In this tutorial, we’ll get our hands dirty as we crack open our computers and take a look at upgrading the memory and video card, two upgrades that can immensely effect the performance of both Mac Pros and Windows machines. We’ll learn principles of upgrading, buying, and physically installing hardware, so even if your particular machine is not covered, it’s still applicable. This is for beginners and professionals alike and is geared more towards media content creators. This is a great opportunity to take a peek inside the machine you use daily and to find out how to get a lot more performance out of it through these two simple upgrades.

Tutorial

Additional Resources

• Essential Upgrades to Boost Your System
• Quick Tips – Understanding Memory and Multiprocessing

We’re very proud to announce the release of Freelance Confidential, Rockable Press’s newest book on freelancing. This book aims to provide the hard numbers on the biggest issues of freelancing and advice on how experienced freelancers can improve their business. More than just another single person’s view on freelancing, Freelance Confidential contains contributions from the Editor of FreelanceSwitch, Amanda Hackwith, a panel of 10 expert entrepreneurs, and 3,200 freelancers worldwide.

Last winter, we asked readers of FreelanceSwitch to contribute to a global survey on freelancing–over 3,200 responded! Get those statistics and you’ll learn the real numbers on the biggest questions which revealed some surprising new trends for the freelance industry. Did you know…?

• Fewer freelancers live in large urban cities than did three years ago. What are the benefits?
• New referrals from advertising and cold calling has dropped significantly. What’s the best new source?
• Freelancers with former experience as an employee report the highest level of satisfaction and happiness. Why is that?

What’s Inside

More than just a stats book, Freelance Confidential compares survey numbers to the 2007 survey to see what’s changing. We’ve also interviewed ten amazing success stories like Ed Gandia of International Freelancer’s Academy, James Chartrand of Men with Pens, FreelanceSwitch’s own N.C. Winters, an exclusive interview with founder Collis Ta’eed, and many more.

You’ll learn the current trends and insights on big questions:

• Where do you find new clients? You’ll be interested to see what source has grown over the past three years.
• How much do you charge? Think hotshot consultants are able to charge the most? Think again.
• How do you raise your rates? The numbers show it’s not a steady climb to retirement.
• How do you stabilize your income month to month? Our experts were unanimous on two necessary steps for success: diversity and marketing. We’ll walk through the best advice for both.
• Is social media really worth it? Forget the hype, get real and get focus.
• How to make a successful start? Envato founder Collis Ta’eed talks about what he’d do if he had to start from scratch all over again.
• And much more on clients, passive income, security and trends for the future!

Still undecided? Check out the Freelance Confidential launch page to download free sample pages and see what others have to say about the book.

Buy Now & Save

We’re really excited to offer Freelance Confidential in four great formats:

• Buy the digital download in DRM-free mobi, epub, and pdf formats. Book release sale for early buyers! Buy the digital version in the first five days and receive a special sale price–now available for $24, normally $29. As always, all digital downloads come with Rockable’s 100% satisfaction guarantee.
• Buy a full-color print copy on Amazon for $34.99! Bonus: email your Amazon receipt to the address listed inside and receive the digital versions for free!

This is a presentation of a bundle of three Pixel Bender plug-ins: “bs-Smart Set Matte“, “bs-Mix Color” and “bs-Mix Layer“. The tutorial shows the parameters and some example where I show the technique of compositing where those plug-ins can be helpful.

Tutorial

Additional Aetuts+ Resources

• Introduction To Pixel Bender For After Effects

Mamoworld, home of Mathias Möhl and friends, has published a new quick tip tutorial (embedded below), Modifying Keyframes with KeyTweak. Mathias says that KeyTweak is a must-have when working with hundreds of keyframes, like in his stabilize motion tutorial. The new version is easier to use — you can push around keyframes in the work area just using the Arrow buttons.

Mathias explains:

Although the new version of KeyTweak was published last December, I didn’t have a tutorial about its new features (the new “local mode”), hence almost nobody discovered its potential so far. While the old version of KeyTweak (consisting only of the “global mode” of the new KeyTweak) had a somewhat confusing workflow (you needed to duplicate a property, delete all keyframes in it that you want KeyTweak to take care of etc), the new local mode is much more intuitive. With a set of arrow buttons you just move around all keyframes in the work area, and also fade in/out those changes if you like. The old “global mode” remains still useful for properties that are not 2D, like transparency (local mode works only with 2d properties and mask shapes).

Chris and Trish Meyer posted CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 16 – Parallel Worlds on PVC. It’s an introduction to the “Parallel Worlds” of special cases and gotchas that crop up when you try to combine 3D layers in After Effects, live Photoshop 3D layers, plug-ins that render 3D images onto 2D layers, renders from 3D programs, Adobe Repoussé (Photoshop), and Digieffects FreeForm (included in CS5).

This “Hidden Gems” summary covers:

• Rendering Bins (3D layer groups) and Breaks (2D layer pipelines)
• Casting 3D Shadows Onto 2D Layers
• 3D Effects and 2D Layers
• Making Photoshop 3D Layers More Interactive
• Displacement Mapping with FreeForm

You can find more on these topics in 3D layer interactions, render order, and collapsed transformations in AE Help and of course in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (reviewed earlier on AEtuts+). There’s also extras from CMG itself — an excerpt from the Parallel Worlds chapter with some extra stuff not covered in the current summary, as well as an Integrating with 3D applications excerpt on importing 3D info from Maya, Cinema 4D, 3ds Max, and other 3D apps.

Richard Harrington notes some Useful Videos About Documentary Editing, including An Overview of After Effects for Documentary Editors, a presentation by Steve Audette and Mark Dugas given at a PBS conference. Embedded below, it’s pretty basic but effectively shows how a little bit of AE can add a lot of style. Harrington also notes other videos by Audette like “Thoughts on Documentary Editing.”

For similar resources to liven up static content, see Animate a Photo Mosaic in After Effects, The Ken Burns Effect — and beyond, and other AEP resources for multiplane animation.

This tutorial shows how you can quickly upload your InDesign document for collaborative online commenting via Acrobat.com. This is a great trick if you work as part of a remote team, or need quick feedback from clients, best of all, the comments stay in your InDesign document!

Continue reading “Quick Tip: Working with CS Review and InDesign CS5”

Within the majority of vector communities on the internet, portrait art is a popular theme. Be it rendering from photo stock or reference free work, it’s a corner stone in vector art. Browse through twenty five wonderful, unique portraits, be in technique or the final appearance, which may inspire you to try new avenues of vector art portrait creation. All of the art work has came from members on deviantArt, where there is a strong vector community.

Continue reading “Featuring 25 Inspiring Vector Portraits”

In this tutorial, we’ll get our hands dirty as we crack open our computers and take a look at upgrading the memory and video card, two upgrades that can immensely effect the performance of both Mac Pros and Windows machines. We’ll learn principles of upgrading, buying, and physically installing hardware, so even if your particular machine is not covered, it’s still applicable. This is for beginners and professionals alike and is geared more towards media content creators. This is a great opportunity to take a peek inside the machine you use daily and to find out how to get a lot more performance out of it through these two simple upgrades.

Continue reading “How To Upgrade Your RAM and Video Card”

A few times a each month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from throughout the history of Vectortuts+. This tutorial by Rype was first published on May 4th 2009.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a customizable vector sketchbook. This intermediate tutorial uses some basic shapes, Shear transforms, and Effects to create a leather texture. Let’s get started!

Continue reading “How to Create a Vector Sketchbook”

In my experience, I needed to cut a Gradient Mesh. Looking for the solution on forums didn’t work out for me, so I thought it was impossible! The Knife and Scissors Tool are used for cutting vector objects but cannot be applied to the Gradient Mesh. So I thought that this problem would stay unsolved, but thankfully, that was not the case. As Pushkin, the great Russian poet, wrote: "And the case, the god of the inventor." Look how easily it can be done.

Continue reading “Quick Tip: How to Cut a Gradient Mesh”

Today we’ll meet British designer Chris Spooner. He became widely known thanks to his two successful blogs Blog.SpoonGraphics and Line25. Chris has written plenty of excellent tutorials on vector graphics and web design. Learn more about Chris Spooner, his tutorials and blogs after the jump.

Continue reading “Interview with Chris Spooner”

If you regularly use InDesign, you may find that from time to time a file may be corrupt and glitch. In this Quick Tip you will learn a technique that may help recover your file in just a few easy steps.

Continue reading “Quick Tip: How to Fix Corrupt InDesign Files”

The key to this satiny ribbon is the careful placement of gradients on its component parts. And once you have the individual elements down, it’s a snap to create award ribbons, medals, or bunting. Let’s get started!

Continue reading “Create a Tri-Color Rosette Ribbon in Illustrator”

We’re very proud to announce the release of Freelance Confidential, Rockable Press’s newest book on freelancing. This book aims to provide the hard numbers on the biggest issues of freelancing and advice on how experienced freelancers can improve their business. More than just another single person’s view on freelancing, Freelance Confidential contains contributions from the Editor of FreelanceSwitch, Amanda Hackwith, a panel of 10 expert entrepreneurs, and 3,200 freelancers worldwide. Read on to find out more about this great book and how to take advantage of a special launch day discount!

Continue reading “Freelance Confidential: Now Available!”