November, 2004 | CreativePro Network

The Art of Business: The Biggest Tax Question of All

If you have several clients, it’s easy to answer the question “am I an employee or independent contractor?” You’re a contractor and your clients have no tax obligation to you other than to issue a 1099 form that records accurately your compensation for the tax year. But, as is the case with many graphic artists […]

Photoshop CS Tips: Sharpening Images with the PhotoKit Plug-in

This story is taken from “50 Fast Photoshop CS Techniques.” To buy this book click here. Sharpening images in Photoshop requires a good eye — and good software. Photoshop’s built-in sharpening tools are good, but don’t offer enough levels of control to cope with difficult images. So a team of Photoshop experts — including creativepro.com […]

Heavy Metal Madness: Decalcomania Mania

One of my favorite specialty printing methods is that of the water-transfer decal, those difficult-to-apply transparent appliqués that have tortured model makers and RV owners for decades. And no application of the decal art form is better known than that of the travel decals popular in American culture throughout the great era of road trips […]

InDesign How-To: Applying Paragraph Formatting

This article is excerpted from “Real World Adobe InDesign CS.” At the heart of any good page layout is formatting and perhaps none is more critical than paragraph formatting. Bad indents, careless alignment, tight line-spacing, misused tabs — all these combine to disrupt page harmony. Thankfully, Adobe InDesign gives you a full complement of controls […]

Framed and Exposed: What Else Film Photographers Already Know

In my last Framed and Exposed column, I introduced some basic photography concepts that every film photographer has to learn, but that many digital photographers can easily be uninformed about. Because automatic cameras do so many things for you, you can use them to great effect without having to understand what they’re actually up to. […]

dot-font: Highlights from the Low Lands in “Dutch Type”

dot-font was a collection of short articles written by editor and typographer John D. Barry (the former editor and publisher of the typographic journal U&lc) for CreativePro. If you’d like to read more from this series, click here. Eventually, John gathered a selection of these articles into two books, dot-font: Talking About Design and dot-font: Talking […]

Photoshop How-To: Creating Contact Sheets, Picture Packages, and Online Galleries

This article is taken from “Photoshop CS: Top 100 Simplified Tips & Tricks.” To buy this book click here. In many respects using Photoshop is just like having your own darkroom or photographic studio. Its ability to develop digital images is well known, but what about the print-presentation qualities we associate with professional photo labs? […]

Creative Fuel: Voting and Shopping

As I write this, election season should be officially over (at least I hope so) — and not soon enough for my tastes. I stopped watching cable news and called a moratorium on reading major dailies on paper or on screen. It was during the last week of campaigning that I decided who got my […]

Plug-Ins and XTensions: Photoshop Image Focusers and Fixers, QuarkXPress Picture Draggers, InDesign Layout Organizers

Each month Design Tools Monthly reviews some of the best plug-ins and XTensions on the market. Most of the mentioned products can be purchased through The PowerXChange. InDesign Free Scripts for InDesign At Adobe’s Studio Exchange Web site, InDesign users are sharing useful scripts they’ve written. We’ve included some favorites in this month’s Software Closet […]