HP Transforms Color Experience for Graphics Professionals

HP announced it is changing the way graphics professionals create large-format images with the unveiling of the HP Designjet Z Photo Printer Series.

Continuing to expand its professional printing portfolio, HP is leveraging its pigment ink technologies developed for the HP Photosmart Pro B9180 to create the first large-format printers employing HP’s Scalable Printing Technology. Continue Reading »

October 12th, 2006 | Web Team | News | Comments (0)

Quark Releases QuarkXPress 7 Update

Quark Inc. announced today the release of QuarkXPress 7.02, the latest update to QuarkXPress 7, which includes the highest level of flexibility and reliability for QuarkXPress software users. The release will provide new, up-to-date functionality, including license-transfer features and typographic support for new languages as well as resolution of the most important issues reported by customers since the product shipped. Continue Reading »

October 11th, 2006 | Web Team | News | Comments (0)

Expanding Rectangular Selections

If you’ve ever tried to expand a rectangular selection by more than five or six pixels, you know what happens. The crisp, sharp-edged corners that you start off with become rounded. Here’s the fix: Don’t use the Expand command (found under the Select menu, under Modify). First, make your selection and press Command-T (PC: Control-T) to bring up the Free Transform bounding box. Go to the Options Bar and Control-click (PC: Right-click) in the Width and Height fields to change the measurements from Percent to Pixels. Now, simply add the amount of pixels you want to expand to the existing number. For example: If the field reads 110 pixels, and you want to expand it by 10 pixels, enter 120 pixels in the field and press Enter to apply the transformation. Don’t forget to change both the Width and Height fields. That’s it—perfectly expanded corners.

October 8th, 2006 | Web Team | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Rendering Text In Just One Click

If you need to convert your Type layer into an image layer, you can save some time by simply Control-clicking (PC: Right-clicking) directly on the Type layer name that appears in the Layers palette. A contextual menu will appear where you can choose Rasterize Type to instantly render your type.

September 18th, 2006 | Web Team | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Putting Your Lens Flare On The Spot

This tip lets you precisely position the center of the Lens Flare filter by using the Info palette and a little-known feature of the Lens Flare dialog. First, open the Info palette (found under the Window menu), then put your cursor over the precise spot in your image where you’d like the center of your lens flare to appear. Look in the Info palette, under the X and Y coordinates, and write down those two coordinates (I knew one day I’d find a use for the X and Y coordinate readings). Then go under the Filter menu, under Render, and choose Lens Flare. There’s a fairly large preview window in the center of the dialog. Hold the Option key (PC: Alt key), click once on the preview window, and it brings up the Precise Flare Center dialog. Enter those X and Y coordinates you wrote down earlier (you did write them down, right?), click OK, and your lens flare is precisely positioned.

September 16th, 2006 | Web Team | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Get Back Your Background Layer

Lost your Background layer? It happens. It’s heartbreaking, but it happens. If you suddenly find yourself staring at a Layers palette and there’s no Background layer (chances are you accidentally converted your Background layer into a regular layer), here’s how to get a Background layer again: Click on the Create a New Layer icon, then go under the Layer menu, under New, and choose Background From Layer, and Photoshop will take your new blank layer and create a solid white Background layer at the bottom of your layer stack.

September 7th, 2006 | Web Team | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Getting Better EPS Previews

Problem: The image looked great in Photoshop, but now that you’ve converted it to CMYK, saved the file as a TIFF, and placed it into QuarkXPress, InDesign, PageMaker, etc., the image looks awful—way oversaturated and totally whacked. Reason: The preview of CMYK TIFFs just looks like that, so don’t freak out—if it looked right in Photoshop, it should print fine. Okay, what if you saved the file as an EPS, and when you place the image into your page-layout app, the color of the image looks okay, but it’s not crisp and clear, but pixelated. Reason: By default, the preview embedded within EPS images is a lame 256-color preview. Solution: When you choose Save As (from the File menu), choose Photoshop EPS in the Format pop-up menu, and click Save, the EPS Options dialog will appear. In the Preview pop-up menu, choose JPEG. That way, it sends a 24-bit, full-color preview, rather than the lame 256-color preview.

September 6th, 2006 | Web Team | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Locking A PDF Presentation

If you’re using Photoshop to create a PDF Presentation slide show (under the Automate submenu in the File menu) so you can email it to your clients for proofing, one of your concerns may be that your client will just print your photos out to a photo-quality printer, leaving you out in the cold (so to speak). But you can pull the plug on their printing aspirations. When saving your PDF Presentation, under Output Options, choose Presentation, then hit Save. It’ll ask you to name your PDF presentation (you’re not done yet), so name it and click Save. Then, a PDF options dialog will appear. Under Security (in the options along the left side), turn on the checkbox for Use a Password to Restrict Printing, Editing and Other Tasks under Permissions. Enter (and memorize) a password. Then, make sure Printing Allowed and Changes Allowed are set to None. Click Save PDF and it’ll ask for your password one more time. Now, when you email the PDF Presentation, printing will be grayed out, and even if they have the full version of Acrobat, they won’t be able to copy-and-paste your photos into something else for printing.

September 5th, 2006 | Web Team | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Unlocking The Background Layer

Can’t move the Background layer? That’s because back in Photoshop 6.0, Adobe locked the Background layer from movement. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that if you look at the top of the Layers palette, you can see that “Yup, the checkbox to lock movement is turned on,” but the frustrating part is that it’s also grayed out, so you can’t simply uncheck it to unlock it. The only way around this is to double-click on the Background, which brings up the New Layer dialog. Click OK, and your Background layer becomes Layer 0 and is unlocked. Now you can move it.

September 4th, 2006 | Web Team | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Let’s Do The Text Warp Again

I get more people than you can “stick a shake at” asking me about this problem. If you go to use Photoshop’s Warped Text function, you might get a warning that states, “Could not complete your request because the type layer uses a faux bold style.” A faux bold style? What in the wide world of sports is that? Actually, it’s a feature of Photoshop (that was introduced back in version 5.0) that lets you create a fake (faux) bold or italic type style for fonts that don’t really have a bold or italic type style. It’s toggled on/off in the Character palette’s flyout menu. In Photoshop 7.0, Adobe added the option in the warning dialog to “Remove attribute and continue.” All you have to do is click OK to remove the faux bold and now you can warp your text. Life is good.

September 3rd, 2006 | Web Team | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Stop The Crop Snapping

Problem: When you’re trying to crop an image using the Crop tool (C), your cropping border tries to snap to the edges of your document window. This might also be happening when drawing large Marquee selections as well. Solution: Press Command-Shift-; (PC: Control-Shift-;), which is the shortcut for turning off this snapping. The only downside is it turns off all snapping (like Snap To Guides, Snap To Grid, etc.). If you just want the Crop snapping (or Marquee snapping) off, go under the View menu, under Snap To, and choose Document Bounds, and your tools will no longer try to snap to your, well, document bounds.

September 2nd, 2006 | Web Team | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Getting Type In A Perfect Circle

Now that Photoshop can really give you type in a circle, getting a perfect circle that you can add type to is not as obvious as you’d think. To get this perfect circle, click on the Shape tools in the Toolbox and choose the Ellipse tool from the flyout menu (or press Shift-U). Then go up to the Options Bar, and in the group of three icons from the left, click on the middle icon, which creates a regular path, rather than a Shape layer or a pixel-based shape. Then, press-and-hold the Shift key, and drag out your circle (the Shift key constrains the shape to a perfect circle). Now you can press T to switch to the Type tool and move your cursor over the circle. When it changes into a Type on a Path cursor, click on the circle and get to typin’.

September 1st, 2006 | Web Team | Tip of the Day | Comments (2)