Archive for the ‘Tips & Tricks’ Category
Friday, April 11th, 2008
Adobe Illustrator CS3 Tip - Can You Scale to a Precise Percentage in the Transform Panel?
If you open your Transform panel (Window>Transform) and take a long hard look, do you see a way to Scale a selected object to a precise percentage?
I asked this question in an advanced Illustrator class and all of the artists agreed it’s just not possible. There are Rotate and Shear fields in the panel but no Scale field to type in a percentage. One artist added that you could click on the Link icon next the Width and Height field to keep any change in proportion.
Then if want to make the object 50% of it original size, for instance, you just add "/2" after either measurement and press the Return (Enter) key to divide the sizes in half. But there’s no place enter a percentage. I answered, "You got really close, but you’re afraid to try the impossible." With an object selected and the Width linked to the Height in the Transform panel, I highlighted the Width field and replaced the measurement with 50% and pressed my Return (Enter) key. The results got a mixture of oohs and ahhs from my students." What’s the moral of the story? Try the impossible and you could be pleasantly surprised.
Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Adobe® Certified Training Provider.
Posted in Graphic News, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »
Thursday, December 6th, 2007
Use Quick Apply to quickly edit styles
The Quick Apply feature does more than just allow you to apply
styles. Press Cmd/Control-Return/Enter to open the Quick Apply
panel. Then, type as many letters as necessary to get to the name
of a specific style. BUT, instead of pressing the Return/Enter, press
Cmd/Control-Return/Enter again. You’re now in the Style Options
dialog box for that style! Make your edits and then close to change
the style definition.
Credits to: Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
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Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
Where blogging is headed:
Blogging is evolving and maturing. Bloggers who have a real passion for writing and who have developed an audience will keep the conversation going in this platform. But the format of blogs is changing, as well as the content of the ones that are starting now.
read more on this topic Here <–
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Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
Posted in Off Topic News, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »
Monday, August 13th, 2007
How do you prepare for you up-in-coming work wee during the weekends?
Do you note things down?
Do you incorporate ideas with your colleagues?
Doodling is one of my favorites…do you doodle too?
Post your ideas, help a fellow who is blocked unblock themselves 
Posted in Marketing Tips, Off Topic News, Tips & Tricks | 2 Comments »
Thursday, August 9th, 2007
View Image Scaling with a Shortcut
Assign keyboard shortcuts to Select Container and Select
Contents (Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts > Product Area: Object
Menu). Now when you have an image frame selected with
the Selection tool, you can quickly see the image’s true scaling
amount in the Control palette’s Scale fields by using the shortcut
for Select Contents. Press the shortcut for Select Container to
get back to where you started.
Tip provided by: InDesign Magazine
Technorati Tags: indesign, adobe, indesign magazine, tips, tricks, graphics
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Thursday, August 9th, 2007
Layers magazine Tip of the Day - By: Jeff Witchel
In a previous tip, I discussed “knowhow,” one the panels found under the Window menu > Adobe Labs. The second Adobe Labs panel, found in the same submenu, is called kuler, which is a feed from Adobe’s kuler website. Kuler is an amazing website community that’s a great resource for color exploration, inspiration, and experimentation, as well as sharing of color combinations with other members ? http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/kuler If you’ve used Live Color, you’re already familiar with many of the kuler tools.
Any of the color combinations listed in the kuler panel in Illustrator (highest rated, newest, most popular) can be saved to your Swatches panel as a Color Group simply by clicking the Swatches button at the bottom of the panel. You can also join the website to participate in the kuler community and download your favorite color combinations to load into Illustrator, InDesign and other Creative Suite applications.
Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Adobe� Certified Training Provider.
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Monday, June 11th, 2007
In working with complex designs that contain lots of objects, it’s important to be able to select similar objects quickly and easily. That’s why Select Similar Objects has been added to the Control panel. If you draw some simple shapes, some of which share the same Stroke attributes, others the same Fill color, and others the same Opacity, you’ll see how it works.
Select any one of the objects and then click on the Select Similar Objects pop-up menu just to the right of the Opacity section in the Control panel. As soon as you select the search attributes from the menu, all objects that share those attributes will be selected. Select another object and click on the Select Similar Objects button and the same selection options will be applied for this different object. That’s quick and easy!
Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Adobe® Certified Training Provider.
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Friday, June 8th, 2007
If your just coming into this post I suggest you check out part 1 .
- Collaborating with other artists and making “ART” happen.
I usually look for a project to get the creative flow going. You can find many of these in several well known websites.
I normally start a well known event called “Photoshop Tennis”.
This is when 2 or more artists/designers get together and make creative results with several pictures (provided by stock image sites), everyone involved will be given a round to create an image from another image then handed down to the next person on the next round then again…create something from the image provided rom the round before. This goes on for 10 rounds…giving the participants the creative flow and getting out of the blocked stage.
This is regularly done for fun, but its great when you need that extra boost when searching for that idea.
[More to come later in the week]
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Sunday, January 7th, 2007
Adobe Illustrator CS2 Tip – Have Your Pick of Colors.
Did you know that there’s a “Photoshop like” Color Picker in Illustrator? Just double-click on the Fill box at the bottom of your Tools palette or in your Color palette and the Color Picker window will open. After picking your perfect color, click OK and drag the Fill box from your Color palette to the Swatches palette and Save it as a Swatch to use again and again.
Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Certified Adobe® Training Provider.
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