When using the Move tool, I can no longer drag-select layers when my cursor initially clicks on the canvas. However, if I initially click outside of the canvas I can drag-select towards the canvas, a rectangular marquee will appear, and the border to that rectangle successfully selects the layers it touches.
But, when I open a new document I can drag-select with the Move tool no problem.
Any ideas on what's going on? I reset all my tools, restarted Photoshop, and my computer. Still no dice
I've looked at this site for the first time today. I've checked About, the FAQ and the FAQ and searched, and I don't seem to be able to find an answer on this site.
These are the closest I can find:
https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/7174/difference-between-ui-and-ux
What's the difference between UX and layout design?
Reading the first few responses, I'm perceiving quite a difference in scope between 'user experience' as a concept and what I see discussed as 'User Experience' on this site and elsewhere, and I'm definitely interested in opinions addressing this.
Also, while I appreciate the field is broad, maybe there are some human interactions that definitely aren't UX - between two of them face-to-face, for example?
Is there any way to fill grouped objects background in Illustrator?
Below is example how i want it, right now i simply just put white square behind them.
I am currently in the process of creating an iOS application, and I was wondering about capitalization of buttons and titles.
For example, should a button say "Add Post" or "Add post".
If I look at ux.stackexchange for example, I see buttons with the form "Ask Question" and "log in".
Answer
I believe that's a preference thing. The main thing is to be consistent with what you decide.
It could vary on what section of the app you are talking about too. For example, your buttons and titles might be Title Case capitalized, while your links might be lowercase.
Again, just be consistent within the sections that you are standardizing.
I've been working on an e-commerce website, and the stakeholders want to add the following text: 'free shipping if payment by debit card'. Where should I display this on the website?
I think the most relevant place is the second page of the checkout process which is the payment page. Do you have any other ideas?
Thanks.
Answer
Free shipping is known to be one of the most effective marketing tools e-commerce sites have.
Shipping fees can affect the number of items a customer purchases, and they can decrease how frequently a customer makes purchases from the site:
With fees, shoppers will make fewer shopping trips and purchase more goods at a time -- not unlike shoppers who drive great distances to a particular store, Bell says, and decide they had better stock up while they're there. Alternately, fees can prompt consumers to simply walk away. A survey from 2004 found that shipping and handling costs triggered 52% of the abandonment of online shopping carts, Bell says.
Studies have shown that while many customers will "browse" your products, a very small number will actually place them in the cart. If you do not put the free shipping option on the pages that are being browsed, then you are only showing one of your most compelling sales motivators to as little as 19% of your visitors:
In another study for a major department store retail chain it was determined that there are two main reasons for cart abandonment: (1) Customers cannot find what they are looking for, or (2) they do not care for the shipping options. Our study found that 56% of all shoppers browsed for products, but only 19% placed an item in their cart. The most cited reason for this first level of abandonment was, “I can’t find what I’m looking for.” Of this 19% only 7% of shoppers completed their transaction. The most cited reason for this second level of abandonment was, “the shipping costs and options were unacceptable.”
As such, I would not treat it as a transactional element but as an enticement to get the user to commit to a "buy" decision.
The best place to put this information is directly next to the item's price. If you don't then the user is not given a very compelling reason to reach a "buy" decision, and will therefore never see that free shipping is available.
In an application, I have a graph of markers--either with or without connecting lines--in which it is possible to have data points, and therefore markers, that are at the exact same location, even if they represent different data sets. In the image below, there are actually two markers on the right, but they occupy the same space, so appear to be one:
Although the overlapping colors blend, this strikes me as not a strong enough detail to indicate the overlap to the user. I may also provide this graph without lines connecting the points, and so in that case it would be even less clear. Also, if there were two sets of overlapping markers in a row, the connecting lines would also perfectly overlap.
Any suggestions or conventional approaches to alerting the user to this are welcome. (Also, tag edit requested).
Answer
For the specific purpose of a graph/chart, I think much of the problem lies in the fact that the two lines in the example in the question are using the same size and shape marker in the first place - and differing by colour alone.
If you used a combination of shape and colour, you're going to improve the situation for sure, and it's a reasonably common approach to overlapping graphs on a single plot - to identify which graph is which (according to the legend) and to disambiguate crossovers and coincidence.
Using semi-transparent colours for the markers would allow the visual effect to be order independent - ie the circle shape would not mask the triangular shape.
Example:
Note: I've previously solved problems of coincidence on an interactive map, (where one footpath begins at the exact same point as another footpath ends) by using differently angled marker pins which don't overlap even if at a common point.
Eg these two pins 
and 
when next to each other look like this:
In Trading Credit Curves Part I by JP Morgan we have that each point on a credit (CDS) curve represents:
$$PV(\text{Fee Leg}) = PV(\text{Contingent Leg})$$
which is
$$S_n \sum_{i=1}^{n}\Delta_i PS_i DF_i + \text{Accrual on Default} = (1-R)\sum_{i=1}^{n}(Ps(i-1)-Psi)DF_i$$
where the accrual on Default is $S_n \sum_{i=1}^{n}\frac{\Delta i}{2}(Ps(i-1)-Psi)DF_i$
where $S_n$ is the spread for protection to period n, $\Delta_i$ is the length of time period i in years, $PSi$ is the probability of survival to time t, $DFi$ is the risk free discount factor to time i, $R$ is the recovery rate on default
I cannot understand why the accrual on default bit is there and i cannot see how it has been derived and the reasoning behind it. I really dont see why you dont just sum to time n when there is a default and discount that? I dont understand why we need the $\Delta_i$ in the first term on the LHS as it seems superfluous.
I suppose really I dont understand the LHS of the equation derivation at all.
Answer
The formula for the accrual on default $$ S_n \sum_{i=1}^n \frac{\Delta_i}{2}(Ps(i-1)-Ps(i))DF_i $$ is just an approximation that says conditional on default occurring within period $i$ (probability of $Ps(i-1)-Ps(i)$), defaults occurs on average in the middle of the period, thus the $\frac{\Delta_i}{2}$ average accrual time from beginning of period to default.
Given an option and its implied volatility, and also the mean value of the implied volatility over the last 30 days, if we find that the current IV is significantly (> 1 std dev.) away from the mean, then:
How to approximate the time for the IV to mean revert?
Answer
A very popular choice for mean reversion is the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process (here in discretized form): $$L_{t+1}-L_t=\alpha(L^*-L_t)+\sigma\epsilon_t$$
Here you see that the level change is governed by some parameter $\alpha$, the mean reversion rate (or speed), and the distance between the long run mean $L^*$ and the actual level $L_t$ plus some noise.
A very crude, yet intuitive way is to estimate the parameters of this process via a linear regression. Have a look at the following paper: http://www.fea.com/resources/a_meanrevert.pdf
There you see a toy example on page 71: The idea is that you do a regression where the level change of the time series is the dependent and the actual level of the time series is the independent variable.
I coded the following example in R which contains this toy example as a comment and the actual calculation for the VIX from January 2014 till today:
library(quantmod)
getSymbols("^VIX", from='2014-01-01')
level_t <- VIX$VIX.Adjusted
#level_t <- c(15,18,15.5,12,14.5,13,15,17,15.5,14)
change <- na.omit(diff(level_t))
level_t_1 <- level_t[-length(level_t)]
para <- lm(change ~ level_t_1)
summary(para)
(long_run_mean <- -para$coefficients[[1]]/para$coefficients[[2]])
(mean_reversion_speed <- -para$coefficients[[2]]*100)
(halflife <- -log(2)/para$coefficients[[2]])
Running the code gives:
> (long_run_mean <- -para$coefficients[[1]]/para$coefficients[[2]])
[1] 14.61876
> (mean_reversion_speed <- -para$coefficients[[2]]*100)
[1] 9.083576
> (halflife <- -log(2)/para$coefficients[[2]])
[1] 7.630774
The interpretation is that the long run mean of the VIX (estimated from the respective timeframe) is $14.6$, it mean reverts by about $9\%$ per VIX percentage point and needs about $7.5$ days to mean revert by $50\%$.
I'm having a hard time grasping how to get the same brush stroke with the right proportion of space in between like in this image (Marilyn). I'm sure it wasn't free handedly drawn with a brush tool, it's well proportioned.
I'm trying to get the same effect so what I did was I'd trace the face with a pen tool and fill it with a line pattern (flat and angular) but the effects are not quite the same as you see in Marilyn (fine and pointed) with white specs breaking up the lines.
Please assist, I've tried to look up google for tutorials. Thank you!
A website is available in 100 languages. There is a form to select a language, and it includes these 8
Normally, I would sort a list in alphabetical order. However, some of these languages aren't even written in the latin alphabet. I don't think you can sort items alphabetically if the items aren't even written in the same script.
How do you sort a list of languages?
Answer
There are several common options of sorting languages:
BBC World Service and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty sort by English names, which looks outright strange (BBC):
Wikipedia sorts by latinized names. Android sorts by Unicode.
Since the hardest sorting is by latinized names, here's the properly sorted list:
However, I noticed that you have Mingrelian language and Bishnupriya, which are a minority languages and are strange to be included anywhere else other than Wikipedia. Also, the common name of Bishnupriya is Imar Thar, so when it's written properly should be placed before Hebrew when sorted by transliterated names.
Currently working on a ground-up (not just the UI) reimplementation of a whole, existing system. Because it's internal we've been able to work with its existing users during the process, and get their feedback on what they want doing.
One of their existing UI elements involves nested data. Currently, they have to take the following steps:
The list in the drop down is not long enough to justify the text filtering (about 75 items). However, under each of these items there can be a very large number of items and sub-items in the treeview.
We replaced this with a single treeview which has the 75 items at the top level, each one expanding down. This seems very easy to use, to us: as each level expands you can, if necessary, just scroll down the list with the mouse wheel and find what you need.
But the users hated it. They wanted to go back to the old way. When we watched them using the new system it seemed quite clear that the biggest problem is simply that they weren't used to using scroll wheels, so the left-right swipes required as each level was expended and then the scroll bar grabbed and dragged were slowing them down.
We pointed out how useful the scroll wheel was, but they're not used to scrolling, and don't want to start.
To my mind, the way we redeveloped it is unambiguously better. But the user base was equally emphatic in rejecting it. So today, to the complaints of my fellow team members, I removed our new implementation and set it to work in the manner the users were used to.
What was the right course of action here? Is there a point at which the user's fear of change becomes an important UX consideration in its own right?
Answer
What was the right course of action here? Is there a point at which the user's fear of change becomes an important UX consideration in its own right?
This is an interesting question - I believe the answer is yes. The core tenet of user centered design is considering the characteristics and needs of your users in your design. If the fear of change so outweighs the benefit of that change, maybe that change isn't worth making.
However, making changes like the one you described happen all the time, as part of a redesign, and I think you can mitigate the user's fear of change by incorporating some steps into your design/engineering process. My favorite set of practices comes from a blog post titled "Change aversion: why users hate what you launched (and what to do about it)" by Aaron Sedly, a UX researcher at Google:
Warn users about major changes. Unexpected changes catch people off-guard and can provoke a defensive response. A simple message can set users’ expectations, for example: “Soon we’ll be introducing a redesigned site with new features to improve your experience. Stay tuned!”
Clearly communicate the nature and value of the changes. An explicit description can help users to appreciate the changes from your perspective. For example: “We’ve redesigned our site. It’s now cleaner to save you time. Here’s how it’ll help you…”. With framing like that, users will be less prone to change aversion, such as: “Ugh, it looks totally different. I don’t know why they did this, and I wish they hadn’t messed with it.”
Let users toggle between old and new versions. Giving users control over the timing of the change can cut down on feelings of helplessness. Allow them to play in the new sandbox before removing the old one.
Provide transition instructions and support. If a city changes its street layout, residents need a map of the new streets and a way to direct lost people to their destinations. The same principle applies for your product’s alterations.
Offer users a dedicated feedback channel. Without a way to connect with those responsible for the changes, users will vent publicly and further entrench their negativity. Users will respect you more if you actively solicit their opinions.
Tell users how you’re addressing key issues they’ve raised. This completes the feedback loop and assures users that their feedback is critical to prioritizing improvements. Try a simple message like: “We’ve been listening to your feedback about the changes we’ve made. Based on your comments, here’s what we’re doing…”
Update: I just was perusing the papers for CHI '13 and noticed that Aaron Sedly and and Hendrik Müller have published a paper on minimizing change aversion ("Minimizing Change Aversion for the Google Drive Launch" {1}). They measured user satisfaction with the new Google Drive on an extended Likert scale. I found this observation interesting:
Early psychologist William James wrote about the power of habit, as if it were a giant flywheel keeping people in their respective social classes. The same effect applies to people's use of products, which generates substantial inertia over time. Any forced changes to well-established habits are prone to cause disruption, and significant effort to regain inertia.
The mere exposure effect, identified by Zajonc, showed that familiarity breeds liking. With technology, familiar designs and interactions have a natural advantage over new approaches, at least until a new version is used enough to reap the benefits of familiarity.
The authors go on to note that they "developed a framework of actions to minimize change aversion", which included the steps I originally mentioned from the blog post.
Update 2: I came across an interesting paper in the IUI '14 proceedings that was citing the aforementioned Sedley and Müller paper on change aversion: "On user behaviour adaptation under interface change" by Rosman et al. This study is looking at how users learn and adapt to new user interfaces and it considers when the users are already used to an existing interface. They found that a change to a user interface can degrade user performance even when the change might be considered to result in a "better" interface. This study highlights the importance of having a good change management strategy when you make large changes to your software.
1: Aaron Sedley and Hendrik Müller. 2013. Minimizing change aversion for the google drive launch. In CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2351-2354. DOI=10.1145/2468356.2468767 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2468356.2468767
2: Benjamin Rosman, Subramanian Ramamoorthy, M.M. Hassan Mahmud, and Pushmeet Kohli. 2014. On user behaviour adaptation under interface change. In Proceedings of the 19th international conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 273-278. DOI=10.1145/2557500.2557535 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2557500.2557535
When I place a multipage pdf file into InDesign CC, the pages go outside of my document settings, making this function useless. What do I have to do to make the placed pdf pages go within my document settings, which in this case is 11 in. Length X 8.5 in. width, .5 in. margins on all sides, with two columns per page. I would greatly appreciate an answer to this, Thank you.
How can I create an image in Photoshop that imitates a photo taken with a low-quality phone camera? Examples of qualities I want to simulate:
Some examples:
Answer
Cell phones have tiny lenses, tiny image sensors, which add noise, lose detail and have indifferent contrast. High-frequency data (hair, fur, grass) is the first and most obvious victim, so that should also be your first target for the simulation.
The best place to start, since you have Photoshop, is in Adobe Camera Raw. Open the jpeg into ACR from Bridge (right click and choose "Open in Camera Raw").
Here's an image before:
And after:
Note that this is quite different from the effect you'd get using any of the Blur filters in Photoshop, but is a good match for the loss of detail in a typical camera phone.
Now open the image in Photoshop.
This technique makes very realistic sensor noise in the darker and bluer areas of the image, which is where they are normally most noticeable in the "real thing."
Here's the full final image:
I have a line-of-business tablet application that is used outdoors day and night in a vehicle. One of the users recently provided feedback that they find it difficult to read the screen when wearing sunglasses in bright daylight.
The current color scheme is similar to Microsoft Office (2007).
Would switching to a black-text on white background (like this site) work better in your experience? My main-problem with using BW color scheme is that I am not sure how other colors (ie red for important task, or table row alternation) will work.
Answer
Yes, bright ambient light reduces contrast, so going with a black and white display will be the best you can do. Increasing font size and weight may also help. Hue differences also tend to wash out in bright light so your color codes are probably performing poorly anyway. Tinted sunglasses probably don’t help either. If the color codes are very important, then you should crank up the color contrast by maxing out the saturation for outdoor use, rather than use the relatively muted colors found in Office 2007.
However, perhaps a better solution is to supplement your color codes with other graphic codes like weight, shape (e.g., icons), and density/number (e.g., dashed versus solid lines). For example, a border of high-contrast diagonal line segments suggests urgency for many users. Distinguishing multiple levels of shading is also more difficult in bright light, so I wouldn’t rely on that. Using redundant graphics in addition to color will maximize you apps accessibility as a side benefit (and your case just goes to show we’re all disabled under the right circumstances).
Any chance your user is using polarized sunglasses? Since LCD screens use polarizers, such sunglasses can make your screen very difficult to read in any kind of light. You could advise the user to try different sunglasses.
To make it easier to read across rows of the table when the sun washes out your zebra striping, you could insert a half-high empty row every 4 or 5 rows. Or you can try a horizontal rule every 3 to 5 rows.
I have been working in the accessibility of an accordion that is used to take user input from checkboxes and return a list of criteria based on the user input. We are using Outsystems and have not been able to make the accordion accessible in JAWS for IE, chrome or firefox.
We have exhausted all our resources and rather than scrap the whole accordion, we'd like to create a version that would not involve an accordion and could pass AODA standards. I thought I could create a hidden header so that when a screen reader tabs into it, they would be notified of the accessible version available for them to use and could click the hidden header element to go to that version.
I am wondering if this is an acceptable way to create an accessible functioning page? Is there a better way to do this? Thanks
Answer
WCAG 2.0 allows a conforming alternate version if
See the full requirements you have to meet.
Of course it’s not a good practice to go down this route (one version for everyone is almost always preferable, for various reasons), but it’s better than not providing an accessible variant at all.
Depending on the nature of the accessibility problem with the accordion, keep in mind that screen reader users might not be the only users that have problems with it. If that’s the case, you should not visually hide the link to the accessible variant.
When my print rep talks about five-colour printing, what does he mean? I know you have cyan, magenta, yellow and black - but what's the fifth?
Answer
In Offset printing the fifth colour is an additional spot colour, which could be anything (of course depending on the printer/printer services). I've yet to hear what is the single most common "fifth colour".
Why? For example in (now discontinued) hexachrome (CMYKOG, yes 6 colours) printing process orange and green were added to achieve wider colour gamut and better colour reproduciton. Also, it could be unmixable colour such as Pantone metallics or fluorescent to add more effect, or some secret mixture which would be printed onto your paper money for added security.
And as Philip Reagan commented, the fifth colour is usually a crucial colour for the corporate/brand image, such as the "Coca-cola red", "IBM blue" or "Ferrari red"; when the colour is best to be consistent (and not dependent on the mixing).
The most accurate answer, with cost estimates, you can only get from your print rep.
What if you have too many columns in a table?
Possible solutions:
What is good/bad practice? Is there any other, more preferable, solutions to this problem?
I am looking for some kind of minimalistic network graphs but I can't find the right words to describe them.
A while ago, I discovered a webpage that has these kind of graphs but I no longer find it.
I have tried terms such as: "big data visualization", "network graphs", "design network graphs", "stock network graphs"...
An example of what I am looking for:
Or the background logo used on this site itself:
I am just looking for a graph (minimalistic or flat design) with lines and nodes.
This is a similar website that I found:
http://personalbrandinstitute.com/
I'm a photographer, who dabbles in graphic design from time to time as well. What are the differences between the various color spaces?
Answer
RGB is a additive, projected light color system. All colors begin with black "darkness", to which different color "lights" are added to produce visible colors. RGB "maxes" at white, which is the equivalent of having all "lights" on at full brightness (red, green, blue).
CMYK is a subtractive, reflected light color system. All colors start with white "paper", to which different color "inks" are added to absorb (subtract) light that is reflected. In theory, CMY are all you need to create black (applying all 3 colors at 100%). Alas, that usually results in a muddy, brownish black, so the addition of K (black) is added to the printing process. It also makes it easier to print black text (since you don't have to register 3 separate colors).
Most screens (computer, phone, media player, television, ect) are RGB (e-ink screens being an exception), the pixels have little subpixels that just show red, green or blue.
Most printers print in CMYK color (though some photo printers will print with expanded colors beyond those 4).
So if you're ever doing something for a screen, use RGB, if you doing something for print, use CMYK.
Update: Please keep in mind, that you can't display the exact same colors in RGB and CMYK.
My story consists of a character that thinks a lot. The main idea is actually in his thought. How do I bring it out? The point of view is in third person, and it changes with every chapter.
Answer
As @MichaelKjörling says, it depends a lot on the POV you are writing in. You should edit your question to add this crucial detail.
If you are writing in first, your character’s thoughts come out naturally in the telling of the story. THE END OF THE AFFAIR by Graham Greene is a fantastic book to read as a first-person novel where the protagonist spends pages of time deep in thought. Because he is telling the story, there is no reason to format these thoughts, they just spill onto the page as exposition:
For why should I have spoken to him? If hate is not too large a term to use in relation to any human being, I hated Henry - I hated his wife Sarah too. And he, I suppose, came soon after the events of that evening to hate me: as he surely at times must have hated his wife and that other, in whom in those days we were lucky enough not to believe.
HALF BAD by Sally Green is another beautiful example of first-person POV where the protagonist’s thoughts tell the story:
Waking up to sky and air is okay. Waking up to the cage and the shackles is what it is. You can't let the cage get to you. The shackles rub but healing is quick and easy, so what's to mind?
The cage is loads better now that the sheepskins are in. Even when they're damp they're warm. The tarpaulin over the north end was a big improvement too. There's shelter from the worst of the wind and rain. And a bit of shade if it's hot and sunny. Joke! You've got to keep your sense of humor.
You can express thoughts within dialogue by using different speech marks. Virginia Woolf does this in THE WAVES:
'I was running,' said Jinny, 'after breakfast. I saw leaves moving in a hole in the hedge. I thought "That is a bird on its nest." I parted them and looked; but there was no bird on a nest.’
In A STRANGE NEW WORLD, Nathan Lapointe mixes it up a bit in third person, spilling thoughts of characters out in different ways:
“Goodnight Keira,” he said, quickly falling asleep. She lay awake for a long time that night, her mind swirling with the day’s events. She had spent most of the day fishing, which was boring and not something she was good at. It was peaceful though, which had been shattered when Eric and Ryan told them about the horrible creature in the swamp. ‘There’s no way Clark could have survived that,’ she thought, and then idly wondered why it hadn’t attacked them sooner.
She thinks fishing is boring, but Lapointe bleeds that thought into the rest of the exposition. He then uses different speech marks to convey a direct thought. And then uses a thought tag, as she idly wonders about something else.
In THE BLADE ITSELF, Joe Abercrombie writes in third person and expresses thoughts in italics:
Why do I do this? Inquisitor Glokta asked himself for the thousandth time as he limped down the corridor. The walls were rendered and whitewashed, though none too recently. There was a seedy feel to the place and a smell of damp.
James Joyce bleeds streams of consciousness directly into ULYSSES without distinguishing them as thoughts (he doesn’t need to):
Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugar-sticky girl shovelling scoopful of creams for a Christian brother. Some school treat. Bad for their tummies… His slow feet walked him riverward, reading.
Some strategies grate on people. I’m not a big fan of thought tags: ‘He thought.’ ‘I idly wonder to myself.’ I prefer ’stylistic contagion’ where the language and thoughts of the characters bleed into the narrative using their distinct voice to distinguish them, rather than speech marks or italics or tags.
If a huge portion of your book has to be spent in the mind of the character, I'd argue that first person would be easier for you. But there are so many ways to handle a character’s thoughts, as long as it’s clear, it’s really up to you. I’d suggest going back to a book you really loved and see how that author handled it.
Good luck!
For all the graphic designers who do web design too: How do you produce client design mockups for review and then convert them into HTML/Wordpress etc?
Are they created in Illustrator/Photoshop and then the images extracted for use with the new site?
Can any HTML/CSS properties be extracted from a website page mockup done in Photoshop or Illustrator?
I'm a Software Engineer willing to learn more about design stuff. I've been trying to create a logo for a project and I am stuck trying to use curved lines. When moving anchors points, I'm having trouble with positioning dX and dY because of my trackpad's lack of precision. Is there a way to manually set dX and dY position in Illustrator?
Picture Example: Can't set dY to 12px.
Answer
Select the point and from the top options bar:
Can anyone suggest resources or techniques I can use to improve my sentence construction when writing? I am a native English speaker and fairly well educated, but confess I didn't pay much attention in English class at school, something that's biting me in the behind now!
In recent years I have made efforts to write more regularly (mostly non-fiction such as a blog) and some technical writing at work, but I tend to find my writing isn't particularly nice to read. I find my sentences are either too long, too short (and therefore paragraphs have no flow) or I use commas or words in the wrong places. I am often able to improve things by re-reading and editing them the next day, but rarely do I end up with something I feel is engaging to a reader.
I do read a lot myself so it's not like I can't tell what good writing is, and yet because the writing is good you don't really notice it and the story takes over - this is what I would like to achieve, even if only in small doses.
I know there are resources online, but they tend to be one extreme or the other: either basic grammar rules that I do generally follow, or just suggest to keep writing and somehow it gets better - but I don't see how this can happen if I don't have some guides or lessons to learn.
Is there any standards out there when it comes to a mailing address form? I need to collect the following fields:
The country and province will be drop downs. (the province one being dependant on the country)
so my question is: is it better to have the fields in a similar layout to a standard mailing form: ie:
address line 1
address line 2
city province postal code
country
or in a more logical order like:
address line 1
address line 2
city postal code
country province
Answer
Luke Wroblewski wrote an article at UX Matters about international address forms. I'd recommend consulting that article as it lists some best practices, patterns and conventions distilled from user research. Luke also wrote a book about web forms called Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks which covers this topic as well.
Near the end of his article, he also highlights Amazon's form, which is generic and supports all kinds of inputs. Amazon would be a good place to do some research for your form design. 
I'm writing a company blog and want to update one of our recent posts about our product's feature.
Should I add 2-3 paragraphs of update at the beginning or at the end of the post?
Great examples are welcome :)
P.S. The update is going to be visually distinguished from the original text.
For some reason Sketch removed text resizing some time ago, but I'd say I need the feature quite often. Currently you can change text size only via size window/shortcuts which is kinda inconvenient for me.
Is there a hack to transform text layers size via dragging like in Photoshop?
For a game heavy on story, what is the position of the editor called? I'm talking about the guy who makes sure the story, the writing, the pacing, the dialog and everything else about the story is as good as possible before the sequences or scenes are actually programmed into the game. Someone who checks for errors and inconsistencies in the story to make sure those are eliminated before the real work begins.
Answer
My understanding of game teams is limited but the writer is generally asked to do a lot more. In an ideal world, there would be a lead writer but this is not always the case.
In many games, the writing is voice acted and not shown as text as much as it used to be. In that regard, the story flow is the responsibility of the director.
Games as an art form are still, in many ways, figuring out how they differ from book and films. It is an exciting time to be a writer in game development because game developers are starting to appreciate writers as an equal artistic contributor along with the graphic designer, coder and so forth.
When it comes to looking at writers in games Extra Credits is a great series that I recommend. Not only because they get writing and what good writing can be but because in talking so much about the industry they show where writing sits within the industry (poorly, often) even if they don't mean to.
To answer your question. The editor often coordinates the selection and final draft process with the writer and proof reader. In games, the writer is more like a script writer most of the time. In such a huge project, the writer is just a very small cog. The writer may answer to a lead writer and the writing team will answer to a director or project manager - it depends on the studio. There is not an exact parallel in games as in print but for the right game, a print heavy game, there probably could be.
That said, some big studio titles have script editors just like movies and TV do, so you might just be looking for "editor".
I have mocks from a designer showing an initial form for searching a location. There are fields for location (business) name and city (pre-filled) and a Next button (disabled at first). When the user starts typing in the Location Name field, a div containing search results appears in real time under the Location Name field. To choose a location, the user taps on the result of his choice, the list goes away, and the choice is displayed below the Next button, which is now enabled.
A QA colleague is concerned that if the user chooses from the list, decides to search again, then changes his mind and wants to go with his first choice, how does he dismiss the results list without having to choose another selection from the list and re-search for his original choice? Currently, that is the only way to dismiss the list. The results list covers the Next button, by the way. One option is to add a "Close" or "X" icon to the search results list, but that is a visual challenge. Another colleague suggested using the Next or Done buttons that appear on Mobile Safari's form assistant bar, but Next only tabs between form elements and Done just unfocuses a form element then hides the keyboard.
I'm looking for suggestions on how to close the search results, either with a slight redesign or if there's a way to customize Mobile Safari's form assistant and having a button tap action tied to closing the div of results. (e.g. Cancel instead of Done). The solution should also work in other devices; I'm just using iPhones as an example. This is also not a native app; it's a website.
Original mocks -
Answer
From my comment above.
One way of implementing this is to add a little gray 'x' symbol at the end of the input area, that when clicked will clear both the input area and the dropdown results. This system is fairly widespread so users are likely to understand it (for example, Windows Explorer's search box uses this). However, you can always add a caption above the search box to say that clicking the icon will clear your search.
The second method of doing it is pretty well-known too. You can detect a click outside the box and use this as a trigger to clear the input and results. However, I think the former method is better as it can be implemeted without JavaScript (using a type 'reset' form control) and as such will always be available to all users regardless of whether they have JavaScript enabled or not.
I'm looking for more information regarding a specific type of visual effect that I have been trying to recreate many times in Photoshop, without any success. I would like to learn how to do this from tutorials, that is if I knew what to search for.
Below I have an image from an Oculus Rift game, and another from a movie trailer (Kung Fury). Notice how light at the edges of objects diffuses into two, sometimes three slight red green and blue colors (RGB). What is this effect called? Obviously the examples are very not alike but the result is pretty much the same thing, and I really want to learn how to accomplish this in Photoshop.
Sorry if the question looks kinda dumb, but I knew no other place where I could ask this.
Answer
This is called chromatic aberration. Here's an example from Wikimedia:
.jpg)
The Oculus Developer Guide (PDF) provides a nice explanation:
Chromatic aberration is a visual artifact seen when viewing images through lenses. The phenomenon causes colored fringes to be visible around objects, and is increasingly more apparent as our view shifts away from the center of the lens.
Fortunately, programmable GPUs provide the means to significantly reduce the degree of visible chromatic aberration... This is done by pre-transforming the image so that after the lens causes chromatic aberration, the end result is a more normal looking image.
So the effect your seeing is added to the virtual reality games to actually reduce distortion due to chromatic aberration. I've found an interesting PDF that explains this technique: Improved Pre-Warping for Wide Angle, Head Mounted Displays
I've recently designed a cosmetic label for a client and I've given them the final file to have it printed at their designated printer companies.
But a few have them have come back and said that they can't print it because the colour isn't a Pantone when in fact, on my Illustrator file I clearly picked a Pantone colour because on my colour swatch, it says "Pantone 649U".
Does anyone know why they might be saying that? Is it just me or have I done my file wrongly?
I'm so positive that I've used a Pantone colour because the usual printer company I go to have managed to print it true to colour when I tested it but every time my client gets back to me about one of her printers, it's either the colour comes out so neon or it's a completely different colour or they just say they can't print it because it's "not a Pantone" colour.
If anyone could shed some light as to what I'm doing wrong, that would be great!
Microsoft has a very clear usage of "..." on buttons which open a dialog.
taken from Microsoft guidelines
though looking "old" its very clear what will happen after pressing the button. Is there a more modern way for distinguishing these types of buttons? (regular and one with elipses "...")
I am working on a software where the UI is designed by a manager instead of UI experts. This has lead to many problems and inconsistencies in the visual design, user expectations and standards of the host OS are broken etc etc.
Now, the latest crime (in my eyes) are huge triangles for opening/closing of combo boxes. Combined with a thin font, this puts the weight all on the triangle, the actually important part (the name of the selected item in the combobox) is de-emphasized. If you take a screenshot and blur it, everything reduces to background color except for large blobs of foreground color where the triangles are.
I am asking here since I'm no expert either.
Are there recognized guidelines for such visual indicators, their size and weight?
Is there a agreed-upon measurement for these things?
The host OS is Windows, the design seems to be inspired by metro / win8 style, but we're on Win7 using WPF.
When I have a circle shape and now I substract from it a little square in the middle, what I get is a shape that looks like hollowed circle. But in fact in its paths I still have my whole shape of circle and a 'substraction path'of a shape of square. How to make it a real substracted path, so when I combine this shape with others, the substraction path doesn't affect them?
Here is more of an explanation:
1) at first I make asimple substraction on a square - notice what happens on a vector mask: it is a square and a substraction of a rectangle. It wouldnt bug me that much if not when...
2) then I add another shape...
3) and finally try to merge this two into one shape.
The substraction makes a nice Cshape with the first shape, but also messes up the other shape.
The effect I need is just a C shaped polygon that I can merge /wo ruining rest of composition, and still get the nice, resizable shape of the whole.
sorry for not inserting images, but my reputation won't let me.
I'm a software developer and am working on a personal project (website + iphone/ipad app). I need simple illustrations for these to fill in the blanks until the project gets "some" paying customers or I find investors. With more money I can hire some graphic design folks to do a great job. As for now, I'm aware of the big brand tools out there (Photoshop, Illustrator) but am looking for an illustration tool for beginners. I've used "Paper" app by FiftyThree Inc. and was able to create something fairly decent in just a few minutes. I'm looking for an application that will do this on my computer, that has more features than Paper, but without the learning curve of Photoshop or Illustrator.
Summary question: What are some great beginner illustration tools (OS agnostic)?
Thank you
In a contact form, I need either their number or email. I've thought of these ways:
Which, if any, would you consider user-friendly if you were visiting a site?
Answer
Generally speaking, web forms don't offer either / or workflows. And the only obvious way to signify that a form has an either / or branch is through extraneous text that users don't read anyway.
As such, I'd suggest you have a single text field which smartly validates, automatically detecting the type of data entered. This is quite possible in javascript, for example. Consider the following:
In this case, I've added helptext to indicate the formats that are acceptable. This is important, else a user, expecting to give just one particular kind of data, would be rather puzzled.
Alternatively, if your GUI implementation doesn't offer this sort of smart validation, might I suggest a multi-part single line field, like the following:
Under the Black-Scholes model, the delta of a call option is sometimes interpreted as the probability for the option to end in the money.
If I assume that the underlying follows a normal distribution (Bachelier model), does the same approximation hold for the Bachelier delta?
I'm interested in the difference between using the words help or support when used in the context of customer help/support on a website or application.
Which would you use and why? As always any supporting information whether formal or observational would be great.
Answer
In a desktop application, I associate "help" with a built-in or online documentation system, possibly containing a search function and/or a context sensitive guidance system.
With "support" on the other hand I think of a call center, website, phone line or whatever, but always occupied by human beings that are paid by my license fee and who will listen to the problems I have with their application.
Everybody knows the normal registration process:
IMO this process works because people are used to it but it isn't very elegant because it breaks the user's flow. The same process on in a mobile app would look something like this:
This is just painful (even more so if the email address used for the sign up isn't the one that is used on the mobile's email client).
I see two main alternatives but both have some issues:
Don't require a confirmation by email, just sign in the user immediately. Main problem: We can't be sure if the email address is correct (other than syntax).
Don't require immediate confirmation: Let the user confirm his email address in the next 7 days or so and sign him in immediately. Main problem: Still can't handle wrong email addresses
Are there any other alternatives or more elegant ways to handle registrations?
Answer
Let's say the user just cannot receive email on their mobile device - for example those that deliberately do not want to be contacted by email - those on a limited data plan - or those without the inclination or technical know-how to setup email.
For whatever reason, there are going to be people who fit that category. So ask yourself if you want to actively include them as new sign-ups - or deliberately exclude them.
I'd be inclined to actively include them and let them confirm the email at their convenience.
Then between signup and email confirmation (whether it's from desktop or mobile it doesn't matter), their account is put in a 'pending' state.
If there's anything secure or that involves sharing, distribution, or in any way involves other people or large volumes of data, or anything that physically costs your business, then this is disabled until email is confirmed, but basic features should still be enabled in this pending state.
This 'pending' state should be displayed clearly but discretely somewhere with the ability to quickly see why the user's state is pending and not fully signed in.
That information would include something along the lines that
So this is an informal, accepting and flexible mechanism that should adapt to most situations.
Those that confirm straight away won't see the pending state displayed.
Those that don't confirm right away will be gently reminded, but there's no pressure to do so immediately.
Those that continue to use the service for longer without receiving an email can easily check the pending state to make sure the right email address was used.
After a week or so, you might highlight the status somehow and show a suitably apologetic message to say it doesn't look like the user has confirmed the email and would they like to check the email address or send the confirmation email again.
All of this of course assumes that the types of activity your service provides are not all those that really you need to confirm the email address before they are allowed.
In modelling loss given default,(LGD), we often encounter the term Margin of Conservatism. What is it in layman's terms? I am not able to find a wikipedia page on this.
Answer
If you are looking for a rigorous mathematical definition, there isn't one.
A margin of conservatism is broadly defined here to be the additional amount in model estimates relative to actual outcomes. This definition will differ depending on the model in question; where for some it may be interpreted as low threshold above some metric of accuracy, while others may require a much higher threshold. Certainly, conservatism may be considered as a back-testing objective, whose definition may be moulded to the purpose of the model being tested.
For example, when calculating LGD for economic capital, estimates might be low enough to be an accurate representation of the portfolio, yet on the side of conservatism to ensure underestimation is kept to a minimum . However, stressed LGD estimates should be inherently inflated to provide a cushion during economic downturn periods.
Institutions incorporate margins of conservatism in their risk parameter estimates to capture certain modelling deficiencies, uncertainties, or risks. The quantification of such ranges vastly among institutions and models.
I want to change the order of my artboards when exported to PDF, and the only way i can achieve this is by moving actual artwork from one artboard to another, which doesn't seem right. Is there any way to change the artboard number in Illustrator?
Answer
Open the Artboards panel and drag the artboard to the desired spot, but be aware this will not change the actual position of the artboad in your Illustrator workspace.
As you can see in the image below, the number on the left is the actual order and on the right you have the artboard name, that by default is "Artboard 1, 2 etc." But it has nothing to do with it's actual position, only the number on the left sets that.
How can this pattern be recreated? Pay attention that it has round lines in the bottom and straight line at the top.
I tried to use blend tool (in Illustrator) on two arcs and one dot with dotted stroke, but result is far away from original picture.
Trick is to calculate size of arcs, distances, dots frequency, but guys.. there should be another way to to it.
Answer
The curve that have stroke = the small circles is an obvious idea. But the whole series of those curves is not Illustrator's blend. It's a series of cutting circles that cut grill's perimetr with evenly spacing (=as the minutes on a clock-face) The angle between the cutters and the perimeter is sharper than 90 degrees to allow cutters to exist above the diameter of the perimeter. A few topmost cutters altough are straight lines to be able to reach high enough.
ADDENDUM: In the following example we construct one curve of holes geometrically. The cutter meets the grill's perimeter circle with 60 degrees angle.
In practice a programmed script should be used. It's straightforward job to calculate the cutters (=centerpoints, radiuses, sectors that remains in the grill area) into an Excel worksheet.
To show the client what the finished design will look like on the actual product (brochure, business card, envelope etc.)
How do you create branding/packaging images like the ones below.
Until recently I always thought these images were photographed but looking at it closer I've realized the designs and logo are all computerized. how do I get it to look like this and where can I get the original packaging from? further more how would I get something with typography to look 3 dimensional on piece of paper?
Would it just be easier to spend money and get it photographed?
Answer
Only existing things can be photographed, for example products as soon as they have been made in the development lab.
Packages and paper stuff are available as blank white for photographing and simple ones can also be drawn in Illustrator or Photoshop. Complex ones need proper CAD application. In addition to proper geometric projections, Illustrator, Photoshop and CADs can give the lights and shadows in 3D mode.
See the following other discussion. There a nonexistent book is prepared for advertising: Imitate a photo realistic rendering of a book cover
Texts, decorative artworks and logos can be inserted. Geometric distortions such as skew and rotate make them to sit on planar surfaces. In Illustrator texture photos, logos, decorative art drawings and texts are easily placed also onto simple curved surfaces. Same in Photoshop.
Highlights and shadows are easy if the materials are non-glossy. They're simply blurred and partially transparent white and black areas with proper blending mode (=hard light).
Highlights and shadows are much more demanding for glossy and translucent materials. With them the skill differences between the people really explode as the differences in the plausibility of the results and consumed time.
CAD software and also Illustrator and Photoshop for simple 3D geometries are great help. Illustrator and Photoshop cant handle reflections and translucent refractions automatically if there ere several objects. Those need hard manual work or photorealistic CAD.
Even if there are no difficult glosses and translucencies, it is not at all easy is to stay consistent in a multi-item layout (=same light, same projection). One must have a diciplined way to work for this.
As already mentioned, purchasing a kit for the layout can be a great help.
I'm writing a high school romance story. My story centers around two characters falling in love, but I can't find a way to make their romance seem real and believable.
Here is the backstory: The main character is a boy from a lower class family. He got a chance to go to another big city and attend a prestigious school. In the school every other child is from a much higher class society and family. So the boy is most likely to be bullied and that turned out to be true.
There is also a girl character who is super popular in that school. I want my main character and this girl character to fall in love with each other, but not finding a reasonable way to tie most popular girl to the most bullied boy ever. ALSO, the girl character is not the motherly type creature in general. So I can't make her fall in love with him out of kindness and generosity. No, the girl character is not mean. I meant she isn't that kind of girl who will notice a bullied person and necessarily feel like helping him. Also I don't want her to be in Love with him out of sympathy, that would be pathetic. She is actually a trouble maker kind of girl but she is also very playful, funny and childish.
My general question is this: What makes a fictional romance seem real and believable? How do you develop the relationship between the characters?
Answer
I heard some very good advice in this area (can't remember where it came from, sorry). Ask yourself; what quality does each lover possess that fulfills the deepest need in the other? Those qualities are what make it feel inevitable to readers that these two people would fall in love.
There are a million and one variations that can be played, and they all depend on the personalities of your characters.
You mentioned that your female character is wealthy and popular. What does she lack? He should embody these traits.
Maybe she is popular because of her wealth, because of her family, because she is beautiful. Maybe she wants someone who can love her without her wealth or without her family or her looks. Maybe when they meet he doesn't know who she is, or she has just been in an accident and looks hideous or something like that. (Imagine her stumbling into a wasp's nest and getting stung all over. He saves her, probably getting stung himself in the process. He always thought she was stuck-up and unattainable, she thought he was a coward because everyone called him one. They get thrown together and figure out neither was what they thought)
Maybe she feels like her life has been predetermined, or that she doesn't have any choice about where she is going. She wants someone who won't control her, maybe someone who doesn't feel threatened when she makes her own choices.
Maybe she comes from a broken home and she needs someone who she knows she can count on. Maybe she is surrounded by greed and dishonesty and he's honest and content with what he's got. Maybe she's surrounded by cowards and he's a brave man. Maybe her life is threatened and he steps in to save her. And so on.
Now, what does he need? He's poor and bullied. His pride has probably been stomped all over so he needs someone who isn't judgmental and who sees the diamond beneath the rough, as it were. He needs someone who will stand up for him, but not in a way that unmans him.
He needs someone who is vulnerable because it's very hard to fall for someone without vulnerability. For a person who feels powerless, having the power to save someone else can be a powerful aphrodisiac :)
Maybe he has unpleasant relatives who treat him like trash because they are poor. Having the woman who loves him be socially superior, wealthier, and a far better person, could make for some really satisfying scenes as she sends them scurrying off with tails between proverbial legs.
Anyway, once you decide what qualities will bring them together, you can decide what events occur to show each of them how this person who they may have disliked at first was not actually who they thought. At that point, readers should feel that their growing love is inevitable because they anticipate how the two will complete each other.
As the title says what is the best way to take an existing sans serif font, such as Helvetica, and add a grunge effect to the text for die cut vinyl? I know it can be done manually but that tends to take time.
Answer
Take a picture of some 'grunge' or scan in some 'grunge'. Crank the contrast up in Photoshop to make a black/white image. Bring that into your vector illustration tool and auto-trace it.
Then take your letters, join them into one object. Take your grunge, join that into one object. Then use pathfinder tools to 'punch' the grunge out of your letters.
We're building an application that is like an interactive flow chart. When users are viewing the flow chart, they can interact with certain shapes:
The problem that I've encountered is how to properly identify that the shapes are clickable and also which action occurs when clicked.
These are our current ideas:
Flow Chart Link:
External File Link:
Pop Up:
We also add the pointer cursor when hovering over the shape. However, I'm really having difficulty accepting these as very intuitive and clear. FWIW - each shape can also have a different geometry (rectangle, diamond and ellipse) and color.
I would also appreciate suggestions for better icons.
Answer
Those small markers in the corners are very subtle - it took me a while to work out that there were differences between them.
I strongly suggest that you change how you mark the links by doing some of the following:
I am novice to photoshop and working on converting PSD to * HTML*.
I learned that you can select a layer and Ctrl + A, and copy-paste to create a new image equal to the size of layer.
I also learned that you can copy by Ctrl + left mouse click, and copy-paste.
However I noticed that the second method is not good for copying layers with opacity. What is the difference between these two methods of copying layers?
Answer
Difference just in selection method.. at first case you select the whole artboard, at the second you select just a object on a layer (some transparency can be dropped due threshold).
The second way is good to get selection exactly like an object. It is handy in many cases. And not so when you want have just a full copy.
Btw, you can consider Ctrl / Option+J as well. It makes full duplicate of a layer.
I am new to any graphical editing software and I even do not know how can I formulate a question.
I have this:
And I would like to only have the outline (removing the fill):
How do I accomplish this?
Answer
You need to change the stroke and fill for the object.
Select the object and press Ctrl+Shift+F to open the Fill and Stroke window. On the Fill tab, change the fill to No Paint for transparent. On the Stroke paint tab, change the stroke to a solid color. If you want to change the thickness of the outline, go to the Stroke style tab, and change the width setting.
All fonts I have ever heard of are two dimensional: each glyph is basically a two dimensional region (a closed contour or some closed contours), which the software or printer somehow strokes or fills depending on the instructions given by the user. I would like to know whether there are one dimensional fonts, where the glyphs are described just as collections of segments (which the software can stroke but not necessarily fill), not of regions.
In other word (or better, in images), what I would like to have is the left thing instead of the right one in the picture below. Does this exist?
(sorry for the picture, I know it is really bad; I just did that quickly)
Answer
In plotters, it's called a "stroke font", "single line font", "engraving font", "technical lettering font", or just "plotter font".
A plotter strokes images onto paper using a pen. It cannot fill images except by repeatedly stroking them less than a pen-width apart. So fonts designed for use with plotters will contain glyphs with one stroke ("simplex"), two more or less parallel strokes ("duplex"), or three strokes ("triplex"). Fonts with more strokes take longer to draw but allow more variation in stroke width within a glyph. Using a pen too narrow for a glyph at a given size will cause visible gaps between the strokes.
One example of a mostly simplex font is Hershey Vector Font. Its at sign @, brackets [], braces {}, and tilde ~ are duplex.
If you've seen "blackboard bold", that's a 𝕕𝕦𝕡𝕝𝕖𝕩 font with the pen width less than the distance between strokes.
Old-school imaging libraries supported stroke fonts in much the same way as a plotter does. When rendering text, an application would set the stroke width and color before drawing text, just as it does before drawing a line. This is analogous to selecting a pen on a plotter.
But modern raster imaging libraries use OpenType fonts, which contain TrueType or CFF (PostScript Type 2) outlines. OpenType fonts simulating stroke fonts instead contain the outline of a stroke at some line width. This stroking operation can be reversed by insetting the glyph's outline by a distance of half a stroke width, sort of the inverse of algorithmic bold.
UPDATE: Pantone have replied to my question directly, the answer is below
It stands to reason that no one would want to attempt to name all the Pantone colours (as opposed to referencing them by code).
So why then do some have actual names like "Royal blue", "Serenity", "Cool Grey"? What makes these colours special and deserving of a name?
Right now I am looking for a deep wine red, and when I go back to the client, I think it's so much more convincing to tell them "I suggest we go with Pantone "Red Bud", than if I were to call it "19-1850-TCX"!
However my favourite red thus far only has a colour code (1955 C). No corresponding name :(
Can anyone offer some background on how it came to be this way, and bonus points if anyone knows any reference sites where they only list the "named" colours!
Answer
Pantone's (very fast!) reply, which was signed off for publication here by the very friendly tech rep.
Pantone has many different color sets that are designed to specify and communicate color across different industries. The Pantone Plus Series is based on graphics/printing ink and is the well-known Pantone Matching System (PMS) that has been around for 50+ years. These are the colors that are specified with numbers and a suffix such as ‘C’ or ‘U’ which specify the type of paper the ink is printing on. For example, Pantone 100 is the ink color and Pantone 100 C is this printed on Coated paper. There is also Pantone 100 U which is the same color ink but printed on Uncoated paper. The same Pantone color printed on coated and uncoated paper will have quite a different visual appearance. Although there is a variance in ink film thickness, the majority of the difference is attributed directly to the reaction of the ink to the paper.
These colors are all specified with a number only and the suffix for paper type and print process. The exception being the 18 Pantone Basic Colors (base inks) that are used to mix the rest of the colors. These are colors such as Pantone Yellow, Reflex Blue, Black , Green, etc. The other exception is we have colors that fall in the ‘Gray’ and ‘Black’ colors that are named as ‘Warm Gray’ or ‘Cool Gray’ or ‘Black’. These also come with a number association as there are many different shades/hues of these colors. So that is why there is Pantone Cool Gray 1 C. There is 11 Cool Grays and 11 Warm Grays and 7 Blacks.
The other commonly used color system is our Fashion Home + Interiors guides (commonly referred to as FHI). These guides are based on specifying textiles. These come in two formats, Paper (TPG) and Cotton (TCX). The Cotton is a dyed cotton fabric swatch of the colors and the Paper is a lacquer paint/coating on paper. Depending on the product you are working with would determine which guide you would want to visually see the color on, fabric or paper. These are specified as 18-1443 TPG for the Textile Paper guides and 18-1443 TCX for the Textile Cotton guides. So the color is 18-1443 and the TPG or TCX specifies which format of textile guide these are found in. These colors are a separate set of colors to the Pantone Plus Series.
These colors all come with a number format of two digits hyphen four digits and the suffix of TPG or TCX. Being as these colors are separate from the graphics/ink guides and were developed later they have been given ‘names’ to go along with the number specification. This is why colors such as 18-1443 also has the name ‘Redwood’.
I hope this has given you some insight and clarification into why some colors have ‘names’ and while others do not. One thing to keep in mind is we always recommend associating the number and suffix as this will accurately allow accurate color communication. Please let me know if you have any questions.
I am painfully aware that nearly all my paintings and drawings seriously lack in terms of proper anatomy. The figures ofen look unnatural, twisted, deformed etc. More advanced colleagues told me I need to work on my anatomy.
But here's the problem: how do I do that?
What can I be doing to help my practical understanding of anatomy and the ability to apply it? Cause I studied some anatomy textbooks and I have an idea of the bones and muscles of the human body, and I can tell the difference between the lats and traps. Still, I cant apply it to have realistic looking figures and heads.
What should I be doing? Drawing skulls and then faces on them? Painting over skulls on faces? Same for figures - should I be drawing bones on photos / well drawn figures? Should I be drawing the pics from anatomy books? Are there any others I should be doing, that I cant even think of right now?
I want to have a practical understanding of anatomy, I even bought some books (like Tom Flints & Peter Stayners anatomy for the artist), but I dont really know how to use them! There are just some cool drawings of people in different poses, but no actual advice on how to practice it and learn it!
edit:
Also, besides advice on what I should be drawing, I would welcome advice on how I should be drawing. I mean the things i should have in mind while studying. Should I be trying to envision the form? Should I try to imagine the muscles beneath the skin while i draw nude figutres? Or maybe I should be trying to simplify the forms? These are just examples of the type of advice I would like to recieve.
Please note, I want to study anatomy in order to be able to draw anatomically correct figures from my imagination later, when Im more advanced. This will probably affect the way I should be studying anatomy. Making an analogy to studying rendering forms and lighting, I was once told: "mindlessly drawing just what you see wont help you improve your rendering skills for imaginative objects. Try to think about why a shadow is placed where it is and why is it shaped so, why os it soft or hard, where the reflected light comes from etc".
This doesn't seem complex, and I'm not a beginner but can't figure it out or find answer online.
I want to be able to trim a series of lines to fit in a complex shape (lay the shape over a group of stroked paths and trim them so only segments that are within the shape remain). I want actual truncated line segments left so that I can apply strokes, widths, profiles and brushes to what's left.
I understand clipping masks (but they don't leave new endpoints for width/brushes) and envelopes (which bend/distort lines to fit) and have tried all of the pathfinder options with no luck. I can of course just use scissors and cut-cut-cut at each intersecting point, but this isn't a one-off shape it's a process that I want to be able to repeat often across several works.
Essentially it should just be a clipping mask that cuts/deletes line segments outside it and leaves actual line segments (not shapes) behind...seems simple and an obvious function, but I'm stumped. (I'm in CS6)
Thanks for any help!
How would I convert a photograph or pattern to use only colors from a palette I give it? Is this possible in Photoshop? I think Pic2Color used to do something like this but it's offline...
Answer
Yes it is possible, and very easy to do: Image > Mode > Indexed Color: Here you can switch the Palette to "Custom", pick number of colors in the palette and few other options.
Photoshop will then ask you to flatten the image for the conversion.
We have arrived at the crime scene. Here you can change various options, e.g., if you were creating a new palette.
For the pre-defined palette, we'll have to go for the topmost option and select "Custom..." to get the file selection menu open.
Photoshop has already generated a suggestion palette for your image, but since we'll be using a pre-defined palette, we'll go for the "Load..." button at the right side of the custom palette menu.
Now we are dealing with the murded weapon. I have my pre-defined palette here, saved using Photoshop default file format ".ACT". Photoshop also understands .ACO and .PAL - if your palette is in different format, you might enter *.* in the "File name" box and just try to use it (works only if the palette actually is one of these formats but is renamed to avoid abuse or something...) OR convert it to one of the supported formats. (Don't know any tools for that ATM, never had to convert palettes.)
Now this here is the custom palette I have. One thing to keep in mind as we progress: This palette here is not very suitable for the picture we are using it with. But it demonstrates the change of palette and dither options well. You could manually adjust the colors here by double clicking the representing squares. Useful in case you have to have a #FF00FF for transparency at the index #0 or stuff like that.
You will propably want to adjust the dither options in case the palette you are using doesn't fully support the given image. Options are diffusion, pattern and noise. In the previous picture we were using Diffusion. Here is Pattern:
Here is the last option, Noise. I'll stick with this, just because the gradient pleases me the most. If you have a lot of pictures where obvious dithering happens, you might want to keep the same option for the same project for the sake of consistency, but that's up to you.
Ok, the crime has happened now. The decisions were made and here are the results. If I had chosen, e.g., one of the palettes photoshop suggests me to go with (3rd picture, Local or Master(Perceptual, Selective or Adaptive)) the dithering would be minimal and the change from 24bit colorspace to indexed palette almost unnoticeable (at least for the untrained eye, har har) but since my palette was almost the worst match possible we get to witness the grains of dither:
I hope this helps.
