Creative Tip: The Magic Right-Indent Tab.

Here is another quick-but-useful tip for InDesign and QuarkXpress. When you need to set a tab that aligns to the right edge of your text box, don't waste your time fumbling with manual tab stops. Both InDesign and QuarkXPress have a hidden feature that makes this easy. Just remember these shortcut keys:

InDesign: Shift-Tab
QuarkXPress: Option-Tab

Source: This tip comes from the February 2008 issue of Design Tools Monthly. Seattle creative teams with a CreativeTechs support plan receive a complimentary subscription to Design Tools Monthly in their monthly care package.

Tech Tip: Rename Your Files with Renamer4Mac.

Renamer4Mac makes it easy to rename a large number of files. You just drag files or folders into its window, then adjust what you want to change. As you define your intended changes, Renamer4Mac previews in blue what each new file name will look like. When your file names appear the way you want them, you can apply the changes.

power4mac.com/renamer

This tool is perfect for designers who find themselves with a folder full of files whose names need to be adjusted. For example, adding an identifying name to photos, along with a sequential number. Or changing the names of files for a website to lower case and replacing spaces with underscores.

Source: This tip comes from the February 2008 issue of Design Tools Monthly. Seattle creative teams with a CreativeTechs support plan receive a complimentary subscription to Design Tools Monthly in their monthly care package.

Seattle Training: Upcoming Morning Workshops.

Wed, Mar 12 - Using Adobe Lightroom.
Thu, Mar 13 - Photoshop CS3: Smart Objects + Shape Layers.
Wed, Mar 19 - Acrobat: Prepress with PDFs.
Thu, Mar 20 - Photoshop CS3: Layer Effects.
Thu, Mar 26 - Mac OS X Font Management.

Your referrals wanted! Referrals from our clients and readers are what keeps CreativeTechs healthy and in business. As a small thank-you, every week we send iTunes gift cards to new Seattle-area subscribers, plus the friend or colleague who referred them:

Vacation Alert!
Your friendly tips-writing staff is returning from vacation this week. This is the last of our queued tips. We'll be back to thanking new Seattle subscribers next week. Thanks for your continued referrals.

CreativeTechs QuickTips is a free weekly newsletter for creative professionals who use Macs. Each week we publish a fresh mix of left-brain and right-brain tips based on our real world experience supporting hundreds of creative teams in the greater Seattle area. For a complete archive of previous tips, visit www.creativetechs.com/tips

For IT Professionals supporting Mac users, visit Make Mac Work. This weekly technical blog focuses on IT issues facing Macs in Enterprise environments. It is written by CreativeTechs' lead enterprise engineer, Jordan Bojar. For an archive of previous topics, visit www.makemacwork.com

Your referrals wanted! CreativeTechs relies on word-of-mouth introductions. If you know a Seattle-area creative team who might benefit from our unique expertise providing computer support for creative professionals, please introduce us. We are never too busy for your referrals. Email help@creativetechs.com, or call us at 206-682-4315.

Copyright 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 CreativeTechs, Inc.