The Synergy Group provides recruitment, training and consultancy solutions to public and private sector employers across the UK. Established in 1997 Synergy has successfully grown by delivering its services with integrity and professionalism and is now firmly established as one of the leading providers of staffing solutions in the country.

Organisations within The Synergy Group are able to provide a wide range of services to help resolve resourcing and skills issues:

The Synergy Group – public and private sector jobs and contracting

Training Synergy – people, resources and services for training projects and managed training programmes

Synergy has built on its initial success with steady year-on-year growth. With an annual turnover of around £34 million, Synergy is a substantial business – but not one that is so large that it has lost its sense of community. We’re big enough to have all of the quality processes in place that you’d expect from a large recruitment company, but small enough to not get bogged down in the red tape that hinders the responsiveness of some organisations. Synergy is a financially stable organisation which is 100% debt-free.

If you are interested in having your business rebranded, please do not hesitate to contact us for a no obligation quotation.

Photoshop CS5 does have new features, but for those working with huge files, the 64-bit part is essential. It means that working with bigger files can be much faster, because operations can be performed in RAM.

The days of the scratch volume are over for Mac Pro users with adequate memory (excepting really monster jobs exceeding 60GB or so).

Memory usage

Memory in 32-bit CS5 is limited to 2100MB, nearly 1GB less than with Photoshop CS4 (3072MB vs 2100MB).

Problem is, many 32-bit plugins require 32-bit mode until new versions arrive. The only workaround seems to be run both CS4 and CS5 simultaneously.

The Cache Tile Size setting is a load of crap also. I mean… makes no sense!? The recommended default setting yields hugely impaired performance. And using a preset is well running blind. Adobe states “To quickly optimize these settings, click a preset…”. Rubbish!!! This is a careless decision (or maybe mistake). Something else should be done, perhaps maybe CS5 figuring it out automatically (self analysis).

Let’s just say that the performance levels were not to my liking. In fact, Photoshop CS5 performed worse than CS4. I was even more confused because Adobe touted the 64-bit nature of Phototshop CS5, which was supposed to bring all sorts of performance gains. I saw none of these, and in fact the opposite.

The Rotate View tool was sluggish and jumpy, brush resizing via the keyboard was jerky at times, zooming in and out was full of hiccups and lag.

Lest you think I’ve been holding on to some old outdated machine, I’m running a Mac Pro dual-quad 3.2 Ghz with 24 GB of RAM. And like I said, CS4 was blazingly fast for me. I was really disappointed in the upgrade. In fact, I was reverting back to using CS4 for my Photoshop needs.

Reaching the end of my rope, I finally did a Google search. I found the Mac Performance Guide article all about Optimizing Photoshop CS5 Performance.

The series of articles explains that most of the tips for CS4 were valid, but there were a few things specific to CS5 that could use a little work. In particular, the one tip that helped me was the Cache Tile Size tip. Seems this obscure little setting in the preferences has a huge impact on Photoshop CS5’s performance, and oddly it’s set by default to a number that kills Photoshop’s performance by up to 80% in some cases!

There’s also a Memory Allocation issue which — as the author suggests — is a bug and needs to be fixed by Adobe.

For general use, I’d probably use a history of 50 or so, because I like history then to these settings…

1024kb Cache   –   15 History   –   3 Cache levels
don’t even think about using 128K tiles with big files.

When asked by our friends at ITOL in Liverpool to design their monthly magazine only available to subscribers and its members, we jumped to work right away. For more information on how to become an ITOL Member or Fellow, please click here.

We are proud to announce our newest client ‘The Institute of Training and Occupational Learning’ (ITOL).

ITOL is a rapidly growing International Institute, and is now the professional body of first choice for those specialising in training, development and occupational learning.

]]> http://slightlycurvedcube.co.uk/blog/more-free-wallpapers-to-download/feed 0 http://slightlycurvedcube.co.uk/blog/360 http://slightlycurvedcube.co.uk/blog/360#comments Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:35:17 +0000 admin http://slightlycurvedcube.co.uk/blog/360

The first impression any potential customer will have of your brand is through the image it projects. We create logos for businesses that are solid, trustworthy and exude professionalism.

The logo is the face of any brand – a first impression – so the design is very important. When executed perfectly, ‘the logo’ is an extremely powerful asset to a client’s brand that should shine through with prowess. However, creating a brilliant visual representation of a brand requires much more than just graphic-design and a copy of Adobe Illustrator.

Slightly Curved Cube know that like any work that involves a set of specific skills, logo design requires plenty of practice and experience for it to be successful; knowledge is definitely power for any agency, and we have that knowledge.

You see – the whole point of creating a fantastic logo is to build your brand recognition. So, how do we go about doing this? Well, it varies from case to case but the goal with the logo is for the average person to instantly call the brand to mind. A few good examples of this are definitely the logos for Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald’s, and Nike. Because just a glimpse of any of these logos is all you need to recognise the brand. The key to making a popular and recognisable logo is to combine size, style, colour, typography, and most importantly… originality.

Slightly Curved Cube never overlook any of these during the design process, as this would impair the quality of your final design.

Our process…

Our logo packages are concise and thorough. We carry out a fair bit of research before we design anything. We look at your competitors to see how you and your brand can be ‘different’ from your competitors and therefore shine through.

Slightly Curved Cube will sketch ideas on paper first to get a better understanding, as preliminary sketches are an important first step in designing a more effective logo. We will send you the sketched artwork via email before we commence ANY computer work.

From the initial sketches, we will initially supply our clients with 6 logo concepts as a PDF. Each will vary in style, but stay within the aesthetic qualities your target market. Then from the 6 logos delivered, we ask you to choose one and the chosen concept will be refined and tweaked with unlimited revisions until you receive the desired effect.

Our logos from £195 and full branding packages (POA), so why not contact us today? ]]> http://slightlycurvedcube.co.uk/blog/360/feed 0 http://slightlycurvedcube.co.uk/blog/charity-website http://slightlycurvedcube.co.uk/blog/charity-website#comments Wed, 16 Jun 2010 09:52:54 +0000 admin http://slightlycurvedcube.co.uk/blog/?p=344