Photoshop CS: Down and Dirty Tricks with Scott Kelby

By Nicole Neuman, UNC-Chapel Hill

Out of all the tech skills sessions I attended throughout the conference, Scott Kelby’s presentation of “down and dirty” Photoshop tricks was the most entertaining by far. He took ads that look intimidating and time-consuming to make, and showed us how he could recreate them in a few minutes with a handful of Photoshop tricks. His jokes and sarcasm about Adobe’s naming conventions and his explanations of why he uses certain tricks (“if it were me, I’d use a drop shadow…”) all made the absorption of new Photoshop skills much more painless (and much more interesting) than the normal tutorial session. Here are a few bits of Scott Kelby’s humor:

“Contrast is a basic principle of design. So, having a rectangle on a rectangle creates stupidity.”

“Why do I add a drop shadow? Because it’s mandated by federal law.”

“This is only for freaks and I know if you’re here, you’re a freak.”

Scott Kelby is an amazing Photoshop wiz – I recommend checking out his column in Photoshop User magazine or see if he’ll be in a city near you in the upcoming year by going to www.photoshopseminars.com.


UNC Chapel Hill students with Scott Kelby after the session.

Using InDesign with Photoshop

by Nicole Neuman, UNC-Chapel Hill

Integration, integration, integration: I think that's the most stressed benefit of using InDesign. Colin Fleming demonstrated how easy it is to use InDesign with Photoshop; it's very easy to pull in native Photoshop documents (you can drag and drop any file into InDesign - .ai files, pdfs, anything!) and edit them too (hold option and double click on the image and photoshop opens for you to edit the file). "I love InDesign. I do backflips over it," Fleming said. "Whatever you do, just have fun with InDesign. That's where it pays off."

F.Y.I. the largest size document InDesign can handle is 18 square feet

OS X Primer and Tips and Tricks

Robert Esker spoke about many tips and tricks within OS X and also the differences between the OS 9 and OS 10 systems. Early on he suggested www.apple.com/pro/design as a website to go to to find useful tips about the operating system. He also told us the requirements to run OS X, they are: G3, G4, G5, imac or emac, powerbook (all models later than the original), ibook, 128 mb of physical RAM and a built-in USB. OSX has a UNIX based foundation which gives it stability and flexibility, one example of how OSX is better than OS 9 as a result of the UNIX based system is that in OS 9 the whole computer would freeze up instead of just the program where in OSX only the program wiil quit, not everything. There are also built-in standards on OSX such as XML, Perl, Apache, Quicktime, PDF, Open GL, Java and WiFi. There is also Native Support for standard networks. Another topic that was brought up was security. OSX is generally more immune to viruses etc. because it is currently a smaller market and thus it makes it harder to code viruses. Overall, OSX is above and beyond the OS 9 system. Currently, the most recent version is Mac OSX Panther v10.3 which came out in October 2003, Tiger will be the next version and should come out in the first half of 2005.

InDesign and InCopy CS

by Nicole Neuman, UNC-Chapel Hill

Gary Cosimini summed up his hour long tutorial on InDesign and InCopy with one simple phrase: "What sort of dark magic is going on here?"

InDesign is unique because it is a made from scratch product. Colimini said that Adobe basically scrapped the PageMaker code because it was made of "spaghetti code." He likened spaghetti code to a house that was built in 1903, remodeled 15 times since then, and when you flip the light switch downstairs, a toilet flushes upstairs.

Discussion on InDesign CS is a popular topic as many people make the switch from the "other" softwares. In this tutorial, we learned a variety of benefits that InDesign has to offer users and a bunch of useful tricks for those who have already made the switch.

Cosimini said that one of the best things about InDesign is that users can work with native files from Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat. Quark and PageMaker are "paste" or layout programs and InDesign is an actual design program. InDesign incorporates several things that save designers time: javascript functions, nested styles, and even a function to save workspaces with different palettes open for different layouts.

We also got to see a demo of basic InCopy functions and a rundown of the benefits. Something funny that Cosimini pointed out: in InCopy, text is black and displayed on a white background. In order to "keep copy editors around the world who are used to A-text from throwing up," the display colors can be changed to neon green type on a black background. "Maybe we should have had a place where you type the year you entered the field, the colors will change accordingly," said Cosimini.

Overall, an informative session on two awesome programs.

Adobe Type: A Marriage of Design and Technology

By Erica Frederick
Michigan State University

The first half of this session focussed on the history of type at Adobe, which started with PostScript. The initial challenge was to make type look good once it was rasterized.

The first three fonts Adobe liscenced from LinoType were Helvetica, Times Roman and Courier.

The speaker, Christopher Slye, spoke a lot about Carol Twombly, Robert Slimbach and David Siegel who were instrumental in the creation of many Adobe Originals. Some of their work includes Utopia, Minion and Adobe Caslon. These were all created in the late 1980s.

A now-discontinued project that had a significant influence on current type faces was Multiple Masters. This project made it possible to generate different optical sizes of fonts based on their point sizes. So, a font could be used both as a cutline at 7.5 pt and as display type at a much larger size.

Multiple Masters then gave way to OpenType, which contains up to 65,000 glyphs, far more than was possible with Multiple Masters. It was based on Unicode, so the type could remain consistent and be used in different languages, not just the languages of Eastern Europe. OpenType contains substitution features which you can activate in InDesign and Illustrator from the character pallates.

With OpenType, some ligatures exist by default, but they can be changed by the designer, and letters appear in different versions based on which letters they are next to.

Slye said the fonts contain more information about optical sizes than is possible to use in InDesign or Illustrator, but the support to use that information in those applications will gradually be introduced with each new version.

Photoshop Power Hour I and II

Photoshop CS is a relatively easy to use program if you are doing basic color correcting, sizing etc. but when it comes to really learning the ins and outs, it is good to have someone like Russell Brown of Adobe around. Although he taught us what he calls his 'unethical' photo treatments, we learned a lot about what Photoshop CS can really do. Some of the tips and techniques that we learned were how to use the lens blur and how it was different from the gaussian blur (the lens blur simulates a camera lens while the gaussian blur is just an out-of-focus blur), how to make one part of a photo have a lens blur using alpha layers and a gradient, how to use the match color tool to match, for example, two different skies in multiple photos, how to color correct if you are color blind, how to use the file browser and how to use the camera raw tool. We also received a CD that had examples and tutorials on it. Russell Brown is an awesome teacher, he offered his book as a prize as well as another book and suggested Jack Davis' Photoshop CS Wow book to help teach photoshop.

Michaela Idhammar, UNC-CH

Adobe Illustrator Tips and Tricks

Terry White, technical resource manager for Adobe, gave a presentation on useful tips and tricks in Adobe Illustrator CS. Basically, Terry showed us a ton of different useful techniques that showed us how to successfully use new tools within Illustrator CS. One cool thing is that when you open up Illustrator a screen pops up and lets you open a file, open a new file or open a saved template. There are over 200 templates within Illustrator CS that can quicken the design process. Business sets, CD cases, DVD cases etc. There is also an additional file within the Illustrator application that is a 244 page PDF with helpful information. One main thing that we learned was that the pencil tool can be used to reshape an image. All you have to do is select the object then place the pencil tool over it and drag the shape into whatever direction you want it to go. Also if the shape is not as clear as you want it to be there is a smoothing tool within the pencil tool to make the line into more of the shape you want it to be. (It's hard to explain, a lot easier to see.) We also learned the benefits of the symbols library and how to fill text with the image without having to make it into outlines. In CS you can still edit the text after you have placed the image into it. Also, filling text with gradient can be done using the appearance pallette and then the text is still editable and still live. The 3D tool is also really cool and it is amazing what Illustrator CS can do. Basically, within Illustrator CS there is more capability to leave things live and editable rather then converting them to outlines. The updates made within CS ease the use of the program and shorten the time it takes to create.

Making database searches easier with Adobe Creative Suite

Do you have problems finding files you saved ages ago on your computer or put in a file folder? Do you need to update your filing system or possibly create a system? Well, there is help for you out there, and believe it or not, there are three simple steps to better mananging your digital assets.

First you need a place to store your information. Whethere that is on a hard disk, file server or CD, you need to make sure you have a designated place on your PC or Mac for these files.

Second, you need a method to describe your data. This can be a simple as a keyword "Mail" to as complex as you want to get. You also have to make sure your keyword is associated to your data, in some way connected. It needs to have a name and some kind of description connected to it.

Finally, you need to have a way to find it. For this, software is available to search your database for you, and Adobe is right there to help you. With software package with the Adobe Suite, you can easily track your work-in-progress or archived articles easily and quickly.

All it really takes is a creative and intelligent strategy of orgainizing your work, and if you can't do it on your own, Adobe (and a number of other software companies) are ready, waiting, and willing to help you.

Janelle Poore
Brigham Young University