Archive for the 'tools' Category

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Productivity Tip: Floating, Transparent Reference Images Using Screenshots & Free Software Afloat

Afloat transparent window software for Mac OS X - screenshotEver 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.

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Pantone bought by X-Rite

Pantone color swatch bookColor matching wizards Pantone have been bought out by color management gizmo maker X-Rite (yeah, I never heard of them either). Seems they have been collaborating for some time now, with the Pantone Huey being one of their joint efforts. The Huey is a pretty cool, essential and affordable tool, so perhaps this is a good sign of things to come (see my review of the Pantone Huey monitor calibration tool).

Pantone swatch books are essential tools for any artist/designer working with color, but it’s good to see that the hardware side will no doubt be more aggressively pursued by this merger, since the new owners are hardware based. Such a huge part of the work of many artists and designers create these days is done on the computer monitor, and proper calibration for predictable print output is essential.

via Daring Fireball

Creative Binge – New Free Portfolio & Social Networking Website for Creatives

CreativeBinge.com online portfolios & social networking for artists, illustrators, designers: screenshotCreative Binge is a new online portfolio & social networking site for artists, illustrators, designers and all you other creative types. The talk of social networking for the community site sounds like a great idea.

The website has a clean and classy design and interface, and a very easy to use upload feature for adding your artwork to the free portfolio with your account.

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Genopal Color Scheme Generator Software: Weird Name, Cool Tool

Genopal color scheme generator software: sample color scheme

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.

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Color Theory Resources

Color Wheel artwork

Primary, secondary, tertiary, complimentary, analagous, brightness, hue, value, saturation, tints, shades… do these words mean anything to you? They should.

A post by cartoonist Matt Glover points out ColorFAQ – very basic web guide to color theory. It got me poking around on the internet for some other sites with some more depth on the subject. Sometimes I forget how much I use color theory every single day, it’s just something that sometimes goes on autopilot and is an easy topic to forget to recommend to others.

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