Veerle's blog

Today it is about a year ago that we started to have some fun with peeping into people’s offices. I think it would be fun to do this again. Many new people have arrived on this blog since last time and of course things change over time. In my case you’ll see that I don’t use my mirror doors G4 with 22 inch Cinema Display anymore.

Time for a bit of CSS styling fun! When working with CSS you need to have the ability to analyze your layout and see how you would place your div containers. That’s what differs from working with a classic table layout. You need a whole different approach and think more in terms of containers. Stop thinking of how you’ll slice your layout, start thinking on how to put each graphic into a container… How much containers do I need without overdoing it?

Some of you may know that Smart Objects work with stuff placed from Illustrator but that’s not all Smart Objects has to offer in Photoshop CS. When designing a mockup you probably work with images, then later in editing you scale the image to what you think is right. How many times have you dreamed of a possibility to scale it back with any loss of quality?

We all know that you really can’t do it, the image would pixelate and soften instead. This instance was true until CS2 entered the scene. Yes it is true now you can place a photo in Photoshop and make it a “Smart Object”, just select the layer of the photo and go to the “Layer menu” and choose “group into New Smart Object”.

When you do this it is linked to the embedded high-resolution original. So now when you resize it’s still crystal clear even if you scale it a dozen times. But wait there is more, you can also rotate images or even warp them, it always pulls data from the original so that everything stays crisp. It allows me to rethink the way I work and I can do things that weren’t possible before CS2.

One more thing, if you duplicate a Smart Object and make a change to the original all duplicate layers update automatically. So go ahead and update, warp, swap, etc. all without the fear of quality loss.

Yes the lords of the music industry are at again, this time in The Netherlands (and don’t get me started on the Stichting Thuiskopie). Geert and I are listeners of the Daily Source Code from Adam Curry and we love the Mashups, Hit Test from Jan Polet or the Backtracks Podcast Quiz. A fun way to give our brains a good workout.

Last month a remarkable building was inaugurated by Spain’s Queen Sofia. I’m talking about the new Valencia opera house “Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía”. Its nautical forms suggest its closeness to the sea and its setting in the former bed of the river Turia. The metal roof is like a feather held up by two supports.