yeah I figured that was the way, slynk...

Shoot, Retro. If there's a way...

Great tips there slynky.

To highlight lips I do something like this (though it may not be the best way, I don't know...I like to take short cuts. This may be dangerous;)

-->Select and Feather the areas of the lips you want to define

-->Create a New Layer while the areas are still selected and Fill with a lighter color, Opacity at something like 25%. Then contract the selection and Fill again, Contract and Fill, Contract and Fill....untill you have achieved the desired definition.

I'm such an idiot. First I spelt it "raser" in the heading instead of "raster", but what I actually meant was "vector". D'oh!

But I'm glad you guys could decipher what I meant!

Yeah I've tried the "arc" method, retrocity, but it didn't really look that great.

PSP is far more vector-friendly than PS, me thinks. I could create a vector circle then select the text "A" button, hover the cursor over a certain place on the vector circle, and the text would automatically wrap around it. And voila! circular text...

So I guess PS's poorer cousin, PSP, has something more to offer after all.

thanks guys. Looks like creating in RGB then converting to CMYK is the way to go. and I can always save a version in each mode.

I find tutorials distracting, especially some of the online ones; but that's just me and my poor attention span, my inability to consume large chunks of sometimes poorly written, confusing, or error ridden explanations. However, if you find you need tutorials I would recommend you shop around for a really good, simply written, yet comprehensive guide (good luck!). Actually, I think the Quickstart guides would be a good place to start.

NB: Manual guides can get pretty expensive, so make sure you give it a good read first, and make sure it is exactly what you want.

{Hey Slinky: and here I was bemoaning my 450 mhz!}

I'm not the best at explaining things but this just looks like standard layering to me. Not sure which part of the pic you want to replicate or your experience level....hope Slynky can give you a better answer!

The cover is obviously one of the most important parts of a magazine (except for the content, of course!) so you need a really striking image. #3 is good but the first two lack impact - close-ups of the machines would be better I think.

can you post a pic of one of the covers so we can see?

Okay, sorry to go on about this, but perhaps I should elaborate. There is a 'total design size' and a 'live print area'... If the 'total design size' is as specified by the guidlines, but the image - the 'live print area' centered within the 'total design size' - is shorter than 28", is that exceptable? Because technically the print would still meet the 'total design size' requirement. Does this make sense?

The print guideline specifies a rectangular-shaped image. Can a person submit a sqaure-shaped image so long as the width meets the size requirment (as the height would of course be less)?