CreativeTechs Tips

We ran this same tip last year — and I haven't found a fireworks screensaver I like better. So, in honor of America's summer Independence Day celebrations, here are links to Skyrocket, a free, fun, 4th of July screen saver you can download for your Mac or PC:

Mac Version of Skyrocket

Windows Version of Skyrocket

Want to see the screensaver in action before deciding to download? You can watch a couple 1-minute screen capture videos on the full version of this tip.

Fireworks Screensaver Preview

Fireworks are rendered in 3D with realistic sound, camera flares, and lighting. The camera view can be set to fly around the the fireworks display. Hypnotic.

Go into the options for this screen saver and play with some of the settings. This example has the screen angle changing and flying through the fireworks display:

Finally, here is a more sedate video capture with the camera angle changes turned off.

Source: Your humble tips writer is heading out on a short pre-Independence Day vacation this weekend. Before we load the kids into the family Caravan, I'm spooling up a couple classics tips for today's holiday newsletter.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:03 PM | Permalink

In May of 2007 Adobe finally admitted what we've known for a while — FreeHand is dead. Adobe will no longer update or patch FreeHand for new operating systems or hardware (such as Intel Macs). Adobe has created several migration guides to help long-time FreeHand users move over to Adobe Illustrator instead.

But here's the problem: If you've spent the last ten years designing and working in FreeHand, then Illustrator may be the wrong place for you to switch to. Many die-hard FreeHand users will be far better served switching to Adobe InDesign instead. Yet as far as we've found, no one has created a good resource to help designers migrate from Freehand to InDesign.

A Tribute to Aldus FreeHand. (1988 – 2007)

Design Tools Monthly has created a timeline of FreeHand's features over the years. It starts back in 1988 when FreeHand was the first to introduce such novel innovations as editable blends, and the ability to place TIFF files in an illustration program:

Design Tools Monthly: FreeHand Firsts

The timeline continues on through the years to the last entry which reads "2007 — End of life."

Resources: Migrating from FreeHand to Adobe Illustrator CS3.

Moving on, Adobe has produced several helpful documents on its website for people ready to make the jump away from FreeHand. These three PDFs from Adobe explain much of what you need to now when migrating from FreeHand to Illustrator CS2 or CS3:

FreeHand to Illustrator Migration Guide.

Migrating from FreeHand to Illustrator: A Technical Resource.

FreeHand to Illustrator Migration FAQ.

In addition to these free PDF's, instructor Mordy Golding has produced an excellent series of video tutorials for migrating from FreeHand to either Illustrator CS2 or CS3. These videos are both available at Lynda.com:

Migrating from FreeHand to Illustrator CS3

Migrating from FreeHand to Illustrator CS2

The problem with all these resources of course (as far as we're concerned) is that Adobe Illustrator may be the wrong place for many FreeHand-based designers to end up.

Calling Seattle-area FreeHand Users.

One Seattle designer wrote us this week:

“I’ve been using Freehand for nearly 20 years. In the last 10 years, it’s become my main program for both page layout and vector art. It has been great to have a program do both so well.

So now I’m grieving for my dying program and wondering where I go from here. I have done some work over the years in Illustrator and don’t really care much for its interface. I have never used InDesign but I’m told it is better to work in than Illustrator.

Are there any classes that will help me make this strange and challenging transition? I’m very concerned about many years of archives that I need to access.

Thanks for your listening ear... (I’m pretty freaked out by all this).”

We know there is a need for a better FreeHand migration class. Most of the other classes we've seen for struggling FreeHand users are really just training sessions for Adobe Illustrator with a few extra screenshots thrown in.

So we're putting out the word. If you'd like to see a course that helps FreeHand users update their workflow to take advantage of the best in both Adobe InDesign and Illustrator, drop us an email. We need 5 more people in the Seattle area to make this a go. You can email our electronic production trainer Jason Hoppe directly with questions and suggestions.

Source: Seattle was the founding home of Aldus Corporation (the original publisher of FreeHand), and thus has more die-hard FreeHand designers than other parts of the world. This tip includes information compiled in the latest issue of Design Tools Monthly.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 05:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Is your Mac OS X server crashing frequently? If so, we have two questions for you:

Question 1: Do the crashes, restarts, or slow downs occur primarily when several people are searching server volumes over the network?

Question 2: Are you running Mac OS X Server 10.4.7 or later?

If you answered yes to both these questions, you may be suffering from a problem that exists in Mac OS X Server 10.4.7 and above where multiple Spotlight searches can render a server unresponsive.

The Good News, and the Bad News.

The good news is that there is a fix for this problem — we are regularly correcting this issue on most of the Mac OS X Servers we support. The bad news is that the fix requires editing hidden text files through the Mac OS X terminal. That's more than we generally get into in this tips collection — and should only be applied by someone fairly versed in the Unix command line.

In this tip, we'll describe the problem. We'll provide enough information for someone with the proper experience to apply the fix. And we'll encourage you, if you are experiencing these problems, to forward this tip to your computer support team to apply on your server.

The Problem: Spotlight and Crashing Mac OS X Servers.

When your creative teams searches a shared network volume, your Mac OS X Server sets aside some RAM for that search activity. As more people search, the server sets aside more RAM. Mac OS X Server will continue this way until it has set aside about 2GB of RAM.

Our crashing problems surface on severs with less than 4GB of RAM. It turns out reserving that much memory for Spotlight searches doesn't leave much room for everything else your server needs to do. This results in your server performance degrading, or the server becoming unresponsive, and even restarting unexpectedly.

You can confirm this problem may be occurring on your sever by using Apple's Activity Monitor utility. Look for a process named "kernel_task" with a process ID of 0. If this kernel_task is taking a large amount of real memory (over 1 GB) then you are probably suffering from this problem.

The Fix: Editing the /etc/rc.server file.

The fix requires changing your server's preference so that it reserves much less memory for these Spotlight searches. This one change prevents your studio's searches from eating up your server's RAM, and crashing the system.

Apple has published a technote that describes the changes that must be made to the /etc/rc.server file. Apple wisely describes what changes need to be made to this rc.server file, but does not provide step-by-step instructions about how to make those changes. In other words, if you don't know how, you shouldn't be the one doing it.

Apple Technote 305167 — Mac OS X Server 10.4.7 and later may become unresponsive when clients search mounted network volumes.

If you are not ready to dig beneath the hood with terminal commands yourself, we recommend you forward this tip and the Apple link to your Mac support team.

If you are in the Seattle area and don't have a good Mac support team, consider inviting CreativeTechs out to your studio for a free introductory meeting.

Source: This tip inspired by the persistent sleuthing of CreativeTechs's server guru Jordan Bojar who brings ten years experience as a Unix-geek in high-end server farms.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 05:21 AM | Permalink

Lately I've noticed more studios placing self promoting displays in their client reception areas. This is a fun, simple way of exposing visiting clients to your studio's changing portfolio of projects.

These portfolio theaters can be cheaper and easier to create than you might have guessed. Examples range from using a new Apple TV, to repurposing an old design station with an Acrobat slide show. Pull it off with flare and you have a great environment for visiting clients and vendors to discover and appreciate the breadth of your studio's portfolio.

Portfolio #1: Apple TV + HD Television.

In eight weeks, photographer Chase Jarvis moves into his swanky new studio near Seattle's Gas Works Park. Among other clever details, visitors will soon enjoy a remarkable portfolio theater running off an Apple TV. A perfect fit for his all-Mac shop.

The Apple TV screensaver is perfect for showing off your diverse photography portfolio. For the moment, the Apple TV is a new product and using it's built-in features are pretty cool. Once that 3D-spin effect becomes passé, you'll want to swap out the default screensaver with something else (keep your eye on sites like AppleTVHacks.com).

In addition to your portfolio images, you can play video of course. Chase has been producing a fun collection of behind-the-scenes videos showing the inside of what he terms "The Black Box" of commercial photography. You can bet high resolution versions of these videos will be gracing the Apple TV theater in his new space. Check out his videos: RAW: Ninjas, or FRAMES: Hasselblad Masters.

Cost: $299 for the Apple TV, and as much or as little as you wish to spend on a new HD TV.

Portfolio #2: Apple Cinema Displays + Mac Screensaver

If your creative studio has standardized on Apple computers, mounting an Apple Cinema Display on the wall in your reception area is a great way to frame your digital portfolio.

Pravda Studios in Seattle's Capital Hill neighborhood has created an impressive unit featuring four Apple Cinema displays to show off their diverse portfolio of video, photography and design. All four displays are driven by a PowerMac G5 with two dual-screen video cards mounted below on the same unit.

The easiest way to show off your studio's work is to point Apple's built-in Mac screensaver to a folder of your portfolio images. Sit back and watch as your creations slowly pan and dissolve across the screen. The effect is even better when you use multiple monitors, as each display fades in alternating rotation.

If you don't have the time or budget to build a fancy display case, you can purchase an optional wall mounting kit for just this purpose.

Cost: A 23-inch Apple Cinema Display goes for $899, and you can run it off one of your retired studio Macs.

Portfolio #3: Video Projectors + Video Dailies.

An ad agency I work with in Seattle's Pioneer Square created a remarkable portfolio theatre. Their uncommonly large reception area sports tall white walls. By installing two home-theatre projectors in the ceiling, they created huge side-by-side movie screens. They play a variety of customized DVD's without sound. The DVD's contain a mix of video dailies from recent commercial shoots, as well as a variety of clips from other odd sources (one day was an old black-and-white science fiction retrospective).

I find the dailies from their recent commercials the most fascinating. It exposes visitors to a slice of their portfolio, while giving interested parties a glimpse into the craft that goes into a video shoot. The raw footage has an unedited quality that is fascinating to watch. The use of two theatre images going simultaneously gives a contrast in content that reminds me a bit of what I've seen in dance clubs or at my favorite sushi bar.

Cost: Probably $3000 to $6000. Projectors are coming down in price. The result looks like they spent much more.

Portfolio #4: Predicta TV + Video iPod

I work with a design studio in Bellevue whose branding plays off classic science fiction paraphernalia of the 1950's. What if they bought a modern Predicta television and hooked it up to a video iPod (using this iPod AV Cable). They could download a simple rotating portfolio of recent work using Apple's iPhoto software.

Visiting clients would be drawn to the Predicta TV, while a portfolio of the studio's latest work slowly faded in and out on the screen.

Cost: $3500 for the Predicta TV. $299 for the iPod.

Portfolio #5: An old iMac + Adobe Acrobat.

Let's finish this series off with a cheap example — this comes from an innovative graphic design studio in downtown Seattle. For years, they had an empty reception station near the front door, with an old iMac sitting unused on the desk. One day it occurred to them to turn that iMac around towards incoming clients.

They designed an attractive Acrobat PDF file with photos of recent projects and quotes from clients. Then they took advantage of Acrobat's little known slideshow mode to automatically fade between the pages of their PDF. We've written up a new tip showing this technique: Build an Acrobat PDF Slideshow. Voilà. An easy, attractive self-running portfolio kiosk for incoming clients.

Cost: $0 because they already had an old iMac gathering dust.

Source: This tip is inspired by a new studio build-out for photographer Chase Jarvis that should be complete in 8 weeks. Most of this tip is updated from an article I wrote back in 2004, from a short-lived series called "101 Ways to Market Your Creative Studio."

Posted by Craig Swanson at 06:12 PM | Permalink

Over the last couple weeks we've been polling our clients for some of their favorite features in Adobe CS3. One tool mentioned by several designers is InDesign CS3's new Gradient Feather Tool. For situations where you want to fade a photo into the background, this tool saves you a trip back into Photoshop — for some designers this is a great time saver.

As is our style, we've created a simple animation showing this tool in action.

Source: This tip inspired by Jason Hoppe's new series of half-day Adobe CS3 training classes starting June 26th. Want to get up to speed on the new versions of Photoshop CS3, InDesign CS3, or Illustrator CS3? Pick a single workshop for $150, or sign up for the full set for $395. Full class details on our blog.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:52 AM | Permalink

When you find yourself working with more text than you can fit into your InDesign text frame, the easiest way to see how much copy is overflowing is to open the Story Editor. (Edit > Edit in Story Editor)

In the Story Editor, a red line on the left side will show you how much text is overflowing your layout. If you decide to trim the text to fit your available space, you can edit your copy directly in this window.

Source: This tip comes from the June 2007 issue of Design Tools Monthly. Members of a CreativeTechs support plan receive a subscription to Design Tools Monthly in their monthly care package.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:26 AM | Permalink

We love cheatsheets. Those handy quick-reference guides that keep all sorts of vital information right at your fingertips.

In fact, we're dedicating one issue each month to provide a growing collection of creative and technical cheatsheets.

Photoshop Lasso Cheatsheet.pdf

This month's creative cheatsheet covers the Photoshop Lasso tool. We've distilled the basic functions of this widely used tool into a concise format that fits on a standard 3x5 index card.

Coming Up: The Ultimate Photoshop CS3 Cheatsheet Collection.

The cheatsheets for individual tools should be useful — but the cool part is when all the cards are collected into a single flip guide. That puts cheatsheets for every Photoshop tool and feature right at your finger tips.

CreativeTechs' production guru, Jason Hoppe, teachs several popular Photoshop and InDesign evening classes each quarter at Seattle's School of Visual Concepts. Over the next several months we are creating a whole collection of 3x5 Photoshop cheatsheets based on those classes.

We've been playing with some early prototypes, and we're pretty enthused. Meanwhile, stay tuned for more free PDF downloads — we've got a new set of creative and technical cheatsheets coming every month.

Source: These index-card cheatsheets are partially inspired by the Hipster PDA, popularized by 43 Folders. Our first round of creative cheatsheets are drawn from Jason Hoppe's popular Photoshop courses taught at Seattle's School of Visual Concepts each quarter. For details check out SVC's Summer Schedule.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 02:22 PM | Permalink

Few experiences are more frustrating than digging through old notebooks trying to track down the correct settings for your DSL router. Especially when the rest of your studio is up in arms about Internet and email being down.

Which brings us to this month's technical cheatsheet:

Router Settings Cheatsheet.pdf

We often find ourselves fixing problem Internet connections or poorly performing networks. Rarely do clients have all their important network settings organized in one place.

This cheatsheet prompts you to track down and organize crucial network details on a single 3x5 card. Take a moment now to fill this out before you need it (or ask your current tech support to fill it out for you).

Make several copies. For many clients, we recommend taping a copy to the bottom of your router. When problems occur, you'll be glad you did.

Source: This is the first in a series of cheatsheets designed to help document and organize the crucial IT details in a typical creative studio.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 07:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Want to get up to speed on the new versions of Adobe CS3? We'll make it fast and easy for you: Seattle's School of Visual Concepts (SVC) is hosting a series of half-day, hands-on workshops to help you get up and running quickly.

We know you are busy, so we've packed a lot of great stuff into these morning sessions. You'll learn all the new CS3 features in a rapid, fun, environment. Each workshop is led by CreativeTechs' powerhouse production guru, Jason Hoppe:

• Making the Move to Adobe Photoshop CS3
• Making the Move to Adobe InDesign CS3
• Making the Move to Adobe Illustrator CS3

Each half-day workshop comes with a class binder, a visual guide to help you apply your learning back at the office, and CDs filled with sample files and resources. The cost is $150 per workshop, or $395 for all three.

The focus of these classes is to help graphic designers and production artists get up to speed with the new features in CS3, and get back to work.

You can register for classes at the SVC website. Pick your classes and follow the links below:

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Class Schedule (pick one).

Since we all rely on Photoshop, we could all use a crash course on how the CS3 version is different from what we're used to.

• Photoshop CS3: Thu, June 28 — 9 a.m. to Noon
• Photoshop CS3: Tue, July 17 — 9 a.m. to Noon

Adobe InDesign CS3 Class Schedule (pick one).

Now that Quark is a distant memory for most print designers, don't get left in the dust by the newest version of InDesign CS3.

• InDesign CS3: Tue, June 26 — 9 a.m. to Noon
• InDesign CS3: Wed, July 18 — 9 a.m. to Noon

Adobe Illustrator CS3 Class Schedule (pick one).

If you rely on Illustrator, you'll need to know about all the changes and improvements to the CS3 version of this formidable vector drawing program.

• Illustrator CS3: Wed, June 27 — 9 a.m. to Noon
• Illustrator CS3: Thu, July 19 — 9 a.m. to Noon

About The Instructor.

Jason Hoppe is an Adobe Certified Expert. Jason brings years of hands on real-world experience with electronic production in some of Seattle's most respected firms. More importantly for this class, he's been producing high-end retouching and packaging projects using CS3 applications in real-world environments.

$150 each or the full set for $395.

Pick a single workshop, or sign up for the full set for $395. If you are interested in taking all three courses, email help@creativetechs.com and we'll help get you scheduled.

Bonus: 10 Hidden Tricks from Previous Versions.

In addition to all the cool new stuff in CS3, we'll share our list of the 10 best tips and tricks that everyone missed in the previous versions of Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator.

Some of these hidden gems have been around for years, yet people are always amazed at some of undiscovered shortcuts and tricks that we all miss along the way.

Not sure? Come to a free CS3 talk June 13th or 14th.

Not sure if you are ready to make the leap to CS3? Sign up for one of two FREE talks we're giving at SVC next week. You'll have a chance to ask all your CS3-related questions in an informal, small-group setting.

FREE: Should you upgrade to Adobe CS3?

• Wednesday Afternoon — June 13th. Noon - 1:30 p.m.
• Thursday Evening — June 14th, 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

See you at SVC this Summer!

Come join us at SVC this summer. Learn some new tricks. We'll have you back at your own office, and back to billable work with time to spare.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 05:32 PM | Permalink

A wise blog reader once said, “There are two types of Internet users. Those who use RSS feeds, and those who don't.” It's true. Once you grasp how useful RSS feeds are, it changes the way you keep updated online.

The problem is, if you aren't already in the know, no one seems able to clearly explain what RSS is all about. Most descriptions becomes so convoluted that it leaves the uninitiated more lost than they started.

That's why I love this simple, unassuming 3-minute video. With a whiteboard, a pen, and a fun casual style, Lee LeFever does the best job I've seen describing RSS in easy plain English.

Today I use RSS to track over a hundred technical blogs for work. My kids' school provides an RSS feed that warns me about upcoming schedule changes. We even use RSS feeds at CreativeTechs to keep our team updated on recent issues for maintenance support clients.

Enjoy a short video. Join the RSS club.

Source: This tip inspired by an ongoing search for an easy way to describe RSS to clients and readers. Seth Godin has tried it. Wikipedia has tried it. There is even a site called WhatisRSS.com. But in my book, this little whiteboard exercise has them all beat.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 09:16 AM | Permalink

Back on March 28th I led a free talk at Seattle's School of Visual Concepts titled Getting Ready for CS3, Leopard & New Macs.

We cautiously recommended most studios hold back a couple months before upgrading to Creative Suite 3 — and I promised we'd run a tip in the beginning of June 2007 with our experiences supporting CS3 in real-world environments. This is that tip.

The short anticlimactic answer: Yes, upgrade to CS3.

In the last several months we've been supporting a wide number of creative studios who chose an early upgrade to CS3. So far we've seen limited problems caused by that upgrade, and we continue to hear good feedback from our clients who have upgrade to CS3.

If you have an Intel-based Macs, CS3 is a must. The new CS3 applications are significantly faster on Intel Macs than their predecessors. In addition, Illustrator CS3 and InDesign CS3 solve specific crashes that plagued the older CS2 versions on Intel Macs.

Some bugs.

There are a number of small bugs regarding the new Illustrator color swatches, certain Photoshop layer operations, some issues with Bridge in certain server environments, and import of older InDesign CS files according to the vast army of nitpickers on message boards and forums sites.

Despite the occasional bug, we recommend CS3, and expect most of the inconveniences will iron themselves out with minor updates (some of which Adobe has already issued).

No Font Auto-Activation plug-ins for CS3 yet.

The most common complaint we've heard from clients using Adobe CS3 is in the area of font management. Font Agent Pro and Extensis Suitcase have not yet released CS3-compatible auto-activation plug-ins for most of the new CS3 applications.

Note: Earlier this month, Extensis did release a Suitcase Fusion auto-activation plug-in for Illustrator CS3. Available here.

Some Acrobat Pro 8 workflow glitches.

Another frequent complaint we've heard from early-adopter clients has been with the new Acrobat Pro 8 causing glitches with existing workflow. Installing Acrobat Pro 8 on top of existing version 7 installations has required some additional troubleshooting.

Source: Come to SVC's free talk: Should You Upgrade to Adobe CS3? There are two free talks scheduled: June 13th at noon, and June 14th at 6:30 p.m.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 06:34 PM | Permalink

By default, Illustrator will use your selection's bounding box when aligning or centering objects. Have you ever wished you could tell Illustrator to center everything around a particular object instead?

You can. After you've selected all the objects you want to align, click one object (just click, no shift key). Nothing changes on the screen, but the item you clicked becomes the key object. Illustrator aligns everything else in your selection around that item.

Source: This little-known feature has actually been around since Illustrator 9. It came up while we were preparing materials for a new series of "Making the Move to CS3" classes at Seattle's School of Visual Concepts. Check SVC's class schedule for times in June and July. In addition to covering the new features introduced in Adobe Creative Suite 3, we're adding a special list of 10 cool things everyone missed from the earlier versions too.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 06:11 PM | Permalink

iStumbler is a powerful free tool for finding and troubleshooting wireless networks. It will display all the wireless hotspots within range of your Mac. You can quickly determine whether they’re open or secure, their SSIDs, signal strength, the wireless channel used, and more:

iStumbler Website

This type of information is becoming increasingly important in some Seattle buildings were dozens of wireless networks compete for bandwidth. It's also a handy tool if you find yourself away from the office and hunting for a free hotspot to check email.

Source: This tip inspired by an increasing number of challenges establishing stable wireless networks in active areas of the city. Recently one client found himself in a highrise with over 22 other wireless networks.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 11:45 PM | Permalink