Archive for the 'Thoughts' Category

Version Cue, what?

I was just reading through this post on creativebits about version strategies:

I know the Adobe package contains Version Cue, but I never really managed to grasp how it works. Every time I try to learn about it, all I find is marketing mumbo-jumbo instead of a simple tutorial on how to use it, and I get discouraged. If you know a place to learn about it, please share!

Just as I thought, a lot of creative professionals either don’t even know that Version Cue exists or if they do, can’t wrap their head around how it works. It’s sad because being a software developer myself, no one wants to think that all their efforts into building out a feature are lost to the general audience of that product. What makes Ivan post even more tragic is the fact that his suggested versioning scheme is very similar to what Version Cue does for you behind the scenes.

I’ve known about Version Cue for quite some time (GoLive Server anyone?) and had the opportunity to start using it last year when my team went from one (lonely ol’ me) to now about five people who need to access our graphical assets, designs, and page comps. I quickly realized when the team started to grow that we needed to arrive at a solution that would allow us all to share assets from a central repository and not trip ourselves up from saving over each other’s files. We were able to set up the server just fine and with any software, it took us a little bit of time to get comfortable using it but nowadays it works great for us.

I would like to know what all of you think about Version Cue and if a deeper dive into how to use Version Cue and what it’s doing would be helpful to anybody. Would it?

Sphere: Related Content

First Look: Adobe Media Player

First Look: Adobe Media Player. Yet another media player to rule them all. I think this could be a contender if it subsumes Flash Player and Adobe Reader.

(Via MacCentral.)

Sphere: Related Content

Somebody at Apple doesn’t like 10 minutes

alarmclock.gifSo I’ve been noticing this in iCal for quite some time that you couldn’t snooze an alarm for 10 minutes. You can do 5 minutes and 15 but no 10. Sure, I’m always for cutting down on options to make things simpler but this just seemed a little odd to me. Especially when there are plenty of times when I do want to snooze something that’s roughly 10 minutes from now.

ical.png

So even though this irked me somewhat I didn’t start devising my conspiracy that someone doesn’t like 10 minute increments until I revisited the Check Mail interval in Mail. Again, low and behold, no 10 minute option. Weird, huh? I guess 10 minute is just not short enough or long enough for some people.

mail.png

Sphere: Related Content

Please welcome Mr. Finnegan Nack

Please welcome Mr. Finnegan Nack.

(Via John Nack on Adobe.)

Congratulations John! Happy Fatherhood and hats off to the best product you’ve ever helped with. I don’t see how the next Photoshop is going to top Finn 1.0!

Sphere: Related Content

Happy birthday, Photoshop and Lightroom!

Happy birthday, Photoshop and Lightroom! “Is today, February 19th, ‘The Most Important Date In Digital Imaging History (Via John Nack on Adobe.)

It’s funny on Photoshop’s birthday, I find myself struggling to get mine to run. You see I just swapped out my original MacBook for a MacBook Pro. Since then, I first couldn’t get Save for Web to come up in Photoshop. I finally figured out it was a possibly corrupted preference file. Then in debugging this, I reinstalled Photoshop and a few other apps in the suite. They worked fine until I decided to run the updater. Now when I try to open a document in any app, it crashes spectacularly. Now I’m deleting, reinstalling everything, and now trying to reinstall again to see if I can get everything working for me. Ugh.

Update: So it turned out to be a comedy of errors (but not really funny). I swapped out my original MacBook for an extra MacBook Pro someone traded out at work. So I did a Time Machine brain transplant to the new (old) MacBook Pro.

The migration seemed to go okay until I tried to do some work over the weekend and realized the Save for Web window wouldn’t open up. The UI would dim like it was going to work but then nothing. I tried to reinstall Photoshop but that didn’t help. Continue reading ‘Happy birthday, Photoshop and Lightroom!’

Sphere: Related Content

Bring bad design to justice.

Design Police | Bring bad design to justice.

A downloadable PDF you can use to call out bad design. Pretty funny. (Thanks Dave!)

” (Via xBlog.)

The Casualties of CS3: FreeHand

ImageReadyWell, it’s pretty much official. As John Nack has posted on his blog, FreeHand will no longer be updated, if you haven’t already it’s now time to move over to Illustrator:

Adobe does not plan to develop and deliver any new feature-based releases of FreeHand, or to deliver patches or updates for new operating systems or hardware. Adobe will, however, continue to sell FreeHand MX, and will offer technical and customer support according to our support policies.

Continue reading ‘The Casualties of CS3: FreeHand’

Sphere: Related Content

Spraying Symbols in Adobe Illustrator

Spraying Symbols in Adobe Illustrator. Symbols are one of those great but overlooked features in Illustrator. A great tutorial for anyone spending anytime in the app. (Via Veerle’s blog.)

Sphere: Related Content