This one was hard to title, but it’s just a quick workflow tip to save you time. Instead of having to type in demensions and DPI every time you create a new document, you can use a series of keyboard shortcuts to force Photoshop to make a carbon copy of the current document settings. Have a watch :)

Creating New Documents Faster from Jay Hilgert on Vimeo.

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Hey everyone, before you blow up the comments about how you already knew this, let me say one thing. Not everyone is an avid user and these little tips are meant to help rid people that are learning Illustrator of some daily frustration with simple answers to simple problems. Today’s question was sent in by Morgan, and it has to do with rulers. Have a watch.

Illustrator 101: Reset Your Rulers from Jay Hilgert on Vimeo.

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I guess this could also be categorized as a workflow tip, but it’s good to know, no matter what you want to call it. I’d like to take a second to show you about Photoshop’s (and Illustrator’s) “Button Mode” in the actions palette. If you aren’t familiar with actions, they are customizable tasks that save you time and make you more productive by eliminating redundant tasks. I haven’t written an article on Actions themselves yet, but here is a nice one I found on the web.

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I’m not sure if this will apply to everyone in the design world, but renaming a huge list of files can be a real pain, and I’ve found myself in need of batch editing countless times. It’s so much faster and easier to do a “Batch Rename” to save a ton of time, and a ton of clicks. OS X has a built-in utility called Automator that can do just that, among many other things. I’ll keep it simple for now, but depending on the reaction I get, maybe I can go into more detail about Automator in future posts.

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This might be a tip that is more useful for bloggers or tech writers than designers, but I’ve found myself in this situation plenty of times. I need an application icon to use as an image for one reason or another, I can’t find a decent one online, and all of the crappy conversion shareware software is just wasting my time. I came across a very neat trick over at Macosxhints that was super simple and no 3rd party software is required. If you have OS X you can use the Terminal App (Applications > Utilities) to convert any ICNS file to an image format that can be used in whatever Photoshop.

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