New slices you create are automatically given a file format, whether you chose one or not. I often had documents that were defaulting to JPG rather than PNG and I couldn’t figure out why; until today.

Setting the default for new slices

When you create your new master PSD that will hold all your slices, the first thing you should do, before you create any slices, is select “File > Save for Web and Devices” and choose PNG-24. Save out an empty PNG. Now all your newly created slices will default to that. Yay!

Then I found swf2pngs. It looked like it did exactly what I needed. When I first downloaded it a few days ago it didn’t quite have the features I needed. But the developer has been extremely supportive, and even added some new features to accommodate my requests.

The big reasons I now love and fully recommend this app are:

• Export from the SWF, not from within Flash. Exporting via Flash at different sizes means doubling (and quadrupling for retina iPad) the pixel values in your head *every time* you export. It’s tedious and error-prone.
• It’s fast and accurate:
  - load up a single SWF
  - export at the default settings for normal-res
  - switch the scale popup to 2 and add the @2x suffix and export again. (I particularly like that I don’t have to rename all the files after)
  - switch the scale popup to 4 and export again.
• You can target a specific movie clip inside your SWF, though I haven’t ever needed to do that.
• If you have a bunch of animations that are the same size, stick them in the same FLA and rename each sequence right in the timeline (see their homepage for a much clearer explanation)

After using it for a few days, I can’t imagine doing any kind of frame animation for a game without it. And it’s only $10.

I’ve had the pleasure to work with @GrouchoDuke from Acceleroto on his upcoming infinite runner, Rush City. Above you’ll see the final icon for the game. See below for a time-lapse of the artwork for the icon being created by hand from a low-poly in-game model (similar to how the Sortie icon was created).

- Get a paid Dropbox account ($100/year for 50 GB) and put your current projects in there. Not only does this backup off-site, it also gives you access to your files from anywhere, if you need them. This might not be enough for many people to store all their work *and* photos, though.

- Use iCloud for contact & calendar sync across all Apple devices, as well as iOS device backup. You can also use iTunes Match to “store” your music in the cloud; your mileage with this service may vary, depending on your music collection.

- Use Apple’s Find My Phone service to register all your devices. This lets you locate your iPhone, iPad, iPod and even your computer, anywhere in the world. Not 100% guaranteed, but it definitely can help. It can also let you remote-wipe your iPhone (which is no loss because you’ve backed up to iCloud, and can restore it later).

- Add an “If found” message to your lock screen. This is more likely to (potentially) help if you lose your device, rather than have it stolen. But it can’t hurt; maybe your phone will be found by someone honest. Download my Photoshop template to make one easily:

- Most important: Require a password to get into your computer and your iPhone. On the iPhone, go to Settings > General > Passcode Lock and follow the instructions. At the very least, this will keep people out of any sites you might have been logged into, like Facebook or Google Docs, as well as all your email.

On the Mac, go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy:

- Create a guest account on your Mac with no password, so that whoever stole your computer can get online. This will help the “Find my Mac” service (above) locate the computer.

- Please note: These steps do not prevent someone with physical access to your computer (who knows what they’re doing) from booting with a system disk and wiping the computer completely, restoring OS X to its default settings. This would prevent “Find My Mac” from locating it. There is a way to prevent this, though. This is a bit more of an advanced step, but you can set a Firmware Password on your Mac, that prevents a user from changing the boot disk on startup (which is what is required to wipe the computer). Read more about this topic here.

This won’t necessarily protect you from theft, but you should also have everything you own backed up. Apple has made this very easy with Time Machine. Just get a nice big external hard drive and plug it in. Two quotes that hit this issue square on the head:
“It doesn’t exist if it doesn’t exist in two places.” and “The biggest mistake people make is to trust their hard drive.” Every hard drive WILL fail, eventually. If one Time Machine isn’t enough for you, I recommend getting something like a drobo, which makes sure all your data is stored on 2 drives, in case one fails.

“I like two things. I like dinosaurs and my computer. If I didn’t like my computer that would be dumb because all those games would be wasted!”

If you are ever using drop shadows, please set your default to “straight down” (90 degrees) and definitely no more than 50% opacity. Dark drop shadows are distracting. A good drop shadow is barely seen; it should pull your text off the background just a bit.

Here’s the before and after, with a time-lapse video of the process following that:

All the artwork was created in Photoshop; time-lapse video made (effortlessly) using @qrunchmonkey‘s excellent ScreenNinja (Mac App Store link).