Tagged: Adobe

Adobe Reader for iPhone and iPad

Mac & OS X
25 Oct, 2011

Adobe Reader for iOS Just like Adobe Reader on the desktop, now you can use your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to quickly view and interact with the widest range of PDF file types – including PDF Portfolios, password-protected PDF documents and even Adobe LiveCycle rights-managed PDF files with Adobe Reader for iOS.

Using Adobe Reader for iOS, you can open and view PDF files from email, on the Web or from any application that supports the “Open In” function. Through its highly intuitive user interface, Adobe Reader provides you with an efficient PDF viewing experience regardless of the iOS device you happen to be using.

But that’s not all. You can also interact with PDF files in a number of ways including searching for specific text in the PDF or using bookmarks and page thumbnails to quickly navigate to different sections in the PDF file. And should you need a hard copy, you can also print the PDF wirelessly using iOS AirPrint.

I’ve been using Adobe Reader on my iPhone 4 for the last week or so, and found it to work extremely well. Previously I was using a 3rd party app, but it wasn’t nearly as fluid or easy to use as Adobe’s own solution.

20% off Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 through December 31st

General
18 Oct, 2011

Adobe CS5.5 Deliver innovative ideas in print, web, interactive, and mobile design with Adobe Creative Suite 5.5. If you’re in the market for an upgrade, Adobe has a 20% off Creative Suite 5.5 going on now through December 31st. That’s quite a savings! For digital photographers, Adobe has also made a 30% off discount available on Photoshop Lightroom when you purchase it with Photoshop or a Creative Suite. Check the Adobe Discounts page for more information and other discounts.

If you’re running an old version of Creative Suite, this is a great upgrade. If you already have CS5, you’ll most likely want to wait until the next upgrade is available unless you’re planning on doing tablet, phone or ebook development.

Where to find Adobe Photoshop custom Workspaces on your hard drive

Photoshop
21 Sep, 2011

If you’re like me, you set up custom Workspaces in Adobe Photoshop. I like having certain panels located in certain places, some fully open, and some reduced to icon-only state. Saving those panel locations makes it easy to return Photoshop to your preferred setup quickly and easily if you move Panels around during a work session. It also allows you to have different configurations for different tasks, such as one setup for general Photoshop work, and another for color correction.

Recently I did a clean install on my MacPro, and wanted to pull my custom Workspaces from a backup so I wouldn’t have to re-configure them – a time-consuming task. But where does Adobe Photoshop store these custom Workspaces?

They’re found where you would probably most expect them to be:
Users/[your user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CS5Settings/WorkSpaces
Make a backup copy of this file for easy recovery if you decide to reformat you drive at a later date – it’ll be easier to get up and running again when the time comes.

And if you’re interested in finding where other custom files and preferences are stored, you can visit this knowledge base article on Adobe’s website.

The Graphic Mac Link Box #5

General / Internet
5 Aug, 2011

The Graphic Mac Link Box A collection of interesting or otherwise helpful links I’ve come across recently that you may not have seen:

9 Things you should do after installing OS X Lion
No operating system is perfect, though. At least, not for everyone, and especially not right out of the (non-existent) box. Looking to make your Lion experience that much better, we’ve bundled together a bevy of tips and tricks that you really ought to have ready on your first trip into the new OS.

What Potential Impact Can HTML5 Have on SEO?
How might HTML5 change the way we approach SEO? What are the possible impacts of HTML5 in search engine algorithms? A few questions answered in this informative article.

10 Free Slab Serif Fonts
You can never have too many fonts available. This is a small, but nice collection.

Instaport for Instagram
A simple way to export all your Instagram photos to other social services or your local hard drive.

40 High-Quality InDesign Tutorials
New to Adobe InDesign? DesignMag has a great collection of informative tutorials to help you learn the ins-and-outs of the most popular page layout and design application.

9 tips for emailing important people (clients)
Here are 9 top-notch tips for writing emails that make it as easy as possible for the recipient to send you a response.

Extensis updates Fusion to support Mac OS X Lion and Adobe Creative Suite 5.5

Mac & OS X
2 Aug, 2011

The Suitcase Fusion 3 update is available as a FREE download for the Suitcase Fusion 3 application on Macintosh and Windows operating systems.

This release updates Suitcase Fusion 3 for compatibility with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion).

The new plug-ins automatically activate the exact fonts required for each file using the patented Font Sense™ technology to create a unique fingerprint for each font. Adobe Creative Suite auto-activation plug-ins now include:

Adobe InDesign® CS3, CS4, CS5, and CS5.5
Adobe Illustrator® CS3, CS4, CS5, CS5.1 (shipping with CS5.5)
Adobe Photoshop® CS4, CS5, CS5.1 (shipping with CS5.5)

Existing Suitcase Fusion 3 users may obtain the new plug-ins through the Check for Updates features of Suitcase Fusion 3.

Mac OS X Lion and Adobe Creative Suite: what you need to know

Illustrator / InDesign / Mac & OS X / Photoshop
21 Jul, 2011

The question of the day: Will Adobe CS apps choke on Lion fur?

I received several emails since yesterday morning asking why I hadn’t posted an extensive review of Mac OS X Lion. I’ve already stopped replying to those emails, and thought it better to update everyone on the most common subjects.

Why no review of Lion on The Graphic Mac?

If you go through the archives here, you’ll find that I’ve never really reviewed the latest Mac OS X upgrades. The reason is simple. Everyone else already has it covered. Seriously, if you really want to read re-hashed press releases from Apple you don’t need me to do it. The features found in Lion are awesome. The updated interface is awesome. The new Mail is awesome. And for the most part, everything works just as before.

Just buy it, it’s only $30 and it’s awesome.

I’m running Adobe Creative Suite version X, will it work with Lion?

I run Adobe Creative Suite 5, so that’s the only version I can comment on with first-hand knowledge. In short, it works just as it did in Snow Leopard. And I mean that literally. Adobe CS apps don’t take advantage of any of Lion’s new features like Versions, Full Screen, Restore, and some multi-touch gestures.

There are a few issues with CS apps running under OS X 10.7, which Adobe has outlined in this Knowledge Base article, but for the most part they are minor.

Do the Adobe CS apps run faster or slower in Lion?

See comments above. They run just about the same as they did in Snow Leopard – whether you consider that fast or slow is a matter of opinion.

When will Adobe update their apps to work with Lion?

I work for an ad agency, not Adobe.

Is it hard to get used to running iOS on a desktop Mac?

No. But that’s because the idea that Lion is iOS for the Mac is way overblown. Apple has implemented a few features from iOS, ALL of which can be turned off or simply ignored. Other than the interface colors, and a few other minor tweaks, it’s not a whole lot different than running Snow Leopard.

That being said, if you’re unhappy with the direction Lion has taken, you’re going to really hate the next few years. If you buy a new mouse for your Mac today, it’s not far-fetched to say it’s probably the last one you’ll ever use (if it’s a decently made one, anyway). That spaghetti string of cables behind your desk is probably going to get a lot smaller in the coming years. Everything is going wireless – including the charging of your iPhones, iPods and other small devices.

I believe we’re on the front doorstep of a new revolution of change in the technology industry. In closing, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

Add Instagram effects to Photoshop for free

Photoshop
20 Jul, 2011

For those of you who love to use Instagram on your iPhone and wish you could have those same simple effects available to you in Adobe Photoshop – REJOICE!

X Pro II Photoshop action compared to the original Instagram filter

Daniel Box has made a set of Instagram Photoshop Actions that come extremely close to reproducing several of the Instagram filters in Photoshop.

They’re free, so give ’em a try!

Free Adobe Creative Suite printing guide available for download

General / Resources
12 Jul, 2011

The Adobe Creative Suite 5 Printing Guide is available for download

Many users of Adobe’s Creative Suite software are unaware that Adobe provides an excellent printing guide in PDF format to aid in learning the ins-and-outs of successful commercial printing using the Creative Suite apps

The guide is an excellent resource for new users, serving as a training manual, as well as a brush-up for experienced users. The guide covers a wide-range of printing-related topics in Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat. The free Creative Suite 5/5.5 Printing Guide is a 22MB download.

The Graphic Mac Link Box #3

General / Internet
24 Jun, 2011

The Graphic Mac Link Box A collection of interesting or otherwise helpful links I’ve come across recently that you may not have seen:

Prepare for Pixelmator 2
For those who want full featured image editing but don’t want the price tag attached to Photoshop, Pixelmator is the perfect app. Pixelmator 2.0 will be available later this summer via the Mac App Store as a free upgrade for everyone who purchased any version of Pixelmator via the Mac App Store. For now, anyone who doesn’t have the app can purchase the currently available version of Pixelmator on the Mac App Store for $29 and receive a free upgrade of Pixelmator 2.0 once it is released.

Control your privacy in Google Chrome
I love Google Chrome, it’s a great Web browser with plenty of features and extensions. The problem is, it was made by Google; so you know they’re collecting all sorts of data while you’re using it. Ahad Bokhari has a great tutorial on how to protect your privacy while using Google Chrome.

Photoshop CS5 vs. CS5.5
If you work primarily in Adobe Photoshop, you may be wondering what the difference between PS CS5 (v. 12.0.4) and PS CS5.5 (v. 12.1) actually is. The answer is: absolutely nothing. John Nack explains on his blog.

Google stands by 15-minute refunds
Google offers a 15-minute time frame to receive a refund on apps purchased in the Android Marketplace. While many users complain that it takes that longer than 15-minutes to download and configure some apps, it’s still better than Apple’s refund time of zero!

View Instagram stream on your Mac
Screenstagram allows avid Instagram users to view their Instagram photo stream as a screensaver on any Snow Leopard Mac desktop or laptop.

40 Online generators for web designers and developers
Web forms, charts, button makers, AJAX plugins, fonts, color schemes, CSS menus, and more. Tripwire Magazine has a list of 40 great generators to save you some coding time.

Prevent color shifting in your Photoshop image by adjusting only the gray values

Photoshop
21 Jun, 2011

When you’re using Curves, Color Balance, Levels, Hue & Saturation, and other color correcting filters on your Adobe Photoshop image, it’s always best to use an Adjustment Layer (the icon at the bottom of the Layers panel shown at right). Doing so allows you to make further adjustments to your image later on using the Adjustments panel, leaving the original image intact. It also gives you an easy way to adjust only the gray values in your image, thus preventing color shifting.

Using the Luminosity Blend Mode allows you to adjust only the gray values in your image

First create an adjustment layer using the color adjustment of your choice. In the example above, I’ve chosen Color Balance. Next use the Blending Mode drop down menu at the top of the Layers panel to set the layer blending mode to Luminosity.

Now when you tweak the settings in your Adjustments panel, Photoshop will limit the changes to only the gray values in your image. As you can see in the image above, leaving the Blending Mode of the Adjustment Layer set to Normal introduces a lot of color shifting in the image. By changing it to Luminosity, Photoshop prevents it from taking place.