Illustrator

Mordy's visit last week to discuss Illustrator CS5 was so refreshing, that we decided to keep the Summer vibe going and invite him back again this week. And what does he bring? Vector-based sno-cones. Yes, it's another great Illustrator show with Mordy and Deke diving deep into the summer and dynamic effects. And me ingenuously following along, thinking, one day soon, I'm going to learn to use Illustrator so I can put all this knowledge to use. If you feel the same, pull up a sno-cone, maybe toss a little adult beverage on top, and join us.

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Ah...feels so good to be in the dekeLounge, knowing that the first book in Deke's CS5  One-on-One series is going off to the printer Monday. (It will feel even better Monday.) But now that Photoshop is done, it's time to turn our attention to Illustrator. And what better way to kick off the next phase of the madness around here (that madness being the creation of the new, long-awaited Illustrator CS5 One-on-One book), than to invite the guru's guru, Mordy Golding, to haul himself off the golf course and have a cocktail with us. And talk Illustrator CS5, of course. Which is what we do. (Do I sound punchy? I feel punchy. Let's have some punch.)

Actually, it's Pimm's and Ginger this week, as we consider the following awesomeness of Adobe's Vector Wrangler Extraordinaire. Read more » 

Hello, gang. I hope Memorial Day treated you well and you are now back in the saddle and riding high on this Tuesday, the 1st day of the 1st month of Summer.

Just a quick note to let you know: My insanely in-depth, comprehensive-as-all-get-out Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Fundamentals course has gone live on the lynda.com Online Training Library. It spans roughly 250 movies lasting 23 hours, meaning that it offers more than enough to satisfy both the lightest and the darkest of your vector-based cravings. Iit even includes the well-worn and infinitely flexible ghost robot, rendered here inside a surfboard. In all seriousness, who among us could resist riding the waves with one foot below his empty heart and another on his pitifully screaming mouth?

Not that I've ever actually surfed or anything. But I have rode the high seas of vector-based adventure for nigh on 23 years. And I've poured much of my experience into these videos. (After all, I have to save something back for the Advanced and Mastery courses.) Read more » 

A couple of nights ago, too much traffic knocked the site down for 10 full hours. Which made me ecstatic. Thanks for the chaos!

Meanwhile, the purpose for today’s post is to alert you of ongoing progress made on my CS5 One-on-One video series for lynda.com. First, regarding the Photoshop series (which goes live next week), below is a still from a video that I shot a couple of days ago. I had to rerecord a handful of movies because an image license fell through. So naturally I was working through some anger issues. But as always happens in these cases, the new videos are better than the old ones. Plus they include hand-drawn demos of a few tips and tricks, which are new to Photoshop CS5. The image below documents how to resize and adjust the hardness of a brush on-the-fly, if only you can interpret it.

Oh, and did I mention Photoshop CS5's revamped sharpen tool, once the worst tool in the program, now produces halfway decent results? Check it out. Read more » 

Some of you have asked, so I thought I'd let you know: It looks as though "Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Fundamentals," my comprehensive 194-movie, 20-hour video series for lynda.com, will go live the week of May 3. That is to say, just one week from Monday. As I've mentioned before, it includes roughly 99% new content and a slew of new features. But mostly, it's all about bringing you up to speed with how to use Photoshop, from cradle to grave---as I trust this macabre pencil sketch (which I use to explore the Image Size command) demonstrates in no uncertain terms. Hint: the sheep did it!

Meanwhile, I'm hard at work on "Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Fundamentals." Read more »