Archive for February, 2008
With all of the recent activity with Apple updates and software releases, this one caught me a little off guard. Apple has just released Aperture 2, and shaved a $100 off the price. (Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe it used to be around $300) If you’re a Mac user and a Photographer, this is great news. Personally, I love Aperture for RAW image processing. I think I’m finally gonna buckle down and drop the cash for it this time. Can’t wait to see what’s new!
Whatever kind of designer you are (be it web, print, 3D, multimedia, etc.), you most likely rely on quite a few different apps on a regular basis, and you’re always looking to improve your workflow efficiency. With the release of OS X 10.5, we were introduced to stacks. A feature that promised everyone a clutter-free desktop environment. I don’t know about everyone else, but I was more than dissatisfied with stacks. Good news folks. Apple released 10.5.2 today, and one of the fixes I was personally hoping for came true. Stacks have been beefed up, and we got our list view back! This really made my day. No more 3rd party apps like HierarchialDock to keep my desktop clean. Thanks for listening to us Apple!
I’ve gotten quite a few emails from people who have missed the Vectorstock Free Vector of the month a time or two, and asked me to email it to them. Well, as much as I wish I could, I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to re-distribute digital media that doesn’t belong to me. So, I’m going to remind everyone each month to go download the free files. This month’s free Vectorstock vector hints at Valentine’s Day. Download it while you can folks. (remember, you have to be registered and logged in to download the free vectors over there)
I found a great little font here that I want to share with everyone called Panhead, by Billy Argel. Billy is a great font artist, and if you pay attention to his fonts, he includes lots of little hidden gems in his character sets. In this case, some killer swirly curls/floral dingbats. The reason I like them so much is because you can easily “create outlines” (in the Type menu) in Illustrator to convert these dingbats to good old fashioned vectors.
WebClip Icons are strictly for iPhone & iPod Touch users, but since they are quite the popular little devices, website owners might want to think about adding a WebClip icon soon. A WebClip icon is the icon that the iPhone/iPod Touch uses if a user adds your site to their (now customizable) homescreen/s. I would expect that most people who would bookmark BittBox on the iPhone would just read the RSS feed, but as a site owner, I don’t want to leave anything to chance. I want my icon to look the way I want it to look, and not rely on the iPhone to do it for me. Think of it as a really big favicon.
I’m pretty sure this is new to CS3 (please chime in if you have CS2, because I don’t) but you can now open jpegs with Photoshop’s Camera Raw plug-in. Camera Raw is essentially what the name suggests, a RAW image processor, built into Photoshop. CS3 now allows us to open jpegs in this neat little editor. You might ask yourself: “Why would I need to use Camera Raw? Why not just edit the image in Photoshop itself?” Well, maybe you don’t want to use Camera Raw, but it’s nice to know you have the option. Especially if you take a lot of pictures in jpeg format (or your camera doesn’t shoot RAW) and you just want to tweak your images without having to apply tons of adjustment layers to get what you want.
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