Opening and saving native Adobe Illustrator files (.ai) practically becomes rote to anyone who spends quality time with Illustrator. But if you’re new to Illustrator CS or thinking of upgrading, you should know that some changes have taken place that may leave you a bit bewildered. The simple act of opening an older Illustrator document […]

Adobe InDesign has developed into a very capable, versatile print-publishing application of its own right. However, InDesign’s publishing feats do not stop at print. Adobe made certain that InDesign CS would meet most cross-media publishing needs as well, such as Acrobat PDFs, eBooks, and the Web. Earlier versions of InDesign included an export command to […]

Adobe GoLive would likely seem a favorite with designers, given its ease of use and Adobe’s trademark user interface. Yet, even die-hard GoLive fans (and there are some) have probably considered jumping ship. Users have become all too familiar with GoLive’s tendency to corrupt site files and generate bloated JavaScript code that is next to […]

Let’s start by getting the obvious out of the way: The name Macromedia Studio MX 2004 is a mouthful. I had my doubts when Macromedia launched the Studio MX moniker more than a year ago, deciding to append all its major application names with MX and launch Studio MX as its product suite. Well, now […]

When Mac OS X was first released in 2001, one of the first core graphics applications to run on it was FreeHand 10. That’s just one of the “firsts” FreeHand has brought to the market throughout its history: it was one of the first popular illustration products to offer layers and the work-in-preview mode way […]

Adobe Photoshop keeps marching along: Now in its seventh incarnation, this mega-program retails for about $600. While many of us have been able to keep up with its new features and pay its upgrade prices through the years, imagine what it must be like for newcomers trying to start with Photoshop from scratch nowadays. Many […]

With Illustrator 9, Adobe introduced some remarkable capabilities for exporting vector files to Photoshop — and brought even more to the table with Illustrator 10. The onslaught of new features in the last two releases of both Illustrator and Photoshop may have obscured these new exporting options so that they snuck right by you. But […]

I can’t quite remember exactly when I heard about Macromedia Flash and started to tinker around with it. It was somewhere around the time of Flash 2 and 3. What I do remember is revisiting the documentation and tutorials several times as I struggled to grasp the concepts and learn the proper steps to accomplish […]

I’ve been using Adobe GoLive since its first incarnation. In its previous five versions, it’s gained powerful, unique features and undergone a couple of name changes. First, it was GoLive CyberStudio, which was then abbreviated to its current name when Adobe acquired its developer in 1999. With version 5, Adobe brought us Smart Objects, a […]

Whenever I attend Macworld Expo keynotes, I do my best not to get swept up in the excitement and fervor swimming around the convention hall. It helps to keep my impression of the announcements objective and see them in their true light. But this isn’t always easy when you have Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, presenting […]