I hope I don’t write about free file hosting websites too often, but you never know when one service might meet your needs better than another one. EatLime and File Dropper are two more great services that I just had to write about…each one has points of differentiation and they are both extremely easy to use. EatLime’s strong point is the capability for the recipient to start downloading as soon as you start uploading…this functionality is a huge time-saver. The filesize limit on EatLime is 1GB which should meet most of your file hosting needs…and files are hosted as long as they continue to be downloaded. EatLime just recently switched to focusing on easy video sharing, but they still host any type of file. File Dropper is about as simple and easy to use as it gets…it sets itself apart by having the largest filesize limit of any free file hosting site out there—a whopping 5GB…I am not sure how many people would need to host a 5GB file, but hey, I’m sure it happens. File Dropper, like EatLime also hosts your files only as long as they continue to be downloaded. So go bookmark these two sites so you will have them when you need to get that large file to your client. компютри

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If you have been a photographer or graphic designer for any amount of time, you have most likely been asked to remove some wrinkles or some extra pounds, etc. for a (vain) client. We all have our little tricks for fulfilling these requests, but most of the time we know there might be a better or quicker way to do what we are doing. Well, the best way to learn how to do something better is to share what you know with other designers and gather knowledge from others. That is exactly what many designers have been kind enough to do…and the PhotoshopTalent blog has put together a very nice collection of these tutorials that have been produced by various different graphic designers. So check out this list of “33 Awesome Body Enhancement Photoshop Tutorials”…you are likely to learn a very useful new trick to add to your bag.

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Alright, as a graphic designer I do catch myself using some of the same trusty fonts over and over….and I know I am not the only one guilty of this habitual typesetting crime…at my company I can pretty much guess who designed the ad if the font Optima is used and I am also certain who designed it if Times New Roman is used in it…and then there is the Helvetica Neue fanatic too! Don’t get me wrong, all of these fonts have their place, although Times New Roman is WAY overused! So what’s my point?! My point is that graphic designers need to have sources for quality fonts and we need to familiarize ourselves with these quality fonts so that the ads we design don’t all look the same! So today I have two resources for you: First, I have a list of 30 fonts that the creator of the list claims “all designers must own”…but to me it is just a list of 30 great fonts that most designers already own but probably don’t use often enough! The second resource is a website called Fawnt that offers designers 50 free quality fonts. So go checkout these excellent resources and stop using the same old font over and over!

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I love everything about OS X’s Mail software except for one glaring thing…the signature feature is severely crippled…maybe it is better in Leopard, but in Tiger I hate that Mail doesn’t provide any easy way to create an HTML signature. Anyways, I had been wanting to create an HTML signature for my email and hadn’t been able to figure out how to do it until I found this great tutorial…it isn’t extremely difficult to do, but it also isn’t easy peasy…hopefully Apple will add HTML functionality to signatures in future versions of Mail. But for now you can go to All Forces blog and read the tutorial on how to accomplish this.

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Photoshop actions are a huge productivity booster…and Photoshop special effects tutorials are really cool. But when you take those and combine them, you get a super-charged creative tool! Some talented designers have been kind enough to do just that and to share their work! They have taken special effects and recorded them as Photoshop actions and have posted them for our use. And Visual-Blast Media has done the grunt work of searching for these great actions and have posted links to 124+ of the best ones!  So, hop on over the Visual-Blast and grab these actions to boost your productivity AND creativity! Enjoy!

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Have you ever been working on a large publication and wanted to allow another designer to work on a particular page, but they couldn’t because the document could only be open by one person. Well, a solution to this problem is now available in the form of a plug-in! And the best thing is that it is free! The Layout Zones add-on for Indesign allows you to choose a page or a particular selection to save to a separate InDesign file that a co-worker can then work on, then Layout Zones updates the main document with the modified file when your co-worker is done making changes…this is an amazing tool that can increase productivity in a huge way! So if you do work on large documents in InDesign, head over to InDesignSecrets to read more about this add-on and to download this excellent tool!

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Hey everyone, there are so many ways to publish yourself on the web today that it is often hard to decide which option to go with. Well recently I discovered an option called Issuu that I was extremely impressed with. It is as simple as uploading a PDF, but the result is a very reader-friendly online publication. The reader can view your publication full-screen using Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari. Page turns are nicely animated and if the print is too small, just clicking on the page zooms in or out and moving your mouse around moves the page. I am not easily impressed, but this website impressed me with its ease of use and professional-looking results. So if you want to put your book or magazine on the web in a very reader-friendly, professional format, be sure to check out Issuu!

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