CreativeTechs Tips

Ever find yourself wanting to create a quick hanging indent for a drop cap or bulleted list?

The special "Indent to Here" character in QuarkXPress or InDesign makes it a snap. Type this character in a text block and all remaining lines of the paragraph are indented to that point.

To make things easier, Quark and InDesign use the same shortcut:

Macintosh: Command + \ (backslash)
Windows: Control + \

InDesign Indent to Here Menu Option.

InDesign also lets you access this feature from the menu bar:

InDesign CS2: Type > Insert Special Character > Indent to Here.

InDesign CS3: Type > Insert Special Character > Other > Indent to Here.

Note: The Indent to Here character is indicated by a dagger symbol when the "Show Hidden Characters" feature is turned on (shown above in our example).

Source: This tip inspired by an example from Jasson Hoppe in last Wednesday's Mini-Workshop on InDesign: Style Sheets. This tip was originally published in QuickTips #80 in February 2006.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 09:00 AM | Permalink

Both Microsoft Entourage and Apple’s Mail application retain attachments even if you have saved them to another location on your hard drive. Plus, these mail programs keep copies of all the attachments that you’ve SENT to other people.

You can slim down your mail archives by removing old attachments you no longer need. Seperate instructions are included for both mail programs.

Removing Attachments in Apple Mail (Mac OS X 10.4)

To find all your messages with attachments in Mac OS X 10.4’s Mail, create a Smart
Mailbox to easily group them into a single window.

Chose Mailbox > New Smart Mailbox.

Choose Contains Attachments from the conditions pop-up menu (circled above). Give the new mailbox a name (such as "Contains Attachments") and click OK.

Tip: Want to limit the emails presented to you? Click the plus sign and add another condition, such as only showing email received before January 1, 2007 (shown below).

The new Smart Mailbox appears on the left under your other mail folders.

Finally, to delete an attachment without losing the message it is attached to, just select your email messages one at a time, or in groups and choose Message > Remove Attachment.

Warning: This command takes effect immediately, with no dialog box to warn you — make sure you are only removing attachments you no longer need, or have saved elsewhere.

Removing Attachments in Microsoft Entourage

Entourage doesn’t have Smart Mailboxes, but if you can sort your mail lists to display emails with attachments at the top by clicking on the attachment icon at the top of any mail list.

Tip: If this icon is not available at the top of your mail list, tell Entourage to display the attachments column by checking View > Columns > Attachments.

Once you've identified a number of emails with attachments, select one or more messages, and choose Message> Remove All Attachments. This is especially useful for the Sent Mail folder.

When are done removing unwanted attachments, the disk space is not reclaimed until you compact the Entourage database:

Quit Entourage and then relaunch it while holding down the Option key. This tells Entourage to display a maintenance dialog that includes an option to rebuild its database. Choose Compact Database or Rebuild Database.

Source: This tip comes from the June 2007 issue of Design Tools Monthly. Members of a CreativeTechs support plan receive a complimentary subscription to Design Tools Monthly in their monthly care package.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 02:53 PM | Permalink

Many times every month we get calls from designers or IT managers who need to reset a lost administrative password on Mac workstations.

Apple has provided an easy method to reset a lost password — although you'll need to have a Mac OS X Install CD/DVD to take advantage of it.

We're posting this short illustrated guide to make the process easier next time it comes up.

Bookmark this tip so you have it handy the next time a user forgets their Mac's administrative password.

Step 1: Start up from a Mac OS X Install CD.

This hardest part of this technique may be laying your hands on a Mac OS X Install CD when you need one. Use a version that is close the the version of Mac OS X you have installed.

Hold the C key as the computer starts to boot from the CD.

When the installer starts, choose your language, and you'll proceed to the welcome dialog.

Step 2: Choose Reset Password from the Utilities menu.

Tip: In previous versions of Mac OS X (10.2 and 10.3), you can find the Resent Password option under the Installer menu instead.

Step 3: Select your Mac OS X hard disk volume.

Select the user name of your original administrator account.

Important: Do not select "System Administrator (root)". This is actually a reference to the root user. Do not confuse it with a normal administrator account.

Enter your new password. Click Save.

Step 4: Quit the Reset Password tool, and Restart your Mac.

Once you restart your Mac, you should be able to log in with the newly changed password.

Source: This question comes up all the time. The most recent inspiration to get this tip written up comes from the in-house creative department at Organic to Go. Apple also provides a nice Technote on this topic.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:55 PM | Permalink

Here's a light InDesign tip for any designers finding themselves cranking out the occasional old-school direct mail letter. You can easily create a "yellow highlighter" character style with InDesign's Custom Underline feature.

While the effect itself is a bit cheesy, the technique does let us demonstrate a few shortcuts using InDesign's character styles.

Step 1: Create a Custom Underline.

Let's use a few tricks to build this style quickly. First, select some type you wish to highlight, and Option-Click (Mac) or Alt-Click (Win) on the Underline icon in InDesign's Control palette.

Which brings up InDesign's Underline Options dialog.

Give your underline stroke a weight that is several points larger than your current type size, and use a negative offset to move the underline up to center around your type. You'll need to experiment a bit with these settings to get the look just right.

Step 2: Save it as a Character Style.

Once you've got your highlight effect tweaked properly, save it as a character style.

Option-Click (Mac) or Alt-Click (Win) on the New Character Style button in the Character Styles palette, then give it a name and click OK.

You may now highlight text to your heart's content.

Source: This topic partially inspired by this week's upcoming 90-minute mini-workshop in Seattle covering InDesign: Style Sheets. The actual tip comes from David Blatner on the always excellent InDesignSecrets blog.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:25 PM | Permalink

Starting in August, CreativeTechs is offering weekly, mini-workshops every Wednesday morning in our office.

Here's the pitch: Join us Wednesday mornings at 9:30am, pick up a couple new skills, and get back to work before lunch. You can put what you learned into use the same day. The cost is $50 per workshop.

August Mini-Workshops:

Aug 15, 9:30-11am — Photoshop: Mastering Layers. A solid understanding of layers is the first step toward mastering many other advanced Photoshop techniques. In this fast-paced session, Jason Hoppe will walk you through using Photoshop layers to streamline how you build your files. [SOLD OUT]

Aug 22, 9:30-11am — InDesign: Style Sheets. Style sheets are a huge time saver for designers — especially in the creation of long or multi-page documents. This workshop covers the fundamentals of InDesign's character styles and paragraph styles, and quickly gets into tips, tricks, and shortcuts that should please even the most seasoned InDesign user.

Aug 29, 9:30-11am — Photoshop: Selections. Selecting and isolating objects in photos is one of the most important Photoshop skills. This workshop covers Photoshop’s numerous selection techniques — including plenty of tips for creating accurate selections, maintaining fine edge details, and working with difficult images. Many examples from real-world retouching projects.

Upcoming September Mini-Workshops:

Sep 5, 9:30-11am — InDesign: Master Pages. Full description to come.

Sep 12, 9:30-11am — Illustrator: LiveTrace. This topic was requested by a client who still has users going back to Mac OS 9 to use Adobe Streamline. Full description to come.

Sep 19, 9:30-11am — Photoshop: Mastering Masks. Full description to come.

Sep 26, — Acrobat: Interactive PDFs. Full Description to come.

Don't see a workshop for you?

Workshop topics come directly from client requests (the LiveTrace workshop on September 12th for example). So email us your idea and we'll work it into an upcoming schedule. Want a session on using metadata in Adobe Bridge? How about a workshop on creating interactive PDFs? Maybe you'd like to see a session focused on retouching people's faces in Photoshop.

Email your ideas to training@creativetechs.com.

Outside of Seattle? We still want to hear from you. These same workshop topics will eventually be covered in our weekly tips newsletter.

Call us with any questions or problems.

Jason Hoppe has been instructing designers in Seattle for over 12 years — the workshop materials are great. However, we are all a little new to the logistics of coordinating a weekly event like this. If you have any problems or questions with online ticket ordering, please don't hesitate to call our office at 206-682-4315 or email help@creativetechs.com and let us help you in person.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 09:00 AM | Permalink

Photoshop provides a neutral gray canvas around your images when you work in full screen mode, or when you zoom out so the image is smaller than your document window.

Have you ever wished you could change the color of this default grey? There’s and easy way, and although most people don't know the trick, it’s been in Photoshop since version 4.0.

Step-By-Step: Changing Photoshop's Canvas Color.

Here are the basic steps for this technique (if the animated GIF wasn't clear):

1. Set the foreground color you want to use for the canvas.

2. Select the Paint Bucket tool.

The Paint Bucket is hidden under Photoshop's Gradient Tool, in case you've never had reason to use it.

3. Shift-Click on your canvas area to change the color.

Photoshop's Full Screen Mode Canvas Options.

Photoshop lets you switch between a variety of screen modes (including a new mode added in Photoshop CS3). Interestingly, this technique allows you to change the canvas color on each screen mode separately. So if you want a gray canvas while working, but a white canvas when presenting, you can customize to your heart's content.

Press the F key to cycle through Photoshop's screen modes:

Standard: The default view with individual windows.

Maximized (new in CS3): The pasteboard fills the window and the document is enlarged to the maximum possible size without being covered by any palettes. Gray canvas by default.

Full screen: Hides the Status bar and fills the screen with the pasteboard, with the menu still visible. Gray canvas by default.

Presentation mode: Same as previous but without any menu at the top. Black canvas by default.

Tip: As always, press the TAB key to hide and show your palettes while working. (Press Shift-TAB to hide all palettes except the toolbox).

Argh! What was Photoshop's original gray again?

If you find yourself wanting to get back to the neutral gray canvas Photoshop shipped with, open your color picker and use an RGB setting of:

R: 204 G: 204 B: 204

You can put your canvas color back to the defaults Photoshop shipped with.

Source: This tip inspired by a entertaining troubleshooting phone call with photographer Jim Mannino at Landreth Studios. Jim had accidentally changed the color of his canvas and didn't know how he had done it.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 04:51 PM | Permalink

Here is a fun one. You can send any open document as an email attachment by simply dragging the icon in its title bar onto the icon of your email application in the Dock. Make sure to save first. Try it!

Source: This tip comes from the July 2007 issue of Design Tools Monthly, a newsletter for Macintosh-based graphic designers that summarizes tips and news from a wide number of magazines and websites.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 03:40 PM | Permalink

A couple months ago our production and training guru, Jason Hoppe, developed a great series of "What's New in CS3" booklets for our summer workshops at Seattle's School of Visual Concepts. If you missed out (or don't live in the Seattle area) here are the PDFs for you to download:

What's New in Photoshop CS3.pdf

What's New in InDesign CS3.pdf

What's New in Illustrator CS3.pdf

These provide a quick, visual guide to all those cool new features in Adobe Creative Suite 3. Jason did a wonderful job putting these together — and while they are intended to be supplemented with lots of additional information in the live class, they stand on their own as a handy resource.

Source: Jason Hoppe is an Adobe Certified Expert and long-time instructor at Seattle's School of Visual Concepts. This week Jasson is leading an in-house group training session on Adobe Creative Suite 3 for about 25 people at Horton Lantz & Low, a design, advertising, and direct marketing agency in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 03:33 PM | Permalink