Illustrator CS6 – Amazing New Pattern Tool

 Illustrator  No Responses »
Mar 182013
 

One of the most amazing new features of CS6 Illustrator is the new pattern tool. It’s surprisingly easy to use, so let’s go ahead!

 

The first thing I’m going to do is create the shape I want to use for the pattern and I’ve created just a very quick flower shape, which I have dragged and dropped into the swatches panel. Do make sure that your shape, you’re going to use, doesn’t already contain a pattern.

 

Initial Shape into Swatches

Initial Shape into Swatches

Basic Pattern

Basic Pattern

Pattern Options Panel

Pattern Options Panel

Brick Offset Option

Brick Offset Option

Change Overlap

Change Overlap

Image6  Read more...

Quick Overview of the Amazing New Pattern Tool … that Adobe should have introduced many years ago!

 Illustrator  No Responses »
Feb 282013
 

As many of you, who have been creating patterns know, creating a decent repetition in Illustrator has always been a lot of hard work. Trying to make your pattern not look too rigid, did require creating a number of copies of the object to be ‘patterned’, offset them, draw a rectangle around the area to be repeated and sending it to the back! If your rectangle was not absolutely perfect your repeat would not look right and you would have weird overlaps.

All this is now gone with the new Pattern Tool.  Read more...

Creative Suite Workspaces

 InDesign, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jan 312012
 

Another often overlooked aspect of most Creative Suite apps is their ability to store preset panel combinations. Adobe call these workspaces and they can be extremely useful for rapidly loading specific panel sets or just carrying out general tidying up.

Workspaces can be found in two locations: under the View>Workspaces drop down menu or, in the Application bar on the right hand side.

Screenshot of InDesign workspace switcher

InDesign workspace switcher

I this example I’m using InDesign. The current workspace (Essentials) is displayed in the application bar next to the search field. Click on the downward triangle to see a list of preset workspaces (this is known as the workspace switcher).  Read more...

Creative Suite 5.5 Printing Guide

 InDesign  No Responses »
Jun 262011
 

Adobe has just released the Creative Suite 5.5 version of its ongoing Printing Guide. If you haven’t seen it before, this is an extensive document updated for each version of Creative Suite. It explains in detail a myriad of technicalities related to getting your documents to print correctly in a commercial environment. Even if you have read it before it’s always worth reading up on new features and how they affect existing print workflows and for known problems. You may not be aware, for example, that InDesign cannot honour all Photoshop blend modes, which can cause unpredictable problems on output. The printing guide also acts as a great overview to the new features of the various CS apps and as introduction to some of the more difficult workflow concepts such as colour management and transparency flattening. Best of all, it’s free.  Read more...

New Groups on LinkedIn for UK Users

 Blender, InDesign, Uncategorized  1 Response »
Aug 022010
 

If you are using products such as Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, DreamWeaver, PHP or Blender then there are a number of new groups now available on LinkedIn which you might want to join.

For those who haven’t heard of LinkedIn before it is a business networking site with over 70 million members of all levels, and can be a great place to network, find new opportunities and learn from the community (plus it’s free).

The groups which have just gone live are listed below:  Read more...