The post is a review of a program called Slife that is teaching me a lot about my workflow. I’ll be writing more about how I am using it here in the next few weeks, so please make your way over to MacSparky to read the review.

If you are visiting by means of MacSparky. Thanks for dropping by. As a Mac lover, I think you will find plenty to tickle your fancy here. Visit the Series page to get a taste of some of what I’ve been writing about. I would especially recommend the Capture Everything series, which has been the most popular series to date.

Thanks to David, for the chance to do the guest post. And thanks to all readers, from Creativityist and MacSparky alike, who make this project so much fun.

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slife review

The biggest thing is FXG. We have FXG support in Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fireworks so you can take that artwork you’ve spent time on in the design tools and bring it into your Flex applications. It’s a full XML-based representation that will make the artwork easy for designers to create and developers to work with (in addition to saving on file size).

We’re also looking at helping developers be more expressive. Things like Pixel Bender help blur the lines between developer and designers. Developers can work with designers to code up great filters that can be used in Photoshop, After Effects and Flash. It’s going to make design across all mediums come alive in very interesting ways.

So CS4 is a big release for developers. I would argue it’s the first CS release to truly integrate everything Adobe and Macromedia did because it’s started to incorporate the developer side of Macromedia. There’s also some interesting new stuff in there that should expand Adobe’s footprint on the tech world, so I’m excited to see how that’s received.

I’ll update the post with links to the events/agenda when I have them, but here is the info for the user group meetings in Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul, and Hong Kong.

If you’re in any of those cities, please come join us!

For those who are participating with us, you can share your thoughts in the comments below. (If you aren’t participating, feel free to share your reactions too.) If you are using your blog to process your experiences, please leave us a link.

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the artist’s way collective: week 4 hub

Only three hours ago, give or take, TUAW posted about Espresso. Being developed by MacRabbit, the makers of said CSSEdit, Espresso looks to take nipping and tucking to a whole new level. In their own words: “we looked at the needs of modern web developers and streamlined their workflow into one focused app.” I like the sound of that so much, I’m almost willing to forgive this audacious claim: “Soon, Espresso will deliver something better than a caffeine boost.”

See you soon Espresso. And sooner if you let me be a tester!

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espresso preview please

With new files added every day, my documents folder gets a little stuffy. I know I’m not the only one; last spring, I wrote a post about how I organize my documents using Leap and Hazel. It has been one of my most popular posts.

In that post, I mentioned in passing what has become a most useful trick. I have a current documents smart folder. It’s for my hipster files…the ones that are connected to the projects I have going right now.

Using Leap, I tag files as current if they are connected to any projects that are in progress. Leap uses the “Spotlight comments” field in the file info to tag these files. You don’t have to use Leap to do this, by the way…but the other ways I have seen involve wading a little further into Styx.

Once you have labeled a few files, you can create a smart folder to get to them quickly. Open finder, and select “New Smart Folder” from the File menu:

Once that window is open, click the little plus sign in the top right hand corner. Choose the Spotlight comment field in the first window, contains in the second, and then type “current” in the third:

Now, save your smart folder. I put mine in the documents folder…its a good way to mock the less cool files that are crowding their way in there. I also dragged mine to my dock — it’s one of the only items that gets a permanent home there. When it’s time to pick up where I left off on something, the files I need are only two clicks, and about five seconds, away.

Go make one now. It’s what the cool kids are doing.

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a folder for the trendy kids

Adobe is a huge company with a great design community, a great developer community, and a great footprint on the web. We have a ton of intellectual property that we’ve been open with because it helps move our own agenda forward but also helps innovation across a wide swath of technology including rich media, documents, and the web. Adobe has a long history of striking a good balance by continuing to make money off of open standards and specifications that we free and that others have created. Adobe makes money off of tools, servers, and services. We increase revenue by increasing the number of people using our stuff which allows us to be open with a lot of our biggest assets. And while a lot of that has focused recently on the developer side of the house, examples like XMP show that it really does come from every part of the company. Including the parts that make most of the money.

Hopefully we’ll see more of this next year and beyond because I think Adobe has a unique niche in the web ecosystem as it sits today. We’ve got lots of technology and a business model that encourages more openness.

For those who are participating with us, you can share your thoughts in the comments below. If you are using your blog to process your experiences, please leave us a link.

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the artist’s way collective: week 3 hub

Something happens as we grow older and we lose that innocence. To give myself the label of a designer or a writer is to invite my skeptic to speak. To name myself as an artist of any kind means that I have some kind of minimum standard I have to meet to qualify for that title. But I am the one that defines that minimum standard, and I usually place that standard just a notch or two above where I am.

So this week, I’ve been learning to tell that internal skeptic to shut up. If I want to say that I am a designer, then yes I am. If I want to say that I am a writer, then yes I am. If I want to say that I am a ballerina…well, I’m not going to go that far.

A few thoughts that have stuck with me from this week’s reading:

• To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. — Robert Louis Stevenson (pg. 43)
• You will discover the joy of practicing your creativity. The process, not the product, will become your focus. (pg. 44)
• Perhaps the greatest barrier for any of us as we look for an expanded life is our own deeply held skepticism. This might be called the secret doubt. (pg. 49)
• we need to gently set aside our sketpicism — for later use, if we need it — and when a weird idea or coincidence whizzes by, we gently nudge the door a little further open. (pg. 51)

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artist’s way reflections: week two