Seagate FreeAgent Go 640GB USB 2.0 drive

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I wanted to test Snow Leopard on the MacBook Pro I use for public demos and classes, and didn’t want to munge the drive irreversibly. So I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the drive onto the Seagate drive, then ran the Snow Leopard install on the Seagate — it’s a bootable drive. So far, all the necessities (applications, printer drivers, scanner driver) seem to work fine.

Consider this my public confession that I am not a bleeding-edge adopter of a new operating system: I used to be more intrepid, but I didn’t want to take chances with my demo machine. Carbon Copy Cloner is great for this, and it also provides an incremental backup feature. CCC is donation-ware: if you like it, you can donate to the developer. I guarantee that you’ll like it, and I encourage you to generously support Mike Bombich and other developers who contribute so much to the software ecosystem.

Note: while the Seagate drive can be used on Mac or PC, Carbon Copy Cloner is Mac-only.

That’s right — I’m a cellphone infidel. I’d like to have a sleek, hip iPhone, but I’m not willing to abandon Sprint for the more expensive AT&T service that’s spotty out here in the sticks where I live. Yet, I lust after the thousands of apps.

However, I do have an iPod Touch, so I can watch videos and listen to music while stuck on a plane, so I can run most of the apps I want, including the spiffy Color Expert app from Code Line Communicators. While it’s true that you’d get the most out of Color Expert with an iPhone (because of the camera), it’s still quite useful (and fun) on an iPod.

Some of the app screens in Color Expert. Note the photo at upper right, being sampled to pick a starter color for the palette-generation process.

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Choose from Color Wheel or Swatch mode, and then choose a color. Better than that? If you have an iPhone, use the camera to take a photo, and pick colors from that (on the iPod, you can pick colors from a stored photo). Then, choose the method for generating additional colors (e.g., Split Complementary, Triadic, etc.) If you’ve started with a color in the Pantone swatch book, all secondary colors are Pantone colors as well — very slick. A plus: Color Expert will display the CMYK, RGB, HSB, and Lab values for Pantone swatches. Is it a replacement for your Pantone fanbook? No, of course not — but it’s a great portable quick reference. Besides, you can’t play music on your Pantone Color Bridge swatchbook.

Once you have these palettes, what do you do besides admire your little screen? Well, you can save color palettes and email them. Unfortunately, they aren’t in a standard Adobe Swatch Exchange format, but at least you have a record of the swatch numbers or recipes. More than anything, I think, it’s a great way to brainstorm.

And it helps me justify having the iPod Touch

If you’ve ever had to silhouette a girl with windblown hair, you know what a challenge it can be to create the perfect mask. I’ve always used channels, duplicating the best one and using Levels, Curves and judicious handwork to create a mask. As long as the subject has some contrast with the background, there’s hope, but, even then, it can be time-consuming.

The ideal masking solution faithfully captures the shape of the subject, maintains translucency and soft transitions, and can be used non-destructively. It’s not a simple problem to solve, which is probably why I haven’t found a product that fit all requirements — until now. All of the other products I’ve tried erase background pixels rather than creating a separate mask. Some do a better job of maintaining transparency, some aren’t much better than using the Magic Wand. But I’ve found only two products that create non-destructive masks with nice, transitional edges: Power Mask, and EZ Mask, both from Digital Film Tools.

Both products do a great job; EZ Mask is just a bit, ah, easier (natch). When you see a product named “EZ Mask,” it’s tempting to think… well, you know. But trust me: it’s wonderful! Let me show you…

With EZ Mask, you start by converting your background layer to a floating layer, then adding an empty layer mask (the tutorials explain all this), then use highlighting tools to indicate background and foreground areas by painting across them (below).

The red highlights indicate background colors, and the green highlights have been painted over foreground colors (i.e., the color areas constituting the subject). There is also a third highlighter, for unknown transitional areas, but it wasn’t necessary in this image. Once you think you’ve indicated the areas correctly, have EZ Mask show the mask results:

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If you’re not satisfied, you can further modify your highlighted areas until you like the results. Then, when you click the Process icon, EZ Mask generates the final mask in what was your blank layer mask.

Fake sky inserted behind masked runners. Yes, it's garish and obvious. But, hey, look at that great mask!

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Once you’ve generated the mask, you can’t return to EZ Mask to modify it; however, you can work on it as you would any other layer mask, using painting tools, selections, Levels, Curves, etc. to modify its effect.

Power Mask uses similar principles, but as you paint clockwise along the edge of the subject, you can see the mask taking shape. You can still use foreground/background painting tools to modify the results before the mask is finalized.

Tutorials and examples on the Digital Film Tools site explain all of this in much more depth, and there are trial versions for you to play with. Currently, EZ Mask is $195, and Power Mask is $150, but there is a bundle containing both products for only $245. In addition, Digital Film Tools develops a number of plug-ins for Avid, Final Cut Pro, After Effects, and Aperture. Very cool stuff.

In case you’re wondering, I don’t get a kickback. In fact, I didn’t even get free software. I bought the products because the trials convinced me I couldn’t live without them.

]]> http://www.claudiamccue.com/2010/01/ez-does-it-really/feed/ 0 http://www.claudiamccue.com/2010/01/great-cheap-ipod-touch-screen-protector/ http://www.claudiamccue.com/2010/01/great-cheap-ipod-touch-screen-protector/#comments Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:44:47 +0000 Claudia http://www.claudiamccue.com/?p=731 I realize this doesn’t fall under the heading of “graphics,” but I’ll bet a lot of you have an iPod touch. Even though I’d heard that the screen is sturdy and scratch-resistant, I wanted to ensure its smooth surface would remain unmarred.

There are a bazillion products to protect these things; I first bought a protector for about $20 that used a squeegee, sponge, and a small container of liquid to adhere the film. I made quite a mess, but with a lot of squeegeeing (is that a word?) I finally eliminated all the bubbles, only to find a piece of lint trapped smack in the middle. Aargh!

Then I found this product, absurdly priced, on Amazon. At first glance, you might get the idea that this is a cheap product. Its enthusiastic tagline — “The greatest guarder for LCD screen” — is quaint. The back of the package says “For iTouch II,” but it fit my iPod Touch 3rd gen perfectly. (Despite the illustration, it wouldn’t be appropriate for iPhone, unless you’re willing to cut a little hole for the speaker.) But it’s very well made, smooth and flawless, and the application procedure is painless and well thought-out.

It’s currently priced at $3.00, so I ordered 5 of them (in case I botched the installation–still cheaper than the one protector I’d already used). This protector provides a “tack cloth” to clean dust off the screen (I recommend using a good glass cleaner first). And it has a unique approach: there are two sheets protecting the screenguard: one covering the adhesive side, and one to act as a thick carrier sheet as you position the protector. A small protruding tag on the carrier sheet makes it easy to position the protector and use your fingers (or the tack cloth) to “roll across” the sheet and anchor it. The surface is smooth (not “rubbery” like the previous protector I used). It’s crystal clear, and you don’t even know it’s there. Highly recommended.

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Don’t you just love the tabbed document display in Creative Suite 4 applications?

If you do, you’re in the minority, judging by the number of people who ask “How do I change that?” often followed by “What were they thinking?!” I can help a bit with the first question, but I can’t answer the second one. I guess it’s part of the increasing Macromediafication of the application interfaces: perhaps the flat gray architecture is meant to be chic and soothing, and maybe the tabs are intended to conserve screen real estate. Whatever the explanation, here are some tips for returning to the Land of Floating Windows, as nature intended.

Photoshop

Open Preferences > Interface. UNcheck “Open Documents as Tabs” and “Enable Floating Window Docking.” If you just uncheck “Open Documents as Tabs,” document windows will still insist on docking if they’re dragged near each other.

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InDesign

As in Photoshop, open Preferences > Interface and uncheck “Open Documents as Tabs” and “Enable Floating Window Docking.” Heave great sigh of relief.

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Illustrator

Alas, Illustrator only lets you get halfway there: You can turn off the option to open documents as tabs, but you can’t prevent documents from docking if you move them too close together. Some strange magnetic force compels them to huddle together for warmth.

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Feature Requests

Here’s an idea: if you dislike the tabbed interface, put a note in the suggestion box. Fill out the Feature Request form on the Adobe website and ask that this compulsive behavior be an option, not the default.

]]> http://www.claudiamccue.com/2009/11/please-dont-put-it-on-my-tab/feed/ 10 http://www.claudiamccue.com/2009/10/its-not-helvetica-nu/ http://www.claudiamccue.com/2009/10/its-not-helvetica-nu/#comments Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:57:07 +0000 Claudia http://www.claudiamccue.com/?p=698 You’re probably familiar with Helvetica Neue. On the Mac, it’s even one of the built-in System fonts. It’s a commonly-used font — and commonly mispronounced.

It’s not “Helvetica Nu.” It’s “Helvetica Noy-yeh.” Sparked by my teenage love of German cars and a stint in high-school German classes, I long ago learned to love the Germanic economy of language. I always considered it wasteful that the French would put a perfectly good “T” at the end of a word, and then not pronounce it. The Germans, however, don’t waste letters. Porsche is pronounced “Porsh-eh,” not “Porsh.” It’s Noy-yeh, not Nu.

This has been a public service announcement

At first glance, you may have read this as “Hotel HelvetiCa,” just because we’re all so accustomed to the common font name. Our brains just want to fill in the “missing” C.

Helvetia was the Latin name for Switzerland in the Middle Ages. The label HELVETIA can be found on Swiss coins and postal stamps, while the abbreviation “CH” stands for “Confoederatio Helvetica,” the Latin version of “Swiss Confederation” (hence the CH sticker on Swiss cars and Switzerland’s top level internet domain, .ch.)

This is the Hotel Helvetia, in Lindau, Germany, on the beautiful Lake Bodensee.

The Font Bureau, Inc. has filed a $2 million lawsuit against NBC over unlicensed installations of fonts, including Bureau Grotesque and Interstate.

Apparently, NBC used purchased fonts on many more computers than the original license allowed, and also used fonts which had not been purchased.

More information here.

Guess we can look forward to a lot of creative uses of Times New Roman in upcoming NBC advertising.

PS: when’s the last time you read the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) for the fonts you own? (And I do mean own. You do, don’t you?)

Now, the just-released 6.0.4 update fixes this shortfall, as well as some other issues. The PDF of the release notes can be found here.

Before you freak out, it’s not a common circumstance, nor is it a showstopper. Just thought you might like to know. Here’s the equation:

Place a layered PSD as an anchored object within a header or footer row in a multi-page threaded table, and then attempt to print to a PostScript printer. The job starts to print, then displays the above error dialog: “The Adobe Print Engine has failed to output your data due to an unknown problem.”

If it’s a single-page table (which makes header/footer rows pointless, but I digress), there’s no error. The same PSD placed in a plain old body row prints without problem, regardless of table length.

In my case, the printer is a Xerox Phaser 8400, but choosing any PostScript PPD produced the error, even if I attempted to generate PostScript using the tasteful Adobe PDF PPD. My little non-PostScript Epson inkjet printed with no problem. I could also export to PDF and print that to the Phaser successfully from Acrobat. So it’s not solely a Snow Leopard/Phaser issue.

This hit me as I was printing a handout comparing Acrobat Standard/Pro/Extended features. After narrowing down the culprit, I substituted a flattened PSD using a Photoshop path to silhouette it, and printed with no squawking.

NOTE: I suppose this marks me as a Luddite, but I never made the move to Leopard. I was reluctant to update my demo/training laptop because of early issues between Leopard and Creative Suite applications. To me, there was no compelling performance improvement, so I stuck with the old faithful cat. But when Snow Leopard was released, I thought I should catch up. I bought a Mac Pro desktop and started from scratch. With the exception of this oddball issue, it’s been fine. The new version of Suitcase runs fine, the apps behave, and all is well.

Let me know how Snow Leopard is working (or not working) for you.

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On another note, I’m over the cute cat names. How about just using the version numbers? Ten Point Six — what’s wrong with that? It’s definite, unambiguous, solid. Not fluffy.

Or memorable monikers like “Galactica” or “Bonaventure”? Maybe famous composers: “Hey! I just loaded Mozart!”

But the increasing frequency of such complaints has left me wondering if declining tech support quality could be a trend at the Big Red A. Since I’m quite fond of Adobe, that’s distressing.

Now, it seems, there’s some confirmation of my clients’ complaints, as well as some hope that those complaints are being addressed. On the main Adobe support page, there’s a brief message from Lambert Walsh, VP of Technical services. It reads, in part:

Adobe is committed to providing the most advanced, innovative products and services in the world. Recently, however, our customers have experienced a level of service that is inconsistent with what they expect and deserve. This is unacceptable and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused. We are working diligently to resolve these issues.

Lambert’s full letter is available here as a PDF.

I understand how tough it is to provide comprehensive tech support; I provide support for Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, and general printing issues for my clients and seminar attendees, and it can take some digging to solve their problems. For me, the rewards are that my client’s life now runs more smoothly, and that I often learn new things as a result.

Given the mile-long list of Adobe products, I can’t imagine the challenge involved in finding knowledgeable personnel to field the ocean of tech-support calls. From installation and activation issues to unique weird conflicts (and user proclivities), it has to be a nightmare. I don’t envy Mr. Walsh!