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Tip 1
Press W to Hide Everything in InDesign
To instantly hide all the guides, nonprinting items, bleeds, etc. in an InDesign document, just press W (when your cursor isn’t in an active text frame). This toggles Preview mode on and off. Alternatively, you can click the bottom right button on the Tool palette to enable Preview mode. Either way is a fast way to see what will actually print.

Tip 2
About Those Desktop Icons
One way to speed your Mac is to keep as few icons on your Desktop as possible.
This is because Mac OS X treats each Desktop icon as a full-size Finder window, taking up a chunk of memory. One approach is to create a folder or two on your
desktop and move all your Desktop items into them. You can then open and use those folders as if they were mini-Desktops.
Rob Griffiths



Tip 3
Command-R for “Reveal”
Many file-related utilities (the Finder, font managers, iPhoto and iTunes, etc.) will “Reveal” the location of a file if you select it in the program and press Command-R. For example, select an Alias in the Finder and press Command-R to see the location of the alias’s original file. Select a photo in iPhoto and press Command-R to reveal the
original image file. Same for songs in iTunes and fonts in Suitcase. Many times this is handy for emailing or copying an original file.Tip 2: If the Revealed file is shown in Icon view, making it difficult to determine where exactly in the folder hierarchy it lives, try switching to Column view or simply hold down the Command key and click on the window’s name in its title bar. A hierarchical list will pop up that shows its location. (Tip 3: let go on any of the folders in the list to open that folder.)
 


Tip 4
Google Alerts
You can have Google send an email to you when it discovers a new mention on the Web of any term you want to track. Use Google Alerts to keep track of where your name, company, client, competitor, product, etc. is showing up. Go to ww.google.com/
alerts, enter your email address and search term, and then whenever a new item
shows up in Google’s top- 20 results for that search, you’ll get an email notifying
you with a link.



Tip 5
Select Text Columns in PDFs
Selecting one column of text in a multicolumn PDF can be challenging. In Acrobat
and in Apple’s Preview application, you can easily select a just one column
by holding the Option key while you use the text selection tool to drag a marquee around the area containing the text. In multicolumn layouts, this can be the easiest way to select text from one column without including text from adjacent columns.
 


Tip 6
Add Your Signature to a PDF
If someone emails a document to you in PDF format and wants you to sign it,
here’s one way to add your signature electronically: first, scan your signature,
and then in Acrobat: 1. Create a “Stamp” of your signature by choosing Tools> Commenting> Stamp Tool> Create Custom Stamp. Name the stamp and navigate to your signature file (vice-versa in Acrobat 7). In Acrobat 6, assign it a Category by typing one into the appropriate field (“Signatures” is a good one). 2. Apply the stamp by choosing Tools> Commenting> Stamp Tool> your signature. To add text (for the date, for example), choose Tools> Advanced Editing> TouchUp Text Tool. Option click where you want to type your text, choose a font, and then type your text.



Tip 7
Copy or Move PDF Pages
To copy a page from one PDF to another, open both in Acrobat, open the Pages
tab in both (or Thumbnails tab in Acrobat 5), and drag its thumbnail from one PDF to the other. To select more than one page, either Shift-click to select several contiguous pages, or Command-click to select discontiguous pages. You can also use this technique to rearrange pages within a PDF. To make the copying process easier, Tile the PDFs to see them all at the same time: choose Window> Tile> Vertical or Horizontal.

Tip 8
See Text As You Color It in InDesign
Changing the color of highlighted text in InDesign CS2 is frustrating, because the highlighting obscures the new color. If you’re coloring ALL the text in a frame, then you can avoid highlighting it by selecting the text frame with the selection tool. Then click the T in the Swatches palette to activate text coloring, then click on a swatch (or down-arrow through the color list). All the text in the frame will change color.



Tip 9
Smaller PostScript from QuarkXPress
When creating a Post- Script file from a page layout document, any pictures
you may have resized or cropped are NOT resized or cropped in the PostScript file. This creates unnecessarily large files — sometimes many tens of megabytes larger.
QuarkXPress 6.5 has a handy feature that crops and resizes pictures, saves them as new files, and then reimports them into your project. To process all the pictures in a Layout, choose File> Save Picture> All Pictures in Layout. (To process just one picture, select it and then choose File> Save Picture> Selected Picture.) At the bottom of the dialog box that appears, be sure to uncheck the Overwrite Original Picture option if you want QuarkXPress to create new a picture file with a new name. And check Link Layout to New Picture if you want the new pictures to replace the old ones in your Layout.


Tip 10
Remove Backgrounds from Logos
To remove the background on a logo, first choose Image> Adjustments> Levels and
move the left and right triangles toward the center, so they’re inside the biggest “humps” in the histogram and click OK. Then, type Option- Command-~ and press
the Delete key to remove the background. Finally, deselect everything (Command-D), and choose Layer> Matting> Remove White Matte. This removes any remaining halo.


 
Tip 11
Cropping: Delete vs. Hide
When cropping an image, glance at the top of your screen for the Crop tool options. If you choose “Hide” for your cropped area, the edges of your original image will remain intact but be hidden after the crop. This means that if you change your mind later, you can move the hidden part of your image back onto the canvas by using the Move tool.
CreativeTechs


Tips and Tricks Archive


February 2006

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