First Mac Lesson Successful

Okay, first off, I wasn't trying to shoot the moon here. I thought that the best first test of my newish MacBook Pro was to make something that would be quick and easy for me on the PC with CorelDRAW.

Jinx in her favorite Christmas present.

So, I thought, why not LOLCats? Basically, all that is involved in that sort of graphic is a picture with text on top. You find a picture of a cat first. I had this one from my own cat under the Christmas tree.

Okay, that'll do. But what should it say?

"I CAN HAS BOX"

"WOT? DIS AINT DA BED U BOT ME?"

"TANKS FER XMUS PRESINT. JERBULLZ WUZ DELISHUS!"

"WOT? I'Z NOT TU FAT FER DIS BOX!"

Okay, you get the idea. A suitably pidgin English phrase wuz was all I needed.

Now, in CorelDRAW, I'd just paste the picture on the pasteboard, after copying from its location (in this case, Facebook). Will that work in Illustrator?

Picture pasted copying it from the internet and posting
onto the pasteboard in Adobe Illustrator CS5.

As it turns out, yes! In my previous Mac, such an action would have returned an error message. But it works in Adobe Illustrator CS5. Cool

Next, I had to type my message. Then, select the text and pick a font, in this case "Impact" will foot the bill. Then, assign an outline, and color the letters white. This is what most LOLCat pictures look like after all.

But I ran into a small problem. And to understand what it is, you sort have had to deal with vector graphics yourself.

The outline, when applied and thickened up tends to obscure the letter faces. As you can see in the next picture.

Yucky outline. Howz I ficks?

See, not too pretty, is it. In CorelDRAW, I would simply have applied the "behind fill" command, and possibly "scale with image," in case I wanted to change the size of the text, but keep the outline proportional. This is second-nature stuff to me in Corel, and even in Gerber Omega Composer, my sign software at work. But not so, at least as far as I can find in Illustrator.

No matter. I've worked with enough files from Mac artists to know that they cheat in their drawings to achieve the same effects that I apply the correct way! So, I simply copied the text, pasted in place--which I had to figure out how to do!--and removed the outline from the newly pasted text. Voila!

Voila!

Now, before you jump on me, I'm completely aware that this is a super-duper simple exercise, particularly for experienced Illustrator artists. In Corel, I could do the job in under three minutes, no problem. And in truth, it probably only took twice that long in Illustrator for me. But it goes to show you that you can apply knowledge from one program to a similar but different one. It will take more study to find out if "behind fill" and "scale with image" are features within Illustrator, and I just don't (yet) know where they are.

I will say that I much prefer the Corel/PC interface, having used it for so long. I love the dynamic toolbar in Corel, that puts all of your tools' variables in one simple toolbar, and changes them, depending upon which tool you're using. It's invaluable. It also may have a doppelgänger in Illustrator, and I just haven't found it.

For now, this satisfies my "must learn on the Mac" New Year's resolution, at least for today. Tomorrow, I'll try something a little more challenging. For now? I'z done. Now I can has cheezburger.

Incidentally, this operation would have taken an interminable amount of time on my old PowerBook. With the MacBook Pro, I was running iTunes (Adele's 21), PhotoShop, Adobe Illustrator and Safari, all at once, and toggling between them. There was no performance lag, no "spinning beach ball of death." It works. So I can say without reservation that 2011's four-year-old Mac is a much more useable than 2009's five-year-old Mac! Don't buy a PowerBook on eBay under any circumstances (I can say this now that mine sold!).

Computer Woes: My Ongoing Mac Experience

This is a status update on my experience with life using an Apple Macintosh computer. I bought it from a friend of a friend a year ago or so, to broaden my computer experience. Since my experience in computer graphics--and computers in general--has been on the PC side, practically from its infancy, my Mac knowledge was almost zero. Time to learn.

Since my notebook PC was so terribly slow, my decision was to replace it with a Mac, while keeping my desktop PC. But, I didn't want to outlay a fortune for an experiment. The solution was to buy a Mac that was a couple of years old, and maybe already had some graphics software installed. The one I found is a PowerBook G4, a no longer supported, but at one time top of the line Apple computer. And it has the Adobe Creative Suite 3 installed, as well as Microsoft Office 2007. Sweet!

Not so much, as it turns out. As a web surfing machine, the Mac turns out to be about as slow as the old Intel Celeron machine I ditched. Even with the memory maxed out, the Adobe software is insufferable to run. I can hear Mac enthusiasts saying "don't judge the Mac on the performance of such an old machine!" But why not? The CS3 software was MADE for the PowerMac, and this one has as much memory as it can handle. It should work better than this.

Add to this the Mac's horrible handling of even basic tasks like Google's Blogger software (selecting text, handling basic HTML, like text sizes and bolding and italics), and the stalling out of the Safari web browser. YouTube videos that have to be played one time through, and then again before they are smooth. . . My list goes on and on. My new Samsung Epic 4G cell phone is faster online.

This is not a criticism of the person who sold the computer to me. It's a criticism of the Mac.  Yes, I'm aware that mine is now six years old. But we have a fleet of older computers at work, all PCs, none of which were top of the line when purchased. And all of them can run rings around my PowerMac. Not to mention, there is no task I can't complete faster in the CorelDraw graphics suite, than in the painfully obtuse and slow Adobe suite.  And you know what? Even the very, very, very old Microsoft Office 97 suite I have on my PC works better than Office 2007 on the Mac!

As I type this, my cursor is lagging behind my typing. Fortunately, I am a touch typist. But so far, my Mac experiment has been a bust. What it has done for me, is familiarize me with some of the differences between PC and Mac. But the Mac is only different, not better. Yes, the Apple designs are pretty. And they have--for some reason--a "cool" reputation. But is it deserved?

Mac Update: My Struggles with "Switching" Continue (Take 3)

I've never had this happen before. I've written essentially the same post twice before, and both times had all of it simply vanish.  The post itself may not even be worth the effort, but having narrowed down the problem (a website that apparently doesn't want their images used, attributed or not), I'm going to give it a shot anyhow.

In my ongoing effort to teach myself the Mac OS X Leopard operating system and Adobe CS3 graphics suite, I've tried to teach myself something new every week by creating something.  So, when I needed some street signs for a blog post, I forced myself to sit at my Mac rather than my PC. Using CorelDRAW X3 on my PC, I could complete the job in just a few minutes.  All I needed was two rectangles with radiused corners, some white text, and a nice faux green reflective background. Throw in a soft drop shadow, and voila! Child's play.

Image from Corel.com.
Note the absense of clutter.

I found the project much more vexing with Adobe Illustrator on the Mac platform.  My one-off job took me an hour and a half as opposed to 5-10 minutes.  Part of the problem is just the clutter and distraction offered with the Adobe suite. I've loathed Adobe products since the old days of PageMaker. I don't like the way anything is displayed, I don't like how "import" is called "place," and I especially don't like the 1,000 palettes covering up what I'm working on. Add this to the Mac showing any open programs through all of the little gaps between palettes, and it all hits me like gibberish.

I couldn't figure much of anything out without the Help menu (which turns out to be pretty awesome).  I find this learning curve to be much steeper than the one I faced 13 years ago, when I had to apply my Corel knowledge to the Gerber Omega/Graphix Advantage Composer sign software.  The sign industry grew up on the PC platform, and I was lucky to have started there too with VP Graphics, and then CorelDRAW 2.  While clunky at first, Composer grew to adopt many similar characteristics of Corel's software.  But with Adobe, I'm a lot more adrift.  The knowledge transfers, but the learning experience is frustrating.

A screenshot of Illustrator on my Mac

But I had an epiphany while trying to write this (three times).  Since Corel allows you to set up CorelDRAW and Photo-Paint to look nearly identical to Adobe Illustrator and PhotoShop, my next lesson is going to be on the PC, but with this feature turned on.  It would be nice if Adobe offered a similar feature, but maybe I'll have an easier time of things if I'm in a familiar program while navigating unfamiliar tools. We'll see.  Meanwhile, my home schooling project is turning out to be a lot more frustrating, and a great deal less fun than I'd hoped.

Mac Update: My Struggles with "Switching" Continue

I originally wrote a post chronicling my progress learning how to use the Macintosh OS X Leopard operating system, along with the Adobe CS3 graphics suite. But my Mac ate it. Really.  I had links, I had images, about my difficulty transitioning from PC to Mac, how much easier graphics are to create in my CorelDRAW X3 graphics suite, etc.  I pressed "publish" and then went to view my work.  Gone.  Just a headline.  Now that is frustrating. 

I may try again later, but I'm too frustrated to do it now.

UPDATE: Grrrr. I did it again. Typed it all up, inserted pictures--saving along the way--posted it, and it disappeared again. Methinks something is going on here. I may have discovered some sort of blogger bomb in one of those photos I tried to post. I think some experimentation is required.

Mac Update: My Experience Learning PhotoShop CS3

In my ongoing efforts to train myself both on the Mac and with Adobe CS3, I assigned myself a project.  Arising from a discussion on Facebook, I decided to create an image of a good book burning. Naturally, I'd pick books from the likes of Sean Hannity, Laura Schlessinger, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Jonah Goldberg, Bill O'Reilly, Karl Rove and the like.  First, I had to find an image of a bonfire:

Then, I needed some images of books.  So far, so good, so easy. Although, I must say, doing this in Corel Photo-Paint X3 (my self-taught image editor of choice) is more intuitive for me.  With Corel, all I have to do when I find an online image is press Ctrl+C to copy it, then in Corel press Ctrl+Shift+N to open the new image.  In PhotoShop, I can't find the "paste new image" feature, so I saved each online image and opened them in PhotoShop.

Next, I had to mask each book to remove its background.  This is something I learned over the years in Corel through trial and error.  While the tools in PhotoShop are similar, I found that it was nowhere near as intuitive, and nowhere near as fast. I'll concede that I did not use tutorials or a "For Dummies" book.  I just tried to figure it out myself, something that has served me well in Corel.  Clearly, I may have to get a "how to" book after all (and man I hate following instructions!).

Next, I had to paste each masked book onto the bonfire, and then size, rotate and skew them to make it look like they're scattered around.  This caused much frustration. In Photo-Paint, selecting, skewing and changing individual pasted objects is child's play. . .simple and easy.  In PhotoShop, I found that I had to navigate menus, palettes, right-clicks and layers.  It was excruciatingly frustrating.  Applying changes vexed me, and I found the only way to easily accomplish the task was to change tools, and wait for the "apply changes?" prompt.

After playing around with all of these images for close to two hours, this is the result I came up with:

Final image, created on Mac PowerBook with PhotoShop
(Click to embiggen)

It's pretty much what I was going for, but looks like what it is: a bunch of pasted books in front of a bonfire.  After all the time I spent, I was disappointed.  And I wanted a better image for the blog.  So, I came into the PC I'm so much more familiar with, opened Corel Photo-Paint, and started from scratch. Well, almost scratch.  I found that I can semi-successfully network the Mac to the PC (it's inconsistent, and does not work as easily as all the "switching to Mac" books say it is), so all of my original images could be imported without looking for them again.

I opened each book image, and the bonfire. In Photo-Paint, I re-masked all the books, pasted them into the bonfire image, rotated, skewed and sized them.  I brushed out some of the edges of the book to let the background peek through. I added flames with the image sprayer tool.  In short, I got a much better, much more realistic image, and I completed it in about 15 minutes!

Final image created in Corel Photo-Paint on my PC
(Click to embiggen)

Now, I'm not saying that either image is a masterpiece. My intent wasn't for extreme photo-realism, just basically a political cartoon.  I spend enough time on the computer as it is, and most of my created-for-blog images are quickies.  But so far, this process is so much easier and faster on my PC, I can already tell that teaching myself Adobe CS3 on the Mac is going to be an arduous slog.

Screen Shot of Mac Desktop During Project

Part of the problem is the whole layout of each program, and the fact that I've gotten so used to the Microsoft Windows way of doing things. That, and the fact that Corel has such dynamic, easy-to-use tools.  In Corel, every tool you pick opens a dynamic toolbar, with all settings available at your fingertips.  Adobe uses palettes (which Corel has if you want them, but they dock nicely to the edge of the screen, and stay out of your way), which litter the screen, and distract my eye.  Also, Windows programs can be zoomed to full-screen, blotting out all other open programs.  Each program can take sole focus, acting as a container for only what you're working on.  On the Macintosh, windows overlap, with no containing boundary.  So, if you have a web browser open, it is visible under all of your Adobe palettes, your open image window, everything.

Windows 7 Sceen Shot During Project

This clutter hurts my brain, and frustrates me no end. I'm sure there are second-nature cures for much of this (if you're a seasoned Mac user), but making all of that go away is not intuitive.  And I'll bet there isn't a Mac setting to put a containing window behind all of those palettes.  If you look at my two screen shots here, you can see an example of the clutter on the Mac, and the nice, open, clean workspace on the PC.  But it goes beyond that really.  What I want is a feature that Corel has had for years.  If you're an Adobe user crossing over to Corel, you can quickly change the layout to emulate Adobe, lickety-split.  The whole layout changes to look just like you were using PhotoShop (or Illustrator, if you're using CorelDraw).  Adobe could give the Corel-using artist an enormous leg up by returning the favor.

So, my self tutelage continues. It is clear that I'm going to need to get some lesson-teaching books if I don't want to go crazy.  But that in itself is gonna drive me nuts.  I'm too many years along to be learning my ABCs and 123s.  Imagine wanting to learn algebra, but being forced to start with 1st-grade addition and subtraction, and working your way up.  Ugh.  This is not as fun as I thought it would be.

Computer Woes, Pet Peeves and A Solution or Two!

I've written a lot about computer woes and gripes since I've had this blog (not to mention Jeep repair woes, oy, $1,500 today!). You see, I'm a PC and have been since about 1987 or so. In other words, ever since the Commodore 64 died. I started with an Amstrad clone, with no hard drive, CGA monitor, two 5-1/4" floppy drives, DOS 2.something and the GEM desktop. Which was a pre, pre, PRE-Windows/Mac-type graphical user interface (GUI). There was no mouse.

I'm self-taught, and have graduated through the MS-DOS (and Dr. DOS and PC-DOS) versions, on up to Windows 3.1, 3.11 for Workgroups, 95, NT, 98, 98SE, Me, XP, Vista 32, Vista 64 and now Windows 7 Home Premium 32 & 64. That's a lot of learning, and a lot of acquired guru know-how to just ditch it for a shiny new Mac. Throw in the fact that (outside of a Justin Long) crush, I'm a Mac-O-Phobe. I've never had a good experience with an Apple product. I've never been bowled over by their "simplicity" or their "intuitiveness." In fact, I've often found them to be quite the opposite.

But being a die-hard PC does lead to a few headaches. Scratch that, a lot of headaches. So below, I'm listing a bunch of my pet peeves, by program. If you've arrived at this page through a Google search, and have any ideas, please leave me feedback!

Greenlee Gazette's List of PC Program Pet Peeves

1. AOL, Nonresponsive - (I know, why do I still use it? Because I'm set in my ways) AOL has always had the ability to lock up your entire computer for no discernible reason. And with the advent of Windows Vista and 7, it has a whole new trick. The twirling blue "wait" cursor will start spinning, and everything will stop responding. ALT+TAB will prove ineffective, and you can't switch programs. CTRL+ALT+DEL will still bring up the task manager, but you can't do anything with it. The screen resolution will turn slightly blurry, and may even "pale out," turning 50% white. This can clear up on its own, or can go on indefinitely.

SOLUTION: The only solution to this for me has been a) Holding in the power button on the computer until it shuts off; b) or hitting CTRL+ALT+DEL and choosing "log off." Option b) actually works pretty well in Windows 7, which actually reboots fairly quickly.

2. AOL, Internet Page Blank - This one is new with Windows 7. After a few internet pages have been opened, a click on a link, or a new web addressed typed will bring up a blank page. The "wait" icon may be twirling, but the page is doing absolutely nothing. Blank page. "Done" in the title bar. Sometimes it happens in a single window, sometimes in a tab.

SOLUTION: I may have this one licked. If you type CTRL+K in AOL, and then type in the key word "Browser Fix", you will then see a message ending with (0), confirming tunneling has been turned on within the AOL software. Sign off, and reboot. This has worked for me, though not 100%. But so far, it is much better. UPDATE: My problem is back. This worked at first, so maybe it will work for you.

3. Internet Explorer 8 & Blogger - This also started with Windows 7, but not until a few days ago. Maybe there was a change made in IE8, Blogger or Windows 7, I don't know. But in the normal posting window in Blogger, the "Paste" command is just gone. Can't be done. This renders the software cumbersome at best.

SOLUTION: Use FireFox or Google Chrome instead of Internet Explorer. UPDATE: If you want to continue using IE, try this: go to Tools/Compatibility View Settings in the IE tool bar, and then click the check box for “Display all websites in Compatibility View.”

4. Blogger - The biggest problem with this software is that it is not WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). Editing a new post will NOT necessarily show you what a published piece will look like. Even "Preview" might not get it right. Inserting a picture can throw your formatting all off, the size of text can go completely wacky for no reason, and the results and eccentricities change depending upon which browser you're using.

SOLUTION: Live with it.

5. Google Chrome - Some web sites think that Google Chrome is an old version of FireFox and will not function properly.

SOLUTION: Use FireFox or Internet Explorer.

6. Adobe Graphics Programs - This one's going to bite me on the butt one day. I despise the interface for all Adobe products I've tried, except for Acrobat/Reader. Adobe Illustrator and Adobe PhotoShop are the standard for the graphics industry, but not for the sign industry, where I am. So, I use CorelDRAW and Corel Photo-Paint instead. This isn't a problem. I love Corel. Corel even allows you to set their programs up to look exactly like Adobe products.

Adobe does not return the favor. I don't like the lack of customization, I don't like the floating palettes everywhere, I don't like the lack of a dynamic status bar, I don't like the print options, I don't like any of it. But if I end up in a different part of the graphics industry, I may be forced to adapt. Which would almost be like going from PC to Mac. Ugh.

SOLUTION: There isn't one. But I surely wish Adobe would come up with the option to lay the program out like a Corel application. You'd be doing out of work sign artists a huge favor.

There are many more pet peeves, but these are my biggies. Once again, if you've happened upon this post, and you have other ideas, or other pet peeves, please leave me a comment, or send me an email! Thanks.

Software I Can't Wait For: CorelDRAW X4

Photo from Corel.com

I work in the sign industry, which means I work on a PC platform. This is counter-intuitive to most graphics people, who tend to favor Macs. The reason for this is that sign making machines, once they fully embraced the computer age, opted for the PC. While it may be theoretically possible to operate some of the machines with a Mac, it would certainly take away from the Mac's alleged ease-of-use.

This all worked out for me, because I've been using PC software for graphics almost since such programs were made available. I've used CorelDRAW since version 2. Add to that the fact that I'm a bit Mac-phobic (not scared of them, just dislike them), and also have a profound distaste for Corel's main competitor, Adobe. So I'm kind of excited by a new release from Corel.

One feature that Corel has had for a long time--and one that Adobe lacks--is the ability to set the interface to look almost exactly like the competition. So if you find yourself in front of CorelDRAW, and you are trained on Adobe Illustrator, in a few quick clicks you can be in familiar territory. The only chance Adobe has at ever converting me is to return the favor.

If you're curious about what CorelDRAW X4 (the 14th release) has to offer, here's a preview.

[Excerpt]

CorelDraw Graphics Suite X4

CorelDraw is often regarded by designers as a Creative Suite for marketing departments, but this hasn’t stopped Corel pitching it as much at creative professionals as those who create media as only part of their job. The Graphics Suite X4 bundle combines vector artwork design, page layout and image editing in a single package that costs around a third of Adobe’s equivalent package. . .

Read more at: Digital Arts