Posts Tagged ‘adobe’
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
[Editor’s note: I’ve been using CS5 for a while now and I think you’ll like it as much as I do. This release is focused on making existing work flows easier, faster, and more enjoyable. Check out the official promo at Adobe. Mordy has a great screencast showing off some of these features, as well.]
Joining lines
- Freehand-style line joining! No longer required to select endpoints of two line, it just works with 2 or more lines selected. Did I mention it works on more than 2 lines at once? Super smart, huge time saver.
- Caveat: if you are looking for very complicated GIS-style (angle, gap, etc) line joining, you’ll still need to use an advanced plugin. This one will work 90% of the time.
Select behind
- Like Freehand and InDesign
- Quibble: Doesn’t work on strokes, only on fill
Symbols
- Now can have layers! This will allow us to work around many long standing sublayer bugs.
- Can have masks and not selectable beyond the mask (if content is not visible, it is not selectable)
- Bounding box no longer includes guides
- Selection based on content, not bounding box
- Actually use the registration point
- Can transform symbols with respect to the registration point.
- 9-slice scaling now works, have guides for them (important for preserving the shape of corners when scaled)
- Breaking link to symbol preserves symbol sublayers
- Can align the symbol content to the pixel grid (for pretty web output)
- Quibble:Â Before you could register via the bounding box (using preview bounds). Now you can’t. Instead, set a key object and then use 0 as the offset and use the distribute space button.
Strokes
- Variable width (think tapered streams, see screenshot below)
- Better corner control (miter, see screenshot below)
- Better dashing (including centering dashes on corners, see screenshot below)
- Better arrowheads (registered to the tip of the line or beyond the tip of the line)
- Setup width profiles (even on calligraphic brushes and pattern brushes)
- Segmented art brushes (similar to 9-slice scaling for symbols, no longer distorted shapes)
Fills
- Pattern fill now stable between artboards (they don’t shift)
Pixel Perfect Drawing
- Get your artwork to the web with crisp, on pixel lines rather than grey anti-aliased crap.
- Also Flash- and Photoshop-style text anti-alias settings
- See pixel grid on zoom in
- Quibble: only works at 100% 72 ppi. If you scale up your artwork to get it on the web via Save For Web, this will not work for you. You must scale it up before exporting.
Draw behind mode
- Or in front or inside, like Flash.
- Useful for cartoonists, especially.
Flash (FXG) exchange format
- Better round tripping of graphics to Flash for interactive graphics
- Made for working with Flash Catalyst
Artboards
- Can now be named!
- Easier to reorder, delete empty artboards
- Can rearrange artboards automatically.
Rulers
- Now measure Y down rather than up
- Measure per artboard and globally.
- Paste in same “relative” place across multiple artboards at once
- Makes consistent with Photoshop, Flash, InDesign and most other design apps
- For us programmers, the true mathematical Y measures up is still there, though
Shape builder
- Making a map icon? You’ll find Shape Builder way more intuitive to use than the Pathfinder panel buttons
- Just click and drag between part, kinda like Live Paint.
Resolution independent effects
- Now changing the document raster effects resolution (or scaling the object up and down will NOT change the actual effect spread)
- This is important for “design once, distribute in web, print, etc”
Other stuff
- Bristle brush is very cool for artists
- New perspective grid for axiametric drawing
- Gradient mesh now allows transparency in nodes
Tags: adobe, cs3, cs4, cs5, csbuzz, illustrator
Posted in Software | 1 Comment »
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
[Editor’s note: Their screencast is impressive. Background app that tracks file time usage for billing and how your files are related to each other (what’s placed where) and can search inside documents for layer names, etc). Sounds like a version of Adobe Bridge that’s actually useful!]
Republished from the company’s website.
Be totally organized without organizing anything.
Flow is the world’s first Visual Workflow Manager, built from the ground up to keep creative professionals streamlined and informed. Flow gives you a total understanding of your project, visually and intuitively. In one simple interface, you’ll see all your project files, how they’re related to each other, and where they’re located – on a local drive, on a network volume, even on a DVD you burned a few months ago.
This new birds-eye-view of your project gives you instant access to any file you need—and any version of that file, even if you’ve overwritten it while making changes. Flow even alerts you if you try to modify or delete a file that you shouldn’t. Bottom line: no more lost files, no more accidents, and no more all-nighters. You’ll find yourself delivering everything right the first time—without doing anything different.
John Nack, Principal Product Manager for Adobe Photoshop, calls Flow “one of the slickest, most potentially transformative applications I’ve seen in years.” Could it transform the way you work? Check out Flow’s features to find out.
Watch their video or get the demo . . .
Tags: adobe, cs3, cs4, flow, gridiron, illustrator, john nack, manage, photoshop, project, workflow
Posted in Mapping, Software | Comments Off on Manage Projects with GridIron Flow for Adobe Creative Suite
Friday, January 29th, 2010
[Editor’s note: No, there is no Flash player on the iPhone or the new iPad in Safari. But, just like AIR on the desktop, Adobe has figured out a way to wrap Flash SWFs in an app runtime so they’ll work on the new devices. Apparently part of Flash CS5, Packager for iPhone, announced at MAX 2009 conference, will be interesting to watch (or multi-touch).]
Republished from Adobe.
Today Apple announced the Apple iPad and like many of you, we at Adobe are looking forward to getting our hands on one of these devices. This is an exciting time to be a software designer with an explosion of new devices and we look forward to helping Flash developers and designers bring innovative applications to these devices using our tools and frameworks.
We announced the Packager for iPhone at MAX 2009 which will allow Flash developers to create native iPhone applications and will be available in the upcoming version of Flash Pro CS5. This technology enables developers to create applications for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad (though applications will not initially take direct advantage of iPad’s new screen resolution). It is our intent to make it possible for Flash developers to build applications that can take advantage of the increased screen size and resolution of the iPad.
Continue reading at Adobe . . .
Tags: adobe, cs5, dev, Flash, ipad, iphone, itouch, max, multi-resolution, packager for iphone
Posted in Best practices, Flash, Interactive, iphone, Mapping, Promote, Software | Comments Off on Building iPad Applications with Flash (Adobe)
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
[Editor’s note: Expression Builder gets a needed upgrade, too, and the web map authoring tool’s new features deserve a second look. The ESRI GeoDB support (Windows only for now) comes with a $349 upgrade price tag for existing maintenance customers. I’d like to see scripting (recordable with Illustrator actions) in their next release, and a method to export cut map tiles for mashups.]
Republished from Avenza (1, 2, 3).
Avenza Systems Inc., producers of MAPublisher cartographic software for Adobe Illustrator and Geographic Imager spatial tools for Adobe Photoshop is pleased to announce the release of MAPublisher 8.2 for Adobe Illustrator. MAPublisher 8.2 is the latest version of this powerful mapmaking software used to produce high quality maps from GIS data for both print and electronic distribution and now offers support for both creating geospatial PDF files from within Adobe Creative Suite and importing GIS map data directly from ESRI geodatabases.
MAPublisher 8.2 for Adobe Illustrator is a full product upgrade that is free of charge to all current MAPublisher Maintenance Program subscribers and replaces the current shipping version of MAPublisher, version 8.1, for all new customers using Adobe Illustrator CS3 and/or CS4.
“MAPublisher 8.2 is another major advance for this powerful and widely used cartographic and map-design platform,†said Ted Florence, President of Avenza, “MAPublisher now offers the first and only solution for creating geospatial PDF files from within Adobe Creative Suite and with the inclusion of import support for ESRI geodatabases offers a truly comprehensive map design and publishing solution.†he added.
MAPublisher 8.2 includes all the significant functionality introduced in earlier releases of MAPublisher as well as the following new features and enhancements.
New Features of MAPublisher 8.2 for Adobe Illustrator
- Export to Geospatial PDF with optional retention of attributes and referencing for re-import to Illustrator
- Support for the new MAPublisher spatial database import system for ESRI geodatabases (additional license required. Windows only)
- Upgraded functionality for the MAPublisher LabelPro collision-free rule-based labeling system (additional license required)
- Dozens of improvements & enhancements for the MAP Web Author Tool for automatic creation of interactive Flash maps
- New MAP Measurement tool for measuring lengths, perimeters and areas in page or map units
- Import and export of KMZ files
- Enhanced grid and graticule functionality with a number of new features including full support for rotated MAP Views
- New functionality to create attributes for text objects from corresponding map features
- New functionality to create a map index using additional feature attributes
- Enhanced Expression Builder with recently used list and many new functions
- Enhanced Preferences options includes dozens of new customizable items for most MAPublisher functions
- Upgraded MAP View panels with new functionality
- Various other user interface improvements and performance enhancements to improve usability
Features of the MAPublisher Geospatial PDF Exporter
The MAPublisher Geospatial PDF exporter offers the ability to generate Adobe Acrobat PDF files that contain all the cosmetic features of the completed Adobe Illustrator map document as well as all the GIS data attributes and co-ordinate information of the original GIS data files, such that within Adobe Acrobat the following functionality can be performed without the aid of any special tools, plugins or other special extensions to Adobe Acrobat.
- View map locations in various coordinate systems including decimal degrees, DMS, Military Grid and more.
- Find a location in a map and mark it with a comment
- Measure distances on a map using real-world units (miles, kilometers, feet, etc.)
- Reveal the attributes of map features by clicking on the feature within the map document
- Search by map attribute values to reveal all map features that satisfy the query
- Option to retain attributes and georeferencing for re-import to Illustrator/MAPublisher
Features of the MAPublisher spatial database importer
- Direct import from ESRI Personal Geodatabase (requires ArcGIS license)
- Direct import from ESRI File Geodatabase (requires ArcGIS license)
- Direct import from ArcSDE servers (requires ArcGIS or ArcReader license)
- Support for point, line, polygon and Bezier curve geometries
- Support for Annotations
- SQL attribute query support executed on import to enable import of specific features only
- Spatial filter executed on data import to enable selective importation based on defined data extents
- Support for subtypes and domains during import
The MAPublisher spatial database importer for Illustrator is available as an add-on option for MAPublisher 8.2, for Windows only, for US$599. MAPublisher users with active MAPublisher maintenance may purchase the MAPublisher spatial database importer for only US$349. New MAPublisher 8.2 licenses including MAPublisher spatial database functionality are US$1549. Academic, floating license and volume pricing is available. Prices include 1 year of maintenance. Full details are available at www.avenza.com.
More about MAPublisher for Illustrator
MAPublisher for Illustrator is powerful map production software for creating cartographic-quality maps from GIS data. Developed as a suite of plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator, MAPublisher leverages the superior graphics capabilities of this graphics design software for working with GIS data and producing high-quality maps with efficiency.
MAPublisher 8.2 for Illustrator is available free of charge to all MAPublisher for Illustrator customers with a valid maintenance subscription and as an upgrade for non-maintenance members at US$549. New licenses are US$1249. Academic, floating and volume pricing is available. Prices include 1 year of maintenance. Full details are available at www.avenza.com/mapublisher.
Tags: 8.2, adobe, arcsde, avenza, cs4, esri, geodb, geopdf, illustrator, kmz, mapublisher, pdf
Posted in Geography, Google Earth, Google Map Mashup, Interactive, Mapping, Software | Comments Off on MAPublisher 8.2 Released with GeoPDF, KML + Spatial Database Support (Avenza)
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
[Editor’s note: Adobe begins to catch up to Apple’s iPhone with multi-touch gestures, as the video below from BusinessWire demos.]
Republished from Electonista.
Adobe today fulfilled earlier promises and provided betas for both Flash Player 10.1and AIR 2. Both are the first from Adobe to have a Flash layer that supports multi-touch input, including gestures such as pinching to zoom the window. Flash Player specifically gets H.264 hardware decoding through newer video chipsets and, initially for Windows PCs, can significantly reduce the workload on the CPU or a notebook’s battery.
The gain is particularly helpful for netbooks using NVIDIA’s Ion chipset as it should enable HD video in Flash where it was previously only available for downloads.
Both add native support for microphones, but AIR 2 adds significantly more native communication with the system itself and can talk both to local apps as well as to mass storage devices like flash drives or memory cards. It works better for serving content and has a newer version of the WebKit rendering engine that supports HTML5 and faster JavaScript, much like Android 2.0 or Safari.
Either beta is available today for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. Mobile betas, which should be the first to provide broadly available Flash on smartphones, aren’t due until early next year for Android and Symbian. The HTC Hero already offers an early version of in-browser flash.
Tags: adobe, air, electronista, Flash, iphone, multi-touch, multitouch, smartphones
Posted in Flash, Software | Comments Off on Adobe posts Flash 10.1, AIR 2 betas with multi-touch (Electronista)
Monday, September 28th, 2009
[Editor’s note: Adobe has listened and made it easy to use Freehand under Snow Leapard Mac OS 10.6. Follow earlier procedure in this post but with new registration file from Adobe. Thanks Curt!]
[Adobe now has released] an official solution you can access here:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/504/cpsid_50468.html
This is a Freehand registration file you replace your own copy with. This will bypass the activation component which causes the crash on Snow Leopard. Please use the above link rather than relinking the file to the forum since we are tracking the number of times documents get accessed to give us a and idea of the scale of particular issues.
Tags: 10.6, adobe, Freehand, mac os 10.6, mx, registration, snow leapord
Posted in Mapping, Software | 17 Comments »
Thursday, September 17th, 2009
UPDATE: Adobe has released a non-activation registration file to address Warning 1 below. Read more »
[Editor’s note: Cartographers still migrating to Illustrator from Freehand MX should be wary of upgrading to the new Mac OS as it breaks your Freehand install due to the licensing restrictions the app uses on startup. There is a workaround, but only if you have a volume (company) license code. Thanks Curt!]
I had been unable to replicate the success of others which was quite frustrating but I finally got everything working and wanted to post my solution. I think it either comes down to lack of complete details in the posted instructions, here is how I was able to get it working properly:
- Step 1: Delete your local installation of Freehand. This *includes* the /Library/Application Support/Macromedia directory (well, place it on the desktop)
- Step 2: Reinstall Freehand. VERY IMPORTANT—DO NOT RUN FREEHAND AFTER INSTALL OR PROCEDURE WILL FAIL
- Step 3: Recreate the Macromedia directory
- Step 4: Place your “FreeHand MXa Registration” file back into the newly created Macromedia directory
- Step 5: Run Freehand
For whatever reason, this was the only way I was capable of repairing my licensed copy of Freehand. Simply updating the “FreeHand MXa Registration” file or installing a new copy ofFreehand *without* first removing the Macromedia directory did nothing to help my situation.
A couple of things you should be aware of:
- Warning 1: You may need a serial number which starts with WPD700…
[Editor: WPD700 serial numbers are volume (corporate) licenses, your personal license will likely not work.]
UPDATE: Adobe has released a non-activation registration file to address this. Read more »
- Warning 2: If you had other registration information for Flash, Fireworks etc, you can safely move those back into the Macromedia directory.
Tags: 10.6, adobe, cs3, cs4, forum, Freehand, illustrator, mac, macromedia, mxa, registration, snow leopard
Posted in Mapping, Software | 50 Comments »
Friday, June 19th, 2009
[Editor’s note: The latest update of the Illustrator plugin includes a collision-free rule based label engine, but it will cost you an extra license fee.]
Republished from Avenza.
MAPublisher 8.1 for Illustrator is powerful map production software for creating cartographic-quality maps from GIS data. Developed as a suite of plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator, MAPublisher leverages the superior graphics capabilities of this graphics design software for working with GIS data and producing high-quality maps with efficiency.
New Features of MAPublisher 8.1 for Adobe Illustrator
- Support for the new MAPublisher LabelPro collision-free rule-based labeling system (additional license required)
- Improved MAP Web Author Tool for automatic creation of interactive Flash maps
- New MAPublisher Preferences options for customization of various features and functions
- Split Layer function to move data to new layers based on attributes and expressions
- Enhanced Expression Builder allows import of expressions from Selection Filters
- Enhanced Plot Centroids function now has the option to copy attributes from the source area
- New Export Attribute function for exporting the attributes table to a delimited text file
- Enhanced Register Image function can now create a new MAP View from any referenced image
- New Specify Anchors functionality allows world values to be entered in any co-ordinate system
- Improved MAP View and MAP Stylesheets panels with new functionality
- Various other user interface improvements and performance enhancements to improve usability
Continue reading about 8.1 upgrade at Avenza . . .
Features of MAPublisher LabelPro
MAPublisher® LabelPro™ offers advanced labelling capabilities beyond those available in the standard MAPublisher Feature Text Label and the MAP Tagger Tool, including a sophisticated and user-friendly rule-based and collision-free placement engine.
The MAP LabelPro engine contains sophisticated algorithms based on EZ Label technology from MapText Inc. It solves many of the most common map labelling problems such as complex conflict resolution across multiple layers, the ability to specify data as obstacles and the ability to create complex labelling conventions using user defined rules.
MAPublisher LabelPro uses map attributes, rules and styles for labelling which provides a great level of sophistication and control. Map layers may be assigned an order of priority for labelling and set as label obstacles. Labels can be placed on any defined text layers, unplaceable layers can be ignored or placed. Placement rules and styles can be saved to a file and imported or shared over a network.
Users can use the following rules and placement options to place the text on their maps.
Continue reading about LabelPro at Avenza . . .
Tags: 8.1, adobe, avenza, cartography, ez label, gis, illustrator, labelpro, maptext, mapublisher, plugin
Posted in Interactive, Mapping, Promote, Software | Comments Off on Avenza Systems Releases MAPublisher 8.1 + LabelPro
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
[Editor’s Note: ]
Republished from Adobe Developer Connection.
By Dr. Woohoo @ blog.drwoohoo.com.
Follow along with this tutorial to expand on what we created in the previous tutorial, PatchPanel: Integrating your ExtendScript, with the objective of using a framework that embraces running our Flash plug-in in multiple Creative Suite applications (Photoshop and Illustrator). When we are done, our Flash plug-in will work in all three CS applications using code that is appropriate for each host application― keeping in mind that this is necessary due to the differences in the DOMs of each application.
Our Flash plug-in will get the RGB values of the foreground color of the host CS4 application. You will integrate a separate ActionScript file for each host application within the Flash plug-in that you develop within a Flex Builder MXML project using the PatchPanel SWC library as the mechanism for communicating between your SWF and the host application, which will dynamically be defined in this example.
After completing this tutorial, you should be able to:
- Add the Adobe PatchPanel SWC library, cs4.swc, to your Flex Builder Project
- Import the host CS applications ExtendScript DOM
- Copy your ExtendScript code from ExtendScript Toolkit to Flex Builder
- Know what the appropriate color object structure is within the DOM of the three possible host applications
- Install the SWF and accompanying JSX/JS file so that it is accessible from within Photoshop and Illustrator
Continue reading at Adobe Developer Connection . . .
Tags: adobe, cs, developer, dom, dr. woohoo, extendscript, Flash, flex, illustrator, jsx, mxml, patchpanel, photoshop, rgb, swc
Posted in Flash, Promote, scripting, Software | 1 Comment »
Monday, March 30th, 2009
[Editor’s note: Cartographers looking for Douglas-Peucker type line simplication in Illustrator now have a solution to Illustrator’s default simplify command when trying to generalize features like river oxbows. Jim started on the problem of fixing an Illustrator bug (see image above) where redundant points were created in the path outline command, and now has a more generalized solution.]
Jim Heck shared an amazing tool for Adobe Illustrator with me recently to deal with the irritating bug in versions CS3 and CS4 where redundant points (stacked on top of each other, illustrated above where the dupplicate points are pulled away from the basic shape) are created on outline or offset of a path’s stroke. The script (in Javascript) and Action set he created quickly remove these redundant points while still keeping the path shape. He does this with a bit of behind the scenes trigonometry wizardry. Please note this bug still exists in CS4 contray to rumors, though is lesser virulent form than CS3 (confirmed by me via email with Adobe engineers).
I’ve worked with Jim to refine it the last couple weeks. I think it’s ready for prime time now.
Screenshots:
Settings shown to remove redundant points for outlined path screenshot above. I used a tolerance of 12 points for the river ox bow screenshot below.
How it works:
- Selected path points only or all document paths
- Set distance tolerance in page units (optional)
- Works in locked objects
- Works in compound paths
- Reporting, Selection, and Removal modes
Cartographic applications:
I illustrate below the result of using Jim’s generalization script on a typial river path and you can see in area 1a and 2b how the ox bow removal is light years above Illustrator’s default path simplify command which grossly distorts the shape in the pursuit of point removal. Jim’s script preserves the shape and removes the tiny, tight wiggles. It needs a little bit more programming work to fix areas 1b and 2a + 2c where the shape is loosing some fidelity for not keeping the trailing point in the series of removed points. And maybe needing to keep an intermediary point between 2a and 2c for shape since this is a longer removal?
With a little more tweaking, this tool will become popular for cartographers since we often want to simplify lines while keeping the overall geometry shape when reducing clustered points. The opposite may be achievable, too, when adding points selectively to long curves, but NOT to segments of the line that are already dense with points. But that’s for a 2.0 release 😉
Download the script and actions from Jim Heck’s site . . .
Tags: action, adobe, cartographer, cs3, cs4, douglas, generalize, illustrator, javascript, jim heck, offset, outline, ox bow, path, pinball, plugin, puecker, redundant path points, script, simplify
Posted in Best practices, Mapping, Mountain Carto, Promote, scripting, Software | 8 Comments »
