27 Useful Design Tips

For my design and typography students, here’s a really nice blog with some tips and ideas to improve your feel for good design, good use of typography, and maybe provide some inspiration.

http://digitalsynopsis.com/design/beautiful-illustrated-graphic-designer-tips/

BACKUP – automatically to the Cloud

BACKUP!!!

So, you guys know I’m very neurotic about backing up my files, and I found this service that gives you unlimited space for automatic backups – IN THE CLOUD!

I have dual hard drive backups in my home office, PLUS a separate backup for my startup drive. But living in SoCal, with earthquakes, I’ve always been concerned about earthquake damage hurting my backups, leaving me with nothing.

Recently, I discovered BackBlaze.com. for $50/year, they offer unlimited space for backups, allow the backup of external drives, retain backups for 30 days, and will back up almost everything (system files and Applications won’t get backed up). I have 4 internal drives and several externals. All of my media (photos, videos, and even the files created as temporary files for my video editing), all of my office work files, personal files – and it’s safe and encrypted. All offsite, and all for $50! There isn’t a limit on file size, either – so my largest multi-gig files can be uploaded. It’s not exceptionally speedy, but I can even control the speed of the backups.

I highly recommend checking them out at BackBlaze.com.

New Adobe Character Animation Application Shown at NAB

At the NAB Conference from April 11th to April 16th, Adobe announced a new app, coming to Adobe Creative Cloud members.

Adobe Character Animator does just what it says it will do. You can use pre-created characters that appear to come with the app, or you can create your characters using Photoshop or Illustrator and animate them. I believe I’m initially most impressed with the facial recognition and animation activation, which takes prompts directly from your webcam.

Of course, version 1 of anything will have it’s issues – but this looks really promising!!!

http://www.rgbhq.com/nab-2015-adobe-character-animator-preview/

MANY new Adobe Updates coming SOON!

Up until today, I was under NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) to not reveal what’s coming up to MANY of my student’s favorite Adobe Apps – but today, with the announcement at NAB, all may be revealed. In fact, Adobe themselves revealed what’s to come to Adobe Premiere Pro (oh, my goodness, what they’re doing!), After Effects, InDesign, Illustrator, Flash, Muse, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Audition!

You can check out the upcoming changes to the Video Editing apps here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/coming-next-to-adobe-pro-video-tools/

I’m sure there’re going to be many more blog posts at Adobe, to tell us the rest…

Adobe Extends Discount Offers

Here’s an email I received from Adobe tonight:

We are excited to let you know about the following offers — some of the best deals around!

PS-SPECIAL-EXTENDDeadline Extended to Dec. 8 to get Photoshop + Lightroom for $9.99/mo

Due to the fantastic response, the offer for the the Photoshop Photography Program , available to anyone for $9.99/month, has been extended until December 8th. This is available worldwide, wherever the bundle is available on Adobe.com.

The offer includes access to Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5, 20GB of cloud storage and a Behance ProSite.

CC-SPECIAL-EXTENDExtended Upgrade Plan to Creative Cloud for $29.99/mo Until May

We are also extending our Creative Cloud membership $29.99 promotion into 2014. With this extension, anyone owning CS3+ who has not yet made the move to Creative Cloud, will continue to be able to join Creative Cloud at the rate of $29.99/month for their first year of membership.

Here’s the link to all their current Creative Cloud Discounts:
http://www.adobe.com/products/discount-software-coupons.html?promoid=KHQFR

 

Complete Online Manuals and Help Guides for All Adobe Products – from ProDesignTools.com

Oh – THIS is lovely! ProDesignTools.com has created a page dedicated to ALL the Help files for ALL the Adobe products, in searchable, discussable format! They’re even downloadable as PDF’s!

Check this out:
http://prodesigntools.com/online-manuals-help-documentation-all-adobe-products.html

A Guide to Using Waveform Monitors as Artistic Tools in Color Grading

For my students who’re color grading their footage using an external waveform monitor – Tektronix has just posted a Primer on Color grading theory and techniques.

AND, it’s my second favorite price- FREE!

http://www.tek.com/regional-page/guide-using-waveform-monitors-artistic-tools-color-grading?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=publications&utm_content=guidetocolorgrading&utm_campaign=aimclear

Creative Cloud Backlash

SO many people are responding negatively to Adobe’s recent announcement of their sole offering of a cloud based Creative Cloud subscription that I’m seeing dozens of posts on the subject. The article below offers some links to follow the discussion (read: Rebellion), and a link to a petition to sign, if you find a life-long payment plan is not for you!

http://creativebits.org/photoshop/creative_suite_6_forever

Okay Adobe Users – Get Ready for the CLOUD!

Today, the Adobe MAX conference started with it’s keynote address, introducing the fact that Adobe will no longer be offering the Creative Suite as stand-alone software, but instead will move to Cloud distribution for all it’s products. There will be no CS7, but rather a CC version (Creative Cloud).

CreativePro.com has a good article introducing what was said: http://www.creativepro.com/article/adobe-ends-creative-suite-era-and-embraces-cloud

Keep an eye peeled on this. It seems to be causing quite an uproar!

40% Discount for the CS6 Creative Cloud Ends SOON!

According to John Nack’s blog (the Adobe Evangelist and Blogger) If you own a CS3 or later Adobe app, you can subscribe to Creative Cloud & get all the CS6 apps, 20GB of storage, and more at a huge discount ($29.99/month instead of $49/month in the US)–but note that the offer ends August 31st.

Check it out: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2012/07/40-creative-cloud-discount-ends-in-one-month.html