Category Archives: Graphics (downloads)

vector textures & graphics, photoshop presets and other stuff that can be found on Holter’s website for download

iPhone 5 Illustration, vector PDF

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iPhone5-illustrationWhen I’m working on a project and need some kind of image or graphic, I rarely can find an acceptible specimen to work with. I search every dark corner of the web and my own libraries for something workable, but it always ends in me doing my own illustration of the subject matter. Usually I spend less time doing an illustration than the time I spent searching. Here’s another one of those items that I needed today – an iPhone 5.

It’s all vector art created in Adobe Illustrator. The art is a PDF but fully editable in Illustrator. Feel free to download and abuse it any way you see fit.
Please let me know if it is to be used in any marketing or advertising materials.
Enjoy.

Graphics: A Freebie for You

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textures

ChicagoStreets Textures/Graphics

This is a sample of the latest batch of Vector Textures from my most recent trip to Chicago. I spent 80% of my time shooting manhole covers, storm drain grates, and other utility service portals. Some would say I’m nuts. I say maybe.

Whatever.

Anyway, I’ve cleaned up and saved this little group just for my friends that took the time to join my ProjectPIXL Facebook app. Sadly, some of my friends have about as much use for these graphics as Stephen Hawking does welding equipment, but I’ve posted it all the same. For those who have no use for them, maybe I’ll post some nice high res photos from one of my trips through the Alps or something. I hate to leave anyone out! Next time maybe I’ll upload a Speedglass Welding helmet for Stephen.

Go ahead and click right here or click on the photo to begin downloading the zipped PDFs. The .ZIP file you will download contains 3 Adobe Illustrator based files saved as PDFs and are fully editable in Illustrator or Photoshop. Do what you want with them, they’re yours now!

I have about 50 other great shots of Chicago’s coolest manhole covers and storm drain grates, as well as some interesting building and street textures that I am in the process of converting to vector art. As soon as I get them processed, I will have them available to everyone on the downloads part of my site. I’ll keep you posted.

Update to Free Graphics

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Symbols-radialgraphics

zip zip
1.06 MB

Ai Symbols Radials

1.0 Categories:
vector

Download File

After my post about the Adobe Illustrator Symbols earlier today, I decided to give away a couple more. Actually, they are on my Graphics Downloads page, but for the sake of making things easier on my friends that don’t like to click much, I am adding links to the downloads right here. You can download the Radials Symbols zipped file by clicking here or just click on the image.

One of the libraries is a set of Illustrator Symbols. I created a whole bunch of radial designs one day while trying to come up with something else entirely for a client project. In the process I ended up with a series of different radial graphics that actually make interesting little pieces of art on their own, and with a little help from some other designer who sees things from a different perspective, they could become something really interesting. They are symbol instances, so use them as I described in my earlier post and do with them what you want! Break the symbol link (control + click on a simple that’s on your artboard, select the “break link to symbol” option) and they are fully editable vector graphics that you can pick apart, rearrange, merge into other stuff, or whatever. Knock yourselves out.


zip zip
52.13 kB

Ai Swatches Carbonfiber

Categories:
Patterns

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The next one, as long as I’m in a generous mood, is a bunch of patterns that I created for my website backgrounds. Several of the patterns look like a carbon fiber texture (same as the background pattern of my site), some are dot patterns of varying frequencies, and there’s a diamond plate pattern also. Here’s the link to the zipped file: Patterns, or click on the image to get the download.
The same process applies for installing the pattern swatches into Illustrator: just drop the .ai file (after you’ve unzipped it of course) into your Illustrator app folder > Presets > en_US > Swatches. Notice the only difference is that it goes into “Swatches” rather than “Symbols”. You can also drop it into your User > Library > Application Support > Adobe > Adobe Illustrator CS4 (or CS3, or CS2) > en_US > Swatches. Activate it by going to your Menu > Window > Swatch Libraries > Patterns or User Defined (depending on which folder you put them in), and you’re good to go.

One more time in case you missed it; to get into all of my free vector graphics, vector textures, photo textures, and Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator Presets, just jump over to my Graphics Downloads page and take what you want. It’s all free. One day I’ll have enough money to pay the extra fees to get my ecommerce shopping cart active on my site and I will be charging actual American dollars for some of the more complex stuff. If I were you, and obviously I’m not, I would loot the whole damn page while I’m still mentally ill.
Who knows when I’ll come to my senses? It could be tomorrow (but the improbability factor there is very high), or it could be next month. Don’t be like me; do it before it’s too late!

Make the most of Adobe Illustrator’s Symbol libraries

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I was helping a friend with some Illustrator techniques the other day and Symbols came up. Long story short, I realized lots of Illustrator users never really take full advantage of some of the app’s built in features, like the Symbols. I decided to offer a little information on some of the ways I use the Symbols. I’ve also included a small sample Symbol library that you can download and use in Illustrator yourself. Click this link to download the zipped file.

Symbols Library - A Free Sample

Free Symbols -a preview of the samples

One of the things I find symbols most useful for is logos and other graphic elements that a person tends to use over and over every time you start working on a project in Illustrator. A good example is when I am working on a new project for a client, like a poster or direct mail piece for example, I always need to use their logo in the design somewhere. Rather than hunting through my folders of stuff on my hard drive for the right logo, and going through the process of opening, copying, pasting and closing the file, I keep a Symbol library of all my clients’ logos active in Illustrator at all times. All I have to do is drag the logo onto my art board from the symbols panel. Done. The best part is that a symbol instance can be used repeatedly in a document without making the file larger. Here’s how Adobe describes the symbol:

A symbol is an art object that you can reuse in a document. For example, if you create a symbol from a flower, you can then add instances of that symbol multiple times to your artwork without actually adding the complex art multiple times. Each symbol instance is linked to the symbol in the Symbols panel or to a symbols library. Using symbols can save you time and greatly reduce file size.

Symbols also provide excellent support for SWF and SVG export. When you export to Flash, you can set the symbol type to MovieClip. Once in Flash, you can choose another type if necessary. You can also specify 9‑slice scaling in Illustrator so that the movie clips scale appropriately when used for user interface components.
Note: For information on using symbols in Flash, see Flash Help. For a video on using symbols effectively between Illustrator and Flash, see www.adobe.com/go/vid0198.

After you place a symbol, you can edit the symbol’s instances on the artboard and, if you want, redefine the original symbol with the edits. The symbolism tools let you add and manipulate multiple symbol instances at once.

For more details on symbols and how to use them on Macs and Windows, visit Adobe Illustrator CS4 help.

Open the Symbols Panel


Creating a symbol is easy. You can use almost any vector graphic in Illustrator, but no placed images (psd, jpg, etc.). If you have a graphic or logo you’ve created and want to use it as a symbol, open the symbol panel if you don’t have it open already. Go to your menu, Window > Symbols.

There are a few ways to create a symbol from your graphic. Select your graphic, or group of vector elements, and drag them as a unit into the symbols panel.
You can also click “new symbol” on the symbols panel when you have your graphic selected. Either way you get the same result; a new symbol instance in the symbols panel and a dialog box, “Symbol Options”, where you can name your new symbol, select “Graphic” or “Movie Clip”, “Flash Registration” and “Enable Guides for 9-slice scaling”. By default, the “Movie Clip” option is usually selected, which is perfectly fine for what we’re doing.
The options are mainly for use of the symbol in Flash.
Again, go to the Adobe Illustrator CS4 help for more details on the options.

Create Symbol Instance

Create new symbol instance

Save menu in Symbols panel


Once you have your graphics saved as symbols in the symbols panel, whether it’s a single logo or a bunch of images (see the symbol libraries already available in Illustrator’s presets) that you wish to reference later, you can save your new group of symbols as a library that can be pulled up whenever you need it or open every time you launch Illustrator. To save the library, select every symbol in the panel window you wish to save, then go to the Symbols panel and click the Symbols Libraries Menu (icon in the lower left corner of the symbols panel) and select “Save Symbols…” at the top (see the image).

locate symbol libraries folder

Next, you’ll get another dialog window, “Save Symbols as Library”, prompting you to name your library and save it to a location.
For Illustrator to recognize these library files and display them as choices in Symbol Libraries menu, the file needs to be saved in one of two specific locations. By default, Illustrator should point you to User >Library > Application Support > Adobe > Adobe Illustrator CS4 > en_US > Symbols. You can also save them to your Presets > Symbols folder in your Adobe Illustrator application folder located in Applications on your system. Either location will work.

That’s it. Your new library is saved and you can go to the Symbols Libraries (icon in lower left corner of Symbols panel) in the Window >Symbol Libraries > User Defined (if you saved to default location) to open the library. If the library happens to contain graphics that you use frequently, go to the Symbol panel options menu (upper right corner of Symbol panel) and select “Persistent” to have the library stay open every time Illustrator is launched. If you don’t check “Persistent”, you won’t see the library open next time you launch Illustrator, but you can easily open it from the menu.

Hopefully you will find this useful. I sure do. If there’s something I missed that you’d like to know about, feel free to post a comment and I’ll follow up with an update.
For more free graphics and Adobe Presets, check out my downloads page. Enjoy!

Dropbox iPhone/desktop app

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I’m always telling my friends & family about apps/software that I’ve found, or maybe a cool new way to set up FTP folders for sharing files. I always try to convince them that it’s easy, no problem, but always get the same roll of the eyes and the “haven’t had time to try it yet”, which means I may as well move on and forget about it. When I came across Dropbox recently (my Cindy found it and showed me to be accurate), I saw immediately that this was going to be a simple, yet extremely usefull app that ANYONE can set up and get familiar with in a few minutes.

I began with the free Dropbox iPhone app that I downloaded from the app store. Setting it up is simple, and I can’t emphasize enough the SIMPLE part. Once it’s been downloaded and launched, all you need to do is provide a username and an email address and you’re good to go. I did it while I was waiting for help at a salvage yard. Then a few minutes later while I was searching the yard for parts, I snapped a couple shots of some cool junk, uploaded them to my Dropbox folder, and shared them with other people instantly. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to see the potential of the app.
For a little more control over content such as photos and folders of photos, you will need to download the desktop app. It’s as simple as the mobile app to use and install. When you need to share a batch of images with others, you simply drag the files into a Dropbox folder that sits on your hard drive like any other folder. The app puts a nifty little menu in your top menu bar (on a Mac, I’m not sure how it works on a PC) that you pull down to open your folder. Drop your files in and you’re done! Now you have access to your work wherever you are, and you can share a single file or an entire folder with as many other people you want just by selecting the file/folder and choose the “share this folder” option from the pull down menu. You then add the email addresses of the folks you wish to include, click “share folder” and you are done!
What’s really cool is that when you share a folder with someone else, or vice versa, the folder appears in their Dropbox account when they log in. No navigating through someone else’s FTP folders for your stuff. It’s accessible right from your desktop or iPhone.

It really is very simple. I love Dropbox and it’s one of the most useful apps I’ve found yet. If you need to share your stuff with other people or just want to go to work without remembering Flash drives or other portable drives, this is the way to go. I recommend Dropbox to everyone!

Art Directors Toolkit application: My thoughts…

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Art Directors Toolkit, for those who aren’t aware of it, is a little application that is part of the bundled software that ships with every Mac. At least I think it ships with every Mac computer; it’s been on every Mac I’ve ever purchased or worked on.

ArtDirectors Toolkit 4 - screen grab

ArtDirectors Toolkit 4 - screen grab

This is a snapshot of what it looks like.

Of all the agencies I’ve worked for and all the Art Directors that I know and work with, I’ve never known one of them to actually use this application. Most of the features this app has can be found within the primary applications we all use, like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, so why would anyone open up yet another application on top of the usual suspects that are eating up everyone’s RAM all day long? Additionally, the typical Art Director doesn’t spend much time exploring the folders on their machines just to see what’s in there, or curiously opening up programs to see what they are and what they do. So ADT is just another free, bundled application installed on Macs everywhere just taking up space.

I’m curious. I explore every folder on my machine. I open and run every application because I have to know what it is! Maybe it does something really cool and useful. Why would they install a bunch of totally useless apps on every Mac shipped?

Art Directors Toolkit is one of those apps that I found while exploring one day several years ago. I opened it, played with it, and found that it had some interesting features, but they weren’t enough to make it one of the apps that I use every day and can’t live without so it was closed and never seen again… until the next major upgrade. I’ve repeated this process through several generations of Mac computers and operating systems, until about a month ago. I was going through my Applications folder cleaning it out, backing up all of my older versions of applications to disk and tossing the useless stuff. Then I came across ADT4 again. I opened it, played with it for a few minutes and like every other time was about to quit, but found something that made me think. The Ruler. I’ve played with it before, but this time I just happened to be working on my website and needed to know how much space I had in a column between two Divs, and I thought about the Ruler. Perfect! The Ruler feature is pretty cool for several reasons: it’s “L” shaped, so it measures X and Y coordinates, but also calculates the angle between the two. You can set it units to any measurement; inches, centimeters, pixels, etc., and you can change it’s orientation so that the corner of X and Y is Upper Left or Right, or in the Lower Left or Right corner. You simply drag the ends of the ruler out to get the measurement, which works great when working on a website as it allows you to accurately measure any area on a page. It floats above all other applications so the Ruler is always visible, but you can change it’s appearance as well making it as noticable or as unobtrusive as you wish, and you can even change the opacity so that you can see what you’re working on right through it. Pretty cool!

ADT has a few other features that come in handy on occassion also. It will figure out proportions, scaling percentages and unit conversions. You can store color swatches, mix and blend colors and work with all the color modes to get accurate numbers, which is another great feature for website work. If you need to sample a color from one application and use it in another, ADT makes it easy to do so across apps. ADT also has it’s own little Application Launcher and Folder Drawer where you can store your favorite programs or directories and access them with a click all from within ADT. That is a feature of the newest version 5, however.

It was working on a website that got me reaquainted with Art Directors Toolkit and for that it proved to be very useful. Their version checker told me that there was a newer version available so I downloaded and installed it. Even better! This new version is V5 and has the launcher feature as well as some color swatch features that version 4, which ships with all Macs, doesn’t have. I was very happy with the latest release and I found myself using it every day. Things were great.

Then I booted up my machine one day last week and went to Launch ADT 5 while working on another website only to get a message telling me the demo expired and I needed to purchase a license. Bummed out, disappointed and broke, I was forced to go back to working with ADT4, the one that came with my MacPro. I wasn’t as happy, I was missing some features that I had gotten used to, not to mention all the color swatch groups that I had saved which I now had no access to, and every time I launched ADT4 it opens with it’s default settings, unlike V5 which saves your prefs and settings. I checked on the price of the update and it’s $40 that I don’t have, so resigned myself to working with the old version.

Contact Tech Support Page

Contact Tech Support Page

A couple days went by and I had finally come to terms with it, when upon launching the old free version 4 I got the message telling me my frickin’ demo had expired and I need to purchase a license!! Moving way beyond disappointment into the violent rage I experience every time I get ripped off and scammed, I contacted them to find out what to do about getting the old version working again or if there was an upgrade price to get the new one. A few days went by and no response. I read through their license agreement to make sure I wasn’t missing something again, and found that to get the old version working, I have two choices: I need to either reinstall my original operating system, which is Tiger – several OS versions back – and of course I’m running the latest Leopard so that’s not an option at all – OR – the preferred solution is to contact them and register my software, then they would supposedly send a license to me for the old version. So I contacted them again and tried to request a license. Their site reroutes you to the page where you purchase the new upgrade and asks for the damn license of your existing version, which I don’t have and can’t get because now I’m in an endless loop!!!!!!

So in the end I’ve concluded that if money wasn’t an issue, I would have purchased the upgrade. However, that was before my experience with their website and lack of customer support. Now I’m so pissed off that I seriously doubt I’ll ever use their software again. They will have to respond eventually and be really nice to me before I’ll even consider it, but based on my experience with contacting them and their Customer Support and Technical Support, I don’t think it’s anything I’ll have to deal with for a long, long time.

If anyone is curious or wish to help me extract Customer Support from these folks, the name of the company is Code Line Communications, and this is a link to their site: Art Directors Toolkit 5.

Go ahead, see for yourself. Send them an email and see how long it takes to get a response! Here’s their email address: Customer Support. I’m willing to bet we’ll have Bin Laden as our President before these folks take an interest in their customers.
Good Luck!