Creative Mentor

Adobe have launched on their website the next fantastic installment of the Creative Suite… CS4 is born!

Anyone wanting to see the latest and greatest Adobe has to offer check out their website http://www.adobe.com/ . You can see all the CS4 products, their new features and sale price. Adobe is also now accepting preorders for CS4 products.

If you would like to take a close look at InDesign CS4’s new features list check out the feature list page on  Adobe’s website HERE.

Anyone wanting to get a kick start on their CS4 training, video tutorials on InDesign CS4 and other Creative Suite 4 products have already been posted around the web check out these links:

- InDesign User Group

- Adobe TV

- The InDesigner

- Layers Magazine

Over the coming days we will take a close look at InDesign CS4, I will review my favourite new features and post my own video tutorials. Keep an eye out for them.

Posted by Neil Oliver in CS4 New Features, News | Make a Comment

Take your swatches back into InDesign

In the last post we looked at how to get your swatches from InDesign into Illustrator or Photoshop, now let’s look at importing swatches from Illustrator or Photoshop back into InDesign. As in the last post, the end result we are looking for is to exchange swatches throughout the creative suite as a .ASE file. If you haven’t yet looked at the last post, you might want to do so before reading on.

The first thing you need to do is export your swatches from either Illustrator or Photoshop. Let’s take a look at Illustrator first. In Illustrator go to your swatches panel and select the swatches you would like to export. To select all swatches in the list, select the first swatch hold “Shift” on the keyboard and then click on the last swatch in the list. To select swatches randomly hold “Command” (Mac) or “Control” (PC) and select each swatch separately. Once selected go to the swatches panel flyout menu, located at the top right hand side of the panel and choose “Save Swatch Library as ASE…”. A new dialogue will appear asking you where you want to save the .ASE, navigate to your preferred location, give the .ASE file an appropriate name and then choose “Save”. When you choose “Save” you will get a warning dialogue telling you that you can’t save Gradients, Patterns or Tints in your .ASE file as they are not exchangeable items, choose “OK” to finish.

Before we import these swatches in InDesign let’s go through the same process in Photoshop. From the swatches panel in Photoshop you can’t select the flyout menu and choose “Save Swatches for Exchange…”. A new dialogue will appear asking you where you want to save the .ASE file, navigate to your preferred location, give the .ASE file an appropriate name and then choose “Save”. When saved the .ASE thumbnails differ slightly between InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop however they are the same format (see image below).

Ok all the hard work is done - let’s load these swatches in InDesign. Because the swatches we exported from Illustrator and Photoshop are now in the .ASE format we can load them exactly the same way in InDesign. In InDesign go to your swatches panel flyout menu, located at the top right hand side of the panel. From the menu that appears choose “Load Swatches…”. Navigate to your .ASE file accordingly in the dialogue that appears and choose “Open”. Your swatches will now appear at the bottom of the swatches panel list.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL

Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.

Posted by Neil Oliver in Swatches | 1 Comment

There’s no need to recreate your InDesign swatches in Photoshop or Illustrator, just take them with you.

Commonly people tend to recreate their InDesign swatches when working in Illustrator and Photoshop. Did you know you can take them with you? This post will bring your attention to the best way to take your swatches from InDesign to Illustrator or Photoshop.

The way this is done is through the Adobe Swatch Exchange - this is Adobe’s way of letting you share your swatches between the creative suite applications. InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop all allow you to export your selected swatches to the Adobe Swatch Exchange format, commonly know as a .ASE file. Image below shows you what an InDesign .ASE file look like.

There is no restriction to the colour type of the swatch when exporting, ie CMYK, RGB or Spot/PMS. However there are a couple of swatch types which aren’t compatible when exporting your swatches; these are Gradients, Tints and Mixed Inks. Hopefully soon Adobe will allow these swatch types to export as well. See image below for the warning dialogue that appears if you happen to select an incompatible Gradient, Tint or Mixed Ink swatch.

Besides the advantage of not having to recreate your swatches throughout the creative suite applications, you can also save the .ASE file to the job folder as a permanent untouched reference or even email the .ASE file to other people working on the same job.

So let’s take a look a how we save our swatches. In InDesign go to your swatches panel and select the swatches you would like to export. To select all swatches in the list, select the first swatch, hold “Shift” on the keyboard and then click on the last swatch in the list. To select swatches randomly hold “Command” (Mac) or “Control” (PC) and select each swatch separately. Once all your swatches are selected go to the Swatch panel flyout menu, located at the top right hand side of the panel. From the menu that appears choose “Save Swatches…”. This will open a new dialogue that asks you where you want to save your .ASE file that holds all your swatches. Choose the location you want to save your .ASE file and name it accordingly, once complete choose “Save” and you’re done.

Now let’s take a look at how we load our saved swatches in Illustrator and Photoshop. The idea is simple really, both Illustrator and Photoshop each have their own swatches panel. In both Illustrator and Photoshop the swatches panels are found the same way - go to the “Window” menu and choose “Swatches”, the swatches panel will now appear on your screen. Here is where Illustrator and Photoshop differ when importing swatches from InDesign now in the .ASE format. In Illustrator go to the swatches panel flyout menu, located at the top right hand side of the panel, and choose “Open Swatch Library”. Now another menu appears in which you need to choose “Other Library…”. A new dialogue will appear asking you where your .ASE file is located, navigate to your saved .ASE file and the choose “Open”. Now a new swatches panel appears with all the the swatches you previously saved from InDesign. One last thing whilst we are in Illustrator, if you want to view your swatches in a list like view as in InDesign go up to the flyout menu and choose “Small List View”.

Ok, now lets import these same swatches into Photoshop. To bring up the swatches panel go to the “Window” menu and choose “Swatches”. Now go to the flyout menu and choose “Load Swatches…”. Navigate to the relevant .ASE file and choose “Load”. The loaded swatches will now appear at the end of the swatches list. if you want to view your swatches in a list like view go up to the flyout menu and choose “Small List”.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL

Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.

Posted by Neil Oliver in Swatches | Make a Comment

Attention Sydneysiders!

The next InDesign User Group meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday, Oct 1, 2008. Anyone who hasn’t been to one of these meetings is missing out. It is a perfect opportunity to learn new things about InDesign from leading industry experts, as well as bounce all your questions off them. Check out all the details relating to the Sydney chapter at indesignusergroup.com . You do need to sign up and register (for free) via the InDesign User Group website to record yourself in attendance for the event. Seating is limited so register now!

In this upcoming meeting, the folks from Adobe are going to unwrap Adobe Creative Suite 4. Mike McHugh, Creative Systems Engineer for Adobe Systems will be presenting an exciting, fast-paced session on Adobe’s latest line-up of their flagship Creative Suite products. Come and be one of the first to see CS4 in action.

Posted by Neil Oliver in News | Make a Comment

Adobe has announced that they will be launching CS4 on Wednesday 24th of September. If you would like to be a part of the launch via a special web broadcast on the 23rd of September make sure you register with Adobe, http://adobe.istreamplanet.com/.

Check back here on the 24th for all the latest info regarding InDesign CS4.

Posted by Neil Oliver in News | Make a Comment

If your manager asks, I didn’t show you this…

When deadline is near and your heart is pounding under the stress, feeling as if it’s going to burst, the lapse of every second adding another tonne of weight upon your already crumbling shoulders, your eyes burning more with every new detail, your mind about to explode in concentration, InDesign is there beckoning to take away all your troubles…

Go to the “InDesign” menu and choose “About InDesign”. Type the word “butterfly”. Now take out all that frustration on those innocent little butterflies. Once click pins ‘em to the screen… Option click kills ‘em…

Everyone deserves a break once in a while, right?

CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL

Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.

Posted by Neil Oliver in Interface | 2 Comments

When managing your assets in Bridge you get a high quality preview, InDesign files included…

In this post I want to bring your attention to an often dismissed preference in InDesign that makes viewing InDesign files in Bridge seem a little more practical. I often hear people complaining that they really like sorting images in Bridge, however when it comes to InDesign files there is an element of frustration. It would seem that when you preview an InDesign file in Bridge you get nothing more than a medium 256 x 256 pixel preview of your file. Well there is a preference available to make this preview as large as 1024 pixels, let’s take a look.

You need be be aware that when you preview your InDesign file in Bridge you need to be looking at your file preferably in the “Horizontal Filmstrip” or “Vertical Filmstrip” workspaces to get the largest possible view of your InDesign file. The workspaces are found in Bridge by going to Window > Workspace.

To change the preview size of your InDesign files, make sure you have no files open and choose InDesign > Preferences > File Handling (Mac OS) or Edit > Preferences > File Handling (Windows). Once you’ve located the “File Handling” tab find the “Saving InDesign Files” section and change the “Preview Size” to “Extra Large 1024 x 1024″. All files saved from now on will have a preview of 1024 pixels when previewed in Bridge. It’s important to note you only get a preview of the first spread in the document, unfortunately there’s no option to toggle through the other pages within the document.

If you would prefer to leave this preference off by default you can save a preview of your file at your discretion. Choose File > Save As. In the lower left of the Save As dialogue that appears you will see the option “Always Save Preview Images with Documents”, choose this and a preview will be saved within this file for viewing in Bridge. The size of the preview is determined by the current preference setting.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL

Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.

Posted by Neil Oliver in Preferences | Make a Comment

Resetting your preferences can eliminate the little demons…

It’s surprising when talking with people, to find that many don’t know they can reset their InDesign preferences back to the default out of the box configuration. One person told me they had printed out screen grabs of each individual tab in the preferences dialogue, and when they wanted to revert back to InDesign’s defaults they used their printout as a reference.

There is a way to revert to the default out of the box preferences in InDesign, but before I show you how to do that, let’s talk about why you might want to do this. One reason would be to eliminate any of the weird and quirky things that sometimes happen in the InDesign environment. For instance, I have had a document that for some reason or another the links panel wouldn’t display the links that were obviously on the page. My options at that stage were either exporting the doc as an InDesign Interchange (.inx) file or resetting the preferences back to their default out of the box configuration. I decided to try resetting the preferences first because I noticed some weirdness on another doc I was working on the day before. I went with the hunch and bingo!

Resetting these preferences can sometimes go a long way to eliminating all sorts of technical quirks, so the next time InDesign goes AWOL give it a go, you may be surprised. Oh, make sure you know what your old preferences were so you can go through and set them up just the way you like. Enough of all that, lets look at how to reset them.

Well first of all make sure you have quit InDesign. Mac Users, while pressing Shift+Option+Command+Control, start InDesign. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files, this dialogue will appear twice. Once you choose Yes to both dialogues you can release your fingers from the keyboard. Windows users, start InDesign, and then press Shift+Ctrl+Alt. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files, this dialogue will appear twice, once you choose Yes to both dialogues you can release your fingers from the keyboard.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL

Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.

Posted by Neil Oliver in Troubleshoot | Make a Comment

A friend and long time InDesign user came to me last week and said “I find it so frustrating that I can’t toggle through my open InDesign documents without having to go up to the window menu. I wish Adobe could give me a shortcut to do this”. It got me thinking. How many other everyday InDesign users possibly don’t know that there’s a keyboard shortcut to do exactly that? It’s so convenient I thought I would share it with everyone.

If you choose Command & ~ (Mac) or Control & ~ (PC) you will find yourself toggling gracefully through all your open documents. That’s one for the memory bank!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL

Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.

Posted by Neil Oliver in Interface | Make a Comment

Next Meeting…

For all you Sydneysider’s the next InDesign User Group meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday, Aug 13, 2008. Anyone who hasn’t been to one of these meetings is missing out. It is a perfect opportunity to learn new things about InDesign from leading industry experts, as well as bounce all your questions off them. Check out all the details relating to the Sydney chapter at indesignusergroup.com . You do need to sign up and register (for free) via the InDesign User Group website to record yourself in attendance for the event.

In this upcoming meeting, Cari Jansen from Typefi will introduce you to the powerful XML features in InDesign. Cari will show how you can leverage the XML support in InDesign to streamline document layout. Cari will also briefly demo AutoFit, a very neat and absolutely free InDesign plug-in. Michael Stoddart from Adobe will polish off the evening with an overview of Acrobat 9, explaining the significance of this new version for creative and print professionals.

Posted by Neil Oliver in News | Make a Comment

There’s a direct way to edit your graphics in their native applications right from the page

If you’re in the habit of using edit original directly from the links panel or via the contextual menu, you may be interested to know you can do the exact same thing from directly within your page. The trick is to select the graphic with the “Selection Tool”, then hold “Option” on Mac or “Alt” on PC, and then double click the graphic. InDesign then opens the graphic inside its native application.

If you try to select multiple images and try this same trick, it won’t work. Unfortunately it only works for one graphic at a time. Hopefully one day Adobe will add this functionality to InDesign…

CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL

Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.

Posted by Neil Oliver in Graphics | 1 Comment

Mac OS X 10.5.4 Update

Mac users will be pleased to hear Apple has released a new version of Leopard. The Mac OS X 10.5.4 update is highly recommended for all Mac OS X 10.5, 10.5.1, 10.5.2, and 10.5.3 Leopard users. It includes general operating system improvements all round, it addresses issues including stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac.

This new update goes a long way to fixing some incompatibility issues found between Apple and the Creative Suite too. You can find detailed info released from Apple on the update here. All Adobe users, you can find information on how this update has improved the Creative Suite here.

InDesign and InCopy 5.0.3 Update

For all InDesign and InCopy users, Adobe has released a new 5.0.3 update. You can download it via the Adobe Updater or directly from Adobe’s website here. Adobe has also published release notes on the update which can be found here.

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Posted by Neil Oliver in News | Make a Comment

Just because you think you can’t doesn’t mean there’s not a solution

When you’re moving objects from one layer to another you have a few options that you might like to try. If you have locked and hidden layers and you want to move an object to one of these locked or hidden layers, you don’t need to unlock the locked layer or reveal the hidden layer. Simply drag the object from its existing layer to the desired locked or hidden layer holding down “Command” on Mac or “Control” on PC. Now your object is on its correct layer despite the fact the layer was locked or hidden, and you didn’t need to take the extra step of unlocking the locked layer or revealing the hidden layer.

If you are wanting to duplicate an object from one layer to another, you select the object on the original layer, hold “Option” on Mac or “Alt” on PC, then drag the object from the current layer to the layer you’re wanting to copy the objects to. If you’re trying to duplicate the objects to a locked or hidden layer you will need to add the same “Command” key into the mix as previous, so to duplicate objects to a locked or hidden layer the shortcuts are “Command + Option” on Mac or “Control + Alt” on PC.

Now if you have many layers and want to view the contents of a particular layer and hide the others while you do so, you don’t need to manually turn layers on and off. You hold “Option” on Mac or “Alt” on PC and the click on the eyeball of the layer your wanting to view, now all other layers are hidden. To bring them back “Option” on Mac or “Alt” on PC and click the same eyeball once more.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL

Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.

Posted by Neil Oliver in Layers | Make a Comment

Do you enjoy selecting the same object types on your page over and over? I don’t!

Did you know there is a scripts panel inside InDesign? It’s one of those hidden features many people overlook, but has tremendous power if used in the right context. For any unfamiliar with the world of scripting, in essence it’s a form of automation that brings InDesign to life. Scripts allow the user incredible power in doing the types of things that can become somewhat of a chore. Like selecting the same object types on your page. How do you select all the text frames on your page? By shift clicking, right? Well, have I got something to show you!

The Select Objects script inside InDesign is a real time saver. It allows you to select all the objects of a particular type, or even multiple types, on your page at once. You can choose from any of the following, Rectangles, Ellipses, Polygons, Graphic Lines, Text Frames, Groups, Images, PDF’s and EPS’s. I anticipate the light bulb in your head just went off? Followed by the frustration of always wanting to be able to do such a thing and not realizing it was right there in front of you, yes?

Lets take a look at how it works. If you go to the “Window” menu, down to the “Automation” sub-menu and choose “Scripts”, the scripts panel will appear. You will see two folders inside the Scripts panel, an “Application” folder, where all the default Indesign scripts are located, and a “User” folder, where all the custom scripts you add to InDesign are to be stored.

Open the “Application” folder. Inside the Application folder you will see a “Samples” folder, open it. Next locate the script called SelectObjects, inside either the apple script or java scripts folder. If your wondering what the difference is between apple script and java script is, java script is cross platform, Mac and PC.

Now you’re ready to select a particular object type, let’s select all the text frames on your page, go ahead and double click on the SelectObjects script. A dialogue now appears. Make sure “Text Frames” is checked and all the other options, Rectangles, Ellipses, Polygons, Graphic Lines, Groups, Images, PDF’s and EPS’s are deselected and choose “OK” (see image below). Now all the text frames that were on the active page are selected.

If you’re wanting to select multiple object types, Rectangles and Ellipses for instance. Make sure you have both checked and when you choose “OK”, all the rectangles and ellipses on the page will be selected. How easy!

There is a slight catch, this script selects objects on locked or hidden layers, resulting in objects on locked and hidden layers being selected. You still can’t move or format the objects on the locked or hidden layers though. This may or may not be a problem for you.

For anyone wanting to find out more about scripting or what the other inbuilt InDesign scripts do, check out this link, http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/scripting

CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL

Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.

Posted by Neil Oliver in Scripts | Make a Comment

Did you know you can copy and paste objects and maintain the layer structure?

If you’re in the habit of pasting objects to different documents then adding new layers, then renaming those layers and then moving the objects to their correct layers to replicate the layer structure in the previous document (sounds like a lot of hard work), this tip is for you.

If you go to the layers panel drop down menu (top right) you will see the option “Paste Remembers Layers” (see image below).

Once you choose this option, you have the ability to copy any page elements from different layers in the current document to a new or existing document. When you paste the page elements on the page, the exact same layer structure appears with each object on its correct layer, as it appeared in the previous document. What a time saver!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL

Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.

Posted by Neil Oliver in Layers | Make a Comment