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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

CINEMA 4D FOR AE #7 By Ko Maruyama As an After Effects user and CINEMA 4D user, I note that there are many similarities between the programs. Unfortunately their naming conventions are different. In this short series of tips, I'll try to make a connection to C4D from AE. THIS LESSON: Saving a series of backups, rather than merely saving over the same file will help you maintain a safety net of versions, without having to manually rename them. Remember to clean up when you're done. ...Read More »

Reconfiguring brushes in Adobe Illustrator By Dave Nagel When you work with brushes in Adobe Illustrator, chances are you'll want to customize them a bit to suit your own style, rather than conforming your style to the stock presets. But the customization process isn't always straightforward. So in this tutorial, we'll take a look at three different ways to make brushes your own and try to keep it as simple as possible. ...Read More »

Adobe Illustrator Quick Tip: Radial Gradients By Dave Nagel In Illustrator CS2, standard radial gradient fills won't automatically follow the edges of an object. They'll generally be circular and clipped by the bounding box of the object, rather than conformed to the object itself. However, with oval-shaped objects, there's a little trick to get the gradient to follow the edges of the object, rather than appearing completely circular and clipped by the bounding box. ...Read More »

Achieving Amazing Easing Effects in Flash By Rafiq R. Elmansy In previous versions of Flash, motion tweening was a difficult and time-consuming way to give animations realistic motion effects. The Ease In/Ease Out feature was helpful but its limitations became apparent when you applied it to complex animations because you had to create a lot of frame-by-frame shape and motion tweening to mimic something that looked natural. ...Read More »

CINEMA 4D FOR AE #6 By Ko Maruyama As an After Effects user and CINEMA 4D user, I note that there are many similarities between the programs. Unfortunately their naming conventions are different. In this short series of tips, I'll try to make a connection to C4D from AE. THIS LESSON: Gathering up all of your data. In AE: Collect Files. You can do the same in CINEMA 4D. ...Read More »

SIMPLE TIPS FOR C4D FROM AE By Ko Maruyama As an After Effects user and CINEMA 4D user, I note that there are many similarities between the programs. Unfortunately their naming conventions are different. In this short series of tips, I'll try to make a connection to C4D from AE. This week: THE RENDER QUEUE vs. RENDER SETUP & BATCH ...Read More »

Mac OS X Web Server Tips for Designers, Part 3 By Kevin Schmitt For our final foray into ways to beef up the Web server included with Mac OS X, we might as well delve into technologies that actually require the server to be running in order to work. Today we're going to learn how to switch on two such server-side technologies that are built into Mac OS X but disabled by default: PHP and SSI. And considering how tantalizing I've already made our final installment sound, how could you not read further? ...Read More »

MOGRAPH SPLINES By Ko Maruyama While there are several tutorials on the Mograph installation CD which begins shipping this week, I thought that I would produce a small project file with a few of the tools that you can easily reproduce. ...Read More »

Mac OS X Web Server Tips for Designers, Part 2 By Kevin Schmitt We've been rolling through one of the decidedly unsexy (albeit often necessary) aspects of being a Web designer: the need to actually use an honest-to-goodness Web server to test out your sites. Mac OS X makes this process pretty easy, but there are some extra steps one can take to make the whole experience a tad more full-featured. Let's go over a few more tips for adding some extra bling to Mac OS X's indigenous Web server. ...Read More »

SIMPLE TIPS FOR C4D FROM AE By Ko Maruyama As an After Effects user and CINEMA 4D user, I note that there are many similarities between the programs. Unfortunately their naming conventions are different. In this short series of tips, I'll try to make a connection to C4D from AE. ...Read More »

Adobe After Effects Presets #12 By Ko Maruyama Emerson and I have started to create some presets for After Effects. These are actually project files, and not just Animation Presets. Some of the elements that we will feature here are simple, but others may rely on complex animations. Download the ones you want to see what we've done. ...Read More »

SIMPLE TIPS FOR C4D FROM AE By Ko Maruyama As an After Effects user and CINEMA 4D user, I note that there are many similarities between the programs. Unfortunately their naming conventions are different. In this short series of tips, I'll try to make a connection to C4D from AE. ...Read More »

Windows XP Advice for Intel Mac Owners By Kevin Schmitt So you're the owner of one of those shiny new Intel Macs that seems to be getting all the press these days. And since Apple has so thoughtfully released BootCamp, you may be more than a little curious about what's going on over on the Windows side of the fence. As Windows-on-a-Mac can be a strange (and possibly dangerous) new world, here are a few tips to help you navigate the waters. ...Read More »