Every once in a while, when you’re working on a large file in Photoshop, you might want to make a trip to Edit>Purge>All – which will free up a LOT of memory. Photoshop stores your history and the clipboard in memory – which takes up quite a bit of space depending on how you work. You may also wish to experiment with lowering the amount of steps that Photoshop saves in your history palette by making a visit to the preferences. The more steps saved, the more RAM used.
Category: Adobe Apps
Delete Photoshop layers quickly
An annoying fact when designing in Photoshop is that you quickly accumulate a multitude of layers. Even with Photoshop’s advancements in the layers arena, it gets out of hand quickly. The best thing you can do is delete unused layers. A quick way to delete multiple layers in Adobe Photoshop is to Shift+click or Command+Click the layers you don’t want, then click on the Layer Palette Trash icon. Don’t forget that you can save a Layer Comp before you delete the layers, that way you can quickly return them if necessary.
Using InDesign’s Library feature
You may know that Quark has a “Library” palette that allows you to store objects for future use. But did you know that InDesign has one as well? 
To use it, go to File>New>Library. Then, place an image or text block on the page and keep it selected. Then click the New Library Item button in the Library palette (it looks like a page icon at the bottom). You can click the “i” icon to add descriptive information to each image as well. 
Once you store an object in the Library palette – the object is always available in every document. Better yet, the object retains its scaling attributes and its place on the page – perfect for newletter mastheads, etc. Then whenever you need one of the objects in the Library, you simply choose Place Items from the palette flyout menu. This may seem like a frivolous feature, given that you could just cut and paste in place from other files if you happen to have them open. But think about all the time you spend navigating in the Place dialog box just getting to the folder that contains the artwork… the time savings adds up quickly by using the Library.
Illustrator Gradient Mesh tutorial
Life In Vector has a great tutorial on using the Gradient Mesh tool in Adobe Illustrator. It’s available on the download page, and is about a 1.3MB PDF file. You can also view some of the fantastic illustrations, like the car above, done completely in Illustrator.
Changing the default font in Illustrator CS
When you have a client that always uses the same font, do you ever get tired of having to always change the font when you start typing in Illustrator? Fortunately, you can change Illustrator’s default font. Before changing the default font in Illustrator CS, you need to create a custom startup file by editing the Normal Character Style in Illustrator’s startup files. To change the default font: 1. Quit Illustrator. 2. In the Adobe Illustrator CS/Plug-ins folder, copy the current default startup file – Adobe Illustrator Startup_CMYK or Adobe Illustrator Startup_RGB – and save it with a different name. (This creates a copy of the original startup file in case you need it again.) 3. Open one of the default startup files (Adobe Illustrator Startup_CMYK or Adobe Illustrator Startup_RGB, depending on which type of document you intend to use). 4. Choose Window > Type > Character Styles. 5. Select the Normal Character Style and choose Character Style Options from the palette pop-up menu. 6. Select Basic Character Formats and choose the desired font from the Font Family pop-up menu. 7. Click OK, and save the new file as Adobe Illustrator Startup _CMYK or Adobe Illustrator Startup_RGB in the Plug-ins folder. 8. Restart Illustrator.
Center and fill graphics in an InDesign frame
In Adobe InDesign, you can center a graphic in a graphic frame by hitting Command + Shift + E, and if you want that graphic to fill the graphic frame, the key command is Command + Shift + Option + E which will proportionately fill the frame. Using the two commands together can speed your production time greatly.
Quickly switch and select objects and layers in Photoshop
This may seem like a very basic technique, yet I see very few Photoshop users making use of it. If you want to quickly change layers. Press “V” to select the Move tool. Then Command + Click the object you want to work on. That’s it. The correct layer becomes active and you don’t need to navigate to your layers palette and scroll through the list to activate the layer you want to work on.
InDesign’s hidden forward-delete key
If you’re working in Adobe InDesign on your iBook or any other keyboard that doesn’t have a forward delete button, you can get the same function (deleting the character AFTER the cursor) by holding the Shift key down and hitting the normal Delete button.
Working with History states in Photoshop
Normally, when you select a history state and then change the image, all states below the active state are deleted (or, more accurately, replaced by the current state). However, if you enable the Allow Non-Linear History option (from the History Options in the History palette menu), you may select a state, make a change to the image, and the change will be appended to the bottom of the History palette (instead of replacing all the states below the active state). You can even delete a state without losing any of the states below it! Note: The color of the horizontal lines between history states indicate their linearity. White dividers indicate linear states and black dividers indicate non-linear states. Another Note: Not only is a non-linear history very memory intensive, it can also be very confusing!
Locking items in your InDesign document
To Lock an item in Adobe InDesign means to lock it in place, unlike Quark XPress where locking an item won’t even let you edit the item. To completely lock an object in ID, you must place the item on a layer and lock the layer – only then is the item truly “locked.” However, should you want the ability to continue to edit the item but not move it, you can use the Command + L key shortcut to lock the item and Command + Option + L to unlock it.