Tagged: vector

Get cleaner strokes in Photoshop CS6

Photoshop strokes

There are two ways to apply strokes to shape layers in Photoshop CS6 — via layer styles, which have been around since version 6 (that’s the ancient version 6.0, not CS6), or via the all-new vector shape options. They may appear similar at first glance, but there’s some significant differences.

Bjango has put together an excellent post on getting higher quality strokes in Photoshop CS6 that’s definitely worth a quick read!

Easily create vector-based word cloud with this handy service

Word Cloud Generator

Every once in a while I have the need to create a word cloud for a project. The problem with most web services that create them is that the resulting artwork is rendered as a raster image. Not very customizable.

JasonDavies.com has a fantastic Word Cloud Generator that offers the ability to not only customize the appearance of your word cloud, but download it as a SVG file which you can open and further customize in Adobe Illustrator.

You can use keywords found on Twitter, Wikipedia, or enter your own custom keywords to create the word cloud. Customization includes setting angles of words, font, and number of words. To download your word cloud in vector format, right click on the SVG Download link and choose to Save Linked File As (making sure to add the .svg extension if necessary).

Create vector-based halftone and raster patterns with VectorRaster

VectorRaster

Vectoraster is a Mac OS X graphics utility for creating vector-based raster patterns and halftones based on bitmap images, an effect that has been popular in illustration and design the last couple of years, but is quite tricky to achieve without the proper tools.

The raster patterns and point shapes can be freely configured to produce many different styles. The resulting rasters can then either be exported as vectors to EPS or PDF files, as images to JPEG, PNG or TIFF, or simply copied into most graphics software.

VectorRaster is $29 ($12 upgrade from previous versions) and a demo is available for download.