Future versions of Creative Suite Intel-only

Adobe posted a FAQ today on their Website titled Support for the PowerPC platform, in which they state that:

"Adobe intends for future versions of the Creative Suite range of products to run on Intel based Macs with no support for their installation on PowerPC systems."

This means that if you are a Macintosh user, and you're still running a non-Intel Mac (aka a "PowerPC" system), you won't be able to run the next version of the Creative Suite.

This shouldn't come as a big surprise, since even Apple is dropping support for non-Intel Macs with the upcoming "Snow Leopard" version of Mac OS X, due in September.

How to control the opening view in Acrobat

Like me, you probably spend a great deal of time opening and viewing PDFs. You might as well make this as simple and painless as possible. You can easily set your preferences to make PDFs appear just they way you want them to, every time. Here's how:

In Acrobat, choose Acrobat > Preferences (Macintosh) or Edit > Preferences (Windows) or press command-k (Macintosh) or ctrl-k (Windows). In the Preferences dialog box, choose the Page Display category, and then change the Page Layout and Zoom settings to whatever you want them to be. I prefer to have the Page Layout set to Single Page, and the Zoom set to Fit Page.

This will make most PDF files open the way you want them to, but there's one exception. The creator of a PDF file can specify the opening view of a PDF. When this is done, it will override the preferences on your computer for that PDF file. In other words, the creator of a PDF can specify that a particular PDF always should open at 200%, facing pages view on everyone's computer, regardless of their preferences. But the vast majority of PDF files specify this, in which case your preference settings apply.

In my next post, I'll show how you as the creator of a PDF can specify the opening view for your audience.

Advice for designers during tough times

The 2009 AIGA|Aquent Survey of Design Salaries 2009 is available now. In addition to the usual tables that summarize average salary ranges for designers, art directors, production artists and copywriters around the United States, this year's issue contains insightful commentary from top designers on how to stay competitive during an economic downturn.

A few excerpts:

"Position yourself narrowly so that you are less relevant to the majority but deeply sought by a minority that values expertise." -- David C. Baker

"Focusing does not mean cutting back on what you know—only perhaps on what you do. There’s a big difference." -- Alexander Isley

"Many of us designers look down our noses at the business aspect of our profession, in which creativity reigns supreme. Never forget that if you do not operate your practice like a business, there will be no place for your creativity to live." -- Judy Kirpich

"When was the last time you picked up the phone and connected in person with your most important contacts? If you have people out there advising and advocating for you, be sure to keep them apprised of how you’re doing, thank them often and stay in touch regularly—no matter where you’re at with employment. This is one of the most valuable uses of downtime, but it’s actually something designers should be doing at all times!" -- Monica Little

You can download the entire report in PDF format here.

Easily delete text in InDesign/InCopy

Bonnie wrote today and pointed out that on my InDesign CS4 keyboard shortcut reference guide, I've listed the same keyboard shortcut (command-delete) for both "Delete one word to the left" and "Delete one word to the right".

Believe it or not Bonnie, this isn't a typo (though I'll admit it could be more clear!) This brings up an issue that many people don't understand, so I thought it would be worth explaining here.

Some Macintosh keyboards have two delete keys, one that's two rows above the return key, and another that is between the main keys and the numeric keypad, directly above the cursor keys.

On this type of keyboard, the left-most delete key deletes a single character to the left of the text cursor, and the right-most delete key deletes a single character to the right of the text cursor. Likewise, command-left delete key deletes a word to the left of the text cursor, and command-right delete key deletes a word to the right of the text cursor.

If you have a Mac laptop or a smaller Mac keyboard that only has a single delete key, fn-delete deletes one character to the right, and fn-command-delete deletes one word to the right.

On most Windows keyboards, the left-deleting delete key is labeled as "Backspace" and the right-deleting key is labeled as "Delete" so Windows users don't have this confusion.

I've updated the InDesign CS4 keyboard shortcut reference guide to clarify this issue.

Fall Seminar Series

I'm excited to announce the "Back to School Fall Seminar Series" that I'm holding in the Twin Cities on 9/9/2009 and 9/11/2009. This series of four low-cost half-day seminars is open to everyone who wants to do more with less, to be more productive, more efficient and more effective in Adobe Creative Suite. The seminars are:

Session 1: Power through your work with InDesign Styles
Wednesday, September 9, 8:30 a.m. - 12:00 noon

Session 2: InDesign typography
Wednesday, September 9, 1:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Session 3: Photoshop masking techniques
Friday, September 11, 8:30 a.m. - 12:00 noon

Session 4: Introduction to Flash for print designers
Friday, September 11, 1:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

The seminars are very inexpensive, thanks to the generous support of my friends at Adobe, Central Coast Solutions and Data Print Distribution (DPD).

Please consider coming to one or more of the seminars. I'd love to see you there!