AboutKevin Stohlmeyer Expertise I am an Adobe Certified Instructor. I can answer all your questions about Adobe Illustrator version 8 through the new Adobe CS4 version.
Experience I am an Adobe Certified Instructor for Adobe Illustrator and have been teaching this application to college students for the past 6 years. I now teach this as a corporate instructor.
Organizations Milwaukee Adobe Users Group
National Association of Photoshop Professionals
C2 Graphics Productivity Solutions
Education/Credentials BA - Graphic Design
Adobe Certified Instructor - Illustrator
I bought the entire Adobe Creative Suite CS2 maybe 3 years ago. I've been
using Photoshop CS2 ever since (on an iMac running OS X 10.4.11). I'm a
long-time Photoshop user, but had never tried Illustrator.
So I fire it up and give it a try this week. Was able to create some documents,
Place a Photoshop image, run Live Trace, and generally mess around with
some very small success.
Here's the problem: I was able to create some paths (and I found I had a
zillion of them after I Expanded my Live Trace), but I couldn't get the Direct
Selection Tool (A) to work properly. It's supposed to select individual points
and path segments, right? (at least it does in Photoshop) But it acted just like
the Selection Tool (V); that is, when I clicked on a path with the Direct
Selection Tool, it would select the ENTIRE path, just like the regular (black
arrow) Selection Tool.
Am I missing something very simple, or is there some known glitch with the
Direct Selection Tool in CS2? (I realize Adobe is up to CS4 now, and I
apologize for such an out-of-date question).
Would appreciate any insights-- many thanks!
Cheers, Mark
ANSWER: Hi Mark
After you run live trace, be sure to hit expand (button at the top options) to complete the process, then ungroup the results. You should then be able to select individual points.
Thanks
Kevin
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: Hi Kevin,
Thanks again for your very helpful answer.
Quick follow-up question:
I had Placed an image into Illustrator. I had the "Link" box checked so that the Illustrator image is linked back to the original image. When I select the image in Illustrator, I can see the name of the original (linked) image in the window's menu bar. The image name has a little drop-down menu which includes "View Linked Image."
When I clicked on that option, it launched Photoshop (version CS2, same version as Illustrator) and opened the original image in Photoshop. So far, so good.
I had read that if I modified the original image, I could apply the same modification to the corresponding Illustrator image. To test this, I drew a simple line on the original in Photoshop-- and suddenly Illustrator crashed.
I repeated the whole sequence as described above. Same result: Illustrator crashed when I tried to modify the original image in Photoshop.
Can you suggest an explanation? Illustrator CS2 and Photoshop CS2 were the only two programs I had running at the time.
I'm using an iMac running OS X 10.4.11, and the machine has 1 GB of RAM.
Any suggestions? Many thanks.
Cheers, Mark
Answer Hi Mark,
I have not heard of this issue with linked images crashing AI and Adobe no longer supports CS2 (they are on CS4 already - whew!), so I checked around and the only "work around" I could find for you to try is to close you document when you switch to PS. Then after you make the change, reopen the AI file and see if updating the image crashes it.
The only thing I can think of is 1 gig is not much ram, and depending on how much you dedicated to PS and how many other things are running hidden (fonts, etc.) you may not have enough to go back and forth live.
Try the workaround and let me know if it still crashes.
