Attention art directors: another reason to get your publisher to spring for the new Adobe CS5

At most small to medium sized publishing companies the two biggest issues art directors have is time and computers (hardware and software).

There is not much you can do about "time", a deadline is a deadline, right? But computer issues are often the most contentious. Trying to explain to your publisher or executive management why getting a new, more powerful computer, or getting the latest edition of Photoshop is a good investment is frustrating.

I thought about all the battles my art directors had trying to get new equipment and software -- I thought I was supportive because I recognized that upgrades in this area often saved time and improved quality -- but budget constraints most often won out.

So here is a little gift to those art directors about to go into the bosses office to explain why getting the newest copy of Adobe's Creative Suite software is a good idea. This video from Adobe's John Nack blog shows how you can tackle that old problem of getting hair to mask properly -- pretty amazing stuff.