A Few Oldies But Goodies

Over the past few days I've been doing some updates on some of the older tutorials on the Web site. In case you haven't read them recently, I wanted to highlight them. This will probably be the first of several blog posts highlighting older tutorials as I still have quite a few to update.

Back when David Karlins wrote Creating Web Page Background JPEG Files, it was common to use a small tile able bitmaps for the the background of Web pages. I don't think the technique is used very often these days, but there is still some valuable information you can pick up from the tutorial.

Mike Bresciani showed how you could take an old grayscale photo and give it color in his Adding Color to Black and White Photos with Corel PHOTO-PAINT. Certainly a few of the features have changed in Corel PHOTO-PAINT, but these techniques will still work today. Find an old grayscale image and give it a try!

Everyone loves t-shirts that are personalized. Ron McIntyre shows you how to create your own in Creating Stencils to Paint on T-Shirts. I certainly would have preferred that he create shirts heralding the National Champion Kansas Jayhawks instead of our rival, but the techniques are still something you can use to make stencils for your designs.

As I get more pages updated, I'll post the tutorials here so you can refresh your memory or even see these for the first time.

CorelDRAW X4 Unleashed Now Shipping!

We will begin shipping CorelDRAW X4 Unleashed on June 27th. Anyone who has pre-ordered the book will be processed first and then any new orders will be processed next. The Premium Bonus Content Edition will begin shipping near the end of July.

I am always thrilled when I finish and book and it begins shipping. This book definitely took more time for me than previous books. It has a total of 932 pages. If you are counting, that's 180 more pages than CorelDRAW X3 Unleashed. There were also modifications made to the page layout to allow more information to fit on a page. What does this mean to the reader? It means there is an enormous amount of new information! The new information certainly covers the new features in CorelDRAW X4, but it also provides more detailed information on features that have been around for a few versions.

There are also eleven hours and 34 minutes of videos. That's five hours more than CorelDRAW X3 Unleashed. The Premium Bonus Content Edition will add even more information and even more videos including Corel PHOTO-PAINT X4 Unleashed and 37 of Jeff Harrison's best Powertips!

Get your copy ordered today!

FoxIt Reader Provides Small, Fast PDF Reader

Everybody needs the ability to view PDF files, right? For most users this means you install Adobe Reader. A full install of Adobe Reader v8 takes up 210 MB on your hard drive and it can be a bit slow to load. A new version is on the way with even more features and I fear it will be even larger and slower. We'll soon find out.

The good news is that you don't have to use Adobe Reader to read PDF files. Foxit Reader is much smaller and faster. It only takes 7 MB to install (2.55 MB to download) and it loads lightning fast.

For the past few months I have been working with Foxit Reader and I was hesitate to include it with my CorelDRAW X4 Unleashed book because it wouldn't automatically open the Bookmarks panel even if it was specified in the PDF file. Foxit Reader 2.3 was released about a month ago and it solved this issue. So we're including both Adobe Reader and Foxit Reader with CorelDRAW X4 Unleashed and the user will have the option of which to install, if any.

For those of you developing PDF files, you really need to have both installed so you can test your files in both products. For the rest of you, I'd highly recommend you use Foxit Reader for its smaller footprint and superior speed!

CorelDRAW X4 Service Pack 1 Available for Download

When a new version of software comes out, there are always a few areas that could use tuning up to get it working just right. Corel released the first service pack for CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 today and it is available for immediate download. It is a 42 MB download and should take 5-10 minutes to install.

All of the details for what has been fixed along with the download link can be found on the CorelDRAW X4 Service Pack 1 page.

Once I've had more time to work with the new version, I'll discuss it a bit more.

Great Source for Color Combos

As a designer, you are always trying to find colors that work well together. I ran across a free tool today that can help you create color themes and I want to tell you a bit about it.

Kuler is a free tool on the Adobe Web site. One of its features is that it can create color themes (five color combos) from images posted on flickr. I don't know about you, but I've not used flickr. One of these days I'll have to give it a try.

The great part is that you can see all the themes that have been created right on the kuler Web site. If you have an Adobe ID, you can even download the themes as an Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) file. If you have Adobe's CS2 or CS3 suites, you can use the themes.

I'm a CorelDRAW guy through and through so I wanted to get some of the themes into CorelDRAW. So I used the Eyedropper in CorelDRAW to "Select From Desktop" and snag the colors from the kuler Web site. Once I had captured the five colors from a theme, I could tell CorelDRAW to create a palette from the document and I was all set.

So, visit kuler and create palettes from your favorite themes. Next thing you know, you'll have a nice library of palettes to use in your projects.

New Firefox and Opera Browsers Have Arrived

Regular readers will know how much I detest Internet Explorer. Unfortunately it is still the most-used browser simply because it exists on all Windows machines. Two of the biggest competitors have released new versions of their browsers this week and it is time you gave both of them a long look. Hey, they are free, so it doesn't cost you anything to get them!

Those of you who give the new browsers a try will find that they are faster, use less memory, have more features and are a much lower security risk than Internet Explorer. They also allow you to easily transfer your list of Favorites so there is really no downside at all to switching.

Opera 9.5 is considered a minor upgrade from Opera 9.2. The Opera folks claim that the new version is more than twice as fast at rendering HTML and JavaScript over the previous version. That's a huge jump! Downloading is also faster with the integrated BitTorrent distribution protocol. Sure there are tabs. You can block content you don't want. It handles newsfeeds. And did I mention it was free?

Firefox 3 was just released today and the folks from Mozilla are trying to set a world record for most downloads in a day. I will be switching to Firefox 3 as soon as the final version is available (I'm writing this a few hours before it is available for download). What will you find? It will be even more secure than Firefox 2.0. It does a better job of managing passwords and add-ons. Downloads can be resumed. Even easier to bookmark and organize your favorite pages. Throw in the much faster performance and much less memory used and you have quite a few new features. Oh yea, and it is free too! You might also be able to say you were involved in setting a world record.

Users who are developing for the Web will definitely want to download both new browsers so that they can test their sites in these new environments. The rest of you should want to download at least one of them because they are just plain better browsers than Internet Explorer. For most users it will take less than five minutes to download, install and convert your favorites. Give them a try, I think you'll like them!

Great Artwork for use in CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator and more

I'm always looking around for new sources of material for use in CorelDRAW and other graphics software. That recently led me to discover Go Media's Arsenal Professional Design Weaponry.

You'll find some of the coolest vector artwork you've ever seen. Many of the pieces were created by the Go Media design team for major rock bands, fashion companies and Fortune 500 companies. There are also packages of bitmap textures for backgrounds, fonts and motion graphics.

Of course there are also some cool freebies to download. There is no doubt you'll find something that you can use in your projects. You'll probably find many things you want!