Design-Design » photoshop

Adobe AIR and Kuler

Peter Simcoe — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:39:13 +0000

With the Adobe® AIR® runtime, you can deliver branded rich Internet applications outside the browser that give you a closer connection to your customer. Adobe AIR uses the same proven, cost-effective technologies used to build web applications, so development and deployment is rapid and low risk. You can use your existing web development resources to create engaging, branded applications that run on all major desktop operating systems. -Adobe Website

Essentially Adobe have created a way of creating tools that operate independent of browsers but use the same sort of technologies and resources developed for your website – the most typical use being the creation of Desktop Applications where the user can download the AIR® application and interact / link to data from your own website such as databases or RSS feeds. With a variety of free and very useful apps available created with this system it seems that the underated Adobe AIR® is definitely worth a look for designers, academics, photographers and business users.

Small, Compact and Interactive

Below is a brief video outlining some of the features of Adobe Kuler® – an application created with AIR® for selecting, choosing and applying colour to vectors and bitmaps either independently or as part of the creation of design work within Illustrator. The video demonstrates how Kuler can integrate into CS3 software or at its most basic level it will provide a great talking point for both clients and designers for assessing the colour palette they currently use or planning a new colour scheme.

Other AIR Applications

Adobe have provided a useful summary of the AIR® system on their website. For a summary of some of the best applications you could visit this summary of the “30 Extremely Useful Air Applications for Web Designers” – a useful resource for anyone involved in the design process which includes the Adobe Kuler application. It is also worth looking at Adobe’s own Marketplace for AIR® applications too.

Overall

Don’t be afraid to five one of these little applications a try. I recently downloaded Fractal 4D for creating interesting Adobe Illustrator vector artwork for my designs and what a little gem it has turned out to be [Use the FILE > SCRIPTS > OTHER SCRIPT command to load the JSX file exported from Fractal 4D. Remember that AIR® applications load onto your hard drive rather than operating within a browser and that you will need to have the AIR® plugin for them to work.

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Photography: dpBestflow

Peter Simcoe — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:40:27 +0000

Establishing what constitutes best practice is always important for a designer – and not all designers realise this until they’ve built a few websites from tables, taken a series of important photographs on JPEG compression setting when Camera RAW is available on their Digital SLR camera or even sent a series of images to the printers without consulting them or reading their guidelines on getting the most from their systems. However, it is often overlooked that people involved with creating content such as photographs may not be designers or photographers in small to medium sized businesses on a limited budget and it is useful to have a basic guide to creating text, images or other material to pass onto designers. dpBestflow has been established by The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) to assist people in creating, using and storing digital imagery.

“Through dpBestflow, we are striving to make best practices in digital photography readily accessible to all professional photographers, no matter what their level or working style” – Project Director Richard Anderson.

“dpBestflow helps translate the intricacies of preserving digital images into useful information that can be incorporated into everyday workflow habits.” – Senior Project Manager Peter Krogh

You can see the results of their work atwww.dpbestflow.org where the glossary is worth scanning through as a matter of interest or to find out about those acronyms you just did not understand in the handbooks! You can also download the Quick Reference guide as a summary of the information they have on their site – a single page summary of the most important info.

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Why bother calibrating?

Peter Simcoe — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:44:07 +0000

Calibrating your PC or Mac screen is often seen as a luxury for many companies but having dealt with a variety of small to medium sized businesses it can be seriously beneficial to engage in this process. One of the most common responses to a delivered print job is “why doesn’t it look the same as on the screen”. There are a few simple steps that can be taken to help you, as the company owner, marketing director or designer can efficiently achieve a ‘reasonable’ level of accuracy, or at the very least, improve the colour accuracy you currently achieve.

Hardware and Software

Buy yourself some calibration hardware and software. This will measure the coloured light emitted from your monitor and automatically adjust the computer’s colour settings to represent the closest to some of those diffiult calibration problems such as achieving reasonable skin tones.
Personally I use the Spyder2Express system for my calibration – though, as the link demonstrates, this has now been upgraded to version 3. There are several other budget options available including Pantones Huey amongst others.

Calibration Image

Ask your printers for an example image to compare print output from the print unit itself with what is seen onscreen. This can be incredibly useful if you regularly use the same printer for your brochure work.

You will need to request a printed example of this image – this is usually included as part of a colour chart. I usually put my design work through RCS plc because they are usually very careful to obtain the highest standard in print quality – plus they offer checking and proof reading for a small fee which is always useful as an extra backup after both I and the client have looked through the job.

Discuss

One other tip – don’t be afraid to discuss your print job and the process you are using to create the work with the printers themselves. This not only saves you time because you can get the process right without revision [unless of course you spell something wrong!], but your chosen print unit will value the opportunity to make sure that you save them time by getting it right also.

If your printers are not so happy to advise [though please not the use of advise rather than 'hold your hand at every step' which ends up wasting their time] then it is worth looking for a company who will give you a little customer service to ensure the best results possible.

In Conclusion

Please note that, using this process, there are no guarantees that your colour will be entirely accurate but it is safe to assume that, without spending thousands of pounds on consultancy and equipment, using these methods will significantly improve your colour accuracy.

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Resizing Photoshop images

Peter Simcoe — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:33:43 +0000

If you shrink your images for a website using Adobe Photoshop on a regular basis then consider changing the default settings for the way images are reduced. The image to the right shows the EDIT > PREFERENCES selection where it is possible to set all the defaults for the program. In this case we just want to look at the GENERAL settings where it is possible to change Image Interpolation [essentially the way that images are handled when enlarged, reduced or warped in some way] to Bicubic Sharper – therefore preserving and enhancing the sharpness of the original image as it is reduced. If you spend the majority of your time enlarging images then it is worth considering setting the default to Bicubic Smoother [though it would be ideal to invest in a paid plugin that enhances your image enlargement rather than the Photoshop engine - eg Photozoom Pro]

Spend some time experimenting with these different settings and find the results that give you the best image quality. However, be guided by Photoshop’s instructions also ie Bicubic Sharper for reduction and Bicubic Smoother for enlargement. It makes a difference to the clarity of your product shots, environment photography and much more.

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