Preflighting

Ever wonder why the earth spins the way it does? Ever wonder what comes after humans in terms of evolution? Today I wont be writing about any of that shit. Instead I have to write another boring ass blog about design stuff. I can see why though,I mean this is a design class but I wouldn’t mind some change, you know? So I’m gonna have to talk about preflighting in Indesign. Apparently it’s that thing that keeps letting me know that I have missing links in my article project. So what it is ,is a panel that has collection of all of the shit that’s  missing from your work on your computer. like if a font is used in your project at school and you decide to take this project home and finish it there but the font you used at school isnt on your computer then your preflight panel will let you know that you’re missing the correct font. This covers missing pictures,fonts  non printable shit, I mean its like a spellcheck but covers visual elements. This is from adobe:

Preflight panel overview

Before printing or handing off the document to a service provider, you can perform a quality check on the document. Preflight is the industry-standard term for this process. While you edit your document, the Preflight panel warns of problems that can prevent a document or book from printing or outputting as desired. These problems include missing files or fonts, low-resolution images, overset text, and a number of other conditions.

You can configure preflight settings to define which conditions are detected. These preflight settings are stored in preflight profiles for easy reuse. You can create your own preflight profiles or import them from your printer or another source.

To take advantage of live preflighting, create or specify a preflight profile in the early stages of creating a document. If Preflight is turned on, a red circle icon appears in the status bar when InDesign detects any problems. You can open the Preflight panel and view the Info section to get basic guidance for fixing the problems.

Preflight panel

A. Selected error B. Click page number to view page item C. Info area offers suggestions for fixing the selected error D. Specify a page range to limit error checking

Open the Preflight panel

• Choose Window > Output > Preflight.
• Double-click the Preflight icon at the bottom of document window. The Preflight icon is green if no errors are detected or red if errors are detected.

Use of Gradients & Brushes in Illustrator

How to use gradients with brushes on illustrator.How the hell am I supposed to know,I’m a barber. But for the sake of getting these things done I’ll just inform you. So from what I can gather gradients work a little differently in illustrator than they do in photoshop but if you have experience with them in photoshop then you wont be totally lost.. Here’s a quote from design.tuts.com regarding the brush tool in illustrator. I wasn’t sure how to put it into words.

“Illustrator’s Paintbrush Tool and Brush Panel are some of it’s most powerful tools. With the Paintbrush Tool and Brush Panel you can dress up your vector paths into compelling flourishes, patterns, tapered edges, and more. In this tutorial, I will break down the basics of the Paintbrush Tool and Brush Panel and show you how to create your own brushes.
The Paintbrush Tool
Basically, the Paintbrush Tool functions like the Pencil Tool, allowing you to click and drag to create a path. The difference is the Paintbrush Tool applies predefined vector art to the paths you create. This might seem like a simple distinction, but using brushes will greatly improve you Illustrator productivity and helps you create artwork you never thought possible.”

Design File for Full Bleed

Yo this is a post that just completely goes over my head.Like I have no idea what the hell I’m supposed to be discussing/describing here.. I’m gonna look up a tutorial and try to relay this to you. Alright so what this topic is referring to is the area outside of the intended print size. So what you’ll want to do is create a file in Indesign that has a bleed area 1/8″  so “Therefore, if an 8.5″ x 11″ document with no margins was desired, the designed file must be 8.75″ x 11.25″.”

An example of the above flyer with no margins that was originally designed as 8.75″ x 11.25″ with 1/8″ bleeds on all sides is shown below. The area outside of the dotted red lines is the bleed of the image.

The reason for extending the design 1/8″ on all sides for full bleed

The most common mistake when customers submit files they want printed full bleed with no margins is submitting a digital file that is designed with the same dimension as the desired printed file (e.g. submitting an 8.5″ x 11″ digital file to be printed as 8.5″ x 11″ with no margins). These customers typically ask “why do I need the extra 1/8″ added?” The reason why is twofold:

All printers have a very slight print shift when printing a file.
Therefore, the document that’s being printed needs to be printed on a larger sheet of paper so the printer can print the full dimension of the document without having to worry about very minor shifting errors. Since the printer prints on a larger sheet of paper, the paper needs to be cut to the proper dimension of the file. Without a larger sheet of paper, the resulting print edges might have white slivers after cutting. Therefore there needs to be 1/8″ bleeds in order to account for standard print shifts so no white slivers show after the cutting process. The dotted red lines in the full bleed 8.75″ x 11.25″example picture above are the cut mark lines.

Creating a South Park Character

Some more crap before I’m completely done with these blog posts. I managed to make a South Park character not that long ago with very little help so writing this tutorial seems like a waste of time but since it’s required I’ll just do it. Hell I’m not even sure how to explain half of the things I did to make my character..Which btw looks like this:

Damn after looking at it again I’m actually pretty proud of how it turned out. Anyway back to the tutorial.So the first thing you’re gonna do is open Illustrator. Create a new project with a pixel size of 500×500. Next you’re gonna want to go online and get a reference picture. Any South Park character will do, it’s really just to make sure your scale and proportions isn’t off.From them you’ll want to create the basic shapes that make up the character I did them one by one and by that I mean I would create my shapes using the pen tool and set them aside so that I can make sure they match the proportions of the original reference shot. I guess I could’ve just fucked around with the opacity levels before hand but like I said I was just trying to figure this shit out on my own. So from there its all pretty simple. Use the curve pen tool to create the curves for shit like the eyelids and the hairline. Certain parts of the body have a stroke of one like the thumb and eyelids. The rest you can figure out. Just choose the right colors for the fill of your shapes and you should end up with a South Park character. Of course it wont be anywhere near as good as mine…

my experience using indesign

again!!!! another sack boring blog, about nothing you care about reading. Again, its just for a grade, its just for hours, i don’t want to do this, but i have to. if not ill keep getting bad grades and get kicked out, then i lose my benefits, and that be homeless and then more exaggerated stuff hahaha. Anyways this blog is about my indesign experience….I hated it!!!!! I DONT LIKE IT AND HOPE I DONT HAVE TO USE IT AGAIN..ILL STICK TO PHOTOSHOP, AND FOR ILLUSTRATOR! indesign was used to make magazines and booklets. its confusing and took me days to learn. i almost gave u on it after the 3rd day, but i sort of got the hang of it. and still turned in crappy work. i hated it i hated it i hated it. Why can’t photo shop do all this…. not maybe there is a lot of typos in this blog, and stuff don’t make sense, but teacher said i can do them in less then 10 mins, so trying to put it to the test. so, what did i like about indesign, NOTHING!! WHAT DID I NOT LIKE ABOUT IT, everything!!!! i had to use it to recreate a magazine spread…used it to create a table of contents and used it to create a couple of ads inside the magazine. So i ran out of things to say, so I’m just going to say again how i hate these blogs, and ho i think they’re pointless.. and how i don’t like writing them. i already told you what i thought about indesign.. i really don’t know what else to write. so I’m just going to write about what i plan on doing this weekend. work!! maybe i can get paid to use photoshop indesign and illustrator to make some type of flyer. make some cash on the side. ok I’m out bye

my experience using illustrator

again! heres another blog about a boring subject. AND AGAIN ITS JUST FOR A GRADE AND HOURS, BECAUSE I DONT REALLY CARE ABOUT THESE BLOGS. this blog is about my experience with illustrator and what i liked about it and what i didn’t like about it. i liked illustrator because i can make shapes, whatever i wanted to do i can do it. now, i don’t have that down as good as photoshop, since i spent more time on photoshop…but illustaor was able to do things photoshop couldn’t, like make shapes. anyways there isn’t much for me to write about on these subjects besides a quick what i like and don’t like. i can’t really remember what i didn’t like, because like i said i didn’t spend that much time on it..i used illustrator to make a south park character, i thought it was pretty cool, the class liked it, but again, a piece of crap grade, ha! whatever, ill just stick to doing the minimum from now on just to get by, ayyyyy TURN UP!! anyways, i made the beard with the pen tool, and a bunch of other stuff which i don’t think i could of made with anything else besides illustrator. if i had to choose between photoshop and illustrator, i would choose photoshop, thats more of my thing…actually maybe depending on the project, but since I’m more comfortable with photoshop, thats what ill focus more on. the next blog will be about indesign which i really don’t like…took me a few days to even get close to getting the hang of, it was all a mess, it was complicated, i didn’t like it at all. Anyways back to illustrator, Actually i will probably get a bad grade for this one too, so jet let me stop now… so this is how i end my blog, and move on to the next blog…and again probably get another bad grade because i don’t have a picture in it.. dueces

My experience with photoshop

soooooooooo, heres another boring blog about something i don’t care to write about. Just doing this to turn in for a grade and to get my hours for the week. Because honestly these blogs are a waste of time BRO!!!so lets start this boring article with the fact the i like to recreate movie posters now. Everything i learned in photo shop actually helped me make some none on the side. see, these blogs are a waste of time, but the actual class and hands on are very useful. i like how a question pops into my head like ” hmmm i wonder if i can do this and that, nasa, most likely not, this photoshop program isn’t that detailed” and the teacher shows you it can. its pretty cool, but like i said thats cool, these blogs aren’t. now pure probably reading this like, yo when is he going to stop talking about these blogs, and I’m here to tell you ill keep talking about it throughout out this blog. Anyways, i really don’t have any complaints about it, especially since I’m just starting to get the hang of it. i was paid already for 4 different projects outside of class, nothing crazy, but still got me paid. people pay for what YOU know. I used photoshop to make some flyers, and some birthday stuff.. pretty cool. Again, these blogs are a waste of time, because i don’t care who reads this. I’m just doing this for a grade and hours, i can care less if someone stumbles across my page and reads my blogs. Anyways, i like that i can get photoshop for cheap since I’m a student. Photoshop at first was really hard, i didn’t get it, it was frustrating. but in a week, i started getting the hang off it. i did a pretty dope movie poster, classmates said i had the best one in class… weather its true or not, it felt good… but apparently it was crap, because i got a piece of crap grade for it.. oh well.. anyways that was my photo shop experience. ill be turning this in now for another piece of crap grade, probably because i didn’t put a crappy picture in this blog…deuces.

Spot Colors

So here we have a another boring ass subject. Spot colors. In my mind I think about vintage comic strips and whatnot. Like being to see the dots that make up the images colors. Now I’m gonna see if I’m anywhere near the right meaning.

A spot color is a specially mixed ink using in printing. Spot color inks come in a rainbow of colors, including some specialty inks such as metallic and fluorescent.

Unlike CMYK or process color which creates colors by laying down layers of just 4 specific inks, spot colors are pre-mixed and you use one ink for each color in the publication. You can also use tints of a spot color to get the appearance that you’re using more colors without the expense of additional inks. Damn, well I guess I was wrong…This method for printiing seems like a complete waste.Just like this blog post.I’ll probably never print using this method. It just seems expensive as hell and meant more for hyper professional/rich people work.

Web Safe Colors

What Are Web Safe Colors?Who Cares?

Web Safe, or Browser Safe palettes as they are also referred to, consist of 216 colors that display solid, non-dithered, and consistent on any computer monitor, or web browser, capable of displaying at least 8-bit color (256 colors). The reason why this palette contains only 216 colors, instead of the maximum 256 colors, is that only 216 out of the basic 256 colors will display exactly the same on all computers.

Web Safe colors are defined in terms of RGB values of 0, 51, 102, 153, 204, and 255. These numbers might seem a bit random, but are in fact made up of multiples of 51. OK, you say, where does the 51 come from? Well I was asking myself the same question before I discovered that 51 is 20% of 255. (NOTE: As 0 is considered a value, we say 0-255 instead of 1-256). 102 is 40% of 255, and so on. So out of this randomness comes order. Of sorts.
Below are all the websafe colors, along with their hexadecimal values.

Before the software companies began including Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer palettes in their applications, one needed to specify Web Safe colors using the 6-value formula addressed in the previous paragraph. Here’s a chart of how these colors are defined in Netscape’s palette. Six groups of colors (36 colors per group) make up the entire palette. In this example, all squares begin with a common value of 255 red. The blue component starts at 255 for the first row and decreases per row by increments of 51. The green component decreases per column as you move to the right in the same increments. The next set of 36 squares are identical except that the red component in each color is reduced by 51 to 204. The next group have a red component of 153 and so on. The last group of 36 squares contain 0% red.

The Difference Between Photo Manipulation & Digital Painting

Heres something I didn’t really need to research to come to an understanding about. But I do use my homie’s site to help get this post done.Anywho ,a photo manipulation is as the name implies, the altering of an actual picture.

Photo Manipulation

In digital editing, photographs are usually taken with a digital camera and input directly into a computer. Transparencies, negatives or printed photographs may also be digitized using a scanner, or images may be obtained from stock photography databases. With the advent of computers, graphics tablets, and digital cameras, the term image editing encompasses everything that can be done to a photo, whether in a darkroom or on a computer. Photo manipulation is often much more explicit than subtle alterations to color balance or contrast and may involve overlaying a head onto a different body or changing a sign’s text, for examples. Image editing software can be used to apply effects and warp an image until the desired result is achieved. The resulting image may have little or no resemblance to the photo (or photos in the case of compositing) from which it originated. Today, photo manipulation is widely accepted as an art form.

And Digital Drawing is just a piece thats created from the ground up digitally.

Digital Drawing/Painting – 

Apart from separation of carriers, the main difference between digital and traditional painting is the non-linear process. That is, an artist can often arrange his painting in layers that can be edited independently. Also, the ability to undo and redo strokes create nonlinear intervals in the creative process. Digital painting is also different in how it employs the techniques and study of traditional painting because of the surface differences and the wider variety of tools. The digital artist has at his disposal several tools not available to the traditional painter. Some of these include: a virtual palette consisting of millions of colors, (however these colors are ultimately limited by the capabilities of screen and printing technologies, whilst traditional forms of painting deal with pigment as a tangible material) almost any size canvas or media, and the ability to take back mistakes, as well as erasers, pencils, spray cans, brushes, combs, and a variety of 2D and 3D effect tools. A graphics tablet and a stylus allows the artist to work with precise hand movements simulating a real pen and drawing surface, while other programms (Adobe Eazel) are developed for fingerpainting directly on the screen. Both tablets and touch screens can be pressure-sensitive, allowing the artist to vary the intensity of the chosen media on the screen. There are tablets with over two thousand different levels of pressure sensitivity