CreativeTechs Tips

As a long-time FreeHand user, I've made my peace with that program's departure. But my serenity is put to the test each time we must pull up old Freehand documents from past jobs. Happily, Illustrator CS3 will now directly open FreeHand MX and FreeHand 10 documents (previously, Illustrator CS2 could only open FreeHand 9 files or older). This slight consolation in CS3 might help other long-time Freehand designers finally move on.

Source: We're throwing in an extra CS3 tip each week for early adaptors. For CreativeTechs' current rule-of-thumb on when to upgrade, we've published a short tip: When to Upgrade to Adobe CS3?

Posted by Craig Swanson at 01:59 PM | Permalink

We've been getting a lot of calls and questions this last week about CreativeTechs' "official" recommendation to wait until June 2007 before upgrading to Adobe CS3. This recommendation was part of our presentation on March 28, 2007: Getting Ready for Leopard, CS3 and New Macs!

Now that Adobe CS3 has actually started arriving at many design studios, we've begun relaxing our initial cautious recommendations. As with all major new software releases, we've seen a number of odd bugs and issues that need to be addressed. However we underestimated the pressure in many studios to upgrade to CS3. Especially in studios struggling with the stability of InDesign CS2 or Illustrator CS2 on new Intel Macs.

In general, we're still holding to our original recommendations. We will be running a special June 4th tip titled "Can I upgrade to Adobe CS3 yet?" which will cover our experiences supporting CS3 in live production enviroments. Until then, here is our conservative rule-of-thumb schedule for adopting CS3:

Upgrade to Adobe CS3 in April 2007 If You...

Upgrade to Adobe CS3 in May 2007 If You...

Upgrade to Adobe CS3 in June 2007 If You...

Early-Adopter Adobe CS3 Training.

Based on the number of client requests, we are currently working on a special "CS3 Boot Camp" training program in partnership with Seattle's School of Visual Concepts (the "boot camp" name may change). Even though it is a couple week's earlier than our official upgrade date, we'll have an early-adopter version of those classes available in the next four weeks.

We hope to have the full CS3 training schedule published next week. Until then please email help@creativetechs.com with any questions, or to schedule personalized one-on-one CS3 training.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 01:39 PM | Permalink

Last Wednesday morning, a Seattle construction crew cut through a water main one block from the CreativeTechs office. About the same time our office phone lines and DSL went dead, killing our main Internet access.

Yet, throughout this day's drama, our office email kept flowing and we had full access to the Internet. Why? Because we had taken our own advice and already had a second, inexpensive backup Internet connection in place. Read that tip here: Keep your Internet up using two providers.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:50 PM | Permalink

Does your creative team rely on Internet to keep the business running? If any interruption in email causes major headaches, you might consider adding a backup Internet connection for your studio.

There are routers available that support dual Internet connections. For example, your office might have a primary high-speed connection, with a secondary inexpensive connection as backup.

A common example would be to install both Cable and DSL Internet connections simultaneously -- making it less likely that both connections would be down at the same time.

Linksys Routers supporting Dual Internet Connections.

We can recommend the Linksys RV042 and Linksys RV082 routers from personal experience.

Both routers allow you to add a second Internet connection to help insure that your office is never down. Alternatively, you can use both connections at the same time, and let the router balance your office's Internet load between them for maximum speed. Both have excellent web-based administration tools. (We prefer the RV082 because the larger size allows it to be mounted in a standard network rack. The RV082 is the router we currently use in the CreativeTechs office.)

Amazon Purchase Links:

Amazon credits our account a couple cents for any purchases made from these links. If don't want to support our book fund, just start your shopping from Amazon's main site.

Buy on Amazon: Linksys RV042 Router

Buy on Amazon: Linksys RV082 Router

Source: This tip inspired by a recent Internet outage at our own office. However we first ran this tip back in October 2005 in QuickTips #56.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:14 PM | Permalink

Next time you need to switch from Picas to Inches in one of your Adobe Creative Suite applications, don't go digging through preferences. Simply Right-Click on the ruler and pick your new measurement. This works in Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator in versions CS, CS2 and the new Adobe CS3. Enjoy!

Tip: Adobe InDesign adjusts the vertical and horizontal units independently, so you'll have to make your change to the top and side rulers separately.

Source: This tip comes straight from Jason Hoppe's "Intro to Adobe InDesign" class that he leads every quarter at Seattle's School of Visual Concepts. This month Jason has also provided a package of all-day Quark-to-InDesign workshops for several in-house creative teams at Costco.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 10:56 AM | Permalink

Apple ships their new Apple Remote with every computer they make today. We've started hearing complaints from designers whose Macs go wacky when coworkers run a presentation using one of these ubiquitous devices. We've compiled links to a couple handy Apple Technotes that document how to pair a remote with a specific Mac (or Apple TV).

Pairing your Apple Remote with your Mac.

Pairing your Apple Remote with your Apple TV.

Pairing your Apple Remote with your iPod Dock.

Multicolor cases for Apple Remote.

Help remember which Apple Remote goes to which computer with these colorful cases.

TuneRemote ($19.95)

zCover ($14.95)

Additional Apple Technote Links:

How to replace the Apple Remote battery.

Handy Apple Remote Software:

Control any app with the Apple Remote. Handy for running a PowerPoint presentation for example.

Sofa Control ($14.90)

Twisted Melon ($15.95)

Source: This tip inspired by numerous support calls, including one photographer who is now using an Apple TV as a central portfolio display for his studio. We've used Sofa Control several times at Seattle's School of Visuals Concepts to run PowerPoint presetations with the Apple Remote.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 02:07 PM | Permalink

Over the last several years CreativeTechs has encouraged many creative teams to replace their team's older Postscript font libraries with newer OpenType font collections.

In the past, old Postscript fonts couldn't support a large number of characters. To get around that limitation, special "expert" font sets were created to provide designers with additional typographic features such as oldstyle figures, true small capitals, fractions, special ligatures, and others.

So, what if you've designed larger documents (e.g. annual reports) using special characters from the old "Adobe Caslon Expert" collection? When you convert over to the new OpenType "Adobe Caslon Pro", certain typographic flourishes disappear.

This tip demonstrates how you can use InDesign's advanced find-and-replace feature to help make your font migration an easier one.

Today's OpenType vs. Yesterday's Postscript.

OpenType fonts offer two big benefits over older formats. First, they are cross-platform, which means the same font file works on both Macintosh and Windows computers. Secondly (and more pertinent for this tip) OpenType fonts can contain more than 65,000 glyphs in a single font file. Old Postscript fonts by comparison were limited to 256 glyphs.

Adobe has a nice graphic on their OpenType resource site that illustrates how a single OpenType font today can contain all the characters, glyphs, and features that previously had to be divvied up between a variety of additional "expert" fonts.

The Problem: How to replace "Expert" fonts?

With that ground covered we can get to the problem. After your studio has made the switch to OpenType, how do you handle documents that request the older "expert" font collections. Consider the example below, where an annual report layout uses oldstyle figures for all the financial charts.

Oldstyle figures provide a way of displaying numbers which approximates lowercase letterforms using varying ascenders and descenders. If we simply replaced our missing "Adobe Caslon Expert" with "Adobe Caslon Pro", those financial charts revert to standard numerals which gives a much different look.

When we open our document, InDesign flags the missing "Adobe Caslon Expert." Yet there does not appear to be a natural font choice in the new OpenType "Adobe Calson Pro" to use as a replacement.

The Solution: Use InDesign's advanced Find/Change.

You can't solve this problem using InDesign's default Find Font window. Instead, open the document without changing fonts, and use InDesign's Find/Change tool to update.

In InDesign, choose Edit > Find/Change... and then click the "More Options" button to reveal the powerful but often overlooked find/change formats section.

Using these settings, we can replace the missing "Adobe Caslon Expert" font with "Adobe Caslon Pro" and at the same time apply additional OpenType styles to the changed text.

First, click the Format button in "Find Format Settings" where we can pick our missing font. (Note: Missing fonts in InDesign display with brackets around the font name.)

Then, click in "Change Format Settings" where we can control what character formats are applied to our changed text. Start by choosing "Adobe Caslon Pro" under Basic Character Formats. Then under OpenType Features we can access a number of special typographic features. To recreate our previous design, we pick Proportional Oldstyle from the Figure Style pop-up menu.

You have a tremendous amount of control once you start digging into the Find/Change format controls. Back in our Find/Change dialog box InDesign summarizes our changes:

Click "Change All" and our old expert font has been properly updated to the new OpenType version. You may need to experiment with various settings to fully convert all your expert collection uses. The basic technique remains the same in most cases.

Source: This typographic tip inspired by a great support question from the Seattle offices of global design firm Fitch.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 01:42 PM | Permalink

Some early adopters are experiencing problems installing their new copy of Adobe CS3. If you tested the public beta version of Photoshop CS3 on your computer you will see the following cryptic error when you try to install the full version:

"Adobe Photoshop CS3 cannot be installed because it conflicts with: Adobe Photoshop CS3"

If you've seen this error, you must first remove the beta version of Photoshop CS3. That takes more than simply trashing the application folder.

Remove the Photoshop CS3 public beta on a Mac:

If you need to remove the Photoshop CS3 beta on a Mac, the easiest way is to use an uninstaller that is probably already tucked away in your Utilities folder (Applications/Utilities/Adobe Installers).

Chose the "Remove Adobe Photoshop CS3 Components" option and click next.

Remove the Photoshop CS3 public beta on Windows:

Windows XP: Uninstall via Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel.

Windows Vista: Go to the Programs section of the Control Panel, select Uninstall a Program.

What if that doesn't work?

If the standard uninstall options do not solve your problem, or if you already trashed the Adobe Installers folder before running it, Adobe has created a special CS3Clean Script which will clean up the beta installation and allow you to install the shipping versions of Creative Suite 3:

Link: Adobe CS3Clean Script

Source: CreativeTechs officially recommends waiting until June before upgrading to Adobe CS3 — in fact we'll be running a tip on June 4th, 2007 titled "Can I upgrade to Adobe CS3 yet?" Until then we're adding an extra CS3 tip each week for those early adaptors who aren't content to listen to such conservative recommendations.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:51 AM | Permalink

Here is a quick Photoshop retouching tip that came up this month with a Seattle design studio. While working on a piece for a local non-profit, one digital photo was suffering from color problems in the skin tone highlights.

This particular image turned out to be a great example of a common photo retouching technique. Simply create a new layer and cover up the problem area with a patch of your desired skin tone. Then set that new layer to a blending mode of "Color" and volia, the skin tone is corrected.

Step 1: Select the Problem Skin Tone.

Using Photoshop's selection tools, we outlined the problem areas in the skin tone highlights. Feather the selection slightly to help blend the edges.

Step 2: Pick a Good Target Skin Color.

Using Photoshop's Eyedropper, select an example of skin color nearby in the same photo.

Step 3: Create a new Photoshop Layer and fill with your skin color.

Create a new layer in the Photoshop layer palette. Fill your selected area with the target skin tone color.

Step 4: Set the Layer Blending Mode to "Color".

Step 5: Adjust the Layer Opacity (if needed).

Skin Tone Before and After.

Source: Tip inspired by a recent phone support call from Hansen Design Company. We've been fielding an increasing number of Photoshop retouching questions in the last month.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 02:21 PM | Permalink

If you manage a creative team with even a few designers, we strongly recommend that you take advantage of Adobe's Transactional Licensing Program (TLP) when you purchase Adobe software and upgrades.

Link: Adobe volume licensing made easy.

You'll probably save money. Far more importantly you'll prevent a future of serial-number headaches.

A little paperwork now. Much hassle saved later.

With a transactional license, you get a single serial number for your whole studio (Mac or PC). Even better, the volume-licensed version of Creative Suite avoids the annoying product activation process that ties your installed software to specific computers.

Even the smallest studios can purchase Adobe products this way. Most mail order and catalog resellers can sell this type of volumne license. And Adobe now has a new direct purchase option for small businesses that wish to order directly:

Link: Adobe TLP Direct

Upgrading with a volumne license may require a little more paperwork up front, but the pay-off down the road is much easier maintenance of your studio's software serial numbers.

Source: We've been preaching the value of centralized serial numbers for years. This tip first ran two years ago in QuickTips #49. CreativeTechs provides proactive, outsourced computer maintenance for dozens of creative teams. Serial number management is a key ingredient in developing a well-managed studio.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 01:24 AM | Permalink

In honor of the holiday, we've compiled a collection of hidden Easter Eggs for Adobe Creative Suite. This set is for Adobe InDesign CS2.

Photoshop Easter Egg 1: Space Monkey Splash Screen.

Photoshop has a long history of amusing alternative splash screens. In CS2, hold down the Command key on your Mac and bring up the About Photoshop window (Windows: Ctrl+Alt). You'll be greeted with the slightly famous space monkey.

Source: Designorati.com

Photoshop Easter Egg 2: Merlin Lives.

This little fellow is Merlin T. Wizard. He is a little homage to Photoshop 2.5, which was code-named "Merlin." Go to the layer palette and click on the arrow for the layer palette menu. Hold down the Option key (Windows: Alt) and drag down and select "Palette Options" from the menu. There he is.

Source: About: Graphic Design

Photoshop Easter Egg 3: Doggie Memorial.

This one is my favorite, and even a bit touching. It is also the one that didn't work properly when we first tested it — so some early readers of this post may not have seen this. Follow the these steps:

1. Select Photoshop's Type tool.
2. Click the Toggle Palettes button () to display the Character palette.
3. Select the Font Family field in the Character palette, and type the full name of a font that you have installed (e.g. "Verdana") followed immediately by typing one of the names francis, anthony, christopher, or mitzgy — you'll get beeped at each letter entered beyond your font's name, but just ignore it.
4. Now, click the Toggle Palettes button () again, and you should see a hidden memorial for Francis 1991-2004.

Source: Trevor Morris

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:38 AM | Permalink

In honor of the holiday, we've compiled a collection of hidden Easter Eggs for Adobe Creative Suite. This set is for Adobe InDesign CS2.

InDesign Easter Egg 1: Paw Print Path Styles.

This is a fun hidden secret in InDesign CS that we almost ran for Christmas. Create a custom stroke style. Set it to the "dash" type and name it Lights, Feet, Woof, or Happy (the capitalization matters). You'll get a special border you can apply to any shape or path you like. Woof is shown above. For step-by-step instructions, check out this fun comic strip version of this tip.

Bonus: Create a custom stroke style using a "stripe" line type and name it Rainbow.

Source: YabbAdobeDoo.com via InDesignSecrets.com

InDesign Easter Egg 2: The Friendly Alien.

To make the InDesign Alien pay you a visit, you first need to go to File > Print Presets > Define, and create a new preset called "Friendly Alien" (capitalization matters). Choose a printer other than Postscript File when you set this up. Now bring up the print dialog box and select your new preset. Click the document preview window to make the alien hover out and say hello. (QuarkXPress switchers, this is a pretty obvious allusion to a classic QuarkXPress easter egg.)

Source: crestock.com

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:36 AM | Permalink

In honor of the holiday, we've compiled a collection of hidden Easter Eggs for Adobe Creative Suite. This set is for Adobe Illustrator CS2.

Illustrator Easter Egg 1: Show Eyes (and more).

Hold down the Option key (Windows: Alt) and click on the pop-up menu at the bottom of your Illustrator artwork window. You'll find some fun options added to the normal list. We like the set of eyes that follow your cursor around the screen as you work. You can also choose moon phases, mouse clicks, Illustrator units sold, a random number, or the number of shopping days 'til Christmas. The item at the top of this list was inspired by Mordy Golding who worked at Adobe as product manager for Illustrator 10 and Illustrator CS. That's not his home number you get though, it's Adobe tech-support.

Source: crestock.com

Illustrator Easter Egg 2: Hidden Venus Splash Screen.

Botticelli's Venus has appeared in various incarnations on Illustrator splashscreen almost since the beginning. However she was uncerimoniously removed in Illustrator CS. You can still get a Venus version of the Illustrator splashscreen in CS or CS2 though. Hold down Command+Option and select About Illustrator in the Illustrator menu (Windows: hold down Ctrl+Alt and select About Illustrator in the Help menu).

Source: crestock.com

Illustrator Easter Egg 3: Secret Birthday Cakes

5/26/56 is an important date to someone at Adobe. Enter those numbers into a new custom brush and reveal the secret birthday cakes in Illustrator's brush palette. Create a new calligraphic brush and enter the settings show above (Angle: 5°, Roundness: 26%, Diameter 56 pt). The brush preview changes to birthday cakes!

Source: About: Graphics Software

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:27 AM | Permalink

Thanks to everyone who joined us for CreativeTechs' presentation "Getting Ready for CS3, Leopard and New Macs!" at the School of Visual Concepts. We had a fun evening.

Turnout was great, and the audience Q&A at the end of the night went on for at least an hour after the show. Obviously this is a hot topic.

As always, here is a PDF of our presentation:

CS3 and Leopard 03-28-2007.pdf

In addition, we've compiled some extra links in this blog post...

Seattle Graphic Design Poll: Intel vs PPC

During our presentation, we had a chance to poll the audience about what types of Mac they are currently using. There were about 90 Seattle-area graphic designers in this audience.

Less than 20% of our audience was working on Intel-based Macs. Which is telling. This isn't a scientific poll, but it does support our experience in the field.

Creative professionals have been holding off buying the new Intel Macs until the new version of CS3 is released and stable. This is one of the reasons there is pressure to adopt Creative Suite 3 more quickly than previous releases.

Note: Of our audience members using Intel-based Macs, several report frequent crashes in InDesign CS2 and Illustrator CS2. This also matches our experience supporting designers in the field.

Adobe Creative Suite 3 Links:

Adobe: Creative Suite 3 Design Editions

Adobe: Terry White's Weekly Creative Suite Podcast.

Mac OS X Leopard Links:

Apple: Mac OS X - Leopard Sneak Peak.

ThinkSecret: Leopard shipping in June. (Rumor)

Source: Thanks again to Seattle's School of Visual Concepts and AIGA Seattle for hosting these wonderful free talks. And thank you to Apple's Joe Fleck for providing a special sneak peak into Mac OS X Leopard for this talk. We unfortunately can't include Joe's presentation as part of the downloadable talk notes.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 06:07 PM | Permalink

As a service for Seattle-area creative teams, we are offering a complimentary strategy session with CreativeTechs' lead consultant Craig Swanson. Take this opportunity to map out your creative team's upgrade strategy for this complex series of upgrades.

We've set aside 4 days through May, and have 16 13 11 10 open slots. If you manage a creative team, we encourage you to call and schedule a session. We'll make sure it is a valuable use of your time.

Available Times for Free Planning Sessions:

Wednesday, April 25:     10am: Scheduled     Noon: Scheduled     2pm: Scheduled     4pm: Available Wednesday, May 9:     10am: Scheduled     Noon: Available     2pm: Scheduled     4pm: Available

Wednesday, May 2:     10am: Scheduled     Noon: Available     2pm: Available     4pm: Available Wednesday, May 16:     10am: Available     Noon: Available     2pm: Available     4pm: Available

To schedule a free consultation for your team: Take a look at the available times, and give us a call at 206-682-4315 or drop us a line at .

The slots go quickly, so if you are interested, don't wait.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 04:56 PM | Permalink

Seattle Photographer Chase Jarvis has posted a fun 3-minute video showing a slick DIY laptop case his team put together for outdoor location shoots. Great for those hard to reach environments where you can't fit your Mac Pro and 30-inch flat-screen in the helicopter with the rest of your gear.

The travel kit is built around a rugged, waterproof Pelican 1490 laptop case, and includes a fold-out screen shade, hidden firewire drives for working files and a backup, plus flashcard storage and reader. Chase throws in a fun twist for reviewing images with your creative director using the new Apple remote. The parts cost about $250 and it takes a couple hours to put together.

Read more about this in the full post on the Chase Jarvis Blog:

Link: Photography Laptop Case (aka Pimp Your Laptop Case)

This laptop case was recently mentioned on the popular Strobist blog and the YouTube video was viewed almost 5,000 times in the first five days.

The Chase Jarvis Shopping List:

As an experiment, we threw together a quick shopping list at Amazon.com with most of the items from this video:

Link: CreativeTechs Amazon Store

We couldn't find Amazon links for the Little Hotties Adhesive Toe Warmers that Chase uses in cold weather to drastically increase his laptop battery life. Nor could we find velcro tape (you can probably track that down locally).

Note: This is an Amazon aStore. Amazon credits our account a couple cents for any purchases made from this link. If you'd rather not support our book fund, just start shopping from Amazon's main site.

Source: CreativeTechs' Craig Swanson has recently been asked by a few clients to do a little consulting on blogging and online marketing. This video is one of Chase's first experiment at creating a viral video to spur some word-of-mouse PR.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 03:52 PM | Permalink