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Wallpaper of the Week: Glacier Sunrise

October 19th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in wallpaper of the week

“The good thing about waking up at 6am to see the glaciers at College Fjord is to witness the magnificent sunrise that goes with it.” – mhl12

Download [not a direct link]

Wallpaper of the Week shows off the best free desktop wallpapers every week. If you want to have your desktop wallpaper considered please email me a link or a picture of the wallpaper to mail [at] r3fresh dot com.

Turn a Simple Doodle into an Awesome Vector

October 16th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in design, tips and tricks

Look at the sides of any paper of mine and you’ll always see some sort of doodle. I’m not one to fall asleep in class, but I am one to go overboard and cover my paper in inked randomness. I decided to take one of my doodles farther than the trash can and turn it into a vector, something surprisingly easy to do.

1. Choose a Doodle: Any doodle or pattern will work as long as it has clean lines. For best results have the work outlined with a dark marker on a solid colored paper.

2. Scan and Place: Scan in you’re work. Make sure it’s scanned at high dpi to prevent pixelation (I chose 200).

Then, open up Illustrator and place your scanned piece onto the canvas.

3. Live Trace, Expand, and Clean: With the image selected press the Live Trace button (in the top toolbar). To tweak Live Trace you can chose some of the presets. I chose the Inked Drawing setting.

Use the Expand feature to turn the object into an editable vector, which may need some cleaning up depending on the complexity of your work.

4. Live Paint and More: Now that the doodle is a vector you can add color using the Live Paint feature. Add other effects like shadow and text if you would like. Bask in your accomplishment.

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BlueTunes: Upload Music, Listen Anywhere

October 14th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in media

The biggest problem with iTunes has always been that it’s locked down. You can only listen to the music through your personal computer or on an iPod, but what happens when you’re on a library or business computer and restricted from downloading any software? Use BlueTunes. More »

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