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Seattle CS4 Social Event!

CS4-Logo-White.pngIf you live in the Seattle area, be one of the first to experience CS4 in person. We’re partnering with Luminous Works in Ballard for a special CS4 social gathering.

Join us September 23 from 6 to 8 PM, the day of the official CS4 announcement, at the Luminous Works Schoolhouse in Ballard. Instructor Steve Laskevitch will give a demo of the Best of CS4, we’ll have light refreshments and drinks, and perhaps a few surprises!

Register: Luminous Works & Creativetechs CS4 Event!

Note: Space is limited, and this event has proven very popular (it is almost entirely full). When the remaining tickets run out, we’ll add a special Waitlist for a second CS4 event. We’re still working out the schedule and logistics for that.

September 15, 2008
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Adobe CS4 To Be Unveiled on September 23.

Next week, Adobe is revealing Creative Suite 4 (CS4) on September 23, in a special web event that will be broadcast at several different times in the United States and Europe. If you want to be one of the first to see the full CS4 suite in action, register for a webcast reminder at the Adobe website: […]
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September 15, 2008
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InDesign Nested Styles.

This is a short 3-minute segment taken from the live webinar InDesign Style Sheets on September 10, 2008. The full version of 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. Style sheets can be a huge time saver for designers — especially in the creation of long or multi-page documents. [View all Upcoming Webinar Topics]

September 10, 2008
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Save All Open Documents in InDesign.

Here is a terrific hidden InDesign keyboard shortcut. Say you’ve got a bunch of InDesign files open that you’ve been jumping between, and you need to save them all before stepping out for lunch. Use InDesign’s Save All command to save all your open documents. Mac: Command-Option-Shift-SPC: Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S Source: This tip was one of Scott […]
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September 8, 2008
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Pending Orphan Works Legislation

Every creative professional should know about the details of the Orphan Works legislation currently being considered by Congress. This is a terribly important issue for people like us who make a living with our ideas and images. Here are some resources to help you educate yourself: Creative Industry Websites: Graphic Artists Guild: Orphan Works News […]
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September 8, 2008
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Subscribe to Origami Tutorials on iTunes U.

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We like to take a break from our technical focus during long weekends. So, in honor of the extended Labor Day holiday, we encourage you to get away from your computer, and enjoy a little low-tech paper folding. Apple’s iTunes U serves up a fun collection of tutorial podcasts by physicist Robert Lang who is also one of the world’s foremost origami artists and theorists.

Link: Robert Lang on iTunes U

Subscribe to the podcast collection and learn how to fold a square piece of paper into a duck, a sparrow, and a swallow. A nice way to tip your toe in the pool of origami paper folding.

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September 1, 2008
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Special Character Shortcut Cheatsheets.

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John Brandt’s Special Character Shortcuts (free) is a comprehensive PDF that shows how to access almost any special character in any font. The 16-page PDF includes cheatsheets for accented characters, ligatures, punctuation, currency, legal symbols, math, and greek symbols. Print out the pages for the characters you forget most often, and post them near your computer.

Link: Special Character Shortcuts PDF

Keystrokes are listed for Mac and Windows, as well as HTML codes for web pages. There is also a special section on special nonprinting characters in QuarkXPress 7 and 8, and a handy typographer’s glossary.

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August 25, 2008
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Proofreading With Your Eyes Closed.

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Here is a technique I use every week while proofreading final drafts of this tips newsletter. When you need to proof your final documents or important email, have your computer read the text out loud to you and listen for mistakes. You’ll catch errors you might otherwise miss.

In many OS X applications, you can highlight your text and choose [Application] > Services > Speech > Start Speaking Text (if you are using Mail for example, look under the Mail menu next to your Apple menu).

As with last week’s tip, this trick only works in Cocoa apps. If you are using an Adobe or Microsoft program where this doesn’t work, just paste the text into a new TextEdit document and have your Mac read from there.

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August 25, 2008
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Shift-Click With Photoshop’s Eyedropper.

Even with a well calibrated monitor, it is more precise to color correct using numerical values. This is especially useful when correcting color casts in images with neutral gray areas, or when matching specific colors between multiple images. Shift-click up to 4 areas of your image with Photoshop’s eyedropper tool to identify color sample points […]
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August 18, 2008
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Press ESC for a Pop-up Autocomplete List.

It’s always fun to stumble across a little-known feature that’s been around for years. When you’re typing text in many OS X applications (Safari, TextEdit, Mail, etc), you can press ESC (F5 also works) for an pop-up list with words from the built in OS X dictionary. Note: This trick only works in Cocoa apps. […]
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August 18, 2008
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