By popular demand Ive added a series of videos explaining the key areas of working with tabs, including: Working with the tabs panel, setting tabs, editing tabs, working with right indents and leaders, aligning to decimals and Working with first line indents.

Hope this helps!

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Working with the tabs panel
[See post to watch Flash video]

Setting Tabs
[See post to watch Flash video]

Editing Tabs
[See post to watch Flash video]

Right Indent Tabs & Leaders
[See post to watch Flash video]

Aligning to Decimals
[See post to watch Flash video]

Indents & First Line Indents
[See post to watch Flash video]

I’m excited to announce the launch of my new title at infiniteskills.com. If you’re looking for a thorough training resource on Wordpress, this is it.

The WordPress Unleashed video course from Infinite Skills offers an innovative and easy guide for beginning bloggers.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 23, 2009 - A new training series designed to help WordPress newcomers launch and maintain their own blogs is available from Infinite Skills, a quality provider of e-learning and interactive media. With over four hours of hands-on guidance, the course covers a wide spectrum of common questions and useful techniques, with longtime instructor Neil Oliver providing helpful narration every step of the way. The innovative teaching format makes use of video screenshots of the WordPress dashboard and configuration screens so that learners are guided through the entire creative process.

Now in version 2.8.4, WordPress has been a popular blogging platform and content management system in use for over six years. With each new update to the software, stability improvements and user-friendly enhancements have made their way into the code, and many people are finding that there has never been a better time to start their own blog. While the default WordPress configuration is developed so that users can create basic posts with minimal effort, more complex and interactive sites often require a finer understanding of the way the system works.

The Infinite Skills WordPress training was created to break down the complicated and tedious work of setting up a customized blog into a series of easy steps. After addressing hosting options, the course dives right into the WordPress dashboard to familiarize beginners with the full suite of controls at their disposal and to point out often overlooked or misunderstood settings. Significant time is devoted to posting new content and managing previously published material, and hands-on guidance is provided in uploading multimedia content, managing categories and comments, adding multiple users to a single blog, using widgets and plugins and more.

The Infinite Skills video format is designed to take the best of classroom instruction–thoroughness, clarity and expert quality instruction–and combine it with the affordability and ease of use that digital media can offer. Users are also free to control the speed of the course and the order in which they view lessons in the series. These simple but effective innovations allow a course that is both comprehensive but suited for individualized needs.

The tutorial can be purchased as a hardcopy disc version compatible with both Mac and Windows computers or viewed in its entirety by special subscribers online. More information about the WordPress Unleashed Tutorial Video and Training DVD is available on the product’s web site, including free online samples of several lessons and a point by point list of subjects covered: http://www.infiniteskills.com/training/wordpress-unleashed.html

About Infinite Skills Inc
Harnessing a full library of titles developed by in-house experts and sourced from the best teachers in the world, Infinite Skills strives to become the definitive e-learning destination on the web through superior customer service and educational innovation.

This is your last chance to see CS4 live and in the flesh in 2009. Tips, Tricks and Techniques to help you get more from your software and help the fight against cancer all at the same time. Learn from Industry Experts how to become more proficient and get more from you suite. All of the time, marketing and facilities have been donated for this event.

When: Sept 30th, from 9.00am to 4.00pm

Where: Zenith Centre, Railway St, Chatswood NSW 2067

Agenda
Registration - 8.45am
9.00am – 10.00am - The Fast & The Furious with After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop -
10.00am – 1.00pm - The Workflow Shoot out - InDesign, Photoshop, Flash & Illustrator 12 workflow techniques to get the best from your CS4
Part 1 10.00am – 11.00am Coffee break Part 2 11.20am - 1.00pm
Lunch break 1.00 - 1.30pm
1.30 - 2.15pm Wired for Sound - Become an audio aficionado with Soundbooth
2.15 - 4.00pm Flash Forward - Leverage the social power of Flash to stretch your brand

Tickets are $100 and are fully tax deductible as donation to the Cancer Council.

For more info click here

Most people overlook this, but there is a little symbol on the far right side of the control panel that looks the same as you would see in any panel InDesign. Commonly known as the drop down/flyout/pull down (breath) menu. It’s the one with the down facing triangle with three horizontal lines next to it. If you select it, a menu will appear with loads of different options. Take a good look: you may find something useful there. To customize the control panel choose “Customize…”

From here you can control what appears under each of the five categories (Object, Character, Paragraph, Tables, Other). It can save you a lot of time if the control panel is set up to give you what you need quickly. Try it out!

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

I recently came across a great resource for helping anyone prepare for an ACE exam. Checkout http://www.examaids.com/ these guys provide a simulated learning and testing application for each of the leading creative suite apps. This is as close as it get to taking the actual exam and I highly recommend it for anyone considering taking an exam.

Here are the links to the InDesign examaids: MAC: http://www.examaids.com/products/InDesign-CS4-ACE-Exam-Aid-for-Mac-OS.html and PC: http://www.examaids.com/products/InDesign-CS4-ACE-Exam-Aid-for-Windows.html

Ask me what my number one annoyance is in InDesign and I’ll probably give you a different answer every time. But this one is up there. Have you noticed when you zoom out a few times that all the text within your document turns into grey bars? How are you supposed to get a good feel for your design when this happens?

I find this problem really distracting, and if you do too you can turn it off via your preferences. Choose, InDesign > Preferences (Mac) or Edit > Preferences (PC) and select the Display Performance tab, under Adjust View Settings you will see by default Typical. Below are all the settings relevant to that Typical display setting. If you change Greek Type Below from 7pt to 1pt you won’t have to worry about the problem of text turning to grey bars again when zooming out.

I would also recommend changing the Greek Type Below option for the Fast and High Quality settings. This can be done by changing the Adjust View Settings drop down menu to Fast or High Quality and entering 1pt in the Greek Type Below field.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Do you place images from everywhere and anywhere when working in InDesign, ie a server, hard drive, usb, desktop etc? You aren’t the only one. I’m as guilty as the next guy. For some reason it just seems easier to work like this. Personally, I can be far more creative when not having to worry about file management.

Really though, we should be looking after our images and making sure they’re located in the same folder as our InDesign file. It makes good sense and can be easier to manage our links in the end working this way. If you do place images from all over the place, there’s no need to hunt around for your files, copy them to a new location and then relink them, InDesign can do all that hard work for you.

To do this, select all your links via the link panel, go to the flyout menu within the links panel (top right) and select Utilities > Copy Link(s) To… Now all you need to do is choose the location you want to save them in and press OK. That’s it, all files will now be copied to a new location and relinked automatically within your InDesign file. Life saver!

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

New to InDesign Cs4 is the ability to rotate your spread or page view. You can rotate by 90° CW, 90° CCW, or 180°. To do this, simply select a page or spread from the pages panel. Now that you have it selected, “Right Click”/”Control Click” the page or spread, from the contextual menu that appears choose “Rotate Spread View” and then either 90° CW, 90° CCW, or 180°. Your page is now rotated and you will notice a small rotation symbol that now exists next to your page, indicating the page has been rotated.

You can edit your document as you would normally if your page/spread has been rotated. This form of rotation is visual only, your page won’t print this way, nor will it appear rotated when you export a pdf. It is only to make viewing your document easier.

It’s probably best to remove your rotation once you’re finished with this view. To do this, “Right Click”/”Control Click” the rotation symbol to the right of the page/spread and choose “Clear Rotation”.

There are other ways to rotate your spread, you may want to try these:

• View > Rotate Spread

• Go to the fly out menu (upper right side) of the pages panel and choose “Rotate Spread View”

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

I continually see people (newbies and other) adding space after a paragraph by hitting Enter twice on their keyboard (cringe). Please don’t. If you need to add space after a paragraph, take advantage of the wonderful typographic control InDesign provides. The best way to control the space after a paragraph is to use the “Space After” field within the paragraph panel/control panel. Doing this allows you to edit spacing easily.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

I continually cross paths with InDesign users who run into the problem of copying text from MS Word, and then pasting into InDesign, finding that they have retained MS Words formatting attributes. Or people who want to retain MS Words formatting and can’t.

There is a quick fix to this problem; it all comes down to one preference. If you go to your preferences, InDesign > Preferences > Clipboard Handling (Mac), Edit > Preferences > Clipboard Handling (PC), under the “When placing text and table from other applications” section you will find two options. All Information or Text Only. All Information means all formatting from MS Word will be retained when you paste into InDesign. Text Only means all formatting will be removed when you paste. That’s it.

If you want to set this preference permanently you may want to check out the differences between local and global preferences in InDesign here.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Thanks for joining me today! As promised here is the link to get 20% of my Photoshop Elements training title http://www.infiniteskills.com/e7.htm

You will be able to watch today’s eSeminar in a week or so at http://adobeeseminars.com.au/ondemand/view/photography

It doesn’t matter how experienced you are in InDesign this one will get you at one time or another. If you’re in the habit of using the built in workspaces, you may find that a few of your menu items disappear. For example, if I change over to the interactivity workspace and then go to View > Overprint Preview, it’s not there…

This is because you can customise menu items and then save those customisations into a workspace. If you want your hidden menu items to appear again, go to the bottom of the menu item and choose “Show All Menu Items”. All the hidden menu items now appear. If you leave the menu and then come back again later, you will need to do this same process over again. To avoid this and reveal your menu items permanently, go to Window > Workspace > Show Full Menus or go to the workspace switcher in the control panel and choose Show Full Menus. Now all your menu items will always be visible for your current work space.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

New to InDesign Cs4 is the Kuler panel. Kuler is an online reservoir of swatches that are shared from designer to designer around the world at no cost. It gives you the ability to explore, create and share colour themes around the globe. If you’re lacking in inspiration and can’t think of a colour for a theme, give it a go.

To access the Kuler panel within InDesign go to Window > Extensions > Kuler. The Kuler panel will now appear on your screen. There’s much I could say about Kuler, I don’t want to bore you, Kuler is way to cool for that. Watch the tutorial below.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Changing tools all the time can get really annoying, and having to go back and forth to the tool panel is something I try to avoid as much as possible. If you’re wanting to quickly pan and then zoom in to another area of your page or document, you may want to give the new Power Zoom feature a go.

If you want to access Power Zoom, press “H” on your keyboard to access the Hand tool. Now that the Hand tool is active, click and hold (don’t let go) for a second on the document page. InDesign now zooms your spread right out and a red rectangle appears on your screen, replacing your normal mouse cursor. InDesign is now waiting for you to move to another part of the spread or even another page altogether and release. When you release (let go) InDesign zooms your page into that spot with the same zoom level as previous. This is so quick and easy.

A variation on this is if you click and hold (don’t let go) and want to change your zoom magnification, you simply use your arrow keys on the keyboard to make the red rectangle smaller (results in a larger magnification) or larger (results in a smaller magnification).

Also, if you’re working away and don’t want to change tools, you can access the keyboard shortcut for the hand tool “Spacebar” and then use this Power Zoom feature in the same way. When you let go you’re back on the tool you had selected previously.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Contact sheets are a popular way of viewing a range of images quickly. InDesign CS4 now lets you create your own contact sheets by the familiar “File > Place” command.

To create a contact sheet go to “File > Place”, select a range of images (select one image then hold shift to select a continuous row of images) from the dialogue that appears and choose “Open”. At this stage you’re doing nothing other than placing images, the key now is to use the keyboard shortcut “Command + Shift” (Mac) / “Control + Shift” (PC). With this shortcut held, click and drag (don’t let go) on your document page; you will see a grid appear, indicating the arrangement of the rows and columns within your contact sheet. You can let go of the keyboard now, however you don’t want to release your mouse yet. Before you release, you can customise how many rows and columns appear and arrange the images to suit. All you need to do is use your arrow keys. Left and right will increase/decrease columns, up and down will increase/decrease rows.

If you have selected 10 images to place with an arrangement of 2 columns x 3 rows, you will find the place cursor will still be active with the four remaining images. Create a new page and follow the same steps to place the remaining images.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

I’m excited to announce the launch of my new title at infiniteskills.com. If you’re looking for a thorough training guide to Adobe Photoshop Elements 7, this is it. You can check it out here.

Press Release

New Photoshop Elements 7 Tutorial - Training Video on CD

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 10, 2009 - New York, NY - Infinite Skills Inc, a trusted source in cost effective professional software training, has just launched an exciting Photoshop Elements 7 Tutorial Video. Available on CD or via streaming video online, this comprehensive course has been developed to help users who have purchased Elements and want to use the software to its fullest advantage. Beginning with a detailed tour of the main interface and Organizer and covering everything from white balance to whitening teeth, users get a hands-on introduction to this versatile and often misunderstood program.

Because it costs so much less than its more established cousin, Photoshop Elements is often thought of as a watered down version of Adobe Photoshop. That couldn’t be further from the truth. While the first versions of Elements had their limitations, Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 delivers on the promise of offering a repurposed Photoshop focusing on home use. It utilizes many of the same features that make PS the go-to tool for professional designers and photographers, but it makes them easier to use. Users can work with layers, replace colors and create gradients, for example, but they also get the added functionality that comes with Elements’ photo organizing and sharing tools. Your photos weren’t taken to just sit on a hard drive, and Elements gives you easy options for creating your own photobooks, calendars and collages in a series of steps.

Written and led by professional multimedia consultant Neil Oliver, the tutorial shows you how to get professional quality results from your own home with a program that costs a fraction of traditional industry software. There are plenty of manuals on the market that promise to make learning the software quick and easy, but they rely on text descriptions and static screenshots for their examples. These intuitive instructional videos show you how to get your results directly from the Elements interface, with realtime walkthroughs that appear exactly as they do on your own computer.

While the course is built with a beginning, middle and end, it also gives you the freedom to easily skip around and learn at your own pace. Lessons are divided into short, digestible segments based on the subject covered, and that makes it especially easy for more experienced users who just want to learn specific techniques or review. There are several project-oriented lessons that show you practical uses for Elements 7, such as patching together multiple shots for a panorama or optimizing images to be used on the web. With a diverse array of topics covered and an intuitive format, the tutorial video truly has something to offer everyone.

About Infinite Skills Inc

Harnessing a large library of titles developed in-house as well as resources from some of the best teachers in the world, Infinite Skills strives to become the definitive e-learning destination on the web.

Free demo lessons and more information on the Photoshop Elements 7 Tutorial on CD can be found on the infiniteskills.com

Not sure if you noticed, this site was down for about 4 hours. I started off this morning thinking, it’s about time I posted something on creativementor.com.au. Before I started my post, I noticed a new version of Wordpress was available for upgrade. Thinking nothing of it I clicked the upgrade button, didn’t I…

Turns out that wasn’t the best idea. The upgrade failed, whilst failing it deleted all the files on my database and the database itself. That’s about 18 months of posts gone. You could imagine the type of response…

Well I didn’t react as you might expect. It was more of a deer in the headlights reaction. I got up, went down the road and got a coffee, made a phone call and here we are. All restored.

It wasn’t by my own genius either, lucky my hosting company keeps a backup of the past three weeks.

Sorry for any inconvenience…

Once you have created a button, you need to apply an action to it in order to build functionality into your button. You have two controls over the functionality of your button, the Event and Action. The Event allows you to control when the action will become active. The Action controls the behaviour of the button.

Here is a list of the different Events and Actions available:

EVENTS

On Release: When the mouse button is released after a click.

On Click: When the mouse button is clicked (without being released).

On Roll Over: When the mouse pointer enters the button area defined by the button’s bounding box.

On Roll Off: When the mouse pointer exits the button area.

On Focus: When the button receives focus, either through a mouse action or pressing the Tab key.

On Blur: When the focus moves to a different button or form field.

ACTIONS

Close (PDF): Closes the PDF document.

Exit (PDF): Exits the application, such as Adobe Reader, in which the PDF document is open.

Go To Anchor: Jumps to the specified text anchor.

Go To First/Last/Next/Previous Page: Jumps to the first, last, previous, or next page in the PDF or SWF file.

Go To Previous View (PDF): Jumps to the most recently viewed page in the PDF document, or returns to the last used zoom size.

Go To Next View (PDF): Jumps to a page after going to the previous view. In the same way that a Forward button is available in a web browser only after someone clicks the Back button, this option is available only if the user has jumped to a previous view.

Go To Page (SWF Only): Jumps to the page in the SWF file you specify.

Go To URL: Opens the web page of the specified URL.

Movie (PDF): Lets you play, pause, stop, or resume the selected movie.

Open File (PDF): Launches and opens the file that you specify. If you specify a file that is not PDF, the reader needs the native application to open it successfully.

Show/Hide Buttons: Toggles between showing and hiding specified buttons in the exported PDF or SWF file.

Sound (PDF): Lets you play, pause, stop, or resume a sound clip.

View Zoom (PDF): Displays the page according to the zoom option you specify.

InDesign also allows you to add rollover functionality to a button. This can be done from the State Appearances section of the Buttons panel. Once an object has been converted to a button, it now has three different appearances. Normal, Rollover and Click. Normal lets you maintain the original appearance of the button, Rollover is where you can create a different appearance when someone hovers over the button, and Click allows you to have yet another appearance when someone clicks on the button. To change the appearance of a State, simply select your button, then double click on the particular state you are wanting to edit. That appearance will now be active (highlighted in blue), you can edit the object whilst it’s in that appearance, and it will only affect that State. When you’re done editing your appearances, it’s best to double click back on the Normal State so your design looks as expected. When you export to PDF/SWF the rollovers will be present.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Buttons allow you to create real control over how a person will interact with your dynamic PDF/SWF. You can create buttons that will to go to particular page, take a client to your website, send you an email, open a file or even open a movie. In this post I’m going to show you how to create a button.

You can create a button from any text frame, graphic frame or object within InDesign. To create buttons it’s best to work from the Buttons panel. This can be found in the Window menu “Window > Interactive > Buttons”. When you’re ready to create a button, simply select the object with the Selection tool and click on the “Convert to Button” icon (see image below) at the lower right of the buttons panel.

Once your object has been converted to a button, you will see a button icon appear within the lower right of the object. This is a visual indicator only, it won’t print. If you cant see this little button icon within your new button, it may be for a few reasons; 1. You may need to zoom in on the object a little, 2. You may be in preview mode. If so, hit “W” to exit/enter preview mode, 3. You may have “Hide frame edges” on - to turn this off go to the view menu and choose “Show Frame Edges”.

Once you have converted an object to a button you can convert it back to a normal object by selecting it with the Selection tool and clicking where the “Convert to Button” icon was. It is now a “Convert Button to a Object” icon.

Rather than creating your own buttons InDesign, CS4 has some sample buttons built right into the application. You can access these sample buttons directly from the flyout menu of the Buttons panel (see image below), or you could change to the Interactive workspace. The sample buttons will be docked on the right of your screen. The sample buttons panel won’t be found within the Window > Interactive menu, don’t get caught out.

To add one of these sample buttons to your layout, first select it and then drag it directly to your layout. One advantage of using these sample buttons is that they are already interactive with actions applied. We’ll be looking at adding interactivity to buttons in the next post.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

This video tutorial explains where in InDesign the interactive features are found. It also shows you the built in workspace for working with interactivity.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Thanks for joining me today! Below you will find the links to the working files…

Dynamic SWF after interactivity was applied

PDF document explaining interactivity

INDD working file (no links)

You might also want to check out this link for more info on InDesign’s interacitve capabilitites from Adobe Support.

Did you know InDesign can export to Flash and SWF? Did you know you can create interactive documents with movies, sound, buttons, rollovers, hyperlinks, bookmarks, page transitions and much more?

Check out my recent eSeminar on all thing interactive http://pacific.adobe.acrobat.com/p37436991/.

…

If you’ve ever wanted to get a clear look at your design without all the distracting ruler guides and margins, then you need to go into Preview mode. There are four preview modes available when viewing your document page, Normal, Preview, Bleed and Slug. “Normal” is how you’ve always previewed your document pages, with all the ruler guides and margins visible. “Preview” removes all the ruler guides and margins from view giving you a clear look at your design so you can accurately conceptualize how the design is looking. “Bleed” and “Slug” do the same as “Preview’ with the addition of the document bleed or slug now being visible.

To access your preview mode simply press “W” on your keyboard. By default when you press “W” you will toggle between “Normal” and “Preview” modes. If you want to access the other preview modes you need to locate the preview icon at the very bottom of the tool panel. If you click and hold for a second, a menu will appear where you can specify which mode you want. Once you select that mode from the tool panel, it will be set as the default preview mode when you use the keyboard shortcut “W”.

If you have trouble remembering to check for bleed within a document, you really should set “Bleed” as your default preview mode (as well as using InDesign CS4’s new Preflight feature). With bleed as your preview mode you can quickly scan over the page edges and drag out any images for frames that should be bleeding off the page.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Libraries are the next step in the evolution of a Snippet. Basically a Library is a placeholder for multiple Snippets. The advantage is they are always at the ready in their own library panel, and you get a preview of the Snippet within the Library panel.

To create a Library go to File > New > Library. A dialogue will appear, you can choose where to save the Library file and also name it accordingly. When done, choose Save. Now a new Library panel will open with the same name you just created.

To add a Snippet to your Library, select the element or elements you want to include as a Snippet, then drag them to the Library panel. Now you have a Snippet saved in your Library. If you want to give it a name rather that leave it call “Untitled”,  just double click on the Snippet and rename it within the dialogue that appears. If you want to do this quickly hold down Option/Alt when you drag your page elements into your library panel. Now you can rename them on the fly.

To place a Library Snippet back on your document page simply drag your Snippet from the Library panel to the document page. The Snippet will be placed wherever you drop it. Alternatively you can place the Snippet in the same location that it was in when it was created. To do this accurately you need to make sure the document size is the same as it was when that particular Snippet was created. Then “Right click” or “Control click” on the Snippet and choose “Place Items”. Now the elements are placed in exactly the same position as when they where created.

The library file you create is not document specific, it will remain open for every document you open. If you want an individual library for each job, create a new one with each job and save it in the same location as your Indesign file. Then you need to open the correct Library file depending on the job you’re working on. To open a Library double click it or go to File > Open.

A great advantage of Snippets and Libraries is that you can share or email them off to your colleagues.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Snippets can save you loads of time, especially when it comes to repetitive elements that you use over and again.

To create a Snippet, all you need to do is select either an individual page element or multiple page elements. For instance, I could select just a logo or I could select a logo and a text frame. Now all you need to do is drag the selected elements to your desktop. I know that may seem strange at first, however now you’ll see a file has been created on your desktop. It should have a file name similar to this: Snippet_3001C897A.idms. You may want to rename it so it has some relevance to what it actually is, especially if you’re going to be creating lots of Snippets.

This Snippet can now be placed bank into any other new or existing document. To place on your page simply drag the Snippet back onto a document page. You could also place the Snippet as you would any other graphic using File > Place.

It may benefit you to go through your jobs and make as many Snippets as is relevant, so you can easily place all sorts of design elements very quickly next time round, instead of having to dig through old archives to find what you’re looking for in the future. You can create a Snippet of as many items as you like. You could even create a Snippet of a complete page.

The best thing about Snippets for me though, is the fact that a Snippet is generally really small in file size, meaning I can email it off to someone on the other side of the world. They then can place that Snippet directly onto their document page.

Any swatches and styles associated to the elements within a Snippet will automatically come into a document when that Snippet is placed on a page.

Two things to be aware of are:

1. Snippets created in CS4 aren’t compatible in CS3 by default
2. If you create a Snippet of a linked graphic and send that Snippet to someone else, they need to have access to the location of that link in order for it to not appear as missing. If they don’t have access to the link you will need to send it to them and get them to relink to it in the links panel.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

If you need to copy pages from one document to another, don’t be fooled into using the old Copy and Paste method. Instead use “Move Pages”. Using ”Move Pages” allows you to move your pages between documents while maintaining a lot of the document specific attributes like margins, bleeds, master pages, swatches and styles. Copy and Paste just doesn’t compare.

For ideal results, it’s best if the document you’re copying from and to have the same page dimensions (width and height). If they aren’t it will still work, however the alignment of the page items will be slightly different.

From the “Pages” panel select the page/s you’re wanting to move or copy, by clicking on their page number. Now selected, go up to the flyout menu within the pages panel and choose ”Move Pages”. A dialogue now appears which lets you set what pages you want to move, where you want them placed within the document, and what document you want to move them to. You must have the document you’re wanting to move the pages to open. When set choose “OK”. There’s no real indication that anything has happened, however if you switch across to the document you moved the pages to you’ll see that everything worked nicely.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

You have the ability to set your own custom Indent when working within a paragraph. Insert your type cursor before the character you want to indent, then go to the “Type” menu and choose “Special Characters > Other > Indent to Here”. An indent is now set at that point. Every line of text after that indent will now line up exactly with your custom indent. This eliminates the need for unnecessary tabbing and all the other crazy work arounds people use to do this.

If you want to speed things up, you could “Right Click” (Two button mouse) or “Control Click” (One button mouse), you could also use the keyboard shortcut “Command” + “\” (MAC) or “Control” + “\” (PC).

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Have you noticed when you’re working within a text frame with your type tool active, you can’t pan around to another part of the document page without adding multiple spaces to your text? This is a regular annoyance for a lot of InDesign users.

The solution is simple! If you are working with text and you have your type tool active within a text frame, simply hold down “Option” (MAC) or “Alt” (PC). You have now temporarily changed to the Hand Tool and can navigate around your page freely. When done, let go of Option/Alt and you can continue working with your text. This eliminates the need to use scroll bars or manually select different tools from the tools panel.

You could also try ”Command” (MAC) or “Control” (PC) which allows you to move the active text frame.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Object Styles allow you to capture object specific attributes such as fill, stroke, corner options, paragraph styles (my fave), text frame options, baseline options, story options, text wrap, anchored objects and frame fitting options. You can also capture transparency attributes and effects.

In previous posts this month we have looked at how to create styles, style overrides, redefining and breaking the link to the style, so I’m not going to go over that here with Object Styles. The methods are the same, just remember when working with an Object Style you need to be working from the “Object Styles” panel.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

You can embed a Drop Cap within a paragraph style easily. When you create a new paragraph style go down to the “Drop Caps and Nested Styles” tab. From the Drop Caps section, simply enter how many lines you would like the Drop Cap to cover, and also how many characters should be included as a Drop Cap.

You can also choose to apply a character style to your drop caps. If you haven’t yet created one, you can create it directly from the Character Style drop down menu, choose “New Character Style…”.

For more information on this topic via Adobe Help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]