Hello world!

You may have heard that Microsoft is shutting down Live Spaces and offering to move existing users to WordPress. This is me, moved.

Do You Twitter?

Twitter is a social network mini-blog that allows you to "Tweet" with "Tweeple" who share an interest in subjects you’re interested in. MSExpression now Twitters!

If you clicked the link to MSExpression, and you’re not a Twitter member, you were taken to a sign up page. You have to be a member to participate. Once you sign up, you can search for people you want to follow. OnRamp101 has some great tips to help you get started, as does ProBlogger. Tweeple who find you can follow you, too. It’s a great way to make new friends!

MSExpression has been Tweeting links to new content on the Expression Community web site so by following MSExpression you can keep up with the latest news on Microsoft Expression.

And while you’re there, please follow me, too and I’ll follow you back!

Colorful Expression Studio Add-In

A few days ago Jonas Follesoe announced his Colorful Expression add-in for Expression Design, Expression Blend and as a stand-alone application. Now this is cool!

Installation is easy; just drop the .dll files into the Expression Design directory. Then you’ll want to edit the Design shortcut as follows:

"C:Program FilesMicrosoft ExpressionDesign 2Design.exe" -addin:Colorful.Design.AddIn.dll

When you launch Design a new tab, entitled Colorful, will appear next to the Layers tab:

Click on the Colorful tab and the panel populates with color swatches from the Kuler community web site. As you mouse over the color swatches, the swatches contract to reveal a copy button which copies the swatches to the clipboard. Paste the swatches to the artboard and you’re ready to drag the swatches to other objects on the artboard using the color dropper on the Expression Design toolbox.

It’s simple! Give it a try. The add-in can be downloaded from CodePlex.

Enjoy!

Converting an Image to Grayscale

A member of our Expression Design forum asked a popular question; how to convert a color image to grayscale in Expression Design. There are a few setting variations that net similar results, all of which are found in the Design’s Effects panel. Here’s how:

1. Insert an image to the artboard.
2. Expand the fx button on the Effects panel and choose one of the following settings:

Adjust Colors > Tint and set the Level value to 100 (Germaine’s suggestion)
Adjust Colors > Hue Saturation and Lightness and set the Saturation level to -100 (Fred’s suggestion)

I started with this image:

This version uses Germaine’s suggestion:

 

This version uses Fred’s suggestion:

Although subtle, you can clearly see a difference in the results. Use whichever method works best for you.

Please visit this discussion for more suggestions and insights on this subject.

Free Photoshop Book

For a limited time only, Sitepoint is offering The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques as a free download. The book is in PDF format and, as the title suggests, is about using Photoshop to create web graphics. While the book is intended for web designers using Photoshop CS2, the book works regardless of the version of Photoshop you’re using. You’ll need to supply your email address where you’ll be notified of the location of the download link. So hurry up and go get it; it’s an excellent read!

Quick Alignment Feature in Expression Design

Design has a quick alignment feature that I’ll bet you haven’t discovered yet. It works to align two object’s center points using the Selection tool. Here’s how it works:

First, turn on Snap to Points if it isn’t turned on already. (View > Snap to Points on the menu bar.) Then create two objects on the artboard, such as a circle shape and a square shape, and deselect both objects. With the Selection tool move the cursor to the center of one of the objects until the cursor looks like the regular selection tool with a tiny square shape on the upper right side of the pointer, like this:

Let’s call this a center point cursor. At this point, click and drag the object (notice that the cursor changes to the regular Selection cursor as you drag) to the center point of the second object until the cursor changes to the center point cursor again and the Snap to Point indicator becomes visible, like this:

Then release the mouse and your two objects will be perfectly aligned.

If you have more objects to align, select another object and drag it to the newly aligned group of objects.

Happy snapping!

Vampires and Werewolves

You wouldn’t think that grownups would even consider reading books about teenagers, vampires and werewolves but my daughter-in-law assured me that after reading the first few chapters of book two, in a series of books by Stephanie Meyer, I wouldn’t be able to put the book down. She was right.

In book one, Twilight, Bella Swan falls in love with Edward Cullen, a teenage classmate, despite the fact that Edward is a vampire and Bella isn’t. Edward is as much in love with Bella, a teenage klutz that repeatedly needs saving. Even Edward’s family, a group of friendly vampires, becomes protective of her when a few nasty vampire visitors conspire to do away with Bella after meeting up with her at the Cullen family baseball game. Imagine vampires, who can practically run at the speed of light, playing baseball in a forest!

Bella is heart broken when, in New Moon (book two), the Cullen family, including Edward, up and leave town. (Only Bella could have caused such turmoil by giving herself a paper cut from wrapping paper at a birthday party the vampires threw for her; you know how vampires get at the smell of blood!) In an attempt to help heal her broken heart, and because of a threat from her dad to send her back to live with her mom, Bella starts hanging out with Jacob, who becomes her best friend. Bella is also introduced to werewolves who, as you might suspect, don’t get along very well with vampires, nor do vampires have any admiration for werewolves. Werewolves, it turns out, hunt vampires and have no problem out running them.

I can’t tell you too much more about book two (New Moon) because (1) I’d ruin the story for you and (2) I haven’t finished the book yet. Suffice it to say, it seems that we have werewolves trying to save Bella from vampires and vampires trying to save Bella from herself! And Bella can’t even ask for help from human family and friends because none of them know about Bella’s non human friends.

Book three, Eclipse, is sitting in my book case and it shouldn’t be long before I get to it. I’ve only had New Moon for two days and I’m already more than three quarters of the way to the end of the 563 page book. The final book, Breaking Dawn, hasn’t even been published yet but is available to preorder for the August 9th, 2008, release date. These books are ‘edge-of-your-seat’ fun!

Color Palettes from Photos to Design

Expression Design enthusiast, Carl Camera, wrote an online program for converting ASE color palette files to XAML swatch files for use in Expression Suite programs. You can read about this on Carl’s blog site. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to convert Illustrator color palettes to the ASE palette files using Kuler, an online ASE palette generator, as mentioned in Carl’s blog article. I did, however, find another interesting method for generating ASE palette files. Here’s what I did:

First, I went to the Big HUGE Labs Palette Generator which asks you to browse to a photo on your computer that you want to convert to an ASE palette file. I used a photo with only a few colors, clicked the Create button and in less than a minute the following palette was generated:

 

I downloaded the swatches in Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) format and then went to Carl’s ASE to Expression Converter, navigated to the ASE file I’d just saved, pressed the convert button and saved the resulting palette.xml file. So far so good.

There are a few things you need to do before you can use the palette in Expression Design. First, you’ll probably want to rename the palette.xml file. Neither the Palette Generator nor Carl’s converter give you the option to name the files. So go to the location where you saved the palette.xml file and give it a new name; I named my file Winter Swatches.xml.

Next, you’ll need to open the Winter Swatches.xml file and enter a name in the Name field in the opening SwatchLibrary tag, which looks like this:

<SwatchLibrary xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/design/2007" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" Name="">

Otherwise, when you import the swatch into Design, the category name for the new swatchs will be blank. I entered the name Winter Swatches so that my SwatchLibrary tag looks like this:

<SwatchLibrary xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/design/2007" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" Name="Winter Swatches">

Then save the file. At this point you could import the new swatchs into Design but because Design will map the swatch file to the location where you saved the it, I would recommend moving the file to the default Expression Design Swatch location which, in Vista, is "C:Program FilesMicrosoft ExpressionDesign 2 BetaenSwatches"

Finally, launch Design, click on the More Swatches button, then the Swatch Options button, click on Import Swatch Library, navigate to the Winter Swatches.xml file and click Open. Your new swatch will be added to the More Swatches library for use each time you launch Design!

Thanks, for the great tool, Carl!

Photo Mishap

Granville Island is everything I remember it to be. The buildings are old industrial buildings which have been converted to shops. Remember the old corrugated metal siding? Some buildings have been left in their original state, such as this parking garage.

And others have been painted bright colors, like my favorite shop, Opus Framing and Art Supply.

The inside of the buildings are as much fun as the outside, like the public market.

The first two days I was here the weather was great and I took photo after photo before my brain cells went into idiot mode and lost every one of them! Gorgeous photos, too. It’s been overcast the last two days but now that I see the sun out again I’d better head out and re-take my photos. BRB

I’m on Vacation!

Tomorrow I will be headed for Granville Island. I’m so excited! An artist’s paradise, I call it. I’ll be there for 9 days.

I’m on a mission to learn to take better photographs. I sat in Barnes and Nobel and thumbed through every book I could find on the subject and finally decided on Digital Photography for Dummies. (I’ll write a review on the book when I get home.) While the island itself has many picturesque areas, I’m sure I’ll have to take my camera on a cruise

And, of course, being the pen and pencil junkie that I am, I’ll have to visit my favorite art supply store, Opus. I might even get there in time to take the Drawing for the Absolute & Terrified Beginner Weekend Workshop." (Note to self: pack water soluble pencils and crayons just in case.)

This will be a semi-working vacation as I plan to keep my eye on our Expression Design forum because, as you know, I’m also an Expression Design junkie.

See ya!