Tutorial Tuesday: Digital Graphics Magazine

Today we're going to look at a free magazine, Digital Graphics, for those in working with large format graphics. According to the description of the magazine; they provide printer and software reviews, file management, ink and media selection, tips on workflow enhancement and more. I've been receiving the magazine for several years now and I've always found something useful in each issue. The subscription is completely free, you'll just have to provide some information on yourself.

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Sunday Stock: Power Graphics

Logo design is probably one of the most difficult areas of graphic design. A simple graphic is used to portray a company in all of their marketing materials. Power Graphics Volume 3 includes a number of graphics that can be used to build logos or pretty much any other type of graphic. There are a total of ten categories of graphics included in the collection. They are: Flames, Retro, Gangsta, Speed, Mascots, Sports, Offroad, Surf, Rebel and Tuner. All of the graphics are high-quality vector images that output well in most every production environment that CorelDRAW supports.

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Hump Day Hardware: Mice

I've talked about two of the major tools for interacting with your computer, graphics tablets and keyboards. Today we're going to talk about mice.

Those of you who read the post on tablets will know that I rarely use a mouse. If you have joined us to CorelDRAW Unleashed Boot Camp, you've never seen me pick up a mouse. While I rarely use one, it is something that is a requirement on a computer. If there is a driver problem with your tablet, you need a way to point long enough to get things working again. Some of you may even prefer to work with a mouse, though I find it hard to understand. I guess you just haven't spent much time with a tablet.

One problem I've always had with mice is that they tend to wear out too quickly. Part of the problem was the old mice with the ball in them would get dirty or would mechanically break down. Most of the newer mice have a laser in them for tracking movement so there is nothing to mechanically wear out or get gunked up.

A pet name that I've given to mice over the years is "soap on a rope" or "brick on a string". I can't even use those names any more since many of the mice are cordless. I do recommend you keep a corded mouse handy in case the cordless mouse stops working! It can stay in a closet, but make sure you have one somewhere as you'll never know when it might come in handy.

Since I'm not a big mouse user, I did some research to try and figure out the best mouse available. This research led to the Logitech MX Revolution Cordless Laser Mouse. It lists for $99.99 and sells for $84 on Amazon. If you want to save even more, Amazon sells a refurbished version for under $60. You'll find that it fits your hand nicely and has a ton of buttons, wheels and other useful features. If you need one for a laptop, look to the Logitech VX Revolution Cordless Laser Mouse for Notebooks.

I still believe you should be using a Wacom tablet the majority of the time when you are creating graphics. But for those times when you must have a mouse, the Logitech listed here is a darned good one.

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Tutorial Tuesday: Best Web Graphics

CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT are very popular tools for creating Web graphics. Notice I said graphics, not the HTML code for the page. If you don't have a good handle on how to best utilize the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite to create graphics for the Web, it is very easy to make mistakes.

Hunter Elliott has written an excellent tutorial on creating Web graphics. While the description says it is for CorelDRAW 9-12, it works equally well for X3 and X4. You'll learn when it is best to use a GIF or JPEG and how to properly create them. You'll also learn about PNG files and using PNG transparency. What about Web safe colors? Yes, those are covered and you'll see they aren't really that safe or that necessary. These and many more topics are covered in the tutorial.

That tutorial will have you well on the way to creating graphics for a Web site. But many users are confused about the best way to use those graphics as part of a Web site. For that, you need another tool that is designed for creating Web pages and sites. Probably the most popular tool is Adobe Dreamweaver CS3. It comes with a lot of power and a fairly hefty price. For just over half the price, Microsoft's Expression Web 2 gives you a very powerful tool for building Web sites. Unlike FrontPage, the new product creates much cleaner code and is worth a look. For those looking for a product under $100, check out Namo WebEditor. There are some free tools such as Nvu and Alleycode that might get the job done for you.

Personally I'm a big fan of hand coding my pages. Everyone creating Web content should have a good grasp of HTML code no matter what tool you use. If you understand HTML, a code editor simply makes writing the code a lot easier. Unlike the WYSIWYG tools, it doesn't introduce extra bloated code making your pages much more efficient. I've been using HomeSite for years now. It has been absorbed by Dreamweaver so we'll look elsewhere for solutions. One product I've used is TopStyle. It was created by the same person who created the original HomeSite and has some great features for creating pages and CSS stylesheets. I use it occasionally but still turn to HomeSite for most of my coding. Other users have highly recommended I switch to WeBuilder 2008. It certainly looks promising and I will give it a test drive when I have time to explore further.

The key here is to use the best tools for the job. CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT create great graphics and the others tools mentioned can help you use those graphics for a Web page or Web site. Do you have a favorite tool I haven't mentioned? Leave a comment and tell us about it.

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Hump Day Hardware: Graphics Tablets

When you were learning to draw as a kid, did your parents hand you a crayon or a bar of soap? I think most of you learned with a crayon and yet there are a large number of people who attempt to draw on their computer with a bar of soap otherwise known as a mouse.

Today we're goint to talk about graphics tablets. With a tablet, you use a pen (or a mouse) on the tablet's surface as a replacement for your traditional pointing device. You can still use a mouse or trackball or pointing stick or whatever else if you like. All pointing devices will be active. It isn't just for graphics software either, it will work in all software though it may provide more features in your graphics software. For those who have experience some wrist pain from extended mousing sessions, you might even find that the tablet will take the pain away. If you've never used a tablet before, you might find it takes you a day or two to adjust to the absolutely positioning it offers simply because it is different than the relative positioning used with a mouse. It is just like learning to drive a stick shift. The first day you wonder how anyone can drive the thing. After a few days you don't even notice pushing the clutch and shifting gears.

Now that you know a bit about tablets, let's get one thing very clear. As far as I'm concerned there is only one brand you should consider buying, Wacom. Now as you shop for tablets, you might see other brands that look good and sound good and have lower prices. Please, resist the temptation, they cost less for a reason. In the last day there has been a discussion in one of the coreldraw.com forums about another brand of tablet not working right. Others who had owned non-Wacom tablets chimed in about problems they had with their tablets. When they switched to a Wacom, everything worked fine. If you end up having to buy two tablets, was the other brand really a bargain?

Now that I've told you why you should only consider Wacom, let's talk about the three different product lines available. For those who want the least expensive tablet, the Bamboo line is what you want. The least expensive has a list price of $69.99 and you can definitely find it discounted a little bit from there. Personally I'd recommend you at least look at the Bamboo Fun. It lists for $99.99 so it is $30 more. But where the Bamboo only gives you a pen, the Fun adds a mouse and some great graphics software (Adobe Photoshop Elements 5, Corel Painter Essentials 3 and Nik Color Efex Pro 2). Both of these tablets have a drawing area of around 4" x 5" so they are fairly compact. There is also a larger version of the Bamboo Fun where the active area is 8.5" x 5.3". It also lists for $100 more.

The next line of tablets is the Intuos line. It comes in four sizes that I'll mention here: 4" x 6", 6" x 8", 6" x 11" and 9" x 12". Those of you outside North America will get the same basic tablets with metric sizes. There are some other sizes, but these are the sizes that are most popular. If you want the best, go for the Intuos line as both the tablets and pens offer more features. There are separate areas for scrolling, programmable buttons, the pens have more pressure sensitivity levels and the pens support extra features like tilt.

For those of you who want to draw directly on your screen, look at the Cintiq line of tablets. In this line, the tablet is integrated into an LCD monitor. Yes, you'll pay a lot more for this. I've always had my tablet just to the right of my keyboard and it works just fine. This allows me to get the best monitor possible.

We keep a page on the Graphics Unleashed site that lists the whole line of Wacom tablets with links to purchase them from Amazon. Even if you just want to check prices, you might want to give this page a look.

One thing I know for sure. If you haven't yet tried a tablet, you'll find it to be a much better tool for working in all graphics software. I use my tablet 99% of the time and don't even think of using a mouse no matter what I'm doing. The only time I use the mouse is on those rare occasions when I play a game since it is hard to shoot aliens by tapping the pen on the tablet.

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Sunday Stock: Design Contests to Win Stock Subscriptions

I'm going to take a slight departure from my normal Sunday Stock post. Chris Dickman told me about a series of design contests going on at his graphics.com site. The winners of the contests will receive a free subscription to a stock site.

Go to the Gallery page on graphics.com and you'll see the various contests listed. Click on the title to get the details on the contest along with the prizes. Even if you don't feel like you have what it takes to win, look through the galleries for inspiration from the submitted designs. You might even realize that you do have what it takes!

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Hump Day Hardware: nVidia Graphics Cards

We are graphics professionals and we use graphics software on a non-stop basis. Thus it is important for us to get a display that gives us a high-quality image. Yes, a good monitor is very important. Regardless of your monitor, it is very important to have a good graphics card to drive the monitor.

These days there are really three major choices for video cards. First is video on the motherboard. This is not a good choice. It might be the least expensive in the short term, but it will cost you more time and trouble in the long run. Second is an ATI card. ATI has been around for a long time and they make good cards, but these days they are definitely not the best. Even so, the driver running the card is every bit as important as the hardware and I just don't trust ATI's drivers. That leaves nVidia cards as the very obvious best choice.

Recently nVidia released a new series of cards that easily runs the various benchmarks much faster than any previous card from any manufacturer. In fact, they won the tests with pre-release drivers that are certain to get better with time. Unless you are playing the latest and greatest games, you probably don't need this kind of speed. But that doesn't mean a fast card isn't of benefit.

As designers we tend to want to run our monitors at higher resolutions. This requires more horsepower to push the larger number of pixels around. If you are working with dual monitors, you'll need even more horsepower because there are twice as many pixels.

If you want the latest and greatest then you want the nVidia GTX 280. No, it isn't cheap, but it is loaded with speed. You can take one step back on the speed and save yourself around $100 by going with the nVidia GTX 260. Believe me, you'll still have a graphics card faster than 99.9% of the planet, at least in the short term. To save even more money, you can buy a card that is a bit over a year old, the nVidia 8800GTS. This is the card I have in my machine and I paid nearly three times as much as it costs today after rebate. It is a great card, it just isn't the latest and greatest. But if you want bang for the buck, it definitely delivers!

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Site Updates, Blog Updates and More

Today I spent most of the day updating the home page of the CorelDRAW Unleashed site. Not only did I want the page to be visually appealing, I wanted to make sure it was easy to find the training product that best met your needs for learning how to use CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT. I'll be doing similar updates to the Graphics Unleashed site in the near future that are much more extensive. If you have suggestions for ways we can make either of the sites better meet your needs, please leave your suggestion in a comment.

There will also be changes coming to this blog in the near future. I haven't always been good at posting every day and I want to change that. I want to make sure to get you new information on a daily basis and possible to have multiple posts on a given day. One example would be to suggest a free font every Friday in a post. I'm making a list of other categories where I can provide you with examples on a regular basis. Again, I'd like your input. Post any of your suggestions in a comment. Not only do I want to provide information more regularly, I want to make sure it is the information that is most useful to you.

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Design Studio Packages Loaded with Apparel Templates

There are many CorelDRAW users creating graphics for apparel. Two new packages have been released that are loaded with high-quality graphics to be used for apparel. Design Studio packages can be bought individually or get both volumes for a discounted price. They are loaded with graphics, templates, fonts, distress overlays and a full color book loaded with examples.

This is a great collection for anyone doing screen printer, garment printing, embroidery and more. And for those using Decostudio, it gives you the multi-decoration artwork that will really show off the capabilities of Decostudio.

Check out the sample images from this collection and you'll find that it can bring even more creativity to the products you are creating.

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Easier Searching and Bookmarking

We've made a few changes to the interface of the Graphics Unleashed Web site in the last couple of weeks. Our goal is to make the site even more useful to you. These changes are small changes overall, but we hope their usefulness outweighs the size of the change.

Users are always looking for that nugget of information on the current design problem they need to solve. We've always had a Google search box to search the Graphics Unleashed site in the top navigation bar. Unfortunately it was getting lost next to other items. Since this is such an important function, we have moved the search box to the upper left of the page. Now if there is something you need to find, it should be easier to find it.

The next item we added is a Bookmark link to the upper right of the page. When you hover over this cool widget, a number of choices will pop down that allow you to bookmark the current page in a wide variety of places. This makes it easier for you to keep track of the pages that interest you the most. We like it when you bookmark as it also helps us get new traffic. Some of the services will require that you have an account so that the links get saved with your account. To the best of my knowledge, all of the services are completely free.

These changes have only been made to the Graphics Unleashed site so far, but we plan to soon make the same changes to the CorelDRAW Unleashed site. I hope you find both of these changes useful and we'll certainly be on the lookout for other changes we can make to improve the sites for you.

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Beware the Academic Version of CorelDRAW

I got an e-mail last night from someone asking why they were unable to get the Jigsaw Puzzle Creator add-on to CorelDRAW to work. I noticed that the e-mail came from someone with a .edu e-mail address and asked if he was using the Academic version. Sure enough, that was the problem.

Just so we're clear, the special version is called CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 Student and Teacher Edition. It is created so those in the academic community with limited budgets can still afford to work with CorelDRAW. Most of the popular software packages are available in Academic versions. Anyone who is a student or teacher, and can prove it, is eligible to buy. The package retails for $99 and sells for only $79.99 at Amazon.

Now let's talk about why it truly costs less and why you shouldn't be buying it. There are no printed manuals included. Obviously Corel can save money by not having to print the books and the decrease in the box weight helps on shipping costs. The hidden trap is that VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) is not included. It is a Microsoft product and Corel has to pay licensing fees to include it. So by leaving it out, they save a few more bucks on this special edition. This is what bit the person posing the e-mail question to me. For the most part, this eliminates all plug-ins and add-ons for CorelDRAW from working!

There are also some legalities about the Academic version that are often overlooked. You can't use it to make money. How many people are buying it to save money that are truly going to be using it for their business? My guess is that a large percentage of sales would violate this rule. The Academic version is not eligible for upgrades. So when you realize that VBA is not included or that you shouldn't be using it, you must buy the full version.

From time to time I hear grumbling about the "high cost" of CorelDRAW. The people who tend to complain the most are those using it to run their business. They have machines costing tens of thousands of dollars being run entirely by CorelDRAW...which costs $399 for the full version before discounts. Sure sounds like a bargain to me.

So before you run out and buy the Student and Teacher Edition, think about how you will be using it and what is missing. If you own any previous (non-Academic) version of CorelDRAW, you are eligible for the upgrade. It lists for $179 and sells for $159.99 at Amazon. For those of you who have been using an Academic version or if you are simply a new user, you'll need the full version. It lists for $399 and sells for $306.99 at Amazon. I just hate to see users who can't realize the full power of CorelDRAW because they decided to save a few bucks and thus missed out on all the cool stuff that VBA brings to the table.

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New Artwork for Wide Format Graphics Creators

The folks at Digital Art Solutions have released a new collection of artwork templates geared toward users creating wide format graphics. The Wide Format Graphics Volume 1 collection provides all artwork as vector objects that can easily scale to any size of output needed by users. In total there are 360 templates, 210 vector backgrounds and 200 included fonts. Put that together with a full-color sales portfolio and you have a very powerful collection.

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Wacom Introduces New Affordable Tablets

The Wacom Graphire has been an inexpensive way to get a graphics tablet to use as a more natural input device for your computer. Wacom has come out with new tablets and a new name. Graphire is out and Bamboo is in.

If you simply want a tablet at the lowest price possible without any extra software, then there is a model for you. The biz-oriented Bamboo only comes in black and only in the small (4" x 5") size. List price is only $79.99 and it will be discounted from there.

If you want bundled software, a choice in colors or a choice in size then you want the Bamboo Fun. The software included is Adobe Photoshop Elements (5 for PC/4 for Mac), Nik Color Efex Pro 2 filters and Corel Painter Essentials 2. The colors available are black, white, silver and electric blue. Sizes are small (4" x 5") and medium (6" x 8"). It is priced at $99.99 for the small and $199.99 for the medium.

The Bamboo tablets are a nice upgrade from the Graphire series. Added are programmable buttons and a touch ring for zooming and scaling. The pen has 512 distinct levels of pressure. If you are stuck with a mouse, a tablet is a huge upgrade. For those who already have an older tablet, it might be time to look for a new one.

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