Rich to the right, commoners to the left

I have been using CorelDraw since it was released in January 1989. I consider myself an expert with it so it’s not unusual for me to use it when I need to do something quickly. The logo above and the Zoey the Cool Cat stamp at the end were done in CorelDraw. Quickly and easily, for me.

I know that Photoshop can do everything CorelDraw can do but since I don’t know how to do it, it takes longer. Lately I’ve been endeavoring to use Photoshop rather than CorelDraw, even though what takes me an hour in Photoshop would take me fifteen minutes in CorelDraw.

For example, here is a picture of stairs in San Clemente where I was this morning:

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After my home inspection, I went to the beach and railroad tracks. Directly above me was the exclusive neighborhood of Cotton Point, an enclave of multimillion dollar homes and the location of President Richard Nixon’s “Western White House.” Unfortunately, the enclave is so secluded, private, and gated that all I could get was a picture of a sign telling me that a home up there was for lease.

The first picture above reminded me of the presidential election last year, Mitt Romney’s 1% and we 99% commoners. Those stairs looked suspicious, especially since I was in one of those 1% communities and knowing that commoners throughout California have a right to beach access, notwithstanding the rich who often try to prevent access in and around their properties.

I wanted to remove the sign from the second picture, replace the text, and insert it near the stairs in the first picture. It took me 13 minutes to do it in CorelDraw. It took me one hour and twelve minutes to do it in Photoshop. However, now I know how to do it in Photoshop. Next time it won’t take as long.

Eventually I believe I’ll be able to do everything in Photoshop that I now do in CorelDraw, Corel PaintShop Pro, Corel Photo-Paint, and Image Resizer. Image that! One piece of software replaces four!

Oh, by the way, here’s the result:

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, BRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Zoey the Cool Cat goes back to the Summer of Love

Many years ago when I was living in College Station, Texas, I had a desktop publishing company. I created newsletters, flyers and such for companies, as well as work for students and teachers at Texas A&M University. That required that I have the latest and greatest software, and I had Photoshop, Photo-Paint, CorelDRAW, and many others. The three named were my favorites, though.

When I disappeared from Texas in 1993 and reappeared in San Diego, I no longer had a need for them. I still don’t have a need for them, but my wants are pretty strong. So once I found Eric Cooper to catalog my 73,000 photos for me, I went off and bought Photoshop CS6, Lightroom 4, Photo-Paint X6, PaintShop Pro X4, and CorelDRAW X5. I was comfortable with Adobe and Corel, so I went with their programs rather than the free ones like Picnik (now gone; see!), Picassa, Gimp, etc.

Each day I study those five programs to learn something new. I’ve already studied CorelDRAW this morning and am having just way too much fun. I discovered the Lens Effects, among which are Fish Eye, Heat Map, Magnify, and Custom Color Map, my four favorites out of the many pre-set lens effects. I can see them being very useful in my photography and blogging.

Whenever I’m playing around and learning, I always use Zoey the Cool Cat, and she came in very handy this morning. Here’s what I did, very easily, using the Custom Color Map lens effect in CorelDRAW X5:

 

Zoey the Cool Cat might have missed the Summer of Love, but now she knows what it was like. 🙂

 

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County? I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor with Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re just looking for a home inspector,
I can highly recommend Russel Ray; that’s me!

Is everyone becoming a Jack-of-all-trades?

 

I discovered at least one problem with camping out in someone’s blog: It can be extremely difficult to find more than one post, and camping, almost by definition, requires that there be a lot to read, like, and comment on.

It shouldn’t take five minutes to find your recent posts, and then, once I do, another two minutes to get back to the point where I can select another post to read…. EACH TIME!

I think I see the problem here and it’s something that happens every decade or so when new technology reaches the masses.

For example, back in the late 1970s computers entered the home, and in the early to mid-1980s, they became cheap enough that 80% of the people had one. Then the software arrived, which allowed anyone owning a computer to pretend that s/he was a CPA (Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel), or a secretary (Word), or a graphic designer (CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator).

Ten years later digital photography came to the masses, and just a few years after that they were cheap enough so that everyone has a camera, allowing those same people who were pretending to be CPA’s, secretaries, and graphic designers to now pretend to be photographers.

Fast forward yet another ten years and WordPress has made it so that it’s extremely easy to have your own web site. Those same people who were pretending to be CPA’s, secretaries, graphic designers, and photographers now pretend that they are webmasters and know how to design a web site to make it easy to navigate.

Is everyone becoming a Jack-of-all-trades?

Now if someone can just find a way for me to have a giant panda, I can pretend that I am a Zookepper.

 

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