Well, I missed the Photoshop CS2 Power Tour in Atlanta last week… so I’ve been looking for learning opportunities in and around the Southeast ever since. Enter: “An Event Apart”.
Category: Design
Posts on graphic and web design.
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Adobe Lightroom
Not to be outdone by Apple’s Aperture application for professional photographers, Adobe has just annouced Adobe Lightroom™ Beta. NAPP has created a Learning Center for this new tool on their website, that is immensely useful.
Lightroom Beta lets you view, zoom in, and compare photographs quickly and easily. Precise, photography-specific adjustments allow you to fine tune your images while maintaining the highest level of image quality from capture through output. And best of all, it runs on most commonly used computers, even notebook computers used on location. Initially available as a beta for Macintosh, Lightroom will later support both the Windows and Macintosh platforms.
The Lightroom Beta, is available for download from the Adobe Labs website. You’ll need an Adobe ID in order to preview this application.
I’m glad to see Adobe pushing something like this out. I was just talking to Mercer Harris, an excellent photographer in Washington, GA, about Aperture and how it might fit into their workflow. Lightroom looks to be a viable alternative (if priced right)…
This is going to be great for consumers. I’d love to see Apple and Adobe go head-to-head even more. It’ll just drive them to innovate even more!
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Photoshop CS2 Power Tour
Don, Patrick and I will be attending the Photoshop CS2 Power Tour in Atlanta, GA later this month. If you’re interested in attending, check out photoshopseminars.com.
On Wednesday, January 25th at the Cobb Galleria Convention Center, Dave Cross, Senior Developer, Education and Curriculum for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, will be presenting the all-new Photoshop CS2 Power Tour.
Amplify the impact of your work with these high-voltage, hair-raising techniques for Photoshop CS2! This brand-new one-day seminar will charge your creative batteries and transform you into a Photoshop dynamo, Guaranteed!
The seminar is only $79 for NAPP members, or $99 for non-members. At the seminar you’ll receive our invaluable keyboard shortcuts guide, our “goodies” disc, and a detailed seminar workbook that includes all the techniques presented in a step-by-step format to take home.
Think you might attend, let me know to look out for ya!
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Get Your Feed On
Standards-Geeks rejoice… Microsoft has acquiesced and accepted Mozilla’s option for RSS iconography. (Hallelujah… they had some pretty awful options they were toying around with…) You too can now spread the love for the delightlful little orange icon, by heading on over to feedicons.com, where designer Matt Brett has graciously created a site for distributing the standardized icon to the masses. Do the web a favor, and grab the files! Incorporate them into your site… you’ll be doing the RSS-uninitiated a favor. -
CSS Letter-Spacing Glitch in IE
I’ve used the CSS attribute
letter-spacingto control the amount of space in the titles on my site. They work fine in Firefox, utilizing the following CSS:h1 { letter-spacing: -.08em }IE6 doesn’t seem to like negative
emvalues. IE6 actually adds spacing between the characters in this instance. To fix this, I used the * htmlhackfilter to pass an alternate value over to IE6. Not a pretty way of doing it, but it works. Here’s the code I used:h1 { letter-spacing: -.08em }* html h1 { letter-spacing: -3px; }By using a negative pixel value instead of a negative em value, IE6 displays the content properly.
Update … so why this approach? It’s scalable in modern browsers. By using em values, we can scale the
letter-spacingbased on the size of the fonts, as specified by the user’s settings. Pixel values don’t scale. That’s why we utilize the* htmlhack to pass the letter-spacing value we want it to have. -
IconBuffet Revamp Launched
The folks over at Firewheel Design just unveiled the new IconBuffet website. You can read more about it over on their blog, Sparkplug.One of the cool new features of IconBuffet is the Free Delivery feature… where you can get free icons every month. The catch is, you might get Download A, and I get Download B, and a coworker gets Download C. We can send invites to our friends and allow them to snag our downloads. If you feel like sharing, my account email address is chris@powerserve.net
The icons Firewheel has available are really sweet. I’ve bought several sets from them in the past for use on design projects, and they deliver a high quality product. I especially like that they now offer some vector versions of the icons…
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Blogger: 001 Broken Pipe
I’ve got my fingers crossed right now, but I think I finally figured out what was going wrong with Blogger and it’s ability to publish my blog. It was choking on the MeasureMap script I had to incorporate into my template. I figured this out first by copying the modified template I had setup, and choosing one of the pre-built templates Blogger provides. My site published without a hitch. I then took a look at the MeasureMap code and saw that it was wrapped in its own
<Blogger>...</Blogger>tags. I think this was the issue… I removed those… and incorporated the script elements designated within the<ItemPage>...</ItemPage>tags with stuff I already had to have on the ItemPage and tried to publish. Presto! I can publish again. It’s rather odd that this was an issue… but I figure that Blogger was having problems rendering out the pages because of the way my code was setup.It looks like, for the time being anyway, I will remain using Blogger… but I am still looking for a viable alternative that utilizes ColdFusion, ASP or .Net and won’t affect what I have on the site too much…
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Changes Coming
I thought my issues with Blogger were over. They aren’t. I’m still getting Broken Pipeline errors when I try to publish. I got no response from Blogger. I guess this is to be expected from such a big company… especially one offering free applications.
After evaluating several blog applications, I have decided to make the switch over to
MovableTypeWordPress. I’ll be working on migrating my existing content over to the new blog app in the coming weeks.Stay tuned…
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Measure Map, Revisited
I’ve been using Measure Map since November 11th. Since that time, I’ve found it to be extremely efficient at tracking stats within my blog. I’m also evaluating Google Analytics for a higher view at how my entire site is doing, stat-wise… but it is very unreliable… and seems to update only when it’s good and ready to.The only problem I have experienced so far with Measure Map is its ability to track comments on my site. But I think that is a result of how Blogger is setup. So I can’t really fault it for that.
Interface
I love the use of flash in the interface. It is quick, and definitely aids in the use of the application. It’s easy to increase date ranges using the flash sliders. Data gets pulled into graphics and is populated into flash graphics. Very slick, indeed.
Ease of Use
Measure Map couldn’t be easier to use. It present information in an easy to use format that even entry-level users could understand. It doesn’t present meaningless data – only what is important and most relevant. You can’t beat this sort of reporting. Simplicity rules here.
I can’t wait to see what else is in store for Measure Map. I’ve really enjoyed it these past two weeks and look forward to continuing to use it!
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Huh? Who are you?
It’s like I fell off the face of the Earth or something…
Work’s been really busy as of late. We just hired a new jr. designer to help relieve some of the workload here at PowerServe.
I’ve been ignoring my site because I just haven’t had time to devote any time to it. Traffic has suffered as a result. C’est la vie. It happens
But fear not, I am not deceased, merely indisposed. Hopefully I will have more time to devote soon.