Interactive Llama

So you have a business card built in Illustrator and you want to center the text on the card. If you select the 3.5″ x 2″ box and the text box and click “Vertical Align Center” on the Align palette, Illustrator will move each object halfway towards the other object!

If you want only to move the text and not the 3.5″ x 2″ box, you will need to make the 3.5″ x 2″ box the “key object.” To do this, select both objects, then click the 3.5″ x 2″ box (not a Shift+click though). This will align all the other objects to the “key object” you just clicked.

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Most users of Final Cut Pro for any substantial length of time will likely know all of the following, but if you are just beginning the following is indispensable, especially if you are editing in the presence of your boss or your client that is waiting to tell you directions.

There are many more shortcuts than these, but if you don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t know these, you are not being as productive as you could be. I very, very much wish someone had forced me to learn the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìJKL?¢‚Ǩ¬ù+ ?¢‚Ǩ?ìIO?¢‚Ǩ¬ù + ?¢‚Ǩ?ìF9?¢‚Ǩ¬ù workflow when I was editing back in college.

Cueing/logging footage
I: Mark in
O: Mark out
J: Reverse (press repeatedly to increase speed)
K: Pause
L: Forward (press repeatedly to increase speed)
F9: Insert from Canvas to Timeline

Tools on Timeline
A: Arrow
H: Hand
B: Blade
N: Snapping
S: Slip
SS: Slide
R: Roll (single tracks)
RR: Roll (both tracks)
T: Select this track, from this point forward
TT: Select this track, from this point backward
TTT: Select all tracks from this point forward
Cmd+A: Select all tracks
P: Pen (Adjust sound and opacity on the Timeline Overlays (Opt+W))
M: Marker (I don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t mark often though)

I used to log footage on paper and log clips via FCP?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Log and Capture window, but with the price and size of hard drives these days. It?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s easier to capture all your footage–yes, just let it sit there and eat up your disk space. If you are short on space, then–at the end–use the File>>Media Manager.

So once you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve captured all your footage, add all the usable footage to a Sequence via the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìCueing/logging footage?¢‚Ǩ¬ù keyboard shortcuts listed above. You won?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t even need to use the mouse–which is always a great benefit. To start your actual timeline, duplicate the rough timeline and start moving your items around, if you need a certain cut, go back to your initial rough timeline and Copy (Cmd+C) and Paste (Cmd+V) it. If you have any additional tips to make an editor?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s life easier, please post them.

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

With cheap 300GB disk drives available now it has become easier to procrastinate archiving one’s creative work. Everyone hates archiving their work. It’s so boring–so uncreative. The following is how I archive my work and hopefully it will allow you to archive faster and more efficiently.

The main points to consider when archiving are:

• Do I have everything for this project?
• Do have a list of everything on the disk, so I can locate files in the future?
• Do I have a way of marking that I have archived this project and so can delete my project folder in the future?

DVDs vs CDs
With printable DVDs costing a few cents more than their CD counterparts and the ubiquitousness of DVD players now, I always burn one DVD instead of trying to burn multiple CDs.

Listing files in OS X
A co-worker of mine said there used to be a print window (a Finder window) command in OS 9. I was unable to find an equivalent in OS X. One could screen capture the Finder window in List mode and print the resulting PNG or PDF. That would work, but it would be a pain expand all the folers, and you would still need to fold up the piece of paper and place it in the CD case.

A few months ago, I discovered an AppleScript on a forum that uses Unix commands to recursively list all the file contents of a folder’s directory tree (meaning all subfolders and their contents), and saves it to a text file. Here is the folderPrint script, and the folderPrint OS X application (PowerPC version).

The folderPrintApp.app will open up a Choose Folder dialog and ask you for a folder. It will then save a text file named “folder_list.txt” to the Desktop. You can open this text file and copy all the text (Ctrl+A) into a textbox in the following disk template.

Listing Files in Windows
Coming Soon. . .

Disk template
If you have a direct to CD printing printer (or if you want to use labels), use this archival CD label template (PDF made with Illustatrator CS2) for the Epson R220. For directions on using the Epson R220 to print to CD in Illustrator, read my previous post on the topic. It isn’t the prettiest, but your archive disk ends up in a CD album or with a job ticket, after all.

Marking that a folder that has been archived
I place a text file called “_FOLDER_ARCHIVED” in a folder after I archive it. With the “_” first, I know it will appear at the top of the file list. Once this file has been placed in a project folder, I know that I can delete it, since I have a backup copy.

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Microsoft Word is an often overlooked tool in a designers toolbox. Not in actual design, but in data organization. If you are given a column of information and want to make it a row of information or select only one column of tab separated text, Word is an excellent tool.

Selecting only one column of tab separated text
There are two commands under the Table Menu, “Text to Table” and “Table to Text.” This will divide any text by tabs, paragraphs, commas, or any other character into table cells (rows and columns). From there, you can select a column with the mouse (click above the column, so the cursor turns into an arrow pointed down). Then, copy the whole column to the clipboard (Ctrl+C). Open a new document, and paste the column into the new document (Ctrl+V). Now use the “Table to Text” command under the Table Menu to convert the table back into paragraph text. Now you can select any column you want and bring it into Illustrator or InDesign as its own text box. Now that each column is it’s own text box. You can right justify any of the columns.

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

This is the best tool I’ve seen for analyzing and disecting a pre-existing website (or to debug the one you just created). This extension allows one to outline table cells, view anchors, DIV tags, disable CSS, resize the browser window, validate your code with the W3C, inspect the DOM, and all inside your browser! Download Firefox. Then download the Web Developer Extension.

Screen shot of Display Element Information
Screen shot of Outline Table Cells

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

I finally found the stupidiest Apple OS X bug. I was copying mp3s to a small USB drive (thumbdrive/jumpdrive) and OS X copied 8 out of the 10 files. It stopped at 8 because the drive was full.

BUT THEN, Apple’s OS deleted the first 8 files that would fit on the drive. I then had to remember that it was eight files that would fit on the drive and copy only those.

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

When you are involved in the final production of a print or electronic piece, trying to walk the line of using the copy/text of one supervisor and the graphic design/layout of a different supervisor is difficult, because they both can’t win without using less than a 80% horizontal type shift.

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Over the past 2 weeks, the Epson R220 my company bought has worked intermittently. I called Epson and their technical support said that they would only support the printing of CD labels from their vastly limited and color distorting printing program, Epson Print CD.

Sample File
This PDF has the correct offsets on a US Letter page setup to print directly to the CDs.
The actual offsets are 0.661 in (X) and 0.3621 in (Y) from the left top of the page. That’s negative Y axis in Illustrator, by the way.

Instructions
The secret to making the printer work everytime from Illustrator is to reset the paper size in the Print dialog. To do this (and you’ll need to do this everytime you print), deselect Size: “Defined by Driver” in the print dialog (File>>Print…) to another setting like “US Letter.” Then, close the print dialog. Re-open it and select Printer…>>Printer Settings>>Media Type: CD/DVD from the drop down menu. I recommend saving the Media Type as an OS X printing preset (Printer…>>Presets>>Save).

One one other necessary piece of information. The front CD tray must be open before the file is sent to the printer. Otherwise, the file will just be printed from the regular paper tray on letter size paper.

Color Settings
The color printed will not match those on the screen either (at least in CMYK). The closest Color Setting (Edit>>Color Setting…) that I have seen to the monitor’s color is “North American General Purpose 2.” I believe this is the default for Illustrator CS2 on install.

I hope this helps. It took over five hours to narrow this down. Thanks a lot, Epson. . .

NOTE: The above might work with the Epson R330, but since I do not own a R330, I cannot test this.

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

Some of the following add-ons may not work in Adobe Flash CS3. I am still using Flash 8 due to the critical productivity of the following:
I’ve probably spent more than five hundred hours in the Flash authoring environment in the past year. The two hundred though have been the most productive. Below are many of the authoring productivity tricks I’ve learned. Most will only shave a second or two off each time you use them, but a few might save minutes by themselves.

I recommend linking most of these commands to shortcut keys for optimal efficiency. To do this, edit Flash’s keyboard shortcuts via Edit>>Keyboard Shortcuts (Flash Professional>>Keyboard Shortcuts on a Mac). You will need to create a new set of shortcuts, since you can’t edit the default set. Then, go to Drawing Menu Commands>>Commands and select the command you would like to make a shortcut key for. I hope that these help you.

Instance Alpha Toggle (0 to 100)
Most of the time I toggle movie clips between “0%” alpha and “100%” alpha. You’d think that Macromedia (and now Adobe) would have a way to do this action included into the Flash authoring environment, but that’s what JSFL is for after all. This JSFL command toggles between “0%” alpha and “100%” alpha of all the selected movie clips. If the previous value was not “100%” or “0%,” then no change occurs. The greatest advantage to having this command is that you can select multiple movie clips in multiple layers and change them all to “0%” alpha in one keystroke. I recommend re-assigning “CTRL+0″ to this command.

Creating a Motion Tween
The command, “Insert > Timeline > Create Motion Tween” should have a keyboard shortcut. Since next to creating key frames this is the command I use the most often, I deactivated keyboard shortcut for “Transform” which is “CTRL+T” and made it “Create Motion Tween.” You can also download a command I wrote that toggles the motion tweening. Yes, you can right click and select “Create Motion Tween” and “Remove Motion Tween,” but that requires using the mouse again.

Setting an instance’s name
So you’ve created a fade out tween with two keyframes for the mouse on, a fade out tween with two keyframes for the mouse off, and pulsing movie clip with two key frames for the mouse over. Then, you realize you forgot to set the instance name of the movie clip in each frame. If this has ever happen, download and install this JSFL command created by a Japanese web designer. This simple command copies the selected movie clip’s name from the library and makes that name the instance’s name. You select the six keyframes and with one shortcut key stroke, you’re back in the game.

Frame/Layer Distributor
If you have ever frame by frame (stop) animated a movie clip and then were asked to move the entire animation. You could take all the frames out of the main timeline by creating a movie clip–which is a great benefit of Flash. You can move objects across multiple layers (space), but not across multiple frames (time). This command, by Luar Productions, copies all the selected frames to their own layer. Once there, you will have what looks something like Flash’s “onion skinning,” but it will be the actual animation, not just guides of the animation. You can then move all the “former” frames that are now layers on the stage all at once since they are in the frame column on the timeline. Once they are moved use the Frame/Layer Distributor to convert the layers back to frames.

Removing Frames
If you have been using the frame context menu (right clicking) in order to remove frames, there’s a faster way. You can use the predefined “Insert > Timeline > Remove Frames” (Shift+F5) to delete them. I recommend changing this shortcut command to “CTRL+E” or “CTRL+R.” This is so it will be close to “CTRL+T” which in the previous paragraph I mentioned that you could set to “Create Motion Tween.”

Copying Frames with ALT
If you have been copying frames via the context menu or “CTRL+ALT+V,” you can also duplicate frames by holding down ALT and dragging. This will not insert frames and slide the current frames down the timeline though. It will replace the frames under it–which more often then not what I wanted to do in the first place.

Duplicating a Layer
While we are on the topic of copying frames, I discovered a Duplicate Layer JSFL command that replicates an entire layer–frames and all. It’s from FlashGuru.com. Now you don’t have to create a layer and copy the frames to that layer in order to duplicate it. This is a great for duplicating similar buttons in the user interface. I suggest making the shortcut key to this command Ctrl+D.

Locking Layers
Like Adobe products, you can use the “ALT+click” on the padlock icon to lock all but the selected layer. This causes all the currently locked layers to unlock when you are done though. To get around this, create folders (even if the groups objects aren’t topically similar) and lock the entire folder and thus it’s layers.

Stop frames
There is no doubt that the most used Flash commands are “stop()” and “gotoAndPlay()”. You can type the “ESC” key, then type “st” to write “stop()” in an actionscript window, but there are also Flash Commands you can download that you can assign a shortcut key to add “stop()” This means that you never have to open the actionscript editor.

Returning to the first frame
I frequently place my actionscript in the first frame of a movie in it’s only layer (called “as”) (that’s until I place a pre-loader). As the movie lengthens and the playhead moves down the timeline that frame is no longer visible, and I have to scroll back to the beginning of the movie to edit the actionscript. To prevent this, you can download this JFSL command that moves the playhead to frame 1. I recommend assigning it the keyboard shortcut “CTRL+1.”

Moving frame by frame
You can move one frame at a time with the “” keys in their respective directions. This is great for frame by frame (stop) animation.

Output Window
If you use Flash 8 and you usually downgrade your SWFs to version 7, you are probably now use to the Output window popping up and spouting out errors about embedded strokes. To stop this from happening, place the output window in a panel group with other panels on the far right.

Macromedia Exchange extentions mentioned in this post:
Alpha0to100Toggle
GoToFirstFrame
LayerFrameDistrib
LibFolderCreator
MotionTweenToggle
duplicateLayer
instanceNameSet

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

This post doesn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t have anything to do with ?¢‚Ǩ?ìissues surrounding media creation and marketing,?¢‚Ǩ¬ù but I wanted to post this for anyone that might be interested in making a household budget. There are four columns on the budget worksheet: Weekly, Bi-Weekly, Monthly, and Six Months. The items in black are all the numbers derived from the numbers in red; so only change numbers in red. Behind the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìBudget?¢‚Ǩ¬ù worksheet is the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìSalary?¢‚Ǩ¬ù worksheet that computes taxes and net pay. The Net Bi-Weekly salary is then put into the Budget worksheet to compute income.

Download budgetAndSalary.xls (Excel 2000)

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com