Every friday a fresh, high-resolution, royalty free stock photograh for free download.

Our friends over at AbsolutVision are offering The Design Weblog readers a free download:  A new, royalty-free image every week. This high-resolution stock photo comes in JPG and JPEG 2000 (JPF) formats, complete with clipping path and alpha channel.

Download the above image in JPG and JPEG2000 now (2.2 MB ZIP)

More:  Past FotoFridays and How To Use JPF/JPEG2000 Files

If you are a stock photography agency interested in providing free, royalty-free images to readers of The Design Weblog, please contact us.

Tags:  design howto tutorial photography Photoshop ImageReady  

Quark VS InDesign.com announces simultaneous design competitions celebrating InDesign and QuarkXPress. Creative pros to compete for US$14,000 worth of prizes.

Yesterday Quark VS InDesign.com, The Authority for News and Opinion on the War Between Desktop Publishing Giants QuarkXPress® and Adobe® InDesign®, announced two simultaneously running design contests to create promotional postcards celebrating and honoring InDesign and QuarkXPress.

According to the website:  "This is about celebrating and honoring two incredible tools of our trade, tools that spare us from the grueling labor of hand-cutting ruby lithe and waxing up headlines, tools that save us from having to get real jobs."

For those in the mind to switch from QuarkXPress to InDesign CS, Total Training is offering a free Switching from Quark to InDesign CS video workshop CD. They're even picking up the cost of shipping!

Call 1-800-546-9620 to get your free copy. Ours are already on order.

Every friday a fresh, high-resolution, royalty free stock photograh for free download.

Our friends over at AbsolutVision are offering The Design Weblog readers a free download:  A new, royalty-free image every week. This high-resolution stock photo comes in JPG and JPEG 2000 (JPF) formats, complete with clipping path and alpha channel.

Archived to permanent home. Download from Past FotoFridays.

Check the Design Weblog each Friday for a new, high-resolution, royalty-free stock photo for download—before they expire!

More:  Past FotoFridays and How To Use JPF/JPEG2000 Files

If you are a stock photography agency interested in providing free, royalty-free images to readers of The Design Weblog, please contact us.

Today's How-To's Day tutorials:

• Illustrator CS2:  Live Trace & Live Paint
  By Dave Cross / NAPP

• Photoshop CS2:  Vanishing Point Tool
  By Deke McClelland / Total Training

• InDesign CS2:  Footnotes
  By Jamie McKee / InDesign Magazine

• GoLive CS2:  Package for GoLive
  By Lynn Grillo / NAPP

• Acrobat 7:  Adding Page Numbers
  By Donna Baker / Planet PDF

View all How-To's Day tutorials (includes Photoshop, InDesign, Painter, Illustrator, and more).

View all How-To's Day:  Photoshop Edition tutorials.

How-To's Day is a regular feature of the Design Weblog in which we give you five highly useful how-to tutorials—four from around the Web, and one created specifically for you by yours truly. How-To's Day is the first, third, and, if there is one, fifth Tuesday of every month.

Sometimes the How-To's Day tutorials are hardcore design techniques, other times they're cunning production procedures, time-saving shortcuts, and, once in a while, just plain old fun and funky how-to's.

Got an idea for a How-To's Day tutorial? Know of a cool tutorial elsewhere on the web? Let me know. Have you written a killer tutorial? Send it my way; it may appear in a future How-To's Day.

Tags:  design howto tutorial software CS2 Photoshop ImageReady indesign quark corel acrobat 

National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) launches the Photoshop CS2 Learning Center—the most comprehensive look at Adobe Photoshop CS2 available anywhere

Today NAPP announced the launch of the Photoshop CS2 Learning Center. The learning center, which covers not only Photoshop CS2 but InDesign CS2, Illustrator CS2, and GoLive CS2, features free online videos, articles, reviews, news, a downloadable CS2 overview, and a CS2 discussion forum.

"I loved Photoshop 7. I thought Photoshop CS was even better, but Photoshop CS2 blows them both away. This is clearly the most significant update to Photoshop in years," said NAPP President Scott Kelby. "This update has something for everybody, but if you're a photographer, it's absolutely going to make your jaw drop. It's that good." Kelby added.

Photography more your bag? Don't miss Photoshop CS2—Every New Feature for Photographers

What are the hot new tools and updated features in the latest version of the graphic design industry's workhorse, Photoshop CS2?

• Multiple Layer Control

• Image Warp

• WYSIWYG Font Menu

• Adobe Stock Photos

• Automated Variable Graphics Creation

• Customizable Menus

• And much more!

Get comfortable. There's a lot to tell you about.

Not a photographer? Don't miss Photoshop CS2—Every New Feature for Graphics Pros

Next to a camera, Photoshop is the most important tool of any professional photographer's trade. So what can the photo pro or prosumer look forward to in the ninth release of Adobe's favorite son, Photoshop CS2?

Plenty.

• Noise Reduction

• Optical Lens Correction

• Smart Sharpen

• Spot Healing Brush

• Red Eye Tool

• Task-Based Presets & Customizable Menus

• Digital Asset Management with Adobe Bridge

• HDR Support

• Multi-Image Camera Raw Processing

• Export to Television Monitors

• And more!

Get comfortable. There's a lot to tell you about.

Initial Pricing and Availability

Following the accidental early posting of the press release announcing Photoshop CS2, which hinted at coinciding announcements about new versions of Adobe's InDesign, Illustrator, GoLive, InCopy, and the Creative Suite itself, Adobe officially announced the new versions at midnight Eastern Time.

According to Adobe.com:  "Adobe® Creative Suite 2 Premium software is a unified design environment that combines full new versions of Adobe Photoshop® CS2, Illustrator® CS2, InDesign® CS2, GoLive® CS2, and Acrobat® 7.0 Professional software with new Version Cue® CS2, Adobe Bridge, and Adobe Stock Photos. Delivering the next level of integration in creative software, Adobe Creative Suite 2 enables you to realize your ideas anywhere — in print, on the Web, or on mobile devices."

Quark postcard campaign attacking Adobe backfires, offends and alienates customers.

On Wednesday QuarkVSInDesign.com, a news site dedicated to the desktop publishing industry and the legendary rivalry between Denver-based Quark, Inc., maker of QuarkXPress, and Adobe Systems, Inc., which makes InDesign and other high-end creative products, spilled the beans about a unique and apparently very quiet marketing campaign from Quark. Sets of six postcard-sized promotional cards were sent by Quark throughout early March to QuarkXPress users who had not upgraded to the latest version, 6.5. According to sources, the cards are still arriving.

The cellophane-wrapped six-pack of cards opens with the one pictured here, which reads: "The news QuarkXPress 6.5 features were designed to blow your doors off. Making Adobe cry like a baby was just an added bonus." Several other cards in the series continue the Adobe bashing.

It's "childish and immature. Like kids who stick their tongues out at others while hiding behind their mother, knowing that they'd lose in an actual face to face battle," says Katharine Shade, a desktop publisher quoted in the article, titled "Quark's Postcards from the Edge."

Today's How-To's Day tutorials:

• Graphic Design: Practical Typeface Selection
  By Cameron Moll

• Illustrator: Creating Customizable Dashed Lines
  By CreativeCow

• Graphic Design: 9 Pain Points of Typesetting
  By Charles Purdy/CreativePro.com

• InDesign: Document History
  By David Blatner/InDesignUpdate

• Photoshop: Working with Levels
  By TutorialWiz

View all How-To's Day tutorials (includes Photoshop, InDesign, Painter, Illustrator, and more).

View all How-To's Day:  Photoshop Edition tutorials.

How-To's Day is a regular feature of the Design Weblog in which we give you five highly useful how-to tutorials—four from around the Web, and one created specifically for you by yours truly. How-To's Day is the first, third, and, if there is one, fifth Tuesday of every month.

Sometimes the How-To's Day tutorials are hardcore design techniques, other times they're cunning production procedures, time-saving shortcuts, and, once in a while, just plain old fun and funky how-to's.

Got an idea for a How-To's Day tutorial? Know of a cool tutorial elsewhere on the web? Let me know. Have you written a killer tutorial? Send it my way; it may appear in a future How-To's Day.

Tags:  design howto tutorial software Photoshop ImageReady indesign quark corel acrobat

As you may have noticed, over the last week The Magazine Weblog—indeed, the entire Weblogs, Inc. network—has suffered blackouts, brownouts, and, in the words of CEO Jason Calacanis, basically just sucked. Jason explains the reasons for the technical difficulties here, here, and, finally, here. The short description is that, with millions of visitors everyday, we've outgrown our servers (almost instantaneously), and addressing that problem took longer than expected.

How-To's Day could not be published ontime recently because of the, uh, server suckage. Not only couldn't you read, I couldn't get into the site to write. I was extremely fortunate to get in long enough (after a long time trying) to get the Photoshop CS2 news to you.

The server issues have been addressed by throwing more and larger hardware at the problem, and today the sites are serving and responding faster than they have been in months.

Now that I can post again, How-To's Day is coming; this week it will be How-To-Thursday. Next week will be another How-To's Day (the first Tuesday of April), so hopefully these three consecutive weeks of handy-dandy, neato mosquito tutorials in your favorite software and processes, will help make up for the delays caused by our server issues.

This past weekend someone at Adobe accidentally posted the press release announcing, and detailing the new features of, Photoshop CS 2. The early posting did not go unnoticed.

As reported by both Think Secret and AppleInsider (the latter claiming an exclusive a day after Think Secret broke the news), the press release was scheduled for distribution 4 April, when Adobe will presumably announce all Creative Suite 2 as well as the CS 2 point products.

According to the press release, the following new features are built into Photoshop CS 2:

Once upon a time the pre-eminent printed resource for everything Quark, X-Ray Magazine, ceased publication in 1997 with allegedly 80,000 subcribers. Now, after a long hiatus interrupted ony by a brief attempt at a PDF-only version, it's back.

On March 28 X-Ray, published by ThePowerXChange, LLC., will ship its first issue in both printed and PDF form.

The bi-monthly will focus on QuarkXPress, Quark Publishing System (QPS), Quark Dynamic Document Server (QuarkDDS), Quark Content Manager (QCM), and the customers and markets that Quark and its products serve. In addition to news and and how-tos, X-Ray will feature tips and tricks, offer insightful reviews and opinions on Quark products, as well as address concerns and desires of users across all segments of the publishing industry.

Every friday a fresh, high-resolution, royalty free stock photograh for free download.

Our friends over at AbsolutVision are offering The Design Weblog readers a free download:  A new, royalty-free image every week. This high-resolution stock photo comes in JPG and JPEG 2000 (JPF) formats, complete with clipping path and alpha channel.

Archived to permanent home. Download from Past FotoFridays.

Check the Design Weblog each Friday for a new, high-resolution, royalty-free stock photo for download—before they expire!

More:  Past FotoFridays and How To Use JPF/JPEG2000 Files

If you are a stock photography agency interested in providing free, royalty-free images to readers of The Design Weblog, please contact us.