I'm finding that the new Photoshop CS4 feature that I'm using the most is the shortcut for modifying brush size and brush hardness. I like it better than using other methods, because it's fast and gives you a nice visual indicator of both size and hardness.
Also new in InDesign CS4 is a completely re-written and re-architected Links feature. Some of the changes are obvious when you see the new look Links panel the first time you open it in CS4.
I've been to Hong Kong several times, but had never made the short trip to the Wanchai Computer Centre. It's essentially a multi-floor shopping center quite literally crammed full of all manner of electronic, digital media and gagetry, as well as related products.
My new favorite deep discount camera shop there is a small little place called Concept Digital where I got good deals on some items I needed for my trusty Nikon D70. The management there was friendly and ready to make deals.
If you're ever in Hong Kong, and you're a complete computer/web/photo/gaming geek, you owe it to yourself to budget at least a couple hours and some cash for the vendors at Wanchai.
People seeking Adobe re-certification on InDesign raised some red flags regarding some of the certification test content. Adobe looked into the certification tests and agreed that the latest test had some problems. The InDesign test has now been reviewed, corrected, and re-written. The distribution of the new test raises a handful of questions that I'll address here:
Continue reading "InDesign Certification Exam Revised and Updated" »
I've been keeping tabs with engineering regarding reported issues with InDesign on Leopard, and here's current situation:
There is also a known problem using PDF printer from InDesign CS3, but that's an Acrobat compatibility problem. That issue should be addressed when an update to Acrobat 8 is released.
In the case of items 1 thru 3 above, we have been pursuing these issues with Apple and are having to wait on their engineering teams for information on the source of the problems and the ways they can be fixed. We are not able to debug Apple's system code to diagnose the source of these problems, so we have no choice but to wait for them to do the work on their end and let us know what they find.
Adobe has released a FAQ regarding Creative Suite compatability with OSX Leopard. The good news for InDesign CS3 users is that InDesign CS3 will not require an update to run without problems on Leopard, and neither will InCopy CS3. According to the FAQ document the following applications will require compatibility updates:
Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional and our professional video applications, including Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, After Effects CS3 Professional, Encore CS3, and Soundbooth CS3. We expect to publish free Leopard compatibility updates for the video applications in December 2007 and for Acrobat 8 Professional and Adobe Reader 8 in January 2008.
The FAQ contains an excellent table that explains compatiblity of the various Adobe applications with Leopard.
InDesign CS2 and InCopy CS2 were not designed and tested for Leopard, and the official Adobe statement is that trying to run those versions on Leopard will likely result in "issues for which there is no resolution."
InDesign Secrets received a great question from a user in Geneva, Switzerland:
I'm sure you've replied to this question a hundred times.
Do you know a way to make InDesign CS3 files show a preview icon instead of the generic InDesign file icon? Wasn't this possible in previous versions? I've been googling around with no success.
You can see this kind of preview in Bridge if you have set InDesign's preferences to include a thumbnail image in the document's metadata. It would be possible to see a thumbnail in InDesign's Open dialog if we grabbed that thumbnail in the metadata as well, but at the moment we're not doing that and Bridge is your best alternative.
Getting a thumbnail in the Finder or explorer is a more complicated proposition, and right now it's not supported. The Mac and Windows operating systems have different methods of enabling this type of thumbnail, and in the case of the Mac OS, this support has been inconsistent from version to version so it hasn't been pursued.
David Blatner has posted a nice summary of the way transformations work in InDesign CS3. The transformation code was rennovated for CS3, and InDesign product manager Mike Ninness sent David a summary of how the new version works.
One minor addition to the tips mentioned there: in addition to being able to select all the points on a frame path with the direct select took by clicking on center handle, you can do the same thing by option/alt + clicking on any point on the frame path.
Roaming Preferences
InDesign Secrets received a good question from an InDesign user in the Netherlands:
[W]e would like to move the preference folder of InDesign 4.0 outside this profile. I did do this for Adobe Photoshop by entering a text string into the registry, but unfortunately it does not work that way for InDesign (does it for other CS2 components?).
According to an InDesign engineer:
In CS2, preferences, caches, and temp files went into "%USERHOME%\Application Data\Adobe\InDesign\Version x.y\". The only mitigation you can do is (via the preferencews UI) select a new folder for temporary database files to live in.
In CS3, Adobe made changes so that only files that are smaller (and actually preferences) went into what we considered the roaming part of the profile, i.e. "%USERHOME%\Application Data\Adobe\InDesign\Version x.y\". Files that were caches or temp files now go into "%USERHOME%\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\InDesign\Version x.y\" which we expect to not roam.
There are, unfortunately, no hidden InDesign-specific registry entries by which users can redirect these folders at this time.
Adobe's Bob Bringhurst sent me this alert today:
LiveDocs commenting is now available in the web version of Help. In Adobe Help, click This page on the Web at the bottom of any topic. Once you're in the web version of Help, click the Add Comment button.
This means that InDesign users all over the world can now comment upon, extend, expand, reinterpret, refute, and write rap-able, rhyming versions of the InDesign documentation.
Anne-Marie Concepcion gave a big thumbs-up to the new LiveDocs feature for Photoshop:
In Photoshop CS3's help pages, if you click on any "This page on the
web" link at the bottom of a help page; you arrive at a page at
"livedocs.adobe.com" ... the same help page but with the ability to
add a comment to the documentation, to follow those comments via RSS
or get emailed when people add comments to it.So very, very cool!
When are we (InDesign users) getting livedoc help pages? AFAIK it's
only the Photoshop ones.
I have learned from the documentation people that LiveDoc pages for InDesign, InCopy, and Bridge are coming soon. I didn't get an exact date, but it sounds like you won't have to wait too much longer.