Sun CEO at communication`s vanguard, among the few chiefs speaking to public through blog By The Associated Press At the helm of Sun Microsystems Inc., Jonathan Schwartz became "un blogeur" last week when he started publishing his blog in French and nine other languages. ...Read More »

Moho Reborn By Ko Maruyama A robust, although lesser-known animation application called Moho has been in the pocket of many vector-based animators. With the ability to create tons of animation styles with more features than similar software, Moho's metamorphosis into a studio-style package is no mystery. It's pairing with other eFrontier software however, is a surprising, but interesting match. ...Read More »

After Effects 7 Animation Techniques In After Effects 7 Animation Techniques, Jeff Foster shares methods and best practices for creating fantastic animation. From setting up a camera and getting the right angles, to imitating the movement of the human skeleton and animating text layers, Foster explains everything you need to know to create and edit animations for the most realistic effects. In this segment Jeff demonstrates animating text layers in After Effects using Photoshop text layers with displacement. ...Read More »

Photoshop Tip: Tinting the Grays in a Color Image By Dave Nagel We've recently looked at a few methods for desaturating selective elements of a photo, with a particular emphasis on minimizing the manual labor involved. So what if, after desaturating parts of an image, you them want to colorize them to create even more of a nostalgic feel? No problem. ...Read More »

Photoshop Tip: Color Range in Hue/Saturation By Dave Nagel In our last Photoshop tutorial, we desaturated an image of all but a single color to create a nostalgic photo effect. For the particular image we used, the process was simple, since the object we left saturated was the only one of that particular hue in the image. But what happens when there are elements in your photo composed of similar hues to the object you're trying to isolate? ...Read More »

Photoshop Tip: Desaturating Parts of a Picture By Dave Nagel One common way to create a nostalgic effect in a photo is to desaturate all but one element in the photo--a balloon, a flower, a dress, what have you. And if you have a particularly complex element that you want to leave saturated, this can be quite a masking chore. But there are other techniques that can save you some time in the process. In this first Photoshop quick tip, we'll take a look at one simple method: using Hue/Saturation to desaturate all but one color from a picture. ...Read More »

Distributing Objects in Adobe Illustrator, Part 2 By Dave Nagel In our last tutorial on object distribution in Adobe Illustrator, we looked at a fairly routine method for spreading out objects evenly across and down a page. But there were limitations to that technique. So this time around, we'll take a look at a different method--one that gives you a bit more control over the results and also allows you to introduce rotation into the objects that you spread over the page to create spirals, wreaths and other geometric patterns. ...Read More »

Quick Tip: Text Distortions in Adobe Illustrator By Dave Nagel Creating a logo from scratch or reproducing a logo can require complex text distortions, which usually requires you to convert text to outlines and then go through a series of difficult or time-consuming path manipulations. However, there's a quicker way for some projects, and one that doesn't require you to convert text to outlines: envelope distortions. ...Read More »

A Stroll Through Office 2007 By Lynn Greiner Microsoft's Office 2007 will sport a shiny new interface. Lynn Greiner walks you through a few of the changes, and points out likely places where users might be confused. ...Read More »

Illustrator Tip: Distributing Objects By Dave Nagel "Distribute" commands are some of the more misunderstood features of Adobe Illustrator. It's likely that you've tried to use them a few times, given up and forgotten they ever existed. And it is, in fact, tricky to get them to do what you think they should do: distribute objects across your canvas. But with a little trickery, you can actually use these commands or this purpose. ...Read More »

Download: Texture Generators for Adobe Photoshop By Dave Nagel In our last article on displacement effects in Adobe Photoshop, I mentioned that I'd try my darnedest to come up with an automated method for you to produce your own texture files. Well, gum if I haven't done it. Better yet, I'm not just going to tell you how to automate this sort of texture creation. Instead, I'm going to give you a set of fully automated generators--free for you to download and use as you see fit. ...Read More »

Adobe Illustrator Tip: On Screen Pixelization By Dave Nagel When you work in Adobe Illustrator, you will occasionally encounter problems where elements appear to be tremendously pixelated on screen--that is, the objects' strokes and/or fills appear to be jagged. This is generally a display problem only, and one that shouldn't trouble you too much, though the problems will sometimes make themselves apparent in your prints as well. There is a simple solution for this. (And if you actually want to create pixelization effects, there's a simple solution for that too.) ...Read More »

Students Who Shine: The Winning Projects of the 2006 Adobe Design Achievement Awards Adobe recently announced the winners of its annual Adobe Design Achievement Awards. Now in its sixth year, the premier student design competition honors the world’s most talented student graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, animators, digital filmmakers and computer artists from the top design, film and broadcast institutions. ...Read More »

Drawing Conclusions: This Pen-and-Tablet is a Good Value By Esther Schindler Graphics professionals easily can justify devices to draw on the computer. For ordinary office workers, a tablet might be a gratuitous toy. Yet, this pen and tablet combo is inexpensive enough use for occasional graphics use — and perhaps even as your everyday desktop interface. ...Read More »

Download: Displacement Maps for Adobe Photoshop, Series 1 By Dave Nagel Displacement maps can be used to create a wide variety of 3D or quasi-3D effects in Adobe Photoshop. The basic idea is that the luminance values of one image are used to define the bending and warping of another image. So, for example, you can use displacement to create crumpled paper, billowing fabric and other types of illusions of depth. ...Read More »

Waving the Flag in Adobe Photoshop By Dave Nagel We've looked at displacement effects in Adobe Photoshop for creating effects like crumpled paper and water reflections. This time around, we'll look at it from another angle: creating billowing fabric, like a flag waving in the wind. And we'll also take a look at some compositing tricks to make the effect a bit more convincing. ...Read More »

Convince Safari to Download PDFs By Tiffany LeFarge Older versions of the Mac browser gave you a choice of viewing a PDF or saving it to the Mac's hard drive. With its various updates, that's no longer Safari's default behavior. We'll show you how to get Safari to do what you want. ...Read More »

FAKE LIQUID IN C4D By Ko Maruyama While there are other ways to create this same look, there aren't any that are easier to comprehend for the novice C4D user. In this movie tutorial, I'll demonstrate a simple way to create some fake looking watery liquid stuff. An object, a spline and Path Deformer Pro will get you on your way. ...Read More »

Alien Skin Blow Up By Dave Nagel Alien Skin is known for its effects filters for Adobe Photoshop, but the company's latest software release falls into a different category altogether. "Blow Up," as the software is called, is designed for a single purpose: to enlarge images using alternative methods to Photoshop's built-in algorithms. Is it worth the $200 price tag? We shall see.... ...Read More »

CINEMA 4D GRADIENT By Ko Maruyama Sometimes the best way to learn something is to deconstruct a completed project. While the materials are mostly based on simple parameters, it may help you to understand how a texture is made. You can check out the tutorial here to create your own gradient, but also check out the presets that Will and Emerson have begun. There are already over 50 different presets available. ...Read More »