DISPLAY UNTIL JULY 6, 2010

CONTENTS]
] J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 0
[ ] VOL. 6, NO. 4
] WWW.LAYERSMAGAZINE.COM

[ T U T O R I A L S ]
42 ] Digital Photography:
Overview of New Features in Camera Raw 6
—Sean McCormack

48 ] Adobe Photoshop CS5:

Happy Accident—Dave Cross

54 ] Adobe Illustrator CS5:

Clipping Masks of Love—Corey Barker

60 ] Adobe InDesign CS5:

Setting Up Live Captions—Terry White

66 ] Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro:

Interactive PDFs—Taz Tally

75 ] Adobe Dreamweaver CS5:

Six New Features—Janine Warner

80 ] Adobe Flash CS5 Professional:

Text Layout Framework—Lee Brimelow

16
HENK DAWSON

[ C O V E R S T O R Y ]
30 ] Fifth Annual Layers 100 CS5 Tips
As you’ve probably heard (or at least saw on the cover), included
in this issue of Layers are 100 “amazing” CS5 tips. That’s right,
what you’re about to witness is a whole slew of amazingness
that you’ve probably never seen or heard before packed into 100
amazing tips. (Did we mention they’re amazing?) We’ve covered all
of the usual suspects from Photoshop to InDesign to Premiere Pro,
and think you’re going to be thoroughly impressed. So turn the
page to get started and have fun exploring CS5!
www.layersmagazine.com

Page 30
04
 05

L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
[ D E P A RT M E N T S ]
8 ] Letter from the Editor

12 ] Layers News

16 ] Designer Spotlight

18 ] The Digital Canvas

92 ] Creative Suite Q&A

102 ] The Back Page

Page 18

[ C O L U M N S ] [ O N T H E C O V E R ]
20 ] Design Makeover: Henk Dawson is a master of 3D illustra-
Caught Between Cultures—Jake Widman tion and animation, creating every-
thing from photorealistic to conceptual
illustrations. He has gained extensive
26 ] Artistic Expressions:
experience creating visual assets for
Needlework—Bert Monroy
large corporations such as Microsoft,
Apple, Crayola, and ESPN. Look for
58 ] The Art of Type: Henk’s unique 3D art throughout this
Out of Scale—James Felici issue of Layers.
[Henk Dawson]

[ R E V I E W S ]
86 ] Canon EOS-1D Mark IV—Kevin Ames

87 ] Aperture 3—Dave Huss

87 ] Digimarc for Images 4—Jay Nelson

88 ] URL2hyperlink—David Creamer

88 ] Eos Converge—Chris Main

89 ] Lensbaby Soft Focus—Mike Mackenzie

89 ] modo SLIK—Bruce Bicknell

90 ] booq Python blur—Chris Main

86
90 ] Holomatrix—Marcus Geduld

91 ] Ricoh CX3—Daniel M. East

Whenever you see this symbol at the end of an article, it means there’s either additional material or a download
for that story at www.layersmagazine.com. So be sure to visit the website and check it out.
 [ON THE WEB]
] J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 0
] VOL. 6, NO. 4
] WWW.LAYERSMAGAZINE.COM

[TU TORIALS]
We’re always adding new tutorials to the Layers website,
so be sure to visit often. And don’t forget to sign up for our
graphics tip of the day and to keep an eye out for the
latest episode of Layers TV. Here’s a small sampling of
some of the tutorials that you can find at the site now:

[PHOTOSHOP]
www.layersmagazine.com/category/photoshop
Compositing Images Using Channels in Photoshop, Parts
1 & 2 (Video): In this two-part tutorial, you’ll learn how to
apply advanced compositing techniques in Photoshop to
transform a city skyline.—Stephen M. Burns

3D Bump Maps in Photoshop Extended (Video): Stephen

shows you how to set up your Wacom tablet properties and
also how to distinctly paint bump map textures by creating
and using various brushes.—Stephen M. Burns

[ILLUSTRATOR]
www.layersmagazine.com/category/illustrator
Getting Aligned in Adobe Illustrator (Video): Learn how
to use the Align panel to its full extent by exploring all its
options through the different sections of the panel—Align
Objects, Distribute Options, Distribute Spacing, and Align
To.—Jeff Witchel

[INDESIGN]
www.layersmagazine.com/category/indesign
Secret to Combining InDesign Documents (Video):
After arranging your documents accordingly and
navigating to the Pages panel, Jeff shows how you

16
can combine multiple documents into one editable
HENK DAWSON

InDesign document in just one click.—Jeff Witchel

[FLASH]
www.layersmagazine.com/category/flash
[ LAYERS TV ] Motion Tools in Flash CS4, Parts 1–4 (Video): Learn
how to use every aspect of the motion tools in Flash
Hosted by Corey Barker and Rafael “RC” Concepcion through this four-part series as Tom teaches three
www.layersmagazine.com/layers-tv
ways of tweening motion, how to navigate around
Be sure to join Corey and RC for another season of Layers TV. This weekly
the motion guides and paths in the Motion Editor,
video podcast offers killer tips and tricks to full-blown tutorials, and it
www.layersmagazine.com

covers all of your favorite print, Web, and video apps from Adobe. how to transform motion into ActionScript, and much
more.—Tom Green

[ S O C I A L N E T W O R K ] [PREMIERE PRO]
http://twitter.com/LayersMagazine www.layersmagazine.com/category/premierepro
www.facebook.com/LayersMagazine Animation in Premiere (Video): Franklin teaches how to
Want to stay up to date on everything happening at Layers? Of course you add simple animation to video clips in Premiere Pro
do. Just follow @LayersMagazine on Twitter and be sure to join our Facebook by adjusting positions, scaling images, and changing
fan page, as well. blend modes.—Franklin McMahon
06
 [ FROM THE EDITOR]
S C O T T { } K E L b Y

the hottest tips for you

100 TIPS FROM ADOBE PRODUCT MANAGERS
If you subscribe to the premise, “He who dies with the most tips wins,” then this is the
issue for you—our annual 100 Hot Tips issue. This is always our most popular issue of
the year and once you start digging into the tips, you’ll immediately see why.
Of course, each time we do this issue, we want to raise the bar a bit and get a juicier
collection of insider shortcuts, workarounds, and tricks than we had the year before, so
we thought who would have more of these little-known gems than the people who actually make the prod-
ucts themselves—Adobe’s own Product Managers. We went straight to the source for this year’s collection
of tips to make you more efficient, more effective, and more importantly, to make
your friends totally jealous.
[This is always our In a Hot Tips issue like this, the tips get all the cover attention, but of course
we still have loads of in-depth articles covering all your favorites, including a look

most popular issue
of the year and once
at Camera Raw 6 (new in Photoshop CS5) by Sean McCormack on page 42, along
with Dave Cross’s discovery of a new technique using Photoshop and Illustrator
(Dave tries to play it off as more of an experiment or accident with very cool results,
but we know better) on page 48. If you’re an InDesign user, my good friend Terry
White has an article on setting up captions (p. 60), and Janine Warner shares her

you start digging
into the tips, you’ll
immediately see why.]
have loads of tutorials on all the Adobe products, including lots of videos on all the brand-new features in
Creative Suite 5.
top six features in the just-released Dreamweaver CS5 (p. 75).
Our own in-house Illustrator wizard, Corey Barker, does a very cool type masking
tutorial based on an effect from the movie poster for John Travolta’s latest movie
From Paris with Love (p. 54), and Lee Brimelow is here showing off some of the new
text features in Flash CS5 (p. 80).
Finally, this issue the featured artist in our “Designer Spotlight” is 3D artist Henk
Dawson. If you’ve got a quick minute, go check out more of his work at www.d3d.com.
Beyond this issue, make sure you stop by LayersMagazine.com because we

All my best,

Scott Kelby
Editor & Publisher
www.l ayer smagazine.com

08
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5100 Newport Dr. Suite #6 Rolling Meadows, IL 60008 their respective owners. Some of the views expressed by contributors may not be the
representative views of the Publisher. ISSN 1554-415X
 [layers news]
graphics design news • new products • digital video news • other stuff

Adobe adds HTML5 support

to Dreamweaver CS5
Don’t worry, this isn’t an exposition about the whole Flash vs. HTML5 or Adobe vs. Apple thing. We’re sure you’ve had your fill of that
by now. This is just to let you know that at Google I/O, Adobe announced the availability of a new, free extension for Dreamweaver CS5
called the Adobe HTML5 Pack. According to Adobe, this new extension is the direct result of positive customer feedback that started back at
Adobe MAX 2009. Here’s part of the description that appears in Adobe Extension Manager CS5 after you install the extension: “This extension
provides initial support for HTML5 and CSS3 in Dreamweaver CS5. While HTML5 and CSS3 will not be finalized for some time, the exten-
sion provides support for a set of currently implemented features.”
The HTML5 Pack includes HTML5 starter layouts, code hinting for HTML5 and CSS3 capabilities to help users make use of new HTML5
tags, and WebKit engine updates and improvements to support video and audio in Live View in Dreamweaver CS5. And with new CSS3 capa-
bilities, users can more easily design multiscreen webpages with previews of how they will render across multiple browsers and devices.
“Adobe prides itself on delivering industry-defining tools and being compatible with the most popular Web programming languages,
formats, APIs, and libraries,” said Lea Hickman, Senior Director, Creative Solutions at Adobe. “We continue to move forward to support the
leading edge of work in HTML, enabling our customers to deliver creative content taking advantage of the latest in HTML capabilities.”
For more information and to download the Adobe HTML5 Pack, visit http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/html5pack.html.

PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM

gets PLUS-sized
Pantone LLC, an X-Rite company, has released the “next generation” of its PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM,
the PANTONE PLUS SERIES. This new series not only offers more colors but it also organizes all the new
colors plus previous colors in chromatic arrangement, making it much easier for designers to find and
select colors. (But even though the arrangement is different, the previous colors still use the same
reference numbers [the new colors begin at 7548]).
All the new books in the PLUS SERIES are printed on text-weight paper stock to more
closely reflect the majority of current printed work and to meet the certification standards
set forth by the Forest Stewardship Council. The new colors are formulated with the same
14 ink bases that make up the foundation of the previous colors, along with consistent
ink film thickness to make it easier for printers to match the new colors on press.
The PANTONE PLUS SERIES FORMULA GUIDE and SOLID CHIPS include 224
new colors for a total of 1,341 colors. The new CMYK guide offers a smoother
progression of 2,886 CMYK colors for four-color process printing, and PASTELS &
NEONS and PASTELS & NEONS CHIPS offers 156 pastels and 56 neons. And
the new PREMIUM METALLICS and PREMIUM METALLICS CHIPS provide 300
nonleafing, high-luster metallics.
All guides in the PLUS SERIES also ship with a really cool new tool: The Color-
www.LAYERSMAGAZINE.COM

Checker Lighting Indicator. Pull out the Indicator when you’re ready to evaluate colors
and it will let you know if the current lighting conditions are suitable or not—very handy.
At this point, you may be asking, “Since Adobe CS5 shipped before the PLUS
SERIES, how can CS5 users take advantage of the new system?” We’re glad you
asked. Every PLUS SERIES purchase also comes with COLOR MANAGER software. This allows you to update your Adobe Creative Suite
applications with the new PANTONE PLUS Color Libraries, as well as convert spot colors to CMYK simulations based on loaded
ICC profiles.
For more on other PLUS SERIES products and pricing, visit www.pantone.com.

12
 Get mobilized! Web Watch
[more cool sites for creatives]
It’s no surprise that the world has gone mobile mad, including
Layers! In May, the magazine launched the Layers Text Alerts
program to give readers a chance to stay in the know even
when they’re not in front of the computer. That means stay-
ing connected with “The How-to Magazine for Everything
Adobe” is now easier than ever.
From special promotions and important reminders to
breaking news and can’t-miss Creative Suite tips and tech-
niques, our text alerts will give you exclusive Layers content
and information available solely to opt-in mobile subscribers.
To sweeten the deal, if you sign up to receive our special www.stockphotorights.com
text alerts, you’ll automatically qualify for one of four special Helpful information about copyright
and licensing stock imagery
offers that we have in place for new subscribers.
Simply text LAYERS to 32075 to register today and unlock
the key to some great enrollment deals. [Please note:
Standard text messaging rates may apply.]

Changes to the Layers website;

a note about our tutorials; and Layers on Facebook http://tdc.org
An international organization for all
In late April, we launched the redesign of people who are devoted to excellence
our website (http://layersmagazine.com) in typography
to coincide with the launch of the Layers
Creative Suite 5 Learning Center (http://
layersmagazine.com/cs5). The new Layers
site offers a more streamlined overview of
the wealth of content we make available
online every day, but with that change
came a few minor adjustments that we
wanted to address here.
We’ve made all our Creative Suite
tutorials easier to find by placing the
most recent ones on the main page
and clearly indicating which application
www.logodesignlove.com
Dedicated to logos, this blog is regularly
is being covered in each tutorial with a banner in the upper-left corner. Want to see all the tutorials updated with news, features, and opin-
for that application? Just click on the banner, or hover over the Tutorials drop-down menu in the top ions from the world of brand identity
Navigation Bar.
Speaking of our tutorials, with the launch of CS5, now is as good a time as any to restate our
approach to teaching the Creative Suite in our magazine and online. We’ll always use the most
current version of the Creative Suite in everything we teach. When we do switch versions, we’ll
always create a comprehensive online learning center about the latest version to get everyone up
to speed on all the latest changes. And while we’ll create tutorials that feature new Creative Suite
tools, once the fervor of a new version dies down, we’ll revert to what you’ll always find within
the pages of Layers magazine and on the Layers website—amazing techniques, tips, and tricks
that can usually be performed in prior versions. And finally, we’ll never remove old tutorials from
our site! In fact, our tutorials go all the way back to CS2 online.
As part of the changes at http://layersmagazine.com, the Layers forum has been removed, but
don’t fret, we’ve invited our Layers forum mods to help us continue the conversation on our Layers
www.dcross.com
Facebook fan page (http://www.facebook.com/LayersMagazine). We hope that you’ll join us there A blog on Photoshop, photography,
under the Discussions tab. You can also find us on Twitter as @LayersMagazine. and more by our very own Dave Cross

Upcoming Events
PHOTOSHOP CS5 CREATIVITY TOUR
Baltimore, MD (July 9, 2010)
San Diego, CA (July 27, 2010)
Miami, FL (August 16, 2010)
Charlotte, NC (September 27, 2010)
www.kelbytraininglive.com
PHOTOSHOP LIGHTROOM 3 LIVE TOUR
Ft. Lauderdale, FL (July 12, 2010)
Boston, MA (July 16, 2010)
New York, NY (July 19, 2010)
Los Angeles, CA (July 21, 2010)
South San Francisco, CA (July 23, 2010)
www.kelbytraininglive.com
PHOTOSHOP CS5 FOR
PHOTOGRAPHERS TOUR
Orlando, FL (July 14, 2010)
Virginia Beach, VA (August 30, 2010)
Indianapolis, IN (September 20, 2010)
www.kelbytraininglive.com
LOCATION LIGHTING
TECHNIQUES TOUR
Islington, London, UK (July 23, 2010)
Hartford, CT (September 15, 2010)
www.kelbytraininglive.com
SIGGRAPH 2010
July 25–29, 2010
Los Angeles Convention Center
Los Angeles, CA
www.siggraph.org/s2010
PHOTOSHOP CS5
DOWN & DIRTY TRICKS TOUR
Nashville, TN (August 6, 2010)
Austin, TX (August 18, 2010)
Kansas City, MO (August 25, 2010)
St. Louis, MO (August 27, 2010)
Covington, KY (September 17, 2010)
Pittsburgh, PA (September 22, 2010)
www.kelbytraininglive.com
MAXIMUM PHOTOSHOP CS5 TOUR
San Jose, CA (August 23, 2010)
Cleveland, OH (September 13, 2010)
www.kelbytraininglive.com
PHOTOSHOP WORLD
CONFERENCE & EXPO
September 1–3, 2010
Mandalay Bay Convention Center
Las Vegas, NV
www.photoshopworld.com
[ n e ws ]
Graphic Authority releases sequel
to their Rockstar collection
Graphic Authority, who has been providing design
elements and templates to photographers and
digital artists around the world since 1994, recently
announced part 2 of their popular Rockstar collec-
tion. As with the original version, Rockstar 2 targets
the senior photographer and is a 3-disc collection
containing complete 20-page photo books (includ-
ing covers) in both 12x12" (scalable) square format
and a complimentary landscape format for the
widescreen effect.
The new version contains more than 40 animal printed themed templates, as well as a selection
of folded cards, business cards, and press-printed products. All templates from Graphic Authority
are fully editable, layered, 300-dpi TIFFs, so you can move, resize, add, delete, and change the
color of any element. Rockstar 2 retails for $179.95. For more info and to try out a free template,
visit www.graphicauthority.com.
New Lightroom plug-in available
from Jeffrey Friedl
Lightroom plug-in developer Jeffrey Friedl has released a Snapshot on Export plug-in com-
patible with Lightroom 3 Beta 2 and later. Snapshot on Export allows you to create Develop
module snapshots automatically upon export. Why do you need this? If you make additional
changes to a photo in the Develop module after export, whether intentionally or accidentally,
you can revert back to the export state.
This plug-in is available for free (donationware). Unless users register the plug-in (which
costs $0.01), the functionality will be somewhat reduced after six weeks. For more information,
including a complete overview, installation instructions, and configuration instructions, visit
http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/snapshot-on-export.
Get three-dimensional
with Carrara 8
DAZ 3D–Gizmoz has released Carrara 8, an all-in-one 3D solution for figure posing, modeling,
landscape design, rigid and soft-body dynamics, animation, and rendering. Carrara 8 is avail-
able in both a standard and Pro edition.
Upgrades to both versions include multithreading for Mac and Windows, improved FBX and
COLLADA data exchange, improved plants and vegetation, and render time optimizations.
The Pro version adds 64-bit support for both Mac and Windows, the Bullet Physics Library,
network render optimizations, normal maps, editing of posed meshes, and Puppeteer from
DAZ Studio. It also includes enhanced lighting tools: negative lights,
God rays, barn doors on spotlights, and the much-
requested capability of photometric (IES) lighting.
The Bullet Physics Library is an open-source,
advanced physics toolkit allowing users to create rigid
and soft body dynamics. With the updated FBX export
capabilities, game developers can transfer custom
figures, environments, and animations directly into
the Unity game engine. And with the editing of posed
meshes, users can complete clean-up and detail work
on conforming objects while the model is posed or
conformed so results can be seen immediately.
Carrara 8 is available for $249.95 and the Pro version
retails for $549. For more information, visit www.daz3d
.com/i/software/carrara8.
 [h e n k dawson]

[ DESIGNER SPOTLIGHT]
C H R I S { } M A I N

Henk Dawson works out of his home office in Seattle were he’s lived most of his life. He earned
a degree in graphic design from the University of Washington more than 20 years ago. After a short stint at an ad agency doing desktop
publishing, Henk discovered his love for 3D. He used the payment from his first 3D job to purchase the software he was using to gradu-
ate from demo mode.
Specializing in illustration and animation, Henk uses Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premier Pro, and Luxology’s modo
for 3D rendering to create everything from photorealistic to conceptual illustrations. Since he started his business back in 1989, he has
gained extensive experience creating visual assets for large corporations, ad agencies, design firms, and startups, including Microsoft,
Apple, Crayola, and ESPN. He loves his work and his goal is to continue to stay small and focused on creating quality 3D illustration
and animation.

Layers: You recently purchased a lot of digital photography equip-
ment with the intent to integrate photography into your 3D illustra-
tions. How is that working out for you?
Dawson: The new equipment has improved the quality of the photog-
www.LAYERSMAGAZINE.com
Dawson: The final result can be the same but the creation process is dif-
ferent. A 3D program has a virtual 3D space with geometry, lights, and
textures. Using Photoshop without the 3D tools is like painting on a flat
canvas, but a skilled Photoshop artist can achieve a similar 3D result.

raphy that I do for my 3D work, mainly texture maps and background Layers: You’ve been working with 3D for quite some time now. How
plates. I am, however, working at getting my skills to a level where my easy is it to work with today’s 3D apps? What do you think about the
photography stands on its own. 3D capabilities in Photoshop CS5?

Layers: We see photorealistic art all the time that was created in Dawson: 3D applications have come a long way. Today’s computers
Photoshop that looks three-dimensional, but no 3D tools were used. are fast enough to display real-time previews (for most things) and
Is there a difference between photorealistic art and 3D art? the user interfaces are friendlier than they used to be. Photoshop 3D

16
 17

l AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
is basic but powerful. You don’t need all the bells and whistles of a
high-end 3D program to do sophisticated work.

Layers: These days, it seems like it’s not enough to be just a designer
or just an illustrator. Do you think your skills in 3D and animation give
you an edge over traditional artists trying to make it in today’s industry?

Dawson: Yes. I find it important to specialize. The good paying jobs are
the ones that require a skill that’s in demand and difficult to learn. 3D
animation fits that bill, and I would recommend it as a career. It can take
many years to learn to do it well, but if you like it, it can be rewarding.

Layers: Can you tell us about your process for creating one of your
3D illustrations? How much Photoshop and Illustrator are involved?

Dawson: I spend more time in Illustrator and Photoshop building texture

maps than I spend in modo, my 3D program. I also use After Effects and
Premiere quite a bit. Most of my work is photorealism, so I generally
build my 3D models directly from photographic reference. Occasionally,
I get a more conceptual job and I’ll sketch it out in Photoshop using my
Cintiq monitor.

Layers: You’ve taught at the School of Visual Arts in Seattle, and

you’ve been a speaker and lecturer at many conferences and events.
What types of questions do you receive at these events?

Dawson: I get asked what software I use. I use modo for 3D and
Adobe’s Creative Suite Master Collection. Also, I get asked how
do you build a creative career. I think that it’s important to balance
practicality with passion. It’s practical to take
jobs that pay the bills but it’s also important
to do work that you’re passionate about. You’ll
starve or get burned out if you’re too passion-
ate or too practical.

[CONTACT] Henk Dawson www.d3d.com

ALL IMAGES BY HENK DAWSON
 [ gallery]

[ the digital canvas ]

showcasing the design work of our readers

Design: 1016 W. Fulton Market ] [ Client: Personal Work ] [ Designer: Steve Somen ] [ Software: Adobe Photoshop CS4 ] [ www.stevesomen.com
www.l ayer smagazine.com

Design: The Thought Garden ] [ Client: Personal Work ] [ Designer: Jeff Langevin ] [ Software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
] [ www.jefflangevin.daportfolio.com

18
 19

l AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ][ ju ly / au g u s t 2010
Design: 2010 Calendar Cover ] [ Client: School Project Design: Cover NCRS The Corvette Restorer
] [ Designer: Alex Gomez ] [ Software: Adobe Photoshop CS4 ] [ Client: National Corvette Restorers Society ] [ Designer: Vinnie Peters
] [ Software: Adobe Photoshop CS4 ] [ www.ncrs.org

The staff at Layers magazine

appreciates the time and effort
involved in the creative process,
no matter how large or small the
project. With this in mind, we of-
fer you the opportunity to display
your work on The Digital Canvas.
Please submit your print, Web,
or packaging design (jpeg or eps
Design: Toucan Air ] [ Client: Toucans Bar & Grill ] [ Designer: Nick Babb format) to: letters@layersmaga-
] [ Software: Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator
zine.com. Please include name of
piece, client name (if applicable),
applications used, and any web-
site where our readers can view
more of your work.
 [ DESIGN MAKEOVER]
J A K E { } W I D M A N

client:
Joe Blondo
before
caught between cultures
S eattle writer and poet Joe Blondo first met Milton Wan
at the Chinese restaurant where Wan worked. Their many
conversations about how the Vietnam-born Wan wound up behind
the counter of a Seattle restaurant eventually turned into Caught
Between Cultures: A Story of Milton Wan and Viet Nam. In the book,
Blondo traces Wan’s journey from a difficult childhood in ’40s and ’50s
Saigon, through a risky escape via tramp steamer from Cambodia, to
his sister’s house in Seattle. Soon enough though, Wan found himself
back in Vietnam—this time as a soldier in the U.S. Army.
When it came time to design a cover for the book, Blondo turned
to a longtime friend and collaborator, illustrator Frank Morgan. “I wanted
the cover to convey the cultural elements inherent in Milton, both in
his personality and the world he grew up in,” he says. Frank feels the
cover communicates those elements with its use of the red and yel-
low of the South Vietnamese flag and the red, white, and blue of the
American flag.
He also appreciates the way the bold colors placed against a black
background should help the book stand out on bookstore shelves.
“I find this cover very conversational in the way it ‘shouts out’ to the
passing book buyer,” he says.
Blondo agreed to let us assign his cover to three designers to see
what others would do with the personal and political elements of
the photos that appear inside the book, courtesy of photographer
Peter Mumford. Here, then, are three alternate covers for this book
about one American immigrant, but also about every immigrant’s
experience in an adopted country.

I wanted the cover to convey the cultural elements inherent in Milton,

both in his personality and the world he grew up in.

[ ]
www.LAYERSMAGAZINE.com

Jake Widman is a writer and editor who lives in San Francisco. He’s been covering the intersection of computers and graphic design for about 20 years now—since
back when it was all called “desktop publishing.”

makeover submissions
We’re looking for product packaging or labels, print advertisements, websites, and magazine covers that are currently in the marketplace for
future “Design Makeovers.” So if you or someone you know has a design that you’d like us to consider making over, or if you’re a designer
and you’d like to be considered for a future “Design Makeover,” drop us a line at letters@layersmagazine.com.

20
 21

l AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
after
DESIGNER: Kristine Stallman ] [www.thedesignscompany.com

T he main thing the client liked about his current cover was the
flag theme, so I decided to carry that aspect over into my
design. I wanted to create a cover that the author felt still “shouted
out” to book buyers but could also communicate a little more about
the book’s content.
I started by searching for images of flags from the two countries
that frame the story, the United States and Vietnam. I didn’t want just
flat drawings of flags, however, I wanted pictures that showed move-
ment to help bring a more 3D aspect and some life to the cover.
Once I found the images I wanted to use, I brought them into Adobe
Photoshop. I wanted to show both flags overlapping, almost merging into
each other, to portray the blended cultural elements of Milton’s character.
I positioned each flag in an opposite corner of the cover and then applied
a vector mask to each one. Using the Gradient tool with the Foreground
to Background option, I faded out one side of each flag and then over-
lapped the flags to merge them into each other.
To lend a personal touch to the design, I added in a couple of gray-
scale photos from Milton’s past—you can see these through the flags in
the bottom corner. This helps to communicate to a book buyer that it’s
not just about two countries but that it’s a personal story as well.
Choosing a clean serif font (Adobe Caslon Pro), I placed the book’s
title slightly to the right to keep the focus on the background images.
I used white for the text and applied a slight shadow to help it pop
off the background. Setting the word “between” smaller than Caught
and Cultures not only makes it visually appealing but it also plays upon
the words themselves. Placing the short description of the book in the To lend a personal touch to the design,
bottom-left corner draws the eye down from the title and toward the
black-and-white photos in the background. I added in a couple of grayscale
photos from Milton’s past.

[ A B O U T T H E D E S I G N E R ]
Kristine Stallman ] [ www.thedesignscompany.com
Inspired by designing a cereal box in a high school marketing class, Kristine decided early on to pursue a
career in design. She attended Sheridan College and graduated with a diploma in advertising. Since then,
she has worked in several business environments, and with her schooling and natural design talent, she
brings a unique perspective to design that her clients have come to rely on.
She started her own home-based graphic design business in 2004, focusing on working with small busi-
nesses and startups, so that she could stay home to raise her children. With a little word-of-mouth advertising, her client base
has steadily grown. Kristine specializes in print design but also dabbles in a little Web work as well. She relies heavily on the
K.I.S.S. theory of design.
Kristine currently resides in Waterford, Ontario, Canada with her husband and their four children. She can be reached at
kristine@thedesignscompany.com.

APPLICATION USED: Adobe Photoshop CS3

 [ des i gn make ov e r ]

after
DESIGNER: Keith Gillespie
www.jonevan.com

I wanted my cover to both tell and sell. “Tell” by foreshadowing

the story inside; “sell” by using colors and design to attract
shoppers’ eyes to store shelves and webpage listings. Such a cover
would work its hardest to get noticed, pique a prospective reader’s
interest, and drive impulse sales.
The book is about Mr. Wan’s cultural and family pressures during
the time he served as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam. So my cover likewise
focuses on Mr. Wan, while using design to depict his being “caught
between cultures.”
I represent his cultural past by placing the pre-1975 South Viet-
namese flag behind him. The U.S. flag is in front of him, much as our
culture was in front of him when he left Vietnam in his youth. Mr. Wan
is trapped between the two flags, as if in a vise clamp.
The word “cultures” presses in on his head, which is his mental and
emotional center. And I use an old photo of his family and an image
of Vietnam-era U.S. soldiers to grip him within yet another visual vise.
Finally, I chose Aachen Bold for the headline font, because its capital
“C” echoes the shape of a clamp, and its letterforms are squeezed as
well. The parallel lines in the flags provide even more visual stress, serv-
ing as fencing.
Yet despite all these restrictive design elements, the flags stand
brightly, boldly, proudly. Their parallel lines symbolize the parallel
cultural allegiances that tug on Mr. Wan’s heart and soul. And Mr.
Wan—the only vertical element on the page—rises like a phoenix,
The parallel lines in the flags symbolize
further foretelling the story inside. the parallel cultural allegiances that
Mr. Blondo’s name recedes in the design much as an author recedes
tug on Mr. Wan’s heart and soul.
behind his words. He’s not caught between cultures, appearing
only within the American flag.

[ A B O U T T H E D E S I G N E R ]
Keith Gillespie ] [ www.jonevan.com
Keith served as creative director for one of America’s largest marketing agencies, overseeing five offices
across the U.S. In 2001, he began his own agency, JonEvan Marketing Group. With clients ranging from major
corporations to small businesses, he delivers the strategic planning, concepting, writing, designing, website
programming, and search-engine marketing himself, using outside support sparingly. His multiple skills
let him work efficiently, with a deep understanding of how each skill affects the others while working toward
www.LAYERSMAGAZINE.com

specific project objectives.

He has sold products and services in a wide range of industries, with work in print advertising, direct mail, radio, TV, consumer
activation, in-store displays, websites, email, banner advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising, and
more. Keith has degrees in both design and writing, and is the featured crossword puzzle constructor for Every Day with Rachael
Ray magazine.
Keith resides in Princeton, New Jersey, with his wife, two sons, and dog.

APPLICATION USED: Adobe Photoshop CS4

22 continued on p. 24
 [ des i gn make ov e r ]

after
DESIGNER: LuAnn Arena
www.funkykittyproductions.com

A fter reading the synopsis of the story, I had a clear image

of the visual for the cover and I knew I wanted to do the illus-
tration myself rather than use any stock photography or stock illustra-
tion. My goal was to show, simply and powerfully, the drama of Milton
Wan’s unique struggle at a glance. And, of course, the cover clearly
needs to draw readers to pick up the book and want to know more.
The original cover, predominantly black, with portions of both the
Vietnamese and American flags in the text, needed a stronger visual
component. I felt the human piece was missing, leaving it to look a
little more like a textbook or something similarly impersonal. The
author did state that he felt black would get the book noticed on the
shelf, that he liked the bold colors, and wanted to convey the cultural
elements. That seemed to fit right in with my plan.
I created a composite using multiple images that provided the
structure to work from—a lone soldier looking out over a Vietnam
landscape. I can only imagine the incredible internal conflict of return-
ing to your home country to fight as a soldier of another. I made a
couple of sketches and then scanned my final choice, adjusted the scan
in Adobe Photoshop, and rendered the final art in Adobe Illustrator.
For the landscape, I used red and varying tints of yellow—the colors
of the Vietnamese flag. This provided a striking backdrop for the stark
black silhouette. I resisted using the distinctions of the flags as literally
as the original cover, because the story, in addition to the historical
context, is about the personal challenges of familial relationships.
Finally, I used Eurostile for the font, as it gave a clean, tight look for the
title, tag line, and author.

My goal was to show, simply and powerfully,

the drama of Milton Wan’s unique struggle at a glance.

[ A B O U T T H E D E S I G N E R ]

LuAnn Arena] [ www.funkykittyproductions.com

Originally from Rochester, New York, LuAnn made her way to the Hudson Valley after regularly traveling
the U.S. playing her original music to anyone who would listen. After thousands of miles on the road, it
was time for a new challenge.
With a B.F.A. in Graphic Design, LuAnn has more than five years’ experience in print and Web
design, starting with an on-campus job in the SUNY New Paltz Publications Department and continuing
through her current work on SEGD, an international environmental design magazine and 2009 SNAP (Society of National
www.LAYERSMAGAZINE.com

Association Publications) Award winner. Along the way, she has also worked on numerous freelance projects for print,
Web, and logo design. LuAnn has also produced hundreds of event posters, many including her original artwork, for the
Bearsville Theater in Woodstock, New York.
LuAnn writes a design blog at her website focusing on interviews with designers, sustainable practices, and the sources
of creativity. She’s currently working on a limited-edition poster series including a special poster donation to The Haiti
Poster Project.

APPLICATIONS USED: Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Illustrator CS4

24

[ ARTISTIC EXPRESSIONS]
B E R T { } M O N R O Y
needlework
I M A GE S: © I STO C K PH OTO I LLU STR ATI O N : TA F F Y C LI F F O R D
[Fortunately for me,
using Illustrator and
Photoshop took a lot of
www.LAYERSMAGAZINE.com
the grunt work out of it.]
26
[ t h e d i g i t a l s t u dio ]
Some things can be so complex. Isn’t it great that
Photoshop makes them easy? All you need to know
is how things work and you can do whatever your
imagination conjures up.
One of the billboards in my Times Square painting contains a
model wearing an intricate, crocheted top. I have no doubt that making
this garment was a time-consuming, laborious task. Fortunately for me,
using Illustrator and Photoshop took a lot of the grunt work out of it. It
was just a matter of using some of the features in Illustrator combined
with others found in Photoshop. And, unlike the real garment, I didn’t
have to go to China to get it made!
STEP ONE: It all starts in Adobe Illustrator. Select File>New to
create a new, square document (we used 10x10" at 150 ppi). Turn
on the Rulers by pressing Command-R (PC: Ctrl-R), click-and-drag
a vertical guide from the left to the center of the page, then click-
and-drag a horizontal guide that crosses the vertical line through
the center of the page. Where these guides meet will serve as the
center of our circular design. Create two additional vertical guides
equidistantly on either side of the original vertical guide and create
two horizontal guides at the top of the document. These four guides
will be used to create the overall shape of a single strand of the pat-
tern. If you find the Rulers to be a distraction, press Command-R
(PC: Ctrl-R) once more to turn them off.
STEP TWO: Now, using your guides to ensure symmetry, click-and-
drag to create a path that forms an arc using the Arc tool that’s nested
with the Line Segment tool (\), generating it far enough away from
the horizontal center guide so that the arc will form the outer edge of
your crocheted shape. Shift-click with the Selection tool (V) to select
both parts of the arc. Note: If you inadvertently use the Direct Selec-
tion tool (A), you won’t select all the points, which will prevent the
next step from working properly.
 27

l AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
STEP THREE: Choose the Rotate tool (R). Place the cursor at the variety. Note: Clicking on the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom
center where the vertical and horizontal guidelines cross. While of the Layers panel (Window>Layers) and creating each set in its own,
holding down Option (PC: Alt), click at the center to bring up the separate layer will make it easy to select them and move them around
Rotate dialog. In the Rotate dialog, set the Angle for rotation to independently of each other. This will become an obvious necessity
15° and click the Copy button. (Note: Your choice of Angle value with the next step.
will depend on the size of your document.) This makes a copy
of the original arc that is rotated at the specified angle, rotating
around the central point selected. Press Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D)
to repeat the last action performed. This next arc will be 15° from
the previous arc. Press Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D) several times to
duplicate and rotate the arc until a full circle has been created.
You’ll know if it’s going to work once you get halfway around. If
your bottom arc doesn’t align exactly with the top arc and center
guide, start over at Step Two.

STEP FOUR: Repeating these steps with other shapes, each placed STEP FIVE: Duplicate the shape various times and place all of the
closer to the center, will give you the ability to create some unusual shapes together to form a pattern. They should touch each other
designs. In two separate layers, generate two additional sets of as if they’re all connected into a single crocheted pattern. Hide the
shapes using the same techniques but alter the arc shape to add guides to inspect your work undistracted by pressing Command-;

(PC: Ctrl-; semicolon), or remove them by going under the View
menu and selecting Guides>Clear. Click-and-drag with the Selec-
tion tool, to encompass the entire work and select all the paths.
Copy them to the clipboard by selecting Edit>Copy. Now it’s time
to put Photoshop to work.
STEP SIX: Open Photoshop and press D then X to set your Back-
ground color to black. Go to File>New, choose the document’s
sizes and from the Background Contents menu, choose Back-
ground Color. Click OK and go to Edit>Paste to paste the paths
into the file.
Note: We’re given a few choices for how these paths can be
imported in the Paste dialog; they should be pasted as paths, so
click the Path radio button and click OK. We didn’t assign any
color or shape information in Illustrator because all these attributes
will be created in Photoshop. Also, a smart object isn’t necessary
because we’re only dealing with paths. These paths will be used to
guide the brush to generate the stitches of the crochet.
STEP SEVEN: Choose the Brush tool (B). Open the Brush panel
(Window>Brush). In the Brush Tip Shape section, select a circular,
hard-edged brush tip with a Size of 9 px, and disable all checkboxes
except Smoothing. Then increase the Spacing slider to 74% so the
circular brush tips slightly touch each other. Click the Foreground
color swatch at the bottom of the Toolbox, and in the resulting
Color Picker, choose what color you want your threads to be (in this
example we used white), then click the Create a New Layer icon at
the bottom of the Layers panel to create a new layer to contain the
crocheted pattern.
www.LAYERSMAGAZINE.com
STEP EIGHT: With the Brush tool still selected, open the Paths
panel (Window>Paths). Click the Stroke Path With Brush icon at the
bottom of the Paths panel. The results should create a look that
resembles threads of a crochet pattern. If yours doesn’t, simply
press Command-Z (PC: Ctrl-Z) to Undo, adjust your setting in the
Brush panel, and try again.
28
[ Bert Monroy is considered one of the pioneers of digital art. His work has been seen in many magazines and scores of books. He has served on the faculty of many well-known
institutions, written many books, and appeared on hundreds of TV shows around the world.
[ t h e d i g i t a l s t u dio ]
STEP NINE: Check to ensure your crochet looks good by plac-
ing it against a skin color: With Layer 1 selected, Command-click
(PC: Ctrl-click) the Create a New Layer icon to create a new layer
below Layer 1 (Layer 2), click the Foreground color swatch, pick a
skin-tone color (we used R:188, G:133, B:111), click OK, then press
Command-Option (PC: Ctrl-Alt) to fill Layer 2 with the color.
The final touch to make the threads come to life is a little layer style
application. Double-click the Layer 1 thumbnail in the Layers panel to
bring up the Layer Style dialog. Click to choose Drop Shadow from the
list of layer styles on the left; we want to make the threads look as if
they’re laying over the surface of the skin below. To do this, click-and-
drag down on the pattern to pull the drop shadow out from below;
release it when there’s just a slight bit of space between the needle-
work and the drop shadow. Then click Bevel and Emboss. Increase the
Size to 4 px, change the Angle to 122°, and the Altitude to 30°. Since
the threads used in this article were white, we clicked the color swatch
for the Highlight Mode, changed it to a medium gray (R:100, G:98,
B:98) color, clicked OK, and set the Highlight Mode to Multiply. This
gave different dark tones to the outer edges of the white threads, thus
making them look three-dimensional. When you’re satisfied with the
way your needlework looks, click OK to close the dialog.
Remember, the important thing being shown here isn’t the end result,
but rather how that result was achieved. You may never have to create
a crocheted pattern but a little change in shape here, and a different
style there, could be the answer to the particular problem you’re being
faced with. It’s a question of understanding how things work and how
you can make Photoshop do what you want. Photoshop and Illustrator
are very accommodating. Play with them and most of all—have fun!
ALL IMAGES BY BERT MONROY
]
30
www.layersmagazine.com

Annual Layers
 31

L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
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 Photoshop
Use Noise Reduction to soften skin
By now you know that Photoshop CS5
(Camera Raw 6) and Lightroom 3 have great
Noise Reduction, but did you know that
you could max Luminance and minimize
Luminance Detail to make your image look
like a painting and to soften skin?
BRYAN O’NEIL HUGHES
Better HDR
Photoshop CS5 has an incredibly powerful
new feature called Merge to HDR Pro, acces-
sible from File>Automate. Quick results, intui-
tive controls, and magical de-ghosting. For
best results, bracket three to five exposures
when shooting; stabilize; and use Av (Aper-
ture Priority) or Manual mode to fix aperture.
Selecting hair
Significant changes to the Refine
Edge dialog take masking hair to
a new level. The choices are daunting,
but the steps are simple: make a
selection with the Quick Selection
tool (W); Option-click (PC: Alt-click)
to remove unwanted areas; then con-
www.layersmagazine.com
tinue to Select>Refine Edge. Using
Black & White (K) from the View
menu, choose a 10–15 pixel Radius,
enable the Smart Radius checkbox, and
voilà! Use the Option-click (PC: Alt-click) method
with the new Refine Radius tool (E) located in
the Refine Edge dialog to refine the final mask.
32
Sharpen as it should be
Following in the footsteps of the updates
in CS4 to the old Dodge, Burn, and Sponge
tools, CS5 features a new logic for the
Sharpen tool. Now pressure-sensitive, brush-
based sharpening is more powerful and less
destructive (no artifacts). Just select Protect
Details and the Tablet Pressure options in the
Options Bar. In fact, this is the most sophisti-
cated sharpening algorithm in Photoshop!
Content-Aware Fill
From fixing gaps in a panorama to
removing unwanted objects, the new Con-
tent-Aware Fill (CAF) feature delivers amazing
results, but there are a few tricks to know.
Ask the possible—CAF does a great job
with reproducible patterns: Sky, sand, grass,
stone, etc.; less so with man-made objects.
When in doubt, use a small selection and try
running it and re-running it; each pass will
likely get you closer. Sometimes expanding
a selection will help dramatically. No matter
what the result, CAF will get you further and
faster than ever before.
Removing lines
Phone and power lines are the bane of a
BRYAN O’NEIL HUGHES
retoucher’s existence. The new Content-
Aware Spot Healing in CS5 has fixed this.
Here’s how: Using the Pen tool (P), add a path
to the line; choose the Spot Healing Brush (J)
with Content-Aware selected in the Options
Bar; change the brush size to two times the
width of the wire; and in the Paths panel
(Window>Paths), select the path and click
the Stroke Path with Brush icon—done!
Add grain to bring
consistency to composites
One of many changes to Camera Raw 6 is the
ability to add grain. Grain can be used to add
warmth to an image, hide blemishes and mimic
film stock—but can also be used to establish
consistency between images of varied ISO (or
“film speed”). Consider the case of a shot
taken midday and another at sunset; composit-
ing the midday image onto the sunset will
look artificial due to mixed texture, but a
sprinkle of additive grain will bring consis-
tency and believability to your composite.
Best off all, the results are editable and non-
destructive (when used as smart objects).
By Bryan O’Neil Hughes
Multilayer Opacity and Fill
—and so much more
The ability to select multiple layers and
adjust the Opacity or Fill was at the top of
many Photoshop users’ lists. From text to
image data, those living in layers will enjoy
massive amounts of time saved. Speaking
of layers, you can now choose your own
default layer styles (just click the Make
Default button in the Layer Style dialog).
Painting photographs
Photoshop CS5 enjoys a new paint
engine wired up to the new Mixer Brush tool
(nested with the Brush tool [B]). To enjoy the
benefits, select the new Painting Workspace
(Window>Workspace>Painting) and the
Mixer Brush tool. Open a conventional photo
and have fun experimenting. With more
control of brush and fluid dynamics and the
ability to mix pixels and to change load,
flow, etc., you’ll soon be converting photos
to paintings. Here I have preserved the photo
of my son Miles, while painting over the fall
leaves around him.
64-Bit—what does
that mean to me?
Photoshop CS5 is now capable of running
in native 64-bit on both Mac and Windows.
This means Photoshop can now address
hundreds of gigs of RAM (instead of just 4
GB). The results are speedier operations—
the bigger the file, the bigger the differ-
ence. The 32-bit version is on the same
disc, so if your third-party plug-ins haven’t
been updated yet, you can run Photoshop
in 32-bit.

Photoshop CS5 Extended
Jumpstart 3D creation
from the 3D panel
In Photoshop CS5 Extended, it’s easy to get
started with 3D creation from the 3D panel
(Window>3D). Use Repoussé on text layers,
masks, selections, or paths to extrude them to
real 3D geometries. Take layers and wrap them
around 3D shapes and even open 3D models
from third-party content providers directly as a
Photoshop 3D layer.
Easily access free
3D content online
Download additional free models and materi-
als directly from Photoshop CS5 Extended!
Explore the landing page for 3D content from
3D>Browse 3D Content Online. Here you’ll find
links to popular 3D content providers, additional 3D
materials to download, and information on other
great 3D resources.
Punch out holes in
your extrusions!
In the Repoussé dialog you can manipulate
the constraint (sub-path) using any of the
Internal Constraints tools to either punch it
out to make a hole or add separate extrusion
parameters. You can also add constraints to an
existing Repoussé object by drawing a selection or
path and choosing either 3D>Repoussé>Create
Constraints From Selection(s) or Selected Path(s).
You can also use the Add(Selection) or Add(Path)
buttons in the Internal Constraints section of the
Repoussé dialog.
3D Overlays!
When you have any of the 3D tools
active, you can turn on 3D overlays from the
bottom of the 3D panel to view the 3D Axis
(the widget for manipulating meshes, lights,
and cameras), light widgets, material and
mesh bounding boxes, and a ground plane.
Go to Photoshop (PC: Edit)>Preferences>3D
to change overlay settings. To use the 3D
Axis for meshes, lights, or cameras, select
the right tool to invoke the 3D Axis for that
property. For example, when you select one
of the 3D Light tools in the 3D (Lights) panel
and click on a light widget, the 3D Axis will
now rotate and move the selected light.
Target lights with
a simple click!
Easily position lights now in Photoshop CS5
Extended by using a keyboard shortcut. With
a 3D Light tool active, select the light widget
that you want to reposition, and then Option-
click (PC: Alt-click) on the 3D object to select
the new target of the light.
Use the Material Drop tool to
easily load and drop materials
Material editing workflow is easier now with
the 3D Material Drop and 3D Select Material
tools in the 3D panel. With the 3D Material
Drop tool, Option-click (PC: Alt-click) a mate-
rial to load it and then click anywhere to drop
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L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
By Zorana Gee
it to another part of your model, another
3D mesh, or another 3D layer. Use the 3D
Select Material tool to help target the right
material as indicated by the material picker
thumbnail in the 3D panel.
Ground shadows for 3D
Easily turn on ground shadows
for 3D objects using 3D>Ground Plane
Shadow Catcher. In the 3D (Scene) panel,
set the Quality drop-down menu to Ray
Trace (Draft or Final) to start the render
and actually see the shadow. In the 3D
(Lights) panel, turn shadows on or off for
individual lights using the Create Shadows
checkbox, and then adjust the Softness.
In the 3D (Mesh) panel, you can adjust the
shadow Opacity. Choose Snap Object to
Ground Plane from the 3D panel’s flyout
menu if necessary to see the shadow.
Progressive rendering—
pause and resume
If you’ve paused your rendering (by
pressing the Spacebar) and would like it
to resume, select the Resume Progressive
Render command from the 3D panel’s
flyout menu. When the rendering is com-
plete, you’ll no longer see the blue tiles
getting drawn.
Test renderings
with selections
Sometimes you may want to quickly render
for only a selected part of your 3D object
to save time and check for specific light-
ing effects. That’s now possible by simply
making a selection on the area you want
to render and going to 3D>Progressive
Render Selection.
Depth of field for 3D
Create a depth-of-field
effect on your 3D object
with the 3D Zoom Camera
tool (nested with the 3D Rotate Camera
tool [N]). Option-click (PC: Alt-click) the area
where you want to set the distance or focal
plane of focus. You can also manually set
the Blur and Distance parameters in the
Options Bar. (The Blur is set to 0 by default,
so you’ll need to increase the value to see
the effect.)
 Illustrator
Join me
In Illustrator CS5 you can join any
number of paths by simply selecting them
all with the Selection tool (V) and pressing
Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J)—you no longer
need to select just the end points. A second
Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) with the path still
selected will close the path.
Dash away all
The new dash adjustment option for strokes
will make dashes look as if they were care-
fully and correctly placed—evenly distrib-
uted on a path and cleanly bisecting any
corners, even on complex shapes such as a
20-pointed star. To turn this option on, go
to the Stroke panel (Window>Stroke), click
the Dashed Line checkbox, and select the
second icon to the far right: Aligns Dashes
to Corners and Path Ends, Adjusting Lengths
to Fit. Want to keep that setting turned on
for future object creation? Deselect New Art
Has Basic Appearance from the Appearance
panel’s flyout menu (Window>Appearance).
Masking reversed
Instead of creating complex artwork
and then drawing another object on top
to mask that artwork, you can now simply
click on any object and change the drawing
mode to Draw Inside (Shift-D) at the bottom
of the Toolbox. After you’ve set Draw Inside,
the selected object will mask everything you
draw. Draw Inside also supports the Paste
and Place commands—pasting inside an
object has finally come to Illustrator.
Paint inside
Use Draw Inside with the new Bristle Brush
to fill any shape with beautiful brushstrokes.
This brush creates painterly strokes by mimick-
ing the appearance of actual bristles from
an artist’s brush, but the strokes are still vectors
so they’re fully editable and scalable. To find
the Bristle Brushes, open the Brushes panel
www.layersmagazine.com
(Window>Brushes), click on the flyout menu,
and choose Open Brush Library>Bristle
Brush>Bristle Brush Library. Click on a brush
in the Bristle Brush Library to add it to the
Brushes panel, and then double-click on it in
the Brushes panel to open the Bristle Brush
Options dialog.
34
Draw a triangle
How do you make a triangle? Some
people do it with the Pen tool (P), others by
creating a square and deleting an anchor
point. The fastest way to draw a triangle is
with the Polygon tool (nested with the Rect-
angle tool [M]). While drawing a polygon, hit
the Down Arrow key on your keyboard mul-
tiple times to reduce the number of sides.
Taper strokes
The Width tool (Shift-W) lets you
drag strokes wider or narrower on any part
of a path. You can add multiple width points
to go wide to narrow to wide again. The
Width tool is easy-to-use, but don’t let that
stop you from exploring all the functional-
By David Macy
ity possible with this tool via shortcuts. For
example, pressing the Option (PC: Alt) key
while dragging will allow you to create an
asymmetrical stroke width.
Learn the numbers
While working with the Perspective
Drawing tools, you can use 1–4 on your
keyboard to change the active plane (the
number four key deactivates all the grids).
To see which plane is active, look at which
side is highlighted in the Plane Switching
widget. The number five key also has a
function: Use it with the Perspective Selec-
tion tool (Shift-V) to drag objects perpen-
dicular to the grid plane.
9-slice scaling
CS3 brought a feature called 9-slice
scaling from Flash Professional into Illustrator.
At that time, 9-slice was only really useful
for Illustrator symbols after importing them
into Flash. Now, in CS5, 9-slice works on the
scaling of any symbol right inside Illustrator.
Let’s say you want to make a button with text
on it, but when you scale it up, you don’t want
the text to stretch or the rounded corners to
distort. Make the button into a symbol (drag it
into the Symbols panel) and apply 9-slice scal-
ing (select Enable Guides for 9-Slice Scaling
in the Symbol Options dialog), then you can
scale the button without distortion.
Back to basics
If you’ve applied fancy attributes
like art or pattern brushes, but
you want to reset them to simple strokes, a
new setting on the Control panel is made
for doing just that. With the path selected,
click on the Brush Definition drop-down
menu in the Control panel and look for the
Basic option at the top of the list. To reset
variable width strokes, click on the Variable
Width Profile drop-down menu and select
Uniform at the top.
And even more basic
One of the biggest timesavers to ever
learn with Illustrator is using the X key to
switch between the current Stroke and Fill.
Use this, along with the Forward Slash (/)
key for no Fill or Stroke, and your life will
be so much easier.
 35

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InDesign By Michael Ninness

Gridified tools
While dragging with a frame tool,
tap the arrow keys to start subdividing the
area you’ve dragged out into equal parts. The
Up/Down Arrows change the number of rows
and the Right/Left Arrows change the number
of columns. The default amount of space
between each frame will automatically be
the same as the Gutter value for the current
spread (Layout>Margins and Columns).
Auto-Fit
Something every InDesign user learns
is that an image in a frame and the frame
itself are two separate things. InDesign CS5
introduces a new feature that changes this
relationship. Select a frame that has an image in
it and enable the new Auto-Fit checkbox in the
Control panel. Now when you resize the frame,
the image will “go along for the ride” and scale
as you change the frame!
Mind the gap
The new Gap tool (U) works on the
“white space” between frames. Position the
mouse between two items, click-and-drag to
adjust the position of the gap, and the frames
on either side of the gap will adjust at the
same time—the uniform gap width will be
maintained! Hold down the Shift key to only
adjust the two closest items relative to the
gap. Hold down the Command (PC: Ctrl) key to
resize the gap instead of moving it.
Grid Place for
multipage documents
It’s now possible to place pages from a
multipage PDF, INDD, Illustrator file, etc. as a
grid. In the Place dialog (File>Place), enable
the checkboxes for Show Import Options and
Create Static Captions, and then navigate
to your multipage file. Choose the range of
pages you want to place in the next dialog
and click OK. With the loaded Place cursor,
drag out an area for your grid, subdivide the
area into columns and rows using the arrow
keys, and then release the mouse button to
place the pages.
View links in Bridge
and Mini Bridge
If you want to place an image that you used
in another InDesign document, go to either
Adobe Bridge or the new Mini Bridge panel
(Window>Mini Bridge) in InDesign, and navi-
gate to that InDesign file. Right-click on the
document thumbnail and choose Show Linked
Files. Magically, you’ll now see thumbnails of
all the placed files inside that InDesign docu-
ment. Select the item(s) you want to use and
drag them into your current document.
No more missing fonts!
When you include the fonts as part
of the Package command (File>Package),
InDesign now generates a Document Fonts
folder. When you open an InDesign file that’s
located in a folder that also includes a Docu-
ment Fonts folder, InDesign will automati-
cally install the fonts the document needs!
And when you close the document, the
document fonts are automatically unin-
stalled for you.
one of the yellow diamonds. To exit Live
Corner Edit mode, either press the four
key again, or deselect the object.
Live distribute
Ever needed to change the amount
of space between a number of aligned
items on the page? To do it interactively,
first select the items on the page with
the Selection tool (notice that CS5 now
provides a transformation bounding box
around multiple selected items!). Click-and-
drag one of the handles of the bounding
box to resize all the items in your selection.
To resize the space between each item,
hold down the Spacebar while dragging.
Tool Hints
The new Tool Hints panel
(Window>Utilities>Tool
Hints) lists all the hidden
modifier key behaviors available for the
currently selected tool. For example, look
at the Tool Hints panel when the Selec-
tion tool is active to discover that to select
an item in a group, you no longer have to
switch to the Direct Selection tool first.
You can just double-click on the item with
the Selection tool. To jump back up to
having the group selected, simply press
the Esc key.

Presentation mode
Press Shift-W to switch into
the new Presentation mode.
This will hide the user inter-
face and center and fit your
document into the screen.
Any extra screen area will be colored black.
Press G to change the background to grey,
press W to change it to white, and press B to
change it back to black.
Rounded corners
Select a frame and click on the yellow
square icon located on the frame edge to
enter Live Corner Edit mode. (You can also
press the number four key on your keyboard.)
You’ll now see four yellow diamonds in each
corner. Click-and-drag one of the diamonds
to adjust the corner radius of all four corners
at the same time. To adjust only one corner,
hold down the Shift key as you drag the
diamond. To cycle through the six different
corner styles, Option-click (PC: Alt-click) on
 Fireworks
Just click it to select it
Fireworks has a simple and power-
ful selection model. Click on something
to select it, regardless of what layer it’s on,
even if it’s grouped. There’s no need to dig
through your Layers panel to try and find a
layer. Use the Pointer tool (V) to select an
object or its group, the Select Behind tool
(press V again) to click repeatedly and select
the next object lower in the stacking order,
and the Subselection tool (A) to select an
object in a group. Wicked simple, and sure
to save you time.
The context sensitive
Properties panel
The Properties panel shows the commands
and operations that you can use for the
current selection. In Fireworks CS5, there
are even more context sensitive controls and
nice new features: Easily constrain propor-
tions when scaling width and height; a new
Gradient Dither option smoothes Linear and
Radial gradients; align strokes with a single
click; and new Compound Shape options
allow easily combining vectors shapes as
they’re drawn.
Text layout
Text is part of nearly every design,
and for Fireworks CS5, lots of
refinements have been added to the
already impressive text layout features.
A favorite is the new noncontigu-
ous selection feature—after selecting
some text characters in a text object
www.layersmagazine.com
using the Text tool (T), press-and-hold
the Shift key and click-and-drag to select
additional noncontiguous characters.
Flash Catalyst integration
Flash Catalyst is a new interaction
design tool for the Adobe Flash Platform.
In Fireworks CS5, you can export a selec-
tion, an entire page, or all of your pages
36
to an FXG 2 file and take that into Flash
Catalyst where you can then add structure
and interaction. FXG files can be imported
into Flash Catalyst, Flash Professional,
Illustrator, and Photoshop, or even added
to a Flash Builder project.
Mobile authoring and Adobe
Device Central integration
Fireworks is a screen graphics
design application and can be used to
create optimized graphics for any device.
With the explosion of mobile devices,
set-top boxes and proprietary electronic
devices, there are more screens in the
world now than ever, with no signs of slow-
ing down. Fireworks CS5 designs can easily
be previewed with Adobe Device Central.
Slicing improvements
You can now Edit>Copy and Edit>
Paste Attributes from one slice to another,
saving you time in what can be a tedious
workflow. Slice names are now case-sensitive,
so changing the case of a letter in the slice
name will now change the slice name.
Share color swatches
Fireworks can now share Adobe
Swatch Exchange (ASE) files with Illustrator,
Photoshop, InDesign, and Kuler. Use the
Swatches panel in each application to save
or open swatch libraries.
Finger dancing
Manipulating objects is something
you probably do dozens of times a day.
Learn these keyboard shortcuts to amplify
your productivity.
By Bruce Bowman
• Option-arrow key (PC: Alt-arrow key) to
duplicate the current selection
• Arrow key to nudge the current selection
1 pixel
• Shift-arrow key to nudge the current
selection 10 pixels
• With any tool selected, press-and-hold
the Command (PC: Ctrl) key to toggle
temporarily to the Pointer tool
• Command-Up/Down Arrow (PC: Ctrl-Up/
Down Arrow) will move the selected
object’s layer(s) in the layer order
• Command-Shift-Up Arrow (PC: Ctrl-Shift-
Up Arrow) will move the selected object’s
layer(s) to the top of the layer order
• Command-Shift-Down Arrow (PC:
Ctrl-Shift-Down Arrow) will move the
selected object’s layer(s) to the bottom
of the layer order
• Command-Shift-9 (PC: Ctrl-Shift-9) will
rotate the selection 90° clockwise
• Copy, then select something else and
press Command-Option-Shift-V (PC: Ctrl-
Alt-Shift-V) to Paste Attributes
• Hold the Shift key when using the Pointer tool
or Subselection tool and hover the mouse
between guides to see measurements
• Shift-drag a guide to see measurements
from edges or from other guides.
Measure tool
Do you work on user interfaces?
Ever make specifications that call out
specific pixel measurements? Select the
Measure tool from the Vector group in the
Toolbox (nested under the Rectangle tool
[U]), and use it to create your call outs.
Collaborate with
clients and teammates
With the collaboration tools in Fireworks, you
can make the feedback process as painless as
possible, and look professional and grace-
ful as you do it. There are several different
ways to share your work and you can choose
the right approach for each situation—Share
My Screen, Export Adobe PDF, Preview in
Browser, Create AIR File, Demo Current Docu-
ment, and Export HTML and CSS.

Flash Catalyst
Sharing is caring
When creating multipage sites or appli-
cations, you often want the object on the first
page to show up on one or more of the other
pages. Your first instinct is to copy-and-paste it
into the pages where it’s needed, but doing that
will create multiple copies of the object. To avoid
this, Right-click on the object and use the Share
to State command to select specific states, or all
of them. If you want to remove the object from
the state, use Remove from State.
Down to the wire
Flash Catalyst contains numerous wire-
frame drawing tools and prebuilt components
that you can use to create interactive wireframes.
Prebuilt components are fully functioning buttons,
scrollbars, checkboxes, and other user interface
items that let you quickly mock up the layout of
your finished project. You can find these in the
Wireframe Components panel.
Round and round we go
A huge timesaver, and a giant benefit
to working with Flash Catalyst, is its integration
with other Adobe Creative Suite design tools. By
selecting a vector or bitmap graphic in Flash Cata-
lyst and Right-clicking on it, you can quickly bring
it into Adobe Illustrator CS5 or Adobe Photoshop
CS5, make changes, then automatically merge the
changes back into Flash Catalyst. This roundtrip
editing lets you use familiar design products to
easily add interactivity to your static artwork.
Vector graphics:
The optimizer!
When importing vector graphics into Flash
Catalyst, all aspects of the graphics—the
strokes, fills, and paths—are all represented
by code. When publishing your final project,
37
L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
By Doug Winnie
you can optimize its performance by convert- Spice up your transitions
ing these vector graphics to optimized graph- When you make changes to the
ics using the Flash Catalyst heads-up display location, opacity, rotation, or size of your
(HUD). The HUD is the gray and black floating components, Flash Catalyst captures
panel that changes its options based on the those changes across states and auto-
currently selected object. If you’re handing matically creates transitions. In addition
your project off to Adobe Flash Builder 4, to these automatically created effects,
optimizing your graphics will extract all of that you can create your own directly on the
vector code into an external file. Timeline. By selecting an object, you can
use a number of 3D rotation effects, set a
Linking it up number of component properties, and cho-
When working with larger bitmap graph- reograph custom component transitions.
ics, you can set them up as external linked
images to keep your Flash Catalyst project file Going deep with the
size small. You can also make changes to these Properties panel
linked files after the project is published without In Flash Catalyst, the Proper-
reopening the project in Flash Catalyst. Convert ties panel gives you access
an embedded bitmap image to a linked image to all of the basics attributes for an object,
by selecting it and setting it in the HUD, or such as location, width, height, and others.
Right-click on the image in the Library panel. When you select components like buttons,
radio buttons, and checkboxes, there are
Shhh…Working with the Library component properties that can be set
No need to keep your voice down. With as well. You can define button labels and
the Library panel in Flash Catalyst you can share radio button groups, define tooltip text
and import other components made by other to display when your user hovers over
Flash Catalyst users quickly and easily. From the a component, and trigger hand icons
Library panel, click the Export Library Package on mouse rollovers. Check out all of the
icon or Right-click and select Export Library options available in the Properties panel.
Package. To import another library use the
same controls, but choose Import.
Artboards. So many artboards
When creating your project design
in Adobe Illustrator CS5, you can use the
multiple artboards feature to break up your
design. When importing (File>Import>Adobe
Illustrator File) your project into Flash Catalyst,
individual artboards convert into unique pages
in Flash Catalyst!
Fire away
with Fireworks
Adobe Fireworks
CS5 users have a
unique workflow to get their
designs into Flash Catalyst. When
finished with your project, export
your design as FXG. Fireworks
pages will convert to Flash Catalyst
application pages, including master
page layer objects. Best yet, if you
want to tweak the export engine, it’s
entirely written in JSF, the JavaScript
plug-in language for Fireworks.
 Flash Professional
Magical flowing text blocks
With the new Text Layout Frame-
work (TLF), if you now draw a text block
and fill it with more text than the block can
handle, click on the Out Port of the selected
container and draw a new text block. The text
will flow from one text block to the other just
like in Adobe InDesign.
Instant image update
If you save your project as a Flash
CS5 Uncompressed Document (*.xfl), some
parts of the Flash file can be worked on
separately by different people. You’ll see a
folder with the name of your project instead
of a FLA file. You can edit any Flash Library
asset contained within the matching library
folder. Edit any image in Photoshop, save
your changes, and those changes will be
immediately reflected on the Stage and in
the Library when you return to Flash.
To spring or not to spring
In Flash Professional CS5 you can now
add springiness to any IK Bone in an
armature. The Strength (stiffness of
the spring) and Damping (rate of decay
of the spring effect) properties of
bones give real physical movement by
integrating dynamic physics into the IK Bones
system. However, it may be desirable to turn
off Spring for bones without having to set
both values to zero on every bone. To do this,
select the Timeline layer that the armature is
in to reveal an Enable checkbox for Springs in
the Properties panel.
www.layersmagazine.com
38
Working with keyframes
in a tween span
To easily move a property keyframe to
a different frame in the same tween span
or a different tween span, Command-click
(PC: Ctrl-click) the property keyframe to
select it, release the Command (PC: Ctrl)
key, then click-and-drag the keyframe to the
new location. (If you want to copy the key-
frame, Option-drag [PC: Alt-drag].) The trick
here is to release the Command (PC: Ctrl)
key before you drag the keyframe to avoid
selecting additional frames.
FXG export
You can export a selection or the
entire Stage using a new file format called
FXG. This format offers improved fidel-
ity as well as compatibility with Illustrator,
Fireworks, Flash Catalyst, and Flash Builder.
Simply select Export Image or Export Selec-
tion from File>Export.
Streamlined
video workflows
You can now preview your video live on the
Stage. As soon as you import a video you’ll
see a preview of the first frame. Right-click
on the video to play, pause, and rewind. If a
skin was used to add playback controls then
you’ll be able to use them on the Stage,
as well. This is especially helpful if you’re
working with video assets that have alpha
transparency. You can also add and view
cue points in the Properties panel while
previewing the video.
SWF size history
You can now keep track of the size of
your SWF in the Properties panel using SWF
History. Every time you publish a SWF you’ll
see a running log of your publish size, date,
and time. Three data points are displayed in
the Properties panel but if you click the Log
button you can see up to 100. You’ll also see
an alert icon if your SWF increased in size by
more than 50%.
By Richard Galvan
Navigating the
motion editor
In Flash Professional CS5, there are some
new keyboard modifiers to help you move
around the Motion Editor.
• To pan/scroll horizontally, use Shift-
scroll wheel
• To zoom in and out, use Option-scroll
wheel (PC: Alt-scroll wheel)
• To select multiple keyframes at once, click-
and-drag (marquee select) the keyframes
• To turn off Auto-Zoom in the graphs, use
the option in the Motion Editor panel’s
flyout menu.
Controlling bone movement
Working with a complicated IK
armature and want to move just one section?
No problem. Just hold down the Shift key
while dragging any bone to limit the move-
ment to just that bone and its children. This
comes in handy, for example, if you only want
to move the arm in the armature of a person.
Create a button
without writing code
If you want to create a button to move to
the next frame in a presentation, draw a
button, select it, open the Code Snip-
pets panel (Window>Code Snippets),
twirl down the Timeline Navigation folder,
and then double-click Click to Go to Next
Frame and Stop. You’ll see the code in the
Actions panel with an explanation of what
it’s doing. You now have a fully functional
“next” button, without writing a line of code.

Dreamweaver
Box model beauty
You can now get rich details about
how your layout is hanging together with CSS
Inspect. Click the Inspect button at the top of
your document window, and hover over areas
in Live View. The CSS Styles panel will update in
real time with the properties of your selection,
and you’ll get a visual overlay showing your
selection’s current border, margin and padding
settings, and how they affect the elements
around them.
Multiple server projects
The revised Site Setup dialog
(Site>New Site) not only helps you
get started faster, but it also helps to
manage projects that span across multiple serv-
ers. Say, for example, your client wants to check
everything out on a staging server, but you
need to also use both your local machine’s Web
server as a local environment and a shared team
server for your day-to-day work. Just create a
new server for each part of your workflow, and
then at any point in the project, choose which
is your active testing (development) server and
which is your remote (publishing) server. Easy!
Interactive,
cross-browser previews
When using Live View, you can hit the F6 key to
“freeze” JavaScript—pausing drop-down menus
in place, Ajax data in a particular state of display,
tabs in a particular open/closed configuration,
etc. With integration with the new Adobe Brow-
serLab cross-browser testing service, you can
then send that local “state” of your page right
to BrowserLab to view it in all of the available
browsers across operating systems.
No more related file overload
If you’re working with a dynamic CMS
framework such as WordPress or Drupal, you
may find yourself overwhelmed with files in
your Related Files bar. Click the icon to the far
right of the Related Files bar to filter your
view options—by file type, or even better, by
custom filter. Only working with your design?
Turn off all file types besides CSS. Need to
find just the WordPress core PHP files? Create
a custom filter for “wp-*.php,” and you’ll see
only those files in your Related Files bar.
Experimental CSS design
In Dreamweaver CS5, experiment-
ing with CSS-based layouts is even
easier. Hover over the left margin of your
current rule selection in the CSS Styles panel
to see the new CSS Enable/Disable feature.
Click the “no” icon to disable a particular
rule, and again to enable it. Aren’t happy with
the results? Right-click the rule and choose
Enable All Disabled in Selected Rule to get
everything back to where you started. Things
looking great? Go ahead and Right-click
the rule and choose Delete All Disabled in
Selected Rule to clean up those comments
in your code.
Live View navigation tricks #1
You can now use Live View in CS5
much more like a browser, which is indispens-
able for designing dynamic applications. For
example, you may need to design around
a specific view of a WordPress application,
like a posting page or search results. Just
hold down Command (PC: Ctrl) and click
links to get to exactly the view of a dynamic
app you’d like. Interact with the JavaScript
elements of your interface and then hit F6
to “freeze” any state of your application.
Live View navigation tricks #2
Did you know that you could also
use Live View for digging into remote sites?
Just type any URL in the
Live View location bar at
the top of the document
window, and surf right
to that site—using all of
the CSS tools to show
you what’s happening
underneath the hood, the
Related Files bar to give
you immediate access to
the code underneath, and
Live Code showing you
the markup as you interact
with it.
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By Scott Fegette
Live View
navigation tricks #3
Using a dynamic app such as WordPress or
Joomla? You probably find yourself jumping
back and forth from Dreamweaver to the
admin console in a browser. In Dreamweaver
CS5, you can use Live View navigation
to make that easier. Create a new, blank
document window (or tab), and turn on Live
View. Enter your server console’s URL into
the location bar, and load it in Dreamweaver.
Choose View>Live View Options>Follow
Links Continuously to turn on navigation full-
time, and you’ve got yourself a console tab
you can switch to at any point in time.
Custom code hinting for PHP
With all the new dynamic design
features for PHP-based applications in
Dreamweaver CS5, you might think we
forgot about the hand-coding pro. Not
the case at all. Go to Site>Site-Specific
Code Hints, and if you’re using Drupal,
WordPress, or Joomla!, Dreamweaver will
preconfigure your code hinting to pull in
all the right include files, directories, and
code definitions.
Client management tools
For keeping you and your clients
on top of exactly what Web technology is
hot (or not) and optimizing your bids, you
can now use the SiteCatalyst NetAver-
ages service to track current Web trends
in browser usage, JavaScript and Flash
penetration, technology, and more. Just
choose the NetAverages option from the
CS Live services menu in your Application
Bar, and get fresh, current Web usage stats
at any time.
 After Effects
Work faster with
the Roto Brush tool
When drawing strokes to define a foreground
object with the Roto Brush tool (Option-
W), begin by drawing broad strokes along
the center of the object’s features. Before
you draw a fine stroke along a boundary to
attempt a precise segmentation, be sure that
you’ve drawn foreground strokes down the
center of the object and made at least some
rough background strokes on the other side
of the boundary.
There’s a RAM preview
for every occasion
You can specify two sets of RAM preview
options in the Preview panel: RAM Preview
Options and Shift-RAM Preview Options.
For example, you can set RAM Preview
Options for full frame rate and full resolu-
tion, and set Shift-RAM Preview Options
to skip one out of every two frames and
preview at half resolution. To preview using
Shift-RAM Preview Options, hold Shift as
you initiate a RAM preview. Press Option
(PC: Alt) while initiating a RAM preview to
preview a specified number of frames up to
and including the current frame. The default
number of frames previewed with this com-
mand is five. The preference for changing
this number is in the Alternate RAM Preview
section of the Preview preferences.
Use Imagineer Systems
mocha for After Effects
for motion tracking
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After Effects includes the mocha for After
Effects (mocha-AE) standalone motion track-
ing application from Imagineer Systems. This
planar tracker handles motion-tracking jobs
that would be difficult with the built-in After
Effects motion tracker. So, whether you need
to replace a billboard on a bus or the con-
tents of a mobile phone screen, try mocha
for After Effects.
40
Align your layers to
composition features
To align selected layers to the center or
edge of a composition, choose Composition
in the Align Layers To drop-down menu in
the Align panel (Window>Align), and then
click the icon corresponding to the desired
type of alignment.
Let After Effects
handle the math
Most text fields for input of numerical values
in After Effects will perform basic calcula-
tions for you. For example, you can enter
1920/2 to set a property to half of 1920.
After Effects will do the math for you and set
the property value to 960.
Zoom with the
mouse scroll wheel
To zoom in to or out from the center of the
view, place the pointer over the panel and
move the scroll wheel accordingly. To zoom
in on or out from a specific point, place the
pointer over the panel and hold Option (PC:
Alt) as you move the scroll wheel.
By Todd Kopriva
Collect, organize, and
purge projects and footage
Use File>Collect Files to move a project and
its assets to a single folder before sharing it,
moving it to another computer, or archiving
it. The Consolidate All Footage, Remove
Unused Footage, and Reduce Project com-
mands in the File menu are also great for
cleaning up a project.
Search, and you shall find
The Project, Timeline, and Effects
& Presets panels each contain search fields
that you can use to filter items in the panel.
There’s also a Search Help field in the upper-
right corner of the Tools panel, which uses
the Adobe Community Help search engine
to search online resources most relevant to
the application. This search includes Adobe
Help documents, technical support docu-
ments, forums, and tutorials and articles on
other trusted websites—such as the Layers
magazine website.
Download free stuff
and connect with the
After Effects community
To exchange scripts, projects, and other
useful items with other users, go to the
Adobe Exchange website. Adobe provides
complimentary packages of animation
presets and scripts on the After Effects
Exchange (www.adobe.com/go/learn_
ae_exchange). To exchange knowledge,
ask questions, and share tips, visit the After
Effects user-to-user forum (http://forums
.adobe.com).
Give OpenGL
rendering more
memory to work with
Increase the texture
memory used for
OpenGL rendering to 80% of the installed
video RAM (VRAM) on your video card. The
default of 200 MB is quite small for modern
video cards; values in the 400–800 MB
range are appropriate for modern cards with
512–1GB of VRAM. Choose After Effects (PC:
Edit)>Preferences>Previews, click OpenGL
Information, and enter a new value for
Texture Memory.

Premiere Pro
New DSLR presets
You can now edit the video files
from your favorite DSLR natively in Premiere
Pro CS5. With a fast USB 2 card reader, you
can even edit directly off the camera media.
With some cameras all you need is a USB
cable connected to the camera—no need
to transfer the files for a quick rough cut—
just edit!
Drag clip to make
new sequence
From the Project panel, drag any clip to the
New Item icon at the bottom of the panel
and release. This will automatically create
a sequence with the correct editing mode
(RED, AVCHD, DVCPRO, XDCAM, and so
on). This is my personal favorite new user
interface tip.
Field display settings
in the Source and
Program Monitors
The Source and Program Monitors can
now be set to display the first, second, or
both fields for interlaced footage. This can
be useful when you need to grab a frame to
use as a still. This was a top feature request
from law enforcement investigation and
forensic users.
Export frame from Source
and Program Monitors
The Export Frame buttons in the
Source and Program Monitors offer a rapid
frame export workflow that bypasses the
Adobe Media Encoder. Position the playhead
at the desired location in a clip or sequence
and click the Export Frame button. In the
Export Frame dialog name the exported
frame, choose a file format, and browse to
a location for saving the exported still image
to disk.
Playback/Pause
resolution settings
You can adjust the resolution of playing or
paused assets. Right-click the Source or Play-
back Monitor, select Playback or Pause Resolu-
tion, and then choose Full, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, or
1/16. This gives more control over monitoring
experience. For example, with higher resolu-
tion footage, you can set Playback Resolution
to a lower value for smooth playback (e.g.,
1/2), and set the Pause Resolution to Full. This
allows you to quickly check the quality of focus
or edge details when playback is paused.
Finer control of
keyframe edits
This feature improves the control and precision
when dragging keyframes in a confined space.
For example, audio gain values can jump
dramatically in coarse amounts when dragging
an audio volume rubber band or keyframe in
the confirmed vertical space of an audio track.
To more precisely set the gain value, drag
while holding down modifier keys to yield finer
control of the rate of change in the parameter
value. Hold down Option (PC: Alt) to change
the numeric value by 1; hold down Command
(PC: Ctrl) to change the numeric value by 0.1.
Sequence marker comments
displayed in tooltip
After setting a new sequence
marker, you can enter a name and a comment
in the Marker dialog. Once the marker is set,
hovering over it in the Timeline produces a
tooltip that displays the marker information.
This allows you to quickly scan a number of
markers to determine their contents, without
having to double-click on each of them to open
the Marker dialog in order to read the content.
41
L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
By Dave Helmly
Extend edit
The Extend Edit feature consists of
two commands called Roll Next Edit to
CTI and Roll Previous Edit to CTI. They
allow you to extend the duration of each
clip on a targeted track to the playhead
(CTI) position. If there’s not enough media
to extend to the CTI, the clip is extended to
the media available. These commands are only
available as keyboard shortcuts, and can be
assigned shortcuts from the Edit>Keyboard
Customization menu.
Customizable Project
panel data columns
The Project panel can display any XMP
metadata fields you choose, not only the
clip data fields. Choose Metadata Display from
the flyout menu to select which metadata col-
umns to display, add properties to a schema,
and change the order of columns. Adobe
Premiere Pro saves your choice of columns
in the workspace, so you can have a different
set of data displayed for your Ingest/Logging
workspace vs. the one you use for Editing.
Independently place video and audio
To drag the video and audio portions of
a clip to specific tracks, drag the clip from
the Source Monitor or Project panel into the
Timeline. When the video portion of the clip
lies above the desired video track, press-
and-hold Shift, then drag downward past
the bar separating video and audio tracks.
When the audio portion of the clip lies above
the desired audio track, release the mouse,
and release Shift. ■
 HENK DAWSON

[DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY TUTORIAL]

S E A N { } M c C O R M A C K

overview of new features in Camera Raw 6

The release of a completely new version of Camera Raw always coincides with a new version of Photoshop, so it’s
no surprise to see Camera Raw 6 coming out with Photoshop CS5. As with any version jump, there’s a host of
new features to whet the appetite of digital photographers. Among these are new image rendering (the process
version), noise reduction and sharpening, lens corrections, and the ability to add grain.

Process Version
2003 warning

[PROCESS VERSION] [PV2010 VERSUS PV2003]

How we view our converted RAW files depends entirely upon the The old process version is Process Version 2003. This distinguishes
www.layersmagazine.com

inner workings of our RAW processors. With Camera Raw 6.1, Adobe
has completely changed how this works for the first time since 2003.
The process version affects how Camera Raw handles sharpening and
noise reduction, along with Fill Light and Highlight Recovery. Initially,
this also affected the sensor rendering (the “demosaic”), but this has
since been updated separately. To find the process version, click the
Camera Calibration tab (third from the right) and click the Process
menu at the top.
it from the new version and highlights how rarely Adobe intends
to change the processing. Process Version 2010 has much better
image quality than the old version, with much better detail reten-
tion and color. To change between them, select Process Version
2010 (Current) from the Process menu. If the image is PV2003, a
small warning will be visible at the bottom right of the image. Click
this to update to Process Version 2010 (recommended).

42

[NOISE REDUCTION]
While today’s cameras are much improved regarding noise at higher
ISO, there’s still a need to provide quality noise reduction to remove
color noise and blotchiness from photos. One area of photography
where this is especially relevant is with concert and low-light photog-
raphy. In older versions of Camera Raw, the noise reduction was quite
basic (just two sliders: Color and Luminance) and had a tendency
to smear the photo, making it look soft and lacking in detail. The
example photo here was taken handheld at ISO 6400, to get the shot
at dusk, with no tripod.
[LUMINANCE NOISE REMOVAL]
Luminance controls noise that appears as blotches or uneven bright-
ness. Essentially, Luminance noise reduction tries to even the bright-
ness level in all areas of the photo. Using extreme amounts will blur
and soften the photo. Generally speaking, increase the Luminance
slider until you think it’s a little too blurry, and then use the Sharpen-
ing controls to bring back detail in the photo. Again, for ISO 6400
and greater, using the Color Detail and Luminance Contrast sliders
helps increase edge detail and local contrast in the photo. Note that
for older cameras, this is also true for their highest ISO setting.
43
L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
[CONTROL COLOR NOISE]
Noise Reduction is located under the Detail tab (third from left).
The most obvious noise is color noise (also called chroma noise).
This is the random red, blue, and green pixels you see in areas that
shouldn’t contain those colors. For RAW files, the default is 25, which
usually works well. This isn’t a fixed amount; it’s tailored for each ISO
setting. Drag the Color slider to the left until you see the color noise
appear, and then drag it to the right until it disappears. For ISO 6400
and greater in current cameras, the Color Detail slider will help retain
edge detail with higher color noise reduction.
[SHARPENING]
The controls for Sharpening haven’t changed in Camera Raw 6, but
the rendering has. The RAW default Amount of 25 should be good
for most images. If you’ve converted older images to Process Ver-
sion 2010 (Current) and have high sharpening applied, the photo
might be too sharp. To recap, Amount controls the strength of
sharpening applied. Radius controls the amount of pixels affected
by sharpening. Detail suppresses the halos caused by sharpening
(the “glowing edges”), and Masking controls where sharpening is
applied. Hold down the Option (PC: Alt) key while dragging the
sliders to preview each effect, showing how sharpening is applied.
 [EFFECTS]
There’s a brand-new tab in Camera Raw 6: The Effects tab (ƒx).
This contains the new Grain feature, and Post Crop Vignetting,
originally located in the Lens Corrections tab. Grain was a much
requested feature, allowing the user to emulate the look of film.
Post Crop Vignette has changed too, with the addition of new
modes at users’ requests.
9 [POST CROP VIGNETTE]
The normal Lens Vignetting feature in the Lens Corrections tab
makes for a useful creative tool to darken the edges of photos and
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helps draw attention to the subject. Unfortunately, once you crop the
image, the effect is lost. Post Crop Vignetting has been in Camera
Raw for some time now, but it produced different results than Lens
Vignetting, so there were many requests to change it because the
Lens Vignetting effect was superior. Camera Raw 6 remedies this.
Shown in the image here is the Paint Overlay Style setting, which is
the equivalent of the older style Post Crop Vignette.
44
8 [GRAIN]
To understand Grain, set the Amount to 100, Size to 100, and view
at a lower value (e.g., 25%). Bring Amount back to 50 and Size to 25.
Next, set Roughness to 100. Roughness controls the texture of the
grain. To emulate films like Ilford Delta 3200, add a big Amount with
large, rough grain. A more refined film (e.g., Delta 100) would have
small, fine grain. Adding grain can help smooth images with a lot
of graduation and help with banding. When adding grain at sizes of
greater than 25, blue is added to make the effect look better with
noise reduction.
10 [CREATIVE VIGNETTE]
There are two other Style settings under Post Crop Vignetting. The
default is now Highlight Priority, which looks similar to the normal Lens
Corrections tab’s Lens Vignetting. Use Amount to set the strength of
the vignette and Midpoint to bring it in from the edges. Use Round-
ness to set the shape of the vignette. To see the shape properly, set
Feather to 0. Next, set Feather to taste, getting your preferred transi-
tion between the image and the vignette. Use Highlights to bring
back bright objects in the vignette. To protect color in the vignette
area, switch Style to Color Priority.
continued on p. 46
 11 [LENS CORRECTIONS]
One issue that plagues photographers is optical distortion in their
lenses. While spending more money on lenses helps, even these
lenses can still suffer from chromatic aberration or distortion, not to
mention vignetting. Camera Raw 6 introduces brand-new tools to
combat these problems. The primary tool is Lens Profiles. Adobe
has created a whole series of profiles to automatically correct these
lens anomalies. Lens Profiles are available for Canon, Nikon, Tamron,
and Sony lenses. Also, Sigma has created a huge amount of profiles
for their lenses for Adobe.
13 [MANUAL CORRECTIONS]
If there’s no profile available or you need to do more work than
the profile offers, click on the Manual tab. The standard Chromatic
Aberration and Lens Vignetting sections are the same as in previous
www.layersmagazine.com
versions of Camera Raw. With the new sliders, Distortion will attempt
to fix distortion. The profile is doing a good job for us here though.
Vertical and Horizontal sliders correct for perspective issues. Here,
we corrected for the camera not pointing straight using the Vertical
slider. Rotate helps fix horizons, and Scale lets you remove any gray
section that might appear when fixing the photo.
46
[ Sean McCormack is based in the rather wet city of Galway on the west coast of Ireland. (When it’s sunny, it’s the best place in the world.) He’s the author of Photoshop Lightroom 2
Made Easy and runs Lightroom-Blog.com, an independent blog about Lightroom. He also develops Web galleries and plug-ins for Lightroom.
12 [USING LENS PROFILES]
To access Lens Profiles, in the Lens Correction tab click on the
Automatic tab and then check the Enable Lens Profile Corrections
box. This correctly identifies the lens as a Canon 15mm Fisheye.
If a profile is available for your lens, it will appear automatically.
Our photo has been “de-fished” and the corrections should be
immediately obvious. The distortion, chromatic aberration, and
vignette have been corrected. Profiles can handle lens distortions
from simple to severe, which is great for all photographers. You
can also manually modify the applied amount using the Distortion,
Chromatic Aberration, and Vignetting sliders (100 is the default).
14 [CONCLUSION]
The improvements in Camera Raw 6.1 make the jump to Photoshop
CS5 a delight for photographers. Significant amounts of what was
once pixel edits can now be applied in the RAW workflow and easily
changed if need be, thanks to the nondestructive settings applied to
the RAW file via XMP. Keys to this are the new noise reduction and
lens corrections. Of course, Lightroom 3 users will also have access
to these features in the Develop module.
]
ALL IMAGES BY SEAN MCCORMACK UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED
 HENK DAWSON

[P HOTOSHOP TUTORIAL]
D A V E { } C R O S S

happy accidents
Many people use the term “happy accident” to describe an unexpected result they come across while working
toward an unrelated goal. They’re anticipating a certain reliable outcome but end up with something cooler than
the original plan. Here’s an idea on how to use Adobe Illustrator CS5 and Adobe Photoshop CS5 to experiment
with the goal of getting your own happy accident, although not quite so accidentally.

[CREATE A PHOTOSHOP DOCUMENT] [CREATE BASIC SHAPES IN ILLUSTRATOR]

Let’s imagine that we need to make an interesting background in Open Illustrator CS5 and create a new document (File>New).
Photoshop CS5. Create a new document (File>New) in the size Select the Perspective Grid tool (Shift-P) to see a grid in the
you need and then click on the Background color swatch and background of your document, then use the Pen tool (P) to
www.layersmagazine.com

choose a color (we used R:247, G:148, B:29). Fill your background create a couple of shapes. In this case we’ll create two sepa-
with this color by pressing Command-Delete (PC: Ctrl-Backspace). rate objects, which will ultimately give us more options. Go to
Of course, it could be filled with a gradient or have some texture, View>Perspective Grid>Hide Grid when finished to view the
but for this example we’ll stick with a solid color. objects against a blank background.

48

[COPY THE COLOR TO ILLUSTRATOR]
In Photoshop, click on the Background color swatch, click-and-drag
the hexadecimal number (F7942D), choose Edit>Copy, then click
Cancel. Back in Illustrator, double-click the Color Stroke and in the
Color Picker, click on the # symbol to select the hexadecimal value,
then select Edit>Paste. Now choose a slightly darker version of this
color (C6761E) and click OK. Using the Selection tool (V), select the
other object, and apply the same color for its Stroke. Shift-click the
first object to select both objects, click on the Fill swatch, then click
the None (/) icon below to remove the fill colors.
[FROM ILLUSTRATOR TO PHOTOSHOP]
Choose Edit>Copy to copy the two objects from Illustrator and
then switch to Photoshop. Select Edit>Paste and in the dialog,
click on Paste As: Smart Object. If necessary, Shift-Option-click
(PC: Shift-Alt-click) a corner of the bounding box and drag it to
resize the shapes proportionally from the center, and press Return
(PC: Enter). A new layer called Vector Smart Object appears in the
Layers panel.
49
L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
[ALTERING SHAPES, KEEPING THEM LIVE]
Using the Width tool (Shift-W), click-and-drag on the anchor
points (or any portion of a path) to interactively change the width
of the lines. The advantage of this tool is that it’s a “live” effect,
which means that you can edit the widths at any time. Note: If
you don’t see your strokes widening when you release the mouse
button, you’re probably in Outline viewing mode; press Com-
mand-Y (PC: Ctrl-Y) to change your viewing mode to Preview so
you can see what’s going on.
[ADD FILTERS TO VECTOR SMART OBJECT]
Because the layer is a vector smart object, we can apply smart
filters in Photoshop, which gives us tons of room to experiment
with different settings or multiple filters. In our example, we’ll
to try the Polar Coordinates filter, using the Polar to Rectan-
gular option: With the Vector Smart Object layer active, go to
Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates, click on the Polar to Rectangular
option, and click OK.
 [EDIT SMART FILTER SETTINGS]
In the Layers panel, double-click the Blending Options icon to
the right of the Polar Coordinates Smart Filter to try different set-
tings. In the resulting dialog, we chose Multiply from the Mode
menu then dragged the Opacity slider left to lower it to 40%.
Remember, you can change these settings at any time. Click OK.
9 [ADD GRAPHIC ELEMENTS]
Along with altering the original shapes, another part of our experi-
mentation might be adding more shapes. So, double-click the
Smart Object thumbnail to return to Illustrator, select the Ellipse
www.layersmagazine.com
tool (L), then Shift-click-and-drag to add a circle. Change your Fill
and Stroke swatches to the same settings you used earlier, and
Save. Once again, after saving the Illustrator file, jump back to
Photoshop to see the changes. As you can imagine, there are lots
of possibilities here, and it’s easy.
50
8 [EDIT THE SHAPE OF THE SMART OBJECT]
One of the advantages of using a vector smart object is that you
can edit the original artwork in Illustrator. To do that, just double-
click on the Smart Object thumbnail in the Photoshop Layers
panel, read the warning, click OK to continue, alter one of the
shapes in Illustrator (we flipped and moved it), and then Save the
document (File>Save). When you switch back to Photoshop, the
layer updates (it might take a moment to render) with the smart
filter intact.
10 [TRY ADDING 3D IN ILLUSTRATOR]
Want to move your experiment in another direction? Why not add
some 3D to the mix? Double-click the Smart Object thumbnail,
and when you get to Illustrator, choose the Selection tool. Shift-
click all of your shapes and go to Effect>3D>Extrude & Bevel.
In the dialog that appears, click OK to add a 3D look to your
shapes. Because this is an effect, it can also be changed at any
time through the Appearance panel (Window>Appearance) while
the shapes are selected. Once again, save and switch back to
Photoshop to see the results.
continued on p. 52
 11 [CHANGE THE LAYER BLEND MODE]
Remember, the whole point here is to try many different things to
see what we end up with. So, in the Photoshop Layers panel, under
the Vector Smart Object layer, double-click the Blending Options
icon again, and play with different blend modes and opacity set-
tings. We decided (for now) to select Hard Light from the blend
Mode menu and bumped up the Opacity to 80%.
13 [CHANGE ONE OR MORE FACTORS]
To keep the creative flow happening, you should constantly ask
yourself, “What if I…?” and then try it. The worst thing that could
www.layersmagazine.com
happen is that you’ll have to press Command-Z (PC: Ctrl-Z) to
Undo or Command-Option-Z (PC: Ctrl-Alt-Z) to Step Backward
because you don’t like the result(s). We added more text in a
lighter color and here’s the result.
52
[ Dave Cross is Senior Developer, Education and Curriculum, for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. He is the author of Photoshop Finishing Touches and The Photoshop CS2
Help Desk Book, and is featured on a series of Photoshop training DVDs and on Photoshop User TV.
12 [ADD TEXT IN ILLUSTRATOR]
Don’t stop there—head back to Illustrator and add some text
using the Type tool (T). Tip: Because we want the text to remain
editable just like everything else in our dual-application experi-
ment, don’t create outlines.
You know the drill by now: Save when you’re finished in Illustra-
tor and switch back to Photoshop to see the changes.
14 [EVERYTHING IS EDITABLE]
Finally, we double-clicked the Blending Options icon and changed
the settings to what you see above. Remember, the way we’ve set
up this experiment means that everything is subject to change:
the Illustrator artwork, the smart filter we applied, the blend-
ing options of the smart filter (opacity and blend mode), and the
layer settings (opacity, blend mode, layer style, etc.) we’ve yet to
adjust. The sky really is the limit when you start experimenting, to
the point where the result you get isn’t just a happy accident; it’s a
result of being willing to try new things.
]
 HENK DAWSON

[I LLUSTRATOR TUTORIAL]
C O R E Y { } B A R K E R

clipping masks of love

Here’s a cool technique derived from the movie poster for From Paris with Love starring John Travolta. The
poster layout made very cool use of masking images with letters and shapes. Here, we’re going after a similar
effect entirely in Illustrator. With so many new productivity enhancements, Illustrator CS5 is so much more robust
with image compositing.

[CREATE NEW DOCUMENT; SET TYPE] [BUILD A SHAPE]

Choose File>New to create a new Basic RGB document, and Select the text with the Selection tool (V), choose Type>Create
www.layersmagazine.com

click OK. Select the Type tool (T) and click on the artboard to
set a text object. In the Control panel, set the Fill color to black
and the Stroke to none, then type the letters LVE in Impact font
at 300 pts. Set four spaces between the L and the V. To tighten
the spacing a little bit, select all the letters with the Type tool,
open the Character panel (Window>Type>Character), and set the
Tracking to –50. We’ll create the O later by using a shape.
Outlines to convert the text to regular vector shapes, then choose
Object>Ungroup. Shift-click on the L to deselect it and keep the
VE selected. Select the Shape Builder tool (Shift-M) and hover
your cursor over the V to highlight it. Now click-and-drag across
the top of the V to the E, including the area where they overlap,
to merge the shapes together as one.

[If you’d like to download the files used in this tutorial to practice these techniques, visit www.layersmagazine.com and navigate to the Magazine section. All files are for personal use only.]
54

[CREATE SPATTER; CLEAN IT UP]
Choose Window>Symbol Libraries>Grime Vector Pack. In the panel
that appears, locate Grime Vector Pack 09 then click-and-drag it
onto the artboard. Click the Break Link button in the Control panel to
convert the symbol instance into a basic vector shape.
This spatter needs some adjusting. Choose the Direct Selection
tool (A), select the small shapes that aren’t attached to the main
spatter, and then delete them. This leaves you with only the main
big shape.
[MOVE SPATTER INTO POSITION]
With the Selection tool still active, click-and-drag the spatter be-
tween the L and V—it will play the part of O in our scene. If neces-
sary, scale and rotate the spatter to better fit in the area and for the
composition. With the shape in place, choose Edit>Copy to save it
to the clipboard. Don’t move the spatter.
55
L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
[WARP SPATTER; ADD COLOR]
Choose the Warp tool (Shift-R) and use it to push in the longer
spatter lines closer to the main shape so that these protrusions
don’t get in the way of the copy we’ll add later. When you have
the shape looking the way you want, it’s time to add some color.
Because this is an action movie and we’re portraying a blood spat-
ter, it obviously needs to be red. Choose the Selection tool (V) and
select the spatter. Open the Swatches panel (Window>Swatches)
and select a dark red to fill the spatter shape. Also set the stroke
color to none.
[ADD TO THE SELECTION]
With the spatter still selected, Shift-click on the VE to add them
to the selection. As we did in Step 2, use the Shape Builder tool
to combine the shapes. You can make multiple passes over the
shapes and it will continue to add to the current shape. When it’s
merged, choose the Selection tool and press D to set the Fill and
Stroke colors to their default white and black, respectively. Then
go ahead and set the Fill color to none in the Control panel.

[PASTE SPATTER; CHANGE BLEND MODE]
Remember the spatter we copied to the clipboard? Now we’ll
put it to use. Choose Edit>Paste in Place. Assuming you haven’t
moved the art, it will paste the copy right on top of the spatter.
Open the Transparency panel (Window>Transparency), click on
the Normal pop-up menu, and select Color.
9 [POSITION AND SCALE THE PHOTO]
Choose Object>Arrange>Send to Back, then position the
photo in the layout. If you’re having difficulty with placement
because you can’t see the splatter and text shape, set the
www.layersmagazine.com
Fill color on the text/spatter shape to none and the Stroke to
white to make it easier to position the image. Scale and rotate
the image to best fit in the area of the text and the shape.
56
©ISTOCKPHOTO/SYAGCI
8 [PLACE PHOTO]
Choose File>Place and navigate to the photo you want to use (or to
the download file). Because this is a cool action movie, we’re using
an image of a hitman pointing a gun at a very dramatic angle. In
the Place dialog, you can either Link the image or uncheck the Link
option to embed the photo. Just know that embedding a photo will
increase the file size. Select the file and click Place.
10 [MAKE CLIPPING MASK]
Shift-click the text/spatter shape to add it to the photo selection,
then choose Object>Clipping Mask>Make. This will mask the
image inside of the shape. (Note: Make sure the red color shape
isn’t selected. If you’re having difficulty making the clipping mask,
select the layers using the Target icon [circle] to the right of the
Layer’s name in the Layers panel instead of the artboard.)

11 [ROTATE AND SCALE GRAPHIC]
Now choose the new Artboard tool (Shift-O) to resize the artboard. In
the Control panel, set the width to 8" and the height to 5". (Note:
If your artboard isn’t visible, got to View>Show Artboards.) Grab the
Selection tool, select the entire graphic (photo, text, and shapes),
and place it inside the artboard. Scale and rotate it so the corners of
the first and last letters go off the edge of the artboard.
[ Corey Barker is an Education and Curriculum Developer for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. His expertise in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator has
earned him numerous awards in illustration, graphic design, and photography.
57
L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
12 [THE FINISHING TOUCHES]
Using the same font as before, set the rest of the copy for the poster.
Place the rest of the title in the upper-left corner, and COMING
SOON in the lower right. Finally, select the Rectangle tool (M) and
click once on the upper-left corner of the artboard. When prompted,
enter the same dimensions as the artboard (8x5") and click OK.
Choose the Selection tool and click-and-drag to select the entire
design, including the shape that covers it. Then go to Object>
Clipping Mask>Make. Now you have a nicely cropped movie poster
ready to go!
]
 [ t y p o g r a phy ]

[ THE ART OF TYPE]

J A M E S { } F E L I C I

out of scale
There was a time when few designers dared to
venture into the murky world of the Adobe In-
Design justification controls. The good news is
that more and more users are starting to take charge
of them. The bad news is one of them—the power-
ful glyph scaling control, unique to InDesign—is often misused. In
this column we’ll look at how to apply it well.
Justification controls have traditionally determined to what extent
a program can alter spaces between characters and words—squeeze
them, stretch them—when fitting type into lines. The goal is to
create the most even and consistent spacing possible among lines
and paragraphs by allowing the program to find optimal places to
end lines, either at word spaces or after certain punctuation marks
(such as the em dash), or by hyphenating words.
I M A GE S: © I STO C K PH OTO I LLU STR ATI O N : TA F F Y C LI F F O R D

Glyph scaling
InDesign has added another variable however: It can also flex
the width of the characters themselves. Adobe calls this glyph
scaling, and it can help the program find more of those optimal
line-breaking locations, avoiding the reliance on unsightly stretching
or squeezing of spaces. After all, there are as many characters
on a line as there are character spaces, so the cumulative effect
of tiny, undetectable adjustments to character widths can yield
big results. But there’s a catch: You have to keep the alterations
to a character width small enough so they’re invisible. Here’s an
example of what can happen when those variations are allowed
to get too large.

[ At first glance, it’s

the inconsistent
type color that
catches your eye.]
www.LAYERSMAGAZINE.com

Misusing glyph scaling control creates lines of

type with starkly contrasting character widths.

58
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The designer of the
French election brochure
(opposite page) was look-
ing for a way to solve a
common type composition
problem: Relatively large
type (12-point, in this case)
set with justified margins
over a narrow measure
(13.5 picas). Some of these
lines contain only two or
three word spaces, and
there just aren’t enough
character spaces to allow These justification settings allow the wide leeway for the flexing of word and character spacing neces-
sary for composing text over a narrow measure. To protect the integrity of the type design, glyph scaling
the program to fit the type should always be strictly limited.
without making some lines
look too crowded or too spaced out. The typical result in such situa-
tions is inconsistent type color, with loose lines looking too pale and
Justification dialog
The damage here was done in the Justification dialog, accessed via
tight ones too dark. In our example, the designer tried to help the
the Paragraph panel’s (Type>Paragraph) flyout menu. The justification
situation by choosing to let character widths be flexed as well, but got
values shown here is my recipe for the composition problem at hand.
carried away.
(The best solution begins with reducing the size of the type by at least
At first glance, it’s the inconsistent type color that catches your
half a point, but that’s another issue.) Over such a narrow measure, I’d
eye. The second, third, and fourth lines, for example, look particu-
allow InDesign fairly generous ranges in which it could flex word and
larly tight and dark. But in fact, this effect isn’t caused principally
character spaces. But more importantly, I’d keep the glyph scaling
by variations in spacing, but by variations in character width. This
range small, normally not more than plus or minus (+/–) 1%.
example shows a closer look. After the first line, the rounded char-
This example shows two lines of type whose character widths
acters (look at “o” and “e”) get progressively more compressed,
vary by 1%, and apart from the relative line lengths, there’s
until by the fourth line the type looks like it came from a different
virtually no difference between the appearances of the type in
typeface, a condensed member of the same family. This isn’t a
each line.
pretty sight. And ironically, in addition to distorting the type, the
strategy fails to fix the fundamental problem of type color varying
from one line to the next.

The top line is set in normal Officina Sans, while the bottom
line has had its character widths reduced by 1%.

Variations in the shapes of the round characters are striking, as
though several typefaces were used for the same paragraph.
Line-ending possibilities
Ultimately, glyph scaling works best in lines with many characters.
In such lines, the compound effect of all those tiny width adjust-
ments can allow InDesign to find line-ending possibilities that
don’t require spaces to be distorted too much. This means a line
could end without a hyphen, or that a hyphen could be inserted
at a more felicitous place (demon-stration, for example, instead
of de-monstration). But even in narrow columns, it can make an
important contribution in reducing apparent spacing variations
from line to line.
To successfully use glyph scaling, the trick—as with so many
type tools in InDesign—is moderation. All things, you could say,
in their measure.

[ James Felici is the author of The Complete Manual of Typography (Adobe Press), former managing editor of Publish magazine, and contributor to The Seybold Report, Macworld magazine,
PDFZone.com, and Publish.com. ]
 HENK DAWSON

[ INDESIGN TUTORIAL ]
T E R R Y { } W H I T E

setting up live captions

Creating captions, one of the most mundane tasks in page layout, can now be automated in InDesign CS5. Using
an image’s metadata, InDesign can create live captions. The beauty here is that once it’s set up in your document,
your captions will automatically update if the image changes or if the image’s metadata changes. We’ll also show
you how you can use Buzzword to collaborate between different documents.

[live captions]

[CREATE A NEW DOCUMENT] [ADD METADATA DESCRIPTION]

www.layersmagazine.com

Like most of our InDesign tutorials, you’re going to need a document
to work with. Although you can certainly open an existing document,
we recommend creating a new one so that there aren’t stylesheet
conflicts. Open Adobe InDesign and go to File>New>Document.
Choose Letter from the Page Size menu and click OK. In this tutorial
we’re going to use Adobe Bridge to input metadata to be used in
InDesign. Go to File>Browse in Bridge to open Bridge.
60
Navigate to an image of your choice and select it—it can be a PSD,
TIFF, JPG, EPS, etc. In the Metadata panel (Window>Metadata
Panel) go to the IPTC Core section, click in the Description field,
and type a description of your image. You can add as many things
about your image as you like; InDesign supports just about all of the
fields shown here. When finished, click the Apply icon (checkmark)
at the bottom of the Metadata panel. (If your image already has
metadata from Lightroom or another application, that will work too.)

[PLACE IMAGE INTO INDESIGN]
With the image still selected, choose File>Place>In InDesign. This
will take you over to your open InDesign document and let you
place your image with a loaded cursor. Click to place your image,
and resize accordingly if need be.
[CAPTION STYLING]
Style your text using the fonts, colors, etc. to create the appearance
that you want for all your captions when using this specific paragraph
style. Highlight your text using the Type tool and apply styles in the
Options Bar. For this example, we used Minion Pro Italic at 10 pt.
Now we’ll use the sample caption to create a paragraph style. In the
Paragraph Styles panel (Window>Styles>Paragraph Styles) hold down
the Option (PC: Alt) key and click the Create New Style icon. In the
New Paragraph Style dialog type the word Captions in the Style Name
field. Enable the Apply Style to Selection checkbox and click OK.
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[CREATE TEXT FRAME AND CAPTION]
Although the live caption feature will generate the text frame auto-
matically, we’re going to set up a sample caption text frame first so
that we can create a paragraph style. Select the Type tool (T) and
draw a text frame directly under the image. Now type a sample
caption—don’t worry about what it says; you’re going to delete it
later anyway.
[CAPTION SETUP]
At this point we no longer need the sample caption text frame.
Select it with your Selection tool and delete it by pressing the
Delete (PC: Backspace) key on your keyboard. Now it’s time to set
up the live captions feature. Using the Selection tool, click on your
image to select it, and then Right-click on your image and choose
Captions>Caption Setup from the contextual menu.
 [CHOOSE CAPTION OPTIONS]
The Caption Setup dialog lets you choose which metadata you
want to bring in and what text you want to appear before and after
it. It also dictates where the caption will be placed and how it will
look. For this example, we’re going to select the Description option
since that’s what we entered into our metadata in Bridge and our
paragraph style that we created earlier. So from the Metadata drop-
down menu, choose Description, and from the Paragraph Style
drop-down menu, choose Captions. Accept the rest of the Caption
Setup dialog’s default options and click OK.
9 [APPLY TO OTHER IMAGES]
Of course you’re going to want to do this with multiple images.
You can do so by selecting one or more images in InDesign and
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going to Captions>Generate Live Caption again or you can dupli-
cate (Edit>Duplicate) the live caption text frame you just created,
and as long as the duplicate live caption text frame is touching
another image with a description in its metadata, InDesign will pull
in that description. The magic’s now in the frame itself.
62
8 [GENERATE LIVE CAPTION]
Setting up the live caption options is only the first part. Nothing
happens in Step 7 when you click OK. Right-click your image again
and choose Captions>Generate Live Caption. InDesign will now
generate a live text frame and caption directly under your image
with the description you gave it in Bridge. If you want to center
your type, click on it with the Type tool and select the Align Center
option in the Options Bar.
[buzzword]
10 [USE BUZZWORD FOR COLLABORATION]
One of the often-overlooked features of Acrobat.com is Buzzword,
an online word processor. Not only does it allow you to create and
edit documents but it also allows you to share those documents
with others so they can make changes. Here we’re going to explore
these features. Go to Arobat.com and click the Sign In button at the
top of the webpage to login—you can use your Adobe ID. (If you
don’t have an Adobe ID you can click the Sign Up button to create
a new free account.)
continued on p. 64
 11 [CREATE A NEW BUZZWORD DOCUMENT]
Once signed in, you can create a Buzzword document from scratch
by clicking the New link near the top of the webpage and select-
ing Buzzword Document from the menu. In your new document,
you can enter content by typing or copying-and-pasting into the
document. If you choose to paste your content, go to Edit>Paste or
press Command-V (PC: Ctrl-V). Then, save your document by going
to Document>Save.
12 [SHARE WITH OTHERS]
If you want someone else to collaborate with you on your docu-
ment or perhaps proofread and edit it, you can share it with whom-
ever you want by going to Document>Share, or click the Share File
link at the bottom-left corner of the Buzzword webpage. Then, click
the Share It With Individuals text link that pops up. In the Share
dialog, enter an email address in the People to Share With field
and a message in the Message field if you wish. Click Share to send
your document.

13 [PLACE IN INDESIGN CS5]

How does this relate to InDesign? I knew you were going to ask!
14 [UPDATING CONTENT AUTOMATICALLY]
Now you can click to place that document and edit it right in your
In InDesign CS5 there’s a Place from Buzzword command. Go to InDesign file. This is also a great way to allow your writers to give
File>Place from Buzzword and select your saved document in the you content and update that content without having to rely on mul-
www.layersmagazine.com

Place Buzzword Documents dialog. The Replace Selected Item
option is selected automatically. Click OK and you’ll have a loaded
cursor ready to place your document.
tiple emails of text documents. If you enable the Link to Document
checkbox in the Place Buzzword Documents dialog, your Links
panel (Window>Links) in InDesign will give you a warning anytime
that document has been modified online. You can then use the
Links panel to update the InDesign file automatically.

[ In his current role as Worldwide Creative Suite Design Evangelist for Adobe Systems, Inc., Terry White evangelizes the Creative Suite to customers around the world. He’s also the
author of Secrets of Adobe Bridge and co-author of InDesign CS/CS2 Killer Tips and The iPhone Book, 3rd edition. Check out his tech blog at http://terrywhite.com/techblog. ]
64 ALL IMAGES BY TERRY WHITE UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED
 HENK DAWSON

[ ACROBAT TUTORIAL ]
T A Z { } T A L L Y

HENK DAWSON

interactive PDFs
InDesign CS5 now offers a choice of exporting for print and a brand-new interactive PDF format to fulfill your
interactive needs. The interactive PDF format supports a robust export function that takes advantage of the ability
in InDesign CS5 to create multiple page sizes and includes a range of interactive features including: bookmarks,
layers, buttons and media, and a flexible presentation setup.

[CREATE AN INTERACTIVE DOCUMENT] [INITIATE EXPORT]

Open InDesign CS5 and create a new document (File>New> After you’ve created your interactive document, go to File>Export
Document) that includes multiple page sizes and orientations, (Command-E [PC: Ctrl-E]) to activate the Export dialog. From the
www.layersmagazine.com

bookmarks, buttons, and has attached one or more media files such
as voice, video, or animation. (Go to Window>Interactive to access
all the panels for controlling your interactive elements.) It may take
some getting used to being able to create multiple sized docu-
ment pages in both portrait and landscape orientation—this is new
in InDesign CS5. The PDF document format has long supported
multiple document page sizes and orientations. Taking advantage of
this capability from the beginning of your design workflow will help
later on.
66
Format drop-down menu, choose Adobe PDF (Interactive). There’s
a second PDF choice labeled Adobe PDF (Print). Choosing this
print version will activate the Export Adobe PDF dialog with which
you’re familiar. With Adobe PDF (Interactive) chosen, locate where
you’d like to save your interactive PDF; I recommend you place your
InDesign document, all its linked files, and your initial Interactive
PDF in the same folder. Click Save to activate the Export to Interac-
tive PDF dialog.

[DESIGNATE PAGE RANGE]
In the Pages section, specify the range of pages you’d like to export
to your interactive PDF. In the Range field, use hyphens between
numbers to specify a range of sequential pages and place commas
where you’d like to specify a break in the range of pages. Don’t click
OK yet. Note: You can specify page ranges using either Absolute
Numbering or Section Numbering sequences by going to InDesign
(PC: Edit)>Preferences>General and using the View drop-down
menu in the Page Numbering section. Type a plus sign (+) in front
of each of the page numbers (i.e., +1–+5) in the Range field to over-
ride Section Numbering with Absolute Numbering.
[EMBED PAGE THUMBNAILS]
Enable the Embed Page Thumbnails checkbox if you’d like to create
a thumbnail preview for each PDF document page or spread. These
thumbnails will be visible and available for use in the Open and
Place dialogs in InDesign. Having these thumbnails can dramatically
speed up the recognition and use of PDF files when opening and
placing. However, adding individual page thumbnails will increase
the file size of the final PDF document. If file size is an issue, try
creating one with and one without the thumbnails so you can judge
if the file size overhead of the preview thumbnails is acceptable.
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L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
[VIEWING AFTER EXPORTING]
Directly beneath the Pages field, enable the View After Exporting
checkbox. Activating this option will immediately open your interac-
tive PDF inside of your default PDF reading program once clicking
OK. You’ll be best served to set Acrobat Pro as your default PDF
reading program because Acrobat Pro will provide you with the
greatest range of PDF editing capabilities. Be sure to specify Acro-
bat Pro as the default PDF reader in both your operating system
and Adobe Bridge (Adobe Bridge CS5 [PC: Edit]>Preferences,
select the File Type Associations category on the left, then locate
PDF Document [.pdf] in the list of file types).
[CREATE ACROBAT LAYERS]
If you wish to save each InDesign layer as a separate PDF docu-
ment page, enable the Create Acrobat Layers checkbox. Each of
these InDesign layers will be fully navigable in the PDF. So if you
have different versions of the design layout stored on separate
layers in your InDesign document, anyone viewing the PDF can
create different design layout versions without having to return to
the original InDesign document. Note: If using this capability, it will
likely change the workflow you use to create your InDesign docu-
ments. And of course, adding all these layer pages will increase
PDF document size.
 [CREATE TAGGED PDF]
Enabling the Create Tagged PDF checkbox does not affect what
content of the InDesign document is exported to PDF. Rather,
tagging the PDF will provide help to identify what the various docu-
ment elements are, such as heads, subheads, body copy, tables,
graphics etc., and provides structural information about how this
document is put together. All of this tagging information can
be useful when reformatting and editing a PDF document at a
later time. Adding tagging is generally a good idea because it
adds minimum file size to your document and provides far more
future flexibility.
9 [CHOOSE LAYOUT OPTION]
The layout option you choose will depend upon how your docu-
ment is laid out, such as single nonfacing pages or facing pages,
and whether or not you’re exporting spreads from your InDesign
www.layersmagazine.com
document. For instance, if you have a facing pages InDesign docu-
ment and would like the facing pages to be displayed together
in their correct recto and verso positions, you’d choose Two-Up
(Facing). Notice, two choices include a document with and without
cover pages. This setting also overrides the default preferences
in Acrobat. Note: If you select Default in either the View or Layout
drop-down menus, the PDF will use the default settings in Acrobat.
68
8 [SET VIEW MENU]
Click the View drop-down menu to set the initial view of the PDF
when it’s opened. This view setting will override the default prefer-
ences in Acrobat. The content of the document will often determine
your view choice. For instance, you might choose 100% if you’re
sending a graphics portfolio and you want to make sure that its
image quality isn’t compromised by an over-enlargement on a large
display monitor. Or you might choose Fit Page if you want to make
sure an entire design layout will be visible when the PDF is opened.
10 [PRESENTATION CHARACTERISTICS]
If you’d like your PDF to act like a presentation as soon as it’s opened,
in the Presentation section, enable the Open in Full Screen Mode
checkbox. Set a new timing in the Flip Pages Every field, and from
the Page Transitions drop-down menu, choose a page transition.
Note: The first Page Transitions menu choice, From Document,
will use page transitions assigned within the InDesign document.
You can set up the page transitions in InDesign by going to Window>
Interactive>Page Transitions. Also note, presentation functions
applied to the interactive PDF can be reset when opened in Acrobat.
continued on p. 70
 11 [ACTIVATE BUTTONS AND MEDIA, OR NOT]
Select Include All from the Buttons and Media section if you want
all of your attached media (such as sound files, videos, and anima-
tions) to be included and active in your PDF file. If you select the
Appearance Only option, all of your interactive buttons will be
included in your PDF but they’ll occur only in their normal state and
will not be active in the PDF document. By selecting Include All,
your interactive buttons and media will be active in both the normal
PDF viewing modes and in presentation modes.
13 [SET SECURITY]
Not all documents need security. In fact, adding security to some
documents, such as a portfolio, may create unnecessary hurdles for
someone to view your work. For instance, you may want people
www.layersmagazine.com
to view your work but not be able to print or edit it. That’s easy to
set up. Click the Security button and enable the Use a Password
to Restrict Printing, Editing and Other Tasks checkbox. Enter a
password in the Permissions Password field, confirm your password,
and click OK.
[Taz Tally is the author of Acrobat and PDF Solutions from Wiley Press, as well as numerous other digital imaging books on Photoshop, scanning, digital photography, and prepress. Visit Taz’s
websites www.taztallyphotography.com and www.tazseminars.com.
70
12 [IMAGE HANDLING CHARACTERISTICS]
In the Image Handling section, you determine how pixel-based
images will be converted when they’re processed for inclusion
in your interactive PDF. Your choices should depend upon your
images and their use. For instance, if you’re creating a high-quality
portfolio, you might choose JPEG 2000 (Lossless) for Compression,
while for a monthly sales report, you might choose JPEG (Lossy)
for Compression and Medium for JPEG Quality. Your resolution
choice will depend upon your output device. For onscreen, choose
between 72–96 ppi; for desktop printing, choose 144 ppi; and for
commercial or high-quality printing, choose 300 ppi.
14 [CREATE AND TEST YOUR PDF]
To create your interactive PDF, click OK in the Export to Interactive
PDF dialog. If you’ve enabled the View After Exporting checkbox,
your PDF should open in your default PDF opening application
(hopefully, Acrobat Pro). Review your view, layout, and any presenta-
tion settings you’ve assigned. Test all of your interactive elements.
Also, feel free to change any of the PDF document characteristics
in Acrobat. If you’ve assigned security, carefully check to make sure
it’s working, and for heaven’s sake, write down any passwords
you assigned.Voilà! An interactive PDF!
]
ALL IMAGES BY TAZ TALLY UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED
HENK DAWSON
75

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[ DREAMWEAVER TUTORIAL ]
J A N I N E { } W A R N E R

six new features

Every upgrade brings something new, but Dreamweaver CS5 brings more goodies than most previous
upgrades, and you can put these new features to use right away. Here’s how to use some of the coolest new
features, from troubleshooting CSS with the new inspect option, to adding advanced Ajax and jQuery features
using the widget browser, to testing your pages in different Web browsers using the Adobe BrowserLab website.

[THE NEW, SIMPLER, SITE SETUP] [SETTING UP WEB SERVERS]

In version CS5, Adobe streamlined the website setup process.
When you first start working on any new or existing site in Dream-
weaver, it’s important to begin by setting up the site and identifying
your main website folder. The new Site Setup dialog (Site>New Site)
requires two settings to get started. First, give your site a name
(any name will do, it’s just for your reference). Next, click the folder
icon to the right of the Local Site Folder field and select the folder
on your hard drive where you’ll store all of the files and subfolders
in your site.
Use the list on the left of the Site Setup dialog to access more
advanced features and FTP settings. The new dialog now makes
it possible to set up multiple servers for any site, a great way to
manage both a testing server and a live server for the same website.
Note: You’ll need to click the Add New Server icon (+, plus sign) at
the bottom of the Servers category to open the FTP settings dialog.
 [OPTIONAL IMAGES FOLDER AND MORE]
You’ll find many other options in the Site Setup dialog when you
click the Advanced Settings category, including the setting for an
images folder in your local site folder. If you identify an images
folder, and then insert an image into a page that is outside your
root folder, Dreamweaver will copy the image into the folder you
identify in this field. You can also use the Advanced Settings category
to specify a folder for spry assets, setup version control, cloaking,
contribute, and other advanced features. When finished defining
your settings click Save and you’re done.
[DOWNLOADING WIDGETS]
Click the Adobe Exchange link at the top left of the Widget
Browser window to view all of the widgets available on the Adobe
www.layersmagazine.com
Exchange website. To download a widget, click to select it, and
then enter a valid Adobe ID and password (if you don’t already
have an Adobe ID, you can create one for free, simply click the
Create Account button at the bottom of the Sign In dialog).
76
[THE WIDGET BROWSER]
The Adobe Widget Browser makes it easy to add a growing list
of widgets to your site. Most are created in jQuery or Ajax and
you can use them to add slide shows, drop-down menus, and
other interactive features to your webpage. To access the Widget
Browser, select it from the Extend Dreamweaver menu (the gear
icon) located in the Application Bar (Window>Application Bar) just
below the Dreamweaver menu (just to the right of the Help menu
on Windows). Note: When you click this option for the first time,
read the resulting dialog and follow its prompts to download the
Widget Browser from Adobe Labs.
[ADDING WIDGETS TO DREAMWEAVER]
Most widgets are small so they download quickly and once a widget
is downloaded to your hard drive, it opens in its own widget browser
window automatically. Click the Add to My Widgets button at the
bottom right corner of the Widget Browser window to add the
widget to your local widget browser where it becomes available in
Dreamweaver. Click the Go To My Widgets button in the Widget
Added dialog to open the local widget browser and view the new
widget in your local collection; or click on My Widgets, which is
located at the top of the Widget Browser window.

[INSERTING WIDGETS INTO PAGES]
You can insert any widget that you’ve added to the Adobe Widget
Browser into a page in Dreamweaver by clicking the Widget icon
in the Insert panel (Window>Insert), or by selecting Insert>Widget.
Then, in the Widget dialog, select your desired widget from the
Widget drop-down menu and click OK.
9 [ACTIVATING CSS INSPECT]
Dreamweaver CS5 adds a new tool designed to help you identify
how CSS is used in a webpage. The CSS Inspect option makes it
easy to quickly view the CSS that defines the styles used in differ-
ent parts of any webpage. To use CSS Inspect, click the Inspect
button at the top of the Workspace and click the text link Switch
Now (it appears just below the Inspect button). The Switch Now
link automatically changes the Dreamweaver layout to best take
advantage of the CSS Inspect feature.
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8 [CUSTOMIZING WIDGETS]
Each widget is different, but most come with default images or
other content in place and need to be customized to feature your
content. In this example, I replaced the default images that come
with the LightBox widget by changing the image references in the
HTML code to reference images in my main images folder.
10 [USING CSS INSPECT]
Once it’s activated, just roll your cursor around the screen to use
CSS Inspect. As you do, Dreamweaver highlights content in the
Design View area with color-coded highlighting that identifies
each tag and associated style, as well as any margins and padding
created by the style rule. Simultaneously, Dreamweaver identifies
the corresponding code in Code View, and displays the cor-
responding style rules in the CSS Styles panel (which automati-
cally pops-up when you use Switch Now). Click the Inspect button
again to turn off CSS Inspect.
 11 [TESTING IN ADOBE BROWSERLAB]
Adobe BrowserLab is designed to help you preview how your
12
pages will display in a variety of Web browsers, even if you don’t
have all of those browsers available on your local hard drive. In
CS5, you’ll find a new Adobe BrowserLab panel you can use to
preview any open page in your local site. To preview a page, save
your page (File>Save) and click the Preview button in the Adobe
BrowserLab panel (Window>Extensions>Adobe BrowserLab), or
go to File>Preview in Browser>Adobe BrowserLab. You must have
the page open in Dreamweaver and you must be connected to
the Internet to use this feature.
[USING ADOBE BROWSERLAB ONLINE]
When you open a page in Adobe BrowserLab, you’re connected
to the Adobe BrowserLab website and a screen shot of the page
is automatically created using whatever browser was last selected
in Adobe BrowserLab. In the top left corner of the Adobe Brow-
serLab website, click the View button and choose 2-up View menu
to display the same page in two different browsers side by side,
or Onion Skin to place two previews on top of the other; which
makes it easier to identify subtle differences.

13 [CHOOSING AVAILABLE BROWSERS]

You can preview your pages in a variety of Web browsers in the
14 [SPELL CHECK IN 37 LANGUAGES]
As the Internet becomes increasingly multilingual it’s great to
Adobe BrowserLab website, including the notorious Internet Ex- see Adobe upgrade the spell check features in Dreamweaver to
www.layersmagazine.com

plorer 6.0. You can also use the Browser Sets option (located near
the top of the Adobe BrowserLab webpage) to create a shortcut
to any collection of browsers available on the site that you want to
use for testing. Note: You can’t click on the links or test interactive
features on your page with this option active because it only takes
a screen shot of the page in each browser.
handle 37 languages (previous versions supported less than half
that many). To change the dictionary to any of the included lan-
guages, go to Dreamweaver (PC: Edit)>Preferences. In the General
category, use the Spelling Dictionary menu to select any of the
listed languages and click OK. Then choose Commands>Check
Spelling to use spell check in the language you selected.

78
[ Janine Warner has authored more than a dozen books about the Internet, including Dreamweaver CS5 for Dummies. She’s also the host of a growing collection of training
videos on Dreamweaver and CSS, at KelbyTraining.com. To learn more about Janine’s books, videos, and speaking engagements, visit DigitalFamily.com. ]
ALL IMAGES BY KEN RIDDICK UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED
 HENK DAWSON

[F LASH PROFESSIONAL TUTORIAL]

L E E { } B R I M E L O W

text layout framework

When Adobe released the powerful new text engine in Flash Player 10 called Text Layout Framework (TLF), there was
no tooling support in Flash Professional to take advantage of it. In Flash CS5, however, there’s full support for
easily doing things such as linked containers, multicolumn text, exotic ligatures, and enhanced support for languages
such as Arabic and Japanese. Let’s take a tour of some of these new features.

[SETTING UP FLASH CS5] [TLF TEXT VS. CLASSIC TEXT]

If you’d like to use the same text that we’re using in this tutorial, Double-click the name of the first layer in the Timeline and rename
www.layersmagazine.com

you can download the exercise files from www.layersmagazine
.com. Open Flash CS5 and when the Welcome Screen appears,
click ActionScript 3 in the Create New section. The TLF is written
entirely in ActionScript 3, so if you haven’t already transitioned
to the new version of the language, here’s yet another reason to
do so. Go under File>Save and save this new document to your
desktop as “TLF.fla.”
it to “Text.” Select the Text tool (T) and drag out a new text field
that fills the top half of the Stage. At the top of the Properties panel
you’ll notice a pull-down menu that by default is set to TLF Text. If
you don’t want to use the new text engine you can change this to
Classic Text, which is the name for the old text engine. There’s some
additional file size and overhead with using TLF, so if you need simple
text, it’s better to stick to classic text.

80
[If you’d like to download the files used in this tutorial to practice these techniques, visit www.layersmagazine.com and navigate to the Magazine section. All files are for personal use only.]

[CHARACTER OPTIONS]
Open the sampleText.txt file that you downloaded, and copy (Com-
mand-C [PC: Ctrl-C]) the English language text. Back in Flash, paste
(Command-V [PC: Ctrl-V]) the text into the TLF text field. Select
the text (Command-A [PC: Ctrl-A]), and in the Character section of
the Properties panel, change the font Family to Adobe Caslon Pro
and change the Size to 20 pt. Choose Readability in the Anti-alias
pull-down menu. If your text field will be dynamic or editable, you’ll
need to embed the font by clicking on the Embed button. This
workflow hasn’t changed from previous versions of Flash, although
there’s a new global Font Embedding dialog (Text>Font Embed-
ding) to make font management much easier.
[LIGATURE SUPPORT]
Delete the second text field you created in the last step and replace
the text in the first one with the word “cost.” Increase the font size
to 210 pt. Ligatures are special characters that replace certain com-
binations of letters in a font. Typographers take extra time to design
beautiful-looking connections between characters and most people
never even know they’re there. In the Advanced Character section
of the Properties panel, change the value in the Ligatures menu
from Common to Exotic. As you can see, this particular ligature is
quite fancy, and using them can add a touch of class to your text.
81
L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
[LINKED CONTAINERS]
Linked containers allow you to link two or more individual text
containers together so that text will flow through them. You
should see a small red icon on the bottom-right of the text field
on the Stage. Click on it and your cursor will change to one
loaded with text. Now drag out a new text field somewhere on
the Stage and you’ll notice a connecting line between them and
also that the overflow text from the first text field flows into the
second. Although the containers are linked, you can still style,
position, and manipulate each text field individually.
[MULTICOLUMN LAYOUTS]
When dealing with large amounts of text, it’s often more readable to
break the text into multiple columns similar to what you see in news-
papers. Delete the text field on the Stage and create a new one that
fills the Stage and change the font Size to 18 pt. Paste in the block
of text from the text file. Go to the Container and Flow section of the
Properties panel and set the Columns to 2. You should now see the
text divided into two columns. You can also adjust the gap between
the columns by adjusting the column gutters property to the right.
 [FUN WITH DIGITS]
There are also some subtle options to choose from when it comes
to displaying numbers. Fill the text field on the Stage with numbers,
change the number of Columns back to 1, and increase the Size
to 80 pt. Go to the Advanced Character section of the Properties
panel and you’ll see two options for tweaking the way numbers
appear in your text field. Change the Digit Case property to Old
Style. This displays digits in a more old-fashioned style as designed
by the typographer. Changing the Digit Width property to Propor-
tional groups, the digits are grouped closer together based on the
character’s proportional size.
9 [JAPANESE TEXT]
Properly displaying languages like Japanese in previous versions
of Flash was next to impossible. Create a new TLF text field
that fills the Stage. Change the font to Adobe Std, which
www.layersmagazine.com
comes with Flash CS5. Open the sampleText.txt file and copy-
and-paste the Japanese text into the text field and set the orien-
tation to Vertical. (Note: The text file is in the UTF-8 format, so
make sure your editor is set to read that format.) When you test
it, you’ll notice that text also selects vertically like it should. To
see additional options for Asian languages, choose Show Asian
Options in the flyout menu at the top of the Properties panel.
82
8 [VERTICAL TEXT ORIENTATION]
Another simple thing that designers often want to do is to create
text that’s laid out vertically. This wasn’t possible with the classic
text field. Create a new TLF text field on the Stage, change the
font Size to 22 pt, and type in a word. Now in the top of the Prop-
erties panel, change the orientation of the text to Vertical using the
menu highlighted in the screen shot. Obviously, you still need to
rotate the characters to make things look right. Change the Rota-
tion to 270° in the Character section of the Properties panel. You
now have vertical text.
10 [ARABIC TEXT]
Another difficult language to display in Flash is Arabic, and other
right-to-left languages. With the TLF, this has also been made
simple. Create a new TLF text field that fills the Stage, set the
orientation to Horizontal, change the Rotation back to 0°, and
change the font to Adobe Arabic. Open the sampleText.txt file
and copy-and-paste the Arabic text into the text field. Select
Show Right-to-Left Options from the flyout menu at the top of the
Properties panel. Now in the Paragraph section, you can change
the Direction property to Right to Left.
continued on p. 84
 [ INTEGRATION WITH
ADOBE INDESIGN ]
For those of you who use Adobe InDesign, you may have
noticed the similarities between the TLF and the text capabili-
ties found in InDesign. This is no coincidence, as the InDesign
team is the one who developed this amazing new text engine
for Flash. There’s such fine-tune control available over text, that
most Flash designers won’t ever want or need to use them all.
But for designers who are trying to create beautiful reading
experiences for new-generation devices like tablets, they’ll be
able to faithfully translate the printed page into Flash.
InDesign CS5 also has the ability to export text layouts

11
directly to Flash FLA files using the TLF. This means that
[HIGHLIGHTING TEXT] designers can do their entire layouts for Flash directly in
InDesign where they may be more comfortable. They can
Another frequent request that Adobe received from designers
then export to an FLA file and pass it to the Flash developer.
was that they wanted the ability to highlight certain pieces of
InDesign CS5 also has some new animation capabilities that
text with a different background color, similar to the way you can
allow designers to create basic interactive projects without
do it in programs such as Microsoft Word. Create a new TLF text
even needing to open Flash. As publishers move to get their
field and enter in some text. Now use the Text tool to select one
printed publications onto digital devices, InDesign combined
of the words you typed. In the Properties panel, under the Char-
with Flash, will be a vital workflow to make that happen.
acter section, you can change the Highlight color to anything
you like. You can also change the selection color as well, but that
requires writing some ActionScript code.

12 [TLF WITH ACTIONSCRIPT]

There are times that you’ll need the ability to change TLF
properties dynamically at runtime using ActionScript. Create
a new TLF text field on the Stage and paste in some text. Give
the text field an Instance Name of “tf” at the top of the Proper-
www.layersmagazine.com

ties panel. Select the first frame of the Text layer and open
the Actions panel (Window>Actions). As an example, you can
change the number of columns in the text field simply by setting
the columnCount property as shown in the screen shot (test the
movie to see the results). Most of the other properties can be
set just as easily.

84
[ Lee Brimelow is a Platform Evangelist with Adobe and an award-winning interactive designer. Lee runs the free tutorial site at www.gotoandlearn.com and a Flash-related blog at
www.theflashblog.com. He is also the author of several titles for Lynda.com dealing with Flash and After Effects. ]
 [layers reviews]
the straight scoop on all the latest graphics gear

Canon EOS-1D Mark IV

HIGH ISO DIGITAL SLR
Veteran Canon EOS-1D and 1Ds shooters will feel right at home with the
new Canon EOS-1D Mark IV camera, built on a dust- and weather-resis-
tant magnesium alloy body. Upgraded features include increased sen-
sor resolution and ISO, reduced noise, an increased frame rate, a new
medium-sized RAW file, and if that’s not enough, HD video capture.
The Mark IV has an APS-H 27.9x18.6mm sensor that packs 16.1
megapixels (4896x3264 in RAW) of capture resolution. The new M-RAW
format (3672x2448—9 megapixels) joins the S-RAW (2448x1632—4 mega-
APS-H sensor uses a shorter normal focal length lens, allowing
pixels) format introduced in the Mark III.
increased depth-of-field especially with wide-angle lenses. Automatic
The ISO range of the sensor gets a major boost. The standard
Exposure (AE) control sets the meter to center-weighted average
range is 100–12,800. The L setting remains at 50 while H1 moves to
metering. Manual exposure is also available. The 1920x1080 HD
ISO 25,600, H2 is 51,200, and H3 has an amazing 102,400. That’s four
video may be captured at 29.97, 25, or 23.976 fps—which are the
stops higher than the Mark III. The dual DIGIC 4 Image Processors
rates for television and motion picture, respectively. It has 1280x720
handle image quality at high speeds. I made several captures at the
HD or 640x480 SD (standard defi nition) at 59.94 fps. All video is
top of the standard range (12,800) and the results—especially when
recorded in the MOV format and will record a single clip up to 4 GB
processed with the Camera Raw 6 Process Version 2010 (PV2010)
(about 12 minutes in length), and the quality is good. The built-in
using the Luminance Noise Reduction slider—provided truly won-
microphone has mono recording and stereo sound is possible with
derful results. At the risk of showing my age, photographs made at
an accessory microphone.
this ISO are much better than ISO 800 film I used to shoot.
The Mark IV captures stills and video using CompactFlash or
Speaking of speed, the Mark IV shoots at a continuous 10 frames
SD cards, or both, automatically switching from full to empty cards.
per second (fps) for 28 RAW files or 121 JPEGs using a high data
The desired file’s size can be set for either card. Photographs may
rate UDMA CompactFlash memory card. The shutter is rated up to
also be recorded to both cards at the same time to make a backup.
300,000 exposures.
Movies, however, can’t use this function.
Autofocus in the Mark IV gets attention, too. Canon’s new AI Servo II
Some photographers who are used to a lighter camera might
AF 45-point system has the ability to manually select 39 cross-type
have an initial adverse reaction to the Mark IV’s heft. I believe that
points for fast, precise focusing. Custom functions allow the photogra-
after giving it a chance they’ll overcome size issues and fall in love
pher to set a custom focus point that automatically switches when the
with this machine. This is a professional’s small-format choice for
camera is moved from horizontal to vertical positions. Adjacent sensors
extraordinary options in one digital camera body.—Kevin Ames
can be added to the primary when working with moving subjects.
One of my favorite features is the Mark IV’s 100% accuracy in the
viewfinder. Another thing that’s easy to love is the ClearView II 3" LCD Company: Canon U.S.A., Inc. Price: $4999
www.LAYERSMAGAZINE.com

monitor that has a multicoated screen to reduce glare and a 160° angle
Web: www.usa.canon.com Rating: ● ● ● ● ●
of view, so photos can be easily seen by the photographer and onlookers.
Hot: 16 megapixels; insanely high ISOs; low noise
The Mark IV’s sensor size is close to the aspect ratio in profes-
sional motion picture cameras shooting super 35mm movies. The Not:

86

COURTESY OF APPLE
Aperture 3
POWERFUL UPGRADE WITH EASY-TO-USE TOOLS
Aperture 3 for Macs contains many new features, such as Faces and
Places, that will be familiar to iPhoto users. Faces provides face detec-
tion and recognition to tag people in your photos automatically. Places
uses GPS information embedded in photos to display where the photos
were taken, using a pin on a map. As only a few cameras can embed
GPS information at capture time, Aperture also allows you to drop
untagged photos onto the map manually.
The most popular new feature with existing Aperture users that
I interviewed is Brushes. Similar to the Adjustment Brush in Light-
room, it allows a user to apply corrections to an image selectively.
Brushes supports pressure-sensitive graphics tablets, and Apple
even added a Detect Edges option that mimics Quick Mask in Photo-
shop, which lets the user see the affected areas.
Aperture 3 also provides a variety of Adjustment Presets that
range from image-enhancement settings to special effects like
sepia tone. You can customize, save, and share your own presets
and import other presets. A quick Internet search revealed that
many users are offering or selling their custom presets.
Also new with this release is full 64-bit support, which provides
improved performance on newer Macs running Snow Leopard.
When it comes time to share your images, Aperture 3 uploads
directly to Facebook and Flickr, and it can produce professional-look-
ing slide shows that combine text, images, music, and even video.
For all of its 200 plus new features, this latest version of Aperture
appears to be focused more on the consumer side of photo editing.
Existing Aperture users will love the new features, especially the
tighter integration with iPhoto, and unlike Lightroom, Aperture 3
can manage video as well as still images.—Dave Huss
Company: Apple Inc. Price: $199 (Upgrade: $99)
Web: www.apple.com Rating: ● ● ● ●
Hot: 64-bit support; brushes; adjustment presets
Not: No new tools
87
L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
Digimarc for Images 4
PHOTOSHOP PLUG-IN APPLIES (AND TRACKS)
INVISIBLE WATERMARKS
The Digimarc for Images 4 plug-in for Adobe Photoshop or Photo-
shop Elements (Windows only) embeds your own unique copyright
information invisibly, then their Web crawling service constantly
looks for watermarked images on websites, and reports the results
back to the owner. You can even have the plug-in generate a unique
watermark for each instance of an image, including copies, so you
can track the source of an illegally copied image—this is often used
for “leak detection” when an image is given to one person or channel
and is then copied.
Digimarc 4 can be identified even if the image is cropped or scaled.
In fact, Digimarc claims that the watermark persists when an image is
scaled down to 25% of its original size (and sometimes smaller), or when
cropped down to 256x256 pixels.
To assist visitors to your website, a plug-in is available for Internet
Explorer and Windows Explorer that displays a small D on all images
protected with Digimarc’s watermarking. When a user clicks the D,
information about the owner of the image pops up. The company is
working on a plug-in for Windows Firefox, but no promises are being
made about supporting Macintosh browsers.
Version 4 addresses concerns about image quality from users of
previous versions. Its new Chroma technology uses an understanding
of human visual perception to apply a different amount of marking to
various areas of an image. You can compare examples of the old and
new technologies at www.smartimage.us—to my eye, the Chroma
images have less noise in flat areas, and are crisper overall.
If you’re a budding watermarker, check out the Digimarc website;
it’s loaded with helpful resources. Concerned about your images
being used without permission on a webpage? Digimarc is an effec-
tive solution.—Jay Nelson
Company: Digimarc Corporation Price: Starting at $49 (Basic)
Web: www.digimarc.com Rating: ● ● ● ●
Hot: Web crawler; less impact on images
Not: No 64-bit support; browser plug-in for Windows only
 [ reviews]
URL2hyperlink
AUTO CONVERSION OF HYPERLINKS
Formatting hyperlinks in InDesign CS3 and CS4 is a pain—they have
to be formatted one at a time. That means that every new hyperlink
has to be selected and made into a URL destination. Granted this
isn’t hard, just unnecessary.
URL2hyperlink adds a few new menus to the Hyperlinks panel: Con-
vert URL to Hyperlink, Use Auto URL, and Auto URL Options. Convert
URL to Hyperlink allows you to convert a number of existing URLs
(including email links) by selection, text frame, story, document, or all
open documents at once. In addition, you can automatically apply a
character style and apply an appearance to the hyperlink when clicked
in the PDF.
One of the other nice features with URL2hyperlink is the ability
to format the links as you type them. You set up the options (basi-
cally the same options as before without the Scope) and turn on this
feature by selecting the Use Auto URL option. From then on your
hyperlinks are created and formatted as soon as you type them. The
result is a series of nicely named hyperlinks.
The plug-in works in InCopy, so editors can control the creation
and formatting too. It currently works in InDesign and InCopy CS3
and CS4. InDesign CS5 can batch convert so the need for this plug-in
might be in question; however, the built-in method has some limita-
tions. First, it doesn’t work with selections, text frames, and all open
documents—only stories and an entire single document. Second, the
hyperlinks aren’t auto-named but just show as anonymous hyperlinks.
(InCopy CS5 doesn’t have the batch conversion option.)
Whether or not the URL2hyperlink plug-in gets updated to work
with InDesign CS5 remains to be seen but for CS3 and CS4 users, this
www.LAYERSMAGAZINE.com
plug-in is very useful.—David Creamer
Company: DTP Tools Ltd. Price: $27
Web: www.dtptools.com Rating: ● ● ● ●
Hot: Automatically converts and formats URLs as you type
Not: CS5 replaces some of the plug-in’s features
88
Eos Converge
WIRELESS MUSIC SYSTEM OFFERS
VERSATILITY AND QUALITY
The Eos Converge audio system lets you play your music in any room
from any source—without wires. The Eos Converge Transmitter ($99.95)
comes with a USB cable, 3.5mm stereo mini audio cable, and a power
adapter. When using the USB cable with a computer, the power adapter
isn’t needed. Just launch your music application, select Converge
USB TX in your Sound or Audio preferences, and click play. Whichever
Eos Converge receiver you’re using will automatically link to the trans-
mitter and send audio to the connected speakers. Easy. (Use the power
supply and the stereo mini audio cable to listen to an iPod or other
music device.)
The transmitter can send audio to four different receivers up to 150'
away. The Eos Converge Receiver ($99.95) comes with a stereo RCA
cable, stereo “Y” cable with 3.5mm stereo mini female, and power sup-
ply. Just connect the audio out to your stereo or home theater receiver,
or powered speakers (using the “Y” cable), and crank up the volume.
The receiver also has buttons for pausing your audio and changing tracks.
Another option is the Eos Converge Amplified Receiver ($149.95).
Just plug in any set of speakers directly to this receiver and you’re good
to go. We tested this with the acoustically matched Eos Loudspeakers
($99.95) and they sounded great and had nice bass response (and you
can even hook up an amplified sub for more bass). This receiver has a
volume control in addition to the pause and track controls. It also has
an auxiliary in for connecting an iPod directly to the receiver.
With the Eos Converge system you can send music anywhere
from anywhere. That’s our definition of versatile. Our only real com-
plaint is the cost—the components add up quickly (but they do offer
up to a 20% discount depending on the number of components you
buy).—Chris Main
Company: IntelliTouch Price: $99.95–149.95
Web: www.eoswireless.com Rating: ● ● ● ●
Hot: Versatile; sound quality
Not: Price

Lensbaby Soft
Focus Optic
ADD CREATIVE EFFECTS TO YOUR IMAGES
BY SOFTENING THE FOCUS
The creative folks at Lensbaby have been busy coming up with more
lenses for their innovative Optic Swap System. According to Lensbaby,
the Soft Focus Optic “...creates a velvety soft image perfect for por-
traits, flowers, landscapes, or any subject that needs a soft touch.”
So how does this offering fare? As a user of other Lensbaby products,
I was eager to find out.
I mounted the Lensbaby Composer (sold separately for $270)
and the Soft Focus Optic on my trusty Nikon and put it to the test.
The Composer handles the pivot (to choose the selective focus area)
and focusing tasks, while the Soft Focus Optic produces the effect.
My test results yielded a mixed bag. For example, in most of my test
shots, the highlights were blown out, which produced the soft focus
effect. In a few shots where the lighting was even and the subject
had some lighter areas, the soft focus effect was quite nice. If you
like the blown-out look, then you’ll be happy with the Soft Focus
Optic. If you’re not a fan, you can use the optic when photograph-
ing neutral colors and achieve the soft effect without the blown-out
highlights. When using a flash, you’ll get a pretty cool light pattern
coming off the highlights, which can be a lot of fun.
The Soft Focus Optic works well if you have complete control
over lighting or if you’re capable of relinquishing control and having
fun with the shoot. Either way, with some patience and experimenta-
tion, you’ll get something you like out of it.—Mike Mackenzie
Company: Lensbaby Inc. Price: $89.95
Web: www.lensbaby.com Rating: ● ● ●
Hot: Nice soft focus effect; flash patterns in highlights
Not: Blown-out highlights and light areas are overkill
89
L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
modo Studio Lighting
and Illumination Kit (SLIK)
MODO GETS SLICK WITH SLIK
There is only one thing to say here and that’s “wow!” One of my favor-
ite 3D applications just got a huge boost in its capabilities. The Stu-
dio Lighting and Illumination Kit (SLIK) is an amazing tool that allows
you add another dimension to modo 401. With new tools that allow
you to create studio-accurate lighting and reflections to high-dynamic
range (HDR) environment presets, SLIK will blow you away.
Here’s the scoop. The new SLIK kit allows you to drag preset
lighting into modo and move them around just like real lights so
you can visualize your scene. The lights have the controls right there
in front of the lights, so no worries about having to dig through the
complex menus or shaders to get at them, which is a great feature
in itself. Included in this awesome product are 30 built-to-scale light-
ing assembly presets; 24 different lighting setups supporting small-,
medium-, large-scale, and portrait studio photography; and the
24 2k HDR environmental maps that will give you a wide range of
options to experiment with.
I think that SLIK is really pushing modo to another level of capa-
bilities for not only the animator or modeler but for the photogra-
pher, as well. Take a jump over to the Luxology website to see some
of the fantastic videos they have on this extraordinary product and
I think you’ll be amazed at the results you can get. This is one prod-
uct that’s a must have for all modo users, and for those of you who
don’t use modo, you need to check it out.—Bruce Bicknell
Company: Luxology, LLC Price: $125
Web: www.luxology.com Rating: ● ● ● ● ●
Hot: Cost; accurate studio lighting and reflection setups; presets
Not:
 [ reviews]
booq Python blur Holomatrix
TOUGH PHOTO BACKPACK HOLDS EVEYTHING FROM YOUR
LAPTOP TO THE KITCHEN SINK
The Python blur by booq is a photo backpack designed to carry all
of your digital camera gear plus up to a 17" laptop with accessories.
Booq is known for the quality construction of its bags, and the Python
blur is no exception. The exterior is constructed of 1680 denier ballis-
tic nylon with water-repellant coating. That means this bag has a rigid,
tough exterior that protects everything you put into it.
As for storage, there’s plenty of room for all your gear. Two large
zippered pockets on either side of the bag each contain two expand-
ing neoprene slip pockets that can hold small lenses, hard drives, and
more. There’s a large compartment at the top with room enough
for a camera body with lens and a second lens. The floor of this top
compartment can fold down and become part of the main compart-
ment, which is accessed via the front zipper. With the floor folded
down, there was plenty of room for my Nikon D80 with a Sigma
100–300mm f/4 lens attached. And there are lots of other pockets
in this bag for your filters, Wacom tablets, flashes—you name it.
But once your gear’s loaded, the bag becomes quite heavy (even
empty, this bag weighs 5.7 lbs—a tradeoff for the very solid construc-
tion). The strap system can be adjusted at the chest, shoulders, and
waist to help distribute the weight for a more comfortable ride. But
as with most packs, the weight still tends to rest on the lower back.
Also keep in mind that this bag is big, so make sure you have plenty
of room to maneuver with it on your back.
So would I recommend the Python blur? Yes. I loved having access
to all my gear in one sleek-looking bag, along with the knowledge
www.LAYERSMAGAZINE.com
that everything was protected.—Chris Main
Company: booq Price: $229.95
Web: www.booqbags.com Rating: ● ● ● ●
Hot: Rugged; lots of room
Not: Bulky and heavy
90
TIMESAVING EFFECTS PLUG-IN
Holomatrix is an After Effects plug-in that does one thing well: It
gives footage that produces ghost-like, scan line, holodeck, and
“help me Obi-Wan Kenobi” looks. It’s an unusual plug-in because
it’s not listed in the Effects menu. Instead, it’s applied by choosing
Window>Holomatrix, which then applies a bunch of complex presets
to the selected layer—presets that use many effects and expressions,
and that involve multiple levels of precomposing.
As the presets use built-in effects, you could (in theory) do every-
thing Holomatrix does, without buying the plug-in. Good luck! The
developers have obviously spent hours figuring out the best way to
create the holodeck look, and the process is instantaneous. Choose
the plug-in from the menu and—wham-o—you’re done.
If you’re not happy with the default look, you can make infinite
adjustments in the Effect Controls window or in the custom Holo-
matrix panel that appears after you apply the effect. You can choose
from many presets (or save your adjustments as a new preset), turn
on-and-off various aspects of the effect (glows, random flickers, etc.),
and adjust the thickness and color of the scan lines.
As the result is an unusual mixture of expressions and built-in
effects, there are some gotchas to be aware of when deleting the
effect (because it’s not a single effect, you can’t just select it and
delete it) and when using it in complex situations, such as 3D. Luckily,
Holomatrix comes with a detailed manual and there are also some
excellent tutorial videos on Red Giant’s website.—Marcus Geduld
Company: Red Giant Software LLC Price: $99
Web: www.redgiantsoftware.com Rating: ● ● ● ● ●
Hot: Infinite adjustments; speed; presets; detailed manual
Not:
Ricoh CX3
10-MEGAPIXEL COMPACT DIGITAL CAMERA
I was surprised by the unveiling of Ricoh’s new CX3 digital camera
not too long after the CX2 arrived, but the difference between these
siblings is remarkable. After spending a lot of time with both the CX1
and CX2, the CX3 had some large shoes to fill. Clearly, Ricoh is listen-
ing to its customers with this latest addition to the CX series.
This offering features a new backlit CMOS sensor that produces
The CX3 has another trick up its sleeve in that it shoots 1280p
images with less visible noise and a more subtle, natural contrast.
video, which is surprising for a camera in this class. The new DB-100
Even long-throw flash photos, well beyond the capability of the
battery lasts longer than its predecessor’s does. If I were to have
tiny strobe, are acceptable in most cases. The stunning optics are
any negative issue with the Ricoh CX3, it’s that the selector wheel
far sharper than any models tested in this class. Even when 200'
on the top still sticks out just far enough to slide out of my preferred
from the subject, the clarity and balance of the images is closer
shooting mode (there’s no lock to keep it in position). There’s so
to that of a DSLR. There’s an overall improvement in all shooting
much more to love about this sub-$400 marvel that it’s easy to focus
modes as well.
on the positive.—Daniel M. East
Other nice additions are the Face-Priority AF option in the brack-
eting selector, and a Pets Mode with silent operation and no visible
light emitting from the body that might startle an animal. With its Company: Ricoh Co., Ltd. Price: $399
many refinements, this is still a consumer compact digital camera so
Web: www.ricoh.com Rating: ● ● ● ● ●
there’s no RAW shooting mode. For the pros out there, the image
Hot: Great optics; excellent exposures; HD video
quality has incredible depth and clarity, and colors are balanced,
properly saturated, and razor sharp. Not:

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[CREATIVE SUITE Q & A]
sweet answers for suite questions
[Adobe PHOTOSHOP CS5]
B Y P E T E R B A U E R
I have plug-ins that aren’t yet updated to run as 64-bit
[Q] software. How do I use them with Photoshop CS5 and
Mac OS 10.6?
First quit Photoshop. In the Mac’s Finder, go to Applica-
tions/Adobe Photoshop CS5, Right-click on the Adobe
Photoshop CS5 icon, and select Get Info from the con-
textual menu. In the General section, enable the Open
in 32 Bit Mode checkbox. When you don’t need those
plug-ins anymore, return to the Adobe Photoshop CS5
Info dialog and deselect that option to take full advan-
tage of your 64-bit software.
What’s your favorite new feature in Photoshop CS5?
[Q] The new Content-Aware option, found in the Edit>Fill
www.L AYERSMAGA ZINE.COM
dialog under the Use menu, and in the Options Bar when
the Spot Healing Brush tool (J) is active. Content-Aware
Scale, introduced in Photoshop CS4, is an incredibly
powerful tool for resizing to a new aspect ratio without
distorting the subject of your shot. Content-Aware Fill
and the Spot Healing Brush’s Content-Aware option use
this same powerful capability to seamlessly blend the sur-
rounding appearance of the image into the area in which
you’re filling or healing.
92
H E N K D AW S O N
I wanted to delete part of an image, but the Fill dialog
[Q] opened instead. What’s going on?
In Photoshop CS5, when a Background layer is active
in the Layers panel, the Delete (PC: Backspace) key
opens the Fill dialog. To bypass that behavior and
simply fill with the Background color, select the area
you want to fill and press Command-Delete (PC: Ctrl-
Backspace). And don’t forget that you can fill with the
Foreground color using Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Back-
space). With the area selected that you want to delete,
you can also use the Edit>Clear command to fill the
area with the current Background color.
[Adobe Illustrator CS5]
B Y D A V I D C R E A M E R
How can I adjust the printable area on a large document?
[Q] There are a few ways: Select the Artboard tool (Shift-O) then
click-and-drag to create a new artboard that focuses on the
printable area; or adjust the page tiling area with the Print
Tiling tool nested with the Hand tool (H); and select Tiling in
the Print dialog, or drag the preview area to fit your needs in
the Print dialog. [Note: When you’re finished using the Print
Tiling tool, you’ll want to go under View>Hide Print Tiling
to make the interface go away.—Ed.]

I want to change the size of my artboard, but how
[Q]
can I keep the artboard size proportional?
In the Artboards panel (Window>Artboards) click the
panel’s flyout menu and choose Artboard Options.
In the Artboard Options dialog, enable the Constrain
Proportions checkbox then type in a new Width and
Height size.
[Adobe INDESIGN CS5]
B Y D A V I D C R E A M E R
How can I make a yellow highlighter effect on my type?
[Q] You can make a character style that has the underline
turned on—simply open the Character Styles panel
(Type>Character Styles), click the Create New Style icon
at the bottom of the Character Styles panel and double-
click on the resulting Character Style 1. In the Character
Style Options dialog click Underline Options. Enable
the Underline On checkbox, adjust the Weight of the
rule and use a negative Offset. For Color choose yellow
and for Type choose Solid. Click OK. Apply this character
style from the Character Style panel as needed.
How can I move settings from one document to another?
[Q]
Hopefully, you used styles. Under each style panel, click the
flyout menu to choose Load All Text Styles, Load Swatches,
Load Object Styles, etc. In the Open a File dialog that opens,
select the project with the desired settings and click Open.
The settings will be transferred to the new file.
[Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro]
B Y D A V I D C R E A M E R
My PDFs to my printer are very large. What settings would
[Q] be the best?
Assuming traditional offset printing, when creating
your PDF, set your color and grayscale resolution set-
tings to 1.5 times the printer’s line screen (LPI)—you
can use 2 times the LPI if you want to be conservative.
For example, if printing at 150 LPI: Change the Bicu-
bic Downsampling to 225 ppi for images above 225 ppi
and use Automatic (JPEG) compression at Maximum
image quality. For monochrome images use 1200 ppi
and CCITT Group 4 compression. Always leave Com-
press Text and Line Art and Crop Image Data to Frames
on. If the book is black only (a.k.a. black-and-white), you
can convert the PDF to grayscale in Acrobat Pro after
you create it. Other than that, sometimes PDFs are just
large due to overall image and page count.
What version of Adobe Reader do users need to
[Q] participate in a shared review?
If using Acrobat.com, they’ll need the Adobe Reader 9; if
using an internal server, they only need version 8 or higher.
93
[Adobe dreamweaver cs5]
L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ][ ju ly / au g u s t 2010
B Y R A F A E L “ R C ” C O N C E P C I O N
I saw that Dreamweaver CS5 now has something
[Q] called CSS Inspect Mode. How is that different from
the CSS panel in Dreamweaver CS4?
One of the biggest problems when working with
cascading style sheets (CSS) in earlier versions of
Dreamweaver was its inability to display how the
rules you make in CSS actually look on the page.
Most of the time it was “make a change, save,
preview, redo.” With the new CSS Inspect Mode,
you can have your code and a built-in browser
(WebKit) that lets you take a rendered look at the
CSS code of a document. Dreamweaver color-
codes the CSS on the page to show you how the
box model—margins, padding, and sizes—looks
on a page. This lets you make quicker design
changes by not having to guess the results.
Is there a special place to activate the Application
[Q] Frame inside of Dreamweaver? I can’t find it!
Nope! This is one of those “I have to write to
Adobe” things for me. For some reason, many of
the Creative Suite applications have an Application
Frame built into them (Flash only has an applica-
tion frame option), but that feature has yet to make
it into Dreamweaver. This is a good time to write to
Adobe to see if they can add it as a feature in a later
release. Write to Adobe for a feature request here:
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index
.cfm?name=wishform.
[Adobe Flash CS5 Professional]
B Y C Y N D Y C A S H M A N , P H . D .
How can I display text in multiple columns?
[Q] Select the Text tool (T), and click-and-drag on the Stage
to create a text container. In the Container and Flow
section of the Properties panel (Window>Properties),
change the number next to Columns, and begin typing.
When the text reaches the bottom of the first column it
will automatically flow to the next column. You can also
convert an existing text container into multiple columns.
Select the text container with the Selection tool (V).
Next, change the number of columns in the Container
and Flow section.
Can I preview a video in Flash without publishing the movie?
[Q] In previous versions of Flash Professional, the only
way to view an imported video was to publish your
Flash movie. In Flash Professional CS5, you can pre-
view video right on the Stage. To preview a video,
click the Play button on the video component to start
the video.
 95
For advertising information, please contact Kevin Agren,

L AY E R S M A G A Z I N E ] [ j u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 0
VP, Sales at 813-433-2370 Fax: 813-433-5013
Email: kagren@kelbymediagroup.com

I N D E X O F A D V E R T I S E R S

4 Over, Inc.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97

www.4over.com
I.T. Supplies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
www.itsupplies.com
[O]

48HourPrint.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63
www.48hourprint.com [K] onOne Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
www.ononesoftware.com

[A]
Kelby Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 79, 85, 94 [P]
www.kelbytraining.com
Adorama Camera, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
www.adorama.com Peachpit Publishing Group . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
www.peachpit.com
[L]
[B]
Photoshop World Conference & Expo. . . 71–74
www.photoshopworld.com
B&H Photo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101 Layers Magazine . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91, 96, 100
www.bhphotovideo.com www.layersmagazine.com

PrintRunner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .98
Berthold Direct . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 www.printrunner.com
www.bertholdtypes.com [M]
[R]
Boss Logo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99
www.bosslogo.com MacMall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
www.macmall.com
Really Right Stuff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
[D] www.reallyrightstuff.com

Media Graphix. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69

Digimarc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 www.mediagraphix.com [S]
www.digimarc.com/passion

[F] Media Lab, Inc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Shutterstock. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IBC
www.shutterstock.com
www.medialab.com

Fotolia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BC
www.fotolia.com [W]
Mpix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
www.mpix.com
Focal Press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65 Wacom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29
www.focalpress.com www.wacom.com/americas

[N]
[I] [Z]
National Association of
iStockphoto.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IFC–3 Photoshop Professionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83 Zoo Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100
www.istockphoto.com www.photoshopuser.com www.zooprinting.com

Every attempt has been made to make this listing as complete as possible. However, its accuracy cannot be guaranteed.
 [THE BACK PAGE]
HERE’S YOUR CHANCE TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE
PAGES OF LAYERS MAGAZINE!
Last issue, we used the back page as a call for entries for our
“Digital Canvas” column. It worked so well, and we received
so many really cool illustrations and designs, that we thought
we would use this page again to tell you how easy it is to get
published in the pages of Layers magazine. It’s based on a very
simple premise: send us your artwork. Yes, you read that right—
send us your artwork.
If you have a really awesome piece that you’re proud of, send
it to us. And if we think it’s cool too, we’ll publish it in our “Digital
Canvas” section. As we mentioned before, we love showcasing
the work of our readers, and we know our readers love seeing
their work in print. So whether it was work for a client, or some-
thing you did in your spare time, send it. We like illustrations,
Web designs, magazine and book covers, product designs,
brochures, posters, and the list goes on and on.
As you know, it would be impossible for us to publish every-
one’s work, but that shouldn’t stop you from taking the chance; it
only takes a few minutes to send us an email. And even though we
can’t publish everything, we still appreciate viewing the incredible
illustrations and designs that are being created by our readers.
Just send everything to letters@layersmagazine.com with a
subject of “Digital Canvas.” For each piece you submit, let us
know the title, client’s name (or personal work), all the applica-
tions you used (including version numbers), and a website
where readers can see more of your work. Turn to page 18 of
this issue to see exactly what we need and to admire the work
of other readers.

[ SUBMIT YOUR WORK TO LETTERS@LAYERSMAGAZINE.COM ]

THE DESIGN MAKEOVER

By the way, we’re also always on the lookout for talented designers
for the “Design Makeover.” Every issue, we ask three designers to
create a fresh new look for a design currently in the marketplace.
www.layersmagazine.com

We’ve redesigned everything from logos to webpages to magazine

covers to product labels.
This is our most popular column, and it’s the first page most
of our readers turn to when they receive their latest copy of the
magazine. So if you want a chance to show your skills to the
world, just drop us a line at letters@layersmagazine.com with a
subject of “Design Makeover.”
.
102