I thought Live Trace in Adobe Illustrator CS3 was amazing.

There are a few paths you can follow to trace raster image into its vector equivalent. The best known are Live Trace in Adobe Illustrator, and Corel Trace.
What are their disadvantages? They are rather expensive, for one. And the results they are producing are good, but certainly we could use something better.

Ladies and gentleman, say hello to Vector Magic.



It's essentially an online application, that will take your raster image and vectorize (aka trace) it.
The quality of the conversion is stunning. You can also see comparison of the results from various tracing programs and Vector Magic.

Below you can see image before and after vectorization:



Here's the best part: it's a free software. You don't even have to download it or install. It only requires Flash enabled browser (the tool is created in Adobe Flex) and an image you want to convert!

"Heaven is here" you may want to say. We're not quite there yet - they still need to add recognizing gradients feature :)

However, the tool is great even as it is. And judging by the update dates we will definately see some fast progress    :)

UPDATE: As "Anonymous" pointed out, the service is not free anymore :(

Thank you, Anonymous :)

Kelby Training - if that's not cool, I don't know what is

Hey :)

sorry for not being here yesterday, I had to go to Warsaw, to train employees of our clients about the Joomla Content Menagement System. It was fun being able to talk Joomla for entire day, I look forward to do this again :)

While I was gone, Scott Kelby was very busy launching his new online training service.


Why is it so great? How about really great teachers?? Dan Margulis (yes, the Dan Margulis!), Scott Kelby, Bert Monroy, Terry White, Dave Cross, Matt Kloskowski... list goes on and on! You can check it out at: http://www.kelbytraining.com (watch front page video to see semi-official Scott :) )

List of available courses is a lot longer that you should expect on a first day :)

There are two more things I would like to mention:

1. Service is subscription based - you pay once and have access to all classes (just as Lynda.com)
2. Training courses are not only for Photoshop (I also spotted Dreamweaver, InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat and Lightroom)
   

You can also check out free trial.

Beauty in application interface - not Mac exclusive

For years what I have heard was: "I prefer Mac from PC because Mac applications are beautiful".

However, for some time I can see that PC applications are not far behind, if at all. And a lot of credit can go to Adobe - especially Production Studio amazes me. Have you for example seen After Effects 7 or CS3? It is fun to spend time in AE just because of its interface. Everytime it launches I feel like entering some secret place, where I can do magic noone else can.

In this post I would like point at another Adobe application that gives us beautiful workspace: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.



This is only a part of the interface, but still it is easy to see how well it works with images, no matter what colours they have. Everything is simple and easy to read. It is another evidence that beautifull design can be really, really simple.



They even included a very aesthetic pattern ornament. Take a look at knobes and sliders... We gotta get more of those :D

Adobe's website: new look

Recently Adobe launched their new look of their website. I am very interested in your opinion on this subject.

To be honest, I expected much more from Adobe.
From developer point of view, it's state of the art. From designer point of view... not so much.

Old website has been around for years, and I really think they could work on it for five more minutes. Or maybe they worked to hard, and overdone it?

That seems more likely, but doesn't explain why new website is so dirty and unattractive. I am talking about this awful gradient in the background. It's not that bad by itself, but with "Flash on." animation... WHY?!

The only thing that I like about this new look is the bottom part of the page: clear and aesthetic. Colours used are very "adobe production studio" like... But it is a good example to follow.

Below you can see the part that I like:



Nevertheless I have expected a lot more from Adobe - the company, that produces the best design software there is.

Designer's life is now even cooler

Most of you probably already know Adobe's online software Kuler. It can be used to easily create, save, share and export colour schemes. Exported schemes are importable for applications in Adobe Creative Suite 2 and 3.

Here's what Adobe Kuler looks like:


You can use this free software at http://kuler.adobe.com

But why am I mentioning it right now? Kuler is old news...
It's because Adobe released updated version of Kuler's desktop AIP that now works with Adobe AIR Beta 3 (formely Apollo). You can download it from Adobe Labs. Don't forget to install Adobe AIR first :)

After you install and run it, take some time to admire how dark and pretty it looks :D



Then, you will probably feel dissapointed because you cannot create new sets in it, only browse through those already published.

But fear not! Adobe has found the way to swetten things.
Go to Adobe Illustrator, choose Window -> Adobe Labs -> kuler, and you will find yourself enjoying kuler panel:

Isn't it kul? :)

Apple MacOSX - Leopard (as in Leoutiful)

While not being particulary keen on Apple's products, I love their designs. Not all, but certainly most of them :)

One design that comes to my mind when thinking about it, is the well known crome bar with that stylish text effect.



It's not only used in Leopard, but also in apple's website, in the navigation bar. Don't you just love this clean, simple gradient?
Highlight under the letters gives depth - a really nice touch. Very delicate drop shadow makes the whole design soft and complete.

This example really shows that colour can be overrated :)

If you don't know how to achieve this effect, take a look at veerle's tutorial. You can find there detailed enough step by step guide on how to create a similar chrome bar. Both for Photoshop and Illustrator.

Initialization

Time goes by, hours run as minutes, deadline is comming.

Looking for inspiration? You know that something is wrong with the project, but you just can't figure it out?
I'm not sure if I  can help - but most certainly I will try :)

From now on, on this blog I will post design ideas, draw your attention to design cherries, and point out common design mistakes.

I am open to topic suggestions, and I will try to answer all design related questions.
It's the easiest way to learn through real world examples, so do not be affraid to post questions about projects you're working on.

They say: "there are no stupid questions", so do not be afraid to ask :)

How to contact me? If you don't want to use comments, I'm pretty sure my email is not that hard to find :)