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My Latest Video Course, "Illustrator CS6 One-on-One: Intermediate," Came Out 2 Weeks Ago

Submitted by deke on 6 December 2012 - 12:15am.

That's right, Part 2 of my cradle-to-grave video treatise on Adobe Illustrator CS6 is out on lynda.com. I would have mentioned it 2 weeks ago, on November 21, when the course went live. But I was on vacation in Ireland. In the northern city of Derry, to be exact. And while Colleen was blogging every day, and I was making her graphics, it seemed somehow antithetical to the whole vacationing thing for me to mention my for-profit course. You know what I mean?

But I'm home now. And I've even sneaked in a couple of days of legitimate work. So what the hell, time to blog the course. That image below, that's a Venn diagram bear. He's not a dog, he's a bear. Perhaps a bit over-eager. But still, he's a bear.

Illustrator CS6 One-on-One: Intermediate Read more » 

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Deke’s Techniques 013: Simulating Subpixel Rendering

Submitted by deke on 29 March 2011 - 12:15am.
Deke’s Techniques 013: Simulating Subpixel Rendering

This week's technique covers a topic so arcane, you'll either lose interest seconds into the movie, or be sucked into the topic as surely as you might draw an unfamiliar but addictive soda flavor into a straw.

The idea is this: Regardless of the rendering intent---Sharp, Crisp, Strong, or Smooth---Photoshop has a habit of rendering very small type like Garbage. Whereas that same very small type looks nice and legible when rendered by your operating system or as editable type by a browser. Read more » 

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Martini Hour 032, In Which Deke Admits He Might Have Once Seen an Issue of Maxim Magazine

Submitted by colleen on 17 September 2009 - 12:06am.

You know that I love our guests on Martini Hour. But few things can beat an episode where one of my favorite people (Adobe Product Manager Michael Ninness) talks about one of my favorite products (InDesign). Join us in the dekeLounge as we not only discuss InDesign, but really, how InDesign is helping publishers, designers, and editors challenge the notion of The Document, and ultimately plan against our future obsolescence. And we do all this over "portonics," an unfamiliar but tasty concoction of white port and tonic that was apparently the drink of choice during the unseasonably hot weather in Seattle this summer, inspired by our Michael making the trip down to the lounge to visit us in person.

This is not your standard graphics discussion, but an actual excavation of where the future lies. Check it out... Read more » 

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Photoshop Top 40, Feature #34: Save for Web (and Devices)

Submitted by deke on 25 August 2009 - 12:15am.
Feature #34: Save for Web (and Devices)

If you take a look at the File menu you'll see a command, about midway down, called "Save for Web & Devices." It's actually two commands. There's the "& Devices" part, which lets you save an image for display on virtually every cell phone except the iPhone. No offense, but if I had to rank this feature, I doubt it'd make my Top 10,000.

But the first part of the command, "Save for Web," that part rocks. It lets you downsample and compress an image for dissemination on the Web. Not to mention jettison all extraneous information and convert the colors to sRGB, the color space of the people. Plus you can compare the Web-optimized image to the original and thereby judge what gets lost in the translation. In other words, Save for Web does everything it can to produce slim, trim, and ultimately beautiful Web graphics. Read more » 

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