Johnny Best
Active Member
And he probably won't let his employees use their phones while working, but a core digerdoo is OK.
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Rant Help Make Our Lives Better: Reform Illustrator's Canvas Size Limit
- Thread starter spooledUP7
- Start date
Rick
Certified Enneadecagon Designer
Rick
Certified Enneadecagon Designer
Hey SpooledUP7 I did have a response to your Flexi pros and Cons... but remember, I only design and I have to get the design work to shops who use various production software. I have Flexi and have used pretty much every design/production software out there...
I would never reccommend designing signs in Flexi to start... career wise it's just not a good move
Flexisign Pros:
CONS:
I would never reccommend designing signs in Flexi to start... career wise it's just not a good move
Flexisign Pros:
- Dynamic floating tool panes. I 100% of the time use Design Central, and Fill/Stroke editor. Both automatically change displaying information according to your active tool. Illustrator requires you to have a window for each tool, filling up your screen or requiring your to move them to another monitor. Not efficient. I also regularly use the layers pane too but only for vehicle wraps.
- 100% scale (Unlimited artboard size) Honestly, I don't understand why illustrator has a limit. Vehicle wraps NOT in scale are a recipe for mistakes
- Path editor tools - This alone is worth the program. AB curve, spline, arc, corner etc... controls are like nothing else. You can create and or clean up logos in no time at all. I have shown this to a hundred people and it gets them every time. Every freakin time!
- Effects - easy to understand combine such as fuse, knock out, remove overlap, separate overlap.... Illustrator has this but honestly I have to guess every time because the tools are not clear. I don't even want to try remember them even after 20 years using illustrator.
- Type control - Leading, kerning, rotation, hyper/sub, path follow, arc - So simple and clean and efficient for sign work
- Resize tool - Again working in scale is so much more efficient in my mind so taking a photo of say a box van, create box over the known area, click resize on the box with scale all enabled, enter the real life size and hit enter. Bam! 100% scale in a second. Efficient AF.
- Auto nest - Please do I really need to explain the efficiency of this function?
- Step and repeat - Customer calls, How much for a 6" x 5" decal? No problem, know sheet size, enter rectangle 6x5, click Step and Repeat, enter x a y repeat, spacing and bang you have your quantity up vs your sheet price.
- Select by Attribute - So amazing. Select ALL and any specific colors, effects, types, strokes, anything in one click! Eat that illustrator!
- Filter by... Same as Select by attribute but in one click you can filter out specific colors... leaving you with just what you want to edit
- Trace - Flexi for the longest time owned this market but it has lost it's edge to Illustrator. Still, for a fast and easy trace I will use flexi. For more complicated and higher fidelity traces I use Image Trace from illustrator.
- Rip and Print (I know it's only available for specific packages) Integrated printer and plotter with a massive library of device drivers. I find it extremely efficient to output without having to export jobs. With Rip and Print you can output panels, cut jobs, and contour cut prints directly from within Flexi without ever leaving the design software. You still have the option to use Production Manager like any other rip but there's no need to do so.
- Contour cut. Dynamically create contour cuts numerically, optically, inside holes, no holes, curves, corners, inline or outline based on the totality of the object. Quickly assign multiple contour cut colors for individual contour cut attributes such as force, speed, condition presets.... all from within Flexi.
- Adobe transparency effects (Flexi 10 up I think) I use this daily. Efficient way to create blending effects
- Serialization - Not the most polished function but super amazing to have
- Open Illustrator files - Does an excellent job so long as the art is contained within the artboard and layers are not hidden or locked. Super efficient if you can avoid the Illustrator open/export/save as dance.
- Color pallets. Add persistent and frequently used colors to your pallet. Name them, adjust them, map them... It's the best. Just double click a color from a color book like Pantone and rename it and bam, it's now available as that name forever while leaving the original it's original name. Just be sure to save your modified color table manually or upon closing.
- Guide control - First, Illustrator sucks at this. Why would you want guides to lock as a default? Don't answer. Anyway, drag a guide in just like any other design suite, but double click it and rotate freely, numerically, or whatever. Guides just rock and it's something Flexi has got beautifully right.
- Alignment and distribute - Again, illustrator has this all wrong. Flexi has it all right. One word - Hierarchy. Align to parent object, page, guide groups, the universe... No switching settings it just does it. Align and Distribute just works. Efficient.
- Overprint - Screw you illustrator. Flexi gives you access to overprint all the time, and not in some far-off pane like in Illustrator
CONS:
- Not 64 bit!!!! Come on SAi!!!! It's 2018!!!!!! - Illustrator, and Corel are kicking your ***. Flexi only uses one processor core so be sure it's a fast one. It also doesn't give two flips about your video card. Lame
- Updated tool icons. I started with Flexi 7x and so with every new install I retro select the 7x workspace because the icons are smaller and make more sense visually. They have higher contrast for the effect when active vs the monotone and larger current icons.
- Lack of "Wrap around object" for text.
- Lack of tab control. Really? I am mean really.
- Paragraph control. It's there but it's weak
- Multiple pages. None. It should. Freehand had this in 1999. Illustrator now allows multiple artboards. This is cool.
- Crappy rendering - This has gotten much better since my 7x days but still Illustrator renders the screen smooth and beautifully whereas Flexi is harsh or super flat depending on whether you have Soft Proof on.
- Crashes without auto recovery. Adobe kills it here
- Does not save environmental changes unless you exit the application (Color tables are an exception because you can manually save) so when you crash you loose things like last open location, tool options, and user initiated defaults.
- Does not open or export Corel files. Just accept that Corel is a player SAi and add the support please
- Weak sauce for PLT files. Corel is king
- No import location tool. I use a lot of frequently used art elements and unlike Freehand there is no way to quickly access your library of art. Whats strange is that in 7x it at least allowed you to have a persistent "Last location" for "Import" separate from "Open" location. This effectively served the same purpose as Freehand's library. With the current version of Flexi both Open and Import share the same last opened location. Lame
- Color book selection. This realllllllly sucks. In Illustrator one simply needs to type the name (Number for pantone) in the search field and you can quickly access the color for use, but in flexi you must either hover over the pallet (if you have it open) or scroll to the color in the Fill/Stroke editor. If you have multiple color tables open then it can be a challenge. This needs to be added and I can't believe after all these years they have yet to add it.
- Output gremlins. I am sure this is true for many rips but lets say you have trailer wrap with ten panels. You let flexi handle the paneling through the Rip and Print or direct job through Production Manger, but on panel three your art doesn't contain any bitmaps or gradients but shares similar spot/rgb/cmyk colors like a stripe going through the entire length. Despite you sending the job all at once your #3 panel may print your colors differently forcing your to reprint, repeat the same output and frustratingly scratch your head until you finally just manually change the colors. This is a problem with rendering intent. I have no solution but to rasterize all large jobs prior to ripping. This defeats the purpose of Rip and Print in my mind.
spooledUP7 said:
My point is the computer graphics industry really has no singular "industry standard" of software or hardware. The nearest thing we have to that is Adobe Photoshop (not Illustrator). There are dozens of niche industries that fall into the computer graphics field, each with its own software/hardware/OS-platform conventions. It's not all Adobe/Apple-centric despite popular culture continuing to paint that picture. For instance a lot of high end 3D modeling/animation work is done on Windows or Linux boxes. The most powerful workstation graphics boards currently available can't run on Apple hardware (partly because Apple hasn't made a real workstation CPU tower in years).
The sign industry is a pretty unique niche in computer graphics. It has numerous industry-specific computer applications not taught in any art school (much less any hands-on skills, like wrapping vehicles or bending neon). No single vinyl cutting application or routing table application ever became standard in this industry. It's just like the situation that existed with many Mac-based design studios back in the day: Illustrator versus Freehand, QuarkXpress vs PageMaker, etc. No two shops used all the same plug-ins, extensions, etc. The sign industry is developing its own sub-niche categories, such as shops that concentrate on wrapping vehicles or an outfit that specializes in motion graphics for LED signs.
If someone is out job hunting his portfolio and work experience has to be the biggest selling point. If he's looking at getting into a specific niche then it's only natural he would need to boost his software/hardware knowledge for what that industry niche uses. Adobe Illustrator certainly may be one of those tools. But it's likely the candidate will have to learn something new.
And then for those of us who already have jobs, we have to update our skills for the "just in case" scenario. Things keep changing. It's getting more important to know how to write HTML code, JavaScript and use stuff like WordPress to land a job in an ad agency or design house.
spooledUP7
New Member
This is true if I were arguing for the sake of the computer graphics industry but I am not. I have been very specific with my categorization of users, both in my original topic theme, and the subsequent conversation about the "Creative" industry. Specifically I am addressing "Vector Art Creation" and "Creative" industry.
SightLine
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Flexi Production Manager (the RIP itself) can run multiple threads by the way....
Aside from that and back on topic. I have been trying to get Adobe to do something about the artboard size since 2012. I've even had one of their developers and senior engineers get in touch about it at one point. No idea why they still have not fixed it. There is no logical reason for them not to if every other software can do it other than it is really really deep into the oldest and deepest parts of the code which could be a potential disaster to try and fix.
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1003569
Almost 100,000 views since I posted that! Wow - been a long time since I went and saw that old post at the Adobe site. I've since just given up. Worked at scale for so long that it is what it is and the fact that we are still running CS6 because we are so far still refusing to rent 5 licenses forever. So with that, I know that even if they did fix it, that they would certainly not go back and change the artboard and canvas limits in CS6 anyways. CS6 does everything we need and even if we get a customer file that CS6 chokes on, we can just open that in Flexi and than export it if we do want to work on it in Illy.
Aside from that and back on topic. I have been trying to get Adobe to do something about the artboard size since 2012. I've even had one of their developers and senior engineers get in touch about it at one point. No idea why they still have not fixed it. There is no logical reason for them not to if every other software can do it other than it is really really deep into the oldest and deepest parts of the code which could be a potential disaster to try and fix.
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1003569
Almost 100,000 views since I posted that! Wow - been a long time since I went and saw that old post at the Adobe site. I've since just given up. Worked at scale for so long that it is what it is and the fact that we are still running CS6 because we are so far still refusing to rent 5 licenses forever. So with that, I know that even if they did fix it, that they would certainly not go back and change the artboard and canvas limits in CS6 anyways. CS6 does everything we need and even if we get a customer file that CS6 chokes on, we can just open that in Flexi and than export it if we do want to work on it in Illy.
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
I'm inclined to think this. Of course, not being able to see the code, it's hard to say for sure.
It could be just as simple as they are going to do what they want to do and as long as they don't loose too much revenue, they aren't going to change (which doesn't appear to have happened). Not everyone is affected by canvas limitation. I'm not. I would have to segment my designs for the embroidery machines at far smaller sizes then I would have to even begin to start worrying about my Ai canvas size.
I would say that this would affect more people then the art board limitation. At least it affects me, while the art board limitation does not. I imagine that there are others that that situation applies to as well. I don't think Adobe will change that.
It is what it is. Either pucker up and accept it or seek an alternative solution. I have other ways (and open source at that) of reading new(er) Ai files that will choke my CS6 and earlier versions of Ai that will allow me to either bring it into my copy of Ai just fine or allow it to be used in a different program.
We may define workstation computers differently. My prerequisite is that has a Xeon processor and ECC ram. Based on that, Apple does have a "real" workstation out there now. Now, as far as are there more powerful versions out there compared to what Apple allows you to configure for, that's something else entirely different.
Most on here know I'm a huge fan of Linux, I run it on all my machines and VM Windows, but Linux does have areas (included what you mention) that there are inefficiencies and the full power isn't being utilized as well for certain applications. And it's a Linux kernel issue in some instances compared to a program specific issue (not all the time, not even most of the time, but it is there).
Regarding art board size limits, I'm convinced if Adobe does offer a larger maximum art board size in an upcoming version of Adobe Illustrator the feature will come with a serious drawback: backward compatibility. The current 227" X 227" max art board size is supported back only so many previous versions of Illustrator. Save an .AI file down to a 1990's era version (with more universal import support across other applications) and that 227" X 227" max art board will drop to 120" X 120" (or smaller). Loads of other features disappear too.
Chances are between slim and none that Adobe would offer any updates to legacy versions of Illustrator to boost max art board size.
The definition of "workstation" can be a subjective thing regardless if the machine is running an Intel Core CPU versus a Xeon CPU, or multiples of either CPU type.
I merely stated the fact that Apple no longer makes any computers that can run the world's most powerful graphics boards, such as the nVidia Quadro GV100. The most powerful graphics boards for gaming won't work either. They physcially cannot fit in anything Apple makes. The situation is similar on the notebook platform. In the past Apple frequently touted its latest, greatest computers as being faster/more powerful than anything else. They can't make such claims now.
One can buy a little round Mac Pro "tower" or an "iMac Pro" with a Xeon CPU and ECC memory. But those computers top out with mid-range graphics boards. Apple could have pursued one solution for this by copying what Alienware offers: an outboard "graphics amplifier" box for desktops and notebooks. Apple's executives don't appear to be interested in that. They have the philosophy of selling computers as portable fashion accessories to go with an iPhone™. They're pursuing the thin and elegant ideology to a fault. For example, Apple's newest top of the line Mac Book Pro has serious throttling problems with the Core i9 CPU due to heat building up in the thin notebook chassis. The high priced notebook can end up running slower than a previous generation Core i7 MacBook Pro. That makes the high end notebook a huge waste of money.
Chances are between slim and none that Adobe would offer any updates to legacy versions of Illustrator to boost max art board size.
WildWestDesigns said:
The definition of "workstation" can be a subjective thing regardless if the machine is running an Intel Core CPU versus a Xeon CPU, or multiples of either CPU type.
I merely stated the fact that Apple no longer makes any computers that can run the world's most powerful graphics boards, such as the nVidia Quadro GV100. The most powerful graphics boards for gaming won't work either. They physcially cannot fit in anything Apple makes. The situation is similar on the notebook platform. In the past Apple frequently touted its latest, greatest computers as being faster/more powerful than anything else. They can't make such claims now.
One can buy a little round Mac Pro "tower" or an "iMac Pro" with a Xeon CPU and ECC memory. But those computers top out with mid-range graphics boards. Apple could have pursued one solution for this by copying what Alienware offers: an outboard "graphics amplifier" box for desktops and notebooks. Apple's executives don't appear to be interested in that. They have the philosophy of selling computers as portable fashion accessories to go with an iPhone™. They're pursuing the thin and elegant ideology to a fault. For example, Apple's newest top of the line Mac Book Pro has serious throttling problems with the Core i9 CPU due to heat building up in the thin notebook chassis. The high priced notebook can end up running slower than a previous generation Core i7 MacBook Pro. That makes the high end notebook a huge waste of money.
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
You also said partly because Apple doesn't make a "real" workstation.
Like I said, while they do make workstations, how powerful you can get with what Apple allows you to configure for is something else.
There is always the eGPU thing. I think there is one that does work for Macs out of the box, there are others that have workarounds.
Is that really a surprise though considering they can't even get engineering of a keyboard right with the new silicon membrane that was there for both protection as well as noise reduction doesn't really protect as much as one thought?
Don't forget about a kernel bug that caused an overheating issue that it had in one line of laptops. And that happened without even stressing the laptop at all.
And while we are at it, had the su(do) password issue at the launch of High Sierra.
For things that are just "supposed to work" there are issues.
WildWestDesigns said:
The companies who make the highest end graphics boards still have to create drivers that would work under OSX. They're not doing that with any of these large, high wattage graphics boards. They're only making drivers for Windows and certain builds of Linux. I don't see that changing as long as Apple is not manufacturing and sustaining a full size desktop tower product. If anything Apple is going the opposite direction: their update for the little round Mac Pro thingie isn't a full tower computer. It's just another iMac, one painted darker that costs about twice as much.
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
There aren't that many true builds of Linux as it is. I would be willing to bet that they support far more then one would think. I know my Lenovo workstation desktop (that is using the humble GTX 980 card) only says it has support for RH and Debian. The thing is, especially with Debian support, that means Debian and all it's derivatives, which would include Ubuntu and all of Ubuntu's derivatives. With RH, I think the big ones are RHEL, Fedora (which I like, but EOL cycle is a killer), CentOS, Oracle Linux, Scientific Linux etc. Suse and Arch tend not to be supported as much (I think due to their rolling release nature). But really there are only truly 4 or maybe 5 (just can't think of the 5th one) different builds of Linux. Everything else is mainly what else they package with it (DE, toolkits etc). With Arch though, you can get support.
If they just make the drivers as RUN files, that would bypass the need to package it within the repos. Don't have to go through the repos. It's a mistake to think that you have to. Most of my programs were installed either as RUN files, they are AppImages or binary archives (AppImage and binary archives are portable versions).
I think Apple is going to a boutique operating system. That's just my opinion though.
WildWestDesigns said:
Apple's OSX has already been a "boutique" OS for many years. The problem is, lately, the OS and computer product line is getting very murky at telling customers what industry niche it serves better than anyone else. And Apple under-cuts itself in the casual computing market with the iPad product line. It's a lot more comfortable to sit on the couch with an iPad in your lap than a notebook computer.