Here’s a pretty handy little reference graphic: an annotated keyboard with Photoshop’s keyboard shortcuts. And even an extended text-based shortcut chart on the bottom!
This makes me think that not only could it use a bit of spicing up in the visual sense, but also that this would be pretty handy for Illustrator users as well… maybe even incorporating Modifier key shortcuts to boot.
A set of free, printable keyboard shortcuts cards for Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and more are available for download over at ComputerArts.co.uk.
The set includes keyboard shortcut cards for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator CS, Macromedia Freehand, Cinema 4D and 3D Studio Max. These are CS1 versions, but from what I can gather the shorcuts should be pretty much the same for the newer versions. Not too sure about the Macromedia apps (which are now Adobe apps) as I have never used any of them.
As anyone who has read this blog can tell, I am a huge keyboard shortcut junkie, and you should be one as well. I cannot even begin to emphasize how much knowing these will enhance not only your pleasure on using graphics software (and software in general), but how much of a marked increase in productivity you’ll see.
I cringe in geek pain when I see a fellow Photoshop or Illustrator user laboriously hauling their mouse over to the Tools palette, or even to the menubar for anything but the most arcane of Menu items.
Download. Print. Learn. Kick massive butt.
See also:
• Annotated Keyboard Graphic With Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts
(via Creative Bits):
A neat little trick to work up original, radially symmetrical star-type shapes using multiple copies of rotated text. Good stuff!
There’s an interesting entry over at the excellent blog Drawn regarding a study done on copyright term lengths by a Cambridge economics PhD. He argues that 14 years is the optimal amount of time, due to production and other economic factors.
Head on over to the post at Drawn.ca for some interesting discussion in the comments, and also a link to the original article at Ars Tecnica which has a link to a PDF of the actual paper.
Copyright is a very interesting concept, especially coming from the creative/creator side of things. Part of me wants to own and control everything I create for infinity, but the other side of me can understand the need to stimulate creativity in society. However, patent holders only have 20 years to capitalize on their work. There seems to be a dichotomy there, but perhaps there are finer points which separate the two.
In the meantime however, make sure you always drop a © (that’s the “C in the Circle” symbol, which is Option-G on your Mac) on your artwork. You can include the date and/or your name, but don’t have to. You don’t even have to officially register the art to use the Copyright symbol (although it’s recommended for added protection).
Here’s a quick overview of Copyrights at the USPTO (United States Patent & Trademark Office).
In some previous posts, I rambled on about the ability to scroll, one-handed, using the Wacom software, and a shareware alternative, Smart Scroll X. I also touched on this a bit in my Wacom Intuos graphics tablets review.
I am very pleased to report that the developer of Smart Scroll X has worked out the issues with Camino and NetNewsWire. The newly introduced scrolling feature in the Wacom tablet driver software is very cool, and should be more than sufficient for most users. Smart Scroll X fills a gap that the more nerdy of us may appreciate. And I think this is the proper situation for a shareware app – to extend functionality. Continue reading
So you’ve just made a selection in Photoshop using the Marquee tool, but you didn’t start in the right place and one of the corners isn’t covering part of the area you want selected.
Yeah, you could try to place your cursor oh-so-perfectly right near the area in question and try to drag another rectangular marquee selection (using the Shift key of course to add to an existing selection). But why doesn’t Photoshop just give you interactive resize handles for the selection?
I just picked up a great new plugin for Illustrator, Zoom to Selection (Mac only) from the Adobe Illustrator plugin coder known cryptically as Worker 72a. Zoom to Selection does exactly as it’s name implies – allows one to zoom (maginify) in and out of an Illustrator document using the currently selected object as the centering point of the zoom.
A new sexy cartoon school girl pinup has recently been added to my slowly growing collection over at MyPSPTubes*. This one was fun to work on. I wanted to play on the classic fighter plane nose cone art where the girls were straddling a plane (or a bomb!). I thought the number two pencil was perfect. She was given glasses at one point for that sexy librarian look we all love, but it just didn’t work with the overall design. Continue reading
Ever find that you are trying to copy & paste ( or drag & drop) vector art from one Illustrator file to another, only to find all your transparency and other Appearance effects gone? I have to Google this every time it happens, so I thought I would make a post for it so I can look it up for myself, and help a few others along the way. Of course remembering this would be helpful, but I can’t count on that! Continue reading