Application Splash Screens

Take a stroll down memory lane and look at the history of splash screens from various graphic applications. It is a lot of fun to see if you can remember what you were working on with each version of the software years ago.
Splash Screens

2016 Olympic Logos

The Olympic Committee has just released a collection of logos for the cites competing for the 2016 summer Olympics. I am happy to see they are vastly better than the 2012 London logo. My favorite is the Tokyo logo.

Photoshop World Day 1

Greetings from Las Vegas! Today was the first open schedule day including three session slots and the ever-popular keynote address by Scott Kelby, NAPP President and Johnny L., Adobe Systems VP. 

While this is Scott's convention, the keynote is really Johnny's show. Starting by showcasing the new Photoshop Elements 7 (coming soon) and Adobe Lightroom 2 (along with John Knack, product manager), he also brought the crowd to their feet by showing off the newest version of Adobe Photoshop. 

Some of the features have already been leaked, but another feature that really oo-ed and ahh-ed the crowd was channel splitting, which allows you to create lenticular prints (the print moves when you look side to side) or a 3-D image. Now how much does this shot remind you of Jaws 3-D? 

Finally we ended with the NAPP Guru Awards (darn it - I didn't win) and the Photoshop Hall of Fame induction ceremony. A big personal congrats to John Knack on his induction. 

Today's sessions included a packed room for Burt Monroy speaking about painting in Photoshop and Ben Whitmore's standing room only presentation on "Jaw Dropping Photoshop Techniques" and let me tell you – they were. 

The tech expo hall featured presentations from Cannon, Adobe, and more. Be sure to check out this week's "Deke Pod" starring Deke McClelland. Watch behind him as someone familiar walks past...

Well thats it for day one, but judging from everything going on here - we will have to have an event soon to bring you up to speed on all the latest info. 

Blog you tomorrow! - Kevin

Making the Case for FileMaker Pro

C2 is proud to offer an exclusive 5-day course of the Official FileMaker Training Series. Come join Cris Ippolite, one of only 24 authorized FileMaker instructors in the world, as he provides training on all 12 Official FileMaker Training Series modules over 5 days. The FileMaker Training Series is FileMaker’s official curriculum and is not offered elsewhere in Wisconsin. He is very excited to be coming back to his hometown of Milwaukee to teach the series to you!
Training will be held the week of September 15 and each course will be 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. daily.
Seating is limited for this fantastic opportunity! Please contact Kate Barrie @ 414.431.0062 or kate@c2gps.com for more information and pricing detail. We hope to see you all there!

A Word From Cris Ippolite...

FileMaker Pro. Many of you have heard of it or may have worked with it, but did you know it has been in the marketplace for more than 20 years?

In that time, more than 13 million units of FileMaker software have been sold around the world. FileMaker enthusiasts include ALL of the top 50 universities in the U.S., the top 250 U.S. school districts, and 70 of the Fortune 100 companies.

A wholly owned subsidiary of Apple, Inc., FileMaker isn’t just for Mac users anymore! Cross-platform capabilities that run natively on both Mac and Windows platform make FileMaker the premium database software on the market today. It has muscled its way into IT infrastructures in all industries.

Currently on version 9.0, FileMaker underwent a massive database engine redesign in version 7. It allows for multiple “tables” to be combined into a single FileMaker file. This feature has cut down both development time and cost, and has brought forward some of the most powerful features in the product’s history.

Most notably, FileMaker now allows for up to 250 concurrent users via Server, full support for php Web integration and a partnership with the MySQL alliance that spawned a connection kit (called “ESS”), allowing for LIVE connections to data sources running MySQL, SQL Server and Oracle!

Imagine connecting to your organization’s SQL Server, Oracle and MySQL databases from one place, and using the information without additional programming. With FileMaker, you can! FileMaker Pro 9 creates secure easy one-way or two-way connections to External SQL Data Sources. The SQL data acts just like FileMaker data. Create custom reports, add calculations and other fields, build relationships with existing FileMaker data, using the easy-to-use tools of FileMaker Pro.

There are new layout objects that allow you to do everything from automatically resizing your layouts to embedding FULL web viewing functionality into your existing FileMaker database layouts.

With the PHP features of the FileMaker Server, you can publish information to external websites, gather information from Web users, and create new solutions combining a Web-based front-end with a rich, FileMaker Pro back-end. Support for popular open source Web standards PHP and XSLT means you and your Web developer will be reading and writing live FileMaker Pro data in no time.

All these reasons support FileMaker Pro as the #1 best-selling standalone database for both Macintosh and Windows.

When business professionals outgrow spreadsheets, they depend on FileMaker products. Customizing, creating, and sharing easy-to-use software solutions is quick and easy. FileMaker is powerful enough to integrate with corporate data environments, share on the web, and evolve with your needs.

Want to learn more about using FileMaker or take your FileMaker skills to the next level?

C2 Shout Outs!

C2 Shout Outs: Spreading the C2 love for achievements in the lives of our talent and clients.

The C2 Talent Placement team congratulates the following C2 Talent and clients for finding one another. Best wishes for a prosperous future!

Tim Panicucci has joined Marx, McClellan & Thrun
Mike Driscoll in his new role as Junior Art Director at CI Design
Dan Oen on long-term assignment at EMD Chemical as a Graphic Designer
Paul Hammell is at Pentair Water as a Senior Graphic Designer
Joan Kersten for her new position as Senior Graphic Designer at Berger Boats in Manitowoc

Save the Date! Celebrate AIGA Wisconsin’s Return with Pentagram and the Harley-Davidson Museum

AIGA Wisconsin marks its return with a special presentation on the creation of the new Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee. We welcome Pentagram New York partners James Biber (architect and designer of the museum) and Abbott Miller (designer of the museum’s permanent exhibition) to share their experiences showcasing the history, culture and engineering of this American icon.

Designers, architects, and other enthusiasts are encouraged to join us on Wednesday, September 24, 2008, from 6 to 9 p.m. Please mark your calendars now!

More information will be available on our web site launching in early September at wisconsin.aiga.org.

LIVE! From Photoshop World 2008

This week I am attending Photoshop World in Las Vegas. Stay tuned to 100% Fresh for updates, information, and photos on the latest developments from the conference as I plan to blog daily from the Strip. Wish me luck and please be sure to comment on the posts with any questions or requests!

Google Chrome

Today Google is releasing its first beta of a new internet browser called Chrome. This new browser is based on webkit, which is also the same core technology as Apple's Safari. The beta is initially only available for windows, but it will be made available to both OS X and Linux shortly.

For more information click here

Remove extra returns from PDFs

Have you ever copied text out of a PDF and noticed that at the end of the every line break there is a hard return? This can be quite annoying when you are trying to copy and paste text out of a PDF and then re-flow it back into a new document. The trick it to create a tagged PDF. In Adobe Acrobat Professional go to the advanced menu and choose accessibility > add tags to document. Now when you copy and paste the text it will re-flow correctly when pasted into a new document.

CTC Conference After Effects Hands-on Files

For everyone who was in the After Effects hands-on, here is a link to many of the files that we worked on - and some we did not get to:

http://mythtaken.com/CTC/

If anyone in the class wants to contact me - feel free to email me at:
alex@c2gps.com

Learn What Application Made your PDF

Have you ever wondered what application made any given PDF? It is very easy to find out. Just open any PDF in Adobe Acrobat Professional and go to File > Properties. This will open up the general properties dialog and halfway down it will tell you application (and version) created your PDF.

Hiding Master Page items

A client contacted me yesterday with a problem they were having with masterpages. After talking to them on the phone to make sure they were doing everything correctly, they sent me the files so I could take a look.
After take a closer look at the files I realized that the masterpage was being applied correctly, but the masterpage items themselves were not present. That is when I went to the pages panel menu and noticed that "hide master items" had been chosen. After choosing "show master items" from the menu, everything went back to normal again.

Come learn direct from Adobe and nationally recognized experts!

This year C2 is hosting the new 2008 Creative Transitions Conference here in Milwaukee. This is a unique opportunity for all creatives, whether you are in print, web, video, animation, or multimedia. The three day conference runs August 13-15, 2008 at the Milwaukee Hilton City Center.

We are bringing the talent to you - no need to fly to the east coast or down to Chicago to learn from the best. Speakers for the 2008 conference include: Anne-Marie "Her Geekness" Concepción, co-host of the popular InDesignsecrets.com podcast and InDesign guru; Lesa Snider-King, author, istockphoto guru, and a nationally recognized Photoshop Expert; Adam Pratt, Adobe Senior Solutions Engineer and co-host of Adobe TV's "The Lazy Designer"; Michael Kanfer, Adobe Business Development Manager and Academy Award Winner for Visual Effects (Titanic, 1998); Tom Petrillo, Adobe Senior Solutions Engineer; and many more!

Sessions can be attended at will - no confusing schedules or limiting track-only presentations. You choose who you want to see!

Day three will feature hands-on workshops hosted by many of our speakers and C2 certified instructors. Three hours of training direct from the experts!

Exhibitors from Adobe, C2, istockphoto, Shutterstock, Widen Enterprises, O'Reilly Media, Proven Direct, and more will be presenting their products and services throughout both days in our Exhibit Hall.

Another great incentive for our conference, being a veteran of the conference circuit, is food is provided (which also lends to the creative credo - if you feed them, they will come). Breakfast, lunch, cocktail/snack hour, and a great keynote address banquet is all included in the conference packages.

Your registration also includes a free Thursday night pass to Milwaukee Irish Fest, the largest Celtic celebration in the United States.

Click here to view the conference website, or contact us for special discount codes and rates!

Hope to see you all at the conference. Together we can make this a rousing success!

Kevin

Create Crop marks instantly in Quark and InDesign

Creating crop marks can be a time consuming operation. Luckily both Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress for the mac have scripts built in that can automate this process.

In QuarkXPress, select your object and go to the applescript menu and choose box tools > Add Crop Marks. After a few seconds the crop marks will be complete.

(click on image to see animation)

Inside InDesign, select your object and go to window > automation > scripts. Now in this panel choose application> samples > applescript or javascript > crop marks. Follow the onscreen directions and you are done!

(click on image to see animation)

Object-Based Alignment

How many times have you tried to center two objects in Illustrator only to have them both move to the midpoint and not center on one object? Well the solution was eluding me until I discovered what Adobe calls "key objects". Here's how it works:

Step 1: Take your two objects and select them both.













Step 2: While selected, click on the object you want to lock in place, and have the other objects align to. Note: Click on it, do not shift click or double click.













Step 3: Select your alignment from the align palette or the options bar at the top of your window. Viola! The objects align to the key object!
















Have fun! Kevin