Tagged: InDesign

Quickly access Open dialog box in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign

Photoshop tip

If you want to spare every key click you possibly can, you can quickly access the Open Dialog Box in Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator with nothing but your mouse – and you don’t even have to make a trip to the File menu!

With no documents open, simply double-click an empty space in the Application Frame (the space normally taken up by a document window. The catch of course, is that you have to have the Application Frame active and no document open.

[zilla_alert style=”yellow”] This is a tip I posted back in 2012, but it’s a great shortcut so I thought I might repost it. [/zilla_alert]

InDesign CS6 Pantone+ color glitch: a workaround

InDesign CS6 Pantone+ color glitch: a workaround

If you try to get Pantone 543 (or a number of other Pantone colors) in Adobe InDesign CS6’s Color panel, you’ve likely run into an annoying glitch. You simply can’t find it by typing it in as you could with CS5.

CS6 Pantone glitch

InDesign Secrets describes the CS6 Pantone+ glitch in detail, and offers some workarounds.

What I find most annoying about this glitch is that Adobe hasn’t fixed it with a small update yet, and that Pantone doesn’t make the older libraries available for easy download. Hopefully, the new InDesign CC (due to ship later this month) fixes the problem.

Printing absolute page numbers in your Adobe InDesign document

I know. You’re probably thinking “just type the page number in the Print dialog box.” But that only works when your pages are numbered in the default method where page one is actually the first page in the document. This isn’t always the case. Many times, you’ll have a multi-page document where you’ve used the Numbering & Section Options in the Pages panel and the page numbering doesn’t start until (for example) page six—to accommodate a cover page, table of contents and intro pages.

So if page one is actually the sixth page in your Adobe InDesign document, and that’s the page you want to print, you can’t just print page one, because that would actually print the first page of the document—which in this case is the cover page.

Absolute page numbering

To print the specific page that is numbered page one (the sixth page in this example), you have to print the Absolute Page Number. To do this, simply add a + (Plus) symbol to the absolute page number in your document (in this case, 6) as seen in the image above.

Replacing an existing image in your Adobe InDesign document

InDesign

You probably know you can place an image in Adobe InDesign by hitting Command + D and clicking on the page to place the photo. But many times, you want to replace an image already in the document. Many people end up placing the image, cutting it, then deleting the image from the existing frame and pasting the new one in the frame. That’s a lot of work when you can just replace the existing image.

To replace an image in the existing frame, simply hit Command + D and choose your image as you normally would, but Option-click the existing image in your layout to replace it.

The iMac 27″ for graphic designers: part 2

27" Apple iMac

In part one of The iMac 27″ for graphic designers, I covered the reasons for choosing the late 2012 iMac 27” to replace my 2006 Mac Pro. As a graphic designer who works in Adobe Creative Suite apps all day long, with file sizes pushing the 1GB range, power is important. But as I found out with my MacBook Air, the Mac Pro just isn’t necessary anymore. Not only does the iMac have all the power you need, but it’s a much more elegant hardware solution, and significantly easier on the pocketbook. I also listed some of the pros and cons of the iMac.

Now I’m going to talk a bit about my experience actually using the iMac for the last two months. (more…)

InDesign color-related keyboard shortcuts

InDesign CS6Most designers know that hitting the X key switches between stroke and fill active states, and the / (slash) key fills the currently selected object with the color None in Adobe InDesign. There are a few other color-related shortcuts that, if you burn into your brain, can save you a good bit of time and mousing around on screen.

  • The , (comma) key will fill or stroke an object with whatever the current color is
  • The . (period) key will fill or stroke an object with the current gradient
  • The D key will fill an object with None and stroke it with black.
  • Hitting Shift + X will reverse the fill and stroke colors of the currently selected object. This is by far the most useful shortcut for me, because I’m constantly applying a color to the stroke when I wanted to apply it to fill

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The Graphic Mac
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