Beginner

Hopefully anyone that has been using InDesign for a time will have found this alread but for newbies or those who don't fiddle with apps…

One of the best things about InDesign over Quark for me is the ability to really control your workspace and keep things hidden and within easy reach at all times. I find it's much easier to work when your workspace is uncluttered and only the panels you need are permanently active. The rest I dock to either the left of the right of the screen.

I know this is a basic tip, but every second person in my office was unaware of it and they encouraged me to post it as something very useful. So here it goes.

This works in most browsers that support tabbed browsing. To create a new tab you can press Apple-T (Cmd-T) and to open a link from an existing page in a new tab you can hold Apple (Cmd) and click.

I've heard the odd person moaning that Apple no longer include Keycaps in their new all singing all dancing OS. This just isn't true, like a lot of things in OS X you just need to know where to look.

If you open up the International settings in System Prefs you should switch on 2 options in the 'input menu' tab; Character Palette and Keyboard viewer.

I'm sure everyone knows that the selected background color by default is the color used when expanding the canvas.

Too many times I see designers altering the background color or swapping foreground and background colors just for a canvas expansion operation. They don't need to do that. The foreground and background colors can be kept untouched.

When you're working with text in Photoshop you may loose changes because you're in the Flash/Illustrator habit of hitting Esc to 'get out' of editing mode with the text tool (while saving changes).

You probably know there's the little "Commit current edit" check mark in the properties toolbar or alternatively, you can switch from the text tool to the V tool, but if you're looking for a shortcut you can just press Apple(Cmd)-Enter to commit changes.

Have you noticed that you can apply the crop command even if your selection is not a rectangular. It can be any shape. Photoshop will detect the most extreme pixels of your selection in each direction and will crop the image accordingly.

If you've ever worked with a huge Photoshop file, you know that it's easy to get lost between the dozens of layers. If you have a large pasteboard with several elements, you can get frustrated trying to find the layer that contains the image you want to move/apply filters to/etc. The tiny thumbnails in the layers palette doesn't do much to help, however, there is a way to do it. Hold down the Control and Command (aka Apple) keys, and click on an image in the pasteboard. A menu will pop up, showing the name of the layer it is on. By selecting the menu item, you switch to the layer.

There is one default setting in PS that I have to change immediately after a fresh installation. In Preferences /General I deselect the option for Zoom Resizes Windows.

Usually I open a window to a certain size and then zoom in/out and scroll in that space. I hate the default setting of the zoom resizing my windows.

You surely know that in PhotoShop you can drop the foreground color to the swatches palette for later reference just by clicking on an empty area of the swatches palette.

But, did you know that it's as easy to delete one too? Unfortunately just dragging the swatch out won't work. However, you can drag it to the tiny trash icon. Even simpler is to press the Alt (Option) key and the cursor turns into a scissor that will allow you to delete a swatch instantly just by clicking on it.