InDesign CS5’s new double click behavior and groups
Just finished writing a long overdue blog-post for InDesign Secrets. Taking a closer look at InDesign CS5’s new double-click behaviour when working with Grouped objects. Hope you all enjoy the read 
Group work (InDesign Secrets)
Topics: Adobe, InDesign | No Comments »
Multi-Find/Change for Adobe InDesign and InCopy released
The new Multi-Find/Change Plug-in developed by Martinho da Gloria of Automation is simply amazing… It simplifies the Find/Change process in InDesign by allowing us to build Find/Change sets that include many Find/Change Queries, including those saved within InDesign… and run a series of Find/Change commands grouped within a set with a single mouse-click. The plug-in is user friendly and has an easy to understand click and drag interface that even allows us to undo all changes in one quick step if we’re not happy with the result and share our query sets with others.
This makes a huge difference from how we might have processed documents in the past…
Imagine this: You’re working on a longer document, let’s say an annual report. You’ve received the text in Word document format, and import this into InDesign to commence the layout process. It’s something we’ve probably all done… and following the import… we might have heard some loud comments going around the office.. “oooh my… I’ve got some cleaning up to do… “. Removing double spaces, removing double carriage returns, changing double tabs to single tabs, running through a document and ensuring certain words are spelled correctly…
InDesign’s Find/Change command would have been of some help. Others might have used the Find’Change By List Script to run through a series of Find/Changes in a ’single’ hit. This script itself does require some knowledge on formatting the accompanying text file correctly that is used to process the multiple commands…
The Multi-Find change script is well worth the price and has been released today.
Watch the following YouTube video to have a bit more of an idea of how this plug-in works and then jump across to the Automatication web-site to get your copy of the plug-in.
Topics: Adobe, InDesign, plug-in | 1 Comment »
Gone fishing in InDesign CS5
Last night’s InDesign User Group meeting in Perth was a great success. Michelle one of our members kept track of the number of new features covered during the 2hr InDesign CS5 show-and-tell session: 34 for the evening! Thank You Michelle for keeping track of the total and dotting the number down on your evaluation form!
To conclude the evening we covered the new Interactive features that Adobe’s added to InDesign CS5. Animation, Object States, Timing etc. Most popular amongst these features was the creation of custom motion paths in InDesign CS5.
We witnessed three little fish swim across the page… and playing happily together… I’ve recorded that part of the demo in a short YouTube video.
Topics: Adobe, InDesign, digitip, podcast | No Comments »
Fontographer… It’s back
I received an interesting email from FontLab today… announcing the return of Fontographer. A new version (5) of Fontographer has just been released for Mac and PC. So Fontographer has come back to life after more than a decade of being in hybernation.
I used Fontographer in the very early days, and if I dig into my ancient software archive I will probably still find an original installer disk floating around somewhere, if I remember correctly it was bundled with on of the MacroMedia Studio software bundles?
If you’re an old Fontographer fan, hop onto the new Product Page to find out more…
Topics: Fonts | 6 Comments »
Spaced out dots…
Have you ever wondered why those dotted stroke types in InDesign have a mind of their own? Read my new blog-post “Spaced out dots…” on InDesign Secrets
Topics: Adobe, InDesign | No Comments »
Never miss another IDUG meeting again
I confess… up until now I hadn’t taken the time to set-up the “Upcoming InDesign User Group Meetings” iPhone Web App on my iPhone.
It’s a super quick 4-step process, that makes it super easy to access the Upcoming InDesign User Group Meetings list from your iPhone.
- Launch the web-browser on your iPhone.
- Enter the following URL:
www.indesignusergroup/iphone/meetings/ - Then in the screen that pops up, Tap the plus sign at the bottom
- in the Next screen Tap “Add to Home Screen” … and you’re done
Once you’ve added the iPhone Web App, it becomes just another App icon on your iPhone. Click it and you’ll never have to miss another meeting again… where ever in the world you might be.
Sorry about the out of synch audio… I recorded with and uploaded via QuickTime X.
Topics: Adobe, Apple, InDesign, iPhone | No Comments »
EVENT: InDesign CS5 show-and-tell (Perth IDUG)
The next Perth InDesign User Group meeting is coming up on 22 June 2010. In a 2hr InDesign CS5 show-and-tell InDesign’s new features will be highlighted.
You MUST register for this event, as seats are limited.
Information & Registration:
http://indesignusergroup.com/chapters/perth/events/1471/
Topics: Adobe, InDesign | No Comments »
Better Photoshop Techniques adds Augmented Reality…
To celebrate the arrival of Photoshop CS5, Better Photoshop Techniques magazine, created an exclusive augmented reality back cover for Issue 22.
It’s cool really… Navigate to the Better Photoshop Techniques web-site, take your edition of the magazine, click the special viewer pop-up window, hold out your back-cover and smile for the camera!
Augmented Reality (AR) combines the physical and interactive 3D world. It’s not a new technology, but it will definitely make you jump up and down. I know I did when I first saw this back in March at an Adobe event I attended. Simply wave a piece of paper at the camera and some video is projected on your piece of paper in virtual reality.
Want to know more?
Read “Augmented Reality using a webcam and Flash” on Adobe’s Developer Connection or watch some of the Max 2009 videos on Adobe TV:
- Designing for Augmented Reality. What is it, how is it being used? how can you use it yourself inside of Flash?
- Augmented Reality within Flash Player. (FLAR), superimposing graphics over video…
Topics: Adobe, Photoshop | No Comments »
Displaying Style Overrides in InDesign CS4 (and CS5)
Marc Autret (IndiScripts) wrote another lovely script. According to his own words… it’s the shortest script he’s ever written. The ShowHideLocalFormatting script!
Once installed his script provides a simple on/off mechanism to display any local style overrides that are applied to text. No need to look for that tiny little + symbol in the Character/Paragraph Styles panel… instead a very clear red line marks all the overrides. It even picks up things like hyphenation enabling/disabling, lack of style formatting etc, by placing a red vertical rule at the start of each line in the effected paragraph.
It really is very cool indeed! Merci Beaucoup Marc!
Although Marc doesn’t mention this in his blog-post. I’ve tested the script in InDesign CS5 as well, and it seems to work just as nicely as it does in CS4. That’s super!
Topics: Adobe, InDesign, scripting | 2 Comments »
Awesome InDesign CS5 find by Mike Rankin
Honest, Mike’s one of those super smart people who just finds the coolest gadgets in InDesign CS5. He’s just written a post on InDesign Secrets on Transforming Pages in CS5.
As soon as I read it I thought: Calendars… so I tested his tip and ooooh yeahhhhh baby….. you can now construct your InDesign document with vertical spreads… A much requested feature… What an amazing tip Mike!!!
Not just that… if you Export the InDesign Document as Spreads to PDF… you get a similar result:
A seriously cool find! Thank you Mike!!
This is a great way obviously of providing proofs to your customer, however, I won’t guarantee that your printer will be happy with this
You can actually achieve a similar PDF result from InDesign CS4 as well… (and CS5) … using Rotate Spread View (Pages panel menu) … However, that results initially in a rotated spread PDF (landscape) output. You’d need to use the Rotate Pages command in Acrobat to get the same finished (portrait) result.
Topics: Adobe, InDesign | 3 Comments »