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Tip 1
Bridge Shows InDesign Fonts
A quick way to see all the fonts used in an InDesign CS2 document (including
those hidden in unused style sheets) is to use Adobe Bridge. In Bridge, locate your InDesign CS2 document, then scroll to the bottom of the Metadata panel at the left. All the typefaces used in document text and in its styles are listed.
Anne-Marie Concepción
www.designgeek.com
 

Tip 2
File Naming Tips for Exchanging Files with Windows Users
If your Windows-using associates can’t open your files, pay attention to file
naming rules such as: Add the correct Windows file name extension, such as .doc for Word, .xls for Excel, .psd for Photoshop, .qxp or .qxd for QuarkXPress, .indd for InDesign, etc. Don’t use anything but letters, numbers, and dashes in your file names. It’s pathetic, but true. And don’t use more than one dot (period) in the name.
 


Tip 3
Copy Tables from PDFs
Using Acrobat to copy a table from a PDF can be difficult and frustrating. If you
try to drag the Select tool over the text in the table, then copy it (Command-C),
the tabs convert to spaces. The trick is to hover the mouse pointer over the table for a moment and wait for it to become the Table icon. Then, you can click to select the entire table, or click-and-drag to select rows and columns. Then Control-click and
choose Copy Selected Table from the contextual menu that appears. You can then
paste it into another application with tabs intact. To maintain text formatting,
you can try simply dragging the table from Acrobat onto your other application’s document page. If that application supports RTF (Rich Text Format), it may work.



Tip 4
Test Your PDF Output Capabilities
The Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG) offers a free Ghent Output Suite, designed
to help professionals determine whether PDF files are behaving as expected
in graphic arts workflows. The first series in the Ghent Output Suite consists of 11 PDF test patches along with a manual and individual readme files for each patch, covering the most common issues relating to PDF for print workflows. To download
the free Ghent Output
Suite visit: www.gwg.org.
 

Tip 5
Use InDesign Text in Illustrator
To copy text from InDesign to Illustrator without losing its formatting, export
the text from InDesign as RTF (choose File> Export and select Rich Text Format).
Then choose File> Place in Illustrator. This will import InDesign’s text formatting,
including Paragraph and Character styles.



Tip 6
Mastering Guides in InDesign
InDesign CS2 gives you tremendous control over guides. If you hold down the Shift key while dragging a guide from a ruler, the guide will jump to the visible ruler increments. To move the guide to a precise location, just select it and type the position into the Control palette. To create a guide that continues across a spread, either hold down the Command key while you drag it from the ruler or release it on
the pasteboard area. To reposition a spread guide, type a new location into
the Control palette, or hold down the Command key when dragging it. Because new guides are placed onto the currently active layer, you can create one or more “guides” layers and then activate one before you create a guide. That way, you can turn related guides on and off by using the Layers palette.


Tip 7
Copy Picture Paths in QuarkXPress 7
In QuarkXPress 7, for the first time, you can copy file names and paths from the
Usage dialog box. To do this, open the Usage dialog box (Utilities> Usage) and
select a picture from the Pictures area. then click the More Information disclosure
triangle under the list of files. This will display everything QuarkXPress knows about the picture. You can then select any information in the More Information area and press Command-C to copy it.



Tip 8
Easier Footnote Formatting in QuarkXPress
If you import a Microsoft Word document that contains footnotes into QuarkXPress, you can save some time and trouble by doing this: Go ahead and import the text into a QuarkXPress text box or chain of boxes. Scroll to the end of the story and then copy the whole block of footnotes as one long single story (footnotes are placed at
the end of the story when imported from Word). Then create a text box where you want the first footnote to be and paste the footnotes into it. After that, link each new text box for footnotes to the previous one, and the text of the footnotes will flow into it. This way also all the footnotes can be selected at once to make global changes to formatting, since they’re all one long story in linked textboxes. (Applying style sheets is also a good idea.)



Tip 9
Photoshop Navigator Tips
Photoshop’s Navigator palette does more than just allow you to scroll around your image. If you hold down the Command key and drag an area of the thumbnail, Photoshop will zoom into that area of your image. If you hold down the Command key and click on the thumbnail, Photoshop will zoom to the full magnification of
1,600 percent at the location you clicked in the thumbnail.



Tip 10
Three Cropping Tips
When using the Crop tool, you can press / to toggle the visibility of the shading
that appears outside the cropping rectangle or toggle the Shield checkbox in the options bar. To stop the crop tool from snapping to the edge of your image, toggle it off under View> Snap To> Document Bounds. You can tell Photoshop to hide but not forget the area you crop (so you can retrieve it later) by choosing either Delete or
Hide in the Control palette (next to Cropped Area:).



Tip 11
Favorite Photoshop Automations
In Photoshop’s File> Automate menu, you’ll find several features for automating
processes. Three favorites are:
• Crop and Straighten Photos: If you place several photos on a scanner bed and scan them all at once, this feature will then identify the individual photos, crop and straighten them, and remove each one to its own image file. Just be sure to leave at least 1/8 inch between the photos when scanning.
• Fit Image: If you want a bunch of photos to not exceed a particular dimension
in EITHER width or height, give Fit Image that dimension none of the photos will exceed that maximum length in either dimension.
• Photomerge: If you’ve taken several photos you want to merge into a panorama, and each one overlaps, Photomerge will attempt to stitch them together for you. It can be uncannily accurate.
Matt Kloskowski
Layers, July/Aug 06, pg.41



Tips and Tricks Archive

August 2006

June 2006

February 2006

January 2006

November 2005

October 2005

August 2005

July 2005