This Week's Sneak Peek

This guy gave me a host of problems this week.

Leo the Lib and MAGA Max make a return this week, and the first problem I ran into was that I haven't drawn Leo from this angle before. Trying to make him recognizable, I cluttered my drawing board with an awful lot of eraser dust. Eventually, I had a face that was acceptable.

But I wasn't getting having him slumped in his chair right. I'm still not satisfied with this.

Then, when I had the cartoon scanned and transferred to my computer screen, I realized that he was way, way out of perspective. I clipped the image above and moved it to a better location in the cartoon, then erased the portions that would be covered by the people in the foreground.

So far, so good.

But the setting required lots of people in the background, too, and now there was a big gap in the space where Leo used to be. The rest of a table needed to be filled in, as well.

Photoshop does a lot of things really well, from filling in colors, shading, and centering text. But it's not designed for drawing lines, especially straight ones. It's like performing surgery with a bowling ball and oven mitts.

So I'm not happy with what went out for syndication today, but deadlines are deadlines. I'm going to try fixing what I can the old-fashioned way this week, though.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Another pesky computer issue popped up (literally) last week, and since I don't seem to get Adobe Incorporated's attention by complaining directly to them, I'm gonna go ahead and post it here.

A pop-up warning started appearing on my screen claiming to have detected unauthorized Adobe software on my computer.

In every respect, the warning behaves like every scam warning that has ever sought to infect one's computer.

It doesn't address me by name or account. It refuses to get out of the way, remaining in front of whatever else I am doing. It cannot be closed; only the "Learn more" link works, opening up a new browser. And most suspect of all, the warning gives no indication which Adobe app is allegedly suspect.

Like you, I have any number of Adobe programs on my computer. There's Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Adobe Application Manager on the desktop, plus a bunch of other Adobe programs lurking in the shadows.

And of course, I also have Adobe Photoshop CS5, for which I paid big money to Adobe twelve years ago so that I could save my cartoons in CMYK format (a utility not available in plain old everyday Photoshop).

My strong suspicion is that it's that expensive Photoshop CS5 program that Adobe (if that is your real name!) wants me to uninstall so that I can start renting a new download of it instead.

Well, I'm not the only person who has had this nuisance show up. One of those Adobe programs lurking in the shadows is "Adobe Genuine Software Integrity Service," and there are any number of on-line bulletin boards about how to turn it off. It does turn itself back on if you don't uninstall it; but from what I've read, Adobe will sneak it back onto your computer as soon as they discover that it's missing.

Ooops, I probably have said too much....

This Week's Sneak Peek

We've hit a snag here at Bergetoons.

Ever since the latest Microsoft Windows update, I've been getting this error message in ULead Photo Express, the program I use to scan my cartoons. The scanner dutifully scans the cartoon, but then ULead tells me it's "unable to insert the file into the album." This is one of those times when I wish I were offered some option other than "OK," because when I hit "OK," the scan closes without allowing me to save the image.

ULead Photo Express is a relic of my old computer, and has never worked entirely properly on the new one. Its standard modus operandi is to save scans into various "albums," but for some reason on the new computer, ULead is the only app able to see anything in the "ULead Photo Express 3.0/Photo/" folder where those albums are. While there is a work-around for that, it's simpler to save my black-and-white .tif into another folder where my Photoshop program can find it.

(I use both graphic programs because there are some things ULead does better, and other things Photoshop does better; and ULead doesn't have CMYK capability.)

I used to be able to scan from Adobe Bridge CS5, but some Windows update over a year ago rendered it incapable of locating peripherals. Since then, Adobe Bridge doesn't seem to be of much use.

Happily, I have found a work-around for scanning my cartoons. It seems that if I start by having ULead open an already existing file, it then doesn't insist upon having a destination album selected for a new scan.

So there will be a new cartoon here in a couple of days. Stay tooned.