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Educational discounts

Photo ©2020 Matt Johnson https://www.behance.net/MATTJIPHON5187

Schools and colleges may be eligible for a significant discount on the Productivity Pack set of plugins. For example, the University of Wisconsin would qualify for at least one free corporate license covering 25 students across all UW campuses in the state. A private school such as Marquette University High School would qualify for at least one studio license covering 10 students at their Milwaukee campus at 50% off.

To apply, simply fill out the form on the main menu at Support > Educational Discount.

Graffix Educational Discount

Thank you to all of the instructors who give so much and help so many.

Improved Transform tool

Coercing one shape to fit over another is fairly simple when everything is at right angles, but too often I found that’s just not the geometry we’re dealt. For those times, I added some new functionality to the Transform tool in the ToolShed plugin collection.

Say you need to add more detail to an object and have a scanned image to trace, but the image is out of proportion and your art is at some random angle. No problem! First, move the scanned image so some point matches the art you’re aligning it with.

Rotate the scanned image so that the centerlines align, then Option- or Alt-click the anchor point to set a custom anchor for ToolShed’s Transform tool.

Holding down the Option or Alt key to force scaling to use your anchor point, adjust the bounding box’s horizontal and vertical handles so that your images align.

If the bounding box of your raster object isn’t aligned with the axis of the image itself, no problem. Hold Option or Alt and rotate the axis where you want them. Now you can size the object without the hassle of measuring the angle and setting a custom constrain angle in Illustrator’s preferences.

And it works on any Adobe Illustrator art object that can be scaled or rotated, not just images. Now it’s easier than ever to get your geometry to align! Download ToolShed and try it out with the 1,000 free trial uses. That’s right, a thousand, and they don’t expire after some too-short period that seems to expire just before you have time to really test it! It’s only $15 for more tools than you can count on both hands.

Subscription plugins?

Everyone who pays for software seems to have an opinion on subscription models, not often positive. I can understand, though, how for some people it actually works pretty well. Let it go on the record that I would never (as in never ever) move my Illustrator plugins to a subscription-only basis, but timed licensing is supported by the online authentication software I have (kudos to NSP-Code for a great product), and it got me thinking that it may be a nice option to offer. Sometimes a job arrives with CAD files that could make a nice starting point for the project. Rather than manually trace it all, it might be nice to “rent” Concatenate for the duration of the project and reuse many or most of those vectors. I think a lot of people would agree that the twenty bucks for Concatenate is pretty small compared to the savings it returns in its first project alone. Or when you divide a ten-dollar plugin into a few months’ fee, it pretty much comes down to pocket change. Then again, maybe there’s a situation that works for both parties, like one year’s access to Productivity Pack or a site or corporate license. I’m open to suggestions!