Graphic Design Woes: I Give - You Win

I'm not even sure that there's much of a narrative that I can write for this. The pictures will explain it all.

After a LONG string of emails and numerous changes (and with making this ten times busier than i'd prefer)...

they decided to do their own and scrap my design. i'd be offended but it means that i am no longer involved. thank you sweet baby jesus.

i love them, i do. design is hard. i know. so to that i will just say... go read this article. and be kind to your graphic designers. www.buzzfeed.com/copyranter/clients-are-morons

Photoshop: Fireworks Users Do Not Be Afraid!

I grew up using autocad as a drawing program and net fusion to build websites. Isn't that insane? And I SWEAR I'm not that old!! I eventually, in college, moved to using Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks. Some of you may have never heard of fireworks. BUT if you're a web designer before a graphic designer you know it well. I'm a web girl that eventually turned graphic. All of that being said I was TERRIFIED of photoshop. Layers freaked me out. I never learned how to properly use them in Fireworks so I always had everything in the same layer but you could choose what you wanted to work with. Not the case in photoshop but i'm here to tell you THAT IS OKAY! You will survive the transition! Layers are a beautiful thing. If you have any hint of OCD, like me, it will be your favorite photoshop feature! Looking back they are not terribly different, but driving the two programs is. The best thing I can tell you to do is either find a friend who is a Photoshop genius like my co-J or dig through adobe's tutorial videos! They are wonderful! They have an entire playlist on this page of how to get started but I love the layers video for newbies: http://tv.adobe.com/show/learn-photoshop-cs6/playlist/getting-started-with-photoshop-cs6/

If you're not new to photoshop but looking for a few tricks that you may or may not know here's one that i found today that was always something i couldn't figure out how to do so i would revert to fireworks for it! the source is linked to the pic!

another one that we use all the time so as not to reinvent the wheel is stealing layers from your other photoshop artwork. all you have to do is open your two psd's in two separate windows and drag and drop a layer from one to the other! depending on your file size you'll probably need to resize it but it can save you a ton of time if you're making numerous graphics for the same event in different sizes (ie advertising graphics). 

the other tool i LOVE to use that makes the proceeding ecard valid is a filter called liquify. there's no way to explain it other than to get in and use it. you can squeeze in and push out in all the right places. but be careful or you'll end up looking like this:

 but if you do it right this card can secretly hold true for you!!

Mac Keyboard Shortcuts: Bullet Points and Screenshots Are My Favorites

I know it seems like a really easy thing to figure out but I wish you knew how long it took me to figure out how to create a bullet point in photoshop. Some day, photoshop will have full text editor features. This is a REALLY simple post but I'm going to link to a GREAT resource:

• To make a bullet point in photoshop: hold option + 8 at the same time and you will get this: • which is a BEAUTIFUL sight after you've been fighting with photoshop to line up your dots with your list. Alternatively you can always just copy and paste your bullet list but that's neither here nor there. :)
• To screenshot an area of your screen (we do this ALL of the time when we are in the process of sending drafts of large graphics out to everyone for review): command + shift + 4 . We also enjoy taking screen shots of peoples faces in videos at those awkward moments, like this...

Another great use for screenshots is documenting things you see on social media. Keeps the time stamp, location, etc all in tact. We file ours in a folder. These are good things to screenshot. You know. Just in case it ever comes up again:

but go check out this guys site and notice the tabs at the top of the page. it has some amazing shortcuts i didn't know about and he's dead on with his app recommendations: http://www.danrodney.com/mac/index.html