1. Art

For all makers of art and design a crucial source of inspiration is the work of fellow artists, designers and creatives of every kind. Knowledge of art and design history offers a solid grounding on which to make work, while an awareness of contemporary art practice frames the context in which the work is produced. Successive art movements have evolved and thrived by artists taking inspiration from one and other’s work and this continues to be the case today. At times when inspiration is flagging it is important to look to the work of past masters. When a designer is grappling with an aesthetic problem, they are assisted by the vast history of art that features practitioners who have already ‘solved’ many of these dilemmas.

2. Galleries and Museums

The best way to experience art is in the flesh and fortunately our galleries and museums are bursting with great works and fascinating relics. There is a mass of inspirational art to explore, from the embarrassment of riches held by national museums such as the British Museum and National Galleries to the cutting edge work found in small contemporary shows. Many of the finest museums are free to enter (although some charge for majors exhibitions), and many offer talks and events exploring the collections. Thousands of small galleries have rolling schedules of exhibitions and many publicly advertise for their opening night ‘private views’, a chance to meet the artists, mingle with other creatives, and enjoy a glass of wine.

3. The Internet

It’s easy to take the Internet for granted, but it was only a few years ago that researching artists and creative techniques would involve trawling through libraries, searching for periodicals, and attending evening classes. Today all this can be found with simple searches, reading Wikipedia pages or watching YouTube clips. The Internet has revolutionized many aspects of our daily lives; for artists and designers it is an invaluable source of information and inspiration.

4. Film

Many critics and historians consider film to be the quintessential art form of the twentieth century. The haunting quality of silent movies, the sharp design of light and shadow in film noir, the garish colours of Hammer horror, the grit of American gangster movies, the aesthetics of European art house, the startling graphics of Manga animations, and cutting edge CGI and 3D technologies; for artists and designers film is an enormous source of visual imagery and inspiration.

5. Music

There are two ways in which music can be an important source of inspiration for artists and designers. Firstly, music can form the soundtrack to a designers practice, helping create a mood and ambience to accompany the working environment. Designers can choose music to suit the project on which they are working, helping to set the pace and mood of the work. The second way that music can positively influence designers is in its packaging, performances, posters and other related imagery. Musicians often embrace strong aesthetics, high fashion and state-of-the-art design to accompany their music, inspirational stuff for those involved in the visual arts.

6. Print Ads and Posters

Film and music are prompted with often astonishing posters and print media, as are every kind of commercial product, events and even ideas. Many print ads are made by the leading designers of the day to ensure eye-catching imagery and effective communication. This media is an essential resource for the designer to find reference material and inspiration.

7. The Outdoors

There come moments in every creative person’s practice that the inspiration dries up and the ideas stagnate. At these times it is great to have a break and get outside in the fresh air, have a stroll or take a bicycle ride. Parks and countryside, city streets and urban environments can all enliven the senses and invigorate creativity.

8. Books

While the best way to see art is in the flesh, and so much is available on the Internet, one of the best ways to study visual work is in books. For book designers and typographers, of course, the book form is the best way to present their creations. Books are available on all types of artists, history and techniques, and they remain one of the most rewarding means of finding inspiration.

9. Magazines

In common with books, magazines and periodicals are a fine way of finding inspiration. Publications such as Art Review and Modern Painters cover the latest trends and contemporary artists, whilst also providing overviews of past movements and critical theories.

10. Life

The best art, design and creative works are directly inspired by the maker’s life. Working purely stylistically and aesthetically can produce results, but it is when artists infuse their work with their personal experiences of life that the work becomes enriched and truly enlivened.

Here’s a list of 20 applications that allow you to create blog posts from the comfort of your operating system environment, no internet connection required.

Mars Edit 2: Mac

Mars Edit is among the most popular desktop blogging apps for the Mac. It supports all of the major blogging platforms such as WordPress, Blogger, and Drupal and even many of the newer ones like Squarespace and Tumblr. Composing a blog post in Mars Edit can be as simple as writing an email but there are enough advanced features like macros (reusable snippets) and TextWrangler integration to keep professional bloggers happy.
Price: $29.95

Flock: Mac & Windows

I know this doesn’t strictly fit the category of a desktop blogging app, but it is a desktop app and it does have blogging integration… so there. Flock is the most unique web browser I’ve ever come across and is absolutely worth checking out. The thing that makes Flock unique is that it has integrated tons of the services you use online into the browser itself (by default). This means you can browse the web while keeping tabs on your social networking and blogging services. The built-in blog editor isn’t as fully featured as Mars Edit, but as a free utility bundled in a browser it’s pretty impressive. Check out all the services Flock supports below. Price: Free


Flock Services

Ecto: Mac

Ecto is a surprisingly fully featured blogging application with support for a ton of platforms. Ecto features include both a rich text editor and an HTML editor, full local control of recently posted entries and drafts, and the ability to convert and scale images. In my own testing Ecto seemed a bit rough around the edges but it’s definitely a good alternative to Mars Edit if you’re looking for something a little cheaper.
Price: $19.95

Qumana: PC & Mac

Qumana is another free option with most of the necessary features we’ve already discussed: WYSIWYG and HTML editor, support for most major blogging platforms, and local control of previous posts. What sets Qumana apart is its emphasis making money with your blog. Qumana lets you easily include ads in your posts so you can (theoretically) earn cash as viewers click on the ads.
Price: Free

Blogo: Mac

Blogo breaks ground in the interface category by delivering a slick, minimal UI for updating your blog. Blogo supports Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, Typo, Drupal, Expression Engine, Twitter, Ping.fm and more. Notable features include a bookmarklet to easily grab content from your browser, a fullscreen editing mode and easy drag and drop photo uploading/resizing.
Price: $25

MacJournal: Mac

MacJournal is geared more towards private journaling than professional blogging, but it does include full support for LiveJournal, Blogger, Movable Type, and WordPress. MacJournal takes full advantage of OS X by offering features like Quicklook integration and iSight compatibility.
Price: $39.95

BlogJet: Windows

BlogJet is one of the nicer Windows-only options that I came across. BlogJet sports a ton of great features including posting to multiple blogs simultaneously, Flickr and YouTube integration, file sharing/attachments for your readers to download, and browser/feed reader integration. And of course, support for WordPress, TypePad, Movable Type, Blogger, MSN Live Spaces, Blogware, BlogHarbor, Squarespace, Drupal, Community Server, etc.
Price: $39.95

RocketPost

Another really impressive Windows only app, RocketPost claims to be the “only one with WYSIWYG editing, full local editing and full blog import.” RocketPost boast tons of top notch features like automatic linking to related posts, quote tracking, quick linking, auto save, instant photo album creation, and scheduled posts. If you’re on Windows and are serious about blogging, this may be the way to go.
Price: $29

And a Bunch More!

After you’ve listed the features for eight desktop blogging apps, things start to get redundant. So I’m going to stop there and let you check out the rest. The apps above are the ones I found particularly impressive or unique, but here’s another 12 that are definitely worth looking into.

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1. Adobe Creative Suite
An obvious and primary requirement (I feel) all serious web designers should have. I couldn’t get through the day without Photoshop while Illustrator and Flash are constantly called upon. I hear Fireworks is good too, especially for compressing images, but I’ve yet to use it myself.

2. Transmit
Transmit is an FTP client for Mac. Edit remote files, synchronize, search, SSL, tabs; it covers all your daily FTP needs.

3. Coda
Coda is a light-weight all in one text editor. You can edit your code, preview your web page, upload to server (integration with Transmit), edit CSS and run commands in Terminal; all from within this one app. I would use Coda for front-end development.

4. Textmate
Textmate is another text editor that I prefer using for back-end development. Code completion, snippets, syntax colouring are some of the things I enjoy about Textmate along with ease of customizing fonts and colours.

5. CocoaMySQL
CocoaMySQL gives you an interface to work with your MySQL databases. This is a desktop alternative to PHPMyAdmin, which is a lot quicker and in my opinion a lot easier to operate.

UPDATE 13/12/08: CocoaMySQL has been abandoned and replaced with Sequel Pro. Works just as well and looks even better. Check it out.

6. MAMP
MAMP is an easy way to get Apache, MySQL and PHP up and running on your machine. Just by running MAMP all these three services will be up and running, no messing around in Terminal needed.

7. Things
Great app for getting things done. Set yourself project tasks and daily tasks and check them off as and when you get them done.

8. CSS Edit
A very good CSS editor. It allows for real time previews of your website and styles and is a very efficient app allowing you to easily find all styles being applied to certain elements.

9. Transmission
Transmission is used for downloading/uploading torrents over the net. Useful for sharing files with friends and colleagues (among other things)

10. MarsEdit
MarsEdit allows you to compile draft blog posts on your local machine before publishing them live on your blog. I use it daily to take notes on various blog topics I think of and then I can easily compile a blog post over the course of a week.

11. Skitch
I was only recently introduced to this by GoodOnPaper @ FOWA. Allows you to easily share images/screenshots on the web and using the Skitch editor you can add notes to your image or highlight areas of a screenshot. Very useful and saves having to load up Photoshop for simple tasks.

12. Parallels Desktop
You can run Windows XP or Vista on your Mac using Parallels. Handy for being able to test your websites in versions of IE (using Multiple IEs) and if there are any Windows only apps you need to use, e.g. Microsoft Access.

13. Office
A good old favorite for creating text documents, preparing slideshows or looking after sets of data. There are a few Mac alternatives, and of course online alternatives, but I personally prefer Office.

14. Paparazzi
Paparazzi takes full screenshots of webpages. The problem with Cmd+Shift+3 is that it only takes a screenshot of the visible screen. Paparrazi takes the whole height of the page, even below the fold, so it’s great for showing screenshots of your web designs.

15. Twitterific
Easily interact with Twitterland via Twitterific. Saves you having to make the trip to Twitter to see what’s going on as it can retrieve and send tweets for you.

Maya was developed for the film industry and is now being used for design, visual effects, games, film, animation, visualization and simulation. The most significant thing that sets it apart from other 3D packages — and the reason it is used so widely in these major industries — is that it is highly customizable. Big studios can write custom code to suit their productions using the software’s development kit. This makes Maya highly adaptable to any workflow.

Below, we feature tutorials that address most Maya-related topics for beginners and advanced users. These tutorials cover almost everything Maya has to offer, from modeling to the final rendering process.

For Beginners

Poly Head Modeling

Box Modeling a Male
Brief tutorial on the box-modeling technique.

Low Poly Character
In this tutorial, you will see how to create a low poly character in 3D.

Real-Time Character Modeling
Modeling a real-time character.

Subdivision Surfaces
Use subdivision surfaces to model a character in Maya.

Face
This video tutorial teaches you how to model a face in Maya using polygons.

Texture Map NURBS Dragon
This tutorial teaches you how to paint 3D texture maps onto a NURBS dragon model.

Layered Texture
In this tutorial, you learn how to use the alpha channel of your projected image to “stencil” your image over or under other images in your geometry using a layered shader.

Fur
Basic tutorial on Maya fur.

Tree
Create a realistic tree in Maya.

Grass
Creating simple grass in Maya.

CG Nature
This tutorial shows you how to make terrain, trees and grass using Maya.

Realistic Ear
This tutorial shows you how to model a realistic human ear.

Human Anatomy UV Coordinates Setup for Texturing
Learn how to create your UV texture maps correctly so that they don’t blur or stretch.

Coin
This tutorial shows you how to create a very realistic coin using Maya.

Keroro Gunso
In this Maya tutorial, you learn how to model Keroro Gunso.

Coffee cup
This tutorial shows you how to create a coffee cup in Maya.

Screwdriver
This is a basic modeling tutorial that teaches you how to create a screw-driver and then use Final Gather to render global illumination, HDRI and depth of field.

Onion
Create a realistic-looking onion in Maya.

Mud Effect
Tutorial on creating a dynamic mud effect in Maya using soft body.

Wine Glass
This video tutorial teaches you how to model a wine glass in Maya.

LCD Monitor
In this tutorial, you learn the basic modeling of an LCD monitor in Maya.

Toilet
Tutorial on modeling a simple toilet in Maya.

Cigarette Box
In this tutorial, you learn basic modeling and UV mapping for a cigarette box.

Tea Cup
In this tutorial, you learn how to model and texture a tea cup.

Space Ship
Learn how to model a space ship.

Airplane
Video tutorial shows you how to model an airplane in Maya.

Tarantula
Tutorial shows you how to model a tarantula in Maya.

Paint Geometry Tool
The Paint Geometry Tool can be very useful when adding anything that needs to be duplicated and randomized across a given surface. In this tutorial, you learn all the basics of Maya`s Geometry Tool.

Using Bump Map to Sculpt Details

Rendering Wireframe
This tutorial shows you how to render wireframes on top of 3D models.

Subsurface Scattering
Simulating subsurface scattering with Mental Ray.

3D Cloud Shader
Create a realistic cloud in Maya using fluids.

Light Lamp
Creating a realistic lamp light using Maya.

Mental Ray Studio Lighting
This tutorial teaches you how to achieve a basic studio lighting setup with Maya and Mental Ray, using a single HDR image and Final Gather.

Maya Optics
A brief explanation of how lighting works in Maya and how it is different from physical real-world lighting.

Getting Started With Mental Ray`s Final Gather
Basic guide teaches you how to use Mental Ray’s Final Gather to render a model.

Light
A detailed tutorial on lighting in Maya.

Studio Lighting in Autodesk Maya 2009
Tutorial gives brief explanation on studio lighting in Maya 2009.

Image-Based Lighting
In this video tutorial, you learn how to create shadows under an object with a photorealistic image in the background.

HDRI in Mental Ray
This tutorial demonstrates how to use HDRI to achieve photorealistic rendering in Maya.

Realistic Lighting with LDRI Images

Chrome Car Rims
This tutorial guides you through the process of creating realistic-looking chrome car rims.

MapCreation in Maya 2009
Video examines how, using Maya 2009’s new render pass features, we can easily export a normal map from high poly geometry.

Realistic Glass
This tutorial explains three methods of creating realistic glass in Maya.

Tennis Ball Fur

Tire Cover
This tutorial shows how to model difficult rotating objects.

Cable
In this tutorial, you learn how to make a simple NURBS cylinder behave like a real cable, affected by gravity, elasticity and other real-life physical forces.

Hair styles with Maya fur
In this tutorial, you learn how to create various hairstyles with the Maya fur plug-in.

Hair Dynamics

Dynamic Telephone Cord
This tutorial shows you how to create a dynamic telephone cord using Maya Hair.

Crowd
Create a simple crowd in Maya with the help of the CrowdMaker Rendering Engine.

Cobblestone
This tutorial guides you through creating a 3D mesh in Maya that will be used for repeating material. It also includes instructions on how to create the model and then obtain a color map and normal map from the model.

Gear
This tutorial teaches you how to model and render a gear in Maya.

Sport Car Nissan 350-Z
Tutorial explains how to create 350Z’s body using polygonal modeling with blueprints in Maya.

Bee
This basic tutorial covers topics such as modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, rendering and particles.

Using Sun and Sky in Mental Ray with Maya
This tutorial demonstrates Sun and Sky system options in the Mental Ray Maya rendering engine.

Tire
In this tutorial, you see how to create realistic-looking sports car tire in Maya.

Candle Flame
Create a realistic candle flame in Maya.

Eye
Model and apply shaders to get realistic eyes.

UV mapping Techniques
This tutorial shows most of the UV mapping techniques and tricks of Maya software.

Water from Particle
Learn how to create realistic water, with effects, from Particle in Maya.

Pillow with ncloth
Maya ncloth provides excellent ways for CG artists to create realistic clothing. It simulates real-life factors such as forces acting, friction, rigidity, glue strength, pressure, tearing surfaces, etc. This video tutorial teaches you how to use ncloth to create a pillow.

Controlling Fog Density
Create and control a fog effect in Maya.

Optimized Caustics in Maya Mental Ray
In this tutorial, you learn how to make fast and optimized caustics effect with Maya and Mental Ray.

Coca-Cola Bottle
Modeling a Coca-Cola bottle in Maya.

Shelves And Mel scripts
Mel is a scripting language for Maya that is similar to C. Using Maya’s Mel scripts, you can link objects, loop an action, simulate real-world dynamics and do many other things. This tutorial teaches you how to make shelves and create Mel scripts to speed up repetitive tasks.

Tank
This tutorial focuses on making tank treads using Mel scripts.

Making eyelid rig with driven keys and expressions
This tutorial teaches you how to create an eyelid rig with driven keys and expressions.

Growing Flowers
In this tutorial, you see how to create a growing flower animation.

Stormy Ocean
This animation tutorial teaches you how to create a realistic ocean storm.

Clock Animation
Create a clock animation using Maya Expression.

Lava Effect
This tutorial explains how to make a shader for lava effects using Maya’s material editor, called Hypershade.

Rocket
Model a rocket with a particle trail in Maya.

Particle Emission When Objects Collide
Emit particles at the exact location of the collision of objects.

Destroying A Wall
Destroy a wall using rigid bodies and particles in Maya.

Rigid Body Collision Detection

Spaceship Fleet
This animation tutorial shows you how to use the particle instancer to create a fleet of spaceships flying across a plain.

Bend Deformer
This Maya tutorial covers the use of the Bend Deformer, which links one attribute to another, and the use of math in expressions to create animation.

Rotating Wheels
Learn how to create an animation of a wheel that rotates in sync with the speed of the car. The final animation is more accurate and realistic.

Falling Leaves
Create a falling leaves animation in Maya using nCloth and Paint Effects.

Yoyo Animation
Tutorial on animating a yo-yo, with the string wrapping around the fingers of a deforming hand.

Muscle Rigging
Maya tutorial on creating muscles that contract and expand a few frames before the limb moves.

Instancing Animated Geometry To Particles
Particle Instancing saves time when animating many identical objects in a scene.

Mechanical Stairs 
This tutorial teaches you how to create a set of mechanical stairs.

BlendShapes
This Maya tutorial explains the process of using BlendShapes for facial animation.

Domino Effect
This tutorial teaches you how to set up the geometry of a domino effect and apply a passive-to-active key switch.

Jellyfish
This tutorial shows you how to create and animate jellyfish. It covers many topics such as modeling, texturing, animation and paint effects.

Walk
This complex tutorial uses Maya Expression to add repeating actions to a model.

Motion Blur
Add motion blur to your 3D animation in post-production by creating 2-D motion vectors in Maya.

Maya Live
Maya Live is a set of motion-tracking tools for matching CG to clean plate footage. This basic tutorial teaches you how to use Maya Live.

Hotbox
Hotbox is a great feature of Maya that will increase your speed and productivity. It allows artists to access every tool in Maya with the keyboard space bar, without having to waste time searching for tools and menu items all over the large Maya interface.

Irradiance Particles in Mental Ray
Learn how to use the powerful irradiance particle system in Mental Ray to lower your rendering times while balancing the rendering quality of your image using custom techniques and settings.

For Advanced Users

The tutorials featured below come from skilled professionals who work in the CG industry and are intended for advanced users of Maya software. You can use these techniques in other 3D software packages as well. Some of the tutorials use other packages like ZBrush, Mudbox and Photoshop in combination with Maya for best results. Before you begin any of these tutorials, make sure you have enough processing power: most of these tutorials are resource hungry. If you perfect the basic techniques covered above, try to use your skills to work on some of the high-quality projects featured below. Practice is the key to success.

Modeling a Character
In this tutorial, you see how Carsten Lind creates a character model in Maya.

American Alligator
See how Massimo Righi creates a sunbathing American alligator.

Next-Gen Environment Textures
A tutorial by Daniel Vijoi on creating next-gen environment textures in Maya. This tutorial focuses more on texturing.

Sohrab
Making Sohrab, by Farzad Dalvand.

Male Green Frog
Tutorial teaches you how to create a photorealistic render and 3D model that can be used for animation.

Steam MasterNext
Making Steam Master: next-gen game head by Sorin Lupu.

Spitfire War Plane
In this tutorial, you see how to model a Spitfire war plane.

Swimsuit Babe
Make an attractive woman, by Jimmy Chow.

Fruit Tarts
Make lovely fruit tarts, by Hau Ming.

Last ELF
Make the Last Elf in Maya. The author, Piotr Fox Wysocki, has done everything in detail to give it a real-life look.

Skullhead Mobster
Making Skullhead Mobster, by Harsh Borah.

Prince
Making Prince, by Robert Vari.

Tiger Zoo
Making Tiger Zoo, by Massimo Righi.

Prehistoric Animals
A demonstration of how this artist renders realistic-looking prehistoric animals.

Ingrid Bergman
Making Ingrid Bergman, by Max Edwin Wahyudi.

Morgane
Modeling Morgane in Maya, by Cousigne Adrien.

Breaking Subsurface Scattering into Render Layers in Maya
This tutorial is about the process of breaking the subsurface into rendering layers and compositing them in post.

Portrait of a Troll
Jonas Persson creates this Portrait of a Troll.

Cheese Platter
Detailed tutorial on making a cheese platter, by Hau Ming.

Quiet Room
Making a quiet room, by Yan Chan.

Gladiator
Making a gladiator, by Christopher ADAJAR.

Joker
Making the Joker, by Mohammadtaghi Aibaghi Esfehani. The detailing is done with ZBrush, texturing and matte painting and shave and haircut with Adobe Photoshop, and the finaly rendering with Mental Ray.

Varga
Making Varga in Maya.

Old Farm
Creating an old farm, by Daniel VIJOI.

Trapped
Making Trapped, by Massimo Righi.

Fatjon’s Performance
Making of Fatjon’s Performance, by Qu Yu Cheng.

High Polygon Realistic Character Creation
Creating a realistic high polygon character in Maya.

Gordon Ramsay`s Caricature
Making Gordon Ramsay, caricature by Jason Edwards

Turtle
Maya tutorial on creating a realistic-looking turtle. Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Street Cop
Creating a street cop, by Mashru Mishu.

Dr Julian
Maya texturing tutorial by Julian Jeremy Johnson-Mortimer.

Character Walk Through
Maya tutorial on creating a stunning character.

Meet You
Making of Meet You by Zhang Sheng.

Facial Animation Rig for Delgo
This tutorial from Warren Grubb shows how he created a facial animation rig for this character, which is more powerful and flexible than standard multi-targeted blendshape rigs.

Character hair
This tutorial shows how to create low poly hair for game characters using lots of images and some printscreens directly from the application used ( Maya, Photoshop, etc.)

Next-Gen Game Car
Model a game car without blueprints. This tutorial covers modeling, UV mapping and texturing.

Mini Cooper
This Maya tutorial focuses on shading and texturing.

Classical Girl
Making a Classical Girl by Wang Shiyong.

Foot
Modeling a foot in Maya, by Steven Stahlberg.

About the Author

Vailancio Rodrigues is a college student, webmaster and Web designer who likes to learn new things and share them with others. He likes to work in the creative field and is constantly improving his skills. His fields of interest are Web technologies, photography, motion graphics, art and technology. You can follow Vailancio on Twitter.

Sources: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/27/the-ultimate-collection-of-maya-3d-tutorials/

This video requires Adobe Flash Player.

KISS(Keep it simple stupid)

Rule 2

Take advice, you never know too much that you can’t take the advice of others, look at other magazines, newsletters etc, and especially, the rest of this list…

Rule 3

Determine what kind of document you’re producing. If we can break it down into two kinds:

… you have to read me, so it really doesn’t matter how I make it look, and I don’t give a damn anyway…

… please read me, I have something to offer and I hope you’ll take the time to read on…

for those with the first kind of document, just stop reading now, for others…

Rule 4

Is it a formal or informal document?

Formal documents need to be well structured, look as if they mean what they say, keep them consistant in terms of fonts and layout… be businesslike

Informal documents can be looser, make them inviting, choose an informal (optima etc) font, lots of white space. Make the reader want to read on.

Rule 5

There are a number of socially correct mechanisms to make sure that whatever type of document you are producing looks good …

One font for body text and one for headline text …

Never put more that one space between words, especially after punctuation. …

Respect other languages, use the correct accents when appropriate …

use the correct quotation marks (not feet and inches symbols) …

be consistant with paragraph spacing (first line indent, inter paragraph gap) …

not too much hyphenation (if any) …

beware of widows and orphans…

respect your reader

Rule 6

Select an appropriate format for the type of document you are producing. A5 booklet, A4 report, A3 broadsheet etc.

Rule 7

Consider the reproduction mechanism. …

If you are photocopying the end document, beware of the limitation of tints on any specific photocopier (hint: fine tints smudge on some copiers) …

Professional printing of the final document: choose your paper with care, ask the advice of your local printer (print office) before getting too deep in the production process. If they have preferences regarding the tools they use for preparation of documents, consider them (ie Pagemaker etc).

Rule 8

Keep backups (copies) of items as you go along, make sure that you have copies of all documents (pictures, logos, main document etc) well secure. Sodd’s law will ensure that something untoward happens in the last hour of your deadline.

Rule 9

Having selected a publication format, edit to that format, not the other way around. Do not try and make the format fit the pieces…

Rule 10

Remember Rule 1

Quark has a lot of keyboard shortcuts, but most of them aren’t mnemonic, so they are hard to remember. Here’s a list of the ones you’ll probably want to suffer to learn anyway. With one exception (noted below), these work in both version 3.3 and 4.0.

• Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V = Cut, Copy and Paste the selected item (respectively). What you can select depends on the tool you are using.
• Ctrl+Z = Undo. Everyone’s favorite “oops” command. You get one…count it…one level of undo, so be careful.
• Ctrl+Shift+B = Apply Bold. Select text press the combination and lo your text is bold.
• Ctrl+Shift+I = Apply Italic. Same idea as adding bold, except it adds italic instead.
• Ctrl+J = Go to a certain page. Why J? Maybe it stands for jump? I just dunno.
• Shift+F8 = Toggle the Item and Content tools. You get really sick of switching between the two using the toolbox.
• F5, Shift+F5 = Bring to Front and Send to Back respectively.
• Alt+clicking on a style name = removes local formatting and applies the style. (This command changed in version 4.0 — it used to be Shift+style name.)
• Ctrl+0 = Zoom to fit in the window. If you have a big monitor, you can sort of still read the text.
• Ctrl+1 = Zoom to actual size, so you really can read the text.
• Ctrl+Shift+F = Opens the Paragraph Formats dialog box.
• Ctrl+E = Get picture or get text (depending on the type of box that is selected).
• Alt+Ctrl+Shift+F = Make an imported picture fit in a picture box, without changing the aspect ratio.

Revert to Saved

As noted, the folks at Quark give you just one level of undo. A way around this limitation (sort of) is to use the Revert to Save command. Before you decide to attempt anything weird, save the file. Then commit the weirdness. That way, in the event of a big design failure, you can choose File, Revert to Saved to return to your last good (i.e., pre-weird) version of the document.

Use Libraries

It’s sad how few people take advantage of Quark’s libraries. Two minutes of setup can save you eons of repetitive formatting. For example, supposed you have a standard figure box and caption that you use over and over in a newsletter. Rather than redrawing them every time you need a figure, create a library and drag the formatted boxes into it. Then whenever you need to add a figure, you can drag the perfectly formatted objects into your layout.

Apply Styles in Your Word Processor

An easy way to speed up applying styles is to just not do it in Quark at all. Set up the Quark file with the same style names you use in your word processor (or vice versa). The key is that the style names must be exactly the same. Then when you choose File, Get Text, make sure that Include Style Sheets is selected. You’ll get a bunch of messages (one for every style) asking you if you want to use the existing Quark style. Say you do. Your text arrives in the Quark file already formatted. Cool.

Create a Jump Line

If you have an article that continues on another page, you may want to include a “jump line” to tell your readers where it’s continued. Create a new text box and type in “continued on page” or something like that. For the page number, press Ctrl+4 instead of typing in a page number. This command inserts a code for the page number of the next text box in the linked chain. If you rearrange the pages later, the jump line will automatically update.

Move to the Next Box

If your layout includes articles that continue on other pages an easy way to have Quark move you to the next page is to place your cursor at the end of a text box. Then hit the right arrow key. Quark jumps you to the next text box in the chain, no matter whether it’s on the next page or 20 pages later in the document.

Find/Change Special Characters

As you can in some word processors, you can use Quark’s Find/Change function to look for unusual items such as tab characters, spaces, or paragraph. For example, if you (or a wayward author) type two spaces instead of one after a period, you can use Replace to quickly replace two spaces with one space. Or if you have documents with a lot of extra paragraphs, you can search for extra paragraph returns.

These are a few of the special characters you can enter in the Find what and Change to boxes:

• \t = Tab
• \p = Paragraph
• \n = New line
• \c = New column

For example, many times people indicate a bullet with an asterisk followed by a couple of spaces. If you want to find all the asterisks that should be turned into bullets, you would enter “\p* ” into the Find what box.

InCopy CS3 and InDesign CS3 parallel workflow (simple overview)

The designer places the InDesign layout on a central file server. Text and image frames in the layout are assigned for review and editing to a contributing member of the editorial workflow. Multiple InCopy users can open spreads and edit content from the same layout file concurrently while it’s on the server, even if the designer has it open in InDesign.

However, to protect the integrity of the design, InCopy only allows editors to edit the contents of text and image frames which the designers have designated as editable in the layout. Editors cannot change page geometry (move or resize frames, add or delete frames or pages, apply text wrap, etc.). While they can apply local text formatting and any text styles the designers created and saved with the layout to their stories, editors cannot add, delete, or modify any of the styles. If the designer is working on the same layout concurrently
and saves changes to it in InDesign, any editor who has it open in InCopy is notified that the design is out of date. Choosing File > Update Design in InCopy immediately refreshes the layout to reflect the latest state of the publication, without losing any of the InCopy user’s edits.

When the editors have completed the final touches to their stories, and the designer has updated all the InCopy content in the layout, the file is ready for preflighting and handoff to a commercial printer.

Black should be only 100%K, not composite from all colors
You have to keep in mind that printing process has minimum 4 passes (to print full color – in Offset technology), and that alignment of these four passes may not be 100% same. Every pass is one color. So if you make text from 100C 100M 100Y 100K composite, you will have noise at letter’s edges. Photoshop has habit to form black from all composites so pay attention to select only pure black (0C 0M 0Y 100K) when you write text.

Use minimum 300DPI for Offset and 600DPI for Digital printings
Human eye can easily notice granulation of image raster if its resolution is lower than 96 DPI. Common Offset printing plates (machines) support 300DPI, so use this quality and make design in that resolution. Also, some digital printers support more dots per inch so you can make design from 600 to 1200 DPI’s, but it is very hard to notice difference between 600 DPI and higher. In special cases if you make design for buildboard, you can use 30 DPI, because of view distance.   

Clean up small composite values
Keep in mind that every colored surface is made from these 4 components mentioned before. If you have on some surface less then 10% of some color, it is better to modify that color component to 0% in order to avoid edge noise. You will make small change on color. Also if you try to print 5% of some composite it is very small chance that something will be printed at all on Offset printing.  
Example: if you fill background with gray color: 5C 5M 5Y 5K you will probably bet totally white surface, but, if you use 0C 0M 0Y 11K, which gives very similar color on screen, you will have some gray color on background.
Simply, printing and screening technologies are different.

Make from 3 to 5 mm bleed on every edge that should be trimmed
Printing surface is always bigger than required dimensions. When you do screen design you don’t think about cutting, because it doesn’t exist on screen, but, when you do design for paper you have to keep in mind that someone will have to cut edges of your design. So there is Trimmed dimensions and Not-Trimmed. As designer you are thinking in trimmed dimensions, but when you send file on printing you have to make tolerance in case that swings that cuts paper to fit required dimensions make mistake, and, it always make some mistake. If you don’t make your design bigger you will have white stripes at edges of your catalogue or flyer.   

Keep in mind that US print shops use the English system religiously. In case you didn’t know, points and picas come from the English system, and its much easier for us to use all of our technology with those measurements. The bleed (that’s the area of excess design to allow for cutting) is always 1/8″ or less depending on the room on the plates.   

In case of flyer, you have to make this bleed for all edges, in case of catalogue, only outer edges should have this because, edge that comes to bending line doesn’t have cutting.

Make margins at least 5mm
All elements of design and all texts should be at least 5mm from edge of cut. I tried with 3mm, it was bad looking because on some places distance was smaller because problem of swings. In some cases you can go up to 10mm of margin.   

That is something that I noticed that beginners in graphic design should know. There is also some pure design tips about contrasts and colors, but I’ll leave it for some other tutorial.   

Use TIFF as final file format
I advise you to use TIFF format when you send design to printer company. I had cooperation with many printing companies and printing professionals and everybody agree that TIFF / CMYK is most trusted image format for color-safe exporting and transporting from design workstation to film exposition company.   

It is safe to use: LZW compression (more compatible) or ZIP compression (less compatible). For final file you can discard layers to reduce file size. Skilled print workers reported that ZIP compression may lead to corruption later on in the process of printing, also that LZW compression is not allowed by some applications (Heidelburg).   

Check http://www.omnetwork.net for more tutorials covering this and other design topics.

About author: Goran Grubic is skilled print and web designer from Serbia running design portal omnetwork.net (http://www.omnetwork.net/) which offers for free large unique tutorial library (covering Photoshop, Flash, 3D Studio, Dreamweaver and similar topics), free graphic resources (templates, elements, 3D models etc.), photography (free&royalty free, just use it!) and sounds&music loops for multimedia web development.

This example shows how to Load, Add, Subtract, and Intersect selections between overlapping layers just with quick thumbnail clicks.

Load Pixels to Selections

In “Layer 2″ Command-click to load a fill as a selection. Any pixel which is not transparent in “Layer 2″ will be loaded as a selection. This is not the same as copying the layer, only its outline. The green fill shows the selected region although you will get only the surrounding Marquee. Let’s call this state (with “Layer 2″ selected) the initial state.

Addition

With the “Layer 2″ loaded as a selection, Command + Shift-click on “Layer 1″ to add it to the selection. Now non-transparent pixels of both “Layer 1″ and “Layer 2″ are combined as the new selection. Notice the small plus sign in the Command-Click box.

Subtraction

Revert to the initial state and Command + Alt-click on “Layer 1.” This will subtract any overlapping pixel of “Layer 1″ from the current selection of “Layer 2.” Notice the minus sign.

Intersection

Revert to initial state and Command + Alt + Shift-click on “Layer 1″ to keep only the overlapping pixels as a selection. Notice the X sign. If the layers are not overlapping this action will deselect all.

Garbage Masks

Garbage Masks are created to roughly isolate the ‘region of interest’ from rest of the image. Further trimming is carried out inside the Garbage Mask with precision.

Vector and Raster Selections

Draw an outline around the region of interest in the image with any of the Lasso Tools and double-click to complete the selection. A Garbage Mask needs to be saved for further refining, which can be done both as a Layer or Vector Mask. We must choose it depending on complexity of the outline and how we are planning to trim it later on. With the Lasso selection click Add Layer Mask to save it as a Layer Mask.

Alternatively, we can also save the selection as a Vector Mask which can be later refined by working on the shape spline that defines its outline. With the Lasso selection still intact (2), go to the Paths tab (3b) and click Make Working Path from the Selection button at the bottom. This will save the selection outline as a Shape Working Path.

Now load the selection again, and return to Layers tab. Click Add Layer Mask once to create a Layer Mask (Command-click to load again) then click the same button( 6b) once more to Add Vector Mask. Saving selections as Vector Masks or Shapes saves memory.

Selecting with Vector Mask

Click on the Vector Mask to activate it. Or selecting any of the Shape tools will make it active. Vector Masks are modified by adjusting the spline positions (Control Points) and curvature (Tangents). You can disable, delete, or save the Layer Mask with another Layer. The Convert Point tool is most suitable for altering Vector shapes and Paths. Click and drag on the handles, then Command-click on control points to move them.

Once a acceptable outline has been achieved use the Add Points tool to refine and further match the outlines. Delete points when necessary. Dragging handles with Command + Shift will lock their relative slopes. Drag directly on the Control Point to reset handles. Regular curvy shapes are best to be extracted with this process.

This method is also best in situations where boundaries are not clearly visible.

Select by Color Range

Selecting by color is the fastest way to Chroma select. Click Select > Color Range and select a color with the Eyedropper Tool available. Once selected certain shades can be removed selectively with the Minus (-) Eyedropper or again added with the Plus (+) Eyedropper. There is also a preview window that displays the selected region or the original image.

This tool can be used to setup Garbage Masks around the subject and later refine it with editing the Mask. Select by color is not a one-click solution, but does a great job in minimizing manual work.

Chroma from Channels

Color information of each type are stored in as separate channels, which can be viewed in the Channels Tab. We can use the channel wise variations in color intensities for selecting objects in the image. This process is helpful only when background and foreground have separate color distribution in at least one channel.

Advanced Chroma

In the Histogram we can see that the blue channel is predominant in the image and it extends up to the highlights where other channels are very weak. Our subject here is the patch of vegetation in foreground.

Picking the Best Channel

A simple observation of the three channels tell us that the blue channel has the highest contrast between the Sky and Grass. We are going to exploit this property to separate the two. Duplicate (Command + J) the Layer and go to the Blue channel of the Copied layer. Click Image > Adjustments > Curves or Press Command + M to apply curves modification on the current channel.

Applying Curves

Select the point closer to the dark grays of the channel and drag it (2) forward in the x-axis (horizontally) keeping y-axis at 0 (shown by the small circle). This will make the darker pixels uniformly more darker. It shouldn’t affect the background, drag it a little back to left if it does.

Next, select another point closer to the White Point, drag it (3) back towards the midtones keeping the y-axis(vertical) at maximum (shown by the small circle). What we are doing is saturating the dragged range of blue up to 100%. Make sure the whole background turns white or almost so, and there is a very high contrast between the Grass and Sky.

Channel as Mask

Command-click on the channel thumbnail to load the channel into the selection. Areas which are predominantly blue will be selected totally and the rest according to respective degrees. Areas which have no blue (the black parts) will be left from the selection. With the selection in place go to the Layers tab and click Add Layer Mask to save the selection as a Mask.

Inverting the Mask

Press Command + I to invert the Layer Mask.

Selecting by Brushing on Masks

Brush based selection is used to extract foregrounds with complex outlines with accuracy. It is also used to refine selections made with other techniques. And it also support transparency (softness).

Erasing is probably the first thing that comes to mind when we talk about brush based selection. But it is not a recommended process at all. Erasing is a destructive process and can permanently damage the original image as recovery is limited only to a number of undo levels we have set.

Brushing with Layer Masks

Here too Layer Masks can be used, to preserve the workflow of Eraser and additional possibility of recoveringremoved portions if they are needed. Painting on the Layer Mask with a White or Black will reveal or hide the contents respectively. We can brush out backgrounds in the same way as in using the Eraser tool and get it back by painting with White.

No Feedback

When brushing the mask we may sometimes trim off relevant parts accidently and keep focusing on the wrong silhouette only to be discovered later. This is highly probable when foreground background have similar hues and there is no immediate visual feedback.

Immediate Feedback

This problem can be averted by following a simple rule of keeping a multiplied duplicate of the current layer in the background as a guide layer. Multiplied gradient maps will show-up as high contrast versions of the subject outlines if violated.

Luma Select

As already mentioned Luma is the illumination levels of an image. Luma can be used to extract components from the image which have a considerable brightness difference than others.

Simplest Luma Hack

Unlock the background and make a duplicate of it, then hide the original Layer.

Apply Threshold

Apply a Threshold Adjustment Layer on top. You will notice that some parts of the image have been turned instantly black and rest are pure white, and there are no intermediate grayscale levels.

Adjust Threshold

Adjust the Threshold Slider and try to enclose the subject or background (whichever is darker) in black. Hide the Threshold layer and look at the original image for guidance when required.

Merge Layers

Command-click to select the top two layers and Merge them into one. Select the bottom layer, make it visible and create a blank Layer Mask.

Add Layer Mask

Copy the merged image and paste to the Layer Mask, following the process discussed above. We have our Layer Mask ready, but in most cases there will be holes and parts of our background visible. Use the Mask Painting technique discussed above to make it tidy. Invert if necessary.

Luma Select with Transparency

The Threshold technique discussed above is very fast to implement, but is only useful for extracting solid objects as it lacks transparency. The following method can be useful in situations where we need Luma extraction with transparency. Here we are going to remove the ice-water from the rest of the rocks.

Using Luma to Mask with Transparency

Unlock and Create a layer from the background (1). Apply an Adjustment Layer Black and White on top and then a Brightness-Contrast Adjustment Layer above it.

Reduce Brightness

Select Use Legacy mode and slowly move the Brightness slider to left, try to get as many black areas from the rocks as possible. This process will reduce the brightness of the Water too so don’t overdo it.

Increase Contrast

Now slowly increase the Contrast slider to the right. With each increase dark-grays will turn to black and lighter grays will glow more brightly. We are going to get the whites as opaque and grays as semi-transparent. Try to get both Whites and Grays where necessary. Over increasing the contrast will make it look like a Threshold Layer, if so there will be no translucency left.

Merge the Layers

When satisfied with the results Merge the top three Layers. Go to the background layer and Add a Layer Mask and copy the merged Layer into the Layer Mask.

Yet Another Possibility

Other than the above two procedures there is also another way of Luma based extraction using the Lab color method.

Lab Color Technique

Open an image and turn it to Lab Color mode by clicking Image> Mode> Lab Color. Goto Channels Tab and find the lightness channel or press Ctrl+1 to directly select it. This is where the illumination levels of all pixels are indexed in the Lab Color mode. You can play with that channel and try to isolate some element from the background. Don’t forget to duplicate the Layer or the Channel before you alter any channel.

And filters that doesn’t work on the image in Lab Color mode works on the Lightness channel, and yield almost similar results.

Conclusion

Photoshop has quite a few options when it comes to selection techniques. Try applying some of these solutions in your workflow to increase your productivity and effectiveness.

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