[David Cabestany]

Have you checked that the layer has the printing option on?

[David Cabestany]

You need to create an object with the exact shape you need to cover with metallic ink in Illustrator and paint it black or whatever color, in fact you can load Pantone metallic inks in the swatches palette, which is actually advised, that way when you output your file, Illustrator will automatically create a separate plate for any additional ink besides the usual 4.

[David Cabestany]

If you are in CS5 all you need to do is select them all and hit Command J, which will join the paths in one single shape, after that you can fill it.

If you are in a previous version you need to select the open endpoints of each path and join them using the same command.

Instead of drawing circles and then cutting them in half you can either draw arcs (the tool is the same as the line tool, just click and hod to see the other options) or even easier, draw circles and join them together applying a pathfinder>unite operation.

[David Cabestany]

Hey Les, thanks for your reply.

I know about the extra fill and offset to fake a stroke, unfortunately I can’t use it this time, because I need the type to be truly with no filling, so I can see whatever it’s behind.

As mentioned, I was able to to it, but it only works some of the times, some others just doesn’t. I experimented with both the offset path effect and the outline stroke effect, it really has me perplexed.

I have the file that has the gradient on the stroke with no fill, it’s a CS5 file, let me know if you’d like to take a look at it.

Thanks.

[David Cabestany]

Photoshop CS2 is a Mac OS only application, whereas Snow Leopard is designed to run in Intel based computers which are optimized to run Universal applications (CS3 onwards).

Rosetta is a backend emulator that Apple designed so Mac OS applications could be run in Intel computers, don’t worry, it’s safe to install, as it is an Apple program, in fact you will never see it running as a program per se and you can’t launch it alone, it only works when it needs to “translate” from old applications, such as Photoshop CS2.

However, any program that runs through Rosetta will have a significant degradation in performance; Snow Leopard is designed to run 64 bit applications natively, so you might want to consider upgrading to CS5 and experience a dramatic boost in your workflow.

[David Cabestany]

Daniel, my guess is you now have an uneven amount of ram on each slot, as far as I know Macs must distribute ram evenly across the available slots and in even numbers, for example, 16 gb should be installed using four 4 gb dimms, one per slot.

How did you distribute your ram?

Also I’d consider upgrading to CS5, which by being a 64 bit application can take advantage of more ram installed.

[David Cabestany]

It will check your hard drive for possible issues pertaining system files that may or may not have gotten corrupted and are causing your computer to behave erratically, it fixes many errors, and yours certainly sound like a good candidate for this.

Here’s the process:

Restart your machine holding command S
You will get a black screen with text popping in, no interface at all. This is known as the verbose mode. After the screen settles the last line you should read

root#

hit enter and type:

fsck -f

hit enter

the computer will start running a series of checkups on your drive, it will try to repair any wrong files, if any and if possible.

Depending on the issues encountered the process may take 2 minutes or 40 minutes, so be patient.

When it’s done you should read something like:

The volume appears to be ok.

If anything was modified you will read ***FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED***

After that type:

reboot

hit enter.

Your machine will boot normally, now you can try Illustrator again, but before launching hold the shift, alt and command keys, when a message asking to delete the preference files appears click yes.

Hopefully everything should be working fine now.

Good luck and let us know.

[David Cabestany]

Have you tried booting your computer in single user mode and running an fsck scan?

[David Cabestany]

It might be easier to conform in After Effects instead.

[David Cabestany]

Depending on the particle emitter you are using, you may need an expression to make the emitter follow the path, particularly if you’re using a 3d particle emitter.