Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

If you are like me and you are wondering why in the world Adobe decided to eliminate the previous functionality of the Paint Bucket tool in Illustrator CS3 with the introduction of the new ‘Live Paint Bucket’ tool, fear not — a solution is at hand.
Continue reading 'Fill Vector Paths Old-School Paint Bucket Style in Illustrator CS3'

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

Adobe just released an incremental update to InDesign CS3 (5.02), and it’s so new it seems to not be in the auto-update as of yet. Per the Read Me file:

 This update fixes known issues with Anchored Objects, Character Alignment, Step and Repeat, Indexing and Table of Contents, Text and Fonts, Dictionaries, Color, Scripting, Graphics Import/Export, InDesign Interchange files (INX), XML, Library files, and Printing, as well as other miscellaneous issues. 

Continue reading 'Adobe InDesign CS3 5.02 Update Released – 10.5 Fixes On Apple’s Shoulders'

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

I just stumbled across some more Creative Suite 3 issues on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, on the Adobe support site Photoshop page. Supposedly this will be fixed by an OS X update, not an Adobe update (and Adobe and Apple are working together on this issue).

Continue reading 'Even More CS3 & 10.5 Leopard Issues: Photoshop CS3'

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

A plugin that I always forget to tout, since the functionality it provides seems so intrinsic to Illustrator once it’s installed, I forget it’s a third-party enhancement.

Select Menu for Adobe Illustrator (Mac and Windows, free) from Graffix Software is available for every version of Illustrator from 8 on up to CS3. It adds additional selectable items under the Select -> Objects menu.

This plugin really comes in handy at the production stage of prepping your art, allowing you to find all sorts of items that you need to preflight. It especially comes in handy after flattening transparency, such as when you export art to an older version of Illustrator. I find lots of klunky and open paths all over the place after flattening transparency, and I couldn’t imagine how much of a pain in the neck it would be to clean up art without Select Menu.

Continue reading 'Essential Adobe Illustrator Plug-in: Select Menu'

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

James Demsey over at design blog The Creative Mac (formerly The Creative Guy) posted some additional issues with Adobe Creative Suite 3 and Mac OS X 10.5. Seems in addition to the Open/Save/Place issues I mentioned earlier, copying vector art from InDesign to Illustrator has issues, as does hiding InDesign.

Continue reading 'More CS3 Problems On Leopard'

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

Yikes, just read over at MacMerc.com that one of Adobe’s guys posted a blog entry recently regarding some serious issues with InDesign, basically in all the dialog boxes. That means crashes for Save, Place, Open — doesn’t sound like something I would want to deal with. They did say this seems to be primarily with PowerPC based Macs, but that affects those of us still on a G4. These new InDesign bugs Adobe says they need Apple’s help to squash.

Continue reading 'Serious Issues With InDesign CS3 & Mac OSX 10.5'

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

There’s a handy Mac OS X application list & summary over at graphic designer James Dempsey’s Creative Guy blog about which software applications seem to be working and which seem not to be working on his Intel MacPro.

Continue reading 'Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: What works, what doesn’t'

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

Adobe announced the other day that CS3 is all set for Leopard, except for Acrobat Pro. Scheduled for sometime in January, the Acrobat update is coming but why such a long delay?

Update: I have recently learned about some CS3/10.5 issues. Be sure to read as these go beyond the Acrobat Professional issues noted here.

Continue reading 'Adobe: CS3 OK on 10.5 – Except For Acrobat Pro'

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

Just a quick heads up for Mac Adobe users out there: Adobe has stated that Creative Suite 3 is not quite ready for the new “Leopard” Mac OS X 10.5 operating system from Apple. Adobe says they are working on it and should have things ready by mid-November.

Really, Adobe can’t be blamed since Apple has only just recently settled on a Gold Master (the final version) of 10.5, so there are sure to be things they still need to work on since the last developer release a week or two ago. Seems Apple must have been scrambling to get this out since they delayed it from the Spring and promised in November.

Continue reading 'Adobe says CS3 Needs Tweaks for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard'

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

It’s been about a few months since I upgraded to Adobe’s Creative Suite CS3 suite of graphic & design applications, and am running them all on a PowerMac G4 (dual 1.25 processors, 2 Gb RAM). I thought I would share my experiences with anyone out there contemplating upgrading to CS3 with an older Macintosh. I also have one of the original MacBooks, so there’s a decent comparison with CS3 running on an Intel processor Mac.

In short, I would recommend waiting to upgrade your Mac to at least a G5 or an Intel based Mac before going to CS3, but that said it’s still usable.

Continue reading 'CS3 + G4: Using Adobe Creative Suite CS3 on a PowerMac G4'

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.