Thu, 28 December 2006
Acrobat 8 Professional introduces a pretty neat feature that will make you feel like you work for a top secret government agency (and maybe you already do). With the Redaction features you will be able to distribute PDFs as you always do, but now you'll be able to hide sensitive information such as birth dates and social security numbers. In this episode you learn how to put this feature to good.
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Mon, 25 December 2006
It's easy to create Web Photo Galleries from the Bridge. However, there are a couple of features in the Bridge for applying metadata tags to your images that the Web Photo Gallery feature in Photoshop will take advantage of. In this 640x480 episode we'll take a look at how to do this. It will greatly enhance the way you put your images up on the web.
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Thu, 21 December 2006
Admittedly Spell Checking is not an exciting feature. However, with InDesign's Dynamic Spelling you can check/correct your spelling as you go. Also with Autocorrect you can correct your common mistyped words automatically as you type them. In this episode I'll show you how to enable Autocorrect and enter your own Autocorrect words.
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Mon, 18 December 2006
Whether you're publishing your own websites or just sharing pictures with friends and family via email, you should really know how to use the Save For Web feature in Photoshop CS2. In this episode I'll show you how to optimize your images to the smallest size you want to achieve.
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Thu, 14 December 2006
Adobe has released a Public Beta of Photoshop CS3! This BONUS EPISODE covers some of the cool new features AND for Mac users this public beta is a Universal Binary which means that it's native to both PowerPC and Intel based Macs. Of course there is a Windows version as well. The Photoshop CS3 Public Beta will be available sometime early on Friday, December 15th for you to download. In the mean time check out this episode to see what you have to look forward to. Also this episode is being posted at 640x480 resolution as a test. Let me know if you like it?
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Thu, 14 December 2006
Tables can be used to layout elements on a page. However, with GoLive CS2 you can also use tables to represent spreadsheet data or bring in data from a database export. In this episode we will see how to bring in a comma delimited file and stylize it using the built-in table styles.
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Mon, 11 December 2006
When someone says, "draw a box in Illustrator" you instinctively reach for the box tool and drag out a box on the page. However, if you need to create the box at a specific size then you need to know how to draw by the numbers. Use the drawing tools in Illustrator CS2 to draw shapes at specific sizes.
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Thu, 7 December 2006
Acrobat has had the ability to combine PDFs into one for some time now. In this episode you will see how to not only Combine PDF pages from various documents into one PDF, but you will also see how to Package multiple PDFs into a new kind of Package document PDF.
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Mon, 4 December 2006
In the last Bridge episode we started to look at the Camera RAW features of the Bridge. In this episode we go even deeper and look at the synchronization features as well as the ability to batch process your camera RAW files into other formats such as JPEG.
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Thu, 30 November 2006
Often we start out formatting a document manually then later on we wish that we had used Character Styles for that manual formatting that we've done. In this episode I will show you how to find text that has manual overrides applied to it and replace it with Style Sheets.
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Mon, 27 November 2006
Most of the tools in Photoshop CS2 have settings that make the tool work a certain way. If you find yourself constantly adjusting tool settings to get the tool to work the way you want it to, then you should be taking advantage of Tool Presets. In this episode I'll show you just how easy it is to set up as many Tool Presets as you need.
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Thu, 23 November 2006
Most websites start out as mockups in Photoshop or Illustrator. In this episode I'll show you how to take a multi-layered Photoshop file and slice it up in Photoshop. Then we'll take that Photoshop file into Adobe GoLive CS2 and assign links to the slices from Photoshop.
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Mon, 20 November 2006
With Illustrator CS2 you have Filters and Live Effects. In this episode I will show you the advantages of using Effects vs. Filters. You'll also see the best practices for setting your Raster Effects Settings. Also if you need to make changes to your effects in the future you'll see how to do so with the Appearance palette.
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Thu, 16 November 2006
When Adobe acquired Macromedia we got a great technology called Breeze. Breeze has been rebranded Acrobat Connect and Acrobat Connect Professional. Acrobat Connect allows you to host online meetings with up to 15 people at a time 24 hours a day. The beauty of Acrobat Connect is that it's based on Flash technology which means that you can be assured that 98% of your meeting participants will be able to participate in your meetings without having to download anything first. Although it's called Acrobat Connect you can use this technology to share your screen/desktop and show any kind of application including PowerPoint presentations. Acrobat Connect is a hosted service and therefore there is a monthly fee. You can signup for a free trial account to try it out.
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Mon, 13 November 2006
If your camera can shoot in Camera RAW you should take advantage of Camera RAW inside the Adobe Bridge. The Bridge offers Camera RAW processing in batch so that you don't have to make your adjustments one-by-one. In this episode we'll take an introductory look at how Camera RAW works.
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Thu, 9 November 2006
One issue that former QuarkXPress users run into all the time is taking the extra step to group their objects together first before resizing them. In InDesign CS2 not only is this not necessary, but it may also cause frustration with the way text sizes are represented after the objects are scaled. In this episode I'll show you the best practices for resizing and I will also show you how to correct the text issues caused by grouping first.
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Mon, 6 November 2006
With Smart Objects in Photoshop you can be confident that you can resize your images down without throwing away any data. This way you can change your mind at a later date and resize your images back up to retain the original quality. You can also group multiple layers into Smart Objects to control various design aspects of your project.
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Thu, 2 November 2006
In our last GoLive episode we took a look at how to export HTML from an InDesign document by first packaging it for GoLive. In this episode we'll take a look at going further into this feature by taking a package from InDesign and building a page from scratch using the elements from the package. These elements are Smart Objects that update the HTML page with the InDesign document is updated.
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Mon, 30 October 2006
Every good illustrator knows the advantage of using a Wacom tablet with Adobe Illustrator. In this episode we'll take a look at the power of using pressure sensitivity. When you plug in a Wacom tablet it doesn't automatically set your tools to be pressure sensitive. I'll show you how to set your brushes to really take advantage of your new tablet.
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Thu, 26 October 2006
Preflighting PDFs in Acrobat Professionals keeps getting better with each version. In previous versions of Acrobat you could run PDFs against the Preflight tool and it would either pass or fail. If it failed you would then have to manually resolve the problems in the PDF or by generating a new PDF. In Acrobat 8 Professional you can now apply "Fix-ups" to correct the most common problems encountered in working with PDFs for print.
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Mon, 23 October 2006
The Adobe Bridge allows you to easily move images between the various CS2 apps. However, it also allows you to manage several aspects of the documents you're viewing. So it's probably a good idea to get a handle on how to be most efficient managing the various views in the Bridge and also to take advantage of Workspaces.
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Thu, 19 October 2006
Adobe InDesign has some amazing layout tools. However, one of the graphic features it borrows from Adobe Illustrator is Compound Paths. In this episode I will show you how to take advantage of Compound Paths to create an effect of looking through window panes into an image. This tip comes from my team member Colin Fleming.
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Mon, 16 October 2006
This tutorial comes from Justin Seeley. Justin is the host of the Photoshop Quicktips podcast. Justin was the star at Photoshop World Midnight Madness this past September with his winning tip of turning a photo into a sketch. His tip won the contest and his prize was a new iPod with video. I asked Justin if I could share his tip with you and he said absolutely. So here it is.
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Thu, 12 October 2006
I get asked the question all the time, "How do I export HTML from InDesign." The answer is "you don't", at least not directly. You Package up your InDesign document for GoLive and let GoLive do the Export for you. In this episode we'll take a multi-page InDesign document and export one of the pages to HTML. I show you the ins and outs of how this feature works.
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Mon, 9 October 2006
Adobe Illustrator is one of the most sophisticated drawing tools on the planet and sometimes we spend so much time on the whiz bang features that we forget that it is a "drawing tool". So in this episode we'll take a look at drawing with custom brushes.
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