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Archive for September, 2007

Illustrator Quick Tip: Faster Gradient-Color Adjustments

September 20, 2007 | Posted in Illustrator | 74 Comments »

A reader recently asked me about using the eyedropper tool to adjust the (one of 2+) colors in an Illustrator gradient. If you’ve never witnessed this frustration, it is quite annoying. In Illustrator, when using the gradient palette, (Adobe should have figured this out by now) you can’t double-click on one of the gradient color sliders to bring up the color picker? Furthermore, if you click on one of the color sliders of your gradient, and then use the Eyedropper Tool to change that color, Illustrator replaces your gradient fill with a solid color. Every. Time. Although I don’t have a 100% fix for this, I do have a keyboard shortcut to ease your pain…

Illustrator Quick Tip: Faster Gradient-Color Adjustments
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Last Day for Vecteezy Contest Submissions

September 20, 2007 | Posted in News | 13 Comments »

Something that just came to my attention is the contest that Vecteezy.com is holding for it’s contributors. Today (Sept 20th, 2007) is the last day (UPDATE Vecteezy has extended the deadline to: Monday Sept 24th, 2007, winners announced Tuesday) to submit your original vector designs and the winner gets an iPod shuffle, and a $15 iTunes gift card. 2nd place gets a $25 iTunes gift card. All submissions must be Nature in theme and no auto-tracing or Live Trace is allowed. I wish I could have gotten wind of this sooner, but if you have a nature-themed vector collecting dust on your hard drive, might as well submit. (I don’t think there are a ton of submissions at this point, so your chances of winning are actually pretty decent) Contest Details Here >>

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Found Freebie: High-Res Watercolor Textures

September 19, 2007 | Posted in Freebies | 18 Comments »

The folks over at the Go Mediazine blog just released a set of 2 High-Res Watercolor Textures for everyone to feast on. You can never have too many textures, and these are 2 good ones. (jpeg format) While your there, be sure to check out the rest of their freebies section, and they have some great design tutorials as well.

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Illustrator CS3: Extract Swatches from Selected Artwork

September 18, 2007 | Posted in Illustrator, OS X | 30 Comments »

I don’t know if this would be as useful to you as it is for me, but I leaped for joy when I discovered this little Illy CS3 feature. If you deal with client-delivered vector artwork, this could make your life a ton easier. By selecting any or all of the artwork and then clicking “New Color Group” from the Swatches Palette Options, Illustrator will extract all of the colors in your selection, and add them to your swatches in a nice, neat little group! Detailed instructions below.

Illustrator CS3: Extract Swatches from Selected Artwork
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CssMenuMaker.com Giving Away an iPhone for Best User-Submitted Menu Design!

September 17, 2007 | Posted in News | 5 Comments »

If you’re a CSS-savvy designer and you wouldn’t mind owning an iPhone, I have some good news. The kind souls over at CssMenuMaker.com have just announced a contest where users can submit accessible CSS menus, and the best design will bring home a free 4G iPhone! I’ve agreed to help judge the contest. (I won’t be competing because of a previous Apple.com purchase, if you know what I mean) If you are a talented web designer, you have nothing to lose. You can’t win if you don’t submit!

CssMenuMaker.com Giving Away an iPhone for Best Menu Submission!
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