The art must be made up of symbols and therefore you have o enter either isolation mode or use the method Monika mention Edit>Edit Colors> Recolor Art. ... View more

We need to see the art selectd and see the layers panel with all layers expanded so we can see all the objects in each layer. ... View more

The OP is looking for 1. a masking set of tools ot a masking mode such as in after effects. In AE you can use all your drawing tools to create artwork or you can use it to create masking shapes depending on the mode you are in. Very handy! 2 A crop art tool to actually crrop the art. That should be possible in AI since it is now 64bit and will not crimp the processing. These should be doable in AI CS 7 ... View more

You are correct 10 would be th smallest size you should use on a business card. or on anything that you wish people to actually be able to read. A great deal of people over forty will have ahard time reading anything smaller and over forty is the largest population segment in the U.S. And if you notice there aremany younger people using glasses or contact lenses. Even people who have laser correction done to their eyes seem to also need reading glasses. So though many people with good vision that are designers use smaller fonts do so without really thinking about the actual function off the card. When I started out as a graphic designer I designed a number of cards and my card itself was actually popular and people I gave to it to told me they kept it because it was very simply looked good and they could read it. many of them also told nme if someone gave them a card they had a hard time reading they threw it away. ... View more

I meant to do this the reason is the with one line orient at the bottom center in the position proxy when you expand the appeareance you will have 32 actual lines radiating out of the center. That was a msitake I made and I actually showed exactly whaat Jacob wrote, my error. ... View more

Yes, I have to apologize I am actually showing what you wrote it is a duplicateand I made a mistake about how many copies there should have been 15 would be the right number not 31 so I made two mistakes. ... View more

Edit. I did read that wrong this time the first time I read it correctluy as you cn see from the screen shot I used one line and 31 copies at the desired angle. I have no idea why one would make a pair of lines going in opposite directions? I thin I used the same effect but in a very different and simpler way. And thgat is why I think it is the easiest way. One Line 31 copiesat desired angle. Very different from a pair of lines going in opposite directions. ... View more

To prove larry's point probably the easiest way of doing this is to draw the line Vertically. got to Effects>Distort and Transform>Transform and simply input the angle and the number of copies which is one less than the toal since you have one already and click OK. If you need the lines selectable you go to Object>Expand Appearance. If you think you will need or want to change the number of lines keep it as an Efect and you can always chgange it in the future. Also if you wanted and it is not the best way you can make a pie chart but tht is kind of messy. ... View more

I found an odd work around I know you but ther is more to it so read on. shift select the paths you want in the layers and the to skip one or more pths option/alt select and to continue of course use the shift key again. Onece you have all the pthas you want from the layers panel flyout Options for Selection. Check lock. The Object>Unlock All , it will only unlock the selected items you just locked and they will then be slected on the canvas as well. Here is a couple of screen shots notice the locked layer stays locked and unselected in both the layers panel and on the canvas, ... View more

Esc. to close is the thing to always try before force quit. I like the feature where you can put the time date and page number in one shot. Thanks for the script. But have a request probably not doable. I write fiction as a hobby. No I am not concerned about my spelling. So I might work and a section and then putit aside for a while then resume it would be good to be able create sections and chapters with dates applied the to sections or chapters but no the the whole document! Is such a thing possible? A very handy device I must say I am for Adobe acquiring it from you. ... View more

Here are some thoghts you might consider before wishing you had such a tool. Considering the weight of a straoke can be quite thin and quite heay and everything in between 1 Does the a too orient it self according the the weight of the stroke or to the shae of the path? 2. how would it work on a thin stroke if the tool only spanned the with of the stroke. Is zooming in a feasible way to work 3. How would the tool work if you were running the gradient along the strokes path, does it folow and conform to the shape of the path? 4 If The Gradient ran across the stoke's width then you would have to zoom in a lot if it were a very thing stroke or even a medium weight stroke? 5 Does it help you to have the tool when applying the standard gradient to the Stroke would it work like the fill gradient tool? 6 What haapens whebn you have fill and stroke gradient do both tools show up? Would that be too much clutter? OK I  can think of more but You get the point. Although I think it is a very difficult thing to figure out how to impliment such a feature I also think I have a way the interface could actually work. ... View more

I am also sorry you are having problems but to be air to Adobe about this issue it has been a long time since they drop the development of FH and the writing was on the wall for a long time as well. I myself have posted many times here on the Forum tht it is inevitable that support for FreeHand has to come to an end. For one thing you stated quitel well yourself. Do I have to downgrade my OS? Because the OS is continuing to evolve as are the applications the older versions will be obsolete and not workable on modern computers and a modern OS and thatt the sooner you switch the better becasue if you don't then you will be left out in the cold. The thing to do is to fid someone or simply rent a computer running and older system and open the files and save them as .ai files but you can just open some of them ou have to open all of them and save them a ai files. If you do not do tht then in the future you may not be able to find a computer tht is even capable of running an older OS, so there might be no way to get these old files ecept to redraw them. In case you don't understand why there might not be computers capable of opening these files in the future, let me explain, the older computers will eventually breakdown and there are no parts to replace the old ones and even if those parts are found those will eventually give way and that will be the end of it for good. You need to convet now before it is too late. Even if you downgrade your OS that too will not last for ever and the support for that OS will cease at some time and those computers will also become obsolete and unusuable. ... View more

I do not know what is causing your problem but you can select the text as before and go to Object> Expand or Object>Flatten the Trnasparency either one should work. It would be nice to see your selected art and the appearance and layers panels expanded so we can see everything it might give a clue. ... View more

You might have to reset the preferences also at the bottom of the characcter panel there is a selection for the language, if it is set to Portuguese currently change it to english ... View more

You're welcome. ... View more

I just wrote my name with the mouse using the brush tool. You might do it by hand and scan and the trace the path with the pen tool but I chose not to spend that amount of time. The Brush tool will smooth out the apth depending on your set up of the tool. Then I applied a brush to it in this case from the Artistic Library and the charcoal brushes a thin one you might have to a cut the paths to get the brushes to apply the wy you want. Here is how it might look when you start witht he basic brush After I selected a brush Here after selecting a diffferent brush If you are talking about the qulity of the actual signture I am currently on yusing a mouse so thst is not exactly my real signature I just made it look as much like actual writing as I could in short time. It takes practice I guess. Once you draw your writing you can hen use the direct select tool if need be to reeadjust any aprt of the path that looks too angular to me writing. So just think of it as art and do the most representational drawing of hand writing as you can. Better to go slow than fast. ... View more

BTW the indicaters that it is a draw inside or draw behind object go away when you double click somewhere on the canvas ... View more

It sounds to me that all you really want to do is to be abel to have a stroke and a fill and there is no need to do anything but select your stroke which you have snd then give it a fill of your choice. The fill cn be a solid color , a gradient or a pattern fill, even an image if you make it a swatch. No need to copy the path. Illustrator and Photoshop are very different in may regards. you can also set the stroke to align to the center of the path, insde the path and to the outside of the path. You ave to read about the difference between working with vector and raster programs. You can also set the elipse to draw behind or draw inside and place an image inside it or draw with say the blob brush so that it is not a solid fill. A path can have a fill and a stroke. Can you describe what you are trying to achieve? ... View more

I m going totry but you are not going to like what i tell you and there is nothing I can do about it. First so you know that this is probably correct whether you like oit or not create a new user account. Log into the new user accounlaunch Illustrator and nothing else. Now create a new document and go to the font menu and all is now well. This means one of four possibilities or all or some of them in combination. If it is not a font corruption, which I think it actually is even though you say it is not, then it would be a permissions problem and that means the permission for a directory is set to read only or no access. The directory is somewhere along the path to the wwhere you have your active fonts stored or for the font manager you use if you use one. Or it can be a font cahae problm you can use ONYX to repmove your font Cache files it is a free download. Then it could be a corrupt perfeerence even though you are certain it is not and it need not necessarily be Illustrators preferences (settings folder it could be the preferences folder itself that is corrupt and it could also mean the the com.adobe.illustrator.plist also has to be discarded along with the settings folder not just the settings folder. There ae to other possibilities a conflict with a plug in or third party software or an update. Then the permission on the sttings folder might need to be set read write for aall users and the contents with in the folder as well. I think it is a correupt font it has in the past always been a font corruption issue. ... View more

You're welcome! ... View more

I didn't realize Crisper was not the OP inn that ca se you log inn as the root to replace the file. But is risky if make a mistake. Also be alert to trashing the com.adobe.Illustrator.plist alongwith theh setting fholder and cleaning the personal cache and font cache files it looks to me to be a corrupt cache file. I will post the location of those files later tonight. ... View more

>ai files are .ai files and as far as I know any .ai file can be opened by AI CS 6. I you wish to have someone open one of the files you save as .ai v7 post one and I will open it on my Mac. And let you know. ... View more

Use one of the brushes from say the Artictic Library and say one of the charcoal brushes like this ... View more

I can't  help you but there are several users contributing to this thred tht should know how to guide you to replacing the file that Lion is preventing you from replacing. It's a fairly simple procedure you can do a search if you want on how to do this. But as I say I can't directly help you. ... View more

Interesting! Also funny I might actually have totake a long break from the Forum, it would be really good luck for me if it happens. ... View more