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Flatbed scanners are truly one of the best innovations for the graphic artist. Ever since I got mine several years ago, I’ve scanned everything from paper comps to a cat (uh, for the texture of its fur, and no, I didn’t harm the cat during the scanning process). One thing some people with scanners might not already know is that they can scan 3D objects quite nicely. Try placing a pen or pencil on the bed of your scanner and scan it into Photoshop. You’ll be surprised how life-like the scanned image appears. One thing to keep in mind is that the depth of field on the scanner is very limited. Objects less than an inch deep will usually do well. Anything larger would be pushing the limits, although I’ve scanned golf balls that have turned out fairly well. As an example of what I’m talking about, I want to show you how I created the image of The FontSite Font CD. I first created the artwork for the CD in Adobe Illustrator (for silk screening onto the CDs themselves). Since the art was done, all I needed to do was create the look of an actual CD and incorporate it with the silk screen art. To do this I took the backside of a CD (the side without printing) and placed it onto the bed of my scanner. I then scanned it into Photoshop. Because I was scanning a real CD, I got that real CD look. In Photoshop I put the scanned image of the CD on a layer by itself. I used a layer mask to knock out the background around the CD to white. Then I imported the artwork from Illustrator onto a separate layer. In Photoshop 4, every time an image is imported, it is automatically placed onto a new layer (very convenient, most of the time). As the image is imported, Photoshop gives you the opportunity to scale it by dragging any of the four corners. I adjusted the silk screen artwork until it matched the size and position of the CD scan. I then adjusted the opacity of the silk screen art layer to 80%. This allowed some of the CD scan to show through the art, which ultimately gives it a much more realistic look.

CopyPaste by Script Software   Download Try-Out versions of CopyPaste for Mac and Windows.

For quite some time now Sean has been harping on me to install and try an extension he claims saves him a lot of time and effort. The extension is called CopyPaste. Well I finally gave in and installed it and immediately found it to be indispensable. CopyPaste is like feeding your clipboard steroids. It greatly extends the functionality of your standard system clipboard. With CopyPaste installed, you’re no longer limited to only one item floating around in your clipboard. You now have up to ten clipboard items at any time. This can shave tons of time off any repetitive task. The first project I really put the extension to the test was creating the list of fonts on The FontSite CD. After each font name, we listed weights found within the font. The common weights of regular, italic, bold and bold italic were used throughout the list. At the beginning of the project, I defined each common weight name as separate clipboard items and recalled them as needed. Man that saved me a bunch of time. Defining and recalling clipboard items is very simple. Normally to define a clipboard item you first select the type or item you wish to copy and type Cmd-C for Mac and Ctrl-C for Windows. With CopyPaste, you simple type any number (1–0) before you let go of the Cmd or Ctrl key and the extension puts the selection into the numbered slot. To recall that item type Cmd-V or Ctrl-V and then the number. This product is definitely a cool extension to have. And best of all there’s both Mac and Windows 95/NT versions available. Give it a try. (You win this round Sean). CopyPaste adds submenus to the Cut, Copy and Paste menu commands and displays the contents of each clipboard for a quick visual ID.