4T

Flash Catalyst (formerly codenamed Thermo) has been around on Adobe Labs for a while now but I’m still meeting lots of people who know nothing of it – if you’ve ever wanted to create interfaces in Photoshop or Illustrator and then add simple functionality without coding (you’d need to hand over the completed project to a Flex developer to get the most out of it) then your day has arrived.

Click this link to watch a movie about it and visit the FC page here.

There are feeds from the Labs site which you can subscribe to in any feed reader – Firefox would be an excellent choice (if you’re using Apple Mail then it has a built in feed reader) so you can keep up with the latest developemnts at Adobe.

The feed URL’s are:

• RSS 1.0: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/labs/index.rdf
• RSS 2.0: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/labs/index.xml
• ATOM: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/labs/atom.xml

If you’re not using the world’s most popular browser already, you can download Firefox today!

Just three or four for today:

Alt-[ = move down through layers

Alt-] = move up through layers

Add Shift to the above and you’ll select them as you move through

Alt-, (Comma) = Select bottom layer

Alt-. (Period or ‘full stop’ for the Brits) = Select top layer

Here are some handy brush mode shortcuts:

The Essentials

• Shift-Alt-N = Normal
• Shift-Alt-M = Multiply
• Shift-Alt-O = Overlay
• Shift-Alt-S = Screen
• Shift-Alt-C = Colour
• Shift-Alt-U = Hue

The Complete List

• Shift-Alt-A = Linear Burn
• Shift-Alt-B = Colour Burn
• Shift-Alt-C = Colour
• Shift-Alt-D = Colour Dodghe
• Shift-Alt-E = Difference
• Shift-Alt-F = Soft Light
• Shift-Alt-G = Lighten
• Shift-Alt-H = Hard Light
• Shift-Alt-I = Dissolve
• Shift-Alt-J = Linear Light
• Shift-Alt-K = Darken
• Shift-Alt-L = Hard Mix
• Shift-Alt-M = Multiply
• Shift-Alt-N = Normal
• Shift-Alt-O = Overlay
• Shift-Alt-P = Airbrush Mode
• Shift-Alt-S = Screen
• Shift-Alt-T = Saturation
• Shift-Alt-U = Hue
• Shift-Alt-V = Vivid Light
• Shift-Alt-W = Linear Dodge (Add)
• Shift-Alt-X = Exclusion
• Shift-Alt-Y = Luminosity
• Shift-Alt-Z = Pin Light

You can also cycle through the modes using Shift-Alt-Plus (forward) and Shift-Alt-Minus (backward).

I’m asked this question quite often – all you need to do is to set up the document the way you want it (including any swatches, styles and symbols etc.) that you want to open with the preset and then save your file to the document profiles folder:

• on the Mac OS: Users\(User)\Library\Application Support\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS4\en_GB\New Document Profiles
• on Windows: Documents and Settings\(User)\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS4 Settings\en_GB\New Document Profiles

Please note that I’m using the UK version in English, so the folder inside of the settings may be different if you’re using another language. The file might aso be hidden on some versions of windows if you want to access it directly (to make amodification to an existing preset, for example).

The profile will be available when you restart Illustrator.

My life is a blur at the moment – I’m finding just about enough time to make the odd Twitter ‘tweet’ and that’s about it. There’s a small stack of podcasts that need finishing and I apologise for the delay as I do for the lack of posts recently; I promise to get back on track soon!

In the meantime, here’s a tip that I picked up a while back for making blurred text in InDesign – it’s appropriate at the moment!

Step 1: Create your text

Step 2: Select the text and set the fill to paper in the swatches panel

Step 3: In the Effects panel, set the blending mode of the text to Multiply and be sure to make sure that the knockout option is deselected.

Note: If you have the text sitting over a coloured background, it might look a little strange on your screen; turn on View: Overprint Preview (Shift-Cmd-Alt-Y) to see how it will look when it’s printed.