I finally added a resource page with a listing of blogs, tutorial aggregators, freebies, books, magazines and plug-ins that I find helpful. You can access the Resources from the top navigation bar. I know I have missed some, so if you have a suggestion for a resource, feel free to contact me. I will review the resource and see if it fits with the rest of the resources.
The other week, I had a file that kept getting corrupted when I would send it to a printer. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong and spent forever sending emails, zipping files, examining outlines and so on. I came to realize, it was an obscure brush I was experimenting with early along in the project. I didn’t even use it in the final version! After that fiasco, I will always clean up my files!
Using shades of color are essential when I create glossy buttons and icons. In the Glossy Buttons and Web 2.0 Stickers tutorials, I used Cyan because it was easy to enter a percentage of Cyan, giving me quick shades. What if you need lighter and darker shades of a mixed color? An easy way is to hold down the Shift Key when you are dragging the sliders in the Color Panel!
The Pencil and Brush tools are useful, but sometimes frustrating. I always found the open paths it creates particularly annoying. A simple solution is to press the Option/Alt key when you are ready to close a path. Once pressed, it will join the first and last anchor points with a straight line. Holding down the Option/Alt key and drawing a little past the starting anchor will close the path automatically.
