Graphics Feeds - English

Yesterday's post was really long, so I'm going to keep today's post really short. That's just fine as this tip gives you a lot of bang for your buck.

You've filled an object in CorelDRAW with a solid color. The color looks good, but may be wish it was a little darker or a little lighter or had more yellow in it. No problem. With the object selected, hold down the Ctrl key and click on a color in the palette. It will add around 10% of the color you clicked to the existing fill. So click on black to make it darker, click on white to make it lighter, click on Yellow to add more yellow, etc.

The new book "The game" (Spelet in Swedish) by KG Johansson, published by Hegas publishing have just been released. Click here to be taken directly to the book>>

I made the cover, both layout & design, idea and the illustration itself. As well as the other full page size additional 7 illustrations in B&W inside the book. A total of 8 illustration and cover design. It was a real fun assignment. Thank you Hegas Publishing.

Text & review belowe from the publisher, Hegas.

The book's story line:
John is playing computer games. He can sit for hours, days and nights in front of the computer. One night, he is being called up by an unknown man. With a great drama unraveling John is given a new game. And the game begins to change him. He now no longer recognise himself. An exciting book about mysterious calls, secret meetings and violent car chase´s. But also about computer games that unconsciously alter a human being. Young students at Nyhamnsskolan School in south of Sweden (Europe) got to read the manuscript of the book, and they thought it was one of Hegas absolute best books.

Reviews of the book also highlights the illustrations. Read below:
Musician and author Kjell-Gunnar Johansson has created an exciting book of high-quality, which should fascinate many types of readers. It is about John who one day is given a computer game from a mysterious man. He is drawn into the game and is stucked even though he notice that it is to kill terrorists, and the purpose of the game is to make the player into a racist. Then, the mysterious man likes to get back the game, and a threatening situation is created against John and his friend Sofia. Just as quickly as they are dragged into the game, I am cought by the book. It is well-written and has a great level of detail and clarity, with a large font and other tricks to facilitate the reading. The story is illustrated by the artist and illustrator Stefan Lindblad. It is scary images drawn with black ink technique. The author and illustrator deal with the very hot and always present topic of racism in a magnificent way. -- Anna-Karin Lindh, Bibliotekstjänst AB (Swedish Library sercive BTJ)

Already on the front page, the text suggests that something exciting enough will be done, which is also the case. It is a dismal story, and unfortunately quite lifelike. John (who attends compulsory school between 11-15 years old) by misstake gets his hand on a computer game, whose content is to take control the player's thoughts, in a creeping way, to make the player into a complete racist, who hate all Muslims. John and his friend Sofia notice how quickly prejudices can be fitted with them, when they test the game, and they reflect on how such a game can control an entire people's thoughts in a certain direction. The book is highly readable with short paragraphs, short sentences and simple choice of words. A few (7) black and white ink illustrations is well suited to the text. A book that gives an exciting reading experience, but also constitutes a great basis for discussions around the subject of prejudice and racism. -- Lena Franzén, Bibliotekstjänst AB (Swedish Library sercive BTJ)


I hope those who read the book have as much fun as I, who had the opportunity tomake the illustrations and the cover.


Stefan Lindblad
Illustrator & artist

 
Aerial Burst at the PGI Convention

Greetings all. As I promised in my previous article, here are some preliminary images from the PGI Fireworks Convention in Gillette, WY from mid-August.

The link to the gallery is here.

As you can see from looking at the images, I approach Fireworks photography from much the same angle as I do my waterfalls. Long Exposures and flowing colors are the rule.  I tend to like the exposures from a long distance, a wide angle and a around 15-20 seconds of exposure time.

In my next entry I will discuss some image editing tips for working with those fireworks captures in several different image editing packages.

Rikk Flohr © 2008

When you were learning to draw as a kid, did your parents hand you a crayon or a bar of soap? I think most of you learned with a crayon and yet there are a large number of people who attempt to draw on their computer with a bar of soap otherwise known as a mouse.

Today we're goint to talk about graphics tablets. With a tablet, you use a pen (or a mouse) on the tablet's surface as a replacement for your traditional pointing device. You can still use a mouse or trackball or pointing stick or whatever else if you like. All pointing devices will be active. It isn't just for graphics software either, it will work in all software though it may provide more features in your graphics software. For those who have experience some wrist pain from extended mousing sessions, you might even find that the tablet will take the pain away. If you've never used a tablet before, you might find it takes you a day or two to adjust to the absolutely positioning it offers simply because it is different than the relative positioning used with a mouse. It is just like learning to drive a stick shift. The first day you wonder how anyone can drive the thing. After a few days you don't even notice pushing the clutch and shifting gears.

Now that you know a bit about tablets, let's get one thing very clear. As far as I'm concerned there is only one brand you should consider buying, Wacom. Now as you shop for tablets, you might see other brands that look good and sound good and have lower prices. Please, resist the temptation, they cost less for a reason. In the last day there has been a discussion in one of the coreldraw.com forums about another brand of tablet not working right. Others who had owned non-Wacom tablets chimed in about problems they had with their tablets. When they switched to a Wacom, everything worked fine. If you end up having to buy two tablets, was the other brand really a bargain?

Now that I've told you why you should only consider Wacom, let's talk about the three different product lines available. For those who want the least expensive tablet, the Bamboo line is what you want. The least expensive has a list price of $69.99 and you can definitely find it discounted a little bit from there. Personally I'd recommend you at least look at the Bamboo Fun. It lists for $99.99 so it is $30 more. But where the Bamboo only gives you a pen, the Fun adds a mouse and some great graphics software (Adobe Photoshop Elements 5, Corel Painter Essentials 3 and Nik Color Efex Pro 2). Both of these tablets have a drawing area of around 4" x 5" so they are fairly compact. There is also a larger version of the Bamboo Fun where the active area is 8.5" x 5.3". It also lists for $100 more.

The next line of tablets is the Intuos line. It comes in four sizes that I'll mention here: 4" x 6", 6" x 8", 6" x 11" and 9" x 12". Those of you outside North America will get the same basic tablets with metric sizes. There are some other sizes, but these are the sizes that are most popular. If you want the best, go for the Intuos line as both the tablets and pens offer more features. There are separate areas for scrolling, programmable buttons, the pens have more pressure sensitivity levels and the pens support extra features like tilt.

For those of you who want to draw directly on your screen, look at the Cintiq line of tablets. In this line, the tablet is integrated into an LCD monitor. Yes, you'll pay a lot more for this. I've always had my tablet just to the right of my keyboard and it works just fine. This allows me to get the best monitor possible.

We keep a page on the Graphics Unleashed site that lists the whole line of Wacom tablets with links to purchase them from Amazon. Even if you just want to check prices, you might want to give this page a look.

One thing I know for sure. If you haven't yet tried a tablet, you'll find it to be a much better tool for working in all graphics software. I use my tablet 99% of the time and don't even think of using a mouse no matter what I'm doing. The only time I use the mouse is on those rare occasions when I play a game since it is hard to shoot aliens by tapping the pen on the tablet.

Instead of telling you about a single tutorial today, I'm going to tell you about a magazine that you can get for free that will provide you a regular source of information.

Website Magazine caters to those in the business of running a Web site. I've been receiving it since its inception and there are always a few articles of interest to me. Many of you have probably created a graphic for a Web site and it is quite possible that you run the site for your business. Now you have a free resource that can help you get the most out of your site.

The free subscriptions offered are what is called a "qualified subscription". This means you'll need to answer a few questions about your business and your involvement in purchasing. Basically they want to be able to tell their advertisers that the readers are interested in what the advertisers are selling. Go ahead and request your free subscription today!

Back in March, Corel Holdings made an offer to purchase all outstanding shares of Corel's stock for $11 per share. Today that offer was withdrawn. Keep in mind that Corel Holdings is already the majority shareholder with 69 percent of all shares.

Corel says that its directors will now evaluate strategic alternatives for the company. Of course none of those alternatives has been made public. So why don't we, the users, have a little fun and see what kind of alternatives we can dream up. Who know, maybe one of us has a great idea that Corel has not yet explored.

I'm going to list a few of my thoughts that I feel would be good for the company. Feel free to post comments with your thoughts. Please remember that these are my thoughts and if they are in any way related to the reality of the situation, I certainly know nothing about it.

1. Corel needs to make up their mind on Corel Ventura. I think it is absolutely crazy that they have done nothing with the software in seven years. Did you know that Corel Corporation was built as a VAR providing support for the then Ventura Publisher and that Corel's first product was a laser printer? Did you know that Corel created several utilitities like Headline and NewFont to add cool text features to Ventura? Did you know that those products turned into CorelDRAW in 1989? Those of us who truly use and believe in Ventura can make very compelling arguments for Corel to resume development. While we find the software indispensable, it is definitely showing its age. If Corel isn't willing to resume development before the end of 2008, they need to find a buyer for it immediately. Personally I don't think they would get much money from a sale and yet it could again become very valuable if they would simply develop it. It is the perfect complement to their other graphics products.
   
   
2. Sell WordPerfect! They have tried so hard to compete with Microsoft Office that it has taken valuable resources away from CorelDRAW. Remove WordPerfect from their product portfolio and almost everything else they own has some relation to graphics.
   
   
3. Consolidate image editors. Do they really need so many of them? Paint Shop Pro, PhotoImpact, PHOTO-PAINT and Painter are just the biggest names Corel owns. I truly believe there should be no more than three. Paint Shop Pro and PhotoImpact should be combined in some fashion to be the entry-level consumer product. PHOTO-PAINT should be the professional level editor. Painter should be for those who want to "paint" from scratch on screen. Believe me, some users would get upset when their favorite gets changed. It is just too much to develop products that compete against one another. Not to mention that Corel's own products can read the formats from the other products.
   
   
4. Continue to develop vertical markets for CorelDRAW. DecoStudio has taken CorelDRAW into the world of embroidery. Corel DESIGNER is for those doing technical illustrations. What about a version dedicated to the sign market to compete with FlexiSign? Maybe something else geared towards Web development. Of course putting Ventura in the box would give people the ability to do books more gracefully that doing it in CorelDRAW.
   
   
5. Work with third parties! This is a giant pet peeve of mine. Look at the corel.com Web site. Look at the coreldraw.com Web site. How many of the resources provided are provided strictly by Corel and how many by third parties? You'll find very few third party products listed. As one of the bigger providers of training products for CorelDRAW, it really bugs me that Corel does so little to work with third parties. And while this is somewhat self-serving, I always ask that Corel work with my competitors as well because I believe that it will be good for all of us in the long run. If a shopper realizes all of the support for CorelDRAW that exists, they are more likely to buy CorelDRAW and get the most out of it. If they go simply on what Corel provides on their Web properties, support looks awful compared to what is available for the Adobe suites.

OK, that's my five ideas. Are they realistic? Maybe. Will they happen? Sadly I'm not confident any of them will happen and that to me is Corel's problem. What do you think of my ideas? Am I crazy or did I hit the nail on the head? Do you have any ideas you'd like to share? Our goal is to make a stronger, more profitable company as that can only help us to get a better version of CorelDRAW in the future!

At the CorelDRAW Unleashed Conference last month, someone asked me how to make a triangle with rounded corners.

They'd spent a loooonnnnnng time attempting it, making 3 circles, and drawing lines between them. Forget it. Don't bother. :-)

let me show you 2 sensible ways.

A. The New E-Z Way (X3 or higher)

1. Make a Polygon (press Y to invoke tool). Hold CTRL, drag out to be approx. 3" tall.
2. Set to 3 points on the property bar (not outline points!!!). You should see a triangle on screen.
3. Convert polygon to curves. Ctrl + Q.
4. Menu: Windows | Dockers | Fillet/Scallop/Chamfer
5. Choose fillet from drop-down. Press apply.

B. Old-School

1. Make a triangle. Often I'd make a box with the rectangle tool.
2. Convert it to curves. Ctrl + Q.
3. Double-click shape, select one node and press delete.
4. Give the triangle a very thick rounded-corner outline (40 points for ex.).
5. Convert outline to object. Ctrl + Shift + Q
6. Weld the outline to the interior piece.

Go try both methods now!

Today's macro, Shelby's QuickFill/Outline doesn't just have one function, it has a number of different functions related to fills and outlines. You can select all objects with the same fill color easily and you can even move them all to the same layer. The same can be done with outlines. It can also convert outlines to objects while also deleting the original object.

It also has a number of functions that works with both outlines and fills at the same time. Those include converting them to black and white, converting them to wireframe, deleting all objects with no fill or outline, swapping fill and outline colors and selecting all objects with same fill and outline as the currently selected object. In short, lots of productivity enhancing features. If you are a coder, the macro is also unlocked so that you can modify the code if needed.

I've been writing on this blog for about three and a half years now. I started slowly and lately I have been trying my best to provide something new on every day. We have a pretty large readerbase now and I thought it might be a good time to explain some of the things see you at the bottom of each post as I think they are underutilized.



Above you will see a sample of the information block you find below each post. I'll go over each section so that you understand everything that you can do.

The first section are the labels. With each post, I assign keywords/labels that apply to that post. The blog automatically builds a page with all posts with a specific label. In this case, one of the labels is "sunday-stock" and it would link to all posts in the sunday-stock series. So if the post you are reading is on a topic of interest to you, you might find similar posts just by clicking on one of the labels.

The next block has a number of links. First up is "Subscribe to this feed" which allows you to subscribe to the blog using your favorite newsreader. This can include most current browsers and e-mail clients. Rather than having to go to your newsreader to check for new posts, you can also subscribe to the blog via e-mail. Each day you will receive an e-mail digest of all new posts since the previous days e-mail. Subscribing is as easy as clicking the big button at right and filling in your e-mail address. You will receive an e-mail asking you to confirm your subscription. Click the link in that e-mail and you'll start get the digest on the next day.

After the subscription link are a number of links that allow you to help tell others about a post if you find it of interest. There are a number of different services that collect this information and we've provided links to the most popular services. Each of these do require you have an account (they are free). I certainly appreciate it if you can help spread the word about posts that are useful to you. This helps make the blog more popular and that is good for all of us because I have even more motivation to keep providing you with information.

The last line tells you who created the post and it will almost always be me. At this point I am the only one allowed to post so it will always be me. You'll also see the time the post was posted. After this is the most important part. You'll see our sample post has 0 comments. If you click on this, you can comment. In order to comment, you'll need a (free) Google Account. If you've done anything at Google, you probably already have an account. Why do we require you to have an account when we could allow anonymous posts? Simply put, it is a way to prevent spammers from posting nonsensical comments promoting "special" drugs, cheap watches and whatever other junk they are promoting these days. Yes, I do moderate the comments. I don't mind at all if the comment is critical and you can certainly post rave reviews. Just keep it clean, don't attack anyone and don't spam and I'll let the comment be posted. Comments can allow you to add to the information that I've posted, ask questions, correct mistakes and much more. Several of you have e-mailed me comments about previous posts. I don't mind the e-mails, but I'd rather you post them on the blog so that everyone can benefit from them.

Clicking the envelope icon to the right of the comments allows you to e-mail the post to someone else. If you find something really useful, please share it. Again, the more readers we get, the more motivation I have to post! The last icon, the pencil, will probably not be available to you. This allows you to edit the post. Since I am the author, it shows up when I view the blog. Unless you are authorized (sorry, I'm the one one), you can't post or edit posts. Then again, that is why we allow comments so that you can contribute to the information posted.

I'm going to take a slight departure from my normal Sunday Stock post. Chris Dickman told me about a series of design contests going on at his graphics.com site. The winners of the contests will receive a free subscription to a stock site.

Go to the Gallery page on graphics.com and you'll see the various contests listed. Click on the title to get the details on the contest along with the prizes. Even if you don't feel like you have what it takes to win, look through the galleries for inspiration from the submitted designs. You might even realize that you do have what it takes!

If you need to post an image in the forums, note that the maximum size inside the main forum is 600 pixels square. If you stay under that, then images such as screen shots will look much clearer.

How do you keep track of all the graphics on your computer? If you are strictly working with CDR files, I certainly hope you are using ROMCat! But what happens when you need to track CDR, CPT, TIF, PNG, PDF, AI, EPS and many other formats?

That's where the ST Thumbnails Explorer utility, shown at right, comes in extremely handy. It does support CDR files as you can see with the top thumbnail shown. It starts with the bitmap thumbnail stored in the file. But it actually generates a higher quality thumbnail by launching CorelDRAW in the background. Of course, that assumes CorelDRAW is on the machine. If a user doesn't have CorelDRAW, it can only use the thumbnail stored in the file. CorelDRAW X4 files have quite good thumbnails. Older versions look pretty lousy in comparison.

Also notice that it is previewing a CPT file. Yes, that includes files with multiple objects. Of course it also handles almost any graphic format you would normally receive.

If you've been looking for a program to manage all of your files, this is definitely one you want to try. You can download a free 30-day trial version, then purchase it when you find that it meets your needs. A single user license is only $29.95 and include free lifetime upgrades! Give it a try, I think you'll find it indispensible.

Do you have an account at CorelDRAW.com? If so, it's time for you to make an avatar if you don't already haveone. You can upload it through your profile, look for a tab that is labeled Avatar.

1. Find an image you like. It can be anything. Open it in Corel Photo-PAINT.

2. Run the Image | Resample command so that it is no larger than 80 Pixels in the widest or tallest dimension. Why do it now? For the next step....

3. Use the Effects | Sharpen Adaptive Unsharp command to restore detail that was lost during downsampling. You may need to enter 100% for the sharpen value.

4. Save your avatar as a 24-bit PNG file (without any masks or transparency). It will be converted to Jpeg by the CorelDRAW.com site automatically. If you send a jpeg of your avatar, then it will be compressed twice... not good.

NOTE: If you want a Square Avatar, some methods are to either;

A. Open your original high resolution file. Select the Crop Tool. Press and hold the Control Key. You should be able to make a perfectly square crop. Double-Click inside the crop. Then go to Step 2 above.

B. Add or delete some "space" around your image by using the Image | Paper Size command. Make the width and height numbers the same. You can pan the image around inside the dialog. Then go to Step 2 above.

Enjoy, and I hope to see your cool new avatar!

This week I am shooting fireworks: Literally and Figuratively.

The PGI Convention is in Gillette, WY this week and I have secured on-site access to do a little practice on the elusive fireworks that frequent so many summer celebrations.

Random Observations and Tips:

• Fireworks competitions are far easier to shoot than civic displays. You can isolate individual blasts as they come one-at-a-time. The 12 inch shell pictured above is an excellent example. The time between allows you to set for the next shot and listening to the announcers can give you valuable clues as to shell size and field of view.
• Long Exposures work best on isolated charges shot at wide angle while short exposures work better on many bursts in the air at once and on telephoto shots.  I have used shutter speeds as short as 1/125th and as long as 20 seconds.
• ISOs tend to be in the middle: 200-400.
• F-stops also work best in the middle: F4- F8. On long time exposures F11-F16 are common
• Wide-angle is king in fireworks photography. Most of the work I am doing is either 15mm Fisheye or 17-40mm Zoom.
• Tripods are a must and remote releases are a convenience that can't be overlooked.
• Flashlights or head lamps are very helpful in finding your way out after the show is over.
• Memory cards and plenty of them. The shooting is fast and having ready-to-insert cards in your right pocket and full cards in your left pocket is a great way to keep up on the action.
• Two Cameras are better than one. You can have a wide shot on the entire display and a tight shot on individual burst. Remote timers aid this process greatly.

OK- Confession: The fireworks are composited into this
'Strobist' style self-portrait.  Do you know how hard
it is to get fireworks in when using a 10 second timer?

I will be posting a gallery of fireworks shots shortly and offering a few tips for post production for firework pics  in image editing software as well. That will have to wait until I return from this expedition and process the many images and video captured there.

Rikk Flohr © 2008

Today's Font Friday will be really short and sweet. Our font for today is Parkland (both sans serif and serif versions) as shown at right. It is a shareware font, so make sure to read the included readme file for instructions on how it may be used. In short, you can use it non-commercially for 30 days without cost. After that it is $10 for non-commercial use and $100 for commercial use. Remember, a quality font includes over 200 individual graphic characters and it takes a lot of work. Please support those who create cool typefaces or we probably won't get very many new designs.