Shortcut keys for blend modes in adobe photoshop

here is a list:-

Blend Mode	Keyboard Shortcut
Normal	Shift + Alt + N (Win) / Shift + Option + N (Mac)
Dissolve	Shift + Alt + I (Win) / Shift + Option + I (Mac)
Darken	Shift + Alt + K (Win) / Shift + Option + K (Mac)
Multiply	Shift + Alt + M (Win) / Shift + Option + M (Mac)
Color Burn	Shift + Alt + B (Win) / Shift + Option + B (Mac)
Linear Burn	Shift + Alt + A (Win) / Shift + Option + A (Mac)
Lighten	Shift + Alt + G (Win) / Shift + Option + G (Mac)
Screen	Shift + Alt + S (Win) / Shift + Option + S (Mac)
Color Dodge	Shift + Alt + D (Win) / Shift + Option + D (Mac)
Linear Dodge	Shift + Alt + W (Win) / Shift + Option + W (Mac)
Overlay	Shift + Alt + O (Win) / Shift + Option + O (Mac)
Soft Light	Shift + Alt + F (Win) / Shift + Option + F (Mac)
Hard Light	Shift + Alt + H (Win) / Shift + Option + H (Mac)
Vivid Light	Shift + Alt + V (Win) / Shift + Option + V (Mac)
Linear Light	Shift + Alt + J (Win) / Shift + Option + J (Mac)
Pin Light	Shift + Alt + Z (Win) / Shift + Option + Z (Mac)
Hard Mix	Shift + Alt + L (Win) / Shift + Option + L (Mac)
Difference	Shift + Alt + E (Win) / Shift + Option + E (Mac)
Exclusion	Shift + Alt + X (Win) / Shift + Option + X (Mac)
Hue	Shift + Alt + U (Win) / Shift + Option + U (Mac)
Saturation	Shift + Alt + T (Win) / Shift + Option + T (Mac)
Color	Shift + Alt + C (Win) / Shift + Option + C (Mac)
Luminosity	Shift + Alt + Y (Win) / Shift + Option + Y (Mac)

What is Anti - Aliasing?

Hey people, 


Its been ages since i wrote on my dearest blog. its still comes into my dreams and haunts me for betraying it. Anyways here i am today with another information which still is quite unknown to many artists around the world. This animal is known as "Anti - Aliasing".

In computer graphics, antialiasing is a software technique for diminishing jaggies - stairstep-like lines that should be smooth. Jaggies occur because theoutput device, the monitor or printer, doesn't have a high enough resolution to represent a smooth line. Antialiasing reduces the prominence of jaggies by surrounding the stairsteps with intermediate shades of gray (for gray-scalingdevices) or color (for color devices). Although this reduces the jagged appearance of the lines, it also makes them fuzzier.

Another method for reducing jaggies is called smoothing, in which the printer changes the size and horizontal alignment of dots to make curves smoothe

Antialiasing is sometimes called oversampling.

Resource: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/A/antialiasing.html

InDesign CS5 - Put to use

www.thebookdesigner.com

www.isuu.com (the you tube for magazines)

www.Lonnymag.com

Colour Modes and Bit Depth Basics

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-tips/colour-modes-bit-depth-photoshop/

A great video on Bit depth fundamentals.

Some Interesting functions of various tools

Here are some more addition to the bag of tips and tricks.
Pencil Tool
You can get to the Pencil tool option by double clicking the pencil tool icon. Divided into two neat sections-
Fidelity i.e.  the amount of anchor points that are drawn as you make your strokes.
Smoothness i.e. the percentage to which the illustrator will try to smooth out the line that you make.

Wondering why is this guy so much excited about the pencil tool. Well read on.
As long as your pencil tool is selected you can easily rework on any selected path which may or may have not been drawn by the pencil tool. Cool! :)




Align and Distribute
If you have two or more objects on your artboard and you want to align them together Vertically or Horizontally to one of the objects you can do the following -

1. Select all the desired objects/shapes
2. Click another time on the object/shape you want to align to - now this becomes your source object
3. Click on any of the align functions and the operation will happen in respect to the source object.


Transform Tool


At first glance the Transform tool (E) could seem to you as a plain old tool to rotate and scale up and down. But - wait a minute, there is more to it. If you hold down the Alt key you would scale from center outward. If you press Ctrl key you would distort it giving it a little bit of perspective. If you hold down all your modifier keys then you would end up constraining your Perspective angle to One Point Perspective.
Sweet - isn't it?

Thats all Folks! :)

the blob tool

A sneak peak at Blob Tool.

Pathfinder Fun

Pathfinder operation are really fun to work with.

Ctrl+Shift+F9 is short cut key to bring up the pathfinder operations.
the two modes that you would see here are different.
The shape mode is dynamic in nature - which essentially means that the changes are live in nature. They will happen on the fly.
The pathfinders option is static in nature - meaning its kind of hardwired.

Now what the First "Add to shape area" does is that it unites the shapes. Not to mention that this is all happening Live, on the fly! :)
Now this will result in a compound shape - look in your layers pallette. Wondering what is a compound shape - well the object that results from any of the Shape operations converts two or more shapes into a compound shape.