Archive for the 'tools' Category

TinEye — Amazing ‘Similar Image’ Search Engine

Published on September 14, 2008 in tools. 0 Comments Tags: art, artist, image, Photoshop, productivity, search, tool.

I know what you’re thinking — Google already has an image search. But TinEye is different.

TinEye‘s image search works by uploading an image or giving TinEye a URL for a webpage or image link. From there, TinEye uses proprietary search magic to compare the uploaded image to it’s ever-increasing database of images. Some sort of digital fingerprint is generated for images it collects as it scours the web, and these digital fingerprints are used for the comparison. The results are quite impressive.

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SmudgeGuard – Handy Accessory For Wacom Users & Graphic Artists

Published on August 28, 2008 in tools. 2 Comments Tags: accessory, art, artist, drawing, graphics tablet, sketch, tool, Wacom.

Yeah, I know – it looks kinda weird. And what is the SmudgeGuard exactly? As you can see from the product shot, it’s kind of a glove – one that only covers the pinky finger and the meaty area of the palm below.

Originally designed for artist lefties who were always smudging their work when drawing their palms across their artwork, it’s also useful for any artist working in pencil, charcoal or related media where a hand-drag can smudge the artwork. And, interestingly enough, it’s also quite useful for Wacom graphics tablet users.

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Fix For WordPress Visual Editor Conflict With Certain Plugins

Published on August 21, 2008 in tools. 4 Comments Tags: art, blog, OS X, plugin, troubleshooting, WordPress.

This post is a bit off-topic, but seeing as how I found a fix for an issue that seems to be affecting a lot of WordPress users, and I find many a solution to my WordPress issues on other blogs, I thought I would post.

If you are finding that activating certain plugins on your self-hosted WordPress installation is breaking the Visual Editor, this may be the fix you are looking for.

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Free ‘Flatting’ Photoshop Plugin For Comic Artists

Published on July 30, 2008 in productivity, resources and tools. 3 Comments Tags: Adobe Photoshop, art, artist, cartoon, cartooning, color, comic, CS3, free, Mac, Photoshop, plugin, vector.

Just stumbled across these handy – and free – Photoshop plugins which should be a huge time-saver for comic artists who ink & color their pages in Photoshop. A process also known as ‘flatting’.

These have to be a huge productivity booster to any artist working with coloring line art in Photoshop, not just comic book artists and the like.

I can already envision many applications for these in my workflow, even though I am primarily a vector artist.

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Mac Vector App Showdown

Published on May 14, 2008 in tools. 0 Comments Tags: Adobe, Adobe Illustrator, art, CS3, design, illustrator, Mac, Mac OS X, OS X, review, shareware, software, vector.

A good, informative post over at TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) comparing low-cost vector software applications for Mac OS X byÂ indepedent developers. The review is specifically comparing tools and techniques available in Adobe Illustrator CS3.

The comparison covers four applications: DrawBerry, EazyDraw, Lineform, and VectorDesigner. I have demoed all of these at one point or another, and found each to have their stregths and weaknesses.

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