In Creative Suite 2 Adobe introduced the Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ASE) file format. With it, you can create custom swatch colors in InDesign, Illustrator, or Photoshop, and import them into the rest without having to manually recreate them. Among several ramifications, that means for print output pros fewer instances of the common problem of the…

Everyone knows InDesign’s Space and Align commands move and distribute objects, but did you know they can also make short work of building a layout grid? Did you know InDesign had a Guides Manager like QuarkXPress?

This week BarryCon, the organizer of the Creative Suite Conferences and the InDesign Conferences, debuted a free video podcast. The opening round is a tutorial from Sandee Cohen, aka VectorBabe, and its guaranteed to make you ooh and ahh.

Everybody knows that creative productivity and efficiency is a huge interest of mine. As a consultant, it’s my specialty–helping creative and publishing workflows eliminate repetitive tasks and inefficient methodologies so they can spend more time being creative and thinking about creativity than thinking about their software and tools. The following tip is one of my…

Changing the document size in Illustrator via File > Document Setup does not update the rulers to accommodate the new document size. Consequently, all your positions will be off in the Transform and Control palettes. Fortunately, it’s an easy fix: If your rulers are hidden, show them with CMD+R (CTRL+R), and then double-click the vertex,…

CMD+S, CMD+W, CMD+S, CMD+W… It gets tedious if you have a number of documents open at once and you’re already running late for a dinner date. Save yourself some time and keystrokes. Use this keyboard shortcut to save all opened documents in fell swoop: CMD+OPT+SHIFT+S (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+S). Once saved, just hit CMD+Q (CTRL+Q) to quit InDesign…