Pantone

And the answer is, we were captured by pirates. Fleshless, Illustrator-loving pirates who locked us up in the hold of their ship, with only our laptops and daily rations of grog, refusing to let us out until we revealed the whereabouts of that long-elusive treasure-map-posing-as-a-book, Adobe Illustrator CS3, no 4, no 5 One-on-One. (Valued treasure maps go through a lot of iterations before you find them.) Anyway, the pirates have let us go. Well all of us except, David Futato, our design mastermind, who they insist on keeping captive until the book goes to the printer early this week. Of course, they've moved him to swankier quarters and they've upgraded his daily ration to sprouted lentil faux-meat products, multi-colored jello, and white russians. 

So pour yourself a bloody mary on this fine Sunday morning as we regale you with the tale of how, in honor of our captors, or maybe just because his new home came with one of those flag holder thingies already attached to the house, Deke set out to create a pirate flag in Illustrator. And this week we honor our erstwhile captors and discuss how he went about doing it.

Here's the adventurous tale of how Illustrator helps Deke fly his true colors: Read more » 

Hello, friends. Deke here this week. (Colleen is buried hundreds of pages deep inside a book we hope to one day call Photoshop Elements 8 One-on-One, which is slated for delivery next month. Poor dear; book writing is such torment.) And so it is my esteemed privilege to present you with Martini Hour 036, the last dekeLounge-recorded Martini Hour before we embark on a long series of shows captured live and loose from Las Vegas. Baby.

This week's C&D-only show features a question from a caller who fails to identify herself. I dub her Daffodil because she sounds so sweet and pretty and harmless. But Daffodil's question is about the most horrifying one we've encountered, perfect for Halloween: Why is it that Pantone spot colors look one way in Illustrator and InDesign, and another in Photoshop? And how in the world do you correct this problem?

By way of example, we take on Pantone 172: Is it Pumpkin or Grenadine? (See the swatches in the graphic, top left. I mean, holy shit, how different are those?)

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