Design Topics
Basic Photoshop Tutorials added.
I brought over the two tutorials I had from my opinion section written by guest columnists on Rothecreations.com.
8-Bit Color Channel vs. 16-Bit Color Channel
Someone at work came to me with a problem yesterday where they were getting an error message in Illustrator about not being able to read a 16-Bit image.
I had never had this error message, and when I hopped into Photoshop, I found that this .tif image was set to 16-Bit color. I changed it to 8-Bit Color Channel and everything seemed to work just fine.
16 Bit Color Channels are basically more information per channel. For example, for RGB, that would mean you would have a 16-Bit greyscale and then 48-Bit Color RGB Image (16 per Channel of Red Green and Blue x 3). It is more information and if I would have to guess without doing too much research, is something similar to RAW. It contains more data than most users need, but at least they can utilize it if need be.
Photoshop can edit in 16-Bit image mode to some degree. None of the layers options work, but most of the basic tools do. So, you may want to work in 8-Bit until you have the image where you need it then convert it to 16-Bit Channel.
Effects differences from version Illustrator 9 to Illustrator 10.
Today I learned that the filters options from 9-10 changed. The gaussian blur, which is a seems to be a default filter in 9, is apparently an SVG extension in 10, and if any vector art that contains a blur is attempted to be moved, an “action terminated” dialog box will appear.
Inserting a fireworks HTML file
In the past, when I inserted a fireworks HTML, I drew a table, and then drew a cell size that fit the Fireworks graphics table I had just sliced and exported. I then placed it inside the cell, and went on my merry way.
Well, there is no need for that nested of tables. You can just create a new page in Dreamweaver, and place the Fireworks HTML in directly.
How do I change the color of a section of text?
(InDesign 2.0 not CS 3.0) The swatches palette is not the most intuitive when coming from a vector program for changing vector graphics and text colors, fills, and strokes.
In order to change the color of text, make sure that in the swatches palette, you push the T button up to the left of the tint. This activates all of the colors to be used for fills and strokes of the text, which you can change the precedence of each by click the stacked icons for the open fill “T” and the closed fill “T”.
If you want to change the values of a vector object, just click the square next to the “T” to get back to the original options. They will default to vector editing, not text.
If you want to add new colors to your swatches, just like in other adobe palettes;
Go to the bottom of the palette and click the new swatch button.
You can then double click that swatch when listed and change the CMYK values, and give it a name.
Exporting Individual Slices
After a couple of years of exporting a document out of Fireworks as an HTML page and inserting it in an HTML page where I needed it, I finally figured out a way that I have more control.
I think that most everyone probably already knows this, but if you right click on a slice you can save it individually as whatever you want to name it. Change frames to change the content on the slice, if you have set up rollovers using shared content on frames. If you need to save a handful of slices, and the export is defaulting to the wrong directory, then export a whole .html document to the location so that it remembers the correct location, later going back and deleting that document.
Using the “Fit Canvas” shortcut.
As I have already mentioned, the more shortcuts you can learn as a designer and implement them into your work flow the more productive you can be.
Another one I have recently learned that really helps me along is the rotate shortcuts and the fit to All and fit to Canvas shortcuts.
In Fireworks under the modify menu there are “Fit Canvas” and “Trim Canvas” options as well as rotate options.
I have set mine to Ctrl+Alt+F to Fit Canvas, and Ctrl+Alt+T to trim canvas, the latter of which I don’t use too often.
What Fit Canvas will do is remove any part of the canvas that there are no objects on, and if part of your image is off the canvas viewing area, it will fit to that dimension too.
But I will often use the two rotate commands in conjunction with the fit Canvas command when opening, trimming, rotating, saving, and closing a file.
You too can set your own shortcuts commands and save your shortcut presets in a file by going under Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts > and either Menu Commands or Tools.
