Let's suppose you receive a pdf document that you need to further work on in Illustrator, but when you open it all fonts get replaced by the default font, because you don't have those fonts used in the pdf. The font information is there in the pdf, so theoretically if you could convert all the text to outlines you would be able to work with the document.

To do that you have to open a new Illustrator document. Place the the pdf. Select the menu Object / Flatten transparency. Make sure to check the Convert all text to outlines option and go. You got the whole pdf in curves.

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Generally I must say that all Mac OS X based browsers including Safari and the Intel optimized Firefox version are relatively slow. This is especially apparent when you run Windows XP under OS X in emulation using VMWare and try any browser, be it IE, FF or the brand spanking new Google browser Google Chrome. Windows based browsers are snappy and fast compared to a just acceptable performance on OS X.

I hope with time things will improve and I won't have to envy the Windows browser responsiveness anymore. Just maybe Google Chrome will come out for OS X soon and it will be as light as fast as it seem on my Windows emulation. But the Google Mac team is not committing itself to any deadline. Push Google to make it happen, sign up for their list to be notified when Google Chrome for OS X comes out.

When you work with Illustrator documents your document's background is mostly white. The interface of the application, such as the panes and the toolbox are also white by default. This puts some strain on your eyes and brain when you're trying to identify each area. To relieve this extra effort you may want to experiment changing the background of the user interface to a shade of grey instead of white.

You can change this setting in Preferences/ User Interface. Don't set it too dark as it decreases the contrast between the background and graphics of the buttons making it more difficult to see the individual functions. A good balance is a color in the middle of the slider which is a light grey.

A secondary advantage of such a setting is that you will have an easy way to tell which application is running in the foreground as InDesign and Photoshop toolbars are quite similar to Illustrator.

I know there are many who prefer complete consistency of interfaces among applications. I personally prefer a small difference between them as it helps to identify instantly what I'm dealing with. That's why it was a good idea to have Safari, iTunes, Garageband and other Apple apps all have slightly different looks. It's a better parallel to the real world and it's easier for our mammalian brains to grasp.

If you work with files that have a common base and several custom layers for languages or other mutations, you should always remember to switch on the Paste Remember Layers option in Illustrator. You will find this option by clicking the little contextual menu icon in the top right corner of the layers pane.

This way when you select objects across several layers in your document and copy/paste it you will retain the layer separation and naming from the source document.

Drovak speculates:
Adobe could port its Creative Suite...to Linux as a shot across Redmond's bow. Then the company should embrace Linux in-house and develop a complete, optimized Linux OS designed to run a high-performance version of its Creative Suite on Linux optimized for Adobe products, to be sold as a bootable bundle for multicore-workstation hardware.

The idea is to produce a near-dedicated Adobe computer designed to use all the power of the newest chips to run the Adobe software under Linux. Having complete control of a high-powered OS would make all of the performance-demanding Adobe software run rings around any other implementation, if engineered correctly. It would become the viable desktop alternative to both the PC and the Mac.

This is a similar strategy that Apple did to create a good Unix based platform (OS X) to run the Apple iLife and the pro-apps. So, it's a tried and working concept. I think Adobe should certainly go for it. I would even go a step further and suggest they should drop Windows support eventually and concentrate on their Unix based Adobe apps only to streamline their operations.

America Is F*cked.......(Graphically at least) from Jess Gibson on Vimeo.

And this applies to most parts of Europe and the Middle East and Asia as far as I can tell. What can we do!?

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If you use Gmail regularly the 6+GB space Google offers may not be enough and you may be running out of space, which will make your account stop working. To avoid this problem you may want to free up some space with these tips.

If you're still struggling to make enough space, you can use this ultimate and simple solution:

1. Set-up you Gmail as an IMAP account in your Mail.app using these instructions.
2. Allow it a lot of time to download all your emails. Be careful not to download too much data at any 24 hour interval, as Google has a tendency to block the accounts with excessive traffic. Do it over a few days.



3. Then select the All Mail folder under your account.
4. Switch on the Size column in the list of your mails by CTRL-clicking the column titles.
5. Sort the messages by Size. Now you can see individual messages that have the largest attachments within your account.
6. Select and delete those emails that are unneeded. Check for those duplicates where you forwarded a large attachment and therefore it occupies your mailbox twice in your inbox and sent folders

Besides freeing up space on your Gmail account, by setting up an IMAP account you've also set-up a backup of your Gmail in case something happens to your internet connection or your Gmail account.