The Squeeze Is On  

Lossy or lossless? No, the subject isn't baseball, it's file compression. Understanding it can improve your image.

Fleishman, Glenn. Adobe Magazine (1998). Design>Graphic Design>Image Editing

Unexpected Text  

I know, I know, Illustrator is a drawing program - but its text-handling features can be handy, too. Here's a guide to using them.

Kvern, Olav Martin. Adobe Magazine (1996). Design>Graphic Design>Image Editing>Adobe Illustrator

Using Photography to Illustrate Technology Trends and New Capabilities  

The very best of today’s public relations photography devises visual statements by carefully blending composition and lighting. Dramatic use of color has emerged as a strong graphic element over the past decade. Today’s inexpensive scanners and related image manipulation software provide new capabilities to manipulate B/W and color photos.

Brus, John M. STC Proceedings (1993). Design>Document Design>Image Editing>Visual Rhetoric

What is Digital Imaging and Why is it Important to Technical Communicators?  

Digital imaging is one of the most significant technological tools available to developers of technical documentation. Because of digital imaging equipment such as scanners and digital cameras, developing detailed, well-organized and graphic technical documentation can be done much faster and with minimal help from outside sources (e.g., drafters, photographers, and printers). The purpose of this paper is to define the fundamentals of digital imaging technology, describe its major components and applications, and help technical communicators make informed choices when evaluating digital imaging equipment.

Knerr, Dianne. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Software>Image Editing

When Bigger Isn't Better  

Working with large bitmap images can clog your hard disk and slow performance to a crawl. Here are some tips for staying lean.

Katz, Wendy. Adobe Magazine (1995). Design>Graphic Design>Image Editing>Adobe Photoshop

Drawing Hilbert Curves with SVG

Hilbert curves are a type of space-filling curve that can be constructed with the SVG polyline element, using a basic design and then aggregating.

Opera (2008). Articles>Graphic Design>Image Editing>SVG

How to Cool a Hot Photo  

When your photo can't be changed, surround it with cool color.

Before and After (2008). Design>Graphic Design>Image Editing>Color

Forty Beautiful Grunge Photoshop Tutorials

In this collection, we present to you 40 excellent, high-quality grunge Photoshop tutorials. So fire up Photoshop and get ready to get your hands… dirty!

Gube, Jacob. Smashing (2008). Articles>Graphic Design>Image Editing>Adobe Photoshop

Appropriate Use of Alternative Text

Adding alternative text for images is the first principle of web accessibility. It is also one of the most difficult to properly implement. The web is replete with images that have missing, incorrect, or poor alternative text. Like many things in web accessibility, determining appropriate, equivalent, alternative text is often a matter of personal interpretation. Through the use of examples, this article will present our experienced interpretation of appropriate use of alternative text.

WebAIM (2005). Articles>Accessibility>Image Editing>Web Design

Relative Sizing and Images

Few people realize that with today's modern browsers, relative sizing can in fact be added to images as well as text elements on your web page. Making the image scale with the text may aid in accessibility, despite the degradation of quality.

WATS.ca (2006). Articles>Web Design>Image Editing>CSS

Crop Images Contextually

Crop images contextually for faster downloads and higher impact. By cropping maximally and resizing you can convey meaning without slowing down your web pages.

Website Optimization (2008). Articles>Graphic Design>Image Editing

Graphic Thoughts: My Top 10 Photoshop Moves, Part 1

Almost every time I speak to an audience about graphics or Photoshop, I’m asked if I went to school to learn what I know about the application. The truth is that while I spent more than 3 years in an Advertising Art degree program, I ultimately switched gears and got a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in marketing (Mom and Dad were thrilled with this news!), and that was in the early ’90s—pretty much in the infant stages of Photoshop.

Gray, Lawrence. Event DV (2008). Articles>Graphic Design>Image Editing>Adobe Photoshop

Graphic Thoughts: Creating Great Backgrounds in A Snap

Recently, I had the chance to go with my in-laws to City Museum in St. Louis. What an amazing place to get lost in by crawling through inventively designed tunnels that go underground to many stories below the city streets. The most impressive thing to me was how the place was constructed—they used everyday items, such as metal storage bins, bottles, and gears (plus what looked like a million other items) to create elaborate mazes of artwork.

Gray, Lawrence. Event DV (2008). Articles>Graphic Design>Image Editing>Adobe Photoshop

Adding High-Impact Filters to Your Titles

Words go so well with video. They can give an emotional punch to a scene or simply announce what is going to happen next. I love using romantic quotes, Bible passages, and other forms of text in my work. The best part is that you can be just as creative with how those words are presented as you are in picking out the text in the first place.

McManus, Joe. Event DV (2008). Articles>Multimedia>Image Editing>Video

Creating Perspective Shadows

Perspective—it’s one of the first things you learn about in any art class. The basic idea is that it’s the way your eye actually sees something, represented on a flat surface such as paper or a monitor. A simple example is drawing a group of objects: You represent an object in the distance by making it smaller, while making objects close to the viewer larger—make sense? In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to create perspective shadows in Adobe Photoshop CS3. The result is dynamic, but the technique is a breeze!

Gray, Lawrence. Event DV (2008). Articles>Graphic Design>Image Editing>Technical Illustration

What Everybody Ought to Know About Digital Photo Retouching 

Today we take a look deeper into the hidden art of digital retouching where skies can always be blue and imperfections simply disappear. Whether you like it or hate it, think it’s necessary or not, retouching is here to stay.

Inspired Magazine (2009). Articles>Graphic Design>Photography>Image Editing

How to Change 100 Screenshots to the Same Size with a Single Click 

All the screenshots in your Word document are different sizes. What’s the quickest way to get them all the same size? Is there a shortcut? Yes!

Walsh, Ivan. I Heart Tech Docs (2009). Articles>Document Design>Image Editing>Microsoft Word