Archive for October, 2007
I got wind of the Inaugural Blog Action Day a little late, but I want to participate because it’s such a great cause. Blog Action Day is a cooperative effort by bloggers around the world to raise awareness on a given topic each year. This year the topic is (The Environment) climate change and global warming. I’m not going to pretend to give you tips on going green. I’m simply trying to raise awareness by posting about Blog Action Day, and the environment is a topic that I have a deep interest in.
Another standout talent from the BittBox User Showcase on Flickr, and the featured artist for October, everyone say hello to Pashii. I don’t need to say much more. The pieces speak for themselves. There is an interview with Pashii below, and a few selected works. If you weren’t in the mood to get inspired today, well, you’re about to!
On Oct 1st, Adobe launched a new online file sharing and storage service simply called “Share” (beta). The service is aimed at making it easier for creative professionals to share, deliver and receive large files without email. In order to use this service you need an Adobe ID, which is simple and free, and also gives you access to other sections of the Adobe site like the Developer Center and Exchange ( a place to download plugins and extenstions, etc. for Adobe products)
The day I discovered this little time saver, I rolled my eyes in shame thinking about how much of my life I’d wasted doing it the hard way. I want to share a neat little Photoshop productivity tip for faster folder creation in the Layers palette. The method varies between versions (because of shift select functionality added recently to the Adobe Suite) but I’ll show you how to do it in CS3 and CS1. I don’t have a copy of CS2, so hopefully the (you) readers can help us with that in the comments.
I don’t know how this one slipped by me, but Inkscape 0.45.1 was recently released. If you aren’t familiar with Inkscape, it’s a free, open source vector graphics editor (like Illustrator) available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Fedora. I’m not a regular Inkscape user but I do like the Trace Bitmap feature. If you aren’t willing to drop the cash on Illy, Inkscape is for you. Download Inkscape here.
Dock Dividers is a freeware (set) of apps for Mac OS X that allows you to place dividers between groups of applications in your dock. And don’t worry, there are both vertical and horizontal dividers, (for side-mounted docks). This can be helpful for productivity if you use the dock alone to launch your apps, and also provides a visual separation between your groups for quick reference. It might not save you a click, but milliseconds rather. There is a similar, previously released freeware that offers a couple of different styles to choose from.
Again, this is a rather trivial Illy skill, but with a program as robust and sometimes mystical as Illustrator, you can often get something to work and never know why. Other times you can’t get something to work, something that seems like it makes a lot of sense, and all you are missing is a simple ‘bitt’ of knowledge to rid you of your frustrations. In this quick tip, we will touch on the importance of compound paths, as opposed to groups, when applying a single gradient across multiple shapes in Illustrator.
Sponsors
Twitter: bittbox
- New Post: http://t.co/yq8XkgjK
- New Blog Post: How To Create A Set Of PS Brushes From A Single Texture Photo: Creating Photoshop brushes is rath... http://t.co/ljZ39pJf
- New Blog Post: Free Texture Tuesday: 5 Split Wood Textures: http://t.co/GcEkrC6z
- New Blog Post: Freebie Friday: 6 Abstract Lines Brushes: Happy Friday everyone! Today I’m releasing this set of... http://t.co/xhCZBTPq
