[Mike Gondek]

1) Step & repeat closely spaced circles in ilustrator to make to match the size of your jumbotron, and copy them to you clipboard.
2) Paste the circles from illustrator into your phothsop layer and choose layer >> vector mask >> current path.
3) Add a layer style of an inner bevel and make it really soft.
4)Duplicate a copy of your layer and change the mode to soft light (to saturate the colors)you can gaussain blur this layer also.

A reference photo would help to match the look, but this should give you some ideas. I am thinking of the bellagio sign. If you don’t have illustrator to make your circle you can do this in photoshop, and can even define a pattern with just one circle in white over a black background on a new file the size of your repeating values. I just like illustrator cause it is so great for tweaking somehting just using alt cursor key to step & repeat.

[Mike Gondek]

9.02 is for photoshop (CS2 is version 9). If your tablet software has an update download that also.

[Mike Gondek]

Your problem most likely is that in AE you need to enable the continually rasterize button. Teh icon looks like a mine(naval)/asterisk.

[Mike Gondek]

Does it hang on every tool in photoshop? I never use the smudge tool, cause it is so slow.

Download the 9.02 update if you have not already and resetting your preferences

[Mike Gondek]

INK SPOTS
Set paintbrush to hard (Shift ]) a couple of time
Increase paitbrush size to size of largest spot (])
Paint a couple of large ink spots
Use the keyboard shortcut ([)a smaller brush size for some medium & smaller spots
Go to liquify, and then you can use the top brush to warp the spots so they are not circles.

SPONGE PAINT
Load the dry media brishes from teh flyout menu of the brushes palette.

BLOOD SMEAR
Not sure if you mean a blood smear under a microscope where you see the cells or a blood smeared by a hand on a wall.

[Mike Gondek]

1) First make your selection of what you watn to keep
2) If you layer is not a floating layer, doubleclick on the background layer, and hit enter so that the layer name is no longer background in italic type
3) CLick on the bottom left and place into after effects

[Mike Gondek]

You cannot control the order in which paths are drawn in live trace, btu you can reorfer paths in the layers palette of illustrator.

First you want to expand your live trace. Teh you watn to create new layers in your layers palette,a dn I sugegst naming them to help avoid confusion. Everytihng is now on your layer 1, adn you want to ungroup everyhting. Teh you can slect individual paths. Once you have te paths slected you will see the layers palette has a bullet point next to the layername that contains the object, drag that bullet point to the layer you want that art to be on. Once you have moved the tiems to layers, you can thn import thsi into after effects as choose the option to preserve layers adn you will get a layered comp you can animate. If you want to animate the bezier points, you may want to copy those form ilustaor and paste them into after effects (since i dont believe after effects has an expand command).

[Mike Gondek]

Many ilustrators think they need to buy the very large size (12×19) expensive tablet. You really will do fine and most likely better with a standard size (I like 6×8, 4×6 is a little small), and it will probably be better on your hands as you will not have to make such large hand movements to get to the other size of screen.

Wacom also has their Intuos line which has 2xlevels of sensitivity of the grapphire line, and recognizes if the pen tilts, and has a few more mouse buttons. The Cintiq is the highest end option actually lets you draw directly on the screen.

I would recomend a 6×8 Intuos for you, if that does not make your budget then a grapphire.

You will digitally be able to accomplish better masks quicker than with friskfilm.

[Mike Gondek]

I will be honest and tell you I have not tested a product that showed any worthwhile improvement. To me all these products are placebos, and that is why they do not show a before and after printed on their box.

My book is about 2 years old, but I showed the printed results of an image done by the 3 major products at the time. Another author who frequented this forum claims in his book that genuine fractals works great and would often post that on this forum. When we asked him for samples to prove his point, he never replied only promoted his book over and over again.

I haven’t tested digital anarchy (so don’t count them out), but extensis smartscale, genuine fractals and a couple others I can’t remember the name did nothing taht phothsop biciubic interpolation and a median filter couldn’t do.

In my opinion the only solution is to use Illustrator live trace on image and turn it into an illustration, which worked for us on the graphics for the CBOF Chicago Business Opportunity Fair for trade show graphics. If your image cannot have an illustrated appearance, then you need have the shoot done over as any other technique I seen people post on the internet really does no improvement the human eye can see at >3 feet away.

There are techniques and rules to follow for not making an image worse than what you have(eg saving as jpeg over and over again), but the technique to scale an image by 1% and do this 100 x actually makes the image worse instead of better, and I have seen a few people post this on the internet(my feeling is they plagarised someone else’s BS post without testing it themselves or they fooled themselves into thinking that worked without comparing actual printed results).

[Mike Gondek]

I do my invoices as a PDF, and use the javascript calculations to total my hours and dollar amounts. I then save the PDF and lock it if necessary so they don’t change anything and email it to them. My clients like this better than the traditional mail an invoice or faxing, cause it is quicker, and easier for them to archive my invoices.

You situation sounds a little different as it appears your clients have the need to edit your invoices. Your clients could open you pdf template and even with reader fill in the fields. Teh problem is that they will atelast need Acrobat standrad to save the PDf or else all they can do is print it out, and the PDF will not save the information typed in the fields. I have been hoping for years that Adobe woudl allow to save a pdf with reader, as sometimes I downlaod an invoice form my ftp and fill it out at the clients site. Most of my design clients have acrobat, but the computer repairs I get often don’t and that is a pain.

What is it that your cleitns edit on your invoices, do they fill out your hours?