September 12th, 2008
admin

When you select a font in InDesign® from the font menu, check the icons to the left of the font’s name. The icon is there to let you know the type format. The O indicates OpenType fonts, the TT is for TrueType fonts and the red a is for PostScript fonts. Get to know the advantages of each format.
September 9th, 2008
admin
Once you explore all of the characters in your favorite type face or font, you may want to see what else is hidden in the keyboard map for the font. For example, how many times have you wondered were the © symbol is located, or where the ® symbol for registered product names? Better yet, you may have the need to check out the full keyboard map for a glyph or symbol font like Zapf Dingbats or Carta. Glyph fonts like these are only a few of the available fonts to you in the lab. Alternative type characters or glyphs can be hard to find. Luckily inside of InDesign and Illustrator you can easily find a map of the keyboard layout. InDesign’s Glyph menu can be found by going to the top menu bar > find Window> scroll down to Type & Tables > then down to Glyphs. A window like the one above will appear. Select the font you want to see by clicking on the small arrow that is circled in red.
Danika Morphew-Tarbuck gave a demo to the class to teach us how to sew a leather wrapper around two signatures of drawing paper. Below is a photo of a sample that she created.

Danika used leather from a purse that she bought at a thrift store to use as the cover. Heavy weight drawing paper was used for the journal pages. She said sewing is easier if you use waxed linen thread. You will need two needles to sew this book.
Step by step photos can be seen by going to the Read more >. Read more…
In class, we discussed using Adobe CS3 Automated Web gallery creator script in Photoshop and Bridge. As I mentioned, you can use many programs to automatically generate web galleries from your image files. In my next post, I will list other programs. A program that I have been using for over a year is Adobe Lightroom. By far, this is one of the fastest ways to generate web galleries. Last week Adobe release a free Beta version to Lightroom version 2. You can download a copy from this link. You will need to create an account and agree to license terms. Once you do, you will see a link for a copy of the beta for Macintosh and for Windows machines. You may not have interest in the digital photo processing procedures of Adobe Lightroom, but while the Beta version is operational, you will have some very attractive web templates, that can be created easily. Let me know if you have questions or problems with the download or install.

I was searching for an answer to a question for a problem in InDesign and I discovered free training videos on the Adobe site. Go to Adobe Video Workshop On the top of the left column is the a list of training videos called Adobe Video Workshop. Let me know if you have any questions.

Watch this video to learn how to connect to the class server from your Apple computer.

Are you familiar with the Font book application in the Mac OS? Go to your Applications folder > look for the Font Book application> and launch it.
The second column from the left is a list of all installed fonts on your computer. Scroll the mouse over to the font column and select one. You can see the full layout of the typeface. As you scroll down the list of fonts you will dixcover that some fonts are mostly symbols. As you work on your website and digital glossary, you might want to spend time scanning through the many font options that are on the computer. We have many more fonts on the server. I sent you a link to a tutorial showing how to log on to the class server and how to add fonts to your computer workstation. Check your email.
Your classmate Dean found this free FTP program. Say it with me – IT IS FREE – But it installs only on Firefox. Copy and paste this link using FIREFOX not Safari
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/684
Then hit the INSTALL button It will install it in your FireFox brower. I will add a shot tutorial to configure it soon. That way it may be easier to add files to your web space.

If you use Adobe Photoshop, you might find this on line video tutorial of interest. Follow this link to a video by Matt Kloskowski. The series is part of the on line videos by Peachpit Press. The link that takes you to the video is at the bottom and is called Layer Masking 101 Tutorial.