Free InDesign keyboard shortcuts

One of the handouts that I give to participants in my InDesign on-site training seminars is a quick reference guide to all the keyboard shortcuts in InDesign. If you haven't had the good fortune to have me do InDesign training at your company, you can still get a copy of the keyboard shortcut guide copy of the keyboard shortcut guide here. I've worked hard to organize the shortcuts into recognizable language, and still have them all fit on two sides of a letter-size page. There are both CS2 and CS3 versions, for Macintosh and Windows platforms. I hope you find these useful!

Case sensitive searches in Bridge

One of the great features of Bridge is the ability to do a Find based on the metadata in your files. I generally try to add all keywords and other metadata all lowercase, except for proper names. But you may not know if the text you are searching for is upper or lowercase. Luckily, if you search for a word or phrase in any of the individual metadata fields in Bridge CS3, the search is not case-sensitive. However, if you select the "All Metadata" option, the search is case-sensitive.

For example, if you have some images with "Horse" with a capital "H" in the description field, if you search for "Description contains horse" (lowercase h) it will still find the image. However, if you search for "All Metadata contains horse" it will not find the image. You would need to choose "All Metadata contains Horse" (uppercase h) for the image to be found.

I can't think of any logical reason why Bridge would be intentionally designed this way, and have reported this as a bug to Adobe.

Twin Cities InDesign User Group meeting

If you are in the Twin Cities, MN area, please join us on Tuesday, February 26, 7:00 p.m. at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design for the next meeting of the Twin Cities InDesign User Group. As of this writing, there are 118 people registered to attend, so I expect a crowd. These meetings are always fun, informative, and FREE! Registration is required. Click here for more information, or to register for the meeting.

Build PDF tooltips inside InDesign

A client recently asked if there was a way to add PDF "tooltips" to a page, so that when a reader hovers over an acronym, a tooltip appears that defines the acronym. I put my thinking cap on, and developed a technique for adding these tooltips right in InDesign. It seemed like a neat technique, so I wrote it up for InDesign Magazine. You can download a reprint of the article here: Build PDF Tooltips Inside InDesign (1.7mb PDF file). (InDesign Magazine is an excellent resource. If you don't already subscribe, you should! See the last page of the PDF for a special subscription rate.)

Drag and drop tricks with Bridge

One of the most useful features of Adobe Bridge is the ability to drag and drop assets (images, artwork, logos, and even text files) from Bridge into other Creative Suite programs, including InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks, (as well as Word, Powerpoint and Publisher).

To make dragging and dropping easier, switch to “Compact Mode” in Bridge by clicking on the compact mode button in the upper-right corner of the window or hitting command-return (Mac) or ctrl-enter (Windows). This does three things:

1. It causes the Bridge window to stay on top of all other windows

2. It returns the Bridge window to the previous size and location from the last time you entered Compact Mode

3. It hides all other Bridge Panels except for the Content panel.

Here's another neat trick: Say you have a Photoshop file open, you're browsing through some images in Bridge, and you locate one that you want to add to your Photoshop file as a new layer. Unfortunately, you can't drag and drop from Bridge into Photoshop. But if you select an image in Bridge CS3 and choose File > Place > In Photoshop, the image will be added to your existing Photoshop file as a new Smart Object layer.

Adobe Stock Photos service to be discontinued

Adobe announced today that Adobe Stock Photos is being discontinued, effective April 1, 2008. I'm sorry to see this unique Web service go, as it integrated the Stock Photo search, comp, and purchasing experience seamlessly with Adobe Bridge, InDesign and Illustrator. More information and a utility for uninstalling the Adobe Stock Photos features from the Creative Suite can be found here.