CreativeTechs Tips

Today’s Illustrator webinar was quite an adventure! Ten minutes before the start of class, our Internet connection suddenly dropped (apparently because of a nearby maintenance crew). Luckily we managed to switch over to our slower emergency connection without too much chaos.

Of all days, today was the day that we received a slew of new visitors from two big referral sources. So to make up for today’s Internet glitch, we’re posting the Illustrator Week 7 class free for everyone to enjoy.

In return we ask is that you help encourage more great referrals! Visit Adobe’s Facebook page and Vectip’s Twitter feed to say that you really appreciate them spreading the word about CreativeTechs training:

#1: The Adobe Illustrator Facebook Page! Tell them it was good!

#2: Vectips Twitter Feed – Reply to say thanks for the Tweet!

Quality and quantity both help here. Let’s show our appreciation with some great feedback to them. Thanks!

PS. Anyone interested in signing up for other free weekly classes should visit our training calendar. Or if you are interested in purchasing full recordings of our past courses, visit our course purchase page.

Tuesday afternoons our resident Photoshop guru, Jason Hoppe, spends two hours solving real-world retouching challenges in front of a live worldwide audience. This started as an experiment for participants in our 10-Week Photoshop Course. SInce then it has grown into a weekly event with a dedicated and growing audience.

Here is an amazing example from last week. Jason spends half and hour rescuing a 1957 wedding photo that was damaged in Hurricane Katrina. If you’ve never joined us for Retouch Tuesday, this video is a great example of what you are missing.

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In this short 8 minute video, Mark Monlux talks about his personal approach to using social networking tools for attract business as an independent professional illustrator. From a May 27, 2009 panel at the Seattle Graphic Artists Guild.

Ever been working on a project in your favorite design application and found yourself hunting for a calculator? You might be surprised how many of today’s creative tools will happily do the math for you.

In this short 3-minute video clip, Jason Hoppe shows you how to place guides precisely in the fast way, letting InDesign do all that annoying arithmetic for you.

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This 5-minute clip comes from last week’s Flash Basics webinar. Erik Fadiman has been doing this long enough to know that almost all Flash classes start with the bouncing ball. If you’ve read anything about Flash, you’ve seen this before. How do we make the ball bounce?

Source: Big news! It looks like we are on track to offer a FREE 10-Week Flash course starting in June. Still working out some of the details. The best way you can help this happen is spreading the word.

Share the fun: Tweet about this Flash Basics video!

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Last week I gave a talk for the Seattle Graphic Artists Guild about why designers should be using today’s online social media tools to attract work. I promised I’d post a video recording of that talk, and here it is.

I gave this talk twice. Once as a rough draft to a small webinar audience, and the next day at the luncheon to a live audience of creative small business owners.

After reviewing both recordings, I find I like the rough draft a bit better. It feels a little more casual, and I enjoy the side comments I found myself making as I was actively figuring out how to describe certain topics.

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This is a full recording of a one-hour personalized retouching session between trainer Jason Hoppe and photographer Gary Gross of Dog Photography of New York. Gary kindly gave us permission to use this recording as an example of how our private 1-on-1 training works.

Jason is available for private 1-on-1 Photoshop training to anyone around the world. You bring your own photos, and spend an hour with Jason working on your specific challenges. Contact us for details, or to schedule a private session.

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This 5-minute clip comes from the Q&A portion of the first week of Jason Hoppe’s 10-Week Photoshop Course. This clip includes an assortment of tips inspired by audience questions. Including how to quickly reset dialog boxes, a shortcut for moving type boxes, quickly scrolling through fonts, setting precise guides, and shortcuts for zooming.

Free Photoshop CS4 Course Enrollment.

In this short 3-minute clip, Jason Hoppe answers a variety of questions from recent webinar attendees. Why does preview mode cover my document bleed sometimes, but not others? A misunderstood question about resizing documents leads to a fun tip. And how do I select and move objects that are hidden behind other elements?

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In this short 1-minute clip, Jason Hoppe shows you the trick to using InDesign’s hand tool to move your document window around while editing text. Normally you access the hand tool with the Spacebar, but not when you are typing inside a text container.

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