f , o n r g P i iere Des lash tor, In uite), F ts, and Prem S e v i t c ls e ea ew too ter Eff f n the Cr A n , r o e you weav focus n have Dream e tips o h t o f s l o il any new nd w Pro. M these CS5, a n i in r s e e t r r ore a atu nd sm even m and fe a n r r e a t le s g fa rning like to workin ne Lea you’d li If n . O s n s tio yer /cs5. applica , visit our La e.com n i z a 5 g S C rsma about w.laye w w t a Center
Photoshop Use Noise Reduction to soften skin By now you know that Photoshop CS5 (Camera Raw 6) and Lightroom 3 have great Noise Reduction, but did you know that you could max Luminance and minimize Luminance Detail to make your image look like a painting and to soften skin?
By Bryan O’Neil Hughes Multilayer Opacity and Fill —and so much more
Sharpen as it should be Following in the footsteps of the updates in CS4 to the old Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools, CS5 features a new logic for the Sharpen tool. Now pressure-sensitive, brushbased sharpening is more powerful and less destructive (no artifacts). Just select Protect Details and the Tablet Pressure options in the Options Bar. In fact, this is the most sophisticated sharpening algorithm in Photoshop!
The ability to select multiple layers and adjust the Opacity or Fill was at the top of many Photoshop users’ lists. From text to image data, those living in layers will enjoy massive amounts of time saved. Speaking of layers, you can now choose your own default layer styles (just click the Make Default button in the Layer Style dialog).
BRYAN O’NEIL HUGHES
Content-Aware Fill
Painting photographs
From fixing gaps in a panorama to removing unwanted objects, the new Content-Aware Fill (CAF) feature delivers amazing results, but there are a few tricks to know. Ask the possible—CAF does a great job with reproducible patterns: Sky, sand, grass, stone, etc.; less so with man-made objects. When in doubt, use a small selection and try running it and re-running it; each pass will likely get you closer. Sometimes expanding a selection will help dramatically. No matter what the result, CAF will get you further and faster than ever before.
Photoshop CS5 enjoys a new paint engine wired up to the new Mixer Brush tool (nested with the Brush tool [B]). To enjoy the benefits, select the new Painting Workspace (Window>Workspace>Painting) and the Mixer Brush tool. Open a conventional photo and have fun experimenting. With more control of brush and fluid dynamics and the ability to mix pixels and to change load, flow, etc., you’ll soon be converting photos to paintings. Here I have preserved the photo of my son Miles, while painting over the fall leaves around him.
Better HDR Photoshop CS5 has an incredibly powerful new feature called Merge to HDR Pro, accessible from File>Automate. Quick results, intuitive controls, and magical de-ghosting. For best results, bracket three to five exposures when shooting; stabilize; and use Av (Aperture Priority) or Manual mode to fix aperture.
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Selecting hair
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Significant changes to the Refine Edge dialog take masking hair to a new level. The choices are daunting, but the steps are simple: make a selection with the Quick Selection tool (W); Option-click (PC: Alt-click) to remove unwanted areas; then continue to Select>Refine Edge. Using Black & White (K) from the View menu, choose a 10–15 pixel Radius, enable the Smart Radius checkbox, and voilà! Use the Option-click (PC: Alt-click) method with the new Refine Radius tool (E) located in the Refine Edge dialog to refine the final mask.
Phone and power lines are the bane of a retoucher’s existence. The new ContentAware Spot Healing in CS5 has fixed this. Here’s how: Using the Pen tool (P), add a path to the line; choose the Spot Healing Brush (J) with Content-Aware selected in the Options Bar; change the brush size to two times the width of the wire; and in the Paths panel (Window>Paths), select the path and click the Stroke Path with Brush icon—done!
Add grain to bring consistency to composites One of many changes to Camera Raw 6 is the ability to add grain. Grain can be used to add warmth to an image, hide blemishes and mimic film stock—but can also be used to establish consistency between images of varied ISO (or “film speed”). Consider the case of a shot taken midday and another at sunset; compositing the midday image onto the sunset will look artificial due to mixed texture, but a sprinkle of additive grain will bring consistency and believability to your composite. Best off all, the results are editable and nondestructive (when used as smart objects).
BRYAN O’NEIL HUGHES
Removing lines
64-Bit—what does that mean to me? Photoshop CS5 is now capable of running in native 64-bit on both Mac and Windows. This means Photoshop can now address hundreds of gigs of RAM (instead of just 4 GB). The results are speedier operations— the bigger the file, the bigger the difference. The 32-bit version is on the same disc, so if your third-party plug-ins haven’t been updated yet, you can run Photoshop in 32-bit.
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Jumpstart 3D creation from the 3D panel
it to another part of your model, another 3D mesh, or another 3D layer. Use the 3D Select Material tool to help target the right material as indicated by the material picker thumbnail in the 3D panel.
In Photoshop CS5 Extended, it’s easy to get started with 3D creation from the 3D panel (Window>3D). Use Repoussé on text layers, masks, selections, or paths to extrude them to real 3D geometries. Take layers and wrap them around 3D shapes and even open 3D models from third-party content providers directly as a Photoshop 3D layer.
Ground shadows for 3D Easily turn on ground shadows for 3D objects using 3D>Ground Plane Shadow Catcher. In the 3D (Scene) panel, set the Quality drop-down menu to Ray Trace (Draft or Final) to start the render and actually see the shadow. In the 3D (Lights) panel, turn shadows on or off for individual lights using the Create Shadows checkbox, and then adjust the Softness. In the 3D (Mesh) panel, you can adjust the shadow Opacity. Choose Snap Object to Ground Plane from the 3D panel’s flyout menu if necessary to see the shadow.
Easily access free 3D content online Download additional free models and materials directly from Photoshop CS5 Extended! Explore the landing page for 3D content from 3D>Browse 3D Content Online. Here you’ll find links to popular 3D content providers, additional 3D materials to download, and information on other great 3D resources.
3D Overlays! When you have any of the 3D tools active, you can turn on 3D overlays from the bottom of the 3D panel to view the 3D Axis (the widget for manipulating meshes, lights, and cameras), light widgets, material and mesh bounding boxes, and a ground plane. Go to Photoshop (PC: Edit)>Preferences>3D to change overlay settings. To use the 3D Axis for meshes, lights, or cameras, select the right tool to invoke the 3D Axis for that property. For example, when you select one of the 3D Light tools in the 3D (Lights) panel and click on a light widget, the 3D Axis will now rotate and move the selected light.
Target lights with a simple click! Punch out holes in your extrusions! In the Repoussé dialog you can manipulate the constraint (sub-path) using any of the Internal Constraints tools to either punch it out to make a hole or add separate extrusion parameters. You can also add constraints to an existing Repoussé object by drawing a selection or path and choosing either 3D>Repoussé>Create Constraints From Selection(s) or Selected Path(s). You can also use the Add(Selection) or Add(Path) buttons in the Internal Constraints section of the Repoussé dialog.
By Zorana Gee
Easily position lights now in Photoshop CS5 Extended by using a keyboard shortcut. With a 3D Light tool active, select the light widget that you want to reposition, and then Optionclick (PC: Alt-click) on the 3D object to select the new target of the light.
Use the Material Drop tool to easily load and drop materials Material editing workflow is easier now with the 3D Material Drop and 3D Select Material tools in the 3D panel. With the 3D Material Drop tool, Option-click (PC: Alt-click) a material to load it and then click anywhere to drop
Progressive rendering— pause and resume If you’ve paused your rendering (by pressing the Spacebar) and would like it to resume, select the Resume Progressive Render command from the 3D panel’s flyout menu. When the rendering is complete, you’ll no longer see the blue tiles getting drawn.
Test renderings with selections Sometimes you may want to quickly render for only a selected part of your 3D object to save time and check for specific lighting effects. That’s now possible by simply making a selection on the area you want to render and going to 3D>Progressive Render Selection.
Depth of field for 3D Create a depth-of-field effect on your 3D object with the 3D Zoom Camera tool (nested with the 3D Rotate Camera tool [N]). Option-click (PC: Alt-click) the area where you want to set the distance or focal plane of focus. You can also manually set the Blur and Distance parameters in the Options Bar. (The Blur is set to 0 by default, so you’ll need to increase the value to see the effect.)
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Photoshop CS5 Extended
Illustrator
By David Macy ity possible with this tool via shortcuts. For example, pressing the Option (PC: Alt) key while dragging will allow you to create an asymmetrical stroke width.
Join me In Illustrator CS5 you can join any number of paths by simply selecting them all with the Selection tool (V) and pressing Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J)—you no longer need to select just the end points. A second Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) with the path still selected will close the path.
Learn the numbers While working with the Perspective Drawing tools, you can use 1–4 on your keyboard to change the active plane (the number four key deactivates all the grids). To see which plane is active, look at which side is highlighted in the Plane Switching widget. The number five key also has a function: Use it with the Perspective Selection tool (Shift-V) to drag objects perpendicular to the grid plane.
Dash away all The new dash adjustment option for strokes will make dashes look as if they were carefully and correctly placed—evenly distributed on a path and cleanly bisecting any corners, even on complex shapes such as a 20-pointed star. To turn this option on, go to the Stroke panel (Window>Stroke), click the Dashed Line checkbox, and select the second icon to the far right: Aligns Dashes to Corners and Path Ends, Adjusting Lengths to Fit. Want to keep that setting turned on for future object creation? Deselect New Art Has Basic Appearance from the Appearance panel’s flyout menu (Window>Appearance).
Masking reversed Instead of creating complex artwork and then drawing another object on top to mask that artwork, you can now simply click on any object and change the drawing mode to Draw Inside (Shift-D) at the bottom of the Toolbox. After you’ve set Draw Inside, the selected object will mask everything you draw. Draw Inside also supports the Paste and Place commands—pasting inside an object has finally come to Illustrator.
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Paint inside
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Use Draw Inside with the new Bristle Brush to fill any shape with beautiful brushstrokes. This brush creates painterly strokes by mimicking the appearance of actual bristles from an artist’s brush, but the strokes are still vectors so they’re fully editable and scalable. To find the Bristle Brushes, open the Brushes panel (Window>Brushes), click on the flyout menu, and choose Open Brush Library>Bristle Brush>Bristle Brush Library. Click on a brush in the Bristle Brush Library to add it to the Brushes panel, and then double-click on it in the Brushes panel to open the Bristle Brush Options dialog.
9-slice scaling
Draw a triangle How do you make a triangle? Some people do it with the Pen tool (P), others by creating a square and deleting an anchor point. The fastest way to draw a triangle is with the Polygon tool (nested with the Rectangle tool [M]). While drawing a polygon, hit the Down Arrow key on your keyboard multiple times to reduce the number of sides.
Taper strokes The Width tool (Shift-W) lets you drag strokes wider or narrower on any part of a path. You can add multiple width points to go wide to narrow to wide again. The Width tool is easy-to-use, but don’t let that stop you from exploring all the functional-
CS3 brought a feature called 9-slice scaling from Flash Professional into Illustrator. At that time, 9-slice was only really useful for Illustrator symbols after importing them into Flash. Now, in CS5, 9-slice works on the scaling of any symbol right inside Illustrator. Let’s say you want to make a button with text on it, but when you scale it up, you don’t want the text to stretch or the rounded corners to distort. Make the button into a symbol (drag it into the Symbols panel) and apply 9-slice scaling (select Enable Guides for 9-Slice Scaling in the Symbol Options dialog), then you can scale the button without distortion.
Back to basics If you’ve applied fancy attributes like art or pattern brushes, but you want to reset them to simple strokes, a new setting on the Control panel is made for doing just that. With the path selected, click on the Brush Definition drop-down menu in the Control panel and look for the Basic option at the top of the list. To reset variable width strokes, click on the Variable Width Profile drop-down menu and select Uniform at the top.
And even more basic One of the biggest timesavers to ever learn with Illustrator is using the X key to switch between the current Stroke and Fill. Use this, along with the Forward Slash (/) key for no Fill or Stroke, and your life will be so much easier.
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Gridified tools While dragging with a frame tool, tap the arrow keys to start subdividing the area you’ve dragged out into equal parts. The Up/Down Arrows change the number of rows and the Right/Left Arrows change the number of columns. The default amount of space between each frame will automatically be the same as the Gutter value for the current spread (Layout>Margins and Columns).
Auto-Fit Something every InDesign user learns is that an image in a frame and the frame itself are two separate things. InDesign CS5 introduces a new feature that changes this relationship. Select a frame that has an image in it and enable the new Auto-Fit checkbox in the Control panel. Now when you resize the frame, the image will “go along for the ride” and scale as you change the frame!
Mind the gap The new Gap tool (U) works on the “white space” between frames. Position the mouse between two items, click-and-drag to adjust the position of the gap, and the frames on either side of the gap will adjust at the same time—the uniform gap width will be maintained! Hold down the Shift key to only adjust the two closest items relative to the gap. Hold down the Command (PC: Ctrl) key to resize the gap instead of moving it.
By Michael Ninness Grid Place for multipage documents It’s now possible to place pages from a multipage PDF, INDD, Illustrator file, etc. as a grid. In the Place dialog (File>Place), enable the checkboxes for Show Import Options and Create Static Captions, and then navigate to your multipage file. Choose the range of pages you want to place in the next dialog and click OK. With the loaded Place cursor, drag out an area for your grid, subdivide the area into columns and rows using the arrow keys, and then release the mouse button to place the pages.
View links in Bridge and Mini Bridge If you want to place an image that you used in another InDesign document, go to either Adobe Bridge or the new Mini Bridge panel (Window>Mini Bridge) in InDesign, and navigate to that InDesign file. Right-click on the document thumbnail and choose Show Linked Files. Magically, you’ll now see thumbnails of all the placed files inside that InDesign document. Select the item(s) you want to use and drag them into your current document.
No more missing fonts! When you include the fonts as part of the Package command (File>Package), InDesign now generates a Document Fonts folder. When you open an InDesign file that’s located in a folder that also includes a Document Fonts folder, InDesign will automatically install the fonts the document needs! And when you close the document, the document fonts are automatically uninstalled for you.
Rounded corners Presentation mode Press Shift-W to switch into the new Presentation mode. This will hide the user interface and center and fit your document into the screen. Any extra screen area will be colored black. Press G to change the background to grey, press W to change it to white, and press B to change it back to black.
Select a frame and click on the yellow square icon located on the frame edge to enter Live Corner Edit mode. (You can also press the number four key on your keyboard.) You’ll now see four yellow diamonds in each corner. Click-and-drag one of the diamonds to adjust the corner radius of all four corners at the same time. To adjust only one corner, hold down the Shift key as you drag the diamond. To cycle through the six different corner styles, Option-click (PC: Alt-click) on
one of the yellow diamonds. To exit Live Corner Edit mode, either press the four key again, or deselect the object.
Live distribute Ever needed to change the amount of space between a number of aligned items on the page? To do it interactively, first select the items on the page with the Selection tool (notice that CS5 now provides a transformation bounding box around multiple selected items!). Click-anddrag one of the handles of the bounding box to resize all the items in your selection. To resize the space between each item, hold down the Spacebar while dragging.
Tool Hints The new Tool Hints panel (Window>Utilities>Tool Hints) lists all the hidden modifier key behaviors available for the currently selected tool. For example, look at the Tool Hints panel when the Selection tool is active to discover that to select an item in a group, you no longer have to switch to the Direct Selection tool first. You can just double-click on the item with the Selection tool. To jump back up to having the group selected, simply press the Esc key.
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InDesign
Fireworks Just click it to select it Fireworks has a simple and powerful selection model. Click on something to select it, regardless of what layer it’s on, even if it’s grouped. There’s no need to dig through your Layers panel to try and find a layer. Use the Pointer tool (V) to select an object or its group, the Select Behind tool (press V again) to click repeatedly and select the next object lower in the stacking order, and the Subselection tool (A) to select an object in a group. Wicked simple, and sure to save you time.
The context sensitive Properties panel The Properties panel shows the commands and operations that you can use for the current selection. In Fireworks CS5, there are even more context sensitive controls and nice new features: Easily constrain proportions when scaling width and height; a new Gradient Dither option smoothes Linear and Radial gradients; align strokes with a single click; and new Compound Shape options allow easily combining vectors shapes as they’re drawn.
By Bruce Bowman to an FXG 2 file and take that into Flash Catalyst where you can then add structure and interaction. FXG files can be imported into Flash Catalyst, Flash Professional, Illustrator, and Photoshop, or even added to a Flash Builder project.
Mobile authoring and Adobe Device Central integration Fireworks is a screen graphics design application and can be used to create optimized graphics for any device. With the explosion of mobile devices, set-top boxes and proprietary electronic devices, there are more screens in the world now than ever, with no signs of slowing down. Fireworks CS5 designs can easily be previewed with Adobe Device Central.
• Option-arrow key (PC: Alt-arrow key) to duplicate the current selection • Arrow key to nudge the current selection 1 pixel • Shift-arrow key to nudge the current selection 10 pixels • With any tool selected, press-and-hold the Command (PC: Ctrl) key to toggle temporarily to the Pointer tool • Command-Up/Down Arrow (PC: Ctrl-Up/ Down Arrow) will move the selected object’s layer(s) in the layer order • Command-Shift-Up Arrow (PC: Ctrl-ShiftUp Arrow) will move the selected object’s layer(s) to the top of the layer order • Command-Shift-Down Arrow (PC: Ctrl-Shift-Down Arrow) will move the selected object’s layer(s) to the bottom of the layer order • Command-Shift-9 (PC: Ctrl-Shift-9) will rotate the selection 90° clockwise • Copy, then select something else and press Command-Option-Shift-V (PC: CtrlAlt-Shift-V) to Paste Attributes • Hold the Shift key when using the Pointer tool or Subselection tool and hover the mouse between guides to see measurements • Shift-drag a guide to see measurements from edges or from other guides.
Measure tool
Slicing improvements
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Text layout
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Text is part of nearly every design, and for Fireworks CS5, lots of refinements have been added to the already impressive text layout features. A favorite is the new noncontiguous selection feature—after selecting some text characters in a text object using the Text tool (T), press-and-hold the Shift key and click-and-drag to select additional noncontiguous characters.
Flash Catalyst integration Flash Catalyst is a new interaction design tool for the Adobe Flash Platform. In Fireworks CS5, you can export a selection, an entire page, or all of your pages
You can now Edit>Copy and Edit> Paste Attributes from one slice to another, saving you time in what can be a tedious workflow. Slice names are now case-sensitive, so changing the case of a letter in the slice name will now change the slice name.
Share color swatches Fireworks can now share Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) files with Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and Kuler. Use the Swatches panel in each application to save or open swatch libraries.
Finger dancing Manipulating objects is something you probably do dozens of times a day. Learn these keyboard shortcuts to amplify your productivity.
Do you work on user interfaces? Ever make specifications that call out specific pixel measurements? Select the Measure tool from the Vector group in the Toolbox (nested under the Rectangle tool [U]), and use it to create your call outs.
Collaborate with clients and teammates With the collaboration tools in Fireworks, you can make the feedback process as painless as possible, and look professional and graceful as you do it. There are several different ways to share your work and you can choose the right approach for each situation—Share My Screen, Export Adobe PDF, Preview in Browser, Create AIR File, Demo Current Document, and Export HTML and CSS.
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Sharing is caring When creating multipage sites or applications, you often want the object on the first page to show up on one or more of the other pages. Your first instinct is to copy-and-paste it into the pages where it’s needed, but doing that will create multiple copies of the object. To avoid this, Right-click on the object and use the Share to State command to select specific states, or all of them. If you want to remove the object from the state, use Remove from State.
Down to the wire Flash Catalyst contains numerous wireframe drawing tools and prebuilt components that you can use to create interactive wireframes. Prebuilt components are fully functioning buttons, scrollbars, checkboxes, and other user interface items that let you quickly mock up the layout of your finished project. You can find these in the Wireframe Components panel.
Round and round we go A huge timesaver, and a giant benefit to working with Flash Catalyst, is its integration with other Adobe Creative Suite design tools. By selecting a vector or bitmap graphic in Flash Catalyst and Right-clicking on it, you can quickly bring it into Adobe Illustrator CS5 or Adobe Photoshop CS5, make changes, then automatically merge the changes back into Flash Catalyst. This roundtrip editing lets you use familiar design products to easily add interactivity to your static artwork.
Vector graphics: The optimizer! When importing vector graphics into Flash Catalyst, all aspects of the graphics—the strokes, fills, and paths—are all represented by code. When publishing your final project,
By Doug Winnie
you can optimize its performance by converting these vector graphics to optimized graphics using the Flash Catalyst heads-up display (HUD). The HUD is the gray and black floating panel that changes its options based on the currently selected object. If you’re handing your project off to Adobe Flash Builder 4, optimizing your graphics will extract all of that vector code into an external file.
Linking it up When working with larger bitmap graphics, you can set them up as external linked images to keep your Flash Catalyst project file size small. You can also make changes to these linked files after the project is published without reopening the project in Flash Catalyst. Convert an embedded bitmap image to a linked image by selecting it and setting it in the HUD, or Right-click on the image in the Library panel.
Shhh…Working with the Library No need to keep your voice down. With the Library panel in Flash Catalyst you can share and import other components made by other Flash Catalyst users quickly and easily. From the Library panel, click the Export Library Package icon or Right-click and select Export Library Package. To import another library use the same controls, but choose Import.
Artboards. So many artboards When creating your project design in Adobe Illustrator CS5, you can use the multiple artboards feature to break up your design. When importing (File>Import>Adobe Illustrator File) your project into Flash Catalyst, individual artboards convert into unique pages in Flash Catalyst!
Fire away with Fireworks Adobe Fireworks CS5 users have a unique workflow to get their designs into Flash Catalyst. When finished with your project, export your design as FXG. Fireworks pages will convert to Flash Catalyst application pages, including master page layer objects. Best yet, if you want to tweak the export engine, it’s entirely written in JSF, the JavaScript plug-in language for Fireworks.
Spice up your transitions When you make changes to the location, opacity, rotation, or size of your components, Flash Catalyst captures those changes across states and automatically creates transitions. In addition to these automatically created effects, you can create your own directly on the Timeline. By selecting an object, you can use a number of 3D rotation effects, set a number of component properties, and choreograph custom component transitions.
Going deep with the Properties panel In Flash Catalyst, the Properties panel gives you access to all of the basics attributes for an object, such as location, width, height, and others. When you select components like buttons, radio buttons, and checkboxes, there are component properties that can be set as well. You can define button labels and radio button groups, define tooltip text to display when your user hovers over a component, and trigger hand icons on mouse rollovers. Check out all of the options available in the Properties panel.
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Flash Catalyst
Flash Professional Magical flowing text blocks With the new Text Layout Framework (TLF), if you now draw a text block and fill it with more text than the block can handle, click on the Out Port of the selected container and draw a new text block. The text will flow from one text block to the other just like in Adobe InDesign.
Instant image update If you save your project as a Flash CS5 Uncompressed Document (*.xfl), some parts of the Flash file can be worked on separately by different people. You’ll see a folder with the name of your project instead of a FLA file. You can edit any Flash Library asset contained within the matching library folder. Edit any image in Photoshop, save your changes, and those changes will be immediately reflected on the Stage and in the Library when you return to Flash.
To spring or not to spring In Flash Professional CS5 you can now add springiness to any IK Bone in an armature. The Strength (stiffness of the spring) and Damping (rate of decay of the spring effect) properties of bones give real physical movement by integrating dynamic physics into the IK Bones system. However, it may be desirable to turn off Spring for bones without having to set both values to zero on every bone. To do this, select the Timeline layer that the armature is in to reveal an Enable checkbox for Springs in the Properties panel.
Working with keyframes in a tween span To easily move a property keyframe to a different frame in the same tween span or a different tween span, Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) the property keyframe to select it, release the Command (PC: Ctrl) key, then click-and-drag the keyframe to the new location. (If you want to copy the keyframe, Option-drag [PC: Alt-drag].) The trick here is to release the Command (PC: Ctrl) key before you drag the keyframe to avoid selecting additional frames.
FXG export You can export a selection or the entire Stage using a new file format called FXG. This format offers improved fidelity as well as compatibility with Illustrator, Fireworks, Flash Catalyst, and Flash Builder. Simply select Export Image or Export Selection from File>Export.
Streamlined video workflows You can now preview your video live on the Stage. As soon as you import a video you’ll see a preview of the first frame. Right-click on the video to play, pause, and rewind. If a skin was used to add playback controls then you’ll be able to use them on the Stage, as well. This is especially helpful if you’re working with video assets that have alpha transparency. You can also add and view cue points in the Properties panel while previewing the video.
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SWF size history
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You can now keep track of the size of your SWF in the Properties panel using SWF History. Every time you publish a SWF you’ll see a running log of your publish size, date, and time. Three data points are displayed in the Properties panel but if you click the Log button you can see up to 100. You’ll also see an alert icon if your SWF increased in size by more than 50%.
By Richard Galvan Navigating the motion editor In Flash Professional CS5, there are some new keyboard modifiers to help you move around the Motion Editor. • To pan/scroll horizontally, use Shiftscroll wheel • To zoom in and out, use Option-scroll wheel (PC: Alt-scroll wheel) • To select multiple keyframes at once, clickand-drag (marquee select) the keyframes • To turn off Auto-Zoom in the graphs, use the option in the Motion Editor panel’s flyout menu.
Controlling bone movement Working with a complicated IK armature and want to move just one section? No problem. Just hold down the Shift key while dragging any bone to limit the movement to just that bone and its children. This comes in handy, for example, if you only want to move the arm in the armature of a person.
Create a button without writing code If you want to create a button to move to the next frame in a presentation, draw a button, select it, open the Code Snippets panel (Window>Code Snippets), twirl down the Timeline Navigation folder, and then double-click Click to Go to Next Frame and Stop. You’ll see the code in the Actions panel with an explanation of what it’s doing. You now have a fully functional “next” button, without writing a line of code.
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Box model beauty You can now get rich details about how your layout is hanging together with CSS Inspect. Click the Inspect button at the top of your document window, and hover over areas in Live View. The CSS Styles panel will update in real time with the properties of your selection, and you’ll get a visual overlay showing your selection’s current border, margin and padding settings, and how they affect the elements around them.
Multiple server projects The revised Site Setup dialog (Site>New Site) not only helps you get started faster, but it also helps to manage projects that span across multiple servers. Say, for example, your client wants to check everything out on a staging server, but you need to also use both your local machine’s Web server as a local environment and a shared team server for your day-to-day work. Just create a new server for each part of your workflow, and then at any point in the project, choose which is your active testing (development) server and which is your remote (publishing) server. Easy!
Interactive, cross-browser previews When using Live View, you can hit the F6 key to “freeze” JavaScript—pausing drop-down menus in place, Ajax data in a particular state of display, tabs in a particular open/closed configuration, etc. With integration with the new Adobe BrowserLab cross-browser testing service, you can then send that local “state” of your page right to BrowserLab to view it in all of the available browsers across operating systems.
No more related file overload If you’re working with a dynamic CMS framework such as WordPress or Drupal, you may find yourself overwhelmed with files in your Related Files bar. Click the icon to the far
right of the Related Files bar to filter your view options—by file type, or even better, by custom filter. Only working with your design? Turn off all file types besides CSS. Need to find just the WordPress core PHP files? Create a custom filter for “wp-*.php,” and you’ll see only those files in your Related Files bar.
Experimental CSS design In Dreamweaver CS5, experimenting with CSS-based layouts is even easier. Hover over the left margin of your current rule selection in the CSS Styles panel to see the new CSS Enable/Disable feature. Click the “no” icon to disable a particular rule, and again to enable it. Aren’t happy with the results? Right-click the rule and choose Enable All Disabled in Selected Rule to get everything back to where you started. Things looking great? Go ahead and Right-click the rule and choose Delete All Disabled in Selected Rule to clean up those comments in your code.
Live View navigation tricks #1 You can now use Live View in CS5 much more like a browser, which is indispensable for designing dynamic applications. For example, you may need to design around a specific view of a WordPress application, like a posting page or search results. Just hold down Command (PC: Ctrl) and click links to get to exactly the view of a dynamic app you’d like. Interact with the JavaScript elements of your interface and then hit F6 to “freeze” any state of your application.
Live View navigation tricks #2 Did you know that you could also use Live View for digging into remote sites? Just type any URL in the Live View location bar at the top of the document window, and surf right to that site—using all of the CSS tools to show you what’s happening underneath the hood, the Related Files bar to give you immediate access to the code underneath, and Live Code showing you the markup as you interact with it.
By Scott Fegette Live View navigation tricks #3 Using a dynamic app such as WordPress or Joomla? You probably find yourself jumping back and forth from Dreamweaver to the admin console in a browser. In Dreamweaver CS5, you can use Live View navigation to make that easier. Create a new, blank document window (or tab), and turn on Live View. Enter your server console’s URL into the location bar, and load it in Dreamweaver. Choose View>Live View Options>Follow Links Continuously to turn on navigation fulltime, and you’ve got yourself a console tab you can switch to at any point in time.
Custom code hinting for PHP With all the new dynamic design features for PHP-based applications in Dreamweaver CS5, you might think we forgot about the hand-coding pro. Not the case at all. Go to Site>Site-Specific Code Hints, and if you’re using Drupal, WordPress, or Joomla!, Dreamweaver will preconfigure your code hinting to pull in all the right include files, directories, and code definitions.
Client management tools For keeping you and your clients on top of exactly what Web technology is hot (or not) and optimizing your bids, you can now use the SiteCatalyst NetAverages service to track current Web trends in browser usage, JavaScript and Flash penetration, technology, and more. Just choose the NetAverages option from the CS Live services menu in your Application Bar, and get fresh, current Web usage stats at any time.
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Dreamweaver
After Effects Work faster with the Roto Brush tool When drawing strokes to define a foreground object with the Roto Brush tool (OptionW), begin by drawing broad strokes along the center of the object’s features. Before you draw a fine stroke along a boundary to attempt a precise segmentation, be sure that you’ve drawn foreground strokes down the center of the object and made at least some rough background strokes on the other side of the boundary.
By Todd Kopriva Align your layers to composition features
To align selected layers to the center or edge of a composition, choose Composition in the Align Layers To drop-down menu in the Align panel (Window>Align), and then click the icon corresponding to the desired type of alignment.
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Use Imagineer Systems mocha for After Effects for motion tracking After Effects includes the mocha for After Effects (mocha-AE) standalone motion tracking application from Imagineer Systems. This planar tracker handles motion-tracking jobs that would be difficult with the built-in After Effects motion tracker. So, whether you need to replace a billboard on a bus or the contents of a mobile phone screen, try mocha for After Effects.
Use File>Collect Files to move a project and its assets to a single folder before sharing it, moving it to another computer, or archiving it. The Consolidate All Footage, Remove Unused Footage, and Reduce Project commands in the File menu are also great for cleaning up a project.
Search, and you shall find The Project, Timeline, and Effects & Presets panels each contain search fields that you can use to filter items in the panel. There’s also a Search Help field in the upperright corner of the Tools panel, which uses the Adobe Community Help search engine to search online resources most relevant to the application. This search includes Adobe Help documents, technical support documents, forums, and tutorials and articles on other trusted websites—such as the Layers magazine website.
There’s a RAM preview for every occasion You can specify two sets of RAM preview options in the Preview panel: RAM Preview Options and Shift-RAM Preview Options. For example, you can set RAM Preview Options for full frame rate and full resolution, and set Shift-RAM Preview Options to skip one out of every two frames and preview at half resolution. To preview using Shift-RAM Preview Options, hold Shift as you initiate a RAM preview. Press Option (PC: Alt) while initiating a RAM preview to preview a specified number of frames up to and including the current frame. The default number of frames previewed with this command is five. The preference for changing this number is in the Alternate RAM Preview section of the Preview preferences.
Collect, organize, and purge projects and footage
Download free stuff and connect with the After Effects community To exchange scripts, projects, and other useful items with other users, go to the Adobe Exchange website. Adobe provides complimentary packages of animation presets and scripts on the After Effects Exchange (www.adobe.com/go/learn_ ae_exchange). To exchange knowledge, ask questions, and share tips, visit the After Effects user-to-user forum (http://forums .adobe.com).
Let After Effects handle the math Most text fields for input of numerical values in After Effects will perform basic calculations for you. For example, you can enter 1920/2 to set a property to half of 1920. After Effects will do the math for you and set the property value to 960.
Zoom with the mouse scroll wheel To zoom in to or out from the center of the view, place the pointer over the panel and move the scroll wheel accordingly. To zoom in on or out from a specific point, place the pointer over the panel and hold Option (PC: Alt) as you move the scroll wheel.
Give OpenGL rendering more memory to work with Increase the texture memory used for OpenGL rendering to 80% of the installed video RAM (VRAM) on your video card. The default of 200 MB is quite small for modern video cards; values in the 400–800 MB range are appropriate for modern cards with 512–1GB of VRAM. Choose After Effects (PC: Edit)>Preferences>Previews, click OpenGL Information, and enter a new value for Texture Memory.
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New DSLR presets You can now edit the video files from your favorite DSLR natively in Premiere Pro CS5. With a fast USB 2 card reader, you can even edit directly off the camera media. With some cameras all you need is a USB cable connected to the camera—no need to transfer the files for a quick rough cut— just edit!
Drag clip to make new sequence From the Project panel, drag any clip to the New Item icon at the bottom of the panel and release. This will automatically create a sequence with the correct editing mode (RED, AVCHD, DVCPRO, XDCAM, and so on). This is my personal favorite new user interface tip.
Field display settings in the Source and Program Monitors The Source and Program Monitors can now be set to display the first, second, or both fields for interlaced footage. This can be useful when you need to grab a frame to use as a still. This was a top feature request from law enforcement investigation and forensic users.
Export frame from Source and Program Monitors The Export Frame buttons in the Source and Program Monitors offer a rapid frame export workflow that bypasses the Adobe Media Encoder. Position the playhead at the desired location in a clip or sequence and click the Export Frame button. In the Export Frame dialog name the exported frame, choose a file format, and browse to a location for saving the exported still image to disk.
Playback/Pause resolution settings You can adjust the resolution of playing or paused assets. Right-click the Source or Playback Monitor, select Playback or Pause Resolution, and then choose Full, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, or 1/16. This gives more control over monitoring experience. For example, with higher resolution footage, you can set Playback Resolution to a lower value for smooth playback (e.g., 1/2), and set the Pause Resolution to Full. This allows you to quickly check the quality of focus or edge details when playback is paused.
Finer control of keyframe edits This feature improves the control and precision when dragging keyframes in a confined space. For example, audio gain values can jump dramatically in coarse amounts when dragging an audio volume rubber band or keyframe in the confirmed vertical space of an audio track. To more precisely set the gain value, drag while holding down modifier keys to yield finer control of the rate of change in the parameter value. Hold down Option (PC: Alt) to change the numeric value by 1; hold down Command (PC: Ctrl) to change the numeric value by 0.1.
By Dave Helmly Extend edit The Extend Edit feature consists of two commands called Roll Next Edit to CTI and Roll Previous Edit to CTI. They allow you to extend the duration of each clip on a targeted track to the playhead (CTI) position. If there’s not enough media to extend to the CTI, the clip is extended to the media available. These commands are only available as keyboard shortcuts, and can be assigned shortcuts from the Edit>Keyboard Customization menu.
Customizable Project panel data columns The Project panel can display any XMP metadata fields you choose, not only the clip data fields. Choose Metadata Display from the flyout menu to select which metadata columns to display, add properties to a schema, and change the order of columns. Adobe Premiere Pro saves your choice of columns in the workspace, so you can have a different set of data displayed for your Ingest/Logging workspace vs. the one you use for Editing.
Sequence marker comments displayed in tooltip After setting a new sequence marker, you can enter a name and a comment in the Marker dialog. Once the marker is set, hovering over it in the Timeline produces a tooltip that displays the marker information. This allows you to quickly scan a number of markers to determine their contents, without having to double-click on each of them to open the Marker dialog in order to read the content.
Independently place video and audio To drag the video and audio portions of a clip to specific tracks, drag the clip from the Source Monitor or Project panel into the Timeline. When the video portion of the clip lies above the desired video track, pressand-hold Shift, then drag downward past the bar separating video and audio tracks. When the audio portion of the clip lies above the desired audio track, release the mouse, and release Shift. ■
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Premiere Pro
HENK DAWSON
[DIGITAL
PHOTOGRAPHY TUTORIAL]
S E A N {
} M c C O R M A C K
overview of new features in Camera Raw 6 The release of a completely new version of Camera Raw always coincides with a new version of Photoshop, so it’s no surprise to see Camera Raw 6 coming out with Photoshop CS5. As with any version jump, there’s a host of new features to whet the appetite of digital photographers. Among these are new image rendering (the process version), noise reduction and sharpening, lens corrections, and the ability to add grain.
Process Version 2003 warning
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[PROCESS VERSION]
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[PV2010 VERSUS PV2003]
How we view our converted RAW files depends entirely upon the
The old process version is Process Version 2003. This distinguishes
inner workings of our RAW processors. With Camera Raw 6.1, Adobe
it from the new version and highlights how rarely Adobe intends
has completely changed how this works for the first time since 2003.
to change the processing. Process Version 2010 has much better
The process version affects how Camera Raw handles sharpening and
image quality than the old version, with much better detail reten-
noise reduction, along with Fill Light and Highlight Recovery. Initially,
tion and color. To change between them, select Process Version
this also affected the sensor rendering (the “demosaic”), but this has
2010 (Current) from the Process menu. If the image is PV2003, a
since been updated separately. To find the process version, click the
small warning will be visible at the bottom right of the image. Click
Camera Calibration tab (third from the right) and click the Process
this to update to Process Version 2010 (recommended).
menu at the top.
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[NOISE REDUCTION]
[CONTROL COLOR NOISE]
While today’s cameras are much improved regarding noise at higher
Noise Reduction is located under the Detail tab (third from left).
ISO, there’s still a need to provide quality noise reduction to remove
The most obvious noise is color noise (also called chroma noise).
color noise and blotchiness from photos. One area of photography
This is the random red, blue, and green pixels you see in areas that
where this is especially relevant is with concert and low-light photog-
shouldn’t contain those colors. For RAW files, the default is 25, which
raphy. In older versions of Camera Raw, the noise reduction was quite
usually works well. This isn’t a fixed amount; it’s tailored for each ISO
basic (just two sliders: Color and Luminance) and had a tendency
setting. Drag the Color slider to the left until you see the color noise
to smear the photo, making it look soft and lacking in detail. The
appear, and then drag it to the right until it disappears. For ISO 6400
example photo here was taken handheld at ISO 6400, to get the shot
and greater in current cameras, the Color Detail slider will help retain
at dusk, with no tripod.
edge detail with higher color noise reduction.
[LUMINANCE NOISE REMOVAL]
[SHARPENING]
Luminance controls noise that appears as blotches or uneven bright-
The controls for Sharpening haven’t changed in Camera Raw 6, but
ness. Essentially, Luminance noise reduction tries to even the bright-
the rendering has. The RAW default Amount of 25 should be good
ness level in all areas of the photo. Using extreme amounts will blur
for most images. If you’ve converted older images to Process Ver-
and soften the photo. Generally speaking, increase the Luminance
sion 2010 (Current) and have high sharpening applied, the photo
slider until you think it’s a little too blurry, and then use the Sharpen-
might be too sharp. To recap, Amount controls the strength of
ing controls to bring back detail in the photo. Again, for ISO 6400
sharpening applied. Radius controls the amount of pixels affected
and greater, using the Color Detail and Luminance Contrast sliders
by sharpening. Detail suppresses the halos caused by sharpening
helps increase edge detail and local contrast in the photo. Note that
(the “glowing edges”), and Masking controls where sharpening is
for older cameras, this is also true for their highest ISO setting.
applied. Hold down the Option (PC: Alt) key while dragging the sliders to preview each effect, showing how sharpening is applied.
[EFFECTS]
8
[GRAIN]
There’s a brand-new tab in Camera Raw 6: The Effects tab (ƒx).
To understand Grain, set the Amount to 100, Size to 100, and view
This contains the new Grain feature, and Post Crop Vignetting,
at a lower value (e.g., 25%). Bring Amount back to 50 and Size to 25.
originally located in the Lens Corrections tab. Grain was a much
Next, set Roughness to 100. Roughness controls the texture of the
requested feature, allowing the user to emulate the look of film.
grain. To emulate films like Ilford Delta 3200, add a big Amount with
Post Crop Vignette has changed too, with the addition of new
large, rough grain. A more refined film (e.g., Delta 100) would have
modes at users’ requests.
small, fine grain. Adding grain can help smooth images with a lot of graduation and help with banding. When adding grain at sizes of greater than 25, blue is added to make the effect look better with noise reduction.
The normal Lens Vignetting feature in the Lens Corrections tab
10
makes for a useful creative tool to darken the edges of photos and
default is now Highlight Priority, which looks similar to the normal Lens
helps draw attention to the subject. Unfortunately, once you crop the
Corrections tab’s Lens Vignetting. Use Amount to set the strength of
image, the effect is lost. Post Crop Vignetting has been in Camera
the vignette and Midpoint to bring it in from the edges. Use Round-
Raw for some time now, but it produced different results than Lens
ness to set the shape of the vignette. To see the shape properly, set
Vignetting, so there were many requests to change it because the
Feather to 0. Next, set Feather to taste, getting your preferred transi-
Lens Vignetting effect was superior. Camera Raw 6 remedies this.
tion between the image and the vignette. Use Highlights to bring
Shown in the image here is the Paint Overlay Style setting, which is
back bright objects in the vignette. To protect color in the vignette
the equivalent of the older style Post Crop Vignette.
area, switch Style to Color Priority.
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44
[POST CROP VIGNETTE]
[CREATIVE VIGNETTE]
There are two other Style settings under Post Crop Vignetting. The
continued on p. 46
11
One issue that plagues photographers is optical distortion in their
12
lenses. While spending more money on lenses helps, even these
Automatic tab and then check the Enable Lens Profile Corrections
lenses can still suffer from chromatic aberration or distortion, not to
box. This correctly identifies the lens as a Canon 15mm Fisheye.
mention vignetting. Camera Raw 6 introduces brand-new tools to
If a profile is available for your lens, it will appear automatically.
combat these problems. The primary tool is Lens Profiles. Adobe
Our photo has been “de-fished” and the corrections should be
has created a whole series of profiles to automatically correct these
immediately obvious. The distortion, chromatic aberration, and
lens anomalies. Lens Profiles are available for Canon, Nikon, Tamron,
vignette have been corrected. Profiles can handle lens distortions
and Sony lenses. Also, Sigma has created a huge amount of profiles
from simple to severe, which is great for all photographers. You
for their lenses for Adobe.
can also manually modify the applied amount using the Distortion,
[LENS CORRECTIONS]
[USING LENS PROFILES]
To access Lens Profiles, in the Lens Correction tab click on the
Chromatic Aberration, and Vignetting sliders (100 is the default).
If there’s no profile available or you need to do more work than
14
the profile offers, click on the Manual tab. The standard Chromatic
CS5 a delight for photographers. Significant amounts of what was
Aberration and Lens Vignetting sections are the same as in previous
once pixel edits can now be applied in the RAW workflow and easily
versions of Camera Raw. With the new sliders, Distortion will attempt
changed if need be, thanks to the nondestructive settings applied to
to fix distortion. The profile is doing a good job for us here though.
the RAW file via XMP. Keys to this are the new noise reduction and
Vertical and Horizontal sliders correct for perspective issues. Here,
lens corrections. Of course, Lightroom 3 users will also have access
we corrected for the camera not pointing straight using the Vertical
to these features in the Develop module.
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13
46
[MANUAL CORRECTIONS]
[CONCLUSION]
The improvements in Camera Raw 6.1 make the jump to Photoshop
slider. Rotate helps fix horizons, and Scale lets you remove any gray section that might appear when fixing the photo.
[
Sean McCormack is based in the rather wet city of Galway on the west coast of Ireland. (When it’s sunny, it’s the best place in the world.) He’s the author of Photoshop Lightroom 2 Made Easy and runs Lightroom-Blog.com, an independent blog about Lightroom. He also develops Web galleries and plug-ins for Lightroom. ALL IMAGES BY SEAN MCCORMACK UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED
]
HENK DAWSON
[P
HOTOSHOP TUTORIAL] D A V E
{
}
C R O S S
happy accidents Many people use the term “happy accident” to describe an unexpected result they come across while working toward an unrelated goal. They’re anticipating a certain reliable outcome but end up with something cooler than the original plan. Here’s an idea on how to use Adobe Illustrator CS5 and Adobe Photoshop CS5 to experiment with the goal of getting your own happy accident, although not quite so accidentally.
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[CREATE A PHOTOSHOP DOCUMENT]
48
[CREATE BASIC SHAPES IN ILLUSTRATOR]
Let’s imagine that we need to make an interesting background in
Open Illustrator CS5 and create a new document (File>New).
Photoshop CS5. Create a new document (File>New) in the size
Select the Perspective Grid tool (Shift-P) to see a grid in the
you need and then click on the Background color swatch and
background of your document, then use the Pen tool (P) to
choose a color (we used R:247, G:148, B:29). Fill your background
create a couple of shapes. In this case we’ll create two sepa-
with this color by pressing Command-Delete (PC: Ctrl-Backspace).
rate objects, which will ultimately give us more options. Go to
Of course, it could be filled with a gradient or have some texture,
View>Perspective Grid>Hide Grid when finished to view the
but for this example we’ll stick with a solid color.
objects against a blank background.
49 L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
[COPY THE COLOR TO ILLUSTRATOR]
[ALTERING SHAPES, KEEPING THEM LIVE]
In Photoshop, click on the Background color swatch, click-and-drag
Using the Width tool (Shift-W), click-and-drag on the anchor
the hexadecimal number (F7942D), choose Edit>Copy, then click
points (or any portion of a path) to interactively change the width
Cancel. Back in Illustrator, double-click the Color Stroke and in the
of the lines. The advantage of this tool is that it’s a “live” effect,
Color Picker, click on the # symbol to select the hexadecimal value,
which means that you can edit the widths at any time. Note: If
then select Edit>Paste. Now choose a slightly darker version of this
you don’t see your strokes widening when you release the mouse
color (C6761E) and click OK. Using the Selection tool (V), select the
button, you’re probably in Outline viewing mode; press Com-
other object, and apply the same color for its Stroke. Shift-click the
mand-Y (PC: Ctrl-Y) to change your viewing mode to Preview so
first object to select both objects, click on the Fill swatch, then click
you can see what’s going on.
the None (/) icon below to remove the fill colors.
[FROM ILLUSTRATOR TO PHOTOSHOP]
[ADD FILTERS TO VECTOR SMART OBJECT]
Choose Edit>Copy to copy the two objects from Illustrator and
Because the layer is a vector smart object, we can apply smart
then switch to Photoshop. Select Edit>Paste and in the dialog,
filters in Photoshop, which gives us tons of room to experiment
click on Paste As: Smart Object. If necessary, Shift-Option-click
with different settings or multiple filters. In our example, we’ll
(PC: Shift-Alt-click) a corner of the bounding box and drag it to
to try the Polar Coordinates filter, using the Polar to Rectan-
resize the shapes proportionally from the center, and press Return
gular option: With the Vector Smart Object layer active, go to
(PC: Enter). A new layer called Vector Smart Object appears in the
Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates, click on the Polar to Rectangular
Layers panel.
option, and click OK.
[EDIT SMART FILTER SETTINGS]
8
[EDIT THE SHAPE OF THE SMART OBJECT]
In the Layers panel, double-click the Blending Options icon to
One of the advantages of using a vector smart object is that you
the right of the Polar Coordinates Smart Filter to try different set-
can edit the original artwork in Illustrator. To do that, just double-
tings. In the resulting dialog, we chose Multiply from the Mode
click on the Smart Object thumbnail in the Photoshop Layers
menu then dragged the Opacity slider left to lower it to 40%.
panel, read the warning, click OK to continue, alter one of the
Remember, you can change these settings at any time. Click OK.
shapes in Illustrator (we flipped and moved it), and then Save the document (File>Save). When you switch back to Photoshop, the layer updates (it might take a moment to render) with the smart filter intact.
Along with altering the original shapes, another part of our experi-
10
mentation might be adding more shapes. So, double-click the
some 3D to the mix? Double-click the Smart Object thumbnail,
Smart Object thumbnail to return to Illustrator, select the Ellipse
and when you get to Illustrator, choose the Selection tool. Shift-
tool (L), then Shift-click-and-drag to add a circle. Change your Fill
click all of your shapes and go to Effect>3D>Extrude & Bevel.
and Stroke swatches to the same settings you used earlier, and
In the dialog that appears, click OK to add a 3D look to your
Save. Once again, after saving the Illustrator file, jump back to
shapes. Because this is an effect, it can also be changed at any
Photoshop to see the changes. As you can imagine, there are lots
time through the Appearance panel (Window>Appearance) while
of possibilities here, and it’s easy.
the shapes are selected. Once again, save and switch back to
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9
50
[ADD GRAPHIC ELEMENTS]
[TRY ADDING 3D IN ILLUSTRATOR]
Want to move your experiment in another direction? Why not add
Photoshop to see the results.
continued on p. 52
11
[CHANGE THE LAYER BLEND MODE]
Remember, the whole point here is to try many different things to
www.layersmagazine.com
[ADD TEXT IN ILLUSTRATOR]
Don’t stop there—head back to Illustrator and add some text
see what we end up with. So, in the Photoshop Layers panel, under
using the Type tool (T). Tip: Because we want the text to remain
the Vector Smart Object layer, double-click the Blending Options
editable just like everything else in our dual-application experi-
icon again, and play with different blend modes and opacity set-
ment, don’t create outlines.
tings. We decided (for now) to select Hard Light from the blend
52
12
You know the drill by now: Save when you’re finished in Illustra-
Mode menu and bumped up the Opacity to 80%.
tor and switch back to Photoshop to see the changes.
13
To keep the creative flow happening, you should constantly ask
14
yourself, “What if I…?” and then try it. The worst thing that could
the settings to what you see above. Remember, the way we’ve set
happen is that you’ll have to press Command-Z (PC: Ctrl-Z) to
up this experiment means that everything is subject to change:
Undo or Command-Option-Z (PC: Ctrl-Alt-Z) to Step Backward
the Illustrator artwork, the smart filter we applied, the blend-
because you don’t like the result(s). We added more text in a
ing options of the smart filter (opacity and blend mode), and the
lighter color and here’s the result.
layer settings (opacity, blend mode, layer style, etc.) we’ve yet to
[CHANGE ONE OR MORE FACTORS]
[EVERYTHING IS EDITABLE]
Finally, we double-clicked the Blending Options icon and changed
adjust. The sky really is the limit when you start experimenting, to the point where the result you get isn’t just a happy accident; it’s a result of being willing to try new things.
[
Dave Cross is Senior Developer, Education and Curriculum, for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. He is the author of Photoshop Finishing Touches and The Photoshop CS2 Help Desk Book, and is featured on a series of Photoshop training DVDs and on Photoshop User TV.
]
HENK DAWSON
[I
LLUSTRATOR TUTORIAL] C O R E Y
{
}
B A R K E R
clipping masks of love Here’s a cool technique derived from the movie poster for From Paris with Love starring John Travolta. The poster layout made very cool use of masking images with letters and shapes. Here, we’re going after a similar effect entirely in Illustrator. With so many new productivity enhancements, Illustrator CS5 is so much more robust with image compositing.
www.layersmagazine.com
[CREATE NEW DOCUMENT; SET TYPE]
54
[BUILD A SHAPE]
Choose File>New to create a new Basic RGB document, and
Select the text with the Selection tool (V), choose Type>Create
click OK. Select the Type tool (T) and click on the artboard to
Outlines to convert the text to regular vector shapes, then choose
set a text object. In the Control panel, set the Fill color to black
Object>Ungroup. Shift-click on the L to deselect it and keep the
and the Stroke to none, then type the letters LVE in Impact font
VE selected. Select the Shape Builder tool (Shift-M) and hover
at 300 pts. Set four spaces between the L and the V. To tighten
your cursor over the V to highlight it. Now click-and-drag across
the spacing a little bit, select all the letters with the Type tool,
the top of the V to the E, including the area where they overlap,
open the Character panel (Window>Type>Character), and set the
to merge the shapes together as one.
Tracking to –50. We’ll create the O later by using a shape. [If you’d like to download the files used in this tutorial to practice these techniques, visit www.layersmagazine.com and navigate to the Magazine section. All files are for personal use only.]
55 L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
[CREATE SPATTER; CLEAN IT UP]
[WARP SPATTER; ADD COLOR]
Choose Window>Symbol Libraries>Grime Vector Pack. In the panel
Choose the Warp tool (Shift-R) and use it to push in the longer
that appears, locate Grime Vector Pack 09 then click-and-drag it
spatter lines closer to the main shape so that these protrusions
onto the artboard. Click the Break Link button in the Control panel to
don’t get in the way of the copy we’ll add later. When you have
convert the symbol instance into a basic vector shape.
the shape looking the way you want, it’s time to add some color.
This spatter needs some adjusting. Choose the Direct Selection
Because this is an action movie and we’re portraying a blood spat-
tool (A), select the small shapes that aren’t attached to the main
ter, it obviously needs to be red. Choose the Selection tool (V) and
spatter, and then delete them. This leaves you with only the main
select the spatter. Open the Swatches panel (Window>Swatches)
big shape.
and select a dark red to fill the spatter shape. Also set the stroke color to none.
[MOVE SPATTER INTO POSITION]
[ADD TO THE SELECTION]
With the Selection tool still active, click-and-drag the spatter be-
With the spatter still selected, Shift-click on the VE to add them
tween the L and V—it will play the part of O in our scene. If neces-
to the selection. As we did in Step 2, use the Shape Builder tool
sary, scale and rotate the spatter to better fit in the area and for the
to combine the shapes. You can make multiple passes over the
composition. With the shape in place, choose Edit>Copy to save it
shapes and it will continue to add to the current shape. When it’s
to the clipboard. Don’t move the spatter.
merged, choose the Selection tool and press D to set the Fill and Stroke colors to their default white and black, respectively. Then go ahead and set the Fill color to none in the Control panel.
©ISTOCKPHOTO/SYAGCI
[PASTE SPATTER; CHANGE BLEND MODE]
8
[PLACE PHOTO]
Remember the spatter we copied to the clipboard? Now we’ll
Choose File>Place and navigate to the photo you want to use (or to
put it to use. Choose Edit>Paste in Place. Assuming you haven’t
the download file). Because this is a cool action movie, we’re using
moved the art, it will paste the copy right on top of the spatter.
an image of a hitman pointing a gun at a very dramatic angle. In
Open the Transparency panel (Window>Transparency), click on
the Place dialog, you can either Link the image or uncheck the Link
the Normal pop-up menu, and select Color.
option to embed the photo. Just know that embedding a photo will increase the file size. Select the file and click Place.
Choose Object>Arrange>Send to Back, then position the
10
photo in the layout. If you’re having difficulty with placement
then choose Object>Clipping Mask>Make. This will mask the
because you can’t see the splatter and text shape, set the
image inside of the shape. (Note: Make sure the red color shape
Fill color on the text/spatter shape to none and the Stroke to
isn’t selected. If you’re having difficulty making the clipping mask,
white to make it easier to position the image. Scale and rotate
select the layers using the Target icon [circle] to the right of the
the image to best fit in the area of the text and the shape.
Layer’s name in the Layers panel instead of the artboard.)
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56
[POSITION AND SCALE THE PHOTO]
[MAKE CLIPPING MASK]
Shift-click the text/spatter shape to add it to the photo selection,
57
[ROTATE AND SCALE GRAPHIC]
Now choose the new Artboard tool (Shift-O) to resize the artboard. In
12
L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
11
[THE FINISHING TOUCHES]
Using the same font as before, set the rest of the copy for the poster.
the Control panel, set the width to 8" and the height to 5". (Note:
Place the rest of the title in the upper-left corner, and COMING
If your artboard isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t visible, got to View>Show Artboards.) Grab the
SOON in the lower right. Finally, select the Rectangle tool (M) and
Selection tool, select the entire graphic (photo, text, and shapes),
click once on the upper-left corner of the artboard. When prompted,
and place it inside the artboard. Scale and rotate it so the corners of
enter the same dimensions as the artboard (8x5") and click OK.
the ďŹ rst and last letters go off the edge of the artboard.
Choose the Selection tool and click-and-drag to select the entire design, including the shape that covers it. Then go to Object> Clipping Mask>Make. Now you have a nicely cropped movie poster ready to go!
[
Corey Barker is an Education and Curriculum Developer for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. His expertise in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator has earned him numerous awards in illustration, graphic design, and photography.
]
[ t y p o g r a phy ]
[
THE ART OF TYPE] J A M E S
{
}
F E L I C I
out of scale
I M A GE S: © I STO C K PH OTO I LLU STR ATI O N : TA F F Y C LI F F O R D
There was a time when few designers dared to venture into the murky world of the Adobe InDesign justification controls. The good news is that more and more users are starting to take charge of them. The bad news is one of them—the powerful glyph scaling control, unique to InDesign—is often misused. In this column we’ll look at how to apply it well. Justification controls have traditionally determined to what extent a program can alter spaces between characters and words—squeeze them, stretch them—when fitting type into lines. The goal is to create the most even and consistent spacing possible among lines and paragraphs by allowing the program to find optimal places to end lines, either at word spaces or after certain punctuation marks (such as the em dash), or by hyphenating words.
Glyph scaling InDesign has added another variable however: It can also flex the width of the characters themselves. Adobe calls this glyph scaling, and it can help the program find more of those optimal line-breaking locations, avoiding the reliance on unsightly stretching or squeezing of spaces. After all, there are as many characters on a line as there are character spaces, so the cumulative effect of tiny, undetectable adjustments to character widths can yield big results. But there’s a catch: You have to keep the alterations to a character width small enough so they’re invisible. Here’s an example of what can happen when those variations are allowed to get too large.
[ At first glance, it’s
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the inconsistent type color that catches your eye.]
58
Misusing glyph scaling control creates lines of type with starkly contrasting character widths.
59 l AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g 2 0 1 0
The designer of the French election brochure (opposite page) was looking for a way to solve a common type composition problem: Relatively large type (12-point, in this case) set with justified margins over a narrow measure (13.5 picas). Some of these lines contain only two or three word spaces, and there just aren’t enough character spaces to allow the program to fit the type
These justification settings allow the wide leeway for the flexing of word and character spacing necessary for composing text over a narrow measure. To protect the integrity of the type design, glyph scaling should always be strictly limited.
without making some lines look too crowded or too spaced out. The typical result in such situations is inconsistent type color, with loose lines looking too pale and tight ones too dark. In our example, the designer tried to help the situation by choosing to let character widths be flexed as well, but got carried away. At first glance, it’s the inconsistent type color that catches your eye. The second, third, and fourth lines, for example, look particularly tight and dark. But in fact, this effect isn’t caused principally by variations in spacing, but by variations in character width. This example shows a closer look. After the first line, the rounded characters (look at “o” and “e”) get progressively more compressed, until by the fourth line the type looks like it came from a different typeface, a condensed member of the same family. This isn’t a pretty sight. And ironically, in addition to distorting the type, the
Justification dialog The damage here was done in the Justification dialog, accessed via the Paragraph panel’s (Type>Paragraph) flyout menu. The justification values shown here is my recipe for the composition problem at hand. (The best solution begins with reducing the size of the type by at least half a point, but that’s another issue.) Over such a narrow measure, I’d allow InDesign fairly generous ranges in which it could flex word and character spaces. But more importantly, I’d keep the glyph scaling range small, normally not more than plus or minus (+/–) 1%. This example shows two lines of type whose character widths vary by 1%, and apart from the relative line lengths, there’s virtually no difference between the appearances of the type in each line.
strategy fails to fix the fundamental problem of type color varying from one line to the next.
The top line is set in normal Officina Sans, while the bottom line has had its character widths reduced by 1%.
Line-ending possibilities Ultimately, glyph scaling works best in lines with many characters. In such lines, the compound effect of all those tiny width adjustments can allow InDesign to find line-ending possibilities that don’t require spaces to be distorted too much. This means a line could end without a hyphen, or that a hyphen could be inserted at a more felicitous place (demon-stration, for example, instead of de-monstration). But even in narrow columns, it can make an important contribution in reducing apparent spacing variations from line to line. To successfully use glyph scaling, the trick—as with so many Variations in the shapes of the round characters are striking, as though several typefaces were used for the same paragraph.
[
type tools in InDesign—is moderation. All things, you could say, in their measure.
James Felici is the author of The Complete Manual of Typography (Adobe Press), former managing editor of Publish magazine, and contributor to The Seybold Report, Macworld magazine, PDFZone.com, and Publish.com.
]
HENK DAWSON
[
INDESIGN TUTORIAL T E R R Y
{
}
]
W H I T E
setting up live captions Creating captions, one of the most mundane tasks in page layout, can now be automated in InDesign CS5. Using an image’s metadata, InDesign can create live captions. The beauty here is that once it’s set up in your document, your captions will automatically update if the image changes or if the image’s metadata changes. We’ll also show you how you can use Buzzword to collaborate between different documents.
www.layersmagazine.com
[live captions]
60
[CREATE A NEW DOCUMENT]
[ADD METADATA DESCRIPTION]
Like most of our InDesign tutorials, you’re going to need a document
Navigate to an image of your choice and select it—it can be a PSD,
to work with. Although you can certainly open an existing document,
TIFF, JPG, EPS, etc. In the Metadata panel (Window>Metadata
we recommend creating a new one so that there aren’t stylesheet
Panel) go to the IPTC Core section, click in the Description field,
conflicts. Open Adobe InDesign and go to File>New>Document.
and type a description of your image. You can add as many things
Choose Letter from the Page Size menu and click OK. In this tutorial
about your image as you like; InDesign supports just about all of the
we’re going to use Adobe Bridge to input metadata to be used in
fields shown here. When finished, click the Apply icon (checkmark)
InDesign. Go to File>Browse in Bridge to open Bridge.
at the bottom of the Metadata panel. (If your image already has metadata from Lightroom or another application, that will work too.)
61 L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ J u ly / A u g u s t 2 0 1 0
[PLACE IMAGE INTO INDESIGN]
[CREATE TEXT FRAME AND CAPTION]
With the image still selected, choose File>Place>In InDesign. This
Although the live caption feature will generate the text frame auto-
will take you over to your open InDesign document and let you
matically, we’re going to set up a sample caption text frame first so
place your image with a loaded cursor. Click to place your image,
that we can create a paragraph style. Select the Type tool (T) and
and resize accordingly if need be.
draw a text frame directly under the image. Now type a sample caption—don’t worry about what it says; you’re going to delete it later anyway.
[CAPTION STYLING]
[CAPTION SETUP]
Style your text using the fonts, colors, etc. to create the appearance
At this point we no longer need the sample caption text frame.
that you want for all your captions when using this specific paragraph
Select it with your Selection tool and delete it by pressing the
style. Highlight your text using the Type tool and apply styles in the
Delete (PC: Backspace) key on your keyboard. Now it’s time to set
Options Bar. For this example, we used Minion Pro Italic at 10 pt.
up the live captions feature. Using the Selection tool, click on your
Now we’ll use the sample caption to create a paragraph style. In the
image to select it, and then Right-click on your image and choose
Paragraph Styles panel (Window>Styles>Paragraph Styles) hold down
Captions>Caption Setup from the contextual menu.
the Option (PC: Alt) key and click the Create New Style icon. In the New Paragraph Style dialog type the word Captions in the Style Name field. Enable the Apply Style to Selection checkbox and click OK.
[CHOOSE CAPTION OPTIONS]
8
[GENERATE LIVE CAPTION]
The Caption Setup dialog lets you choose which metadata you
Setting up the live caption options is only the first part. Nothing
want to bring in and what text you want to appear before and after
happens in Step 7 when you click OK. Right-click your image again
it. It also dictates where the caption will be placed and how it will
and choose Captions>Generate Live Caption. InDesign will now
look. For this example, we’re going to select the Description option
generate a live text frame and caption directly under your image
since that’s what we entered into our metadata in Bridge and our
with the description you gave it in Bridge. If you want to center
paragraph style that we created earlier. So from the Metadata drop-
your type, click on it with the Type tool and select the Align Center
down menu, choose Description, and from the Paragraph Style
option in the Options Bar.
drop-down menu, choose Captions. Accept the rest of the Caption Setup dialog’s default options and click OK.
[buzzword]
Of course you’re going to want to do this with multiple images.
10
You can do so by selecting one or more images in InDesign and
an online word processor. Not only does it allow you to create and
going to Captions>Generate Live Caption again or you can dupli-
edit documents but it also allows you to share those documents
cate (Edit>Duplicate) the live caption text frame you just created,
with others so they can make changes. Here we’re going to explore
and as long as the duplicate live caption text frame is touching
these features. Go to Arobat.com and click the Sign In button at the
another image with a description in its metadata, InDesign will pull
top of the webpage to login—you can use your Adobe ID. (If you
in that description. The magic’s now in the frame itself.
don’t have an Adobe ID you can click the Sign Up button to create
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62
[APPLY TO OTHER IMAGES]
[USE BUZZWORD FOR COLLABORATION]
One of the often-overlooked features of Acrobat.com is Buzzword,
a new free account.) continued on p. 64
11
Once signed in, you can create a Buzzword document from scratch
12
by clicking the New link near the top of the webpage and select-
ment or perhaps proofread and edit it, you can share it with whom-
ing Buzzword Document from the menu. In your new document,
ever you want by going to Document>Share, or click the Share File
you can enter content by typing or copying-and-pasting into the
link at the bottom-left corner of the Buzzword webpage. Then, click
document. If you choose to paste your content, go to Edit>Paste or
the Share It With Individuals text link that pops up. In the Share
press Command-V (PC: Ctrl-V). Then, save your document by going
dialog, enter an email address in the People to Share With field
to Document>Save.
and a message in the Message field if you wish. Click Share to send
[CREATE A NEW BUZZWORD DOCUMENT]
[SHARE WITH OTHERS]
If you want someone else to collaborate with you on your docu-
your document.
How does this relate to InDesign? I knew you were going to ask!
14
In InDesign CS5 there’s a Place from Buzzword command. Go to
InDesign file. This is also a great way to allow your writers to give
File>Place from Buzzword and select your saved document in the
you content and update that content without having to rely on mul-
Place Buzzword Documents dialog. The Replace Selected Item
tiple emails of text documents. If you enable the Link to Document
option is selected automatically. Click OK and you’ll have a loaded
checkbox in the Place Buzzword Documents dialog, your Links
cursor ready to place your document.
panel (Window>Links) in InDesign will give you a warning anytime
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64
[PLACE IN INDESIGN CS5]
[UPDATING CONTENT AUTOMATICALLY]
Now you can click to place that document and edit it right in your
that document has been modified online. You can then use the Links panel to update the InDesign file automatically.
[
In his current role as Worldwide Creative Suite Design Evangelist for Adobe Systems, Inc., Terry White evangelizes the Creative Suite to customers around the world. He’s also the author of Secrets of Adobe Bridge and co-author of InDesign CS/CS2 Killer Tips and The iPhone Book, 3rd edition. Check out his tech blog at http://terrywhite.com/techblog. ALL IMAGES BY TERRY WHITE UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED
]
HENK DAWSON
[
ACROBAT TUTORIAL T A Z
{
}
]
T A L L Y
HENK DAWSON
interactive PDFs InDesign CS5 now offers a choice of exporting for print and a brand-new interactive PDF format to fulfill your interactive needs. The interactive PDF format supports a robust export function that takes advantage of the ability in InDesign CS5 to create multiple page sizes and includes a range of interactive features including: bookmarks, layers, buttons and media, and a flexible presentation setup.
www.layersmagazine.com
[CREATE AN INTERACTIVE DOCUMENT]
66
[INITIATE EXPORT]
Open InDesign CS5 and create a new document (File>New>
After you’ve created your interactive document, go to File>Export
Document) that includes multiple page sizes and orientations,
(Command-E [PC: Ctrl-E]) to activate the Export dialog. From the
bookmarks, buttons, and has attached one or more media files such
Format drop-down menu, choose Adobe PDF (Interactive). There’s
as voice, video, or animation. (Go to Window>Interactive to access
a second PDF choice labeled Adobe PDF (Print). Choosing this
all the panels for controlling your interactive elements.) It may take
print version will activate the Export Adobe PDF dialog with which
some getting used to being able to create multiple sized docu-
you’re familiar. With Adobe PDF (Interactive) chosen, locate where
ment pages in both portrait and landscape orientation—this is new
you’d like to save your interactive PDF; I recommend you place your
in InDesign CS5. The PDF document format has long supported
InDesign document, all its linked files, and your initial Interactive
multiple document page sizes and orientations. Taking advantage of
PDF in the same folder. Click Save to activate the Export to Interac-
this capability from the beginning of your design workflow will help
tive PDF dialog.
later on.
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[DESIGNATE PAGE RANGE]
[VIEWING AFTER EXPORTING]
In the Pages section, specify the range of pages you’d like to export
Directly beneath the Pages field, enable the View After Exporting
to your interactive PDF. In the Range field, use hyphens between
checkbox. Activating this option will immediately open your interac-
numbers to specify a range of sequential pages and place commas
tive PDF inside of your default PDF reading program once clicking
where you’d like to specify a break in the range of pages. Don’t click
OK. You’ll be best served to set Acrobat Pro as your default PDF
OK yet. Note: You can specify page ranges using either Absolute
reading program because Acrobat Pro will provide you with the
Numbering or Section Numbering sequences by going to InDesign
greatest range of PDF editing capabilities. Be sure to specify Acro-
(PC: Edit)>Preferences>General and using the View drop-down
bat Pro as the default PDF reader in both your operating system
menu in the Page Numbering section. Type a plus sign (+) in front
and Adobe Bridge (Adobe Bridge CS5 [PC: Edit]>Preferences,
of each of the page numbers (i.e., +1–+5) in the Range field to over-
select the File Type Associations category on the left, then locate
ride Section Numbering with Absolute Numbering.
PDF Document [.pdf] in the list of file types).
[EMBED PAGE THUMBNAILS]
[CREATE ACROBAT LAYERS]
Enable the Embed Page Thumbnails checkbox if you’d like to create
If you wish to save each InDesign layer as a separate PDF docu-
a thumbnail preview for each PDF document page or spread. These
ment page, enable the Create Acrobat Layers checkbox. Each of
thumbnails will be visible and available for use in the Open and
these InDesign layers will be fully navigable in the PDF. So if you
Place dialogs in InDesign. Having these thumbnails can dramatically
have different versions of the design layout stored on separate
speed up the recognition and use of PDF files when opening and
layers in your InDesign document, anyone viewing the PDF can
placing. However, adding individual page thumbnails will increase
create different design layout versions without having to return to
the file size of the final PDF document. If file size is an issue, try
the original InDesign document. Note: If using this capability, it will
creating one with and one without the thumbnails so you can judge
likely change the workflow you use to create your InDesign docu-
if the file size overhead of the preview thumbnails is acceptable.
ments. And of course, adding all these layer pages will increase PDF document size.
[CREATE TAGGED PDF]
8
[SET VIEW MENU]
Enabling the Create Tagged PDF checkbox does not affect what
Click the View drop-down menu to set the initial view of the PDF
content of the InDesign document is exported to PDF. Rather,
when it’s opened. This view setting will override the default prefer-
tagging the PDF will provide help to identify what the various docu-
ences in Acrobat. The content of the document will often determine
ment elements are, such as heads, subheads, body copy, tables,
your view choice. For instance, you might choose 100% if you’re
graphics etc., and provides structural information about how this
sending a graphics portfolio and you want to make sure that its
document is put together. All of this tagging information can
image quality isn’t compromised by an over-enlargement on a large
be useful when reformatting and editing a PDF document at a
display monitor. Or you might choose Fit Page if you want to make
later time. Adding tagging is generally a good idea because it
sure an entire design layout will be visible when the PDF is opened.
adds minimum file size to your document and provides far more future flexibility.
The layout option you choose will depend upon how your docu-
10
ment is laid out, such as single nonfacing pages or facing pages,
in the Presentation section, enable the Open in Full Screen Mode
and whether or not you’re exporting spreads from your InDesign
checkbox. Set a new timing in the Flip Pages Every field, and from
document. For instance, if you have a facing pages InDesign docu-
the Page Transitions drop-down menu, choose a page transition.
ment and would like the facing pages to be displayed together
Note: The first Page Transitions menu choice, From Document,
in their correct recto and verso positions, you’d choose Two-Up
will use page transitions assigned within the InDesign document.
(Facing). Notice, two choices include a document with and without
You can set up the page transitions in InDesign by going to Window>
cover pages. This setting also overrides the default preferences
Interactive>Page Transitions. Also note, presentation functions
in Acrobat. Note: If you select Default in either the View or Layout
applied to the interactive PDF can be reset when opened in Acrobat.
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[CHOOSE LAYOUT OPTION]
[PRESENTATION CHARACTERISTICS]
If you’d like your PDF to act like a presentation as soon as it’s opened,
drop-down menus, the PDF will use the default settings in Acrobat. continued on p. 70
11
Select Include All from the Buttons and Media section if you want
12
all of your attached media (such as sound files, videos, and anima-
images will be converted when they’re processed for inclusion
tions) to be included and active in your PDF file. If you select the
in your interactive PDF. Your choices should depend upon your
Appearance Only option, all of your interactive buttons will be
images and their use. For instance, if you’re creating a high-quality
included in your PDF but they’ll occur only in their normal state and
portfolio, you might choose JPEG 2000 (Lossless) for Compression,
will not be active in the PDF document. By selecting Include All,
while for a monthly sales report, you might choose JPEG (Lossy)
your interactive buttons and media will be active in both the normal
for Compression and Medium for JPEG Quality. Your resolution
PDF viewing modes and in presentation modes.
choice will depend upon your output device. For onscreen, choose
[ACTIVATE BUTTONS AND MEDIA, OR NOT]
[IMAGE HANDLING CHARACTERISTICS]
In the Image Handling section, you determine how pixel-based
between 72–96 ppi; for desktop printing, choose 144 ppi; and for commercial or high-quality printing, choose 300 ppi.
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Not all documents need security. In fact, adding security to some
14
documents, such as a portfolio, may create unnecessary hurdles for
PDF dialog. If you’ve enabled the View After Exporting checkbox,
someone to view your work. For instance, you may want people
your PDF should open in your default PDF opening application
to view your work but not be able to print or edit it. That’s easy to
(hopefully, Acrobat Pro). Review your view, layout, and any presenta-
set up. Click the Security button and enable the Use a Password
tion settings you’ve assigned. Test all of your interactive elements.
to Restrict Printing, Editing and Other Tasks checkbox. Enter a
Also, feel free to change any of the PDF document characteristics
password in the Permissions Password field, confirm your password,
in Acrobat. If you’ve assigned security, carefully check to make sure
and click OK.
it’s working, and for heaven’s sake, write down any passwords
[SET SECURITY]
[CREATE AND TEST YOUR PDF]
To create your interactive PDF, click OK in the Export to Interactive
you assigned.Voilà! An interactive PDF!
[
Taz Tally is the author of Acrobat and PDF Solutions from Wiley Press, as well as numerous other digital imaging books on Photoshop, scanning, digital photography, and prepress. Visit Taz’s websites www.taztallyphotography.com and www.tazseminars.com. ALL IMAGES BY TAZ TALLY UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED
]
75
HENK DAWSON
DREAMWEAVER TUTORIAL J A N I N E
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W A R N E R
six new features Every upgrade brings something new, but Dreamweaver CS5 brings more goodies than most previous upgrades, and you can put these new features to use right away. Here’s how to use some of the coolest new features, from troubleshooting CSS with the new inspect option, to adding advanced Ajax and jQuery features using the widget browser, to testing your pages in different Web browsers using the Adobe BrowserLab website.
[THE NEW, SIMPLER, SITE SETUP]
[SETTING UP WEB SERVERS]
In version CS5, Adobe streamlined the website setup process.
Use the list on the left of the Site Setup dialog to access more
When you first start working on any new or existing site in Dream-
advanced features and FTP settings. The new dialog now makes
weaver, it’s important to begin by setting up the site and identifying
it possible to set up multiple servers for any site, a great way to
your main website folder. The new Site Setup dialog (Site>New Site)
manage both a testing server and a live server for the same website.
requires two settings to get started. First, give your site a name
Note: You’ll need to click the Add New Server icon (+, plus sign) at
(any name will do, it’s just for your reference). Next, click the folder
the bottom of the Servers category to open the FTP settings dialog.
icon to the right of the Local Site Folder field and select the folder on your hard drive where you’ll store all of the files and subfolders in your site.
L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
[
[OPTIONAL IMAGES FOLDER AND MORE]
[THE WIDGET BROWSER]
You’ll find many other options in the Site Setup dialog when you
The Adobe Widget Browser makes it easy to add a growing list
click the Advanced Settings category, including the setting for an
of widgets to your site. Most are created in jQuery or Ajax and
images folder in your local site folder. If you identify an images
you can use them to add slide shows, drop-down menus, and
folder, and then insert an image into a page that is outside your
other interactive features to your webpage. To access the Widget
root folder, Dreamweaver will copy the image into the folder you
Browser, select it from the Extend Dreamweaver menu (the gear
identify in this field. You can also use the Advanced Settings category
icon) located in the Application Bar (Window>Application Bar) just
to specify a folder for spry assets, setup version control, cloaking,
below the Dreamweaver menu (just to the right of the Help menu
contribute, and other advanced features. When finished defining
on Windows). Note: When you click this option for the first time,
your settings click Save and you’re done.
read the resulting dialog and follow its prompts to download the Widget Browser from Adobe Labs.
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[DOWNLOADING WIDGETS]
76
[ADDING WIDGETS TO DREAMWEAVER]
Click the Adobe Exchange link at the top left of the Widget
Most widgets are small so they download quickly and once a widget
Browser window to view all of the widgets available on the Adobe
is downloaded to your hard drive, it opens in its own widget browser
Exchange website. To download a widget, click to select it, and
window automatically. Click the Add to My Widgets button at the
then enter a valid Adobe ID and password (if you don’t already
bottom right corner of the Widget Browser window to add the
have an Adobe ID, you can create one for free, simply click the
widget to your local widget browser where it becomes available in
Create Account button at the bottom of the Sign In dialog).
Dreamweaver. Click the Go To My Widgets button in the Widget Added dialog to open the local widget browser and view the new widget in your local collection; or click on My Widgets, which is located at the top of the Widget Browser window.
77 L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
[INSERTING WIDGETS INTO PAGES]
8
[CUSTOMIZING WIDGETS]
You can insert any widget that you’ve added to the Adobe Widget
Each widget is different, but most come with default images or
Browser into a page in Dreamweaver by clicking the Widget icon
other content in place and need to be customized to feature your
in the Insert panel (Window>Insert), or by selecting Insert>Widget.
content. In this example, I replaced the default images that come
Then, in the Widget dialog, select your desired widget from the
with the LightBox widget by changing the image references in the
Widget drop-down menu and click OK.
HTML code to reference images in my main images folder.
9
10
[ACTIVATING CSS INSPECT]
Dreamweaver CS5 adds a new tool designed to help you identify
[USING CSS INSPECT]
Once it’s activated, just roll your cursor around the screen to use
how CSS is used in a webpage. The CSS Inspect option makes it
CSS Inspect. As you do, Dreamweaver highlights content in the
easy to quickly view the CSS that defines the styles used in differ-
Design View area with color-coded highlighting that identifies
ent parts of any webpage. To use CSS Inspect, click the Inspect
each tag and associated style, as well as any margins and padding
button at the top of the Workspace and click the text link Switch
created by the style rule. Simultaneously, Dreamweaver identifies
Now (it appears just below the Inspect button). The Switch Now
the corresponding code in Code View, and displays the cor-
link automatically changes the Dreamweaver layout to best take
responding style rules in the CSS Styles panel (which automati-
advantage of the CSS Inspect feature.
cally pops-up when you use Switch Now). Click the Inspect button again to turn off CSS Inspect.
11
[TESTING IN ADOBE BROWSERLAB]
Adobe BrowserLab is designed to help you preview how your
12
[USING ADOBE BROWSERLAB ONLINE]
When you open a page in Adobe BrowserLab, you’re connected
pages will display in a variety of Web browsers, even if you don’t
to the Adobe BrowserLab website and a screen shot of the page
have all of those browsers available on your local hard drive. In
is automatically created using whatever browser was last selected
CS5, you’ll find a new Adobe BrowserLab panel you can use to
in Adobe BrowserLab. In the top left corner of the Adobe Brow-
preview any open page in your local site. To preview a page, save
serLab website, click the View button and choose 2-up View menu
your page (File>Save) and click the Preview button in the Adobe
to display the same page in two different browsers side by side,
BrowserLab panel (Window>Extensions>Adobe BrowserLab), or
or Onion Skin to place two previews on top of the other; which
go to File>Preview in Browser>Adobe BrowserLab. You must have
makes it easier to identify subtle differences.
the page open in Dreamweaver and you must be connected to the Internet to use this feature.
13
[CHOOSING AVAILABLE BROWSERS]
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You can preview your pages in a variety of Web browsers in the
78
14
[SPELL CHECK IN 37 LANGUAGES]
As the Internet becomes increasingly multilingual it’s great to
Adobe BrowserLab website, including the notorious Internet Ex-
see Adobe upgrade the spell check features in Dreamweaver to
plorer 6.0. You can also use the Browser Sets option (located near
handle 37 languages (previous versions supported less than half
the top of the Adobe BrowserLab webpage) to create a shortcut
that many). To change the dictionary to any of the included lan-
to any collection of browsers available on the site that you want to
guages, go to Dreamweaver (PC: Edit)>Preferences. In the General
use for testing. Note: You can’t click on the links or test interactive
category, use the Spelling Dictionary menu to select any of the
features on your page with this option active because it only takes
listed languages and click OK. Then choose Commands>Check
a screen shot of the page in each browser.
Spelling to use spell check in the language you selected.
[
Janine Warner has authored more than a dozen books about the Internet, including Dreamweaver CS5 for Dummies. She’s also the host of a growing collection of training videos on Dreamweaver and CSS, at KelbyTraining.com. To learn more about Janine’s books, videos, and speaking engagements, visit DigitalFamily.com.
]
ALL IMAGES BY KEN RIDDICK UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED
HENK DAWSON
[F
LASH PROFESSIONAL TUTORIAL] L E E
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B R I M E L O W
text layout framework When Adobe released the powerful new text engine in Flash Player 10 called Text Layout Framework (TLF), there was no tooling support in Flash Professional to take advantage of it. In Flash CS5, however, there’s full support for easily doing things such as linked containers, multicolumn text, exotic ligatures, and enhanced support for languages such as Arabic and Japanese. Let’s take a tour of some of these new features.
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[SETTING UP FLASH CS5]
80
[TLF TEXT VS. CLASSIC TEXT]
If you’d like to use the same text that we’re using in this tutorial,
Double-click the name of the first layer in the Timeline and rename
you can download the exercise files from www.layersmagazine
it to “Text.” Select the Text tool (T) and drag out a new text field
.com. Open Flash CS5 and when the Welcome Screen appears,
that fills the top half of the Stage. At the top of the Properties panel
click ActionScript 3 in the Create New section. The TLF is written
you’ll notice a pull-down menu that by default is set to TLF Text. If
entirely in ActionScript 3, so if you haven’t already transitioned
you don’t want to use the new text engine you can change this to
to the new version of the language, here’s yet another reason to
Classic Text, which is the name for the old text engine. There’s some
do so. Go under File>Save and save this new document to your
additional file size and overhead with using TLF, so if you need simple
desktop as “TLF.fla.”
text, it’s better to stick to classic text.
[If you’d like to download the files used in this tutorial to practice these techniques, visit www.layersmagazine.com and navigate to the Magazine section. All files are for personal use only.]
81 L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
[CHARACTER OPTIONS]
[LINKED CONTAINERS]
Open the sampleText.txt file that you downloaded, and copy (Com-
Linked containers allow you to link two or more individual text
mand-C [PC: Ctrl-C]) the English language text. Back in Flash, paste
containers together so that text will flow through them. You
(Command-V [PC: Ctrl-V]) the text into the TLF text field. Select
should see a small red icon on the bottom-right of the text field
the text (Command-A [PC: Ctrl-A]), and in the Character section of
on the Stage. Click on it and your cursor will change to one
the Properties panel, change the font Family to Adobe Caslon Pro
loaded with text. Now drag out a new text field somewhere on
and change the Size to 20 pt. Choose Readability in the Anti-alias
the Stage and you’ll notice a connecting line between them and
pull-down menu. If your text field will be dynamic or editable, you’ll
also that the overflow text from the first text field flows into the
need to embed the font by clicking on the Embed button. This
second. Although the containers are linked, you can still style,
workflow hasn’t changed from previous versions of Flash, although
position, and manipulate each text field individually.
there’s a new global Font Embedding dialog (Text>Font Embedding) to make font management much easier.
[LIGATURE SUPPORT]
[MULTICOLUMN LAYOUTS]
Delete the second text field you created in the last step and replace
When dealing with large amounts of text, it’s often more readable to
the text in the first one with the word “cost.” Increase the font size
break the text into multiple columns similar to what you see in news-
to 210 pt. Ligatures are special characters that replace certain com-
papers. Delete the text field on the Stage and create a new one that
binations of letters in a font. Typographers take extra time to design
fills the Stage and change the font Size to 18 pt. Paste in the block
beautiful-looking connections between characters and most people
of text from the text file. Go to the Container and Flow section of the
never even know they’re there. In the Advanced Character section
Properties panel and set the Columns to 2. You should now see the
of the Properties panel, change the value in the Ligatures menu
text divided into two columns. You can also adjust the gap between
from Common to Exotic. As you can see, this particular ligature is
the columns by adjusting the column gutters property to the right.
quite fancy, and using them can add a touch of class to your text.
[FUN WITH DIGITS]
8
[VERTICAL TEXT ORIENTATION]
There are also some subtle options to choose from when it comes
Another simple thing that designers often want to do is to create
to displaying numbers. Fill the text field on the Stage with numbers,
text that’s laid out vertically. This wasn’t possible with the classic
change the number of Columns back to 1, and increase the Size
text field. Create a new TLF text field on the Stage, change the
to 80 pt. Go to the Advanced Character section of the Properties
font Size to 22 pt, and type in a word. Now in the top of the Prop-
panel and you’ll see two options for tweaking the way numbers
erties panel, change the orientation of the text to Vertical using the
appear in your text field. Change the Digit Case property to Old
menu highlighted in the screen shot. Obviously, you still need to
Style. This displays digits in a more old-fashioned style as designed
rotate the characters to make things look right. Change the Rota-
by the typographer. Changing the Digit Width property to Propor-
tion to 270° in the Character section of the Properties panel. You
tional groups, the digits are grouped closer together based on the
now have vertical text.
character’s proportional size.
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Properly displaying languages like Japanese in previous versions
10
of Flash was next to impossible. Create a new TLF text field
right-to-left languages. With the TLF, this has also been made
that fills the Stage. Change the font to Adobe
Std, which
simple. Create a new TLF text field that fills the Stage, set the
comes with Flash CS5. Open the sampleText.txt file and copy-
orientation to Horizontal, change the Rotation back to 0°, and
and-paste the Japanese text into the text field and set the orien-
change the font to Adobe Arabic. Open the sampleText.txt file
tation to Vertical. (Note: The text file is in the UTF-8 format, so
and copy-and-paste the Arabic text into the text field. Select
make sure your editor is set to read that format.) When you test
Show Right-to-Left Options from the flyout menu at the top of the
it, you’ll notice that text also selects vertically like it should. To
Properties panel. Now in the Paragraph section, you can change
see additional options for Asian languages, choose Show Asian
the Direction property to Right to Left.
[JAPANESE TEXT]
[ARABIC TEXT]
Another difficult language to display in Flash is Arabic, and other
Options in the flyout menu at the top of the Properties panel. continued on p. 84
[ INTEGRATION WITH
ADOBE INDESIGN ]
For those of you who use Adobe InDesign, you may have noticed the similarities between the TLF and the text capabilities found in InDesign. This is no coincidence, as the InDesign team is the one who developed this amazing new text engine for Flash. There’s such fine-tune control available over text, that most Flash designers won’t ever want or need to use them all. But for designers who are trying to create beautiful reading experiences for new-generation devices like tablets, they’ll be able to faithfully translate the printed page into Flash. InDesign CS5 also has the ability to export text layouts
11
directly to Flash FLA files using the TLF. This means that
[HIGHLIGHTING TEXT]
Another frequent request that Adobe received from designers was that they wanted the ability to highlight certain pieces of text with a different background color, similar to the way you can do it in programs such as Microsoft Word. Create a new TLF text field and enter in some text. Now use the Text tool to select one of the words you typed. In the Properties panel, under the Character section, you can change the Highlight color to anything
designers can do their entire layouts for Flash directly in InDesign where they may be more comfortable. They can then export to an FLA file and pass it to the Flash developer. InDesign CS5 also has some new animation capabilities that allow designers to create basic interactive projects without even needing to open Flash. As publishers move to get their printed publications onto digital devices, InDesign combined with Flash, will be a vital workflow to make that happen.
you like. You can also change the selection color as well, but that requires writing some ActionScript code.
12
[TLF WITH ACTIONSCRIPT]
There are times that you’ll need the ability to change TLF properties dynamically at runtime using ActionScript. Create
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a new TLF text field on the Stage and paste in some text. Give
84
the text field an Instance Name of “tf” at the top of the Properties panel. Select the first frame of the Text layer and open the Actions panel (Window>Actions). As an example, you can change the number of columns in the text field simply by setting the columnCount property as shown in the screen shot (test the movie to see the results). Most of the other properties can be set just as easily.
[
Lee Brimelow is a Platform Evangelist with Adobe and an award-winning interactive designer. Lee runs the free tutorial site at www.gotoandlearn.com and a Flash-related blog at www.theflashblog.com. He is also the author of several titles for Lynda.com dealing with Flash and After Effects.
]
[layers reviews] the straight scoop on all the latest graphics gear
Canon EOS-1D Mark IV HIGH ISO DIGITAL SLR
Veteran Canon EOS-1D and 1Ds shooters will feel right at home with the new Canon EOS-1D Mark IV camera, built on a dust- and weather-resistant magnesium alloy body. Upgraded features include increased sensor resolution and ISO, reduced noise, an increased frame rate, a new medium-sized RAW file, and if that’s not enough, HD video capture. The Mark IV has an APS-H 27.9x18.6mm sensor that packs 16.1 megapixels (4896x3264 in RAW) of capture resolution. The new M-RAW format (3672x2448—9 megapixels) joins the S-RAW (2448x1632—4 megapixels) format introduced in the Mark III. The ISO range of the sensor gets a major boost. The standard range is 100–12,800. The L setting remains at 50 while H1 moves to ISO 25,600, H2 is 51,200, and H3 has an amazing 102,400. That’s four stops higher than the Mark III. The dual DIGIC 4 Image Processors handle image quality at high speeds. I made several captures at the top of the standard range (12,800) and the results—especially when processed with the Camera Raw 6 Process Version 2010 (PV2010) using the Luminance Noise Reduction slider—provided truly wonderful results. At the risk of showing my age, photographs made at this ISO are much better than ISO 800 film I used to shoot. Speaking of speed, the Mark IV shoots at a continuous 10 frames per second (fps) for 28 RAW files or 121 JPEGs using a high data rate UDMA CompactFlash memory card. The shutter is rated up to 300,000 exposures. Autofocus in the Mark IV gets attention, too. Canon’s new AI Servo II AF 45-point system has the ability to manually select 39 cross-type
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points for fast, precise focusing. Custom functions allow the photographer to set a custom focus point that automatically switches when the camera is moved from horizontal to vertical positions. Adjacent sensors
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can be added to the primary when working with moving subjects. One of my favorite features is the Mark IV’s 100% accuracy in the viewfinder. Another thing that’s easy to love is the ClearView II 3" LCD monitor that has a multicoated screen to reduce glare and a 160° angle of view, so photos can be easily seen by the photographer and onlookers. The Mark IV’s sensor size is close to the aspect ratio in professional motion picture cameras shooting super 35mm movies. The
APS-H sensor uses a shorter normal focal length lens, allowing increased depth-of-field especially with wide-angle lenses. Automatic Exposure (AE) control sets the meter to center-weighted average metering. Manual exposure is also available. The 1920x1080 HD video may be captured at 29.97, 25, or 23.976 fps—which are the rates for television and motion picture, respectively. It has 1280x720 HD or 640x480 SD (standard defi nition) at 59.94 fps. All video is recorded in the MOV format and will record a single clip up to 4 GB (about 12 minutes in length), and the quality is good. The built-in microphone has mono recording and stereo sound is possible with an accessory microphone. The Mark IV captures stills and video using CompactFlash or SD cards, or both, automatically switching from full to empty cards. The desired file’s size can be set for either card. Photographs may also be recorded to both cards at the same time to make a backup. Movies, however, can’t use this function. Some photographers who are used to a lighter camera might have an initial adverse reaction to the Mark IV’s heft. I believe that after giving it a chance they’ll overcome size issues and fall in love with this machine. This is a professional’s small-format choice for extraordinary options in one digital camera body.—Kevin Ames
Company: Canon U.S.A., Inc.
Price: $4999
Web: www.usa.canon.com
Rating: ● ● ● ● ●
Hot: 16 megapixels; insanely high ISOs; low noise Not:
Aperture 3
POWERFUL UPGRADE WITH EASY-TO-USE TOOLS Aperture 3 for Macs contains many new features, such as Faces and Places, that will be familiar to iPhoto users. Faces provides face detection and recognition to tag people in your photos automatically. Places uses GPS information embedded in photos to display where the photos were taken, using a pin on a map. As only a few cameras can embed GPS information at capture time, Aperture also allows you to drop untagged photos onto the map manually. The most popular new feature with existing Aperture users that I interviewed is Brushes. Similar to the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom, it allows a user to apply corrections to an image selectively. Brushes supports pressure-sensitive graphics tablets, and Apple even added a Detect Edges option that mimics Quick Mask in Photoshop, which lets the user see the affected areas. Aperture 3 also provides a variety of Adjustment Presets that range from image-enhancement settings to special effects like sepia tone. You can customize, save, and share your own presets and import other presets. A quick Internet search revealed that many users are offering or selling their custom presets. Also new with this release is full 64-bit support, which provides improved performance on newer Macs running Snow Leopard. When it comes time to share your images, Aperture 3 uploads directly to Facebook and Flickr, and it can produce professional-looking slide shows that combine text, images, music, and even video. For all of its 200 plus new features, this latest version of Aperture appears to be focused more on the consumer side of photo editing. Existing Aperture users will love the new features, especially the tighter integration with iPhoto, and unlike Lightroom, Aperture 3 can manage video as well as still images.—Dave Huss
Digimarc for Images 4 PHOTOSHOP PLUG-IN APPLIES (AND TRACKS) INVISIBLE WATERMARKS
The Digimarc for Images 4 plug-in for Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements (Windows only) embeds your own unique copyright information invisibly, then their Web crawling service constantly looks for watermarked images on websites, and reports the results back to the owner. You can even have the plug-in generate a unique watermark for each instance of an image, including copies, so you can track the source of an illegally copied image—this is often used for “leak detection” when an image is given to one person or channel and is then copied. Digimarc 4 can be identified even if the image is cropped or scaled. In fact, Digimarc claims that the watermark persists when an image is scaled down to 25% of its original size (and sometimes smaller), or when cropped down to 256x256 pixels. To assist visitors to your website, a plug-in is available for Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer that displays a small D on all images protected with Digimarc’s watermarking. When a user clicks the D, information about the owner of the image pops up. The company is working on a plug-in for Windows Firefox, but no promises are being made about supporting Macintosh browsers. Version 4 addresses concerns about image quality from users of previous versions. Its new Chroma technology uses an understanding of human visual perception to apply a different amount of marking to various areas of an image. You can compare examples of the old and new technologies at www.smartimage.us—to my eye, the Chroma images have less noise in flat areas, and are crisper overall. If you’re a budding watermarker, check out the Digimarc website; it’s loaded with helpful resources. Concerned about your images being used without permission on a webpage? Digimarc is an effective solution.—Jay Nelson
Company: Digimarc Corporation Web: www.digimarc.com
Price: Starting at $49 (Basic) Rating: ● ● ● ●
Hot: Web crawler; less impact on images Company: Apple Inc.
Price: $199 (Upgrade: $99)
Web: www.apple.com
Rating: ● ● ● ●
Hot: 64-bit support; brushes; adjustment presets Not: No new tools
Not: No 64-bit support; browser plug-in for Windows only
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COURTESY OF APPLE
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Eos Converge
WIRELESS MUSIC SYSTEM OFFERS VERSATILITY AND QUALITY
URL2hyperlink
AUTO CONVERSION OF HYPERLINKS
Formatting hyperlinks in InDesign CS3 and CS4 is a pain—they have to be formatted one at a time. That means that every new hyperlink has to be selected and made into a URL destination. Granted this isn’t hard, just unnecessary. URL2hyperlink adds a few new menus to the Hyperlinks panel: Convert URL to Hyperlink, Use Auto URL, and Auto URL Options. Convert URL to Hyperlink allows you to convert a number of existing URLs (including email links) by selection, text frame, story, document, or all open documents at once. In addition, you can automatically apply a character style and apply an appearance to the hyperlink when clicked in the PDF. One of the other nice features with URL2hyperlink is the ability to format the links as you type them. You set up the options (basically the same options as before without the Scope) and turn on this feature by selecting the Use Auto URL option. From then on your hyperlinks are created and formatted as soon as you type them. The result is a series of nicely named hyperlinks. The plug-in works in InCopy, so editors can control the creation and formatting too. It currently works in InDesign and InCopy CS3 and CS4. InDesign CS5 can batch convert so the need for this plug-in might be in question; however, the built-in method has some limitations. First, it doesn’t work with selections, text frames, and all open documents—only stories and an entire single document. Second, the
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hyperlinks aren’t auto-named but just show as anonymous hyperlinks.
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The Eos Converge audio system lets you play your music in any room from any source—without wires. The Eos Converge Transmitter ($99.95) comes with a USB cable, 3.5mm stereo mini audio cable, and a power adapter. When using the USB cable with a computer, the power adapter isn’t needed. Just launch your music application, select Converge USB TX in your Sound or Audio preferences, and click play. Whichever Eos Converge receiver you’re using will automatically link to the transmitter and send audio to the connected speakers. Easy. (Use the power supply and the stereo mini audio cable to listen to an iPod or other music device.) The transmitter can send audio to four different receivers up to 150' away. The Eos Converge Receiver ($99.95) comes with a stereo RCA cable, stereo “Y” cable with 3.5mm stereo mini female, and power supply. Just connect the audio out to your stereo or home theater receiver, or powered speakers (using the “Y” cable), and crank up the volume. The receiver also has buttons for pausing your audio and changing tracks. Another option is the Eos Converge Amplified Receiver ($149.95). Just plug in any set of speakers directly to this receiver and you’re good to go. We tested this with the acoustically matched Eos Loudspeakers ($99.95) and they sounded great and had nice bass response (and you can even hook up an amplified sub for more bass). This receiver has a volume control in addition to the pause and track controls. It also has an auxiliary in for connecting an iPod directly to the receiver. With the Eos Converge system you can send music anywhere from anywhere. That’s our definition of versatile. Our only real complaint is the cost—the components add up quickly (but they do offer up to a 20% discount depending on the number of components you
(InCopy CS5 doesn’t have the batch conversion option.) Whether or not the URL2hyperlink plug-in gets updated to work with InDesign CS5 remains to be seen but for CS3 and CS4 users, this
buy).—Chris Main
plug-in is very useful.—David Creamer
Company: IntelliTouch
Price: $99.95–149.95
Web: www.eoswireless.com
Rating: ● ● ● ●
Company: DTP Tools Ltd.
Price: $27
Web: www.dtptools.com
Rating: ● ● ● ●
Hot: Automatically converts and formats URLs as you type Not: CS5 replaces some of the plug-in’s features
Hot: Versatile; sound quality Not: Price
89 L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
Lensbaby Soft Focus Optic ADD CREATIVE EFFECTS TO YOUR IMAGES BY SOFTENING THE FOCUS The creative folks at Lensbaby have been busy coming up with more lenses for their innovative Optic Swap System. According to Lensbaby, the Soft Focus Optic “...creates a velvety soft image perfect for portraits, flowers, landscapes, or any subject that needs a soft touch.” So how does this offering fare? As a user of other Lensbaby products, I was eager to find out. I mounted the Lensbaby Composer (sold separately for $270) and the Soft Focus Optic on my trusty Nikon and put it to the test. The Composer handles the pivot (to choose the selective focus area) and focusing tasks, while the Soft Focus Optic produces the effect. My test results yielded a mixed bag. For example, in most of my test shots, the highlights were blown out, which produced the soft focus effect. In a few shots where the lighting was even and the subject had some lighter areas, the soft focus effect was quite nice. If you like the blown-out look, then you’ll be happy with the Soft Focus Optic. If you’re not a fan, you can use the optic when photographing neutral colors and achieve the soft effect without the blown-out highlights. When using a flash, you’ll get a pretty cool light pattern coming off the highlights, which can be a lot of fun. The Soft Focus Optic works well if you have complete control over lighting or if you’re capable of relinquishing control and having fun with the shoot. Either way, with some patience and experimentation, you’ll get something you like out of it.—Mike Mackenzie
modo Studio Lighting and Illumination Kit (SLIK) MODO GETS SLICK WITH SLIK There is only one thing to say here and that’s “wow!” One of my favorite 3D applications just got a huge boost in its capabilities. The Studio Lighting and Illumination Kit (SLIK) is an amazing tool that allows you add another dimension to modo 401. With new tools that allow you to create studio-accurate lighting and reflections to high-dynamic range (HDR) environment presets, SLIK will blow you away. Here’s the scoop. The new SLIK kit allows you to drag preset lighting into modo and move them around just like real lights so you can visualize your scene. The lights have the controls right there in front of the lights, so no worries about having to dig through the complex menus or shaders to get at them, which is a great feature in itself. Included in this awesome product are 30 built-to-scale lighting assembly presets; 24 different lighting setups supporting small-, medium-, large-scale, and portrait studio photography; and the 24 2k HDR environmental maps that will give you a wide range of options to experiment with. I think that SLIK is really pushing modo to another level of capabilities for not only the animator or modeler but for the photographer, as well. Take a jump over to the Luxology website to see some of the fantastic videos they have on this extraordinary product and I think you’ll be amazed at the results you can get. This is one prod-
Company: Lensbaby Inc.
Price: $89.95
Web: www.lensbaby.com
Rating: ● ● ●
Hot: Nice soft focus effect; flash patterns in highlights Not: Blown-out highlights and light areas are overkill
uct that’s a must have for all modo users, and for those of you who don’t use modo, you need to check it out.—Bruce Bicknell
Company: Luxology, LLC
Price: $125
Web: www.luxology.com
Rating: ● ● ● ● ●
Hot: Cost; accurate studio lighting and reflection setups; presets Not:
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Holomatrix booq Python blur TOUGH PHOTO BACKPACK HOLDS EVEYTHING FROM YOUR
TIMESAVING EFFECTS PLUG-IN
LAPTOP TO THE KITCHEN SINK
The Python blur by booq is a photo backpack designed to carry all of your digital camera gear plus up to a 17" laptop with accessories. Booq is known for the quality construction of its bags, and the Python blur is no exception. The exterior is constructed of 1680 denier ballistic nylon with water-repellant coating. That means this bag has a rigid, tough exterior that protects everything you put into it. As for storage, there’s plenty of room for all your gear. Two large zippered pockets on either side of the bag each contain two expanding neoprene slip pockets that can hold small lenses, hard drives, and more. There’s a large compartment at the top with room enough for a camera body with lens and a second lens. The floor of this top compartment can fold down and become part of the main compartment, which is accessed via the front zipper. With the floor folded down, there was plenty of room for my Nikon D80 with a Sigma 100–300mm f/4 lens attached. And there are lots of other pockets in this bag for your filters, Wacom tablets, flashes—you name it. But once your gear’s loaded, the bag becomes quite heavy (even empty, this bag weighs 5.7 lbs—a tradeoff for the very solid construction). The strap system can be adjusted at the chest, shoulders, and waist to help distribute the weight for a more comfortable ride. But as with most packs, the weight still tends to rest on the lower back.
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Also keep in mind that this bag is big, so make sure you have plenty
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of room to maneuver with it on your back. So would I recommend the Python blur? Yes. I loved having access to all my gear in one sleek-looking bag, along with the knowledge that everything was protected.—Chris Main
Company: booq
Price: $229.95
Web: www.booqbags.com
Rating: ● ● ● ●
Hot: Rugged; lots of room Not: Bulky and heavy
Holomatrix is an After Effects plug-in that does one thing well: It gives footage that produces ghost-like, scan line, holodeck, and “help me Obi-Wan Kenobi” looks. It’s an unusual plug-in because it’s not listed in the Effects menu. Instead, it’s applied by choosing Window>Holomatrix, which then applies a bunch of complex presets to the selected layer—presets that use many effects and expressions, and that involve multiple levels of precomposing. As the presets use built-in effects, you could (in theory) do everything Holomatrix does, without buying the plug-in. Good luck! The developers have obviously spent hours figuring out the best way to create the holodeck look, and the process is instantaneous. Choose the plug-in from the menu and—wham-o—you’re done. If you’re not happy with the default look, you can make infinite adjustments in the Effect Controls window or in the custom Holomatrix panel that appears after you apply the effect. You can choose from many presets (or save your adjustments as a new preset), turn on-and-off various aspects of the effect (glows, random flickers, etc.), and adjust the thickness and color of the scan lines. As the result is an unusual mixture of expressions and built-in effects, there are some gotchas to be aware of when deleting the effect (because it’s not a single effect, you can’t just select it and delete it) and when using it in complex situations, such as 3D. Luckily, Holomatrix comes with a detailed manual and there are also some excellent tutorial videos on Red Giant’s website.—Marcus Geduld
Company: Red Giant Software LLC
Price: $99
Web: www.redgiantsoftware.com
Rating: ● ● ● ● ●
Hot: Infinite adjustments; speed; presets; detailed manual Not:
Ricoh CX3
10-MEGAPIXEL COMPACT DIGITAL CAMERA
I was surprised by the unveiling of Ricoh’s new CX3 digital camera not too long after the CX2 arrived, but the difference between these siblings is remarkable. After spending a lot of time with both the CX1 and CX2, the CX3 had some large shoes to fill. Clearly, Ricoh is listening to its customers with this latest addition to the CX series. This offering features a new backlit CMOS sensor that produces images with less visible noise and a more subtle, natural contrast. Even long-throw flash photos, well beyond the capability of the tiny strobe, are acceptable in most cases. The stunning optics are far sharper than any models tested in this class. Even when 200' from the subject, the clarity and balance of the images is closer to that of a DSLR. There’s an overall improvement in all shooting modes as well. Other nice additions are the Face-Priority AF option in the bracketing selector, and a Pets Mode with silent operation and no visible light emitting from the body that might startle an animal. With its many refinements, this is still a consumer compact digital camera so there’s no RAW shooting mode. For the pros out there, the image quality has incredible depth and clarity, and colors are balanced, properly saturated, and razor sharp.
Follow Us On
The CX3 has another trick up its sleeve in that it shoots 1280p video, which is surprising for a camera in this class. The new DB-100 battery lasts longer than its predecessor’s does. If I were to have any negative issue with the Ricoh CX3, it’s that the selector wheel on the top still sticks out just far enough to slide out of my preferred shooting mode (there’s no lock to keep it in position). There’s so much more to love about this sub-$400 marvel that it’s easy to focus on the positive.—Daniel M. East
Company: Ricoh Co., Ltd.
Price: $399
Web: www.ricoh.com
Rating: ● ● ● ● ●
Hot: Great optics; excellent exposures; HD video Not:
&
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H E N K D AW S O N
[CREATIVE SUITE Q & A]
sweet answers for suite questions [Adobe PHOTOSHOP CS5] B
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I wanted to delete part of an image, but the Fill dialog opened instead. What’s going on? In Photoshop CS5, when a Background layer is active in the Layers panel, the Delete (PC: Backspace) key opens the Fill dialog. To bypass that behavior and simply fill with the Background color, select the area you want to fill and press Command-Delete (PC: CtrlBackspace). And don’t forget that you can fill with the Foreground color using Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace). With the area selected that you want to delete, you can also use the Edit>Clear command to fill the area with the current Background color.
I have plug-ins that aren’t yet updated to run as 64-bit software. How do I use them with Photoshop CS5 and Mac OS 10.6? First quit Photoshop. In the Mac’s Finder, go to Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS5, Right-click on the Adobe Photoshop CS5 icon, and select Get Info from the contextual menu. In the General section, enable the Open in 32 Bit Mode checkbox. When you don’t need those plug-ins anymore, return to the Adobe Photoshop CS5 Info dialog and deselect that option to take full advantage of your 64-bit software.
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What’s your favorite new feature in Photoshop CS5? The new Content-Aware option, found in the Edit>Fill dialog under the Use menu, and in the Options Bar when the Spot Healing Brush tool (J) is active. Content-Aware Scale, introduced in Photoshop CS4, is an incredibly powerful tool for resizing to a new aspect ratio without distorting the subject of your shot. Content-Aware Fill and the Spot Healing Brush’s Content-Aware option use this same powerful capability to seamlessly blend the surrounding appearance of the image into the area in which you’re filling or healing.
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[Adobe dreamweaver cs5]
In the Artboards panel (Window>Artboards) click the panel’s flyout menu and choose Artboard Options. In the Artboard Options dialog, enable the Constrain Proportions checkbox then type in a new Width and Height size.
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How can I make a yellow highlighter effect on my type? You can make a character style that has the underline turned on—simply open the Character Styles panel (Type>Character Styles), click the Create New Style icon at the bottom of the Character Styles panel and doubleclick on the resulting Character Style 1. In the Character Style Options dialog click Underline Options. Enable the Underline On checkbox, adjust the Weight of the rule and use a negative Offset. For Color choose yellow and for Type choose Solid. Click OK. Apply this character style from the Character Style panel as needed.
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Is there a special place to activate the Application Frame inside of Dreamweaver? I can’t find it! Nope! This is one of those “I have to write to Adobe” things for me. For some reason, many of the Creative Suite applications have an Application Frame built into them (Flash only has an application frame option), but that feature has yet to make it into Dreamweaver. This is a good time to write to Adobe to see if they can add it as a feature in a later release. Write to Adobe for a feature request here: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index .cfm?name=wishform.
How can I move settings from one document to another?
Hopefully, you used styles. Under each style panel, click the flyout menu to choose Load All Text Styles, Load Swatches, Load Object Styles, etc. In the Open a File dialog that opens, select the project with the desired settings and click Open. The settings will be transferred to the new file.
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What version of Adobe Reader do users need to participate in a shared review? If using Acrobat.com, they’ll need the Adobe Reader 9; if using an internal server, they only need version 8 or higher.
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Select the Text tool (T), and click-and-drag on the Stage to create a text container. In the Container and Flow section of the Properties panel (Window>Properties), change the number next to Columns, and begin typing. When the text reaches the bottom of the first column it will automatically flow to the next column. You can also convert an existing text container into multiple columns. Select the text container with the Selection tool (V). Next, change the number of columns in the Container and Flow section.
In previous versions of Flash Professional, the only way to view an imported video was to publish your Flash movie. In Flash Professional CS5, you can preview video right on the Stage. To preview a video, click the Play button on the video component to start the video.
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4 Over, Inc.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97 www.4over.com
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Adorama Camera, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 www.adorama.com
[B] B&H Photo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101 www.bhphotovideo.com
Berthold Direct . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 www.bertholdtypes.com
Boss Logo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99 www.bosslogo.com
[L] Layers Magazine . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91, 96, 100 www.layersmagazine.com
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Photoshop World Conference & Expo. . . 71–74 www.photoshopworld.com
PrintRunner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .98 www.printrunner.com
[R] MacMall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 www.macmall.com
[D] Digimarc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 www.digimarc.com/passion
[P]
Media Graphix. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69 www.mediagraphix.com
Media Lab, Inc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 www.medialab.com
Really Right Stuff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 www.reallyrightstuff.com
[S] Shutterstock. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IBC www.shutterstock.com
[W]
Fotolia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BC www.fotolia.com Mpix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 www.mpix.com Focal Press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65 www.focalpress.com
[I] iStockphoto.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IFC–3 www.istockphoto.com
Wacom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 www.wacom.com/americas
[N] National Association of Photoshop Professionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83 www.photoshopuser.com
Every attempt has been made to make this listing as complete as possible. However, its accuracy cannot be guaranteed.
[Z] Zoo Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100 www.zooprinting.com
L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
For advertising information, please contact Kevin Agren, VP, Sales at 813-433-2370 Fax: 813-433-5013 Email: kagren@kelbymediagroup.com
[THE BACK PAGE] HERE’S YOUR CHANCE TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE PAGES OF LAYERS MAGAZINE! Last issue, we used the back page as a call for entries for our “Digital Canvas” column. It worked so well, and we received so many really cool illustrations and designs, that we thought we would use this page again to tell you how easy it is to get published in the pages of Layers magazine. It’s based on a very simple premise: send us your artwork. Yes, you read that right— send us your artwork. If you have a really awesome piece that you’re proud of, send it to us. And if we think it’s cool too, we’ll publish it in our “Digital Canvas” section. As we mentioned before, we love showcasing the work of our readers, and we know our readers love seeing their work in print. So whether it was work for a client, or something you did in your spare time, send it. We like illustrations, Web designs, magazine and book covers, product designs, brochures, posters, and the list goes on and on. As you know, it would be impossible for us to publish everyone’s work, but that shouldn’t stop you from taking the chance; it only takes a few minutes to send us an email. And even though we can’t publish everything, we still appreciate viewing the incredible illustrations and designs that are being created by our readers.
Just send everything to letters@layersmagazine.com with a subject of “Digital Canvas.” For each piece you submit, let us know the title, client’s name (or personal work), all the applications you used (including version numbers), and a website where readers can see more of your work. Turn to page 18 of this issue to see exactly what we need and to admire the work of other readers.
[ SUBMIT YOUR WORK TO LETTERS@LAYERSMAGAZINE.COM ]
THE DESIGN MAKEOVER By the way, we’re also always on the lookout for talented designers www.layersmagazine.com
for the “Design Makeover.” Every issue, we ask three designers to
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create a fresh new look for a design currently in the marketplace. We’ve redesigned everything from logos to webpages to magazine covers to product labels. This is our most popular column, and it’s the first page most of our readers turn to when they receive their latest copy of the magazine. So if you want a chance to show your skills to the world, just drop us a line at letters@layersmagazine.com with a subject of “Design Makeover.” .