It’s been about a few months since I upgraded to Adobe’s Creative Suite CS3 suite of graphic & design applications, and am running them all on a PowerMac G4 (dual 1.25 processors, 2 Gb RAM). I thought I would share my experiences with anyone out there contemplating upgrading to CS3 with an older Macintosh. I also have one of the original MacBooks, so there’s a decent comparison with CS3 running on an Intel processor Mac.
In short, I would recommend waiting to upgrade your Mac to at least a G5 or an Intel based Mac before going to CS3, but that said it’s still usable.
Continue reading 'CS3 + G4: Using Adobe Creative Suite CS3 on a PowerMac G4'
by George Coghill -
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A great quick tip, from the excellent design blog BittBox, to create a color group of all the colors in an Illustrator document: Select all the art in your document, go to the Swatches fly-out menu and choose “New color group” – you now have a color group folder of all the colors in the artwork. Very cool!
Since color groups are a CS3 feature, this tip is Illustrator CS3 only.
via BittBox
by George Coghill -
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A cartoon illustration & design project for a friend’s party required the resulting art to be suitable for reproduction on a photocopy machine. After some trial, error, Google search, trial, error, Google search, trial, error I discovered the magic combo that allows you to create a halftone in Photoshop for an image and print it out on your inkjet printer so the art will be perfect for photocopying.
This technique is perfect for flyers, newsletters or any other short-run printing needs you have where the cheapness of a photocopy is desired, but so are grayscale images.
Continue reading 'Cartoon Art & Halftones Tutorial: From Inkjet Printer to Photocopier'
by George Coghill -
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Default Folder X is one of those shareware utility applications that seem pretty handy while you are demoing, but until you use another Mac without Default Folder installed (or the demo runs out), you don’t realize exactly how perfect the software actually is.
I constantly run across these “714 Absolutely Essential Mac Applications” blog posts that always leave this one out. And I think the only reason is that the author is unaware of it’s existence. There’s no other explanation. Half of the time the apps I see on those lists are so-so anyways.
So what is this so-called “Default Folder” anyways? In short, it’s a way for you to access — from the Open/Save dialog windows — not only commonly used folders, but also recently used folders and open Finder windows, all with (mostly) user-defined keyboard shortcuts.
Continue reading 'Default Folder X – Essential Mac Productivity Utility Software'
by George Coghill -
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If you aren’t familiar with cartoonist Tom Richmond, make yourself familiar. This guy’s work is absolutely amazing. Very much in the style of Mort Drucker from MAD Magazine — only taken to the extreme. Not only is his cartooning & caricature style excellent, but his color work is also phenomenal. Tom graciously has taken the time to outline exactly how he digitally colors his artwork in Photoshop in a juicily-detailed three-post tutorial/how-to series on his cartooning blog.
Continue reading 'Digital Coloring Tutorials by MAD Magazine cartoonist Tom Richmond'
by George Coghill -
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Ever need to temporarily reference another document while working on something – this may be an image, or instructions, or a PDF file. Many times you want it floating right on top of your current document so you can refer to it while you are working, and not have to switch back and forth between applications.
I do this a lot when working in Illustrator, especially working from reference images, but also the occasional email message or PDF file sent by a client.
Continue reading 'Productivity Tip: Floating, Transparent Reference Images Using Screenshots & Free Software Afloat'
by George Coghill -
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Genopal is a color scheme generator software application I just stumbled across, and it’s pretty interesting.
Instead of the standard color wheels most color scheme generator/explorer software programs utilize, Genopal doesn’t give you the option of choosing a color model such as Complimentary, Triadic and such. Instead there are two sliders, one for Color Diversity and one for Lightness Diversity. There’s a “Generate” button which them cycles though color schemes as analagous or as wild as you set the sliders.
Continue reading 'Genopal Color Scheme Generator Software: Weird Name, Cool Tool'
by George Coghill -
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Here’s a quick tip for you Mac OS X users out there: you can move any window behind the currently active window (also known as the window that has “focus”) without activating it/bringing it to the front.
This one’s real simple: hold down the Command (Apple) key, and then click on the background window’s title bar area (as you normally would) and voilà – you’re moving the window in the background. You can even grab the scroll bar and move it if you have access to it.
Continue reading 'OS X Tip: Move Windows In The Background Without Activating Them'
by George Coghill -
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The excellent Illustrator blog BittBox has a nice Adobe Illustrator Layer Mask tip/walkthough on how to use this highly useful, productivity-enhancing (and fairly obscure) feature of Illustrator CS and higher.
Layer Masks are basically clipping masks that apply to the entire layer (Layer masks need to be sub-layers, and the top-most one at that). The best feature is that they can be locked, and they are not tied to one specific object, or cause an entire group of unrelated objects to become “grouped” as they are when applying a clipping mask to them. This allows you to work normally with all the other objects on other sub-layers while still getting that clipping mask effect.
Head on over to BittBox and read the full post: Improve Your Illustrator Workflow with Layer Masking
by George Coghill -
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Here’s a cool little idea from the geniuses at CreativeTechs.com: “cheatsheets” for Adobe software that are designed to print on a 3×5 index card, complete with space reserved to punch holes for a binder. Designed with the GTD/Hipster PDA crowd in mind. And they’re free!
This link is to the PDF cheatsheet for the Adobe pen tool, since most (or all) of it’s features work the same across the Creative Suite. A real cool visual reference guide, and just one in a series of cheatsheets for Adobe apps as well as other computer and Mac related info that you just sometimes need at your fingertips.
Looks like they are just starting out with these, so be sure to subcribe to the RSS feed and collect ‘em all!
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
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