Both apps were rolled in to Adobe Illustrator years ago—but the features still don’t work nearly as well as they did back in the Mac OS 9 days when they were stand-alone apps.
Of course, if we’re talking about great apps that Adobe killed off:
Adobe Type Manager
GoLive
LiveMotion
PressReady
ImageReady
There is more, but those are some of the ones I used almost daily back in the day.
There is no perfect set of tools for graphic designers. We’re all unique, we all work in different ways, and budgets always come in to play. I’ve put together a breakdown of major factors when building the best graphic design hardware and software toolbox based on my experience. Consider the following as a guide, rather than a set of absolute rules.
I’ve been a graphic designer for 30 years, using the Macintosh the entire time to produce work for some great clients. I’ve worked for ad agencies large and small, a design firm, printing companies, and I’ve freelanced full and part time. Over the years I’ve learned a few short rules as it pertains to building my design toolbox and getting things done—and it has held true everywhere I’ve worked. Those rules are: keep it simple no matter the cost, don’t get caught up in software trends and gimmicks, buy a little more than you think you need, because you will grow into it. The following is more specific advice for building your design toolbox. (more…)
Size Marks is a helpful Photoshop script for web designers and front-end engineers which converts rectangular marquee to labeled measurement mark.
Here’s something every InDesign user should know, but almost none do: InDesign, by default, completely ignores CMYK profiles you have embedded in your images.
If you’ve used InDesign for a few years, you’ve probably figured it out. If not, give this excellent article by David Blatner a read.
Photoshop’s History panel allows you to revert to previous states of your work simply by clicking back through history in the list. But one thing it has never done in the past is record the fact that you performed a Save or Save As on the document.
With the release of Photoshop CC 2014, Adobe has finally added this feature to the History Panel functionality.
Now if you have a complicated document, you’re probably saving quite a bit. Since the History Panel only saves a specific amount of history states (which you can configure in the Preferences>Performance>History States panel), you’ll likely want to at least have all the Save states saved. To do this, you can have Photoshop automatically save a new Snapshot of the document each time you save by clicking the flyout menu in the History Panel and select History Options. Tick the Automatically Create New Snapshot When Saving checkbox.
When manipulating images in Photoshop, it’s all in the details.
Setting default fonts and colors seems trivial, but can be a considerable time-savings if you work for an in-house design department where you’re always using the same corporate font and colors for virtually everything you do.
The ability to set default fonts and colors in new Adobe InDesign documents has been covered before, but I still see people asking about it, so I thought it worth mentioning here again.
To set the default colors:
Any NEW documents you create will automatically have the new default font and colors already set. Unfortunately, existing documents will still use whatever default font and colors that were set when the document was created.
To set the default font:
Tomorrow marks an important day for long-time Windows developer, Serif. They’re launching Affinity Designer, their first foray into Mac software. And they’ve set their sites on one of the largest and most important Mac developers in the world: Adobe.
Affinity Designer is a vector art design tool rivaling Adobe Illustrator in the same way that Pixelmator is an alternative app to Adobe’s Photoshop. Which is to say, it’s the real deal.
I’ve been using Affinity Designer on and off for the last month or so and I must say that I’m extremely impressed. With a price tag of only $40 (special price until October 9th), and a most-impressive feature set, I’m betting that it will find a home on quite a few Macs.
Affinity Designer can import AI, PSD, PDF, and SVG files, and save/export as EPS, TIF, JPG, PNG, GIF, PSD, and PDF. It also offers both RGB and CMYK color modes, including 16-bit color support.
All the tools you would expect can be found, and are easy to use. And the app fully supports Apple’s iCloud, Spaces and Full Screen mode. Some pretty cool features include the ability to use pixel-tools to your vector art and have it remain editable. And the best part, Affinity Designer is fast. Really fast.
If you’ve used Pixelmator, you’ve no doubt come to believe that there actually IS a true replacement for Photoshop. I’m here to tell you that as of tomorrow, there will be a real replacement for Adobe’s Illustrator as well. And rumor has it, they’re working on a page-layout app to compete with InDesign.
Now I’m not a fool. I don’t expect designers everywhere to suddenly dump their investment in Adobe software. But true professional-grade alternatives are out there. Watch out Adobe… you’ve been king of the hill for a long time, but the competition is heating up.
David Deraedt offers Layer Exporter, a panel for Adobe Illustrator which you can obtain for free via the Adobe Exchange. If you’re a web designer or developer, this nifty panel will make your life easier by exporting individual layers in various web formats.