InDesign

Adapted from Adobe InDesign CS4 Bible (Wiley Publishing)
By Galen Gruman

A clipping path is essentially a shape that acts like a cutout mask—anything inside the shape displays and anything outside does not. It’s a very handy way of displaying just the pieces of a graphic that you want to display, such as masking out extraneous background or focusing on a specific portion of a larger image. Clipping paths are also frequently used to control text wrap around graphics.

InDesign can work with clipping paths that are already part of an imported TIFF, JPEG, Photoshop EPS or Photoshop image, or with clipping paths you create in InDesign. And no matter the source of the clipping path, InDesign lets you modify it.

There are obvious benefits to spending the extra time and effort grouping your layers into folders and naming them appropriately.

For one you will appreciate the organization if you have to work further on the file after considerable amount time went by. Second, your coworkers or your css programmer will appreciate a neat file as well.

There are some less obvious and immediate advantages to such tidy practices. Design is not done on paper or on screen. Design is something you do in your mind. You continuously evaluate your work and make further design decisions while you work. Design is an internal dialogue and the result is your design work.

When I launched InDesign CS4 for the first time, it took all of about ten seconds to see that I was going to like what I found. After a few hours of using it, my suspicions were confirmed. Every release of InDesign has brought new and improved features and speed bumps, but none have brought more than Adobe’s latest offering of its flagship page layout application.

While InDesign CS4 offers a host of small improvements and additions, such as inline notes, an improved Story Editor, contact-sheet placement, and a new zoom method, and numerous other small additions, I’m going to focus on some of the major additions that will interest virtually every graphic designer and production artist.

These new features include a new graphical user interface, rotatation of page views, smart layout features, Kuler integration, Flash export, and more.

Read Adobe InDesign CS4 first look.

Have you ever had a problem like the the picture above in InDesign?

All those red zones are above 300% inkt percentage.

So you need to change those percentages, there are a lot of ways of doing it, with profiles and so on...

I found an interesting way in Photoshop. Here it is...

Now it’s possible. Now it’s easy and fun. In this simple tutorial you will learn how to use improved bullets and numbering InDesign’s feature to get numbers on your tickets. Our goal will be to create 1000 tickets, numbered from number 1 to 1000.

Jim from Creative Guy pointed out the great site from Adobe presenting a free Video workshop about Adobe CS3. Have fun learning!

Soon or a later someone will come to you with question: “How I can change background color in my document?”. Simple question but various answers depending on what Adobe application we are talking about.

Looks sweet. I live the non-destructing editing using the new smart filters in Photoshop. Can't beat a live blur. Also, live color looks interesting in Illustrator. What do you think?

The release of CS3 must be near as even Apple posted a CS3 page.

AppleInsider reports, one of the largest online retailers has let slip the entire launch strategy for Adobe's Creative Suite 3 and its various individual apps -- and revealed that PowerPC-based Macs may soon become second-class citizens in the program designer's eyes.