Creating New Documents Faster from Jay Hilgert on Vimeo.

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

Actions save you time, yes, but you might notice when you create them that Photoshop gives you the option to designate a keyboard shortcut to run the Action. While this is a good thing, I actually prefer to use “Button Mode” for all of my actions. I do this because of 2 reasons. 1) I have so many hot keys set up that I wste too much time trying to come up with keyboard shortcuts that aren’t set up for another task already, and 2) I don’t have to remember all the exotic hotkeys for actions that I constantly edit and/or delete.

With button mode, you can activate an action with a single click. Here’s how to enable button mode:

Click on the palette options in the upper right to enable Button Mode. It may be in a different place on the list for other versions of Photoshop. (CS3 shown here). Note – Illustrator also has button mode.

And now you have button mode. The only thing I don’t like about button mode is the fact that you have to disable it in order to edit, record, or change an action, but It save me lots of clicks in the long run.

Overview:

Automator is an application that runs a series of customizable scripts called ‘actions.’ A series of ‘actions’ is called a ‘workflow.’ I created a Batch Rename Workflow for anyone who doesn’t feel like making their own. You can download it here. Just unzip, double-click, choose your settings and you’ll be batching in no time.

1. Download and Unzip

Download the workflow, unzip it then double-click and it will open in Automator. (Note: you may want to save it in Automator and choose one of Automator’s default locations, so you’ll be able to find it each time you launch Automator.)

2. Choose Your Settings

You should now have the workflow open inside the Automator Application. Now all you have to do is 1) add/choose the folder where all your files are located that need renaming, 2) Choose a location for the files after they are renamed, and 3) Choose a name for the new series of files. (There are lots of naming options: sequential, replace text, etc.)

3. Run the Workflow

Once you have all of your setting in place, Click the “Run” button in the top right to execute the script and you’re done, Depending on how many files you just renamed, you probably save a few minutes at least. You might notice that this workflow makes a copy of each file before it renames them. This is so it leaves your original file intact, but If you simply want to rename without copying, just close the “Copy Finder Items” action inside the workflow.

If you’re new to Automator but you’re curious you can browse the Apple Downloads Automator section for tons of free downloads including an awesome Set of Automator Actions for Photoshop. You can batch anything from image size to color mode, orientation, file type and more. You’d be surprised.

1. Locate Your Icon

Now I mentioned that this tip was for Application Icons, but it will simply work with any ICNS file on your Mac. The first thing you need to do is locate the ICNS file you want to convert. I recommend copying it to the Desktop, not only because it’s easy to see but we’re going to use a file path, and the Desktop is a relatively short path to type.

If you want to convert an “Application” icon, like I am, the quickest way (If the app is in your dock) is to Command + Click on the icon in your dock to bring it up in Finder. Otherwise, navigate to your Applications folder and select an application. Then Control + Click on the App itself and select “Show Package Contents.” I’m going to be using Aperture as an example.

Now you will see (in Finder) all of the files that essentially “make up” your application. Navigate to Contents > Resources. This is where all of the image files for your app are located. You will need to find a file named “Appicon.icns” or sometimes its simply the name-of-the-app.icns, (ex: Terminal.icns). I’m pretty sure the Photoshop Icon is called “PS_AppIcon.icns,” so depending on who made the software, you might have to do some searching to find the icon you’re looking for.

2. Copy Your Icon to the Desktop

You can ignore this step if you like typing really long file paths, but I recommend at least making a copy of the icon. You don’t want to ‘move’ it from the resources folder, just hold option and drag it to the desktop to make a copy, or simply copy and paste.

3. Covert Using Terminal.app

Now that you have your ICNS file on the Desktop, open Terminal.app (Applications > Utilities). Paste the code below into the Terminal window, change your username and file names, then hit enter to convert. That’s it. (assuming you did have your file on the Desktop)

sips -s format png /Users/yourusername/Desktop/Appicon.icns --out /Users/yourusername/Desktop/Aperture.png

Done

As you can see, we have a nice, big png (512 x 512px) as a result, complete with transparency. Now remember that the quality of your end result depends on who developed your software. If they didn’t follow Apple’s guidelines and only shipped their software with a 256 x 256px App icon, you might not get the best results.

Your Options:

Now I would think that PNG would be the most useful because of the transparency but you can choose to convert to any of the following image formats: jpeg, tiff, png, gif, jp2, pict, bmp, qtif, psd, sgi, and tga. Just change “png” in the code above to whatever format you choose.

Last week, I was Photoshopping and I noticed that (screenshot below) all of my brushes looked pixelated. not only did they looked pixelated in the Brushes palette, but even when I used the brushes, they even drew like the document was in bitmap mode, but of course it wasn’t. I tried everything under the sun to fix it, and I even called a few good designer friends of mine and they had never heard of such a thing. This is a recreation of what my brushes palette looked like:

When it should have looked like this:

And this is what the brush looked like when I used it:

When it should have looked like this:

After some discussion with colleagues, we decided that it wouldn’t hurt to try and delete the Photoshop Preferences file from my system and see if that works. Well I’m not exactly sure where to even find that file or if it’s a hidden file or not, so I did some searching. I came across a thread in the Adobe forums that was a godsend.

(*Works for Photoshop 6x and newer!) All you have to do to delete your settings and start fresh is 1) Close Photoshop, and 2) Hold Command + Option + Shift (Control + Alt + Shift, PC) while you restart Photoshop. This brings up a dialogue box where you can choose to delete your settings file, no need to search through your system folders to find it.

After I did this, my Brushes palette was back to normal. Who woulda thunk it! Now, this little shortcut may not fix every glitch you run into, but it’s a butload faster than re-installing, so It’s worth a shot if Photoshop is acting up on you :)

While editing an active text box, like above, chances are there are 1 of 3 things you’d like to do next. 1) Move the text box, 2) Change something about the font (size, color, etc), or 3) Select a different tool once your done in order to continue doing something else. If you try to type a shortcut for a tool, you’re just typing letters. Man that can get annoying…

Instead of using the mouse to select a new tool to get out of your text box, all you need to do is hit the “Escape” key (Windows + Mac). This will get you out of the editing mode of the text box and keep the text box selected. It also automatically selects the Move tool (Black Arrow). From there, you can hit your keyboard shortcuts for any tool you want, adjust your font (since the text box is still selected), or move the text box with your mouse or keyboard nudges. Truly a time saver. I hope you all get to know this keystroke intimately. :) Believe it or not, this doesn’t work in Photoshop. In Photoshop, hitting the Escape key deletes the current text box, as well as the layer.

In the screenshot above, you can see that it takes 3 menu levels to get to the brush libraries that are grouped into folders. If you use the “Brush Library Icon” in the bottom left corner of the (any) brushes palette, you eliminate the first menu and jump strait to the libraries. Again, just a small tip, but I know from experience that it’s easy to get used to doing things the same way every time. If you can find a way to break a habit, maybe you can save a few of those precious seconds throughout your day :)

Not only is EPSQuickLookPlugin a godsend, it’s also a breeze to install. It comes with it’s own installer. Just drag the plugin icon and drop it on the ‘QuickLook” folder and you’re done. Note: You may have to Logout of your Mac and Log back in in order for it to start working.

Not only can you use Quicklook to view EPS files, but you can get an “Icon Preview” with some EPS files. The older versions of Illustrator, like 8, will sometimes only have an icon, but you can still use Quickloook to peek inside. You can force the older versions to display a thumbnail if you check “Include Document Thumbnails” when saving to EPS format.

If you would like to preview files other than EPS, you might check out QLPlugins.com, a site with a growing collection of QuickLook Plugins. Not everything on the site is free, but you may find something worth a few bucks if it saves yu enough time.

Before I begin, yes, I’m one of those “side dock guys,” it’s just what I prefer. Anyway, If you’re like me, you like to keep your desktop tidy and as clutter-free as possible. I didn’t like Stacks when they first arrived with Leopard, but now that we have list view, I find them much more useful.

When you use stacks, you might want to use the “Open in Finder” option to navigate directly to your folder in order to drag/copy files, or whatever. I do all the time.

If you want to save a click, just Command + Click on the Stack itself, and Finder will automatically open your Stack for you to browse! That’s it!

Gotta love saving a click. They really do add up over time ;)

1. Open a new Illustrator document, and create some overlapping shapes using a brush or two.

(For those of you wondering, I haven’t released the brushes you see here yet, but I will very soon. If you would like to use some similar brushes to follow along you can download a similar brush set here and here.)

You should now have something like this:

2. Go to Object > Expand Appearance to create your outlines.

You should see your outlines, as well as the left over brush strokes that we don’t need anymore.

Now, if the reason for the next few steps isn’t clear, let me tell you why we don’t stop here. By the end of this tutorial, we will have a single path that outlines what was originally 3 brush strokes. In order to do that, we need to use the Pathfinder palette to combine the 3 shapes into 1. If you try it at this point, you’ll see something similar to this:

That’s obviously not what we want. The key to getting it to work is to either select only the outlines (deselect the brush strokes), or just get rid of them all together. I like to just get rid of them, especially if you have a complex piece of work and deselecting them one by one would take forever.

3. With everything selected, right click and “Ungroup” them.

4. Now with the Select tool (black arrow), select one of the outlines.

5. Go to Select > Same > Fill Color.

This is a simple example, but in complex documents, this would be much faster than selecting them all by hand. Since the brush strokes don’t have a fill, you’ll be able to select everything else all at once. (assuming they’re all the same color)

So you should now have everything except the left over brush strokes selected:

6. With all of your fills selected, go to Select > Inverse.

This will select all of the left over brush strokes, making it easy to delete them.

7. Delete the left over brush strokes.

Note: there are other ways to select the strokes, but this is just what I consider the easiest. Also note that this selection method only works when you “Ungroup everything after “Expanding Appearance.”

8. Select all (Command/Control + A) and you should see only your fills remain. Now we can combine the shapes without all the mess.

9. Open the Pathfinder palette (Window > Pathfinder) and with all your fills still selected, hit the “Add to Shape” button, then “Expand, ” in that order. (see below)

Done! You should now have a single path created from 3 Illustrator brush strokes, as you see below.

I like combining my paths because it not only simplifies the mess, but it cuts down on file size and makes scaling a breeze. If you’ve ever scaled brush strokes in Illustrator it can get frustrating fast, depending on what kind of brush it is, wether or not the brush is set to “proportional, ” and wether or not you have “Scale Strokes and Effects” on or off. However, if you do start outlining your artwork, it’s probably a good idea to keep a copy of the original brush strokes somewhere, incase you want to go back in and adjust a stroke size before you outline it.

It’s pretty simple. If you ever grow tired of loading a set of Illustrator brushes that you use regularly, click on the palette options in the upper right corner and select “Persistent,”and that brush set will automatically load the next time you launch Illustrator.

Personally, I like to keep only the apps that I use on a somewhat daily basis in my Dock. The rest obviously reside in the Applications folder, and before 10.5.2, the Applications Stack left a lot to be desired. This update has fixed a lot of my complaints and now includes a Folder view (Shows the Folder instead of the annoying-ever-changing icon like before), List View (awesome), and more. Best of all, it eliminates 3rd party workarounds. Now if you need to use an app you haven’t used in a while, you don’t have to use finder to get there. Eliminating even a single click can add up over time, so I’m very happy with this workflow improvement. Hope you all like it too! Run that software update baby!