I learned a great trick yesterday and wanted to pass along the info. I’ve always been annoyed that I couldn’t figure out how to take swatches from one .ai file to another, and couldn’t accept that the simplest way to do it was making little boxes of all of the swatches I was trying to [...]

This may seem rather delayed considering CS5 has already come out, but I know many of us are a little behind on updating. I was ecstatic when I finally learned how to package Illustrator files in CS3, but recently found out that it doesn’t work the same way in CS4. This sent me on another [...]

Alright, so I just saw my iMac’s life flash before my eyes. Yesterday, I noticed a little bit of fuzziness on the screen. The fonts on every web page I opened seemed hazy. Chalking it up to being tired or some weird glitch, I let it go. Today, I notice the same problem. And this [...]

I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to the correct uses for Adobe programs. I will admit that I do most layouts in Illustrator, but I know that at least the more complex ones should be pulled together in InDesign. It drives me absolutely crazy when anyone does layouts in Photoshop. It’s meant [...]

And on a few others, apparently. I’m not sure how many people this will be relevant to, but I experienced this little glitch recently, as did a couple of my friends. So I thought I’d share the solution for anyone who may be dealing with the same kind of frustration. Have you ever been happily [...]

UPDATE: There is also a solution for packaging files in CS4 and CS5. It is different than the one described for CS3 below. If you’d like to see the new approach, please click here. I am simply ecstatic over what I have learned this evening. I’ve long been frustrated over Illustrator’s inability to package files [...]

I need to address something that drives me absolutely crazy when done improperly, and that’s type alignment. Whether you right, left, or full justify text, small characters such as periods, commas, asterisks, dashes, etc. don’t count. Too often I see type that’s been set with these small characters treated no differently than their larger counterparts. [...]

So it seems pretty common sense, but laying out text in photoshop is a no-no. I’m not sure if this really qualifies as a tutorial, but it needs to be said – simple : you can lay out your graphics in photoshop, but ALWAYS set type in illustrator. Vector is clean, easily editable, and isn’t [...]