Tips and Tricks

Tip 1

New Copy/Paste Behavior in Mac OS X
The Finder in Mac OS X has a new behavior when you select an item and press Command-C (Edit> Copy). Before, this only copied the file name. Now, it doesn’t actually copy anything until you Paste. If you Copy an item, then press Command-V (Edit> Paste) with nothing selected in the Finder, a copy of the entire item will be pasted.

If you select another item in the Finder and press Command-V, the name of
the first item will replace the name of the second item.

If you press Command-C while one or more items are selected in the Finder, then press Command-V while in a text editor, the names of the items will be pasted into the text document. (This is a great way to make a list of items in a folder-just use Command-A to select everything in the folder, press Command-C to copy the selection, switch to your word processor, and press Command-V. If your original folder is displaying its contents in Column view, the list will paste in alphabetic order.) And finally, if you Copy an item, then select a second item and press Command- I (File> Get Info), you can click on the icon in the resulting Get Info dialog box, and press Command-V to replace its icon with the icon from the first item.
Rob Griffiths

Tip 2

Disc versus Disk
Although they sound the same, and are spelled nearly identically, “disc” and “disk”
mean different things. “Disc” always refers to optical media, such as a CD or DVD. “Disk” always refers to magnetic media, such as a hard drive, iPod and iPod mini, or even a Zip, Jaz or floppy disk.


Tip 3
 
Remove Permanent Ink
One little-known way to remove permanent ink from fabric or skin is to spray the ink spot with Aqua-Net hair spray. This works on ink from Sharpie markers as well as on ink from inkjet printers. (Other hair sprays may also work.)


Tip 4
 
Some FireWire Drives Aren’t Bootable
Not all FireWire hard drives can start up your Mac, and some actually state that they can’t. If you want to be sure that the FireWire drive you want to buy will start up your Mac, be sure to specifically ask about that feature before buying it. For example, any drive that uses the PL3507 FireWire-to-IDE bridge chip from Prolific will not start up your Mac. These include drives from Edge Tech or Kanguru and others.


Tip 5

Acrobat Converts Websites to PDF
Acrobat 6 and 7 do a remarkable job of converting a website into a PDF, complete with hyperlinks, Flash and GIF animations, and QuickTime movies. Web forms are converted to PDF forms that actually work, including dropdown menus. To convert a
website (any website) to PDF, just launch Acrobat, choose File> Create PDF> From Web Page..., then type in the URL of the Web page or website you want. Indicate how many levels of hyperlinks it should follow, and then Acrobat goes to the Internet and downloads everything it needs to make the PDF.
Anne-Marie Concepcion
www.senecadesign.com


Tip 6

Shortcut for Troubleshooting Printing Problems in Acrobat
If, when printing in Acrobat, you have trouble printing a document, click the Printing Tips button near the bottom of the Print dialog. This displays Adobe’s online Support
Knowledgebase document about troubleshooting printing in Acrobat. Since this document is stored on Adobe’s Web server, you’ll always see the most up-todate
information.


Tip 7

Place Multiple PDF Pages into InDesign
To import more than one page of a multi-page PDF into InDesign CS2, do this: in the Place dialog box, choose the PDF you want to import, enable the Show Import Options checkbox, then choose which pages you want to import. After you click the
OK button, your cursor will change to the Place PDF cursor. Click to place the first page of the PDF, then click again to place the next, then the next, etc. Or Option-click to place all the selected pages onto the current InDesign page. InDesign Magazine


Tip 8

Print Useful Thumbnails in XPress
When you select “Thumbnails” in the print dialog box in QuarkXPress, it prints very tiny pages. For larger,more useful pages, set the page enlargement to 200% (File> Page Setup) and then print “Thumbnails.” Letter-size pages then will print at a
useful 24% size.


Tip 9

Quickly Change Fonts in QuarkXPress
To quickly select one of your installed fonts in QuarkXPress, make sure a text box is selected and the Content tool is active, then press Command-Option- Shift-M. This will take you to the font field of the Measurements palette. Then type the first few letters of the font you want and press Enter. If you give this a try, it will probably
become one of your formatting habits.
Bug Fixes

Fix 1
 InDesign Prints Last Page Only
If only the last page of an InDesign document prints when printing to an Epson or HP inkjet printer, you need to change the Paper Size in InDesign’s Print dialog to Defined By Driver. You’ll find this option when you click the Setup item in the list on the left
in the Print dialog.

Fix 2
 Illustrator CS2 & Servers
If you save a document from Illustrator CS2 to a non-Windows server (for example, a Mac OS or UNIX server) the file name is abbreviated to an eight character file name with extension (filename.ext). To avoid this problem, save the file to the local hard
disk, and then transfer the file to the server.

Fix 3
 Version Cue & Tiger Startup
Some Mac OS X 10.4.2 users are having trouble at startup and shutdown if Version Cue from the Adobe Creative Suite 2 package is installed. If you are having problems, use the Version Cue uninstaller application inside Applications> Adobe Version Cue
to remove Version Cue. If your startup problems are so severe that you can’t get
to your desktop, try starting up in Safe Mode before running the uninstaller. To
start up into Safe Mode, restart your Mac while holding down the shift key.
MacFixIt.com
Fix 4
 Illustrator CS2 Graphs & Pasted Text
The graph tool in Illustrator CS2 doesn’t correctly recognize pasted text. To bring tab-delimited text into an Illustrator graph, choose Object> Graph> Data and import the data from a text file.

Fix 5
 Problems Opening InDesign CS2 Files in CS
Problems Opening InDesign CS2 Files in CS To open an InDesign CS2 document in InDesign CS, you must first export the CS2 document in INX format. Then, CS can read the INX file and rebuild the document from the data contained in it.

However, if the CS2 document was created using certain third-party plugins, the INX file may cause CS to crash when it attempts to read it. If this happens, open the CS2
document in CS2, create a new CS2 document with the same dimensions, margin guides, columns and number of pages, then copy and paste all the items from the older document to the new one. Save this file, export to INX and then open the
new INX file in CS. Note: all versions of InDesign also have this crashing problem when opening QuarkXPress 4 documents that were created using certain third-party XTensions. One solution that is sometimes successful is to recreate the document in
QuarkXPress WITHOUT the XTensions present, using the copy/paste technique
described above.

Fix 6
 Virex & Tiger
McAfee has updated Virex to be compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, four months after Virex stopped working.We don’t recommend Virex for graphic design professionals, as it causes unexpected, crippling slowdowns and crashes.
www.mcafee.com

Fix 7
 Spotlight & Photoshop
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger uses the Command-Spacebar keyboard shortcut to invoke Spotlight. Photoshop uses the same shortcut to change the mouse pointer to the Zoom In tool. To fix the conflict, you can either learn to press the spacebar BEFORE holding down the Command key in Photoshop, or change/disable the Mac OS X keyboard shortcut for the Spotlight menu in Apple Menu> System Preferences> Spotlight.


Fix 8
 CS2 Requires Missing File
Mac OS X is apparently too stable for Adobe CS2, so be sure to quit and relaunch
your CS2 applications every couple of days. Otherwise, when you save or export PDF files from Photoshop CS2, Acrobat 7, Illustrator CS2, or InDesign CS2, you either get an error message when you save the file, or an error message when you open the resulting PDF or Illustrator file. The problem is that these applications must reference
a TemporaryItems file located in /tmp/501. Mac OS X regularly deletes files in the /tmp
folder that have not been used or modified within a certain period (approximately
two or three days). When you save or export a file as PDF, the Adobe application
attempts to reference the no-longer-existing TemporaryItems file, which results in errors or faulty PDF creation. If this happens, simply save the file, then quit and
relaunch the application before attempting to export to PDF.|

 
Fix 9
 Illustrator & Tiger
If you try to save an Illustrator CS or CS2 document in PDF format, but the file is saved as an Illustrator (.ai) file instead, try using Adobe’s Save dialog box instead
of Apple’s. To do this, in the Save dialog box, click the Use Adobe Dialog button.
This problem occurs in Mac OS X 10.4 when you’ve told the Finder to open PDF files in Acrobat 7 instead of in Preview.

 
Fix 10
 Spotlight Indexing Can Crash Applications
If you are using Mac OS X 10.4, some applications add and remove temporary files from your hard drive fast enough that Spotlight can’t index them correctly and your applications may crash. To fix the problem, add the folder that holds the temporary files to Spotlight’s Privacy list. For example, PitStop Professional and Instant PDF, from Enfocus, tend to crash if they are processing several documents in succession.
Adding the Enfocus preferences folder (Library> Preferences> Enfocus Prefs Folder) to Spotlight’s Privacy list prevents the temporary files from being indexed, improving the stability of both PitStop and Instant PDF. Adobe products can also become unstable because when Illustrator (for example) saves or exports a large file, a temporary file is created that Spotlight may try to index before it can be deleted by the Adobe product.
Tips and Tricks brought to you courtesy of Design Tools Monthly:
www.design-tools.com






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