Illustrator: Quick Tip - Using the Effect Gallery

When you are trying out different effects in Illustrator CS2, the Effect Gallery is a great way to see all the various effects using one dialog box instead of going up and down through the Effect menu to preview each one individually. It's also a great place for playing.

The effects gallery lets you apply Photoshop-like effects to your paths and bitmaps. Effects will ONLY work in RGB mode.

To use it choose Effect > Effect Gallery.

Web Design: Old School is Old

This article on ITworld.com talks about three old school web design issues that used to be BIG issues in the day before broadband. The author talks about how, unless you are "building pages for your local Windows 95 user group" you need to move on from worrying about;

1. Limited Screen Resolution - the days of 640 x 480 pixels are long gone, the majority of Web surfers now use screen resolutions 1024 x 768 or higher.
   
2. The Browser-Safe Color Palette - also out the door are the limited number of colours you had to choose from. They were 216 colors that never seemed to include the colors you needed.
   
3. Multimedia Avoidance Syndrome - don't lose any sleep at night over whether your multimedia is going will fit down the phoneline. With many users connecting with broadband it's safer to add to Flash and video to your sites now.
   

Photoshop: Quick Tip - Use a new layer for retouching

If you are retouching a photograph, for the sake of safety (and your sanity if you accidentally erase something you didn't want to) , you should do all of your retouching on a separate layer above your image. By doing this you are only changing your new layer and won't damage your main image and you can play with blend modes and opacity to achieve different levels of retouching.



So if you are using the Clone Stamp tool (S) or the Spot Healing Brush (J) or the Healing Brush (J), in the Options bar at the top of the screen, turn on the Sample All Layers option. Now you will be sampling from your main image but painting onto the new layer you created above it.