Archive for category Graphic arts

Zooming weirdness in Mac Photoshop CS5?

Posted by admin in Asides, Graphic arts on February 3, 2011

This is one of those stoopid things you trip over every now and then. Ever since I started with the CS5 upgrade Photoshop wouldn’t allow me to use a zoom marquee… instead it does a strange thing called “scrubby zoom“. This new feature means that when clicking and dragging the zoom tool your image will always zoom in towards the point you first click on. I’m sure this makes more sense to new users but nearly 20 years’ of muscle memory is very hard to shake!

The fix

Thanks to my colleague Aleksej for finding the answer for me. Just uncheck “scrubby zoom” in the contextual menu at the top of your Photoshop window!

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Advertising that you couldn’t get away with these days

Posted by admin in Amusement, Graphic design on December 15, 2010

Found this link to a whole bunch of mostly crassly sexist adverts from way back but but there’s other NO-NOs in there too: TOP 48 ADS THAT WOULD NEVER BE ALLOWED TODAY. Still not seen Mad Men yet but I guess this is what they may have gotten up to…

Anyway here’s my favourite wrong-uns:

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How to tile a print using Adobe’s Creative Suite (CS5)

Posted by admin in Graphic arts on August 2, 2010

Do you need to print an oversized graphic document onto multiple sheets of paper (that your printer can handle) so you can then assemble/[Sello]tape/mount an accurate large format version?

This is a very simple task but strangely difficult to find an answer for. It’s not readily possible with any of the main Adobe CS5 (design premium) apps but Adobe Acrobat Pro can do it without breaking a sweat. Just print the document: if it’s too big for your printer then you’ll be able to select “Tile all Pages” in the Page Scaling pop-up menu. The options are quite limted but at least you can have crop marks and page information printed on each sheet (a definite plus).

To get decent trim/bleed settings I’d go to Illustrator and set up multiple accurately aligned artboards (multiple artboards a feature of Illustrator since CS4) and print them.

Anyway now I can get on with printing large format [proofs and "art" prints] without having to go to the next town…

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DIY Canon macro lens: howto video…

Posted by admin in Photography on June 28, 2010

Lovely eight minute video – perhaps shot on a Canon 5D mkII? (love that bokeh) – how to convert a stock kit lens into a macro. This is a stellar bit of cottage industry engineering:

via Gadget Lab

If you don’t feel that intrepid – there’s other, far simpler ways if you don’t mind manual focus and exposure… macro freelensing … or, same principle but with a bit more usability: buy a macro reversing ring for your SLR/lens combo on ebay (I’m waiting for mine to arrive…).

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Neurologist

Posted by admin in Drawings, Graphic arts on April 13, 2010

“MND research is not so different from the Apollo Program and our ‘one small step’ will be taken too.”

Dr Martin Turner, Neurologist. By Patrick Joyce.

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Flickr fool

Posted by admin in Photography on May 9, 2009

P[hotographic w]ork flow

Flickr. Been using it for years – with periodic hiatus[es] – always worried about losing pictures to sneaky internet thievery – and at the same time wondering how to keep a proper archive of my photos.

Restricted access to Flickr

Well – I can use Flickr without worrying about the first point. Just found out that I can select who from my contacts or the whole universe has access to the see all sizes/download this picture option.

I’d looked for this feature before – last time must have been at least year ago – without finding it. I guess it may be a “new” feature – or just a very well hidden one – as there were so many photographers’ photostreams that I had download rights too.

Time to backup

So now – slowly does it I can backup my entire photographic history to Flickr and get decent off-site cloud based backups. Delicious.

All that’s missing now is to find a plug-in for Bridge/Lightroom/Aperture that will sync changes in my master archive with the Flickr one…

p*orkflow anyone?

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**Kirk Shelton, skate_freak_superstar

Posted by admin in Existence, Graphic arts on February 24, 2009

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I love dafont.com. Looking for a missing font and finding that on the home page. For some things there’s Mastercard.

If that’s not enough to whet your wotsit – have a look at these classy artefacts:

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Go on…

Enter

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