afterglow's blog

Digital Media Designer have just published an article covering some of the new features we can expect from InDesign CS3 when it arrives in Spring 2007. As well as confirming Adobe have an early copy running on an Intel Mac, they cover some of the new capabilities.

Individual Element Transparency
You will be able to adjust the transparency of certain elements such as strokes and fills individually rather than just the whole object as in CS2.

Live Effects
InDesign can now apply effects to objects using a similar scheme to layer styles in Photoshop.

New Fitting Options
You now have the capability to assign a fitting option to boxes before import so pictures can be resized far quicker than the current manual process. This can be saved as a layer style as well.

Multiple Import
You can import multiple instances of text and images at the same time and determine what is inserted where by cycling through them with the arrow keys.

You can see more of the article with screenshots here.

This is a 10.4 tip that was first reported on macosxhints a few days ago. It uses a saved Automator action to call up a pane similar to the iLife Media Browser.

The nice feature of this is the ability to quickly call up your iPhoto library if you need to drag and drop a picture into a project without booting iPhoto. The same function works for your music or media files. It's great timesaver for mocking up ideas in InDesign or other drag and drop aware programs. Normally, it involves booting iPhoto, waiting for it to load, finding the right pic, right clicking and noting the location of the file within the iPhoto folder structure before placing it.

Directions
1.Open up Automator.
2.Click on the iPhoto Icon in the left hand pane
3. Click on the "Ask for Photos" action and drag it to the right hand pane.
4. Save as an Application (or contextual menu item).
5. Drop the new Application in your Dock.
6 You can use the same "Ask for.." function with iTunes or Quicktime.

Another small batch of tips for those that are knee deep in creating graphics through custom shapes and layer styles.

Having recently upgraded (or sidegraded maybe) from a laptop to a desktop based system, I was looking for something other than a mouse/trackpad for ergonomic reasons.

My Powerbook had been a trusty companion on the road for 18 months clocking up 63,000km of use in hostels, river valleys and airport terminals. One thing that you do arguably sacrifice with a laptop is good posture. Laptops are balanced on knees, bent over in connecting lounges and typed on at awkward angles. A mouse was only occasionally used in these scenarios as large flat surfaces were in short supply. However after a period of use, necks will start to ache and prolonged trackpad usage will be detrimental to your wrist. So to avoid this discomfort with a desktop, I decided to start using a tablet, more specifically the Wacom Intous3 A5 Widescreen Tablet. How does it stack up against a trackpad or mouse?

Following on from a previous article on toolbar icon design we're going to tackle it's Big Brother, the Application Icon. The two serve slightly different functions within the program but adhere to the same idea. While we could start on an existing application, we’re going to embrace vaporware and produce an Icon for an Application that doesn’t exist. This is simply to show the process. This tutorial will follow the construction of an Icon for an imaginary application called “Keyfob”. We’ll say that it’s an application for locking and unlocking the Mac remotely. This is partly inspired by a process where someone managed to put their Mac to sleep using a mobile phone.

Where do we start?
A biro pen, a sketchpad and a cup of tea usually works well for me.
However above all these, the most important tool for developing Icons is...?

The brain is a funny thing. This small organ lodged at the top of the body determines every single move, reaction and utterance that you will make from cradle to grave. The mind achieves this efficiently by forming patterns for the thousands of tiny decisions during any day. Something that has sent people to the moon spends the majority it’s time being as uncreative as possible to keep you alive. Tying your shoelaces properly, leaning slightly forward while climbing the stairs, recognising the difference between a speeding bus and a building. All patterns learnt at an early age which are performed effortlessly without any pause or internal debate.

Companies aren’t ignorant of this and have invested deeply in anticipating your future choices and being there to give you the product/service you never knew you needed. In the creative field, your ability to think in new ways is your career. Time to fight for it.

Jakob Nielsen, the usability guru has recently put forward an article outlining how the normal interface conventions may be reaching the end of their useful life.
What You See is What you Get (WYSIWYG) , best typified by the Macintosh interface, may be replaced by What you get is What You See (WYGIWYS) which is a results orientated interface. The leading proponent of this new interaction model?

Office 12....

Read on for a more detailed explantion.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/wysiwyg.html

If you are a regular user of custom shapes in Photoshop, here are a few tips on using them when combined with layer styles. The benefits of using custom shapes for smaller work are the ability to scale losslessly and to experiment with colour and effects by way of saved layer styles.

If you are sending out a group email and want to use a group you have made in Address Book, you can just drag over the group icon from Address Book into the Mail address field. An even easier way is to just type the Group Name in the address field. Mail will recognise it as a collection of email addresses. For instance I use a smart group called Dublin to collect all contacts with an address in the city. Simply typing "Dublin" into the address field will address the mail to all the contacts within that group.
Tested under 10.4

I've been using this utility for about 20 minutes and I'm already a convert. Textpander allows you to make a shortcut for any string of plain/formatted text or pictures. In practice this means entering that regular url, email phrase or picture is just a keystroke away. It installs as a preference pane and a menubar item and allows you to get on with your business without typing out phrases for the ten millionth time in an email. Just pick a short word you would normally never use or a random keystroke.
Best of all it's donationware.
http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?section=textpander