Tagged: Adobe

Photoshop.com accounts migrating to Revel

Adobe Revel

Adobe has announced that current Photoshop.com storage and sharing accounts will move to the new Adobe Revel service starting April 2, 2013. The migration will be automatic.

Adobe Revel is a sort of mix of Apple’s old .Mac photo album feature and iPhoto. It stores your photos in the cloud, keeps them synced with all your devices, builds photo albums for viewing by friends, and offers minimal editing features.

Adobe Revel offers a free tier with limited uploading, and a premium tier that offers unlimited uploading and storage for $6.00 per month.

Fixing the grid alignment bug in Adobe Illustrator

Illustrator alignment bug

Have you come across this little gem of a bug when using Adobe Illustrator? You draw a box and apply a stroke to the inside of the frame, and the stroke appears to “float” off of the frame itself. As you can see in the image above, the actual frame object is the blue line, and my 1-pixel black stroke is way off. The bug has been around for a few years, and I’m not sure why Adobe hasn’t fixed it yet. Fortunately, the solution below fixes the problem.

When creating your document, click the Advanced tab at the bottom of the New Document dialog box. Untick the Align New Objects to Pixel Grid checkbox.

The iMac 27″ for graphic designers: part 2

27" Apple iMac

In part one of The iMac 27″ for graphic designers, I covered the reasons for choosing the late 2012 iMac 27” to replace my 2006 Mac Pro. As a graphic designer who works in Adobe Creative Suite apps all day long, with file sizes pushing the 1GB range, power is important. But as I found out with my MacBook Air, the Mac Pro just isn’t necessary anymore. Not only does the iMac have all the power you need, but it’s a much more elegant hardware solution, and significantly easier on the pocketbook. I also listed some of the pros and cons of the iMac.

Now I’m going to talk a bit about my experience actually using the iMac for the last two months. (more…)

InDesign color-related keyboard shortcuts

InDesign CS6Most designers know that hitting the X key switches between stroke and fill active states, and the / (slash) key fills the currently selected object with the color None in Adobe InDesign. There are a few other color-related shortcuts that, if you burn into your brain, can save you a good bit of time and mousing around on screen.

  • The , (comma) key will fill or stroke an object with whatever the current color is
  • The . (period) key will fill or stroke an object with the current gradient
  • The D key will fill an object with None and stroke it with black.
  • Hitting Shift + X will reverse the fill and stroke colors of the currently selected object. This is by far the most useful shortcut for me, because I’m constantly applying a color to the stroke when I wanted to apply it to fill

Fit gradient to text in Adobe InDesign

One of the cool new features of Adobe InDesign CS6 is the auto-size feature for text boxes. It’s useful for those of us who prefer to keep our layouts neat & tidy. But it also has another very functional feature; ensuring gradients applied to text appear the way you expect them to.

As InDesignSecrets points out: when you apply a gradient to text, the gradient is actually applied to the frame itself, it just appears to be applied to the text inside the frame. So the gradient can appear to extend beyond the text.

Gradient fit to text

In the example above, I have the same black-to-green gradient applied to the text in all three text frames. But as you can see, only the bottom one shows the full gradient. That’s because the frame itself is set to auto-size to fit the text it contains. The two frames above it are larger, and the gradient adjusts to the size of the frame itself, rather than just the text.

So the moral of the story is: if you apply a gradient to text, make sure the text frame itself is sized to fit.

Adobe offers new tools for creating a modern website

Adobe Edge tools

Most designers know about Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks. But did you know that Adobe offers a plethora of modern tools for website creation? You’ll have to be a subscriber to Creative Cloud, but there is a free version available. Adobe Edge Tools & Services offers seven tools that every web designer and developer will want to take a look at. I suspect that these tools are Adobe’s future in the web arena.

Edge Animate:
Create interactive and animated content using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Because you design in an environment based on WebKit, your content will display reliably across modern browsers and mobile devices.

Edge Reflow:
Create responsive layouts and visuals with standards-based CSS. Edge Reflow offers an HTML-based design surface, enabling web designers to accurately and confidently realize their visions throughout design and development.

Edge Code:
Code content and applications with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript using Edge Code preview, a distribution of the Brackets open source project. Work fast with an innovative code editor that works well with other Edge Tools & Services.

Edge Inspect:
Preview and inspect your web designs on mobile devices. With Edge Inspect, work more efficiently using synchronous browsing and remote inspection, and grab screenshots from all connected devices with a single button click.

Edge Web Fonts:
Get started with free web fonts.

Type Kit:
Use commercial fonts on the web.

PhoneGap Build:
Package mobile apps in the cloud.

You can get more information about all the Edge Tools & Services here.

Astute Graphics updates two popular Adobe Illustrator plugins

DrawScribeAstute Graphics has update two of their popular Adobe Illustrator plugins to work with CreativeSuite 6.

DrawScribe features two handy tools: InkScribe and Dynamic Sketch.

Use Inkscribe to replace the Pen and its related tools, and it will revolutionise the way you draw precise and calculated shapes. If you’re a fan of drawing more naturally in vector, but you’d like to speed things up, you’ll love the Dynamic Sketch tool. Whether you sketch with a Wacom tablet or a mouse, this tool provides even more power to produce dynamic vector forms from scratch, to modify existing shapes, and to go back at a later date to adjust the level of detail to your work.

VectorScribe is the ultimate vector toolkit for all designers and users of Adobe Illustrator CS3 and above. It allows you to edit and create vector artwork faster, smarter and dynamically through the use of tools such as PathScribe, Dynamic Measure, and Protractor. The Studio version of VectorScribe also includes Dynamic Shapes and Dynamic Corners tools.

Prices vary for the tools (see the individual web pages), and both offer downloadable trial versions to see if they’re right for you.

SubScribe Designer for Adobe Illustrator CS3-CS6 FREE!

SubScribeSubScribe Designer is a creative workflow enhancement tool for all designers working in Adobe Illustrator. It provides simple access to common drawing tasks such as lines to/from curve tangents or perpendiculars and circles and arcs defined by 2 or 3 points.

Another key function is the Orient tool which allows users to rotate or straighten objects intuitively, precisely and easily.

SubScribe Designer tools:

  • Circle by 2 or 3 points
  • Tangent Circle
  • Curvature Circle
  • Connect
  • Straighten
  • Arc by three point
  • Arc start-end-direction
  • Orient
  • Line tangent to two paths
  • Line tangent to path
  • Line tangent from path
  • Line perpendicular to two paths
  • Line perpendicular to path
  • Line perpendicular from path

SubScribe Designer for Adobe Illustrator is completely free. Illustrator CS6 installation requires Adobe Exchange.

Adobe releases Illustrator features for Creative Cloud members

New features in this Adobe Illustrator release include:

Package Files – a long-requested featurethat allows designers to automatically collect all the files used in an Illustrator project, including linked graphics and fonts, into a single folder helping make handoffs and sharing of projects more efficient and error-free.

Unembed Images – a new capability that enables production artists to quickly unembed images that have been embedded into an Illustrator file by other designers or customers, eliminating much wasted time in day-to-day production work.

Links Panel Enhancements – a new feature enhancement that allows users to access and track information on any artwork placed in an Illustrator file much quicker. What used to require multiple clicks to ensure all placed graphics meet necessary requirements for output is now surfaced up front.

Read more about it here.