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Discover Nested Styles in Adobe InDesign
InDesign’s Nested Styles feature can be a powerful discovery for designers of long documents. This single feature could save untold hours in formatting of books or annual report layouts. Consider our example layout above for a special Scrabble dictionary. Rather than repeatedly applying individual colors, bolds and italics by hand, we add a couple nested […]
Photoshop CS2 Shortcuts Cheatsheet.
Move faster in Photoshop using keyboard shortcuts. Download this handy PDF cheatsheet, print it out and keep it near your computer (you can choose between a Mac or Windows version): Photoshop CS2 Keyboard Shortcuts (Macintosh) Photoshop CS2 Keyboard Shortcuts (Windows) These PDF’s include 4 pages. The first two pages are organized by function in Photoshop, […]
Wonderful documentary about Firefly Press.
This mini-documentary about Firefly Press in Somerville Massachusetts remains one of the most popular items we’ve mentioned: You might wonder what a 6-minute documentary about traditional letterpress is doing mixed in with computer tips for graphic designers. After all, this is technology from the age of Ben Franklin.
Mac Maintenance Checklist.
Friday July 28th is System Administrator Appreciation Day. In honor of our fellow left-brain professionals, we’ve put together a couple tips that may be helpful to those of us tasked with the challenging job of keeping creative teams stable, happy and productive.
First up: A Mac Maintenance Checklist. This is something we’ve been playing with at Creativetechs — for our clients who’ve scheduled a regular monthly maintenance visit to keep their computers fit and healthy.
Mac Maintenance Checklist (PDF)
The checklist is a simple, low-tech way for clients to make sure their computer issues get addressed. Plus it helps the tech avoid missing sporadic maintenance details.
Time Management for System Administrators.
Providing computer support for a busy team of graphic designers, account managers, and other creative pros is a challenging job. It demands an odd combination of long-term planning and short-term crisis response. A new book published by O’Reilly does a good job addressing the real-world, interruption-based environment most system administrators find themselves working in: Time […]
Quickly saturate/desaturate colors in InDesign.
This is another handy Adobe tip from Brian Wood, Director of Training at eVolve Computer Graphics Training in Seattle. This tip works in both Adobe InDesign and Illustrator CS/CS2. If you want to quickly saturate or desaturate a color in the color palette, hold down Shift while dragging a color slider. Both InDesign and Illustrator […]
Paparazzi! – Grab easy screenshots of a web page.
When you need to capture an image of a long website design, don’t spend your billable hours stiching together multiple screenshots.
Mac-based designers should download a free copy of Paparazzi instead.
In Paparazzi, simply enter the URL and click Capture. Your web page loads in a small preview window. You can save the resulting image in a file format of your choice.
Tip: Use Paparazzi to preview what a site will look like at different resolution. Change the Crop Size pop-up to one of the presets (640×480, 800×600, 1024×768), or enter your own dimensions. You’ll get a sense for how well the site design works with different size displays.
An Exchange Server alternative for Mac studios.
Microsoft’s Exchange Server has become an industry standard for providing shared calendars, shared contacts, and centralized email across an organization. An Exchange Server can be a great choice for teams that already have a solid Windows-based infrastructure in place.
But what if you run a Mac-based studio?
That’s a question we get asked a lot. Especially by the owners of medium-sized creative studios. Their teams have the same need for centralized calendars and contacts. A good solution for Mac-based creative teams has been hard to find.
At Creativetechs, we’ve recently started installing and supporting the Kerio Mail Server. This question is becoming a little easier to answer.
Free! Icons for your Website, Blog, Etc.
Here is a great resource when you need icons for your website, blog or other design projects. There are many great collections of icons available on the web. We’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite sources. Enjoy…
Best Fireworks Screensaver Ever!
In honor of the 4th of July: For tip readers in America, here is the best Mac-based fireworks screensaver I’ve seen: Mac Version of Skyrocket or Windows Version of Skyrocket. Want to see it in action before deciding to download? We’ve uploaded a couple short video capture to YouTube. This first one is my favorite. […]