Adobe doesn’t ship printed manuals with their software anymore, at least, not with the Creative Suite applications. Instead, you use the Help > [program_name] Help command in each individual program, which opens either the new local Adobe Help AIR application, or your default browser. Either one brings you the main online help files for that program, “live” as they are hosted on Adobe’s web site.

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The problem with a folder-based filing system is that some items belong in more than one folder. You see this in real life with paper documents: Should loan statements go into "Personal Finance" or "Tax Info"? Do take-out menus go in the kitchen junk drawer or the one in the TV stand?

We have the same problem with computer files. Aliases (or shortcuts, on Windows) can only take you so far.

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Adobe Bridge, the free digital asset management program that comes with any Creative Suite product, is one of my favorite programs. When I'm working in InDesign, Photoshop or Illustrator, it's indispensable for quickly finding, previewing, and organizing all the files involved in a project.

Just like the Finder or Windows Explorer, you can use Bridge to find, organize, rename, and open any file on your computer.more >

Like a number of other Adobe CS3 users, I was initially aghast at the suite's new icons when they first showed them to the world late last year.

Adobe Systems — the company with the legacy of some of the most creative icons in the history of interface design, from renditions of Venus de Milo to color-enhanced X-Ray photography of starfish and butterflies — this same company was *seriously* considering icons that were colored squares and two-letter program name mnemonics? Were they kidding?

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Back in November, Adobe asked me if I'd be interested in recording a bunch of video tutorials on InDesign CS3. Well, not Adobe itself; but a nice woman who *worked* for Adobe asked me.

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The big news this week in the world of digital design has to be Adobe's announcement of their new line-up of Creative Suite applications, dubbed CS3. I watched the live webcast of their launch shindig in New York City this week, even sat through the unplanned 20-minute "we're pausing for technical difficulties" portion when they were having A/V problems.

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If you're deeply into the field of digital design for print, web, mobile devices, or anything in-between, you should be visiting the Adobe Labs site regularly:

Adobe Labs
http://labs.adobe.com/

What's the Adobe Labs page about? Why, click the About page, dear: "Adobe Labs provides you with the opportunity to experience and evaluate new and emerging innovations, technologies, and products from Adobe."

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In recent issues I've mentioned that I did a couple "webinars" (aka webcasts) for Adobe, one on Adobe Bridge, "Your Creative Hub," and the other called "An Introduction to an Adobe InCopy and InDesign Workflow". Each one is an hour long and I covered a ton of material.

If you weren't able to attend, you can now see them on Adobe's web site, since they recently published them as On Demand (recorded) seminars. No cost, of course. Check out the other On Demands while you're there, they're all great!

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Another thing I learned while researching Adobe Bridge is that you can drag and drop images from Bridge right to the free Uploadr tool for Flickr. (Not only that, but any keywords that you added to images in Bridge get converted to Flickr tags!)

Flickr
http://www.flickr.com

Flickr, for the unitiated, is a free online photo sharing service used by a lot of bloggers but definitely not limited to that group. After opening up a free account (if you already have a Yahoo! account, you're halfway there — Yahoo! now owns Flickr) you upload your images to the Flickr web site, usually via their on-line form that allows you to upload up to five images at once. Or, you can download a free Uploadr utility for Mac OS X or Windows XP and drag/drop piles of images from the Finder or Explorer (or Bridge!) for immediate uploading to your online account.more >

Any InDesign user who has ever needed to change the fonts used in a publication knows this frustration: Neither of the two find/change font features in InDesign (Edit > Find/Change and Type > Find Font) can access the fonts specified in Paragraph or Character styles. You have to edit each style individually to change its font spec — an onerous task if you're dealing with twenty bazillion style definitions.

A little over a year ago I wrote about a method that made the task of converting a publication's fonts slightly more tolerable by combining Find Font with Redefine Style:

Find/Change in InDesign Style Sheets
http://senecadesign.com/designgeek/dgarchives/designgeek35.php

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