Mac20Q Podcast 54 Karen Sperling

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karensperling What was so great about talking with Karen was that she is into so many things, like myself she can’t stop herself being interested in a variety of interests. She has published a book called Painting for Photographers which is available now as an eBook and will be going into print very shortly. It is not her first book either, as karen has written a number of manuals for the Application Painter or PainterX. Karen also is an artist and amazingly like the same styles of art as myself too. Both of us really like the German expresionists, the surrealist and we both have an appreciation for the talent of Picasso.

You really must have a look at her paintings at her web site. She is conveying a dream world as art and with them being in black and white it reminds me of the work by Giger the artist that created the creature in the movie Alien. Karen is having an exhibition this month of her art work and if you live near enough you are invited to go and have a look.

Karen also writes screen plays for movies and has a script for a romantic comedy, where does she find the time to do all these things?

Highly Toxic

Gallery Godo
6749 San Fernando Rd.#C Glendale, CA 91201
Opening Night: September 25, 2009
7 pm to midnight - Please join us! http://gallerygodo.net/

Contact me and lets talk about Macs, art, photography, cars, football, motorbikes, film, video

Mac20Q Podcast 48 LearnMacsOnline

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annette_benkie
I got talking to Annette Quirke, we had a great chat about Mac and her LearnMacsOnline website. She does some graphic work in Adobe Illustrator so we were able to talk a little about vector drawing and beziers. Annette comes from Ireland so we had a bit of a connection there, seeing as I spent 12 years in Co. Cavan Ireland.

Announcing Learn Macs Online. Everything you need to help you learn about your new mac.
Easy to understand step by step tutorials, short entertaining videos, mac news and software reviews and tips.

Annette goes to a Mac users group and teaches things at the meetings, helping new users and that is what led to the production of LearnMacs Online. Very keen on photography and has recently bought a Canon SLR, wishing she could have waited a little while seeing as Canon now have an SLR that will also do video.

I had a great time talking with Annette and I am sure you will enjoy the interview too.

Spondicious PodCast 06 – Video

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In this podcast I look at the idea of selling illustrations online through micro stock photography sites. One of the things that you really have to look out for is closed path and open paths.

With open paths in an image submitted to sell it will without a doubt be rejected in all of the microstock sites. When I was a CorelDraw user there was a setting with the pencil and with the brush too that actually automatically joined an open path if you took the end of the line close enough to the start of the line. Don’t think it is possible to do that with Adobe Illustrator.

There are times when you want to concentrate on the drawing and not have to think about the technical aspect of joining the ends of a closed shape. So what you do is to just draw away and when you are ready use a couple of plug ins to join all of the open paths in one foul swoop. I tried a few different ways of achieving this but one I found this set of plug ins I haver not looked back. One plug in to find all of the open paths and one to close them all, although that part of the job is done with a script. Just another plug in really with a different name.

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Closing open paths in Illustrator

Now this is a really important task. closing the open paths in Illustrator, because if you leave any open paths in your art work you will have it being rejected. The problem is first of all finding the open paths and then closing them quickly and easily. I first found this to be time consuming but with the help of some plug ins for Illustrator I can now close open paths really quickly.

Couple little things you need to know about when creating a vector
image, especially if you are going to sell it on stock websites

Here are some tips and tricks for making the best out of your work.
Mostly time savers.

OPEN PATHS: If you are dealing with open paths, you are in trouble, so
try this plug-in from Graffix to FIND THEM FIRST without hassle.

PLUG IN ONE

To install this plugin, just drop the plugin in your Adobe Illustrator
Plug-ins folder. It works with Adobe Illustrator CS – CS2 and CS3….

What does this plugin do… It actually finds all guides, paths, open
paths, closed paths, filled paths, unfilled paths, stroked paths,
unstroked paths, dashed paths, undashed paths, compound paths, groups,
live object groups, gradient meshes, envelopes, symbols, embedded raster
art, and placed art.

It will appear under Select / Object menu.

So after clicking on select open paths, your open paths are selected,
now how are we going to close all these paths, here another plug-in to
CLOSE THESE PATHS.

PLUG IN TWO

This time just drop the plug in in Illustrator scripts folder, it will
appear in File/ Scripts menu, and click. All your paths are closed in 2
steps. What a time saver.

Well if you have only couple paths to close just click on the open path
and press CTRL + J to join them, personally I never use this.

So there you go some vital information for you if you are going to sell your art on the microstock sites.

Life is a bowl of cherries

Learn how to illustrate cherries using the Mesh feature in Illustrator. Have a look at VectorTuts. Useful site with other tutorials on illustration techniques in vector based programs.

I am always looking to learn more about the programs that I use. Be it Artrage, Photoshop, Illustrator or Inkscape. Fortunately there are lots of sites out there now that show you how to do things and the easiest way to lear is by being shown how rather than being told how to.

Try it for yourself and see what I mean

Wanted to create a CorelDraw file

I tried a few different ways to convert a file I have as various EPS, AI, and PDF formats so that I could import it into CorelDraw in order to save as a CDR file, after getting a request for that type of file from a customer in Dreamstime.

No luck whatsoever. I tried moving it via my Ubuntu machine even in case the problem was to do with Mac – Windows incompatabilities. I suppose if I kept trying I might eventually do it but I won’t need to that every day of the week so …. But then you never know when the might be the need again to have a file that will have the CDR extension.

I think in the past I have got Illustrator files into CorelDraw and I know I have imported EPS files in. Trouble is, that there are so many variations of the EPS format.

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