Tag Archive for 'tip'

Adobe Illustrator Video Tip: Quickly Add Smooth Transition Anchor Points

Published on May 15, 2009 in tips and video. 39 Comments Tags: Adobe Illustrator, art, artist, Bezier, cartoonist, Illustration, illustrator, productivity, screencast, technique, tip, tutorial, vector, video.

http://www.vimeo.com/4642671

In this video, I am sharing with you a vector path creation technique to speed up the process of creating curved paths by adding intermediate anchor points after your corners have been created. I used to create my anchor points as I was following the curve of the shape I was tracing. Instead, with this technique the anchor points are added to your vector path after your corners have been created, allowing Illustrator to approximate the length of the curve handles for you with much greater accuracy the first time around.

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by George Coghill
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Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

Be sure to check out my live and recorded drawing, sketching & vectoring videos.

6 Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts For Illustrator Users

Published on January 16, 2009 in productivity, software and tips. 0 Comments Tags: Adobe, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Creative Suite, illustrator, keyboard commands, keyboard shortcuts, Mac, OS X, Photoshop, productivity, tip.

Here are a few handy keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop for those of you out there like me who spend an inordinate amount of time in the Creative Suite primarily using Illustrator. These are not keyboard shortcuts that you can use in Illustrator, but rather are keyboard shortcuts providing methods of doing things in Photoshop that you are used to doing in Illustrator that at first it might seem isn’t possible, like click directly on an object to select it, drag to a new layer, etc.

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Adobe Illustrator Eraser Brush Tip: Option-Erase

Published on January 8, 2009 in software and tips. 2 Comments Tags: Adobe, Adobe Illustrator, illustrator, productivity, software, tip, workflow.

Hold down the Option key when erasing using the Eraser Brush, and you’ll get a marquee that you can drag to erase a perfectly rectangular area.

Bonus Eraser Tool tip: edit the keyboard shortcuts so the Eraser uses the “E” key, and remap the Free Transform tool to Shift-E (essentially swapping the keyboard shortcuts for the two tools). Seems much more intuitive this way.

Both tips via FreeTransform

12 Realities of Pricing Design Services

Published on September 30, 2008 in business. 0 Comments Tags: business, client, design, freelance, graphic design, pricing, resources, tip.

Vandelay Design has a great article discussing pricing issues for freelance creatives. The article talks about design services, but it can apply to illustrators, cartoonists – probably any freelancer out there.

More than just a nuts & bolts calculator, the post gets into the nebulous about preceived value, psychology of clients and more. Nothing needing a PhD, but some nice brief insight into the process.

A good read and some good links at the end as well.

12 Realities of Pricing Design Services | Vandelay Website Design.

via The Graphic Mac

Setting Up Bleeds For Print Design In Creative Suite

Published on August 27, 2008 in productivity and tips. 1 Comment Tags: Adobe, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, art, Creative Suite, CS3, illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, printing, process, software, tip, tutorials, walkthrough.

Although technically these tips apply to any graphics software, this particular tutorial over at Spoon Graphics focuses on the exact steps to set up bleeds for print design in your document within Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop. The method to do so in other graphics application might be slightly different, but these walkthroughs should give you enough info to apply it to non-Adobe software.