Creative Mentor

Maximise your control when copying and pasting from MS Word to InDesign…

I continually cross paths with InDesign users who run into the problem of copying text from MS Word, and then pasting into InDesign, finding that they have retained MS Words formatting attributes. Or people who want to retain MS Words formatting and can’t.

There is a quick fix to this problem; it all comes down to one preference. If you go to your preferences, InDesign > Preferences > Clipboard Handling (Mac), Edit > Preferences > Clipboard Handling (PC), under the “When placing text and table from other applications” section you will find two options. All Information or Text Only. All Information means all formatting from MS Word will be retained when you paste into InDesign. Text Only means all formatting will be removed when you paste. That’s it.

If you want to set this preference permanently you may want to check out the differences between local and global preferences in InDesign here.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Preferences, Text | Make a Comment

Exclusive offer for today’s Adobe eSeminar guests

Thanks for joining me today! As promised here is the link to get 20% of my Photoshop Elements training title http://www.infiniteskills.com/e7.htm

You will be able to watch today’s eSeminar in a week or so at http://adobeeseminars.com.au/ondemand/view/photography

Posted by Neil Oliver in News | Make a Comment

Where have my menu items gone… am I going crazy?

It doesn’t matter how experienced you are in InDesign this one will get you at one time or another. If you’re in the habit of using the built in workspaces, you may find that a few of your menu items disappear. For example, if I change over to the interactivity workspace and then go to View > Overprint Preview, it’s not there…

This is because you can customise menu items and then save those customisations into a workspace. If you want your hidden menu items to appear again, go to the bottom of the menu item and choose “Show All Menu Items”. All the hidden menu items now appear. If you leave the menu and then come back again later, you will need to do this same process over again. To avoid this and reveal your menu items permanently, go to Window > Workspace > Show Full Menus or go to the workspace switcher in the control panel and choose Show Full Menus. Now all your menu items will always be visible for your current work space.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Interface | 1 Comment

There’s a universe of swatches out there…

New to InDesign Cs4 is the Kuler panel. Kuler is an online reservoir of swatches that are shared from designer to designer around the world at no cost. It gives you the ability to explore, create and share colour themes around the globe. If you’re lacking in inspiration and can’t think of a colour for a theme, give it a go.

To access the Kuler panel within InDesign go to Window > Extensions > Kuler. The Kuler panel will now appear on your screen. There’s much I could say about Kuler, I don’t want to bore you, Kuler is way to cool for that. Watch the tutorial below.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Feature | 1 Comment

Want to work faster? Then take advantage of InDesign’s new Power Zoom…

Changing tools all the time can get really annoying, and having to go back and forth to the tool panel is something I try to avoid as much as possible. If you’re wanting to quickly pan and then zoom in to another area of your page or document, you may want to give the new Power Zoom feature a go.

If you want to access Power Zoom, press “H” on your keyboard to access the Hand tool. Now that the Hand tool is active, click and hold (don’t let go) for a second on the document page. InDesign now zooms your spread right out and a red rectangle appears on your screen, replacing your normal mouse cursor. InDesign is now waiting for you to move to another part of the spread or even another page altogether and release. When you release (let go) InDesign zooms your page into that spot with the same zoom level as previous. This is so quick and easy.

A variation on this is if you click and hold (don’t let go) and want to change your zoom magnification, you simply use your arrow keys on the keyboard to make the red rectangle smaller (results in a larger magnification) or larger (results in a smaller magnification).

Also, if you’re working away and don’t want to change tools, you can access the keyboard shortcut for the hand tool “Spacebar” and then use this Power Zoom feature in the same way. When you let go you’re back on the tool you had selected previously.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Feature | Make a Comment

Creating contact sheets in InDesign is as easy as placing an image…

Contact sheets are a popular way of viewing a range of images quickly. InDesign CS4 now lets you create your own contact sheets by the familiar “File > Place” command.

To create a contact sheet go to “File > Place”, select a range of images (select one image then hold shift to select a continuous row of images) from the dialogue that appears and choose “Open”. At this stage you’re doing nothing other than placing images, the key now is to use the keyboard shortcut “Command + Shift” (Mac) / “Control + Shift” (PC). With this shortcut held, click and drag (don’t let go) on your document page; you will see a grid appear, indicating the arrangement of the rows and columns within your contact sheet. You can let go of the keyboard now, however you don’t want to release your mouse yet. Before you release, you can customise how many rows and columns appear and arrange the images to suit. All you need to do is use your arrow keys. Left and right will increase/decrease columns, up and down will increase/decrease rows.

If you have selected 10 images to place with an arrangement of 2 columns x 3 rows, you will find the place cursor will still be active with the four remaining images. Create a new page and follow the same steps to place the remaining images.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Feature, Links | 1 Comment

If you’re interested in learning Adobe Photoshop Elements 7, check out my new training title at infiniteskills.com

I’m excited to announce the launch of my new title at infiniteskills.com. If you’re looking for a thorough training guide to Adobe Photoshop Elements 7, this is it. You can check it out here.

Press Release

New Photoshop Elements 7 Tutorial - Training Video on CD

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 10, 2009 - New York, NY - Infinite Skills Inc, a trusted source in cost effective professional software training, has just launched an exciting Photoshop Elements 7 Tutorial Video. Available on CD or via streaming video online, this comprehensive course has been developed to help users who have purchased Elements and want to use the software to its fullest advantage. Beginning with a detailed tour of the main interface and Organizer and covering everything from white balance to whitening teeth, users get a hands-on introduction to this versatile and often misunderstood program.

Because it costs so much less than its more established cousin, Photoshop Elements is often thought of as a watered down version of Adobe Photoshop. That couldn’t be further from the truth. While the first versions of Elements had their limitations, Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 delivers on the promise of offering a repurposed Photoshop focusing on home use. It utilizes many of the same features that make PS the go-to tool for professional designers and photographers, but it makes them easier to use. Users can work with layers, replace colors and create gradients, for example, but they also get the added functionality that comes with Elements’ photo organizing and sharing tools. Your photos weren’t taken to just sit on a hard drive, and Elements gives you easy options for creating your own photobooks, calendars and collages in a series of steps.

Written and led by professional multimedia consultant Neil Oliver, the tutorial shows you how to get professional quality results from your own home with a program that costs a fraction of traditional industry software. There are plenty of manuals on the market that promise to make learning the software quick and easy, but they rely on text descriptions and static screenshots for their examples. These intuitive instructional videos show you how to get your results directly from the Elements interface, with realtime walkthroughs that appear exactly as they do on your own computer.

While the course is built with a beginning, middle and end, it also gives you the freedom to easily skip around and learn at your own pace. Lessons are divided into short, digestible segments based on the subject covered, and that makes it especially easy for more experienced users who just want to learn specific techniques or review. There are several project-oriented lessons that show you practical uses for Elements 7, such as patching together multiple shots for a panorama or optimizing images to be used on the web. With a diverse array of topics covered and an intuitive format, the tutorial video truly has something to offer everyone.

About Infinite Skills Inc

Harnessing a large library of titles developed in-house as well as resources from some of the best teachers in the world, Infinite Skills strives to become the definitive e-learning destination on the web.

Free demo lessons and more information on the Photoshop Elements 7 Tutorial on CD can be found on the infiniteskills.com

Posted by Neil Oliver in News | Make a Comment

Always, always, always backup…

Not sure if you noticed, this site was down for about 4 hours. I started off this morning thinking, it’s about time I posted something on creativementor.com.au. Before I started my post, I noticed a new version of Wordpress was available for upgrade. Thinking nothing of it I clicked the upgrade button, didn’t I…

Turns out that wasn’t the best idea. The upgrade failed, whilst failing it deleted all the files on my database and the database itself. That’s about 18 months of posts gone. You could imagine the type of response…

Well I didn’t react as you might expect. It was more of a deer in the headlights reaction. I got up, went down the road and got a coffee, made a phone call and here we are. All restored.

It wasn’t by my own genius either, lucky my hosting company keeps a backup of the past three weeks.

Sorry for any inconvenience…

Posted by Neil Oliver in News | Make a Comment

Adding interactivity and rollovers…

Once you have created a button, you need to apply an action to it in order to build functionality into your button. You have two controls over the functionality of your button, the Event and Action. The Event allows you to control when the action will become active. The Action controls the behaviour of the button.

Here is a list of the different Events and Actions available:

EVENTS

On Release: When the mouse button is released after a click.

On Click: When the mouse button is clicked (without being released).

On Roll Over: When the mouse pointer enters the button area defined by the button’s bounding box.

On Roll Off: When the mouse pointer exits the button area.

On Focus: When the button receives focus, either through a mouse action or pressing the Tab key.

On Blur: When the focus moves to a different button or form field.

ACTIONS

Close (PDF): Closes the PDF document.

Exit (PDF): Exits the application, such as Adobe Reader, in which the PDF document is open.

Go To Anchor: Jumps to the specified text anchor.

Go To First/Last/Next/Previous Page: Jumps to the first, last, previous, or next page in the PDF or SWF file.

Go To Previous View (PDF): Jumps to the most recently viewed page in the PDF document, or returns to the last used zoom size.

Go To Next View (PDF): Jumps to a page after going to the previous view. In the same way that a Forward button is available in a web browser only after someone clicks the Back button, this option is available only if the user has jumped to a previous view.

Go To Page (SWF Only): Jumps to the page in the SWF file you specify.

Go To URL: Opens the web page of the specified URL.

Movie (PDF): Lets you play, pause, stop, or resume the selected movie.

Open File (PDF): Launches and opens the file that you specify. If you specify a file that is not PDF, the reader needs the native application to open it successfully.

Show/Hide Buttons: Toggles between showing and hiding specified buttons in the exported PDF or SWF file.

Sound (PDF): Lets you play, pause, stop, or resume a sound clip.

View Zoom (PDF): Displays the page according to the zoom option you specify.

InDesign also allows you to add rollover functionality to a button. This can be done from the State Appearances section of the Buttons panel. Once an object has been converted to a button, it now has three different appearances. Normal, Rollover and Click. Normal lets you maintain the original appearance of the button, Rollover is where you can create a different appearance when someone hovers over the button, and Click allows you to have yet another appearance when someone clicks on the button. To change the appearance of a State, simply select your button, then double click on the particular state you are wanting to edit. That appearance will now be active (highlighted in blue), you can edit the object whilst it’s in that appearance, and it will only affect that State. When you’re done editing your appearances, it’s best to double click back on the Normal State so your design looks as expected. When you export to PDF/SWF the rollovers will be present.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Interactivity | Make a Comment

Learn how to convert an object to a button and take advantage of InDesign’s sample buttons…

Buttons allow you to create real control over how a person will interact with your dynamic PDF/SWF. You can create buttons that will to go to particular page, take a client to your website, send you an email, open a file or even open a movie. In this post I’m going to show you how to create a button.

You can create a button from any text frame, graphic frame or object within InDesign. To create buttons it’s best to work from the Buttons panel. This can be found in the Window menu “Window > Interactive > Buttons”. When you’re ready to create a button, simply select the object with the Selection tool and click on the “Convert to Button” icon (see image below) at the lower right of the buttons panel.

Once your object has been converted to a button, you will see a button icon appear within the lower right of the object. This is a visual indicator only, it won’t print. If you cant see this little button icon within your new button, it may be for a few reasons; 1. You may need to zoom in on the object a little, 2. You may be in preview mode. If so, hit “W” to exit/enter preview mode, 3. You may have “Hide frame edges” on - to turn this off go to the view menu and choose “Show Frame Edges”.

Once you have converted an object to a button you can convert it back to a normal object by selecting it with the Selection tool and clicking where the “Convert to Button” icon was. It is now a “Convert Button to a Object” icon.

Rather than creating your own buttons InDesign, CS4 has some sample buttons built right into the application. You can access these sample buttons directly from the flyout menu of the Buttons panel (see image below), or you could change to the Interactive workspace. The sample buttons will be docked on the right of your screen. The sample buttons panel won’t be found within the Window > Interactive menu, don’t get caught out.

To add one of these sample buttons to your layout, first select it and then drag it directly to your layout. One advantage of using these sample buttons is that they are already interactive with actions applied. We’ll be looking at adding interactivity to buttons in the next post.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Interactivity | 1 Comment