» 2011 » April

Creating interactive documents with InDesign pt4

Apr 302011

Creating buttons

Button creation has been a feature of InDesign for some time but it used to be done via the clumsy Button tool. Thankfully this was replaced in CS4 with the Button panel which makes button creation and configuration simple and straightforward. Remember that Acrobat also has button functions which are different to those in InDesign. Both applications have unique and complimentary functions so it’s worth considering them both in your interactive workflow.

Any InDesign frame (including a table) can become a button. In this case, I’m converting two shapes into navigation buttons for use in a PDF. Select the desired frame and bring up the Buttons panel (once again I’m using the Interactive For PDF workspace). Read more...

Adobe Captivate Preferences – when are they project-specific?

Captivate 1 Response »

Apr 272011

Many authoring tools clearly distinguish between settings that affect the overall behaviour of the program (these are usually known as Preferences) and settings that affect only the current document or project (often known as Project Settings). In the user interface for Adobe Captivate 5.0, the differentiation between these two sets of settings is less clear, as they are merged together within a single dialog box called Preferences (accessible from the Edit menu). As a result, there is potentially some confusion about which settings are truly global, and which affect only the current project. Read more...

20 Killer Tips for Photoshop

Photoshop 1 Response »

Apr 272011

Here are some of the must know tips for any Photoshop Guru. Once you have a few of these under your belt, your colleagues will be referring to you as Obi Wan.

These Tips and Tricks work similarly in previous versions of Adobe Creative Suite.

10 Shortcuts to make your life easier

1. Shift + Tab

Most people known that Tab will hide the palettes and toolbar (If you didn’t there’s one bonus tip) but Shift + Tab will only hide the palettes. This will help those on smaller screens.

2. Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + Z Read more...

Eye Grabbing Images In Photoshop In Minutes

Photoshop No Responses »

Apr 252011

Many times I will look at the images that come from my digital camera and, if I am honest with myself, I am slightly disappointed. Not from the quality standpoint, or even the subject matter, but the images just don’t have that certain something that makes them grab the viewer by the throat and shout ‘Look at me’.

What I would like to take you through now are a few steps that will enable you to give your picture that ‘wow’ factor.

Let’s start with this rather dull picture.

New features in Flash CS5.5 no:1 – enhanced layer control

Flash 1 Response »

Apr 212011

new layer commands in Flash CS5.5

Unless you have been living under a rock the last couple of weeks, you will be aware that Adobe have announced an incremental upgrade to CS5 – CS5.5. As a result, I thought I would post some details on what is exactly new in Flash CS5.5 – and is it worth upgrading or waiting for CS6.

I will take a particular feature and blog about it and give you an example of its use, so you can make up your own mind as to whether it is worthwhile. So here goes – New features in Flash CS5.5 no:1 – Enhanced layer control. Read more...

Creating an asteroid in Blender 2.5

Blender No Responses »

Apr 212011

Another website I keep an eye on is Andrew Price’s website at blenderguru.com. Recently he did a lovely tutorial on creating an asteroid in Blender 2.5 and animating it…

http://www.blenderguru.com/how-to-make-a-realistic-asteroid/

I recommend you have a look at his site if you are at all interested in Blender and 3D work. And here is my asteroid, created by following his example…

…and here is the timelapse movie showing the steps that i took…

[tubepress video="xxpLBgyXcv0"]

… and here is the final animation (not perfect by any means) that I created…

[tubepress video="YR5ZFSnWEVg"] Read more...

New features in InDesign CS5.5

InDesign No Responses »

Apr 132011

Exciting news this week from Adobe, with the announcement of Creative Suite 5.5. This is of particular interest to those creating content for ePubs, HTML and iPad from InDesign.

Amongst the new features is an Articles pane, which allows text to be ordered for output in single column layouts (such as ePub and HTML pages).

InDesign CS5.5 Article pane

Additionally, multiple instances of a single piece of text can be linked together (a bit like a cross reference) and kept updated. Paragraph and character styles can be mapped to output tags for easy export to ePub and HTML Read more...

Blender 2.5 Intro course results

Blender No Responses »

Apr 132011

We recently ran our first Blender 2.5 Introduction course, and I just wanted to share some of the models and animations that I created during that course.

Some simple examples of shapes and materials created within Blender

Disclaimer: It is only a four day course so the models are necessarily primitive, but useful nevertheless. To teach how to model a high detail human figure can take days, so we just created a simple figure – head, arms and legs. No fingers, toes, etc. Then we added a material and did a very simple animation with it (again learning how to do proper walk cycles etc is the job of another course entirely). Read more...

What's new in DreamWeaver CS5.5

DreamWeaver No Responses »

Apr 122011

The features contained within the 5.5 release of DreamWeaver are highly focused and designed to help you spark your own project-based multiscreen revolution, while only requiring a minor evolutionary shift in the Dreamweaver workflows and your own, well developed skills as a web pro. With HTML5 and CSS3 driving a new level of cross-device consistency —as well as adding significant new media and design capabilities —Dreamweaver CS 5.5 support for both will help you take your projects to a new level, regardless of whether you’re starting with an existing project that needs to become mobile application aware, or diving in on a mobile-specific site or application from scratch. Read more...

Blender and Ocean Sim

Blender No Responses »

Apr 072011

There are various branches of Blender in existence, and one of the ones I was keeping an eye on was the Ocean Sim branch. The people behind this brilliant project raised some money to port over an Ocean Simulator modifier to the main Blender branch.

Recently they produced a public build of Blender that works with their new modifier and it is blinding. I thought I would post a quick example that I made using this tutorial.

Here is a simple example I got going in a few minutes of playing around…

[tubepress video="j3uhrlhB4Ok"] Read more...