Europa Blog

InDesign: Unlocking Master Page Elements

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-02-01T18:44:26+00:00

If you're a Quark user moving over to InDesign you may be a little perturbed by the fact that InDesign has the habit of locking all master page elements. The new user could spend a lot of time trying to solve this quandary, and may end up looking in the pallette menu of the pages to find the command 'Override all master page items'. This, however, has the effect of unlocking all master page items, somthing that you probably won't want to be doing. The best way of locally unlocking items is very simple: hold down Apple-Shift or Command-Shift and double-click on the item you wish to unlock.

Creative Suite: Controlling fill and stroke

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-10-05T18:43:47+01:00

A few simple shortcuts to make working with fills and stokes a little easier. (In Photoshop's case, make that foreground and background). X – This will toggle between fill and stoke at the foot of the tool pallette. Shift-X This will transpose fill and stroke. D - This will set an object back to its default white fill and black stroke. , – This will fill and object with the last used fill. . – This will fill an object with the last used gradient. / – This will clear an object of fill or stroke. J - This will toggle between selecting object fill and text fill in the swatches pallette.

InDesign: Aligning to the baseline grid

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-02-29T18:42:58+00:00

How many times have you flicked throught a newspaper or magazine and noticed that text is not lining up across columns? While this is not a deal breaker it's ugly and lazy work, especially when it's so easy to set up a baseline grid and correct this problem. Setting up a baseline grid is something that I normally do at the very start of a publishing project. A lot of designers try this and get deterred by the fact that their leading (line spacing) values tend to mess up. This occurs because InDesign's default baseline grid is set to 4.233mm (in other words 12pt or 1 pica) and if your leading happens to be more than this you end up aligning your text to every other line on the baseline grid. Too many designers get this far and then give up. The solution is simplicity itself: 1. Set your leading and make a note of what is. 2. Go to InDesign > Preferences > Grids... and set the Grid's 'Start' value to whatever your top margin is for the page. Next set the 'Increment Every:' to whatever your leading happens to be. Make sure that you include whatever measurement unit that you are using (i.e. if you are using pts then type '14pt' into the field). 3. Finally, select your type and in the paragraph pane of the control panel hit the 'Align To Baseline Grid' button (even better if you can do this in the paragraph style sheets dialogue box). Now you're up and running...

Creative Suite: Reset preferences

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-07-05T18:42:20+01:00

From time to time things stop working in InDesign. Point in case: I was training a group of four people earlier this week and for no apparent reason some of the InDesign tools refused to work properly for one person only. At times like this the very first thing that I do is close the document and then re-open it. If this doesn't do anything I would then quit the program and relaunch it. If this doesn't work I would then reset InDesign's preferences. To do this, launch InDesign and then hit Apple-alt-shift-cmd and hold these keys down until a prompt appears asking if you want to reset preferences. More often than not, this will do the trick. It's a handy thing to know. Especially when it's Friday afternoon and ten minutes before a deadline.

InDesign: Switch between text and object fill

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-09-13T18:41:33+01:00

A very quick tip, this one: If you're applying colours to a text box via the swatches palette hit 'j' to toggle between text colour and object colour.

Creative Suite: Toggle colours

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-05-19T18:40:08+01:00

A very quick tip, this one: If you're applying colours to a text box via the swatches palette hit 'j' to toggle between text colour and object colour.

InDesign: Easter egg

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-09-08T18:39:37+01:00

Here's a nice Easter Egg available in the newest version of InDesign. Choose 'About InDesign' and then type the word 'Butterfly'. Do this carefully and you will get a reward!

Illustrator: Spazz mode

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-07-25T18:39:14+01:00

I'm new to this blogging business and as yet nobody has even looked at this wonderful blog. Today I submitted this page to a number of blogging search engines, so hopefully there'll be some traffic soon. I live in hope... Anyhow, here's a fun little thing you can do in Illustrator. When you're using any of the primitive drawing tools (i.e. rectangle, ellipse, polygon, line tool, etc.) simply hold down the tilde key (~) and you enter 'Spazz mode'. This enables you to very quickly create hundreds of paths and cause your computer to crash. It's very good for creating spirograph-type patters. Give it a try.

Creative suite: Up and down magic

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-04-28T18:38:30+01:00

I'm constantly surprised by how few people are aware of the following feature. It runs throughout the entire Creative Suite, be it Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.. If you don't already know it, this tip will radically change the way that you work. Simply ensure that your cursor is in any field in any dialogue box or palette (panel in CS3) and use the up and down arrows to intuitively change the value of the field. For example, place your cursor in the font size field of Illustrator and the font size will go up or down in 1pt increments. Alternatively, place your cursor in the rotate field of InDesign and the selected object will rotate in 1º increments. It's a really good way of working. And once you're used to it, this will become second-nature to you. NB If you want to go up or down in x10 increments simply hold down the shift key as you use the up and down arrows.

Illustrator: Perfect rounded corners

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-08-02T18:34:00+01:00

This is just me, and some people might accuse me of going the long way around the block. But... One of the annoying things about Illustrator is the relatively minimal control that you have over rounded corner rectangles. It seems to me that you have two options if you wish to adjust the corner radius: 1/ Use the left and right arrows to alter the corner radius as you're drawing. All very well but the problem is that the box you are drawing very quickly gets to look like a circle and you tend to lose any fine control. 2/ Single click on the artboard and then key in the corner radius that you require. This is a little hit and miss but it works if you’re prepared to keep deleting the object until you get the size that you require. Me, I prefer to draw myself a plain old rectangle and then move over to Effects>Stylize>Rounded corners. You can then turn on preview and use the up and down arrows to intuitively change the corner radius of an object. As I said: longwinded, sure. But to me it's the best of a bad lot.

Illustrator: Flower power #II

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-05-09T18:33:31+01:00

A quick tutorial for a change, featuring my favourite program the sublime Adobe Illustrator. 1. Create a simple elipse and then use the pen tool to sharpen one of the curves (hold down the alt key to temporarily bring up the convert anchor point tool). 2. Add a fill and stroke of your choice and then select the Rotate Tool (r) and alt-click at the base of the ellipse to redefine the rotation origin. Type in a rotation value of 36º and hit 'copy'. Now hit Command-D (Control for PCs) eight times to repeat the transformation and create the flower shape. 3. Use the Pathfinder pallette to join the flower petals together and then add a drop shadow that emanates from the centre of the flower decoration. 4. Select Object>Transform Each and reduce the size of the object to 90% and change the rotation value to 18º. Hit 'copy' and then Command-D until you have made an appropriate number of copies. Hey presto! Easy flowers.

Photoshop: Get stoned

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-08-11T18:32:44+01:00

We had a very nice email from a gentleman in Morocco of all places asking how to create a stone effect for logos in Photoshop. ... ...Create yourself a new Photoshop document. 72dpi for web or 300dpi for print. Select Filter>Render>clouds. ...Select the Channels Palette and hit the New button to create a new channel. Select this channel and apply Filter>Render>Difference Clouds. Now add a little noise to this channel using Filter>Noise>Add Noise. The more noise you add the rougher the stone texture will become. ...Select Filter>Render>Lighting Effects and make sure that the Texture channel is the additional channel you created earlier. Here you can be a little creative and spontaneous. Change the settings to create a stone texture. Here are the ones we used: ...Select the type tool and add the words for your logo. Now unlock the Background layer (alt-double click it) and move this layer above the type layer. Finally alt-click between the layers to create a clipping mask. ...Add a layer style (click the little 'F' button at the foot of the layers palette.) For our logo we used bevel and emboss with an Inner Bevel and the Chisel Hard technique. We also added a drop shadow which, we always believe, is the easiest way to hide bad design!

Illustrator: Create a 3D dice

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-10-23T18:31:48+01:00

Illustrator CS2 included the welcome addition of a 3D effects module, older timers like me will remember this from the days of Adobe Dimensions. It's a relatively simple 3D app but still fun to use. Here we're going to use Extrude And Bevel to create a simple 3D dice. ...Now draw yourself a simple square, adding a fill and removing the stroke. ... Next, alt-drag the circle to make a copy, select the two circles and alt-drag downwards to create two more circles. ... ...Now select the dice face and alt-drag to the right. Next select the two dice faces and alt-drag downwards to create two more dice. ... ...Now it's time to start removing the spots that you don't want. ... ...Now it's time to save each dice side as a Symbol. Select the symbols palette and drag each side into it, one by one. ...Now delete five of the dice sides and remove all the spots from the final one. ... Select the square and choose Effect>3D>Extrude And Bevel. Turn on the preview and set the Bevel depth to whatever the width of your square is (In my case 120px). ... ...Now it's time to apply the dice symbols that you saved to each side of the 3D dice. ... ...All that remains is to add a little perspective (everything in the real world has perspective) and light the dice to your satisfaction. ...

Photoshop: Using Defringe

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-11-01T18:31:12+00:00

Here’s a quick tip which is very useful for those occasions when you want to make a fairly complicated selection in Photoshop.

This came about when an estate agent client of mine found it necessary to replace all of his skies with a clear blue sky but was having trouble selecting branches and foliage. ...

...First go to Select> Color Range… and click inside the sky to select it. Adjust the fuzziness slider to suit your needs.

...Now open your replacement sky picture and past it into the document. ...

...Unlock the background layer and move it on top of the pasted in layer. ... This is where Defringing the layer can help. This command can be found in Layer> Matting> Defringe... Make sure nothing is selected and then adjust the settings to suit your needs. You may have to undo a couple of times to get things right. ... ...And here’s the after:

It's still far from perfect but here's where a bit of jiggery-pokery comes in handy. Select the layer (command or control-click the layer thumbnail) and then use the eyedropper tool to sample a colour from the branches. Now get yourself a brush, set the opacity to about 50%, reduce the hardness and begin painting over the rough areas. ...If you didn't know that the sky had been changed you would be hard-pressed to spot it.

InDesign: Nested style sheets

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-11-10T18:06:00+00:00

This evening, in a wine-soaked stupor, I’m going to be taking a look at one of InDesign’s most powerful and juiciest features. Nested styles appeared back in InDesign CS2 and I, for one, was excited by the possibilities of being able to nominate character styles to appear in any order or position in a paragraph. ...The following exercise is a real-world problem that I had to find a solution to a couple of years ago while working for a fairly big-name magazine in London. What the designers wanted was to have a paragraph style that began and ended with one line of a particular character style. At the time we were using QuarkXpress (sshhhssshhh!), which meant that we were had no choice but to manually apply character styles in a kind of hit-and-miss manner until we achieved the results we wanted. ...For this exercise I’ve created a very simple A4 page with a two-column grid. ...The next step is to create an equally basic body copy style. In this case I’ve named it ‘body copy’. ... ...In this case I’ve called it ‘ Red Intro’. ... ...Next you have to create another character style that is identical to the ‘Body copy’ paragraph style. ... ...Alt-click the new button in the paragraph styles palette and head over to the Drop caps and nested styles pane. What I’ve basically created here is a ‘Red Intro’ sandwich. In other words I have the ‘Red Intro’ character style applied to the next End Nested Style character; this is followed by the body copy character style applied to the next anything (it really doesn’t matter what you apply this to because you’re not really going to apply it, if you see what I mean). Finally, I have the ‘ Red Intro’ character style applied to another End Nested Style character. ...The end result of this is that once you’ve applied the character style you only need to go to the Type menu and choose Type> Insert Special Character> Other> End Nested Style Here where you want the first ‘Red Intro’ style to end. And then you choose the same command at the place you want the Body Copy Style to end. And if you’ve done it correctly, this is what you get:

Illustrator: Dark side of the moon

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-06-21T18:06:15+01:00

Hello out there. ... ... ...We achieve this by first of all copying the prism (this is most important that you do this, I can’t emphasise this enough) then heading over to the Transparency palette and from the palette menu selecting Show Options and then Make Opacity Mask. Now select the second of the two squares that appear in the Transparency palette (the black one) and hit Apple-F (Paste in Front). ... ... ...In the Layers palette expand the Working Layer and make a copy of the the prism by dragging the sub-layer on to the New button. ... ...To do this go to Effect> Stylize> Feather and feather the turquoise prism so that it looks like this: ...Go to the Appearance palette and once again double-click on Feather and and then adjust the feathering of the opacity mask so that it looks like this: ...We have now achieved the effect of white fading into turquoise and then into transparent; and we couldn’t have done it without opacity masks. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Photoshop: The sky’s the limit

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-09-17T18:02:54+01:00

For today's exercise I'm going to be using a vector mask in combination with a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to radically alter the colour of a sky.

We're all familiar with masks in Photoshop, but some of you may never have used a vector mask. They are ideal for quickly masking out sharply defined edges, such as those of a building. ...It's the sort of picture that many of us find ourselves taking in built up areas. Let's see if we can spruce it up a little by making the sky a little more dynamic.

... ...The first thing to do is to create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Do this by clicking on the little CND icon at the foot of the Layers palette and choosing from the list. ... Click in the blue of the sky and an eye-dropper icon will appear enabling you to fine tune the areas of the sky that you wish to change. Now drag the Hue and Saturation sliders until you get the colour that you want. ...As is usual when creating an adjustment layer, a layer mask is automatically created. ... However, in an image like this one, creating straight edges with a brush would prove difficult. Instead, we're going to mask out the building by creating a vector mask. Do this by clicking on the Add Vector Mask button at the foot of the layers palette. ... As you draw, the red of the sky will begin to appear. ...Hit Apple-H to hide the mask so that you can get a better look at what you have done. ...Now you're at liberty to adjust the colour of the skies however you like. You do this by double clicking on the leftmost icon in the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and changing the settings. ... ...

Illustrator: A few requests

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-07-04T18:01:00+01:00

I'm responding to a couple of requests today, so the following exercises are probably going to be a little too simple for a lot of people. ...And even though Adobe have paid good money to purchase the venerable vector old timer from Macromedia, the ability to customise rounded corners independently is a feature that is yet to be added to Illustrator's fairly substantial toolset.

...Create a square or rectangle and centre it to the artboard (as I always do). Now copy the object for later use and go to Effect> Stylize> Rounded corners... Turn on preview and use the up and down arrows to intuitively round the corners.

... ...Click OK and then head over to Object> Expand Appearance, as ever very important this one. Now hit Apple-F to paste the copied object in front of the rounded corner. ... With both objects selected alt-click the Add To Shape Area button. ... ...Now hit Apple-F to paste in front again. ... ...If you feel like tidying things up you might use the Pen tool to clean up the spare anchor points that have been created. ...I don't know what you would call this particular shape, if a name exists for it at all. ... ...Now draw a vertical line with the Line Tool and align both objects to the centre of the artboard. ...Now select both objects and hit Divide in the Pathfinder palette. Ungroup the resultant objects and delete the one you don't require. I don't quite know what exactly you would use this shape for, but this is what was requested. ...I'll make sure that the next one makes you sweat a little.

Illustrator: 180!

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-02-04T17:59:38+00:00

...Align the Polar Grid object to the centre of the artboard, vertically and horizontally (you should know by now that I always do this).

... ... ... ...Now use the Group Selection tool to select the fourth concentric circle and double-click on the Scale tool to scale it down to 84%. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...Just select each number one by one and double-click on the Rotate tool; use the up and down arrows to straighten the numbers, What a drag... ...

Creative Suite: Selecting text

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-03-29T17:55:46+00:00

You'll have to excuse me if the following tips are a little too simplistic for you, or you already know them. Not only do they apply to the entire Creative Suite, they also apply to any program out there.

The reason I'm publishing these tips is that I know for a fact that if you don't already know them they will make your life a whole lot easier. Proof of this comes from the reaction I usually get from a good 70% of people that I train in any software, be it InDesign, Illustrator, Quark or whatever. Many people are generally shocked that it’s so easy to select type. You may be too, but if you already know this you'll wonder why I'm wasting everybody’s time.

Selecting type

There are many ways of doing this, of course. The vast majority of people simply insert their cursor into the text and drag, taking care not to pick up any stray spaces at the beginning or end of the selection. Others do the clever thing: they hit Apple-left arrow to select a word, or Apple-down arrow to select a paragraph. All well and good, but here’s the best way of doing it:

Two clicks of the mouse to select a word

Three clicks of the mouse to select a line.

Four clicks of the mouse to select a paragraph

Five clicks of the mouse to select all words (including any over-set type)

Double-click on a word and then drag (keeping the mouse held down) to select a range of type that starts and ends anywhere within a paragraph

(Indesign Only) Position your cursor anywhere within the type and hit Shift-Apple-Home to select all the type from that point upwards. Hit Shift-Apple-End to select all the type from that point downwards

(QuarkXpress Only) Position your cursor anywhere within the type and hit Apple-alt-shift-up arrow to select all the type from that point upwards. Hit Apple-alt-shift-down arrow to select all the type from that point downwards

Apologies once again if all this is old news for you. And double apologies if I've offended any Adobe acolytes by mentioning QuarkXpress. But what the hell... Those guys need help :-)

Illustrator: Starry, starry night

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-10-01T17:54:00+01:00

...In this instance, however, I'm going to use a Scatter Brush, which is sometimes very useful for things such as crowds scenes and – naturally – Star Fields.

... ...In the Gradient palette click on the white handle to select it then alt-click a colour from the swatches palette. ... ...Turn off the layer's visibility and then alt-click the new button in the Layers palette to create a new layer. ... ... ... ... ...In the Gradient palette select the blue handle and and alt-click to fill with a new colour. ... ... ... ...Fill the star with a colour and then hit the new button in the Brush Palette. ... ... ... ...Now turn on the visibility for the Sky Layer so you can see what you’re doing. Then double click on the Star brush that you created in Step 11 and turn on Preview. ... ... ...

Photoshop: Straighten gallery shots

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-03-01T17:54:00+00:00

...First of all another of my customary apologies but it's been a pretty hectic and emotionally charged week for me. Far too hectic and emotionally charged to think about Adobe tutorials. If you're interested, as well as being overrun with work, I also found myself on the telephone speaking to my mother and father for the first time since 1998. It's a long story and I won't bore you with any details, suffice to say it's been a most unusual week. ...Ever visited an art gallery and tried to take a few shots of the paintings housed in it? The problem is that if you have a flash and stand right in from of the picture you end up with a photograph of a flash going off. The only solution to this is to take the picture at an angle and to let Photoshop strut its funky stuff. As follows: ...Select the Crop tool and draw a rough marquee around the image you wish to straighten. ...In the Control panel at the top of the machine check 'Perspective'. You can now drag the four handles of your marquee to fit the image. 3. All you do now is hit return and hey presto! One magically straightened image. As simple as that. ...Sorry for the shortness of this little tip. I'm going to be making an effort to get back into the groove next week. As always comments most gratefully appreciated.

Illustrator: Metallic type

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-08-01T17:53:29+01:00

...If I appear a little distracted then, please forgive me (as I write Federer is two sets to one up but has fallen to pieces a little in the fourth set). ...For this exercise I'm going to be showing you how to create metallic looking text. ...As ever, I've aligned my type to the centre of the artboard horizontally and vertically. ... ...Now ungroup the converted type and apply a gradient to one of the letter forms. ... ... ...Now the fun bit: if you're using a version of Illustrator earlier than CS3 you must create 10 swatches; from 100% black to 0% black. ...Make another 8 new stokes in this way, each time reducing the size by 1pt and the colour by 10%. ... ... ...Of course, we wouldn't want to have to reinvent the wheel to do this, so go over to the Graphic style palette and with the first character selected, hit the New button. Select each letter individually and apply the stroke style that you have just created. ... ... ...Now apply a drop shadow to the type (Effects> Stylize> Drop Shadow…) These are the settings I've used: ...You should now have a brused metal effect on top of the type. ...Here I've selected the Flare tool and applied a flare with the following settings: Some might say that the Flare tool is simply too tacky to ever use and most of the time I'd agree.

Photoshop: recolouring images

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-06-07T17:52:22+01:00

Don't get the idea that I'm obsessed with flowers but here's another flower exercise for your pleasure. Ever need to quickly recolour an image or part of an image? I can remember years ago doing really stupid things like trying to make a selection in an image before attempting to adjust colours. Naturally, you don't have to do this. Here watcha do: ...Open your image and head over to Image> Adjustments> Replace Colour. Select the Eyedropper tool and begin clicking in the parts of the image that you'd like to change. ...There's really nothing to this. Click on the colour to the right of the Hue/Sauration/Brightness sliders and select yourself a new colour. Here's where you can play about with the fuzziness slider to control how much of the image is affected by your selection. Now you can either select the Eyedropper icon with the '+' next to it or simply hold down Shift to keep adding to your selection. If you make a mistake and want to remove from your selection simply hold down the alt key. ... ... ...Now feel free to recolour your flower to whatever colour you like. ... ... Short and sweet, I admit. But occasionally useful. A bit like myself.

Photoshop: Using Photomerge

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-01-23T17:51:35+00:00

...Two reasons for this, to be honest: one is that I'm really, really busy at the moment. The other is that I've been getting so little feedback for this blog (despite thousands of page loads) that I was beginning to get a little despondent. This has changed recently, however, and I'd like to thank all the people that have sent messages of encouragement (and love!). ...It's a little hobby of mine (in fact, here you can find several examples of my panoramas if you're at all interested: http://web.mac.com/truth42/iWeb/Truth42%20Site/Panoramas.html) ...It's me standing in the middle of a forest with my feet rooted to the spot, holding a camera and swivelling like some kind of demented lunatic. It's not a pretty sight, I can tell you, but fairly essential if you want to produce a 360º panorama. ...The first thing to do once you're sitting back at your computer is to open Photoshop (CS2 in this case) and select File> Automate> Photomerge.. ... ...As you watch you will see Photomerge create new layers, cut and paste images from one layer to another and generally try to make an automated panorama. ... ... ... ... ...The next thing to do is to use Photoshop's Crop tool to cut away the bits of the image that are no good. ... ...The image is way too dark so I create a Levels Adjustment layer (select the little two-tone circle at the base of the Layers palette). ... ...One of the shots I took is way too dark even for this Adjustment layer. ... ...Make sure both are turned on and choose yourself a medium size brush and feather it slightly (the square brackets will allow you to intuitively change brush size; shift-square brackets will allow you to feather the brush). Make sure that black is your foreground colour (hit D to do this); set the opacity down a little and begin painting the background back in. ...

Illustrator: 3D bottle

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-08-17T17:50:59+01:00

...Digressing slightly: if anyone from the USA is tuning into this, I'd like to personally thank the whole of America for beta-testing the iPhone. ...Lets begin: what I kind of like about this exercise is that if you're the sort of person who gets scared by using the Pen tool I can hopefully prove that you don't need to be an expert in Bezier curves to create perfectly acceptable artwork. ... ... ...You're going to use this rectangle to create the rounded bottom of the bottle. Once again go to Effect> Stylize> Rounded Corners and use the up and down arrows to round the box so that it looks something like this: ... ... ... ...Now to address the neck of the bottle: draw a rounded-edged rectangle for the lip of the bottle and align it to the centre of the artboard as below: ...Now select the neck rectangle and the lip rectangle and once again use the Pathfinder palette to merge them. ... ...Lots of ways of doing this but the way I favour is to first draw a line down the centre of the bottle and align it to the middle of the artboard as below: ... ... ... ... ...

Illustrator: Flower power

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-04-02T17:50:09+01:00

...I'm doing this at 11.30 a.m. because I live in hope that one day somebody might actually post a comment to let me know that I'm not alone in this world. For the record this exercise takes advantage of Illustrator's Symbol tools to very quickly create a bunch of flowers. ...I've made sure that this one is aligned to the centre of the page. ... It's important that you do this or your flower will end up looking pretty crappy. ...Add a fill and a stroke to the square and then Go to Effect> Distort And Transform> Pucker And Bloat. Turn on the preview, place your cursor in the field and use the up and down arrows to magically create a flower. ... ... ... ...Give your flowers a more random appearance with liberal use of the Symbol tools. ...Remember that you can double-click on any of the tools to adjust their settings. Also remember that you can reverse the tools' function by holding down the alt key. ...Here I've used four or five different colours to further randomize the flowers' appearance. ...Draw a box that fills the entire artboard and add a gradient by clicking on the middle squre icon at the base of the Tools palette. ...Move over to the Gradient palette and adjust the colours by clicking on a gradient handle and alt-clicking on the colour of your choice in the Swatches palette. Now use the Gradient tool to change the angle of the gradient as show below. ...

InDesign: Turn A Clipping Path Into A Picture Frame

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-03-11T17:49:14+00:00

Here's a lesser-known feature of InDesign: the ability to take a clipping path and turn it into a picture frame. ...A picture of my father-in-law. For those of you who tuned into my last blog, he's the one at who's house I stayed last rainy weekend. ... And proof that moving out of London can be a worthwhile thing to do. He's basically swapped a one-bedroom flat in Hampstead for a five-bedroom house in Sussex, complete with 1/2 acre of land and a swimming pool. ... ...The image is actually a Photoshop document with background removed. It's the way I like to work in InDesign. If I'm preparing a cut-out I will either remove the background in Photoshop or use a layer mask. In this case I select Object> Clipping Path and choose Alpha Channel from the Type menu. ... You might want to play with the Tolerance and/or Threshold but in this case I'm happy with what I've got. ...At this point I'm able to use the Direct Selection tool to have a look at the clipping path. Just select it and click in the middle of the image. ...Now for the interesting bit: simply right-click on the image and the following contextual menu will be revealed (if you don't have a three-button mouse or a Mighty Mouse, simply hold down the Control key and click on the image). It contains the command 'Convert Clipping Path To Frame'. This is interesting because this command is unavailable in any of the standard InDesign menus. ...And here, with the stoke coloured and thickened up is your new frame. ...Now you can remove the image and use the frame on its own if this takes your fancy.

Photoshop: Look younger fast

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-03-28T17:47:24+00:00

I've taken a weekend break with the family and the parents-in-law in rainy old Sussex. ...This little exercise will be familiar to long-term users of Photoshop but it may perhaps prove to be something of an eye-opener for beginners. Whenever I train Photoshop, the ability to lose wrinkles and imperfections, etc. is something that trainees always ask for. In Photoshop there is a dazzling array of tools to help you do this. These include the Clone Stamp tool, the Healing Brush tool, the Patch tool, the Red-eye tool and the Spot Healing Brush tool. All of these tools have a time and place but if it's a quick fix that you're after the following will probably help. ... ...Now go to Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur and blur the layer so that all the imperfections are gone. ...Next in the Layers Palette click on the Add Layer Mask button (the grey one with the little circle in it) and make sure the mask is selected (it will have a black rectangle around it). ...Now select the Brush tool and in the Control Panel lower the opacity, set the brush to airbrush mode and feather the edges of the brush. You're going to begin painting in the main areas of the picture (the eyes, the lips, etc.). Remember that the brush size can be controlled as you paint by using the square bracket keys. The hardness of the brush can be controlled by using Shift-Square Bracket. ... ...Paint in black to reveal detail; if you make a mistake hit the 'X' key to switch foreground and background colours so that you can paint in white to remove your errors. As you paint you will see the layer mask update in the Layers palette. ...At the foot of the page is the actual mask that I created while painting out the imperfections. ...

Illustrator: Recreate Queen’s Jazz cover

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-12-01T17:47:00+00:00

...It also gives me the opportunity to put Illustrator's excellent blend function through its paces, as well as creating an Opacity Mask, some 3D revolve, a little Free Distort and the Polar Grid tool ...There are actually countless ways of doing so but in this case Illustrator's Polar Grid tool is perfect for the job. ... ... ...In the palette menu make sure that Align To Artboard is checked and then align your Polar Grid to the artboard both vertically and horizontally. ... ...Create a new layer and then draw a constrained circle that is just a little smaller than the inner concentric circle and set its stroke width to around 6pt. ... ... ... ...Create a second new layer (you now have three in all) and move this one beneath the other two. ... ...As always there are many ways to do this, but on this occasion we are going to use an opacity mask. ... ...Go to the Gradient palette and after selecting Show Options from the palette menu, double-click the gradient to fill the black square you pasted in with a gradient. ... ... ...Select both bits of 'Queen' text and as before hit Command-Alt-B to create a blend. ... ... ...

InDesign: Create a table of contents

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-11-16T17:45:10+00:00

Not only do you automate the creation of a table of contents, but by creating PDF bookmarks you also make life a lot easier for yourself when you later come to format your document. ...Rather than waste time getting you to create a book from scratch, I've taken the liberty of making the file that I use in this exercise available to everyone. ... ...In order to create a TOC in InDesign you must first ensure that certain Paragraph Styles have been applied to appropriate portions of text in the document. In other words, if you apply the Paragraph Style entitled 04 Chapter Header to every incidence of the word 'chapter' in the text, you can then tell InDesign to look for occurrences of that Paragraph Style and make a note of the page on which it appears. ...You could trawl through the document and apply the Paragraph Style 04 Chapter Header to the beginning of every chapter of the book. ...To do so, go to Edit> Find/Change... and ask InDesign to look for the word 'chapter' and replace it with the word 'chapter'. ... However, if you click the More Options button in the Find/Change... dialogue box, you can then access the Change Format Settings and select 04 Chapter Header from the Paragraph Styles pop-up menu. So what we're actually doing is telling InDesign to look for the word 'chapter', replace this with the word 'chapter', and at the same time change the Paragraph Style to 04 Chapter Heading. ... ...Of more immediate concern is the fact that our Find/Change... has ended up putting our chapter headings bang in the middle of the text in apparently random places as shown in the screen-shot below. ...Once again, if I were not quite so lazy, I could scroll through the document and do this manually, using the 'enter' key instead of the 'return' key to force the chapter headings up to the next linked text box. ... ...We've applied the appropriate Paragraph Style to every incidence of the word 'chapter' and we've got all our chapters beginning on a right-sided page. ...Remember, all we're basically doing it telling InDesign to look for the Paragraph Style 04 Chapter Header and make a note of the page numbers on which this occurs. ... ... Go to Window> Interactive> Bookmarks and you'll find a ready-made set of PDF bookmarks that link to every chapter heading in the document. ...If the word 'chapter' does happen to appear in the book's narrative you can now apply the correct Paragraph Style and go back to Layout> Table Of Contents... to update your TOC.

Illustrator: Olympic rings

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-06-05T17:44:00+01:00

With all the furore over the logo for the 2012 Olympics I thought it might be nice to run a quick tutorial on how to create the famous original Olympics logo with its interlocking rings. This interlocking effect can sometimes be a bit of a challenge but with a little lateral thinking you will see how easy it is. ...In this case it's best to work with rounded off figures so that things do not become too complicated when you align the circles later on. ... Finally, click on a corner handle of the selected circle and resize it slightly, holding down alt-shift to keep the resizing proportional and from the centre. Now Select All (command-A) and bring up the Pathfinder palette. ... ...Now hit Command-D to repeat the transformation and you have three equidistant circles. ...Type in a value of -75px as shown and then click on the top three circle group. Now hit 'Vertical Distribute Space' in the Align palette and the five circles will now be aligned precisely. ...To create the interlocking effect select all and bring up the Pathfinder palette. Now hit one of my favourite commands 'Divide' and the five circles will be separated into segments that you can individually colour. Hit D before you begin colouring to take the objects' fill and stroke back to default black and white. In the swatches palette choose yourself a blue colour and begin dragging the swatch over the segments of the circles that you wish to colour. ... ...It's slightly tricky but you should be able to complete this in under a minute. ...Now for a bit of 3D: Select all and group the objects. ... ...

Photoshop: Rescue your holiday snaps

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-05-09T17:43:48+01:00

Even though I'm a huge fan of Adobe Illustrator that doesn't mean that I'm not equally fond of its big pixel-based brother Photoshop. ...In this example I'm starting off with the type of photo that a lot of us have produced in a drunken stupor during our holidays. ... I was using a handheld camera and was forced to make a decision: do I expose for the foreground or do I expose for the skies? In this case I chose to expose for the beautiful night sky, knowing that when I was back in front of my Mac, Photoshop would do the rest. ... ...Move the default tolerance in the Control Panel up a notch or two and then hold down the Shift key and keep clicking until you get as much as the foreground selected as you can. At this point it's always wise to enter Quick Mask mode (hit the 'Q' key to do this) and choose yourself a medium sized Brush and, painting in white, begin painting out the bits of the selection that you missed. ... When I do this I will from time to time hit the 'Q' key to exit Quick Mask mode and see how my selection is coming along. ...Now take the brush down in size (hitting the square brackets allow you to do this) and feather its edges a little (hitting shift-square brackets will allow you to do this) turn on Airbrush mode in the Control Panel and begin painting in the subtler parts of the horizon that your selection has so far missed. ... ...In the Layers palette create a Levels Adjustment layer (click on the little black and white circle) and a mask for your selection will automatically be created. ... ...Now that the foreground is more balanced it's time to address the oversaturation of colours that is often a by-product of what we've just done. In the Layers palette create a Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer and click ok without making any changes. Hold down the alt key and drag the mask from the Levels Adjustment layer over the mask in the Hue/Saturation layer. ... ...Once again alt-drag the Levels Adjustments mask to the new layer then select Image> Adjustments> Invert (or Command-I) and once again double click on the Hue/Saturation icon to change the layers settings. ... ...

Illustrator: Diamonds are forever

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-07-02T17:42:14+01:00

...Surprisingly, in my opinion, it's not a pre-requisite that you should be able to draw before using Illustrator. ... Of course, these things help but even if you're a beginner you can get a lot out of Illustrator. ...It's all about thinking out of the box to achieve a particular end result. ...Problem with this, however, is not matter what shape or profile you begin with you're always basically lathing an object. ... Then I thought: what not create a custom bevel and extrude the shape? ...You may not know that while drawing with the polygon tool you can us the up and down arrow keys to intuitively add or remove polygon sides. In this example I've given the shape a green fill – this can always be changed later on. Remember to remove the stroke or you will end up with a black object when you bevel. ...It's good fun but you'll find in the end that whatever you try you will not be able to create a diamond shape. ...Find the Illustrator CS2 or CS3 folder and inside you will find a folder called Plug-ins. ... Open it and you will see a list of all of Illustrator's default bevels. (If you're on a PC you must go to the Programs folder and find the Illustrator Plug-ins folder nested inside the main Adobe folder.) ...You can do this by selecting the points with the direct selection tool and making sure that the 'Y' value in the control panel at the top of the screen is identical. ... ...Turn on the Preview and in the Bevels list you will find the bevel that you just created. ... ...It's easy, I admit, but an ideal example of how lateral thinking can really achieve good results in Adobe Illustrator. ...

Photoshop: Vanishing Point Part 1

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-02-05T17:38:07+00:00

Vanishing Point was one of the most interesting additions to Photoshop CS2 and with CS3 it has become even more powerful. It is an incredibly powerful feature that is also very easy to use. In this exercise we are going to map a decal on to the side of a building. It should take you no more than two minutes to do. ...Choose an image to map your logo or words on to. ... ...Filter> Vanishing Point and use the Plane tool to create a basic grid. The image I have chosen is ideal for this purpose as you can clearly see all edges of the the shape. ... You are aiming for the grid to be blue in colour. If the grid is yellow this means that there could be problems ahead. If it is red then it's a no no. ...Now paste in your logo/decal and move it until it snaps to the plane. ... In Vanishing Point its always worthwhile turning on heal to see if it helps your cause. ... ...This is the effect if I choose the Darken Mode. ... ...In the end I have opted for the Colour Dodge mode and taken the Opacity down a little. So ends the first in a series of Vanishing Point tutorials. In the next I'll be showing you how to create more complicated grids and map objects around corners.

Illustrator: Flag Day

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-01-17T04:36:02+00:00

If you're an anorak like I am you can use the align palette to make sure that both objects are precisely aligned. ... ...Next use the Line tool and draw yourself a straight line above the flag that is slightly wider than the flag. ... ...Now go to Effects> Distort & Transform> Twist and choose an angle that makes your zig-zagged line look a little more random. ... Because the top and bottom of a flag are never the same go to the Appearance palette and double-click on Twist and adjust the angle slightly. ...Now this is important: we need to join the two lines together to form an outline around the flag. ... Click on this and then click on the other line to join the two segments together. ... ...Select all objects and choose Object> Envelope Distort> Make With Top Object. ... ...This will make a copy of the flag and place it sitting on top of the original. Choose Object>Envelope Distort> Release and you will end up with a nice neutral gray version of the flag, Delete the underlying Japanese flag group that lies beneath the released envelope object. Now select the Gradient Mesh tool and make a series of cuts at the tops of the flag. ... ...With the Direct Selection tool choose every other anchor point at the top and bottom of the flag. If you do this correctly you can then apply a black swatch to your selection and you should end up with something that looks like this: ... ...Choose Effects> Warp> Twist and play with the settings until you get the flag shape that you require. ... ...I'd really appreciate it if you could post the odd comment or two, if only to know that there are other people in this world who enjoy using the Adobe Creative Suite.

InDesign: Deselecting the Selection tool

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-01-12T17:12:23+00:00

Most people are aware that when using InDesign all you have to do is hit the 'v' key when you are in (almost) any other tool and you will find yourself back in the Selection tool. This is great, and something that should become instinctive if you have been using InDesign for any amount of time. A major problem occurs, however, if you happen to be inside a text box when you hit the 'v' key. If you do this, you end up typing a 'v' into the text. In years gone by I would get over this problem by hitting Command-Shift-A (Control-Shift-A on the PC) and this would deselect the text box, allowing me to then hit the 'v' key in safety. Nowadays, however I have a better solution: Navigate to InDesign's Edit menu and select Keyboard Shortcuts. Under Product Area select Tools and find the Selection Tool in the list below. Under 'Context' choose 'Text' then insert your cursor into the New Shortcut field and hit 'Escape'. Hit Assign and then click 'OK'. Simple, I know. But from now on whenever you happen to be inside a text box and need a quick exit just hit the Escape key and you're back in the Selection tool. It's a big time-saver.

InDesign: Create an Island spread

europatraining@mac.com — 2008-01-05T17:04:00+00:00

One of the questions that constantly arises, particularly from migrating QuarkXpress users, is how does one create an island spread in InDesign? An island spread is three or more pages joined together, rather like the fold-outs that you sometimes see in magazines. In Quark this is very easy to do: you simply drag a page into position on the page layout palette and an additional page is created. If you try to do this in InDesign, however, it just doesn't work. You drag a page into position in the Pages palette and it will invariably end up appearing at the end of the document. This can be annoying to say the least. By default Indesign does not allow islands spread to be created in the Quark way. It does this to prevent a common problem that occurs in QuarkXpress: that of the ordering of pages becoming messed up. I've lost count of the number of times that I've seen inexperienced designers or subs totally destroy a document in Quark by turning right-sided pages into left-sided pages, and visa versa. If you need to create an island spread in InDesign the solution, however, is simple. Simply go to the palette menu of the Pages palette and deselect Allow Pages To Shuffle. Now you can drag in as many pages as you like and place them next to an existing page. But what if you want to do this and still prevent inexperienced users from messing up your documents? Simply select a spread and choose Keep Spread Together. A simple tip, I know (you out there listening 'Creative Guy'?) but a fairly essential one at that.