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Hacks, "bottom feeders," amateurs, etc have come and gone from the sign industry for decades. Really, once the computers arrived so did people with little if any ability to draw and paint by hand. It's the whole syndrome of people thinking the computers are creating the artwork, not the person...

Specifically, which computers that are just one year old cannot install Windows 11? That sounds like a serious exaggeration. If such a thing is happening the computers must be bare bones, entry level models or ones with some kind of minimal configuration. Regarding the appeal of Windows 11, how...

I'm seeing the reverse of that in some categories, such as desktop and notebook computers. Back in the 1980's and 1990's personal computers had pretty limited useful life spans. I used three different desktop PCs at my workplace in the 1990's. 20-30 years ago each new generation of CPUs was a...

Our shop has a pair of HP Latex printers. We added the second printer a couple or so years after getting the first one. They're certainly not perfect, but they were a big step up from the "eco-solvent" Roland VersaCAMM printer we used previously. Our shop also has a flatbed printer, purchased...

There are complete copies in there. The entire pattern is held in a clipping mask. When you release/flatten it the hidden parts will be visible. I think Adobe uses this approach to allow users to quickly add things like brick wall patterns.

Within Adobe Illustrator, the easiest method is using the Repeat function under the Object menu. Choose "Grid" out of the three options. Spacing between the objects can be controlled numerically in the "Options" settings. There are options for how the objects get repeated, such as a grid or...

Cool beans. WTR Roycroft turns out to be available to sync via Adobe Fonts.

I'm intending to re-create the artwork in the attached image, but I need some help identifying the two fonts used to make the original artwork. I'm pretty sure the original creator did the work in Photoshop. Then someone else attempted to auto-trace it, yielding really crude results. Then they...

Having to work with client-provided art files is a fact of life for the vast majority of sign companies. Only in a perfect world can a sign company manage to create 100% of the artwork in signs they produce.

I suppose the process can vary from one RIP/Cut application to another. Generally the approach using a spot color named "CutContour" appears to be the most common. In my own experiences I've never seen a client successfully set up such a thing in any artwork they provide. We usually have to...

Windows 11 was released on October 5. Microsoft is pushing the new OS out to existing PCs new enough to qualify running it.

Are Postscript Type 1 fonts compatible with Windows 11? They still work in Windows 10. Adobe will phase out support of Type 1 fonts in its applications over the next year or so. That may prod other developers to pull support for Type 1 fonts as well. That's pretty odd. Just a couple weeks ago...

Yeah, the "hacks" can't even bother looking up a video on YouTube. Even that is too difficult for them. The situation is exasperating. The laziness really annoys "old timers" like me, who first learned graphic design the analog way back in the 1980's and experienced the digital transition from...

So many people out there trying to do graphic design work can't even grasp the difference between pixels and vectors. It's always fun to get a company logo from a "designer" in the form of a JPEG file and an accompanying Illustrator AI or PDF file containing the same dopey JPEG. It's not...

I'm holding off with the Win11 upgrade for the time being. I have a fairly new 17" Alienware notebook and occasionally get notices I can install Win11 on it. I've been waiting several weeks for a new desktop system I have on order for work. That one has Win10 Pro pre-loaded. I don't want to get...

Inkscape has pretty decent capabilities. As far as I can tell, it's the only free/low-cost vector drawing application with full support of OpenType Variable fonts. I just don't like the user interface. It is very clunky. Every time I use Inkscape it feels like stepping into a time machine back...

For a brief time several years ago Adobe Illustrator was able to open/import CDR files, but Adobe removed the capability due to technical problems. One experience I had was Illustrator completely locked up when I tried opening a CDR file. Then it refused to launch after that. Worse yet, none of...

I'm a little foggy on how Adobe pushes users to stay relatively current with running Adobe applications. If someone is running Adobe CC applications that are more than a couple years old I don't know if Adobe forces the users to update to newer versions. It is a little surprising Astute Manager...

The email from Astute Graphics yesterday was more to do about compatibility with MacOS Monterey and Windows 11, plus a warning they will deprecate compatibility for macOS 10.10 and 10.11, Windows 7 and 8.1 "in the near future." Adobe's CC applications aren't compatible with those OSes anymore...

For some odd reason Graphtec chose first to update the Mac version of Cutting Master 4 to support Illustrator 26 (CC 2022) before taking care of its Windows version. Aren't these guys aware the vast majority of sign companies are running Windows systems? Quite a few industry specific sign...