preferences – The Graphic Mac

James — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 16:00:34 +0000

Safari offers default search engine options. Try dropping the Google habit. Just sayin’…

Display Maestro offers access to hidden display resolutions

James — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 15:00:49 +0000

Do you ever find yourself wanting to switch your Mac’s display resolution, but dread having to go into Apple’s Display preferences only to find that the resolution you want isn’t available?

Display Maestro gives you full control over attached displays, allowing the usage of all available resolutions and bit depths. This is done by ignoring the operating system setting of hiding potentially unsafe resolutions.

I do not have a Retina-enabled Mac to test this on; but on my MacBook Air, Display Maestro offers a few resolutions that are not available in Apple’s built-in Display preferences. The app sits quietly in the menubar and allows you to switch resolutions with the click of the mouse. On some systems, it will even allow you to switch to 256-color depth—perfect for those older games that can’t switch automatically.

If you have the need to view your screen in numerous resolutions, Display Maestro is a handy utility to have at only $4.95. A 15-day downloadable demo is available.

Getting the most out of your Photoshop History panel

James — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 15:00:15 +0000

Adobe Photoshop‘s History panel is probably one of the most useful tools in Photoshop, allowing you to undo and redo things you’ve already done to your image with the click of a button. Many users, however, don’t take advantage of the flexibility that the History panel offers.

You may have noticed that the History panel doesn’t save a history state when you hide or show a layer. If you’re not paying attention, this can throw you off a bit when you’re working on a complex layered document. You can adjust Photoshop to save that layer visibility state by visiting the History options via the fly-out menu in the History panel and turning on Make Layer Visibility Changes Undoable. Below are a few more useful features of the History Panel worth looking at.

Turning on the Allow Non-Linear History option allows you to selectively turn on and off items in the History panel without affecting the items below them in the list. This is probably the most useful feature of Photoshop’s History panel.

Perhaps the second most useful feature in the History panel is the ability to save Snapshots of your image as you go. Snapshots are simply states in the history that you save which include everything you’ve done to that point. So if you’re happy with the image you’re working on so far, save a snapshot of it. This will allow you to continue working with the ability to go back to that point in time, regardless if your regular history doesn’t allow you to go back that far.

Enlarge OS X Mail and Finder sidebar icons

James — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:30:55 +0000

Large, medium and small icon options in OS X’s Mail sidebar

If you’re running OS X Lion on your Mac, you have the ability to enlarge the icons in the sidebar of Mail and the Finder. This is particularly useful for those with less than stellar eyesight, or who simply have large LCD screens and want an easier target to hit when dragging files to or otherwise clicking the icons.

Changing the sidebar icons in Mail is actually not an option if you adjust the size of the Finder’s sidebar icons. Oddly enough, both are controlled in the System Preferences under the General icon. Simply choose the size you wish from the drop-down menu next to the Sidebar Icon Size item and both Mail and the Finder’s sidebar icons will immediately adjust accordingly.

Where to find Adobe Photoshop custom Workspaces on your hard drive

James — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:00:01 +0000

If you’re like me, you set up custom Workspaces in Adobe Photoshop. I like having certain panels located in certain places, some fully open, and some reduced to icon-only state. Saving those panel locations makes it easy to return Photoshop to your preferred setup quickly and easily if you move Panels around during a work session. It also allows you to have different configurations for different tasks, such as one setup for general Photoshop work, and another for color correction.

Recently I did a clean install on my MacPro, and wanted to pull my custom Workspaces from a backup so I wouldn’t have to re-configure them – a time-consuming task. But where does Adobe Photoshop store these custom Workspaces?

They’re found where you would probably most expect them to be:
Users/[your user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CS5Settings/WorkSpaces
Make a backup copy of this file for easy recovery if you decide to reformat you drive at a later date – it’ll be easier to get up and running again when the time comes.

And if you’re interested in finding where other custom files and preferences are stored, you can visit this knowledge base article on Adobe’s website.

Setting your preferred measurement units in Adobe InDesign

James — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:00:31 +0000

Ever wonder why certain Adobe InDesign documents open with Inches as the measurement unit, and other open with points, or some other unit? InDesign is smart enough to remember what measurement unit the document was saved with.

You can quickly change the unit of measure in a document by right-clicking anywhere in the document rulers and selecting your preferred unit of measure.

If you’re annoyed when you open a new InDesign document and the unit of measure is not what you prefer, you can set the preferences to always create new documents using inches (or any other unit you prefer). Simply close all InDesign documents and set your preferred unit of measure in Preferences>Units & Increments. From that point forward, all new documents will use that unit of measure by default.

View detailed WiFi settings in Snow Leopard’s Airport menu

James — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:21:44 +0000

I mentioned a new feature of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard earlier this week, and today I have another one for you that enhances the Airport menu.

Snow Leopard Airport Menu

Hold down the Option key while clicking the Airport icon in your menubar to view detailed statistics about the network you’re currently connected to, such as the Channel, Security Settings and more. While this probably holds little value for the average user, it can be quite valuable for network admins and people who just love to know everything about what’s going on with their Mac at every moment.

Hanging punctuation in Adobe Photoshop

James — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:18:11 +0000

If you’ve spent any amount of time setting type in Adobe InDesign, you’ve no-doubt turned on hanging punctuation via the Story panel — at least, you should have it on. Hanging punctuation floats quote marks, bullet points, periods, commas and other punctuation just outside the text container to make justified type look better. For those times when InDesign isn’t the primary app for doing your design work in (such as Web and multi-media graphics work), Adobe Photoshop also offers hanging punctuation capability. You can turn it on by visiting the Paragraph panel’s fly-out menu and choosing Roman Hanging Punctuation. Large blocks of type (particularly when justified) will look much cleaner when turning on this option!

Saving your Adobe Workspaces (prefs and palette locations)

James — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 15:09:16 +0000

One annoying “feature” we’ve had to endure throughout the years with virtually all the graphics applications we use is the prolific increase of palettes that we are forced to work with daily. If you use Adobe Photoshop, you probably have at least 5 to 6 palettes open at all times. Even a simple ad layout in InDesign might find your screen with 6 to 8 palettes minimum… because lets face it, you never know what you’ll need until you see it in front of you. Even with InDesign’s sliding/docking palettes feature, you may find your screen getting crowded. One solution that works well for me is to take advantage of Adobe’s Workspaces feature. Workspaces, available in all of Adobe’s CreativeSuite apps, are a way of displaying only the palettes you want/need for a specific task. You can save different workspaces and access them at any time. For instance, if you’re working on a text-heavy book in Adobe InDesign, you could have all of the text-related palettes open and arranged on screen the way you want and save that workspace. Then when you go to add graphics, you can switch to a different workspace that might include more design-specific palettes. The screenshot above shows only one custom Workspace in Photoshop, but I have several set up for InDesign for specific tasks. Another option, of course, is to learn the keyboard shortcuts!

InDesign preferences that “stick”

James — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 16:50:50 +0000

Were you aware that most of the preferences/options you set in dialog boxes for tools & palettes only stick with the document you have open at the time? Try opening Adobe InDesign without actually having a document open and set some tool/menu/palette preferences. The choices you make with no document open should stick through program and computer restarts. I find this particularly useful because I set up several custom colors in the Swatches palette for each client. By doing it with no document open, they are always available when I create a new document. I also set up a specific style sheets and a few other minor adjustments… all which apply to every document I open.