One of the least-known color modes in Photoshop, or certainly lesser-known today, is Duotone. This may be partly because it requires converting a file to grayscale first, which means that for color images the very name is unavailable on the menu. But it has a …
If I didn’t know better, I’d think someone who worked on Illustrator had a crush on layers. They appear not only in the Layers panel, but in the Appearance panel. There are no less than three places where the idea of layering, stacking, or something …
I’ve gotten used to the Tools panel (or Toolbox) in Illustrator as it has been for years. Although we can go from single- to double-column for convenience on smaller screens, I hardly ever think about it otherwise. But one feature in Illustrator CC which is …
There’s another trick for dealing with dust in Photoshop (to sort of continue from the last blog post), which takes a little setup but is even more subtle. It involves the History Brush tool, and the History panel. The advantage is that the corrections are …
In the age of digital photography, dust would seem to be a thing of the past. Perhaps. But who knows how many pre-digital pictures still exist, un-digitized, and in need of cleaning? With this in mind, I’d like to show you how. Before we had …
In my last post, I mentioned that the Layers panel serves a more vital function in Photoshop than it does in Illustrator. No offense to Illustrator, of course! But there is a reason I said this. In Illustrator, unless the user makes it happen, objects …
The Layers panel is one of the most important members of the team. A lot of what goes on in Photoshop is related at least partly to which layer(s) you’ve selected. Or want to select to do stuff in. So paying attention to this, and …
An unexpected ally in making selections in Photoshop is the Paths panel. Selecting a precise piece of an image can be tedious, even for a veteran user; understanding the selection tools does not provide instant expertise, and some images have such irregular content that it’s …
One of the more subtle things we can do with an InDesign document to make it look more professional—i.e. polished, consistent, easier to read—is to use the Baseline Grid. This relates to how the text lays out and vertically lines up on the pages of …
The use of Layer Styles (also known as Layer Effects) in Photoshop is fairly easy, but can add some pretty snazzy results. One of the most visually catchy is the Drop Shadow, which can make it look as if an object is in front of …