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.
When to Upgrade to Adobe CS3?
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.
Wednesday’s Fun: Seattle Broken Water Main.
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.
Keep your Internet up using two providers.
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.
Quickly change ruler units in Adobe CS apps.
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!
