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.)
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I’m sure once everyone has a chance to download the Photoshop CS3 beta and digest it all, they will soon discover their favorite new features and enhancements. To get things going though, I thought I’d go ahead and try to list some of mine that quickly surface to the top:
Smart Filters - Finally we get non-destructive filters (well, sort of). Smart Filters build off of Smart Objects introduced in CS2. In order to use Smart Filters, a layer must be converted to a smart object first. Yes, a little clunky, but the team has made every effort to make it as seamless as possible. Choose “Convert to Smart Filters” from the Filter menu in order to have Photoshop CS3 automatically convert a layer to a smart object before apply a selected filter. I’m not completely convinced at how successful this feature will be consider how Smart Objects exhibit strange blending behaviors in CS2. I’m hoping this has been fixed up.
So I haven’t done any intense Photoshop or Illustrator sessions, but I wanted to tell you that once I installed the 2GBs of RAM, the overall experience is dramatically better. The base 512MB of RAM is just not sufficient for running the more RAM hungry apps. I had Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver up today amongst Entourage and a handful of Universal apps, the MacBook completely kept up with me and never felt like it was going to bog down.
Continue reading ‘More on the MacBook’
Sphere: Related ContentThe new MacBook is great. I happen to be writing this on my new black MacBook that I’ve had for about three weeks now. I opted for the black since it does feel more professional to me. Yes, it’s silly about the $150 premium for black. You’d think Apple could’ve thrown in something else to explain the cost and a better nod towards it being meant for the professional end. But as the Macworld editors have pointed out that this is a similar tactic to what they did with the U2 iPod. It is a price premium but Macworld also think it’s to help manage demand.
Continue reading ‘MacBook First Impressions’
Sphere: Related ContentA couple weeks ago I wrote about Adobe’s recent release of FreeHand to Illustrator migration guides. Although I posed the question if the writing was on the wall for FreeHand, my intent was never to cast out harmful speculations to the creative community, but rather to get the community to start considering what the “new Adobe” means to our beloved applications on both sides of the equation. Well, it turns out there was a bit more to the story.
Continue reading ‘More on the Adobe FreeHand Migration Guides’
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Adobe has just posted a rather comprehensive FreeHand to Illustrator Migration Guide (11MB PDF) as well as a brief technical resource paper (392KB PDF) to their Design Center. Although it’s thoughtful of Adobe to put together such helpful guides for longtime FreeHand users, one can’t help but think the writing is on the wall for FreeHand and its users. Nevertheless, the guides appear to be helpful and worth a look if you happen to be considering the switch.
It’s interesting to speculate what Adobe is planning on doing with all the competing products they now have in their product lineup. I think many of us felt FreeHand would be the first or obvious casualty of the acquisition but the other redundant products are a bit more cloudy as to which should win out or if one should win out at all. Instead have the two, like products come together; bringing the best that each has to offer to the mix.
Continue reading ‘Is the Writing on the Wall? Adobe Offers Migration Help to FreeHand Users’
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I’ve been somewhat keeping up with Lightroom but haven’t really given it the attention it deserves. I’ve finally got around to giving it a closer and really like what Adobe is doing with it. In my opinion, it’s the most Mac-like application Adobe has developed. It feels like it was designed for the Mac yet keeps its own identity or feel to it — instead of completely relying on Apple’s or their own UI precedents.
Here’s a few reasons why I think it’s worthwhile for just about everyone to try Lightroom out:
- It’s intended for people with Digital SLR who already are or may want to start using camera RAW.
- Since Lightroom is a public beta, it’s essentially free for a limited time while Adobe solicits development feedback.
- It actually runs fine on a PowerBook G4. For some reason I didn’t think it would but I was pleasantly surprised to find out it runs just fine on my li’l champ, a 12″ PowerBook.
- Oh, and now with the new beta, it natively runs on Intel-based Macs as well.
So go download a copy of Lightroom beta 2 now and see for yourself.
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Working with Dual Screens
Believe it or not, I’ve somehow managed to get by never working on two displays at once though all these years. Lately, I’ve had friends tell me they’ve made the switch to dual screens and said they would never go back. I never could quite grasp the appeal for working with two screens at once. I’ve always thought it would be more trouble than it’s worth. Well, today I had my first true experience working with dual screens. And although the jury is still out on this way of working for me, I’ve found it cumbersome at times and promising at other times. But ultimately it just made me think more about the whole working setup.
Continue reading ‘Working with Dual Screens’
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