One of the hardest things to accomplish in vector illustration is a halftone, which is a way of reproducing a monochrome image using only dots of varying sizes. Halftones are especially important for graphic artists working with a limited number of colors (in poster or t-shirt designs, for example), because they give nuance to otherwise flat artwork. Moreover, vector halftones can be scaled to any size without showing pixelation.
In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create a grayscale object and turn it into a vector halftone. These steps are written for Adobe Illustrator CS5, but the process is very similar for previous versions of Illustrator.
Quark has instituted a special upgrade program that allows customers using nearly any past version of QuarkXPress to upgrade to its most current version 9 for $299. From now until December 31, 2011, current and past users of versions 3 through 6 can upgrade for that standard price, which had, in the past, applied only to versions 7 and 8.
This is a good deal for those who have not upgraded in recent years, but who now wish to use Quark to publish iPad apps and create content for e-readers, smartphones, and other tablets.
QuarkXPress 9 lets designers add new functionality and boost productivity while enabling the creation of content for publication on mobile devices. QuarkXPress 9 lets users create and publish to iPad apps and create content for e-readers, smartphones, and other tablets without coding. New features in version 9—such as conditional styles, story editor, shape maker, and more— automate manual, time-consuming design tasks.
The most difficult objects to mask are those with soft, undefined edges. This is a common issue in photos snapped using a wide aperture (or too close to the object), resulting in an increasingly soft focus as the object extends out of the lens' focal range. Accommodating this variance in focus can be a challenge. To help get your masks just right, I’ll show you two advanced masking techniques for Adobe Photoshop CS4 and CS5.
Prepare your mask
You’ll need to do a bit of prep work before executing the steps below. Open a photo and create a mask using the techniques outlined in an Introduction to Masking Parts and Advanced Masking: Vector Masks. In areas where the object veers out of focus, make sure the mask’s edge runs comfortably inside the object’s blurry edge.
Adobe Creative Cloud, announced this week at the Adobe Max 2011 annual conference, is a cloud-based software initiative designed to redefine the process of content creation, storage, and sharing, and as a major component of the company's transformation. Creative Cloud is further evidence—in case any more was needed—of Adobe’s recognition that the mobile marketplace is the current and future cornerstone of art and design and is the company’s future.
What is Creative Cloud?
There are three parts to the structure of the Creative Cloud—applications, services, and community. Applications will include the tablet-centric Touch apps announced Monday alongside the desktop Creative Suite and Adobe's newest offerings from the lab, Edge and Muse. Services will include Digital Publishing Suite technologies, a portion of Business Catalyst, and cloud-based fonts for Web design via Adobe's acquisition of Typekit, a cloud-based subscription font library. Community will facilitate presentation, sharing, and collaboration on creative projects.
In conjunction with its new Creative Cloud initiative, Adobe has announced six mobile apps designed to make it easier for artists and designers to create and share their work. Files created with the apps—Photoshop Touch, Collage, Debut, Ideas, Kuler, and Proto—can be shared, viewed across devices, and transferred into Adobe Creative Suite CS5.5 for further refinement.
The apps are devoted to several areas of the creative process such as image editing, ideation, sketching, mood boards, website and mobile app prototyping, and presentation.
Not coincidentally, this announcement comes some six months after the debut of the Photoshop Touch SDK which, paired with a new scripting engine in Photoshop CS5, was designed to pave the way for iOS apps and other platform apps to drive and interact with Photoshop on the desktop.
Adobe is planning to launch a series of Internet-hosted services, called Creative Cloud, designed for creators of digital content, the company said Monday.
Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch announced the new offerings at the Adobe Max conference, being held this week in Los Angeles. The services will be available early in 2012, according to the company.
Initially, the company will offer three services. One will provide fonts for websites. Another will help manage the process of digital publishing. The third, based on the Adobe Business Catalyst, will be for creating and managing websites. The company plans to introduce more services in the future, incorporating such Adobe products as Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro, and After Effects.
While you may not have the artistic dedication (or bankroll) to warrant picking up one of Wacom’s Cintiq or Intuos tablets, you don’t have to feel left out: The company’s freshly updated Bamboo line offers three different affordable tablets for hobbyists, photo enthusiasts, and beginning artists.
With these new tablets, Wacom has simplified its consumer-level offerings—formerly five tablets under the Bamboo name with varying price points and features—into just three devices, the Bamboo Connect, Capture, and Create. For this revision, the company has attempted to target a specific swath of the tablet market for each model, rather than promote them by features alone.
