Reset
Misbehaving Photoshop Tools
Sometimes in Photoshop,
a tool behaves strangely
and you can’t figure out
why. The easy way out is to
reset its options to their
defaults by Control clicking
the tool’s icon in the far left of the Options
Bar. A contextual menu
will appear, from which
you choose Reset Tool.
Peter Bauer
Mac Design Sept/Oct 04, pg.90
Tip
2
Quickly
Customize Toolbars
In Mac OS X 10.3, you can
quickly customize the Toolbar
in any Finder window
by choosing View> Customize
Toolbar. Here’s another
way: Control-click the
Action pop-up menu (at the
top of the Finder window
— it looks like a gear). This
will display a contextual
menu with Customize Toolbar
as an option.
Tip 3
Add
Keyboard Shortcuts to
Menu Items
In Mac OS X, you can create
your own keyboard shortcuts
for menu items in the
Finder, in all applications,
or in just one application.
Open System Preferences,
choose the Keyboard &
Mouse pane, and click on
the Keyboard Shortcuts tab.
Double-click any shortcut
to change its keystroke.
To assign a shortcut to
menus in the Finder or any
application, scroll to the
bottom of the list of shortcuts
and highlight “Application
Keyboard Shortcuts.”
When you click the
plus button, you can
choose an application from
the list that appears. If your
favorite application isn’t in
the list, scroll to the bottom
of the list and choose
the “Other” option. There,
you can choose any application
on your Mac. To
delete all your custom keyboard
shortcuts, click the
Restore Defaults button.
This technique doesn’t work with applications that
have their own methods
for customizing keyboard
shortcuts, such as InDesign
and Photoshop (Edit>
Keyboard Shortcuts).
Kirk McElhearn
Macworld 09/04, pg.69
Tip 4
Switch
Columns for Sorting
When viewing a Mac OS X
Finder window in List
view, you can change the
column that sorts the
items by either clicking on
the heading for that column,
or pressing Control-
Tab to cycle through the
columns. Shift-Control-
Tab cycles from right-to left
instead of left-to-right.
Macworld 08/04, pg.91
Tip 5
Explore
Inactive Fonts in Suitcase
Suitcase X1 has a useful but-
hidden feature that
lets you see how your text
looks in any font you have
– whether it’s active or not.
In the Suitcase window,
click-and-hold on the
small pop-up menu that’s
at the top of the righthand
column of stuff. It probably
says “Waterfall”, but if
you drag down to “Quick-
Type”, any words you type
into the text box below it
will display formatted in
any font(s) you’ve selected
in the column of fonts on
the left side of the window.
You can choose any point
size, and as many fonts as
you like. To select more
than one font in the list of
fonts, Command-click to
select discontiguous fonts,
or Shift-click to select
every font between your
most recent click and your
Shift-click.When you find
a font you like, you can activate
it by clicking on the
small circle to the left of
the font name above its
sample. This is a great way
to explore fonts for logos. www.creativetechs.com/tips
Tip 6
Rebuild
Your Email Database
Most email software supports
“rebuilding” its mail
database by holding down
the Option key while
launching the email application.
“Rebuilding” ANY
database is helpful because
it forces the application to
look at all the data, discard
any bits and pieces of
deleted records, and rearrange
the data in a way
that can be searched more
efficiently. (The result is
similar to performing a
“Save As” on PageMaker
and InDesign documents.)
Tip 7 Compare
Any Two Documents
You can see what’s different
between any two documents
by using Acrobat 6.
Just export both documents
to PDF format, then in Acrobat,
choose Document>
Compare. Select the PDFs
you want to compare, and
choose a method: Page-by-
Page Visual Differences will
highlight differences in image,
color, and text; Textual
Differences highlights text
or text formatting that is
different. You can view the
differences in two ways: as a
side-by-side comparison of
the two documents, with
differences highlighted; or
displaying just one of the
PDFs with markups to show
how it’s different from the
other PDF. The markups
don’t tell you much about
what makes the items different,
but at least it points
them out to you.
Anne-Marie Concepcion www.senecadesign.com Tip 8
Find
Your Printer’s
Best Resolution
Charles Maurer created a
set of useful documents for
determining the optimal
resolution to use on photos
printed from your printer.
Print them from Photoshop
(not Preview). If one
prints more smoothly than
the others, then use that
number of dots per inch
when you scale your photos
to print them on your
printer. Download it at
www.tidbits.com/resources/748/PrinterSharpnessTest.zip
TidBITS#748/27-Sep-04
Tip 9
PMS Colors for Flags
Printed versions of the
flags of most nations use
only these PMS colors:
Red 032 Green 354
Yellow 109 Orange 021
Gold 116 Process Blue
Blue 286 UN Blue 279
Intermediate Blue 300
PC Graphics Report 09/04, pg.1
Tip 10
Convert to Outlines
in Illustrator?
When providing an Illustrator
document to an output
provider, some ask you
to convert text to outlines
first. If they are printing
directly from Illustrator,
this eliminates the possibility
of missing fonts. (Of
course, they could just
load your fonts, but that’s
another issue.) However, if
you save the Illustrator
document in PDF or EPS
format, all fonts are embedded
and they can print
it by placing it into InDesign
or QuarkXPress —
without requiring the text
to be converted to outlines
in Illustrator.
David Creamer
Mac Design Sept/Oct 04, pg.93
Tip 11
Make Rounded
Rectangle Frames
in InDesign
InDesign CS doesn’t offer a
rounded rectangle frame
tool but you can still create
rounded corners. Create a
rectangular frame, and then
from the Object menu
choose Corner Effects.
Choose Rounded in the Effects
pop-up and enter the
amount of roundness in the
size box. Click the preview
box to watch your changes
as you adjust the Size up
and down until you achieve
your desired results.
Terry White
Mac Design Conference
Fix
1 Photoshop CS
& Text Redraw
If the Info palette is active
and the screen view is less
than 100%, a screen redraw
issue in Photoshop CS
causes text to display incorrectly
or characters to disappear
or duplicate when
you edit or drag a text layer.
As a workaround, either increase
the view to 100%,
close the Info palette or position
the Info palette behind
another palette.
Fix
2 Missing
PPDs in InDesign
If your printer’s PostScript
Printer Description (PPD)
file doesn’t appear in In-
Design’s Print dialog box,
check to see that the PPD
is version 4.3 or higher. To
see the version of your
PPD, drag it onto TextEdit
and locate the line that begins
with *FormatVersion.
The PPD version appears
in quotation marks at the
end of the line. If less than
4.3, contact your printer
manufacturer for the latest
version of the PPD file.
Fix 3 If Suitcase Stops
Auto-Activating
in QuarkXPress
If Suitcase stops auto activating
fonts for
QuarkXPress documents,
make sure that auto activation
is turned on in
QuarkXPress, under Utilities>
Suitcase XT Prefs.
Auto-activation gets
turned off if you launch
QuarkXPress when Suitcase
isn’t already running,
and it stays turned off until
you turn it back on in
QuarkXPress.
Fix 4 G5 Firmware Updates
If you have a single
processor G5 and have installed
Apple’s Firmware
Update 5.1.5f1 to improve
system reliability and sleep
functions, you may have
encountered other problems:
USB stops responding,
iTunes stops playback,
and kernel panics. To fix
these problems, install
Firmware Updater 5.1.5f2.
Here’s how:
Run Software Update to
download the firmware
updater.
Shut down your Mac and
remove all non-Apple RAM.
Restart your Mac and
launch “Power Mac G5
Firmware Updater Version
Tips and Tricks brought to you courtesy of Design Tools Monthly:
www.design-tools.com
