Photoshop CS 5 3D rotate opengl error

Had an error with a machine a student was using. The error happened when trying to 3D rotate the document. It read:

Could not complete your request because it only works with OpenGL enabled document windows.

Whilst being slightly helpful as to hinting at the problem, I do wish it would try and solve the problem itself. After doing a quick search on the internet I found a nice little Adobe Forum quickly explaining that you need to have an OpenGL compliant graphics card. This didn't help either because just about everyone does!!

So I found another forum saying that OpenGL has to be enabled in Photoshop, and as a default on Windows XP it is switched off (bad move).

I eventually worked out where the tick box was (which wasn't explained in the forum!!!)

1. Go to Edit > Preferences > Performance...
2. Click on Enable OpenGL Drawing.

Of course now I find out that another machine doesn't have a graphics card (it's onboard). Doh!

Downloading Photos using Bridge

Downloading Photos using Bridge

OS X - In ‘Finder’ go to Applications > Adobe Bridge CS5 > Adobe Bridge CS5

Windows – Go to Start > Adobe Creative Suite Premium CS5 > Adobe Bridge CS5

Creating Stripes in Illustrator using Patterns and Live Paint

I recently wanted to fill in a circle is some stripes in Illustrator, but alas it was not self explanatory. After looking it up on the old reliable internet I found quite a few posts describing a technique of copying and pasting lines throughout. Not really what I wanted to hear. The process I wanted was something along the lines of:

Mythical solution (does not really work this way, although I would like it to)

1. Get the fill tool
2. Select "Stripes"
3. Fill object

I decided to investigate myself. I finally came up with a pretty close technique.

Making two lines into a "Pattern"

1. Draw a line and make it a stroked colour of some thickness
2. Copy and Paste it next to the first, making it stroke a different colour
3. Select both lines and go to - Edit > Define Pattern
4. Click on "Live Paint" from the left toolbar
5. From the Fill Colour box at the top you can select the striped pattern you just made
6. Click on the object you want to fill with stripes

Star filled with striped pattern

To change the colour of the stripes:

Changing the colour of pattern using
"Recolor Artwork"

1. Select the fill (double click on it).
2. Select "Recolor Artwork"
3. Go get the option to change each of the colours in the fill:

Just found this post which describes a similar process using boxes, and dragging the boxes into the "Swatches" to create a pattern. Also how to rotate it, simply right click > Transform > Rotate  and tick "Pattern". Nice.

Rotating a pattern