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Creative Suite 4 (CS4) Revealed Tomorrow!

CS4-923event-250px.jpgIf you haven’t registered for tomorrow’s Web Broadcast that kicks off Adobe’s Creative Suite 4, you still have time:

Link: Something Brilliant

We’re sworn to secrecy until Adobe lifts the curtain. But tomorrow night in Seattle, we’re throwing a party with our Seattle-area training partner, Luminous Works, to celebrate all the new CS4 goodness.

Source: Tomorrow’s CS4 party is seriously overbooked. If you signed up for the waitlist, we are hosting another CS4 Social on Monday, September 29, a week from today at the Creativetechs office in South Lake Union.

September 22, 2008
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Expand Selections Without Rounding Corners.

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If you’ve ever wanted to slightly expand the size of a selection in Photoshop, you may have experienced this frustration. When you choose Select > Modify > Expand, Photoshop expands the size of your selected area — but it rounds the corners in the process.

Next time, choose Select > Transform Selection instead. Photoshop’s traditional transform box appears around your selection. Drag a corner to resize it, or type new values into the Options Bar. Ta-da. An enlarged selection, with square corners!

Source: This tidbit found in the July 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.

September 22, 2008
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Resize Your Web Browser with Bookmarklets.

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Here is a fun trick to try in your favorite web browser. Paste the following snippet of javascript code into the address bar where you normally type a web address:

javascript:window.resizeTo(800,600);

This tiny script tells your web browser window to jump to 800×600 pixels in size. A handy shortcut for web designers proofing sites. Here are a collection of resize links based on that simple javascript code:

Resize Link: 640×480
Resize Link: 800×600
Resize Link: 1024×768
Resize Link: Full Screen

You can save these links as Bookmarklets — small javascripts saved as normal bookmarks — to easily resize your browser windows on the fly.

In the rest of this tip we’ll walk you through adding Bookmarklets in Safari.

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September 22, 2008
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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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