appclinic - graphic design tutorials » Productivity

AppClinc 194 – Illustrator CS5: Shape Builder Tool

admin — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:33:08 +0000

The new Creative Suite is out and we’re going to take a look at some of what it has to offer.

If you’re familiar with the functions of the Pathfinder panel in previous versions of Illustrator and use them in your workflow, I believe the new Shape Builder Tool in Illustrator CS5 is going to prove quite useful. It shares much of the same functions as the panel, but is in a more intuitive and easier to use tool. We’ll take a look at how this can speed up tasks that used to involve making multiple selections and using the panel for additions and subtractions.

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AppClinc 189 – Photoshop CS5: Set Personal Defaults for Layer Styles

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 20:08:44 +0000

The new Creative Suite is out and we’re going to take a look at some of what it has to offer. Have you ever wondered why they stick that ugly yellow color in as the default for an inner glow layer style? Have you ever wanted to change that? Now you CAN! Set your own defaults for layer styles in Photoshop CS5 and improve your workflow by NOT having to change the Photoshop defaults every time you use a layer style.

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AppClinc 187 – CSS Link Rollovers

admin — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 02:02:06 +0000

There are severral different ways to set up an image rollover on a link, but the method we’ll cover in this episode is quick, easy and efficient. We’ll run through how to use a CSS class on a link to make a plus icon turn darker in color when moused over using only CSS and one image.

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AppClinc 186 – Investigating in InDesign

admin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:17:05 +0000

You might find yourself in a position from time to time where you have to accept files from another designer and continue to work on them. Before you get to work, you might want to do some investigating of the files to see how things are organized and make sure you’re comfortable with the setup. In this episode we’ll look at a few methods of investigation in InDesign to help you check up on the formatting of type and image layout.

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AppClinc 184 – Hyperlinks from Word to InDesign

admin — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:46:55 +0000

One of many irritating issues that we see when placing a Word document’s contents into InDesign is the persistence of hyperlinks and their ugly blue color, underlines and strange gray surrounding box. In this episode we’ll take a look at an easy way to rid yourself of these annoying hyperlinks in one swoop.

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AppClinc 178 – Appearance Panel in Illustrator

admin — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:31:38 +0000

In this episode we’ll take a look at the appearance panel in Illustrator and see how it can eliminate the need for several other panels and at the same time help us make some pretty cool typographic effects.

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AppClinc 175 – Coloring Objects in Photoshop

admin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:03:12 +0000

When working on comps in Photoshop, you may find yourself needing to change the color of several different objects in your design. In this episode we’ll look at a couple different ways to accomplish this with minimal effort, so you can make updates very quickly and easily, and cut down the time you spend on iterations.

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AppClinc 173 – Layer Mask vs Vector Mask in Photoshop

admin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:40:24 +0000

Masking is one of the best ways to add and subtract content from your documents (non-destructively) and the good folks behind Photoshop gave us 2 different masking methods to choose from! Do you know the difference between a layer mask and a vector mask? In this episode we’ll investigate the differences and why one may fit better in a particular situation than the other.

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AppClinc 169 – Symbols and Symbol Tools in Illustrator

admin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:42:50 +0000

Symbols are yet another handy way to use one piece of artwork numerous times in a document with different instances. This can have numerous advantages including keeping the file size down on your Illustrator documents. We’ll take a look at a quick way to create a symbol and some tools the folks at adobe have provided for us to manipulate instances of our new symbol.

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AppClinc 160 – Typography in InDesign (2) Special Characters

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:07:13 +0000

Once again we will be focusing on typography in InDesign. In this episode we’ll take a look at some of the most commonly used special characters, how they can enhance our layout and how to insert them into a design quickly and easily using key commands.

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AppClinc 159 – Jumping In Quickly

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:56:05 +0000

If you work with many documents that are similar in dimensions, there are shortcuts that can get you working more quickly, allowing you to sped more time being creative and less time wading through dialogue boxes. We’ll look at a few ways to get going quickly on your projects in InDesign and Illustrator with either limited or no interaction with the new document dialogue box.

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AppClinc 158 – Troubleshooting Problems: Brush Tool

admin — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:11:22 +0000

Its almost completely unavoidable. At some point you are bound to have a head-scratcher of a problem when working in Photoshop so its good to know some basic things to look for when things DO go wrong. Step one: don’t panic. There is pretty much always an explanation for why your app is behaving in a strange way. We’ll take a look at some of the things that could be happening when your paint brush tool is misbehaving.

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AppClinc 155 – Paste Remembers Layers in Illustrator

admin — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:17:44 +0000

Here is another quick tip, that might not knock your socks off, but can save you some time if you are trying to copy and paste objects or text between documents in Illustrator. Let this tip also be a reminder that there are tons of cool or useful features in the “fly-out” menus of all the panels.

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AppClinc 139.5 – Introducing Appclinic Mobile

admin — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:48:53 +0000

I am pleased to announce the arrival of the mobile version of appclinic. This new RSS feed includes the same great tutorials that are on the regular feed, but these files are in the m4v format, meaning that you can download and watch (and in some cases possibly stream) the content on your ipod touch or iphone.

AppClinc 135 – Guide-ing InDesign

admin — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:43:16 +0000

Working with guides is almost certainly something you do every day, and at times they seem to only get in the way! In this episode we’ll look at a couple of key commands in Adobe InDesign that allow us to “clear up the clutter” when your guides start to take over your document.