Hawaii Lover

I'll be the first to admit that I love Hawaii. Of the islands I have visited, Maui is my favorite. Hawaii is also the newest of the 50 states in the United States so I felt it might be night to salute it just before we celebrate Independence Day. The Hawaii Lover font combines a script and a grunge font into one really cool font. Some of the characters even include what looks to be a grungy orchid. Just looking at it has me thinking of a trip to the islands.

Run Your LCD Monitor at Native Resolution!

I covered the topic of running LCD monitors at their native resolution a little over a year ago. It is an extremely important topic that I'm going to discuss again today because of a phone call I had recently with a student from a previous CorelDRAW Unleashed Boot Camp.

This gentleman had spent over three hours on the phone with a tech support representative from Corel and they weren't able to find out why the edges of rectangles were distorted. At the end of the call, the support representative suggested that he give me a call. That definitely made me feel good!

Anyways, I tried the steps outlined by the customer and I had absolutely no problem with the rectangle showing distortion. Plus the customer had both printed and laser engraved the rectangle and it output without distortion. It was very obvious that the distortion was a function of the monitor.

We checked the monitor's settings and it was set to 1024 x 768 because his "eyes aren't as good as they used to be". Believe me, I understand that reasoning as much as anyone since I'm pretty sure bifocals are in my near future. I had him change his resolution to the native settings of his LCD monitor and the distortion was magically gone.

I just can't stress enough that you must run your LCD monitors at the native resolution or you will have problems! The upside is that you are able to get more information on the screen at the higher resolutions. I run mine at 2560 x 1600 on a 30" screen and absolutely love that I can have so much stuff available at all times. Or I have lots of extra room for designing, laying out documents or whatever else I'm doing at the moment.

Photo/Digital Video Lighting Kit

One of my goals this summer was to increase my photography skills. To that end I've completed one course in using a digital SLR and I will be starting another course next week. The quality of my pictures is already showing improvement.

An important thing to consider when taking pictures is to get good lighting. Last August I told you about the Portable Lighting Studio for shooting smaller objects. Just as the name implies, it is very portable. I have one and use it quite often. Today I'm going to focus on something a bit larger. The Pro 100 watt "Cool-Flo" Fluorescent Photo/Digital Video Lighting Kit provides you a total of four 300 watt equivalent lights with two reflective umbrellas and stands. While it is not nearly as portable as the Portable Lighting Studio, it does come with cases for the umbrellas and stands. I ordered a set for myself and am looking forward to doing some shooting with them in the near future.

They are fluorescent lights, so the color is a bit "cooler" than incandescent lights. It is easy to adjust the color temperature in your camera or RAW processing software to compensate for this. You'll also be able to avoid the heat and the electricity costs associated with incandescent lights. The lights are also designed for those who are filming video. So no matter the reason you need the lights, you might want to check this set out.

Contrast Masking with Corel PHOTO-PAINT

Hunter Elliott has a really interesting tutorial for Corel PHOTO-PAINT. It in he takes a cool picture and makes it even better by boosting the contrast in only part of an image. The process is called Contrast Masking and is a great way to make good images into great ones. Even better, it is a fairly simply process as long as you have a picture that lends itself well to this type of adjustment.

LineArt

I still remember the Christmas where I received a Spirograph. I flipped through the book that came with it and was fascinated with all of the cool patterns that could be created. The sad reality is that I never once was able to complete any of the patterns without the gear slipping or the pen running dry. I even scuffed up my knuckles a few times as they rubbed against the edge of the gears. In reading the reviews of the current version, the current version seems to still be cursed with the same problem.

The good news is that we can now create even better patterns with CorelDRAW. They work every time and your knuckles aren't any worse for the wear. To automate the process even further, give the free LineArt macro a try. Now if you click on that link, you may be a little lost since the site is in Russian. Luckily Google can translate the pages into English for those of us who don't understand Russian.

As you can see from the screen shots on the Web site, there are four different types of mathematical patterns that can be created. Each of the patterns allows you to adjust some variable to create a nearly endless supply of patterns. I wish I could tell what the words on the four tabs are in English so that we could all better understand what the variables might do. If any of you understand Russian, please post a comment with the translations.

The Web site claims the macro is for CorelDRAW X4. I have not tested it in earlier versions, but it is possible that it may work in them as well. If anyone tries in an earlier version and has success (or failure), post a comment and let us know.

Chinese Dragon

I was recently searching for vector dragon images. I came across a dragon I really like, even though it wouldn't work for the project at hand. Just in case I downloaded a copy of it so that I would have it for future usage. The file is supplied in SVG format and it will import just fine into recent versions of CorelDRAW. Included are both a full color version and a black and white outlined version. No matter what you need, you'll find it in this file.

Windows 7 Upgrades

It might be considered a stretch to call an operating system upgrade a widget. While Windows does include widgets, it is the base upon which all of your other software will run. Well, except for those of you using Linux, Mac or another operating system. Just a few days ago I was discussing the earliest versions of Windows with someone. Things were much different back then as you only ran Windows to run a Windows-specific program. For the most part the tide began turning with Windows 3.1.

The general perception of Windows Vista hasn't been a positive one. Admittedly I'm still happily running Windows XP on all but one machine. While I have the licenses to install Vista on these machines, I can't find any good reason to install Vista on them.

By contrast, I've yet to hear much negative information about Windows 7. The media has had a very favorable view of it and advanced users who have tried the beta versions have reported great success. As I don't have a spare machine to use for testing, I have not yet installed it here in the office. I fully expect to switch my Vista machine over to Windows 7 and I'll be due to get a new computer in the next six months and it will definitely get Windows 7.

Microsoft has said that Windows 7 will become available on October 22, 2009. To make sure that the new operating system gets off to a great start they are making pre-orders of upgrades available at very enticing prices. From what I understand, these prices are only in place until July 11 or until some unspecified number of copies are sold. So if you are going to upgrade, get a pre-order now and save some serious money.

The Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade has a list price of $119.99 and can be purchased in this early window for only $49.99. In Canada, the list price is $129.95 and the early purchase can be made for $64.99. Due to legal hurdles Microsoft is facing in Europe, there isn't a pre-sale available there right now.

Users wanting more features can go for the Windows 7 Professional Upgrade. The list price is $199.99 and the pre-order price is only $99.99. It can also be purchased in Canada where the list price is $249.95 and the pre-order price is $124.99.

Since many of you are CorelDRAW users, you are probably asking how well CorelDRAW will run on Windows 7. Top CorelDRAW users who have been running the beta releases of Windows 7 have had no problems with CorelDRAW X3 and X4. And you can bet that Corel's developers have been running Windows 7 through its paces and that future versions of CorelDRAW will be developed with Windows 7 in mind.

Are you ready to upgrade right away or will you happily stay with what you have? Post a comment and tell me your opinion.