Deke’s Techniques

Your weekly quick-fix of Deke, with ideas you may inspire or inform your own projects.

Tracing a Specific Letterform with a Shape Tool in Adobe Illustrator 2021

Deke uses the new Snap to Glyph option in Adobe Illustrator 2021 to fill in the counters of a few O's with a relative ease that was previously hard to come by.

Snapping to a Specific Letterform in Adobe Illustrator (Using Snap to Glyph)

Deke shows you the ups and downs and in-betweens of the Snap to Glyph feature in Illustrator, that allows you to align your object with a specific letterform (and a specific part thereof).

Snapping to Letterforms in Adobe Illustrator

Deke explores Adobe Illustrator 2021's ability to snap objects into alignment with different parts of letterforms, which Adobe calls Snap to Glyph

Aligning to Point Type in Adobe Illustrator

Deke demonstrates the immense usefulness of Adobe Illustrator's new Align to Glyph features, which give you better control when aligning to point or area type.

Blending Vectors with a Pixel-Based Photograph in Photoshop

Deke uses layer effects and some meticulous masking in Photoshop to make text on the side of his van look like it belongs there.

Drawing Arrows in Photoshop 2021

Deke takes you on a road trip with Photoshop's Line tool and points the way with a quasi-dynamic arrowhead.

Combining the Best of JPEG and Raw iPhone Photos

Deke shows you how to use Photoshop to combine the best parts of a detail rich raw photo and well-processed JPEG version taken from your mobile phone.

Using Camera Matching Profiles in Camera Raw (or Lightroom)

Hidden inside Adobe Camera Raw (or Lightroom) are camera matching profiles that can give you a good head start for developing your raw photos.

New Ways to Scale Type in Adobe Illustrator 2021

Deke explores the new feature in Illustrator 2021 that allows you to set the height of your fonts based on things like x-height or Cap height.

Color Grading: Blending and Balance

Deke demonstrates, as only he does, the Blending and Balance sliders for the Color Grading feature of Camera Raw and all its Adobe cousins.

Color Grading in Camera Raw

Deke shows you how to apply color adjustments with the new Color Grading feature in Camera Raw (and Lightroom, too)

Illustrator on the iPad: Gradients and Repeats

Deke returns to Illustrator on the iPad one more time in order to build the sun of hope and civility with the Freeform Gradient tool and Repeat feature.