How does Photoshop CS5 fare with the interface design staples of antialiased simple shapes? In a word, terribly.

Here are several circles I just drew in Photoshop CS5. Without any “snap to pixel” option for vector circles, the antialiasing ends up all over the place.

Yeah, that’s pretty awful. But the really fun part comes when you try to fix it. Again, there’s no “snap to pixel” vector editing tool; so your only resort is to type in the pixel-correct values by hand. For each and every shape.

Oh, and you’ll need to switch the width and height fields from percent to pixels, and even then you’ll need to make sure to type the “px” in every time or Photoshop will helpfully revert to percent. Have fun!

But how does Illustrator handle this same task? Beautifully. If you’re in Pixel Preview mode (and, in my line of work, you’re always in Pixel Preview mode), the circles come out whole-pixel the first time.

Granted, a couple stray pixels show up. But as an experienced Illustrator user, you’ll immediately compensate with a Transform effect or Opacity Mask. Still a far quicker fix than typing in those Photoshop fields over and over.

This is not merely a circle issue. Any non-rectangular vector shape is very difficult to manipulate in a pixel-appropriate way in Photoshop CS5. New points are almost never placed on the whole pixel, nor do they snap to whole pixels when you drag or nudge them with the arrow keys. (In Illustrator’s Pixel Preview, either operation will snap an anchor point to the nearest whole pixel.) Even worse, the amount that the point does move is determined by one’s zoom level — so you can’t even be sure how much you’ll need to nudge a point to get to that integer value. The only solution is to select and transform each and every point, typing in whole pixel values every time. And forget aligning points in order to make the process go more quickly.

Of course, what you really ought to do is just bring the shape into Illustrator where you can get those points snapped to pixel quickly and with no fuss.

Having run into all these vector-editing issues, would I use Photoshop CS5 to design images for use in an app or website? Well, I resisted doing so for years. I built a decade-long career of icon and interface design almost entirely on the back of Illustrator. Then I arrived at Black Pixel and had to adapt to the company approach. I cursed Adobe every time I typed “px” into a field to prevent it from reverting to percent. But being a designer, I learned to work around Photoshop’s problems as I had long since learned to work around Illustrator’s. Now, Photoshop CS6 is nearly here; and it fixes most (though not all) of my gripes about working with vector shapes. Incidentally, Illustrator CS5 fixed a few rendering inconsistencies and I’m sure Adobe will continue to fix more.

Both are good tools for the screen-centric design job, and both are peppered with some aggravating bugs and engineering decisions. C’est la vie. Good designers deal.

(Addendum: If you’re not getting the joke, this is a tongue-in-cheek response to Marc Edwards’ Illustrator and App Design. I agree with Marc that Photoshop [and especially Photoshop CS6] has become the right tool for the app design job. I just don’t agree with most of his particular criticisms of Illustrator.)

Whether or not Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata ever referred to Apple as “the enemy of the future,” the sentiment is sound — casual gaming, so recently the key to Nintendo’s “blue ocean” strategy, is increasingly an iOS affair. And having all but abandoned the “hardcore” gaming market this past generation, Nintendo is left with very little room to maneuver.

As I see it, Nintendo has three options; and none of them easy. The first and, I believe, worst solution is to abandon hardware and transition to becoming a software-only company. It’s true that gaming properties like Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Metroid and Pokémon are probably Nintendo’s best assets and could sustain a substantial game company. But without the hardware platforms along for the ride, I doubt software alone could fuel the Nintendo we know today. That way lies diminishment, and should be regarded as a last resort. Sega serves as a strong warning against this approach.¹

The second, slightly better plan is to confront the Xbox head-on. In fact, Nintendo has hinted it may be looking to do so with the beefed-up graphics capabilities of the Wii U. But graphics are a technology problem which is relatively straightforward to solve. Nintendo’s real handicaps against Microsoft are cultural: Nintendo does not value developer relations or online connectivity and Microsoft does. Core gamers want expansive third-party libraries and dead-simple online multiplayer; and Nintendo has a long track record of failing badly at providing either with its platforms.

The third option open to Nintendo is the most interesting and the riskiest: go after Apple on its own turf. Create a true, standalone tablet device that takes advantage of Nintendo’s strengths. Such a device — call it the “Nintendo iDS” for fun — would certainly require a world-class browser and support for the usual mobile standbys (like text messaging). But unlike the iPad, the iDS would feature integrated buttons and analog circle pads to make even the most “core” of gaming experiences possible.

It may sound crazy, but it’s not so far from what Amazon is attempting with the Kindle Fire. And Nintendo has a few tricks up its sleeve. As with the 3DS, it could design the iDS with a 3D screen and slider. (I’m not big on 3D in general, but if it makes sense anywhere it’s on a gaming platform.) Games could be temporarily shared with non-owners for multiplayer matches, as Nintendo already allows on its handhelds. But more than anything else, the iDS’ big feature would be one-tap access to both classic and brand-new titles in the Mario, Zelda and other franchises.

Do I think Nintendo will actually try to produce such a device? No. Nor do I expect them to get over their cultural handicaps or transform into a software-only developer. Nintendo will stick to its console hardware guns as long as it can; and it has the cash to be stubborn for quite some time. But the gaming industry is changing dramatically. Sooner or later, Nintendo will have to change too.

I think it’s a pretty good discussion. Go have a listen.

I gave up on Image Capture and used Dropbox. But if you’ve used Dropbox for this purpose, you know it involves several steps: launch the app, tap the Uploads tab, tap the add button, tap the photo, etc. etc. It works, but it wasn’t convenient enough.

I wanted something instantaneous. Fortunately, Ryan McCuaig was able to point me in the right direction. Follow these steps and you, too, can experience painless iOS screenshot sharing on your Mac.

Ensure all your iOS devices use Photo Stream

On each of your iPads, iPhones etc. check iCloud settings in the Settings app. Photo Stream should be set to On.

Locate the Photo Stream in the Finder

Since the user’s Library folder is now hidden by default, I can’t just give you the file path. In the Finder, option-click on the Go menu and hit “Library.” Then navigate to Application Support > iLifeAssetManagement > assets > sub. In the search filed, type “png”; then select “Portable Network Graphics image” from the popup.

Save the Search

Click the Save button under the search field. Give the saved search a name like “Screenshots.” Leave “Add to Sidebar” checked.

This ought to be the end, but it’s not. For some reason, this particular saved search acts up when accessed from the Finder sidebar (at least on my version of OS X). Sometimes it works, sometimes it returns zero results. The fix for this is to add it to the Dock instead. Hit up the contextual menu and do that.

(Note: a few folks have told me they don’t have “Add to Dock” in their contextual menu. Your alternative is to navigate to your Saved Searches folder in your Library folder — again: in the Finder, option-click on the Go menu and hit “Library.” The saved search you created should be in there.)

I recommend also removing the saved search from the sidebar via the same menu.

Now, you have a live-updating folder of all PNG images that arrive on your Mac via Photo Stream.

You’ll probably want to set this to Sort By > Date Created.

No, you won’t need to have iPhoto running for this to work. Take some screenshots on your iOS devices and they’ll automatically start showing up in this folder. Just keep in mind that a retina iPad screen can take a little bit to make its way through iCloud.

(If you wanted to get especially clever, you could add in pixel height and width metadata to filter screenshots from each device type into its own folder. The trick here is that those will vary with device orientation, so you’ll probably end up using a Raw Query — something like “kMDItemPixelHeight == 2048 || kMDItemPixelHeight == 1536” for retina iPad shots.)

The knee-jerk reaction is to mock the public’s grasp of global warming, but that misses a more fundamental truth: that in any contest between the “tyranny of the urgent” and gradual, imperceptible change, the urgent wins. Every time. Even if the most strident of alarmists are completely right, it’s a vain hope that you could ever get a world of very busy humans to work together against such a slow, creeping, inconspicuous phenomenon. They can’t see it.

Rather than go on about global warming, concerned people should make their case based only on immediately observable consequences. The argument should be: Air pollution is observable (just visit L.A.) — so let’s reduce emissions. Trash overload is observable — so let’s reduce and recycle. High gas prices and Middle East volatility are observable — so let’s keep going with hybrid engines, wind farms and other technologies.

Global warming will always be a chimaera for most people. That chimaera may even exist. It doesn’t matter. Find another approach or stop wasting your time.

Or don’t. Really, I have more important things to worry about.

Say you’ve drawn an object in Illustrator and what to use it in Photoshop without flattening it to a bitmap.

So you hit File > Export, choose Photoshop format and make sure to select “Maximum Editability.”

You’ll likely get the following result. Paths have been converted to bitmap layers, in spite of your best efforts.

Unfortunate, and probably a bug. We can wait for Adobe to fix their code (stop laughing!) or figure out a workaround. Creative Suite users, this is what I have accomplished for you.

To ensure paths are maintained, you need to convert every standard path into a compound path. In order to prevent this trick from creating any visible effect, we’ll use a very small path — I prefer a one-pixel square, but in these examples I’ve gone a bit larger so you can see what’s going on — and combine it with the standard path using a live Add pathfinder operation. It’s important that you use the live version of this operation — otherwise you’ll just end up with the same standard path with which you started and you’ll continue to get bitmap results on export.

After a few Add pathfinder operations, you’ll get something like this:

Export this art, and you’ll get the desired shape layers.

So, why is Photoshop more consistently able to convert complex paths into Shape Layers while choking on the most basic sort of Illustrator art? Without getting into the technical details, this is the best explanation I’ve been able to find.

[By way of Leibniz]

(The web doesn’t have a good page on the concept, so I’m trying to make this it. Fixes and suggestions are very welcome.)

I don’t think anyone (excepting perhaps the socialist fringe) is calling for an end to income inequality. Income inequality is not a problem per se — what’s worrying about our current situation are the extremes in income inequality.

Even these are not the real problem, but rather a symptom of the pervasive fraternization between those with money (big business) and those with lawmaking power (the federal government). And by this I hope no one means to imply a dark conspiracy — it is simply the case that those of the same social class (the rich and powerful) tend to associate, to play golf together, to scratch each others’ backs and to generally improve life for one another.

The problem is that big business and government have become so closely entwined and the economy so precarious that the close cooperation between these groups has become a detriment to the rest of the nation. For a while, the Americans on the outside were content to turn a blind eye to the arrangement, which probably emboldened those involved. What the Occupy movements are trying to accomplish, I hope, is simply to put the fear of the Common Man back into the system. They are saying, We the people are well aware of how you operate. You’re not getting away with it to the extent you think you are.

Government ought to be a little bit afraid of its constituency.

It’s foolish to expect those doing the Occupying to have a solution for the problems they are bringing to light. They are not the ones inside the impressive edifices. Effectively, Occupy is a grass-roots watchdog organization and nothing more.

Nor should we view it as an especially partisan enterprise. Occupy is not a liberal cause. It is, or it ought to be, the cause of the common American. Politicizing these issues may make them more readily digestible, but it obscures the fact of what has got so many people fired up in the first place. Remember, the Tea Party was another spontaneous response to almost exactly the same issue. The Tea Party were upset that those in power were offering charity to those who least need it — those with money. Similarly, Occupy is angry at those with money who use their financial reserves as a kind of gravity to bend the lawmaking process to their advantage.

What Occupy wants, and what we should all want, is for lawmakers to make just laws with minimal concern for directly benefiting their top donors; and for corporations to earn their profits without supplicating the federal government for special advantages.

That’s not an interest of the Left or the Right — it’s a requisite for democracy.

1. Export your iOS icon as a 114×114 PNG with the file name “apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png”.
2. Make a new web page on any site you have access to and write the HTML like so:

   <html>

    <head>

     <link rel=”apple-touch-icon-precomposed” href=”apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png”>

    </head>

    <body>

    </body>

   </html>

3. Upload your PNG file to the same directory and load the page in Safari on your iOS device.
4. Tap the actions button and hit “Add to Home Screen.” Ignore the bookmark name and hit “Add.”
5. Check out the icon on your home screen.

Any time you want to preview a new icon, just export it as a 114×114 PNG with the file name “apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png” and upload it to the same place.

If you want to see how your icon looks with the iOS gloss effect applied, you can leave off “-precomposed” in the file name and in the HTML.

The answer is a trendy new school of thought in web design, called “responsive design.” But it’s not just trendy; it solves a real problem. Designers coding responsively create sites that reflow to fit the size of the screen. Text and images shrink or grow; sidebars become sections below the fold; items laid out horizontally shift to a vertical flow.

At least at the most basic level, responsive design is not terribly hard to do. Working from a template posted on Onextrapixel, I was able to convert my landing page to a responsive design with roughly two afternoons and an evening of work.

I’m not done — linked pages still need to be updated with the new design; there are some CSS3 issues with Firefox that I mean to fix. But I like how it’s coming along.