Every friday a fresh, high-resolution, royalty free stock photograh for free download.

Our friends over at AbsolutVision are offering The Design Weblog readers a free download:  A new, royalty-free image every week. This high-resolution stock photo comes in JPG and JPEG 2000 (JPF) formats, complete with clipping path and alpha channel.

Download the above image in JPG and JPEG2000 now (2.2 MB ZIP)

More:  Past FotoFridays and How To Use JPF/JPEG2000 Files

If you are a stock photography agency interested in providing free, royalty-free images to readers of The Design Weblog, please contact us.

Tags:  design howto tutorial photography Photoshop ImageReady  

The FedEx logo is known throughout the world. Rolling Stone Magazine ranked it among the eight best logos of the past thirty-five years; it was in the company of Apple, Coca-Cola, Nike, IBM, Starbucks, McDonald's, and Playboy (a logo with which I've had some experience).

It's a simple logo with clean, bold lines. It can be recognized on the side of a truck from sixty stories up—even when the constituent letters are unreadable. There is even, inside the FedEx logo, a subliminal and simple message of motion, going forward, getting from point A to point B.

How does one create a logo as strong and ubiquitous as FedEx's? What is the design process that leads to the creation of one fo the best logos of the past thirty-five years?

In a November 2004 interview with The Sneeze Lindon Leader speaks out on how he came to design the world's most reliable logo.

Quark VS InDesign.com announces simultaneous design competitions celebrating InDesign and QuarkXPress. Creative pros to compete for US$14,000 worth of prizes.

Yesterday Quark VS InDesign.com, The Authority for News and Opinion on the War Between Desktop Publishing Giants QuarkXPress® and Adobe® InDesign®, announced two simultaneously running design contests to create promotional postcards celebrating and honoring InDesign and QuarkXPress.

According to the website:  "This is about celebrating and honoring two incredible tools of our trade, tools that spare us from the grueling labor of hand-cutting ruby lithe and waxing up headlines, tools that save us from having to get real jobs."

The Photoshop CS Creativity Tour hits Seattle, WA on Friday, 13 May, hosted by Bert Monroy, Photoshop guru and the co-author of the first book written on Photoshop, The Official Adobe Photoshop Handbook.

The full-day seminar includes:

• Layers: Beyond the Obvious

• Channels: More Than What Meets the Eye

• Master Class: Brush & Pen Techniques

• Pen Tools & Filters: Unleashing Your Creativity

• Putting It All Together: From Concept to Masterpiece

Every friday a fresh, high-resolution, royalty free stock photograh for free download.

Our friends over at AbsolutVision are offering The Design Weblog readers a free download:  A new, royalty-free image every week. This high-resolution stock photo comes in JPG and JPEG 2000 (JPF) formats, complete with clipping path and alpha channel.

Archived to permanent home. Download from Past FotoFridays.

Check the Design Weblog each Friday for a new, high-resolution, royalty-free stock photo for download—before they expire!

More:  Past FotoFridays and How To Use JPF/JPEG2000 Files

If you are a stock photography agency interested in providing free, royalty-free images to readers of The Design Weblog, please contact us.

Today's How-To's Day: Photoshop Edition tutorials:

1. Photoshop:  Complex Marquee Selections
   By Photoshop InDepth

2. ImageReady:  Shiney Parts
   By MickM.com

3. Photoshop:  Version Cue File Versioning in Photoshop
   By Heathrowe.com

4. Photoshop:  Rings Around Text
   By Heathrowe.com

5. Photoshop Elements:  Watercolor Effect
   By FotoFects

View all How-To's Day:  Photoshop Edition tutorials.

View all How-To's Day tutorials (includes Photoshop, InDesign, Painter, Illustrator, and more).

How-To's Day: Photoshop Edition is a regular feature of the (Unofficial) Photoshop Weblog in which we give you five highly useful Photoshop tutorials. How-To's Day: Photoshop Edition is the first, third, and, if there is one, fifth Tuesday of every month.

So let's fire up everyone's favorite image editing program and dig into these hot Photoshop tutorials. Have you written a killer Photoshop tutorial? Send it my way; it may appear in a future How-To's Day.

Tags:  design Photoshop ImageReady howto tutorial software

Pariah S. Burke is the editor-in-chief of Quark VS InDesign.com, The Authority for News and Opinion on the War Between Desktop Publishing Giants QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign. As a 20 year graphic communications industry veteran, he is also an in-demand desktop publishing and graphic design workflow consultant and software trainer, teaching ad and design agencies, print and pre-press production houses, and government and military agencies in InDesign, Quark, Adobe Creative Suite, InCopy, Photoshop, Illustrator, PageMaker, Acrobat, Variable Data Publishing, and PDF Section 508 Accessibility.

Sometimes selections need to be complex, adding and subtracting from initial selections. If this is second nature to you, to the point where you've forgotten the keyboard shortcuts you use because they're programmed into your cerebellum just how to make your heart pump, don't read this tutorial from Photoshop InDepth.

View all of today's How-To's Day:  Photoshop Edition tutorials.

View all How-To's Day:  Photoshop Edition tutorials.

View all How-To's Day tutorials (includes Photoshop, InDesign, Painter, Illustrator, and more).

Last week How-To's Day showed you how to make chrome text. In our ongoing pursuit of shiny objects, we bring you this week an ImageReady tutorial from MickM.com that will have your metal photographs, logos, and, yes, chome text shining as bright as can be.

View all of today's How-To's Day:  Photoshop Edition tutorials.

View all How-To's Day:  Photoshop Edition tutorials.

View all How-To's Day tutorials (includes Photoshop, InDesign, Painter, Illustrator, and more).

If you own Creative Suite you've probably wondered about Version Cue, that odd little icon in your menubar (Mac) or Taskbar System Tray (Windows). You may have heard that Version Cue is all about managing files within workgroups. While that's true, it also has value to individual designers. Check out Heathrowe.com's introduction to Version Cue for the value the technology brings to the solo Photoshop user.

View all of today's How-To's Day:  Photoshop Edition tutorials.

View all How-To's Day:  Photoshop Edition tutorials.

View all How-To's Day tutorials (includes Photoshop, InDesign, Painter, Illustrator, and more).

Ring around the rosies, pocket full of PSDs… Nevermind.

Ringing text is not an everyday Photoshop occurence, but masking parts of an image is. In this tutorial from Heathrowe.com you'll learn to do just that through Layer Masks as well as how to subtract one vector shape from another.

View all of today's How-To's Day:  Photoshop Edition tutorials.

View all How-To's Day:  Photoshop Edition tutorials.

View all How-To's Day tutorials (includes Photoshop, InDesign, Painter, Illustrator, and more).

Looking for a way to make your snapshots a little livelier? Try turning them into watercolors in Photoshop Elements with this FotoFects tutorial.

View all of today's How-To's Day:  Photoshop Edition tutorials.

View all How-To's Day:  Photoshop Edition tutorials.

View all How-To's Day tutorials (includes Photoshop, InDesign, Painter, Illustrator, and more).

National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) launches the Photoshop CS2 Learning Center—the most comprehensive look at Adobe Photoshop CS2 available anywhere

Today NAPP announced the launch of the Photoshop CS2 Learning Center. The learning center, which covers not only Photoshop CS2 but InDesign CS2, Illustrator CS2, and GoLive CS2, features free online videos, articles, reviews, news, a downloadable CS2 overview, and a CS2 discussion forum.

"I loved Photoshop 7. I thought Photoshop CS was even better, but Photoshop CS2 blows them both away. This is clearly the most significant update to Photoshop in years," said NAPP President Scott Kelby. "This update has something for everybody, but if you're a photographer, it's absolutely going to make your jaw drop. It's that good." Kelby added.

Photography more your bag? Don't miss Photoshop CS2—Every New Feature for Photographers

What are the hot new tools and updated features in the latest version of the graphic design industry's workhorse, Photoshop CS2?

• Multiple Layer Control

• Image Warp

• WYSIWYG Font Menu

• Adobe Stock Photos

• Automated Variable Graphics Creation

• Customizable Menus

• And much more!

Get comfortable. There's a lot to tell you about.

Not a photographer? Don't miss Photoshop CS2—Every New Feature for Graphics Pros

Next to a camera, Photoshop is the most important tool of any professional photographer's trade. So what can the photo pro or prosumer look forward to in the ninth release of Adobe's favorite son, Photoshop CS2?

Plenty.

• Noise Reduction

• Optical Lens Correction

• Smart Sharpen

• Spot Healing Brush

• Red Eye Tool

• Task-Based Presets & Customizable Menus

• Digital Asset Management with Adobe Bridge

• HDR Support

• Multi-Image Camera Raw Processing

• Export to Television Monitors

• And more!

Get comfortable. There's a lot to tell you about.

Initial Pricing and Availability

Following the accidental early posting of the press release announcing Photoshop CS2, which hinted at coinciding announcements about new versions of Adobe's InDesign, Illustrator, GoLive, InCopy, and the Creative Suite itself, Adobe officially announced the new versions at midnight Eastern Time.

According to Adobe.com:  "Adobe® Creative Suite 2 Premium software is a unified design environment that combines full new versions of Adobe Photoshop® CS2, Illustrator® CS2, InDesign® CS2, GoLive® CS2, and Acrobat® 7.0 Professional software with new Version Cue® CS2, Adobe Bridge, and Adobe Stock Photos. Delivering the next level of integration in creative software, Adobe Creative Suite 2 enables you to realize your ideas anywhere — in print, on the Web, or on mobile devices."