In Adobe InDesign CS3, stroking text meant a stroke was added to the outside of the text, with only the miter join method your only option. This meant the stroke was squared off on corners with no way to adjust it while keeping text editable. With InDesign CS4, Adobe has added the ability to not only choose an outer or inner stroke, but also the option of using rounded or beveled miters as well as squared. Selecting text gives you the options in the Strokes panel. So what does the final result look like? See below. A 5pt outer aligned stroke is applied to the text, with a square miter join. This was your only option with InDesign CS3: 
A 5pt inner aligned stroke is applied to the text, with a square miter join: 
A 5pt outer aligned stroke is applied to the text with a rounded miter join: 
Notice the rounded corners around the text in the image above. You could accomplish this with InDesign CS3, but it requires you to convert the text to outlines. With CS4, you can keep your text editable. I thought I came across an unnoticed feature with CS4, but I see that InDesignSecrets also found this handy feature. It’s little features like this that make InDesign CS4 worth the upgrade.
Tagged: text
Creating a fire text effect in Photoshop
One of the many fantastic tutorials for Adobe Photoshop that can be found at PSDTuts is this Flaming Text Effect. It’s probably the easiest and most realistic-looking fire effect I’ve come across – mostly because it uses an actual photo of fire to create.
Creating chrome text in Photoshop
One of the more popular text effects to use in Adobe Photoshop is chrome text. You can search for hours to find the perfect Layer Style to make your job easy, but you may never find it. Instead, try this Metal Text Tutorial over at PSGallery.co.uk. The tutorial is easy to follow and can produce fantastic results with a little experimentation. From personal experience, I’ve found that your results will vary widely depending on the font you choose to use. Some areas to play with are the bevel settings and variations. While the tutorial does give you exact settings to use, you will most likely find that they don’t produce the desired effect on all fonts. Play around with them to get it to look the way you want.
Move your cursor to beginning or end of InDesign text frames
When you’re working in a document in Adobe InDesign, have you ever found yourself typing a long story in multiple text blocks that are linked, perhaps even across multiple pages, and you realize you want to go back to the beginning of the story to reference something or simply want to re-read what you’ve typed? You can do this easily by hitting Command + A (to select all the text) then hit the Left Arrow key. You can also accomplish the same result by hitting Command + Home. Of course, you can also substitute the End key for the Home key to move the cursor to the end of the text.
InDesign text frame options keyboard shortcuts
InDesign’s Text Frame Options dialog box contains a few features/options you may find yourself using often, such as adjusting the column width of your text frame, adding inset spacing, adjusting the frame justification, adjusting your baseline options, and more. A quick way to access them is to hit Command + B with the frame selected. But a quicker way is to Option + Double Click with either of the Selection tools.