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Heads Up! Adobe Creative Cloud Special Pricing
If your livelihood depends on at least two of the Adobe Creative Suite products, you want to know about this. Since I use Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, InDesign & Acrobat Pro, the Creative Cloud was a no brainer for me.* And, as a registered user of at least one Creative Suite product, I qualified for the 1-year promo price of $29.99 per month. That means I’m getting the CS6 Master Collection for $30 a month! The Photoshop Extended upgrade price alone starts at $399. And Illustrator upgrades start at $249. This special sign-up pricing expires on August 31, 2012.
What is Creative Cloud?
“Adobe® Creative Cloud™ is an ongoing membership that lets you download and install any of the Adobe Creative Suite® 6 desktop applications, plus other applications including Adobe Photoshop® Lightroom® 4. You also get online services for file sharing, collaboration, and publishing. Best of all, you get the latest apps and features as soon as they’re released — giving you the freedom to create anything you can imagine.” Adobe Website.
Who’s eligible for the $29.99 Creative Cloud introductory pricing?
Existing customers who have a qualified registered CS3, CS4, CS5, CS5.5, or CS6 individual product or suite edition and who sign up for the Creative Cloud annual plan directly from Adobe by August 31, 2012, will receive special introductory pricing of US$29.99 per month for the first year of membership.
Learn more about the Adobe Creative Cloud.
Learn more about the special upgrade pricing.
*Disclaimer: I receive no compensation or financial gain from this post. Just wanted you guys to know before the offer expires.
New Tiffany Tillman Workshop!
She’s at it again! Our own very talented Tiffany Tillman has a new, self-paced workshop: The Digital Scrapbooker’s Guide to Blending.
Advanced digital scrapbookers are known for blending photos into page backgrounds, textures, and other photos. Their layouts are inspiring, expressive and often jaw-dropping. Now, you can build them too! Join instructor Tiffany Tillman in creating one-of-a-kind digital blended pages using Adobe’s versatile blending tools built into Photoshop & Photoshop Elements.
Tiffany will guide you through blending techniques using Layer Masks, Brush & Selection tools, Gradients, and compositing — the technical art of combining separate images into a new reality. At the end of this self-paced workshop, you’ll possess the blending skills to create amazing digital scrapbook layouts.
Don’t forget! Our class videos are viewable on your iPad or iPhone.
Learn more about The Digital Scrapbooker’s Guide to Blending.
Join Our Adobe Illustrator Community
We’re really excited about what’s going on in our illustrator community. There’s an ever-growing number of self-paced Adobe Illustrator Workshops available from our resident Illustrator Diva Laura Coyle. As an added benefit for her students, Laura conducts regularly scheduled monthly Illustrator live video chats.
These monthly hour-long chats, affectionately called “Laura Time,” are full of Adobe Illustrator demonstrations and tips. They give her students the chance to interact, ask questions, and to stay inspired and engaged in the learning process. As a registered student of any Adobe Illustrator class at ReneePearson.com, you can attend the chats live or watch the recordings later. There’s also a lively Adobe Illustrator forum at ReneePearson.com where you can suggest topics you’d like Laura to cover in the live chats.
Laura has just posted a video of her time-lapse Adobe Illustrator drawing of a Siamese Fighting Fish, condensed from March’s live chat demonstration. This video will give you a feel for her live chat demonstrations. You can watch it and other Illustrator themed videos on Laura’s YouTube channel at YouTube.com/coyleart.
We have a growing community of Adobe Illustrator enthusiasts. Sign up for an Illustrator class and join us! We’d love to have you.
Eyedropper Color Sampling in Illustrator
A fellow artist introduced me to a blog called Design Seeds where visitors are treated to a steady stream of inspiring color palettes. Each palette is “packaged” beautifully by designer Jessica Colaluca with photography and a row of color chips.
When you find such inspiring color in your online travels, you want to bring it along with you into Adobe Illustrator and let it enliven your work. In Illustrator, though, you can hit a speed bump in the process. So, I have a simple tip for those who want to sample color from pixel based images like jpeg and png files. (more…)
New Adobe Illustrator Workshop by Laura Coyle
Are you ready to ink & paint in Illustrator?
In Ink & Paint, an instant-access self-paced workshop, Laura Coyle gives a detailed demonstration of the two primary inking and painting tools in Illustrator: the Paintbrush Tool, and the Blob Brush Tool. You’ll learn about the settings for getting the most out of these tools with a pressure sensitive Wacom tablet. Laura thoroughly discusses Calligraphic brushes and shows you the steps for creating a set of brushes to use for linework and coloring. A pen tablet is required for this workshop.
With this foundation, you’ll be ready to follow along with Laura as she guides you through a complete, fun, floral art project that includes Laura’s original tracing art and a custom color palette. In the preview video below, Laura demonstrates how to use the Eraser tool.
Register today for Ink & Paint
Sneak Peek: Ink & Paint with Laura Coyle
Our newest self-paced class for Adobe Illustrator, Ink & Paint with Laura Coyle, is nearing completion and we’re so excited!
In Ink & Paint, Laura will give thorough demonstrations of the Paintbrush, Blob Brush and their settings in Adobe Illustrator. You’ll create a set of Calligraphic Brushes, perfect for inking linework and coloring — and then she’ll guide you through a layered floral motif project that includes her original tracing art and custom color palette. In the end, you’ll have art you can use in a repeat pattern in your personal projects.
Even if drawing is not your thing, the included tracing art will give you an enjoyable opportunity to practice and develop your hand-eye coordination with the Wacom Tablet, an essential skill for anyone who works with a tablet. And if you love the idea of digital drawing, this project will give you the chance to look over Laura’s shoulder and learn her process for creating freehand art in Illustrator that you can apply to your own work.
Coming soon to ReneePearson.com so stay tuned! We’ll send you an email when it’s ready. Not on our email list? No worries, sign-up today!
Create a Mosaic Tile Background in Illustrator
While working on this illustrated spa map for US Airways magazine, I discovered a fun shortcut for creating a mosaic tile background in Adobe Illustrator. I decided to share it with you, so here it is!
1. Start by creating a rectangle large enough for the tiles, select it and choose Object > Path > Split Into Grid…
2. A dialog box appears where you can enter the number of rows and columns and the space between the tiles. Check preview, so you can see the results as you change the numbers.
3. Next, select all the tiles, and choose Object > Transform > Transform Each… In the dialog box check Preview and Random and enter low numbers to make subtle and random transformations to the position, scaling and rotation of the tiles. Hit OK.
4. Now the tiles will have a more natural look, resembling a mosaic rather than a perfect grid. You can make subtle variations to the color of the individual tiles to make the effect even more interesting. In my finished Illustration I removed a few tiles to randomize it even more.
We use the Transform Each dialog box with type in Beginning Illustrator and in Illustrator 2 for making patterns, it’s one of my favorite features and I’m always discovering new ways to use it.
Enjoy!
Watch & Learn: Laura Coyle & Illustrator
Illustrator 2 with Laura Coyle starts today. If you missed Wednesday’s live chat with Laura, you’re in luck. You can watch it right here. Right now!
Best viewed at full screen.
Check out more free videos at Laura’s Youtube channel and tips at her blog.
Hot Off the Press: Photoshop Elements 10
Yesterday, Adobe announced the immediate release of Photoshop Elements 10 for both Windows and Mac. In typical Adobe fashion, there are lots of enhanced photo editing tools.
New Guided Edits, like Depth of Field and Picture Stack, provide step-by-step guidance to create awe-inspiring photos. Also, Facebook enthusiasts will now enjoy the ability to tag photos based on their Friends List, making the tagging and sharing process seamless.
The Biggest News
Photoshop Elements 10 also adds more ways to work with photos creatively, like the ability to add text that automatically follows the outline of a subject or a custom path and crop guides for the best compositions. Also, users can now apply 30 new Smart Brush effects by simply brushing over an area of the photo.
Yep, you read that correctly. Photoshop Elements 10 now includes text on a path, a feature that was previously available only to Photoshop users.
You can learn more about Photoshop Elements 10 (and sign-up for notification when the downloadable trial version is available) at the Adobe site.
If you purchased Photoshop Elements 9 after September 2, you’re eligible for a free upgrade.
Beginning Illustrator Self-Paced Workshop
Our Adobe Illustrator expert, Laura Coyle, has released her popular beginner’s class, “Step-by-Step Design with Illustrator” as a self-paced workshop.
Beginning Illustrator contains about 70% of the original Step-by-Step class content. 30% of the content is made up of new lessons and designs. Former Step-by-Step students can purchase access to the new class at a special upgrade price.
Laura makes learning Adobe Illustrator fun and easy…and her students agree!
I was told Illustrator CS5 had a huge learning curve. I now believe it! These classes made it easy to learn and I go back to the videos a number of times. (thank you for that) I also like the easy pace, with Laura’s exceptional instruction.… I personally had a lot of fun, learned so much and I hope to incorporate all this new-found knowledge into an invite business…
