Tagged: document

Quickly switching between multiple open Photoshop documents

PhotoshopSwitching between multiple open Adobe Photoshop documents doesn’t require you to make a trip across the screen to click a different document tab, or moving windows around (if you don’t use the Application Frame in Photoshop) – a particular pain if you’re lucky enough to have a 30-inch LCD screen.

Command + ~ (tilda) or my favorite method, Control + Tab, switches between your open documents, and saves precious micro-seconds in your day.

Adobe InDesign’s un-sexy feature: Multiple page sizes

InDesign CS5In a back & fourth discussion with a friend over the features in Adobe InDesign CS5, the topic of multiple page sizes came up.

My friend couldn’t for the the life of him figure out why you would want or need the feature in a page layout application.

Forgetting the fact that I prefer to think of InDesign as more than a “page layout” application, I offered him the first suggestion that appeared in my mental rolodex of uses for the feature. Expecting the standard “magazine foldouts” reason, my rather un-sexy answer surprised him. Having multiple page sizes in a single InDesign document is a great file management tool.
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Create new documents from Photoshop layers

When you have a multi-layered Photoshop document and for whatever reason you want to save each layer as a separate document, it’s quite easy to do – and requires no tedious cut & paste commands. Photoshop Layers Go to File>Scripts>Export Layers to Files. When the dialog box appears, you’ll have several options available including where you want to save the files, and a file name prefix. You can also choose from a number of file formats to save the document as, including JPG, PSD, PDF, TIF and more. Each format offers a few options as well.

Copy color swatches from one InDesign document to another

Adobe InDesignIf you’re working on two Adobe InDesign documents and you want to pull the color swatches from one document to the other, there are two ways to do it. You could save the swatches from the first document as an .ase file from the Swatches panel flyout menu, then import them into the second document. Or, a quicker way, Command + Click to select all the swatches you want and drag them from the Swatches panel in the first document to the page of the second document. Unfortunately, the later method doesn’t work if you’re using InDesign CS4’s new tabbed window interface. You would have to drag the tab of the second document out to create a new ID window first.

Zoom all Photoshop documents at once

Adobe PhotoshopDid you know that when you’re working with multiple Photoshop documents open at once that you can zoom them all to 100% with a simple keystroke? By holding down the Shift key and double-clicking the Zoom tool in the Toolbox, all your document views will be set to 100%. Pretty handy when you’re evaluating several images at once. Of course, this assumes you have each image open in its own window, rather than CS4’s tabbed window mode.

Create a new Photoshop document with same size

If you need a new Photoshop document the same size as the one you have open, there are two ways I know of to create one without actually checking the document size dialog box. First, you can select all and copy the background layer of the open document, then Command + N for a new document. Photoshop will automatically set the size to whatever you copied to the clipboard, which in this case was the entire background layer of the open document. The second way requires a trip to a menu, but is just as easy. When you have a document already open, hit Command + N, while the new document dialog is open, click the Window Menu in the menu bar and select the open document’s name.