I’ve already pointed out that Adobe InDesign CS5 adds many small new features. Another such feature is the ability to set your starting auto page number in the New Document dialog box.
The new Start Page # feature in InDesign's New Page dialog box
You’ll still need to create an Auto Page Number box on your page just as you always have, but prior to InDesign CS5, you had to manually set the starting page number to your document via the Numbering & Section Options contextual menu in the Pages panel. Now, you can set it right at the start of your document creation.
Not a huge feature, but a nice one for those who regularly create auto page numbers that don’t start with the number 1.
It may not be apparent to you that you can switch from one Adobe Photoshop CS4 tool to another, then back again with just a single click. It wasn’t to me, until I came across it by accident. Let’s say you’re carefully cloning an area of your image with the Stamp tool and you have a slight lapse in concentration… doh! Simply hit the E (switches to the Eraser tool) key and hold it down, erase the goof with your cursor, then let go of the E key. You automatically switch back to the Stamp tool so you can quickly finish the cloning job. The key is to hold down the key while performing the task of the second tool.
Adobe InDesign offers plenty of shortcuts, but there are a few that don’t get much attention that are quite handy once you get used to using them. One of the areas that is often neglected is InDesign’s ability to drag & drop text, rather than using copy & paste.
To take advantage of InDesign’s drag & drop features, you first have to turn it on. You can do this by visiting InDesign’s preferences by navigating to InDesign>Preferences>Type, or hitting Command + K and selecting the Type item in the source list on the left of the prefs window. About half-way down in the Type prefs window you’ll see the Drag & Drop Text Editing section. Check the Enable in Layout View box.
If you want to open a layered Photoshop file as a flattened image you can save time by going to the Open dialog box in Photoshop and selecting your file. Hold down the Shift and Option keys and hit open. You will be presented with a dialog box asking if you wish to Read the Composite Data Instead. Hit OK and you will have a flattened version of your file opened instead of the layered version. This key-combination works while double clicking a file in the Finder as well.
Everybody knows you can go to any particular page in you InDesign document by double-clicking its page icon in the Pages palette, or by typing the page number you want to go to in the little Page indicator box in the lower left of your document window. Of course, there’s always the old Command + J shortcut to bring up a dialog box where you can type your desired page number in. Here’s another page changing tip. Hold down the Option key while double-clicking the page icon in the Pages palette to not only go to that page, but switch the view to Fit Page in Window at the same time.
Adobe Illustrator offers a simple tool to quickly apply colors, strokes, fills, effects, change fonts, and more to every item on a layer at once. The Target icon, the little round icon displayed at the far right of each individual layer in the Layers panel, is used to select every item on the layer. Click the circular Target icon, then apply a stroke, change a color, or apply a style to all the objects on the layer. This can be particularly useful if you organize your Illustrator documents as I do, putting all type on separate layers, backgrounds on another layer, etc.