Inside Adobe Illustrator

The Crop Marks filter is now available for download for those AICS4 customers who wished the CS3 Crop Marks functionality in CS4. This will enable the CS3 crop-marks functionality in CS4 but the CS4's Crop Marks Effects functionality will not work with editable Crop Marks.

The filters are available at Adobe.com.

For Mac filter go here.
For Windows filter find it here.

Here are the instructions to install and use this filter:

1. Quit Illustrator CS4, if it is running.
2. Remove the Crop Marks.aip plug-in from the Illustrator Filters folder (save a copy of this plug-in separately if you wish to use the Crop Marks effect in the future). It is located at Adobe Illustrator _CS4/Plug-ins/Illustrator Filters.
3. Download the provided CS3 Crop Marks plug-in to any accessible location on your computer (such as the desktop) and uncompress/extract the contents.
4. Place the Crop Marks.aip plug-in inside the Illustrator Filters folder (same path as in step 2).
5. Delete the Illustrator preferences. The Illustrator preferences file is located at Users\\Library\Preferences\Adobe Illustrator CS4 Settings.
6. Relaunch Illustrator CS4. The filter will be available at Object > Filters > Create > Crop Marks.
7. If the filter is not available, check to see if you placed the plug-in in the correct folder.

Important points to note:

• After switching to the Illustrator CS3 Crop Marks filter the Illustrator CS4 Crop Marks effect will not be available. Opening any Illustrator CS4 files that contain objects with the Crop Marks effect created using the Illustrator CS4 Crop Marks effect will require expanding the object to proceed with further editing. This is a standard Illustrator behavior when a plug-in is missing.
• If you wish to get the CS4 Crop Marks effect back, you just need to switch back to the original CS4 Crop Marks effect plug-in following the same steps and deleting preferences before restarting the application (resetting preferences is essential every time the Plug-in folder is modified).
• When reinstalling Illustrator CS4, you will need to perform the above steps again to install the Illustrator CS3 Crop Marks filter.

Thanks
-Anil Ahuja
(Illustrator Team)

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As a lot of you have heard, CS4 versions of Adobe's Creative Suite apps have been tested with Snow Leopard and the few problems we found were mostly minor. For more a whole lot more info and perspective, read John Nack's post "Adobe Snow Leopard FAQ"

This entry on Infinite Resolution is meant to give you a bit more specific information about Illustrator. We have done extensive testing of CS4 on Snow Leopard, as well as a shorter set of tests with CS3. Although we certainly have not done the exhaustive tests with CS3 that we would need to do in order to say that we officially support this configuration, I can tell you that for the most part both CS4 and CS3 versions of Illustrator work well on Snow Leopard.

So, what problems have we found that you should know about?

• Both .ai and .eps files saved from Illustrator open with Preview instead of Illustrator, until you tell the OS to use Illustrator for the file types. See this KB article for more details.


• Saving files to a server through SMB protocol may cause crashes. This looks like it is not specific to Adobe applications. See this KB article

If any new information surfaces, I'll update this blog to let you know.

Contributed by Brenda Sutherland, Illustrator Team Geologist

Tuesday is garbage day at my house. . . . In preparation, I run around the house emptying all the trash bins, gather up the recycling and haul out the green waste container and park it all on the curb. Hopefully timing these tasks before that big noisy truck comes along and takes it all away.

The experience is both tedious and cathartic. While I can think of an infinite number of things I'd rather be doing than my weekly trash chore, there is something refreshing about knowing that all of those things I no longer need or want have been taken away, and I'll never have to smell, trip over, or store them away again.

Of course, some people are much better housekeepers than I am, and would be horrified to see my last minute scramble down the driveway. But at least I get it done! And I think designers are a bit like this with their files as well. Some are meticulous about handing off files that have been scrubbed clean, without a single erroneous anchor point or unused swatch. Every layer, sublayer and group has a unique and meaningful name, and there are no hidden objects, unpainted paths, or dead links to be found. I have seen these files, and they are a thing of beauty.

Think about when you pick your car up from the mechanic. How would you feel if you found the old spark plugs or empty oilcans lying in your car? Not to mention greasy handprints on the hood. When you pick up your car, you expect it to be ready to go, without any sign that someone's been working on it. And you especially don't want to be cleaning up after them!

Now think about how your clients feel when they get your files. When they open them up and the swatch panel contains not only all of the swatches from the Startup Profile, but also every spot color you tried out while working out your color scheme, every variation of a particular pattern or gradient you were working on, and all the different brushes you experimented with on that one object you ended up deleting anyway. And then of course are the objects no longer in use but still present in your document. They may not be visible, but their presence can have repercussions that can cost you time and money later. So it's well worth the taking a few minutes to scrub your files before handing them off. Not only do tidy files look more professional, removing these items reduces the file size, and prevents problems and confusion further down the production line as people other than you open and work with them.

Many designers budget time into their schedules for file cleanup. Not that it takes a lot of time, as Illustrator provides time saving tools to help you sweep your files cleans of unnecessary clutter. Hopefully, you are already doing this. If not, read on and I'll share some tips with you that will help you add this step to your workflow as efficiently and painlessly as possible.

Contributed by Neeraj Nandkeolyar, Illustrator Workflow Team

Haven’t we all tried to create ruler guides as accurately as possible, but found after zooming in we found the guides were off? This is one of the reasons why most of us drag ruler guides out at maximum zoom. Here are some quick ways to get accurate ruler guides, without having to work zoomed in.

Choose the desired ruler units, either from Preferences, or control-click (on Mac) or right-click (on Win) on the rulers.