The Postcard Exercise For GDP 111

The postcard template is here.

How to cheat with the chicken and skunk

The long and the short of all this is that by ungrouping and outlining all of your elements, you can then see what you are doing. And you won't leave any stray colors behind.

The Folding Card Exercise For GDP 111

The template for this exercise is here.

One thing in particular occurred to me as I went over this exercise. The axe handle is not set up to bleed, even though this is a trimmed card. What makes that particularly vexing is that the handle is cropped off at the left side in the PSD.

The question, then, is what if this were for real?

You don't want to set yourself up for a you-are-the-professional-you-should-have-known situation. Never mind that the client signed off on the art. It looks wrong, and you did it.

So I distorted the handle by enlarging the canvas size, and then selecting the left side of the handle with the quick-select tool. I converted this to a vector, tweaked that, changed that back to a selection, and then did a layer via copy. I then fooled with it in Free Transform, and then the Liquify Filter, to elongate it.

The result looks pretty good to me.

But.

What looks good on a cheap monitor might be a glaring defect in print, or on a better monitor. So if you do something like this, be very conservative and careful.

Another approach to this problem would be to call the client and point out the problem. Of course, then he would answer with something like, "Come on now, quit bothering me with such stupid details. Aren't you just trying to impress me with how technically proficient you are? La-de-da."

GDP 111 Firefighter Exercises

The lecture video covering these exercises is here.

The exercise files from the Ryder book are here.

The template for the raffle ticket is here.

The template for the poster is here.

The folding card exercise is here.

A Good Source for Free Images on the Web

Here is a good source for free raster and vector images on the Web. Be careful to check the licensing on these images before using them.

SEE ALSO:

• Photo Pin, a search engine for free stock photos.
• Subtle Patterns. high quality, good-looking patterns.

GDP 111, Chapter 6

The Bank Card support materials are here. The squiggle stuff is here.

Chapter 5 Exercises

The family History exercise is here.
The beachball exercise is here.
The Drum & Bugle exercise is here.
The exercises from the CD in the book are here.