The scatter brushes in Adobe® Illustrator® provide a
good starting point for creating playful animated
patterns. By taking advantage of the brushes' ability to
scatter patterns at adjustable intervals, you can quickly
generate animation frames that proceed with seemingly
random movements. Follow along as we use scatter
brushes in conjunction with the Blend commands and
Release to Layers command to create a GIF animation
of dancing flowers. To complete this tip, you need
Adobe® Photoshop® 5.5 or higher.

1. Paint a path with a scatter brush.
Open a new Illustrator artwork window in RGB color
mode. Select the spiral tool in the toolbox in Illustrator,
and drag to draw a spiral. Set the fill and stroke of the
spiral to None. Then apply a scatter brush to the spiral
path. (We chose Window > Brush Libraries > Floral
Sample, and applied the Violets brush.)
Scatter brushes spread copies of an object along the
selected path.

2. Copy the brushed path, and adjust Scatter Brush
Options.
With the brushed path selected, choose Edit > Copy,
and then choose Edit > Paste in Front to duplicate the
brushed path. In the Brushes palette, double-click the
active scatter brush to display the Scatter Brush Options
palette. Drag the sliders to adjust options, click OK, and
then click Apply to Strokes to apply the new options to
the duplicate brushed path.
By adjusting scatter options for the duplicate path, you
alter the distribution of scatter objects along the path.
The two brushed paths represent the starting and
ending frames of your animation.

3. Blend the brushed paths.
Choose Edit > Select All to select both brushed paths,
and choose Object > Blend > Blend Options. For
Spacing, choose Specified Steps, enter the number of
intermediate steps you want in the blend, and click OK.
(We used 5 steps.) Then choose Object > Blend > Make.
The Blend commands let you automatically create
intermediate steps that blend the positions, shapes, and
colors of a starting object and an ending object.

4. Release the blend to separate layers.
In the Layers palette, select the blend you just created.
(You may need to expand layers to see the blend.) Then
choose Release to Layers from the Layers palette menu.
The Release to Layers command places each object in a
group or layer on its own separate layer. In this case,
each step in the blend is released to a separate layer.

5. Export the file to Photoshop 5 format.
Choose File > Export, choose Photoshop 5 for the file
format, and click Save (Windows) or Export (Mac OS).
In the Photoshop Options dialog box, make sure the
color mode is set to RGB. For Resolution, select Screen
(72 dpi). Select Write Layers and Write Nested Layers,
and click OK to the alert message that appears. Then
click OK to export the file.
When exporting an Illustrator file to Photoshop 5
format, you can choose between flattening or
preserving layers in the file. Because you are preparing
your file for animation, you want layers to be preserved.

6. Create animation frames in Adobe
ImageReady®.
Start Adobe ImageReady, and open the Photoshop file
that you just exported. Choose Window > Show
Animation, and choose Make Frames From Layers from
the Animation palette menu.
The ImageReady Animation palette makes it easy to
create and customize frames of a GIF animation. Here,
you converted the layers in your file automatically to
animation frames. You can use the Animation palette to
set further options for your animation, such as delay
time between frames and looping.

7. Optimize and preview the animation.
In the Optimize palette, choose GIF from the file format
menu, and choose other options to optimize the
animated file. Then preview your finished animation by
choosing your Web browser from the File > Preview in
menu.

by Jennifer Apple

A Favicon is a little custom icon that appears next to a website's URL in the address bar of a web browser. And when I say little, I mean 16 pixels by 16 pixels. So if you like a good design challenge try your hand at this one.

All you need to add a Favicon to your site is a Windows Icon (.ico) file called favicon.ico that you upload to the main directory of your website.

Download The Plugin
You'll need the Windows Icon (ICO) file format Photoshop Plugin to export to the .ico file format. You can download the plugin from Telegraphics. The plugin reads and writes ICO files in 1, 4 and 8-bit Indexed and 24-bit RGB modes, and also reads and writes 32-bit "XP" icons (with 8-bit alpha channel). Make sure to install the plugin before you begin this tutorial.



read the last entry

Computer graphics fall into two main types: vector
graphics and bitmap images. We'll make a quick
comparison of the two to help you understand which is
more appropriate for your artwork. It boils down to the
kind of artwork you're preparing and what you intend
to do with it.
Vector vs. Bitmap
Vector graphics
are made up of shapes defined by mathematical
expressions. A vector graphic has crisp, smooth
lines and is resolution-independent—that is, it can be
rescaled to any size or displayed onscreen at any
resolution without losing the clarity of its lines.
Bitmap images
(also called raster images) are based on a
grid of small squares known as pixels. Each pixel has a
specific location and color value assigned to it. Bitmap
graphics can represent subtle gradations of shade and
color. A disadvantage of bitmaps is that they represent a
fixed number of pixels, so they can appear jagged and
lose detail if they are rescaled or displayed onscreen at a
higher resolution.
Which graphic type should you use?
So which type do you need? It depends on what you're
trying to do:
• Vector graphics are crisp at any size or resolution, so
they're well suited for line art, type (especially small
type), and graphics that may need to be scaled, such as
logos and maps. Vectors also produce more compact
files than bitmaps, so they're quicker to open or
download on systems with limited memory or lowbandwidth
connections.
• Bitmap images can represent rich and subtle gradations
of shade and color, so they're appropriate for
artwork created in painting programs and for
continuous-tone images such as photographs. You
might also want to convert vectors to bitmaps to apply
distortion filters or other special effects to them.
Drawing programs such as Adobe® Illustrator® are
ideal for creating vector graphics. Bitmap images are
generally created using graphics programs such as
Adobe Photoshop®. Both Illustrator and Photoshop
can rasterize your vectors into bitmaps.
What's next for graphics on the Web?
Most graphics on the Web today are in bitmap formats,
such as GIF, JPEG, and PNG. Up until now, the only
vector formats practical for the Web have been proprietary
standards, such as Flash (SWF)—but a new openstandard
format called Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
is emerging.
SVG will let Web developers use high-quality vector
fonts and graphics that look great at any size or
resolution and that incorporate sophisticated elements
such as gradients and animation. Imagine being able to
zoom into a map on the Web! And SVG vector descriptions
are embedded in the HTML code, so developers
can put interactivity, such as rollover highlighting, right
in the artwork.
Illustrator 9.0 exports to both SVG and SWF vector
formats. You can even define SVG interactivity for your
artwork within Illustrator.

Adobe ® Photoshop® 7.0 opens up a whole new range of possibilities for creating artistic effects. With the new painting engine, you can create imagery that looks as if it was painted using natural media. Follow along and learn a few of the ways you can customize the brush tool.

1. Choose a brush tip.
Select the brush tool and choose Window > Brushes to
display the Brushes palette. Select Brush Tip Shape on
the left side of the palette, and then select a brush tip.
When you’re exploring the options in the Brushes
palette, it’s best to choose a simple tip, such as Hard
Round or Soft Round, so you can clearly see the effects.

2. Fade the size of the brush.
Select Shape Dynamics on the left side of the Brushes
palette. (Click on the words, rather than the check box,
to view the Shape Dynamics options.) Choose Fade
from the Control pop-up menu below the Size Jitter
slider; then enter a number of steps. The more steps you
enter, the longer the stroke. You can view results at the
bottom of the Brushes palette.
Now try adjusting some of the other shape dynamics.
Drag the sliders to add randomness to brush elements.
(At 0%, an element does not change over the course of
a stroke; at 100%, an element has the maximum
amount of randomness.) Choose options from the
Control pop-up menus to control the variance of brush
elements.

3. Add scattering to the brush.
Select Scattering on the left side of the Brushes palette.
The options in this section of the Brushes palette
determine the number and placement of marks in a
stroke. Adjust the Scatter percentage to specify the
maximum percentage of scattering in a stroke. Adjust
the Count value to specify the number of brush marks
applied at each spacing interval. Adjust the Count Jitter
percentage to add variance to the number of brush
marks applied at each spacing interval.

4. Add texture to the brush.
Select Texture on the left side of the Brushes palette.
The options in this section of the Brushes palette let you
make strokes look like they are painted on textured
canvas. First, click on the pattern sample at the top of
the palette, and choose a pattern from the pop-up
palette. (You can load additional patterns by clicking
the triangle at the top right of the pop-up palette, and
choosing a pattern library from the bottom of the
palette menu.) Use the Scale slider to adjust the size of
the pattern.
Now you’re ready to use your brush.

5. Paint in the image.
Choose a color and paint freehand in an image.
Alternately, you can apply the brush stroke to a path.
(For more information on creating paths and using the
Paths palette, see Photoshop online Help.) We used a
work path to create brush strokes on a new layer.
We then used the same method to create additional
fireworks in different colors.

6. Experiment with other brush options.
Now that you know the basics, you can experiment
with some of the other brush options. For example,
we added color dynamics to our brush and painted
freehand to create particle streaks falling from the
fireworks.