design

Tip: Increase Productivity Using Adobe Illustrator’s Layer Masks

| George Coghill

The excellent Illustrator blog BittBox has a nice Adobe Illustrator Layer Mask tip/walkthough on how to use this highly useful, productivity-enhancing (and fairly obscure) feature of Illustrator CS and higher.

Layer Masks are basically clipping masks that apply to the entire layer (Layer masks need to be sub-layers, and the top-most one at that). The best feature is that they can be locked, and they are not tied to one specific object, or cause an entire group of unrelated objects to become “grouped” as they are when applying a clipping mask to them. This allows you to work normally with all the other objects on other sub-layers while still getting that clipping mask effect.

Head on over to BittBox and read the full post: Improve Your Illustrator Workflow with Layer Masking

Annotated Keyboard Graphic With Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts

| George Coghill

annotated keyboard for photoshop shortcutsHere’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.

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Tip: OS X Window Switching Keyboard Shortcuts for Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop & InDesign)

| George Coghill

Here are some super handy keyboard shortcuts for switching between open document windows when working within the Adobe Creative Suite applications (Illustrator, Photoshop & InDesign). These are Macintosh-only keyboard shortcuts since I do not have access to a Windows machine. Sure to increase your productivity.

  • Illustrator: Command (Apple) + ~ (that’s the “tilde” key, to the left of the numeral one, otherwise known as “the little squiggly line thing”)
  • InDesign: same as Illustrator
  • Photoshop: Control + Tab

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Illustrator tip: Preserving transparency & effects on the clipboard (using copy/paste)

| George Coghill

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 →

Wacom Intuos3 Graphics Tablet Review for Cartoonists & Illustrators

| George Coghill

***Update: See my review of the Wacom Intuos4 graphics tablet ***

I have been holding off on writing up a review of the Wacom Intuos3 graphics tablet until I had a chance to work with them for some time and really get a feel for real-world usage, particularly for cartoonists & illustrators. Oddly enough I had a hard time finding an in-depth review specifically geared towards artists that draw. There were some big questions that needed to be answered, most importantly that of how the Wacom tablets worked with Adobe Illustrator.

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Official Odd Rods trading cards website redesign now live

| George Coghill

Odd Rods trading cards collage

For the past few months I have been working on a pretty cool project, redesigning the official website for the relaunch of the classic Odd Rods™ trading card series of crazy, funny cartoon hot rod monsters & creatures – big eyes bugging out, goofy smiles with teeth bared & tongues wagging. The proud new owners of the Odd Rods™ trademarks and copyrights got in touch with the original cartoonist/illustrator/artist extraordinaire Bob “B.K.” Taylor to bring these awesome cartoon characters back into the popular culture where they belong.

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