Recently in Graphics Category
I came across the image at right, by Melanie Cooper, while going through some of the recent submissions to the January Photos.com Challenge on Graphics.com. It's a delicate, cleanly-rendered image that makes good use of two of this month's supplied base images, but what struck me more was a sense of familiarity. I'd seen something like it before in the Challenge galleries, but where? It took a lot of browsing but I finally found the reference, which turned out to be the base image for the very first Photos.com Challenge, launched way back in February, 2004.
When time is short and there's work to be done, the simplest solution is to stick with tried and true tools, an approach that keeps small software developers from even showing up on the radar screen. However, there is life beyond the Creative Suite, both from the perspective of add-ons to applications such as Photoshop and as replacements for others, such as Illustrator.
I have a confession: one of my secret passions is Bézier curves. You know, the ones first developed in 1959 by Paul de Casteljau and later named after French engineer Pierre Bézier, who employed them in his work as a designer for the Renault car company. For the first generation of digital designers in the 1980s, Bézier curves were what constituted their work, since Adobe Illustrator and PostScript fonts relied on these for the outlines of both graphical elements and type.
How would you react if Adobe or Quark decided to make an application that you relied on for your graphics or publishing work open source? To start, the entire code base would be released under the GPL (GNU General Public License), which would not only place the code in public hands, but make ongoing development completely transparent. While there's little chance Adobe or Quark will ever go this route, that's exactly what Xara Corp., a small British developer, has decided to do with its Xara illustration application.
The main strength of Photoshop is also for those who are occasional users its main drawback—it has evolved to such a degree of sophistication that there are typically multiple ways to achieve the graphical task at hand. To confidently construct a path wending through the program's multiplicity of features and settings to get a job done effectively typically requires extensive daily use over a long period of time. Hence the popularity of books and online tutorials that show readers exactly what steps to follow to perform a particular task. We add Photoshop tutorials to the Graphics.com and Dynamic Graphics magazine sites every week for just this reason.
Okay, I lied. A few weeks ago I mentioned that the British software developer Xara Corp. was rumored to soon be shipping a new version of its eponymous Windows illustration application. In fact, I knew it all along, but was sworn to secrecy. I also knew the new version would improve on the current Xara X. But what I didn't know was that the latest iteration, now dubbed Xara Xtreme, would be dramatically less expensive—to the point of running the risk of not being taken seriously. But Xara Xtreme is in fact a serious, highly-capable illustration tool.
I can usually be heard around this time of month breathing just such a sigh of relief as I browse through the growing number of entries in the current Photos.com Challenge on Graphics.com. If you're not familiar with it, the concept itself has been around for some time: visitors can download and modify an image, then upload it to a gallery where others can add comments. Sounds simple. And in fact, the Challenge began simply enough in February of last year with the base image at right.
I have a weakness for grand projects that exude a kind of Tower of Babel odor. The grander and more difficult to achieve, the better. So I'll resist the temptation to invoke the name of Saint Jude Thaddeus in relation to a recent initiative to create a universal vector graphics translator. On the contrary, I wish this Open Source software project, driven by Scratch Computing, all the best. Wouldn't we all like to live in a world in which the current profusion of graphical file formats was more manageable?
What do cheesy religious knick-knacks and an early Rolling Stones album have in common? If your answer was that they both use 3D lenticular effects, then you win the digital cigar. While “lenticular” is the technical term, more often such images are simply referred to as stereographic and come in several variations. Some change from one image to another as your angle of view shifts, an effect referred to as a “flip”, while the Stones album used a 3D effect (as near as I can remember—it was the 60s, after all).
Would you upload a file to a Web site and pay to have a large-format print delivered to you, a co-worker or a client, as early as the next day? Seems to me such a service might have its uses. Say you're an in-house designer and your firm is exhibiting at a trade show. Suddenly there's a flurry of interest in a product that's not represented well at the show and a large display graphic is required asap for the show booth. However, you're hundreds or thousands of miles away.
