Where is the Adobe Illustrator History Panel?

There isn't one! Apparently, I found out much to my dismay that Adobe Illustrator CS3 doesn't have a history panel like Adobe Photoshop CS3 does, BUT you can do endless (apparently) undos (CTRL-Z). Now is that something you can do in Photoshop? I don't think so...

Wonder if Illustrator CS4 still leaves out the History panel. What's the big deal, Adobe? Give us our History Panel for crying out loud!

Labels: design, illustrator, photoshop

Some fonts some free

Collection of 30 fonts you "want to have," some free.

Read the article.

Those are all good fonts, but I would add stuff like Didot, Bodoni, Bembo, Clarendon...

Labels: design, typography

How to Save kuler Swatches

If using the Adobe AIR version of kuler, you might wonder how to use the swatches, like I am...

You can either get the hex codes for the colors (by clicking the pound sign), or supposedly download the ASE:

Your kuler themes are supported as Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ase) files. To download a theme from kuler, first make sure you’re signed in. Click on the theme you’d like and click Download. This downloads the theme as an .ase file to the location of your choice. In Illustrator CS2, from the Swatches palette pop-up menu, select Open Swatch Libraries > Other Libraries, and navigate to and select your saved .ase file. The file will open in a separate palette labeled with the theme name. To move these swatches to the Swatches palette, select the swatches you wish to move and, from the pop-up menu, select Add to Swatches. The swatch will be added to the Swatches palette. In Photoshop CS2 or InDesign CS2, from the Swatches palette pop-up menu, go to Load Swatches and navigate to your .ase file. Open the .ase file; your colors should appear in the Swatches palette.

For Adobe Creative Suite® 3 components:

In Illustrator CS3, you can use the kuler panel to quickly and directly download themes from kuler into the Swatches panel. Select Window>Adobe Labs>kuler to display this kuler panel. Using this panel, you can browse different RSS feeds from kuler (Most Popular, Newest, Highest Rated), as well as custom feeds, which are explained below. When you see a theme you like, click the Add to Swatches button on the kuler panel, which downloads the theme as a Color Group directly to the Illustrator Swatches panel.

You can also import .ase files downloaded from kuler into Illustrator CS3. From the Swatches panel pop-up menu, select Open Swatch Libraries > Other Libraries, and navigate to your saved .ase file. The file will open as a color group in a separate panel labeled with the theme name. To move this color group to the Swatches panel, select the group and drag it to the Swatches panel.

In Photoshop CS3 or InDesign CS3, from the Swatches panel pop-up menu, select Load Swatches, and navigate to your .ase file. Open the .ase file; your colors will appear in the Swatches panel.

In addition, Adobe Bridge CS3, a component of Creative Suite 3 as well as individual products, allows you to view your .ase files as visible swatches for easy selection.

That's from the kuler documentation, not specifially for the AIR app.

Unfortunately, if the AIR app is downloading the .ase file somewhere I have no idea where it's going. I checked every plausible place and I can't find it.

Another blog post claims that there are even more options:

For each of the colour palettes shown you can copy the swatch values (as a string comma separated without hashes), go to the Kuler website for that palette or save the theme. Now this is where it gets a little weird. Saving the theme comes with a number of options. You can save directly to your desktop as an ASE (Adobe Swatch Exchange) file. Or your given the option to import the theme into Photoshop, InDesign or Illustrator. Great I though I will save it to Photoshop CS3. Ah, you are then told that you need something called Adobe Switchboard which allows AIR applications to import the themes directly into the CS3 applications.

But I don't see any options. When I click the Save ASE icon, nothing happens. Maybe I will stick to using kuler in Illustrator...

In Illustrator you can do:
Window > Adobe Labs > kuler

Labels: air, design, illustrator