Just minutes ago, Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5–"Leopard" to its friends–went on sale.  Congrats to everyone at Apple on what looks like a terrific release.

So, what does this mean in terms of running Adobe software?  The good news is that most Adobe apps don’t require updates in order to run well.  That is, the CS3 versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and other apps are good to go for Leopard right now.  Rock out.

The CS3-generation applications that require patches are After Effects, Premiere Pro, Encore, and Soundbooth (due to go live in early December), and Acrobat 8/Reader 8 (due in January).  Although Adobe is working on these updates, here’s a key line from the Adobe Leopard FAQ (PDF):

Does Adobe recommend running Production Premium or Master Collection before its
updates are available?

A. Yes, we are comfortable recommending this. Our testing revealed a few issues in specific
workflows when running the video professional applications on Mac OS X Leopard. Many
video professionals would not encounter these issues on a day-to-day basis, but we want to
provide updates in December 2007 to address these issues and meet our standards of quality.  You can evaluate the issues by visiting www.adobe.com/go/support and searching the online
knowledgebase for more information.

What about older versions of Adobe software?  The FAQ says,

While older Adobe applications may install and run on Mac OS X Leopard, they were
designed, tested, and released to the public several years before this new operating system
became available. You may, therefore, experience a variety of installation, stability, and
reliability issues for which there is no resolution.  Older versions of our creative software will
not be updated to support Mac OS X.

I can’t speak for other app teams, but while we naturally concentrated our testing on Photoshop CS3 (and beyond), we also tested CS2 a fair bit.  The only significant problem we discovered is that Photoshop CS2’s Web Photo Gallery module can crash while running under Leopard.  We plan to post an updated version that fixes the crash, but that won’t go up until Monday.  In case you’re impatient, I’ve attached the file here.

And that, in a nutshell, is it.  Have fun.

[Update: Adobe evangelist Terry White is one of the most deeply knowledgeable people inthe world when it comes to the Creative Suite applications. He’s been logging his Leopard upgrade experiences on his blog: see The Road To Leopard, parts 1, 2, and 3. On the whole, things seem to be going really well.

Per a note in Terry’s third installment, I’ve gotta say, I’m deeply disappointed that Time Machine now apparently won’t support backups across a wireless network. Good thing I rushed out and bought a new AirPort base station in February, along with a new USB hard drive (given that the base station doesn’t support the Apple-designed FireWire standard)–all in anticipation of wireless household backups. Here’s hoping the planned functionality will be enabled in an update.]

Sometimes I see an article that I wish I’d written, as it just nails something I’ve been thinking for a while.  Joel Spolsky’s piece on the phrase "Designed by Apple in California" neatly captures my thoughts–especially on the idea of California as an idea (very resonant for someone growing up in rural Illinois).  Thank you… thank you for giving a damn.

As for the Zune team apparently aping Apple’s phrase with their "Hello from Seattle," I feel like pulling the Conan O’Brien move that occurs roughly 2:20 into his brilliant visit to ILM, stamping the whole effort "SAD!" [Via]

PS–The "Hello" thing was charming in 1998, too.

Sometimes I see an article that I wish I’d written, as it just nails something I’ve been thinking for a while.  Joel Spolsky’s piece on the phrase "Designed by Apple in California" neatly captures my thoughts–especially on the idea of California as an idea (very resonant for someone growing up in rural Illinois).  Thank you… thank you for giving a damn.

As for the Zune team apparently aping Apple’s phrase with their "Hello from Seattle," I feel like pulling the Conan O’Brien move that occurs roughly 2:20 into his brilliant visit to ILM, stamping the whole effort "SAD!" [Via]

PS–The "Hello" thing was charming in 1998, too.

Of stop motion & time lapses:

• 150 t-shirts + 150 iron-ons + one heck of a lot of precision ironing = the Human Flipbook, created for sandwich chain Erbert & Gerbert. [Via Dustin Black, “Chief Simian Liaison” @ Colle+McVoy]
• Ironic Sans tells the story of Art Binninger, a Star Trek fan who made stop-motion animated Star Trek parody films from 1974 until Paramount put the smack down in 1986. [Via]
• The boxes be flyin’ in "Platform," a stop-motion film.  (The stack’s got kind of a Q*bert look to it.) [Via]
• Legos fly together Busby Berkeley-style to create the Millenium Falcon. [Via]
• CNET hosts a gallery of more Lego stop motion. Bohemian Rhapsody ain’t bad.

Of stop motion & time lapses:

• 150 t-shirts + 150 iron-ons + one heck of a lot of precision ironing = the Human Flipbook, created for sandwich chain Erbert & Gerbert. [Via Dustin Black, “Chief Simian Liaison” @ Colle+McVoy]
• Ironic Sans tells the story of Art Binninger, a Star Trek fan who made stop-motion animated Star Trek parody films from 1974 until Paramount put the smack down in 1986. [Via]
• The boxes be flyin’ in "Platform," a stop-motion film.  (The stack’s got kind of a Q*bert look to it.) [Via]
• Legos fly together Busby Berkeley-style to create the Millenium Falcon. [Via]
• CNET hosts a gallery of more Lego stop motion. Bohemian Rhapsody ain’t bad.

Having just stumbled, sleepy & scruffy*, out of an NYC taxi, I’m amused (and more than a bit sympathetic) to see the drubbing being doled out to the city’s new taxi logo.  Having absorbed, oh, ~850 flame-throwing drive-bys about the Photoshop family logo and the CS3 icons, I can empathize with the poor suckas who created this taxi thing, or who just had the, ahem, pleasure of playing the messenger.  Sam Potts points out the typically blistering comments visited on the work (and on his & other designers’ takes on it):

Why not open it up to ACTUAL high schoolers? Seeing the work they do, I’m betting they can come up with a much more clever solution than these half-brained doozies some wanna-be designer came up with on his bathroom break.
— Posted by Real Designer

Yeesh.  I’m reminded of a joke James Darnell passed along in conjunction with the Photoshop logo flare-up: "How many graphic designers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Any number really: one will do the work and the rest will stand around saying I could’ve done a better job."  God help anyone with the guts to put their work up on LogoPond & the like.  

I do get a kick out of Sam’s bullet-riddled taxi design.  Travis Bickle would feel right at home. [Via Sam]

* Red-eye flights seem to be the universe’s way of punishing my chronic failure to learn that, boy oh boy, it sucks to spend one’s night wedged between ripe, sullen strangers.  You’d think I’d get the hint by now.

Fast performance, as I’ve said before, is the best possible feature: it just works, without requring you to learn anything or to change how you work.  Not surprisingly, it’s always at the top of customers’ lists of requested features.

The Photoshop team works hard to tune the application to run as well as possible for the majority of users, but the ways in which each person uses the can differ pretty wildly.  For example, do you tend to open files with small pixel dimensions and lots of layers, or do you tend to work more with large, nearly flat documents?  The optimal application settings & hardware setups may differ based on your needs & style of working.

To help shed some light on these topics, Photoshop co-architect Scott Byer & performance lead tester Adam Jerugim presented a popular session at Photoshop World last month.  They’ve posted some notes on Scott’s blog, and just this morning Scott uploaded a revised & expanded version of the presentation slide deck (PDF).

[Update: Photoshop 10.0.1 for CS3 is now available.  Here’s more info.]

We know that many people have been unhappy with printing from Photoshop CS3 (overwhelmingly on Windows), and we’ve been working on changes that will make things work better.  Unfortunately the process isn’t as quick as we’d like, given the sheer number of hardware, printer driver, and operating system combinations.  We’ve made some changes & will be issuing an update to Photoshop CS3, but it’s not quite ready to be shared with the world at large.

If, however, you’re experiencing printing problems & would like to test the current code, please drop me a note [update: get the update].  I’ll then ask our pre-release coordinator to send you an invitation, after which you can download the latest build and send us your feedback. 

I’m sorry that things have been more painful than they should be, and I hope this process helps get fixes into the hands of those who need them.

Thanks,
J.

Pitting Adobe’s imaging & page-layout flagships against one another seems a little wonky (kind of a Celebrity Deathmatch, minus the clay & gore), but by doing so Peachpit’s Mike McHugh shows off some of the power hidden in InDesign.  The battle, in six rounds, hits the following:

1. Recoloring Grayscale Artwork
2. Recoloring RGB Artwork
3. Creating Reflections
4. Applying Special Effects
5. Creating Vignettes
6. Generating Contact Sheets

I wouldn’t necessarily agree that ID beats PS on some of these points (cough), but the core imaging juice shared between the two enables ID to perform some neat tricks.  And when it comes to generating contact sheets (with a hand-off from Bridge), InDesign just trounces Photoshop–as well it should.  [Via]

[Update: Mordy Golding has posted an Illustrator vs. InDesign Smackdown on his blog.]

Grid-based Web design has gained currency as a best practice, as articulated by various experts.  For example:

• Mark Boulton talks about why to use a grid, and he offers Five Simple Steps to designing grid systems.
• NYTimes.com design director Khoi Vinh shares his approach.
• Mark & Khoi elaborate on their techniques in the SXSW presentation “Grids Are Good” (8MB PDF).

Now Andrew Ingram has stepped up with GridMaker for Photoshop, a script that enables easy creation of a grid comprised of Photoshop guides.  He’s also created a version for Fireworks using a Flash-based panel.  Many thanks for your efforts here, Andrew.

Elsewhere Matthew Pennell has created a Web-hosted approach to grid generation, complete with a nice set of draggable sliders.  It would be cool to see someone combine these approaches, using a Flash UI inside Photoshop to drive the guide-creation script. [Via my old roommate Khoi Uong; doppel-Khoi powers, activate!]

People managing large asset collections–especially photographers with lots of photos–have long requested finer-grained control over the way keywords are applied to & stored within their files.  Now a new technote on Adobe.com documents the changes & improvements in Bridge 2.1:

The keywords panel is enhanced significantly in the Adobe Bridge CS3 2.1 release. The primary enhancement is the addition of support for nested keyword hierarchies. In previous versions of Bridge, only a single level of nesting was supported. Bridge also now allows the hierarchical information to be written with the keywords. There are also new ways to find keywords quickly in your keyword hierarchy and to add new keywords at any level in the hierarchy. Additionally, Bridge now provides a way to import and export the keywords defined in the keyword panel.

Check out the doc for more details, and please let us know if there are ways in which you’d like to see keywording further improved in Bridge and/or Lightroom.

Through a design competition called cause/affect, the SF chapter of AIGA seeks to "celebrate the work of designers and organizations who set out to positively impact our society."  If you’re using your design skills for the betterment of life, the universe, and everything, or if you know of someone who is doing so, consider submitting your work (see the FAQ for details).  The deadline is November 9, and the awards ceremony will be held in SF on December 4. [Via]

Last night at MAX, Adobe’s Geoff Baum got on stage during the sneak peek session to show off a bit more of Photoshop Express.  Boy, things have come a long way in the few weeks since the sneak at Photoshop World, and last night’s demo showed Healing Brush- & Liquify-like tools running via the app’s Flash interface.  CNET’s Martin LaMonica has details & screenshots. (Update: Here’s a video recording of the session:

[Via Stephen Shankland])

The company is still being somewhat coy (as is par for the course when previewing technology), but as info firms up, I’ll pass it along.

Gratuitous addendum: I like seeing that former LiveMotion/Vanishing Point developer Steve Troppoli continues the Boston office tradition of inserting one’s fly Volvo into demos.  Somewhere, the Flavawagon (which lives forever, in tiny form, within Photoshop’s Web Photo Gallery) smiles.