DesignWell

On Saturday, February 9 at 11:30 am, I spoke at BarcampIndy 2008 on Graphic Web Design and Cascading Style Sheets. All presentations were broadcast on UStreamTV.

The premise of my presentation was to show an overview of the process between layout in Illustrator and PhotoShop to coding in HTML and CSS. I find that web design is often segmented between the coders and graphic designers. I propose that the best outcome can come from bridging that gap. I do this in my daily workplace and try to show tips and techniques for others to bridge that gap. The time slot was only a half hour, so I could not go into coding detail, but only point to tutorials via links. (more…)

Adobe Illustrator CS3 crashed every time I tried to print to a CD on my Epson Stylus Photo R220. I decided to re-install Adobe Illustrator CS3. I did an uninstall with the uninstaller found in /Applications/Utilites/Adobe Installers. I then tried to re-install Adobe Illustrator CS3 with the installation DVD. Twenty minutes into the installation, it said
“Please insert Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit 2 to continue installation” I googled the error and found this Adobe support page, Message “Please insert Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit 2 to continue installation” when you install, reinstall or repair a CS3 Suite or CS3 application (Mac OS) I could not find a “Add or Remove Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit 2 alias” in /Applications/Utilites/Adobe Installers, so I decided to re-install the whole suite!

One of my co-workers warned that I needed to completely remove CS3 preferences, plists, and all those other files that OS-X applications install but never remove!!! I finally found this Adobe Support page, Remove CS3 prerelease software (Creative Suite and individual applications). I figured that it would remove release software, too. I believe that it does, but be sure you know what you doing when you use it. This script runs from the terminal, so it mainly a UNIX shell script that deletes folders and files.

I am now back to Illustrator 13.0.0 instead of 13.0.2, but only after more than six hours of uninstalling and re-installing Adobe Creative Suite !

Most other applications and older versions of Photoshop cannot support documents with file sizes larger than 2 GB. There is new Large Document Format (PSB) that is supported in Photoshop CS and CS2. All Photoshop features, such as layers, effects, and filters, are supported by the PSB format. Other applications and older versions of Photoshop cannot open documents saved in PSB format.

There are three steps that Photoshop takes in saving a file: Generating Full Resolution Composite, Preparing to Save, and Writing Photoshop Format. When dealing with files approaching the 2GB limit, you can quicken the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìGenerating Full Resolution Composite?¢‚Ǩ¬ù and the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìPreparing to Save?¢‚Ǩ¬ù step by hiding all the layers (Alt+click one layer?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s visibility icon will hide all other layers on the PC). The documents will still take a few minutes to save, but some time will be shaved off the beginning of the save.

If there is one layer or more (adjustment, bitmap, vector, or text) and the “Maximize Compatibility” feature is turned on, Photoshop saves two copies of the same image. One is flattened (Full Resolution Composite) and the other is in layers. If you deselect the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìMaximize Compatibility?¢‚Ǩ¬ù feature, this might even reduce your file size by half, and eliminates the reason to hide all the layers for ?¢‚Ǩ?ìFull Resolution Composite.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com