CS4 - The Graphic Mac

Create your own Adobe CS5 style icons

General
21 May, 2010

With the release of Creative Suite 5, Adobe brought with it a new set of icons for all their applications. Now I won’t get into the whole debate about whether or not they’re better or worse than the previous ones, but they are different. And if you’re like me, you may have an interest in altering them a bit, and creating similar ones for other folder and applications in your OS X Dock.

Icon Generator is a website and a companion Adobe AIR application, both free, that allow you to create your own CS5-style icons with little effort.

Create your own CS5-style icons easily

As you can see in the screenshot above, you can type in your own letters (up to 15, but it looks bad beyond three), choose a face and font color, and even add or remove icon shadows and glare. I should also note that if you preferred the Adobe CS4-style icons, you can choose that style instead.

But it Icon Generator doesn’t stop there. You can choose to use an image on the face of your icon, rather than letters. You simply upload a 512×512 pixel JPG or PNG file. As you can see below, the results are pretty darn good!

Icon Generator allows you to use images instead of text on your icons

Once you’re finished customizing, Icon Generator allows you to download a .zip file containing various sized PNG files of your icon, and even update your Twitter profile icon if you wish.

Icon Generator is free, so if you like the Adobe CS4 or CS5 icons and want to customize more icons to match, this little AIR app is just what the doctor ordered.

Working with Document Tabs in Adobe CS4 Apps

General
9 Sep, 2009

With the release of the Adobe Creative Suite 4, all the major apps have adopted a tabbed document interface. At first it’s a bit difficult to get used to, but I’ve found it to be a pretty decent productivity increase. The one thing that baffled me was how difficult it was to get objects from one document to another. I of course am not one for reading manuals, so it took me a while to figure out how simple it really is. You can drag objects (or entire layers for that matter) from one document to another when they’re both open simply by selecting the object(s) or layer(s) from one document and dragging them to the tab of the second document and hovering them over the tab for a brief second. The second document moves to the front and you can let go of them to place them.

Is OS X Snow Leopard ready for heavy-duty design work?

General
8 Sep, 2009

Whenever Apple releases a new operating system, the first thing creatives consider before updating is whether or not the new OS will play nicely with their existing investments in hardware and software. For most designers and artists, that means Adobe Creative Suite, font managers, and Web browsers, not to mention their existing Macs. In my latest article at Macworld, I share a brief overview of Snow Leopard, and how it might affect designers using the Adobe Creative Suite 4 applications. To make a long story short, the answer is yes, go ahead and upgrade. While the speed increases are nominal at this point; future upgrades to individual applications will boost speed in the not-so-distant future – as shown by Safari, Mail and iCal. I experienced no issues running Adobe CS4, Extensis Suitcase Fusion 2 or any other applications I use on a daily basis.

Changing Illustrator CS4 artboard orientation

Illustrator
29 Jun, 2009

I recently received an email from a fellow Mac user asking how you go about changing the orientation of an Adobe Illustrator document once you’ve already created it. Previously, you could do it in the Document Setup dialog box, but with CS4 that has changed – probably due to multiple artboard support being added to Illustrator CS4. Below I’ve outlined how you change the various aspects of your document, including orientation, size, etc. (more…)

Reverting to old-style window interface in Photoshop CS4

Photoshop
24 Apr, 2009

Photoshop document tabs

If you’re a long-time Mac user and don’t care for Adobe Photoshop CS4’s new Tabbed document interface, you can revert back to the old-style single image windows by going to Photoshop>Preferences>Interface and unchecking the Open Documents as Tabs button in the Panels & Document section.

Dealing with Adobe CS4 “license stopped working” errors

General
30 Mar, 2009

If you own a LEGAL copy of Adobe Acrobat, or any of the other Adobe Creative Suite 4 applications, and have suddenly received a “Licensing for this product has stopped working” error message, uninstalling and reinstalling is not likely to fix the problem. Adobe is apparently aware of the issue, and has posted a KnowledgeBase article covering some possible solutions. The article covers all operating system versions that CS4 will run on, and offers several solutions you can try (in order) to fix the problem.

Don’t upgrade to Adobe Illustrator CS4!

Illustrator
13 Feb, 2009

That is, unless you want two of the most sought-after features that Illustrator users have been begging for since at least version 8.

Adobe Illustrator CS4 brings those two huge features and a whole lot of existing feature enhancements to Illustrator users who’ve been patiently waiting. Multiple Artboards: Think of multiple Artboards as essentially multi-page documents, much like a page layout program, except that it allows you to have different size artboards within your document. So what’s the big deal you ask? Read on… (more…)

Photoshop CS4’s shortcut changes and missing features

Photoshop
23 Oct, 2008

While I don’t consider it a big deal, I thought I would mention that Adobe has removed a few items from Photoshop CS4 that were found in CS3 and earlier, as well as changed some keyboard shortcuts. Extract, Pattern Maker, Web Photo Gallery, Contact Sheet, Picture Package and PDF Presentation have all been removed from the default installation of Photoshop. The latter four have been replaced by the Output module in Bridge CS4. Several of the CS3 optional plugins have also gone missing, but you can download them here. The plugins include:

Alias
Bigger Tiles
DisableGetInfoComment
DisableScratchCompress
DisableVMBuffering
ElectricImage
Force VM Compression
Force VM Buffering
HSBHSL
JPEG2000
Overscroll Always
Overscroll Floating Windows
RememberSlowFiles
RLA
SGIRGB
SoftImage
Texture Fill
TWAIN
Unlimited Clipboard Size
Unlimited Preview Size

You may also notice that Command + 1 now resets the view to 100%, making it consistent with other Creative Suite tools. You can see a larger list of keyboard shortcut changes at John Nack’s blog. There are very good reasons for the keyboard shortcut changes, but John also provides a link in the article to download a plug-in to switch the commands back on a few of them. That being said, I would avoid using it because it most likely won’t work forever, so you might as well get used to the new commands.

Adobe releases Creative Suite 4

General
15 Oct, 2008

Adobe officially released Creative Suite 4 today. Adobe Creative Suite 4 delivers tightly integrated software and services that measurably improve productivity and enable you to produce richly expressive work in print, web, interactive, video, audio, and mobile.

Creative Suite 4 pricing is as follows:

Design Premium InDesign, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Acrobat, Bridge, Device Central, Version Cue

$1,799 full
$599 upgrade

Design Standard InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Bridge, Device Central, Version Cue

$1,399 full
$499 upgrade

Web Premium Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Acrobat, Soundbooth, Contribute, Bridge, Device Central, Version Cue

$1,699 full
$599 upgrade

Web Standard Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Contribute, Bridge, Device Central, Version Cue

$999 full
$399 upgrade

Production Premium After Effects, Premiere, Photoshop Extended, Flash, Illustrator, Soundbooth, OnLocation, Encore, Bridge, Device Central, Dynamic Link

$1,699 full
$599 upgrade

Master Collection InDesign, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Acrobat, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Contribute, After Effects, Premiere, Soundbooth, OnLocation, Encore, Bridge, Device Central, Dynamic Link, Version Cue

$2,499 full
$899 upgrade

Full Creative Suites, as well as individual applications can be purchased directly from Adobe’s Web store, or through authorized Adobe dealers. Downloadable demo versions of Creative Suite software will be available soon.

Tagged: CS4