25 Great Examples of Night Photos

Each photography scenario presents its own unique circumstances. When shooting photos at night, it can sometimes be tough to capture the exact lighting you want. The folks at DesignKnock did a post showing 25+ Best Examples of Night Photos. Take a moment to look carefully at the lighting of each photo. Some of them are long exposures that use the light that was available. Others use a special camera or even a flashlight.

I've included a thumbnail of the solar eclipse picture I took last week. While the picture appears very dark, it is because the bright light of the sun made it an extremely short exposure. The funny thing is that this was taken by hand holding a point and shoot camera. I did shoot a few shots with my DSLR and I wasn't nearly as pleased with them. When unique situations like an eclipse happen, make sure to be prepared with multiple options.

Xara Photo and Graphics Designer MX and Xara Designer Pro X

Xara has released the latest versions of their Photo & Graphic Designer MX and Designer Pro X. Even though the names may indicate a tenth version, they are actually version 8. I've included the full press release later in this post if you want all the details. I will give you a quick overview of what I find interesting in the new Designer Pro X. Photo & Graphic Designer is very similar to Designer Pro X but is missing the "pro" features. Look carefully at the product pages for each product to determine which one best meets your need.

I know I hear from users all the time that they want a product that can do all vector and bitmap editing in a single program. Admittedly, I'm very happy having separate vector and bitmap editing software. Xara Design Pro X does include a wide variety of bitmap editing. In the latest version a new feature has been added for selecting and erasing colors. This makes it much easier to mask or select areas of a bitmap for further editing. After selecting, the new hue adjustments can be quite helpful.

Some other cool page layout related features have been added. My favorite is certainly the text styles, simply because this is a feature I use so often in other software. This makes it very easy to update the look of text by simply changing the styles you have assigned. A related feature allows you to have inline graphics. Think of a small graphic, such as an icon, that you want to put in the stream of text so that it flow just like a letter.

Loyal readers know that I am not a fan at all of Corel Website Creator. Xara Designer Pro X allows you to create Web pages in a WYSIWYG environment while still outputting relatively clean Web code. Along with the design environment are a number of widgets you can insert for more advanced functionality. One of the more exciting new features is the ability to embed fonts in your Web pages so you aren't limited to the few "web-safe" fonts.

One area where previous versions have always excelled is speed. Xara Designer Pro X is still by far the fastest illustration software out there. With the new features added in this latest version, it is definitely a tool you should evaluate to see if it meets your needs. There is a free trial available and it has good bang for the buck if you decide to purchase.

Below is the press release for the new versions.

New Xara Photo & Graphic Designer MX and Xara Designer Pro X (version 8) Xara today announced the availability of their new version 8 Designer products - Xara Photo & Graphic Designer MX (v8) and Xara Designer Pro X (v8).

Both products are super-fast, easy-to-use single integrated programs that provide all the tools for a range of graphic design tasks that would normally require three or more separate 'suite' programs; illustration, photo editing, advanced page layout, web graphics and animations – and in the case of Designer Pro building complete websites and online presentations.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer MX and Xara Designer Pro X are the world's highest performing graphics software titles, with their speed enabling more complex and realistic graphics to be created more easily and in less time.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer MX is ideal for any graphics enthusiast, small company or academic user that requires the best value general purpose photo and graphics design tool.

Xara Designer Pro X is the flagship of the Xara product line, the ultimate all-in-one creative tool. As well as the website design features, it provides tools that might typically be required by professional designers such as PANTONE®, CMYK, color separations and PDF/X. It also supports multiple processors for even faster performance.

New features in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer MX and Xara Designer Pro X include:

• Powerful Color Erase /Selection to enhance (change color, adjust brightness, blur, etc) or make parts of photos transparent based on the selected color.
• Photo hue adjustment to change the color tint of any part of a photo.
• An innovative new Shape Erase Tool that can perform both vector erasing or path adjustment, as well as 'soft mask' painting to perform detailed soft-edged erasing of vector, text and photo objects.
• A new Text Styles feature that offers an efficient and powerful way of controlling the global appearance of text. Generates CSS compatible styles.
• New Inline Graphics for embedding symbols and icons into text.
• Many new Template Designs including a selection of modern new print templates, such as greeting cards, brochures, business cards, CD covers and certificates, plus many new categorized clipart designs.
• Many other Photo Tool improvements and additions including the integrated Panorama stitching tool, a more efficient 'Optimize all images' function and ability to optimize images upon upload.
• Media Exchange. All titles in the MAGIX/Xara range can share media files with each other and with some important third party services such as Flickr and Facebook.

In addition to the above features Xara Designer Pro X includes:

• A Shape Builder Tool to 'paint' onto an existing shape to enlarge it, add new areas or adjust the shape or outline. This compliments the new Erase Tool to provide two basic new shape editing tools, that are entirely vector in nature (resolution independent, fully editable) that can edit vector outlines of shapes, or provide soft air-brush like painting and erasing.
• Smart object positioning and page resizing which automatically adjusts the size of a web page and position of objects as you enter more text
• Embedded fonts – website creators are no longer limited to a small list of websafe fonts, but can use just about any font (assuming the font allows website embedding).
• New re-sizable JavaScript Widgets, such as smooth photo slideshows and an interactive Chart Widget for embedding high quality charts into documents or websites.
• MP3 player widget - just drop an MP3 audio file onto the page, and this will embed a fully cross-platform compatible audio player (including iOS for iPad and iPhone) into your website. This joins the existing MP4 player that does the same for MP4 video files.
• Create numbered lists and graphical bullet points - using Xara's vector graphics capabilities you can now design your own graphics for use in numbered and bulleted lists.

Managing Director, Charles Moir says "The Adobe approach of selling separate, expensive programs to perform the common creative editing operations is fundamentally wrong in our opinion. Modern documents (whether printed, PDF or web document) should not need separate tools to edit the text, the graphics or the photos. This is not just a costly process, in time and money, but totally inefficient. Xara's approach offers not just dramatically better value, but we believe it makes the software considerably faster and easier to understand and learn"

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer MX 8 costs just $89
Xara Designer Pro X 8 costs just $299

Upgrades from v7 to Xara Photo & Graphic Designer MX 8 cost $45
Upgrades to Xara Designer Pro X 8 cost $99

It operates on Windows XP/Vista/7

Pincoya Black Font

I love typefaces that are a little outside of the norm. Today's font, Pincoya Black, is designed in the style of the Spanish Civil War according to the designer. Each of the lowercase vowels features a large underscore with the letter elevated.

What do you think of these fonts? Post a message on the Graphics Unleashed Facebook page and share your thoughts or create a revolutionary poster and post it on our page. Do you have any friends that like free fonts? Of course you do! Can you suggest even one of your friends become fans of the Graphics Unleashed Facebook page. That way they can enjoy the fonts we feature.

If you've missed some fonts, don't forget to visit Fonts Unleashed where we keep a list of all of the fonts available for download.

E-Mail Facts and Fiction, Problems and Solutions

Not a day goes by without my e-mail inbox receiving a number of questions and comments. Many times one e-mail alone does not make for a very informative blog post. Yet combining a few of them together can have many valuable nuggets of information. Thus I am going to start a new label called "Foster's Mailbag" and I'll occasionally discuss some topics of interest. We'll start the mailbag out with several issues in regards to e-mail itself.

First up is the all important subject of spam. I don't know of anyone who likes it. I suppose the criminals sending it like it, but most of us hate it. On the average day, I waste at least 30 minutes fighting spam. Sure, I could turn up my filters to block more, but then I'd miss a few "good" e-mails. Yesterday I was trying to have an e-mail conversation with a vendor with whom we regularly do business. Every message I sent, no matter the content, was bounced with the accusation of the messages being spam. There is also a huge difference between true spam and e-mail you simply aren't interested in reading. Legitimate senders give you the option to unsubscribe. One of the things you must do is whitelist (tell your spam filter to let e-mail through) people with whom you do wish to communicate! I covered a lot more about the plague of spam and whitelisting in the post last year entitled I Hate Regular Spam and Facebook Spam. I encourage you all to read it. If nothing else, can you please whitelist the two addresses shown in the graphic above right?

Another problem I see on a regular basis is people entering known wrong e-mail addresses when they create accounts. Then they are frustrated when they don't receive the product they expected. If you don't give us a proper address, we can't send it to you! Of course there is also the dreaded typo. A customer makes a mistake typing their own address and then is frustrated when they don't get a response. We are all guilty of these typos so I can only encourage you to check and double-check what you've typed anytime you are including important information.

The last thing for today was a very interesting problem. A customer wrote above some frustrations with links to videos I had included in an e-mail. Only one problem, I hadn't included any links to videos. This customer was using a yahoo.com address so I suspected Yahoo was trying to be helpful by adding all the extra junk. As a test, I sent an e-mail to my own rarely used Yahoo address. Sure enough, it added all kinds of extra junk. It was using the small icon (with link to the Graphics Unleashed YouTube Channel) and grabbing links to all the videos in our channel and adding them to the e-mail. I have included a screenshot from the bottom of the Yahoo e-mail below. Note that I've added yellow shading over the stuff that Yahoo added. Ah, another day with the joys of e-mail.

Computer Tool Kit Is Necessary For Quick Fixes

Every computer user or at least every small office needs to have a computer tool kit handy. You just never know when you are going to need to make a quick fix. It doesn't have to be something complicated, maybe as simply as screwing or unscrewing a cable to the back of the computer. There are certainly times when you may want to quickly replace a graphics card or a failing drive. While a tad more complicated, still pretty easy to do if you have the tools handy.

You can certainly buy a few separate tools, but then you face the challenge of keeping them together. One of the best things about the Belkin 55-Piece Computer Tool Kit is that it gives you the tools you need in a well organized zipper case. It can easily be stored in a drawer or on a shelf until time to put a tool into use. If you don't already have a good kit near your desk, consider getting this kit.

Popular Logos With Hidden Meanings

It seems to me that I find designs I have trouble creating to be some of the most fascinating. Logos are certainly not my strong point. Delivering a simple graphic that speaks for a company or product is a daunting task. Logos also have to work well at all sizes, in single colors and even when stitched on a shirt. That's what makes the 27 Popular Logos With Hidden Meanings covered by Smashing Hub so impressive to me.

FedEx has always been one of my favorites because it is so incredibly simple and yet the hidden symbol means so much about their business. Goodwill is one I'd never noticed before. While it is a bit more complex, one of my favorites is the Pittsburgh Zoo. Do you have a favorite on the list? Or what about a favorite logo that isn't on the list? Post a comment on the blog or the Graphics Unleashed Facebook Page and tell us about it.

EZMetrics 3 Plug-In Updated For CorelDRAW X6

Do you create technical illustrations in CorelDRAW? Or do you ever need to put your drawings into isometric, dimetric or trimetic views? EZMetrics 3 is a plug-in for CorelDRAW that makes it very easy to convert your artwork into these views.

It has recently been updated to work in both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of CorelDRAW X6. That's in addition to CorelDRAW X3, X4 and X5. If you haven't yet tried it, a free 14-day trial version is available.

Create an orthographic view of your artwork and then click the icon representing the view you want on the cubes in the interface. If you want specific angles, you can even create your own custom views. Once in a view, you can extrude the objects in that same angled view by entering the extrude distance and clicking any of six directions. Objects can also be moved in that view plane in those same six directions.

At the bottom of the dialog are a list of transformations and you can undo those transformations as desired. The best way to learn how it works is to give it a test drive for yourself.