A Wireless Mouse for Graphic Designers!

Apple Magic Mouse

I have tried wireless mice before and they have never worked for me for design work, just too much lag or inconsistent performance when doing intricate Photoshop or other similar work. I have been waiting for Apple to design a new mouse that takes care of the Apple Mouse (previously Mighty Mouse) track ball gunking issue. I love the way the Mighty Mouse works when the track ball isn’t having issues but if it’s been a while I know the frustration is coming soon.

Well then Apple came out with the Magic Mouse and it is Magic! I bought one Friday at an Apple store after making sure I could return it if it doesn’t work for my design needs and was assured there is a 14 day return policy. As soon as I arrived home I set it up and downloaded the driver update. I then cranked up Photoshop and low and behold the Magic Mouse works great! Finally I’m completely happy with my mouse and it’s even wireless. I was beginning to wonder if anyone would ever come up with a wireless mouse that is useable for Graphic Design.

The purpose of this post is to inform others about a wireless mouse that in my opinion works for design work but I’m also liking the functionality of the touch sensitive surface and gestures.

Apple Magic Mouse gestures

Pleases take the poll below

One of My First Wacom Drawings

©

This is one of my first digital paintings with a Wacom tablet. I have a Wacom Intuos 6×11 right now but soon I want to get a Wacom Cintiq 12WX.

colormunki from X-Rite & Pantone

colormunki is a color tool from X-Rite and Pantone which will profile your monitor, printer and projector and integrates with design applications to capture and create color palettes. You can capture colors from photos and anything that you can scan over with the device. Price is $499.

Check it out it looks cool.

Design Tools Weekly Podcast

Design Tools WEEKLY is a free weekly design news podcast.
They also publish a monthly paid subscription newsletter, Design Tools Monthly, which contains all the design news that you would have to dig everywhere to find. You can download a free sample issue and I think you will find that it contains a lot of good information.

My Allsop Mouse Pad

Recently I bought a new ALLSOP mouse pad and it works great. My old mouse pad would slide across the keyboard tray but this one has a rubber grip pad on the bottom that works great. The new pad also has a decent amount of maneuver space which is important for graphic design  and photography work. There is also a larger widescreen format pad at their site which might even be a better graphics mouse pad than the one I just bought.

Did Leopard Security Update Stop Sharing with Older Mac’s?

With Leopard my old G4 tower was showing up in my Shared area of a Finder window and I was able to access the G4 and share it’s screen. Yesterday I noticed that my G4 was no longer showing up in Finder windows? A Windows PC is all that shows up now. The only thing I can think of that might have changed things was the Apple Security update recently released for Leopard Clients and Servers? If Apple disabled this intentionally that is RIDICULOUS!

I can’t update my old G4 to Leopard and I am not going to go out and buy a new computer to share iTunes and backup files to. Has anyone else noticed this? I do want to make sure it wasn’t some other small change that I made.

OK I turned off File Sharing on my G4 and then turned it back on and now I have access again!

Whew I was nervous!

I thought about removing this Blog entry but I will leave it in case it can help someone if they run into this.

I Want A Drobo!

You ask what is a Drobo?

Drobo is a exactly what I have been looking for to manage my hard drive space and data protection requirements.
It has 4 drive spaces which your computer will see as one big drive. The drive spaces are hot swapable with 3.5″ SATA I or SATA II hard drives in any mix of drive sizes and brands and Drobo employs data protection. It manages all of the drives and data protection automatically without user input. I could keep trying to explain it but it would be much easier for you to watch the demo video and check out their site.

Also check out Drobolator a capacity calculator that shows you how much useable space you would have by dragging different sized drives into the on screen Drobo.

When a drive starts getting full or is having problems a light next to the drive let’s you know and you can just pull that drive out and put in a larger or more stable one. The only drawback that I see right now is that it only interfaces with USB 2 but they are adding more options in the future. Something like this is exactly what I have been looking for to add storage and protect data.

Here’s a review of the Drobo from Aperture Users Professional Network.

Pantone Goe System Unveiled

Pantone’s new Goe System adds 2,058 solid colors.
That’s 2,058 solid colors in addition to the current books.

More info from creativepro.com

- More info from Pantones site – (click image above to go to the Pantone site)

PANTONE® Goe^TM System

A new vision of color from inspiration to application, the PANTONE Goe System provides an extended range of 2,058 chromatically-arranged solid colors. Colors are easy to locate and specify using the GoeGuide^TM, adhesive-backed GoeSticks^TM or myPANTONE^TM palettes software. Create, archive and share color palettes using professional printed or digital palette cards.

Features:

Wide gamut of 2,058 solid colors

Ink mixing formulas and RGB values

Chromatically arranged color families

Ten Mixing Bases used to create Goe Colors

Colors printed with uniform ink film thicknesses using inks receptive to coatings

Intuitive naming system

Printed publications, digital and Web components

Color selection and palette building tools

Compatible with the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM®

Benefits:

Expanded range of solid colors choices

Easy to locate desired colors by chromatic arrangement or number

Inks are easily controlled onpress for improved color matching

Color data provided enables recreation onpress, onscreen or the Web

Provides professional tools for color presentation

Guide, chips or software formats offer flexible color selection options

Saves time when using auto-generated or Web-posted color palettes

Expanded color choices when selecting from both the Goe and PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM

Typography School Video

This is a cool video with points of view from veteran designers/typographers and students about the use of computers and the possibly declining use of traditional design/typography methods for both concept development and design implementation.

graphic design

x-rite to Purchase Pantone

x-rite “has entered into definitive agreement to purchase Pantone, Inc. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2007.”

from x-rite.com

graphic design