How to Create a Professional Magazine Layout A few times a each month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from throughout the history of Vectortuts+. This tutorial by Otto Coster was first published on August 4th 2010. Have you ever wondered how professional designers strike the perfect balance between text and image? Using InDesign's powerful type tools, you will learn techniques to help you set and arrange a magazine layout. Step 1 Setting up the Document We'll be using a standard A4 size document for this tutorial. Step 2 Creating a Grid To set up the page grid, go to the "A-master spread" and choose Layout > Create Guides. Why? Step 3 Placing a Background When creating a magazine layout, you'll want to keep a good balance between the white space, images and text. Go to page 2–3 and place your photograph in the bleed space so that the entire spread is covered. Step 4 Creating Body Text Step 5 Setting up a Baseline Grid To make our text look good we need to set up a baseline grid. Step 6 Changing the Basic Paragraph Style
Photoshop and Illustrator cheat sheets for designers For many creatives, it can often feel like there's never enough hours in the day. With ever-demanding clients and constantly looming deadlines, applying time-saving techniques to your workflow is essential, and these helpful cheat sheets for Photoshop CS6 and Illustrator CS6 can help you do just that. Whether you're following a new Photoshop tutorial, or simply practising how to draw something in Illustrator, these cheat sheets will help creatives at all skill levels – and most of the CS6 shortcuts are applicable to Creative Cloud versions of the software, too. The team at Zerolag created the sheets specifically with graphic designers in mind, providing code below the graphic so it can be shared and help improve the productivity of fellow creatives. They've also made printer-friendly versions available for quick referencing. So what are you waiting for? Like this?
Character Formatting | Why Adobe InDesign CS6 Is Now the Best Desktop Typesetting Program Character formatting controls the appearance of the individual letters in your publication. Font, type size, color, and leading are all aspects of character formatting. (Longtime QuarkXPress users won’t think of leading as a character format, but we’ll cover that next.) We refer to all formatting that can be applied to a selected range of text as “character” formatting, and refer to formatting that InDesign applies at the paragraph level as “paragraph” formatting. In addition to these distinctions, InDesign’s paragraph styles can include character formatting, but apply to entire paragraphs. Character Formatting Controls To display the Character panel and shift the focus to the panel’s Font field, press Command-T/Ctrl-T. To display the Control panel, press Command-Option-6/Ctrl-Alt-6. Font Family and Font Selecting a font in InDesign is a little bit different than selecting a font in most other page layout programs. InDesign’s user interface for selecting fonts mirrors this approach. Size
How to Make an Animated GIF in Photoshop [Tutorial] If you've spent any time on the internet at all, you've probably come in contact with an animated GIF. It's an image file that allows you to feature animated images that makes it seem like the image is moving. Think of them as a hybrid between a still image and a video. Why are GIFs great additions to your marketing? They're easy to consume, provide a new way to capture your viewers' attention, and can have a serious emotional impact. The best part about GIFs is that they aren't too hard to make. Click here to download our free guide to learn how to design high-quality graphics. In the following tutorial on making animated GIFs, I'm using the Creative Cloud 2015 version of Photoshop, but the steps should be similar in other versions. How to Create an Animated GIF in Photoshop Here's an example of an animated GIF you might make using this tutorial: Alright, let's get started! Step 1: Upload your images to Photoshop. If you already have images created ... Step 2: Open up the Timeline window.
Create a Distressed Vector Typographic Poster Design Follow this step by step walkthrough of my recent design process for the ‘Spectrum’ poster. Starting with custom made type in Illustrator, we’ll move our vector graphics into Photoshop for some serious distressing with Photoshop brushes, blending modes and more! The Spectrum poster takes inspiration from the old ZX Spectrum computer of the 80′s, the feature of the design is the custom made abstract type, which is mixed with a full spectrum of colours then grunged up to the max with textures and muted background tones. Start work in Adobe Illustrator. Aim to follow each letter from the previous to form one continuous line. The word Spectrum is split in half to help compose the design and to add that extra touch of abstractism. Drag out a few guides to match on key points of the path. Once all the type has been aligned and tweaked, take a step back to review the design as a whole. If all is looking good, increase the stroke weight of the path to thicken up the linework.
How To Create Wet Plate Collodion Styled Images In Photoshop (My Tutorial) I’m sure this will cause a bit of stir in the photography community, but retouching images is my kind of art creating something original. This is the first of hopefully many retouching and photography tutorials that I will be doing over the next months. This tutorial is about wet plate collodion images which I’ve been trying to find a way to emulate in post production. I really like the look and feel of these kind of images. For me, the basic photograph is the starting point and I try to capture people as they are. Then I go ahead and try to create something more, and for this series I have tried to capture a bit more of that old feel to the images. More info: anttikarppinen.com
Gradient rings in Illustrator Circular graph Here is a very simple example of what I talk about. The gradient in each part of the graph follows the direction of the circle. In other words the gradient isn't linear or radial, which are the only options to choose from in Illustrator. The graph below has 28 segments and is applied in a more illustrative kind of way. Circular gradient Draw a rectangle Start by selecting the Rectangle tool and draw a small rectangle. Duplicate the rectangle Duplicate the rectangle by selecting the Selection tool (black arrow), and start dragging to the right as shown in the image above. Add color Give the second rectangle the ending color of your gradient. Blend options To prepare our perfect gradient using the blend feature, we first check our blend options. Make Blend Now that the options are all set, select both rectangles and go to Object > Blend > Make (or press Cmd/Ctrl + Option/Alt + B) to create the blend. Create new Art Brush Select Art Brush from the brush type options Draw a circle
Wait, We Still Like Paper!: How to Screen Print on an Inkjet When designer Briana Bolger-Schuth took a break from advertising work, she wanted to make art. She had no art studio, but she did have access to a new Epson inkjet. Working on a project one night, she had a revelation: “I suddenly thought, ‘Hey, I wonder what would happen if I set these up as separations and ran the paper through each time for different colors?'” The results are pretty wonderful. She calls the project Let’s Put the Black on Last, and the setup is really simple. “The idea of getting something different out of the printer other than just what I expect is so exciting to me,” says Bolger-Schuth, “Where is the fun in knowing exactly what’s going to happen when you press the print button?” When Walter Benjamin penned The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, he bemoaned the loss of authenticity and aura in mass-produced printed works. With Let’s Put the Black on Last, I have my answer. Click to Open Overlay Gallery The other joy is that the process is dead simple.
Creating Seamless Textures In Illustrator I think you’ll all agree that Illustrator is just plain awesome, and with the continual improvements we see with each new version, it keeps getting better and better. Previously, I created seamless textures for typography and seamless backgrounds for my web and illustration projects with Photoshop. But we’ve seen large improvements with the Appearance panel in more recent versions of Illustrator, so now I create these textures and backgrounds solely in Illustrator–it’s actually super easy! So in today’s tutorial, I’ll walk you through the steps on how to create a variety of seamless textures and backgrounds all in Adobe Illustrator. Tutorial Details: Seamless Textures and Seamless Backgrounds Program : Adobe Illustrator CC (You should be able to create this tutorial in CS4+ but some of the tutorial images might look different.)Difficulty: Beginner/IntermediateTopics Covered: Appearance Panel, Effects, Pattern Fills, Graphic StylesEstimated Completion Time: 15-20 minutes each Raster Effects
untitled Watch the above video tutorial on how to setup your PSD file and in depth layer customization techniques. Jump to 25:00 of the video tutorial for how to create a 3D pop out sketch effect! You may also like: Scroll down for the full list of over 95 photo effect Actions! Sketch Photoshop Action (With 3D pop out sketch effect) Create realistic sketch artwork from your photos in only a few clicks. The action has been tested and working on Photoshop CS3,CS4,CS5,CS6,CC,CC 2015.5+ The action will ONLY WORK IN THE ENGLISH VERSION OF PHOTOSHOP . Need help? If you need assistance with this Action or any other Sevenstyles Action, please visit the help page here. Tested Each action is thoroughly tested across between 50 – 150 different photos to ensure there are no errors. The Best Results For the best results, it is recommended to use high resolution photos in the range of 1500px – 3500px. Organised After each action has finished playing, it creates a well organised layer structure. Time Saving Earn Money
Vectips - Illustrator tips, tricks, and tutorials Convert your original design into a Microsoft Word letterhead template At the end of a letterhead design project, it’s pretty common to hear your client say: “I want this as an editable letterhead template in Microsoft Word.” They usually don’t own or know how to use advanced graphics-editing programs like Adobe Illustrator, InDesign or Photoshop, and it simply doesn’t make sense for them to purchase those expensive programs. Microsoft Word is pretty low-tech compared to Illustrator or InDesign; however, that’s what your clients are using and your letterhead design is useless to them if they can’t edit and add content to it, so knowing how to create a Microsoft Word letterhead template is key. Let’s get started. 1. Create your letterhead design We’ve created this example in Illustrator, but Photoshop and InDesign can be used to create letterhead designs too. Create your design in CMYK color mode, and if you’re using photos or complex graphics make sure that they 300ppi or higher, because Microsoft Word compresses all images that you place into it. 2. 3. 4.