This week, after celebrating Illustrator Month in the dekeLounge, we come back to the entire Creative Suite with a vengeance. A vengeance against the things that distract us from our love of Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator. Yes, it’s the ultimate Pet Peeves show as we discuss the things that drive us crazy when we’re trying to get work done. Our reasons are three-fold: 1) we need to vent because it’s healthy, 2) you, beloved dekeItarians might have insights into why some things work the way they do that we haven’t thought of, and c) we want to encourage you to share your own gripes should you need to vent as well. It’s all about the healing airing of grievances this week.
Here are is our list of some particular pain points, and why they perplex us:
- Bonus Real-Time Frustration: What’s with the sanctimonious ever-changing rules on opening files that feature currency; according to Deke it’s our money!
- What’s with that new gray outline thingy when you’re moving things in Photoshop. It’s distracting at best and often misleading. Do any of you know it’s purpose? And more importantly has anyone figured out how to turn the “feature” off?
- In InDesign CS4 there are a bunch of odd gesture reactions when you’re using the Magic Mouse or laptop trackpad that make Deke insane. (You can turn it off in ID CS5, so thank you, Adobe. We love you back!)
- Also, I’m not a big fan of the page reinforcer-esque thing that allows you to select your frame’s content in ID on-the-fly. I can’t get out of it. I rarely mess with the content in my frame (because Deke insists on perfecting images in Photoshop first anyway). Do you guys like the new “Page Reinforcer Mode?”
- Minor irritation: when you’re using keyboard shortcuts, it would be nice to have increments that reflected our needs. We need mirco-movements, but we sometimes need to move in large increments as well.
- Deke asked me for an irritation that involved the Bridge. I just find the evocation of the Output panel to be…mysterious. Also resizing the screen evokes Microsoft Excel. Who wants that?
- Sometimes, it seems that Preference settings and whether they are document-level or global completely understands our needs. And sometimes it defies reason.
- In InDesign, is there a way to create Anchored Objects that don’t involve pasting, then cutting, then repasting? Does that make process make sense?
- Also, we bemoan the horrible previews supplied by InDesign libraries. I don’t need to say anymore.
- Does anyone else feel like the Display quality settings in InDesign seem to switch? Does anyone else feel like we’re picking on InDesign? (We must have just come off some book writin’.)
- In Illustrator, why can’t you specify guideline colors? Talk to the InDesign team, it must be possible to make these colors customized to our own desires.
Let us know where we’re being unreasonable. Or just enjoy the vicarious venting that ensues. Here’s the regular-quality audio file. You can stream, or for best results, right-click and choose Download or Save. Here’s the high-res version; you’ll want to download rather than stream. And don’t forget our usual plea to subscribe via iTunes.
And cheers to our beloved programs which have us so secure in our love that we can complain and yet return to create fabulousness time after time. Until next week!
Of guide colors and global preferences…
Illustrator does allow you to change the colors of guides via the Preferences dialog. Or is that not what you meant? Illustrator’s guides will also pick up the Layer color when they are selected (you can place guides on different layers).
As for preferences, there’s a profound different between how InDesign works and how Illustrator works in this regard. There isn’t enough room to discuss it here, but maybe I’ll cover it in my Fridays with Mordy session tomorrow which focuses on using Illustrator and InDesign together.
Mordy Golding
http://rwillustrator.blogspot.com
The Zoom Grid
My pet peeve is the way Photoshop suddenly displays a grid when you zoom your magnification way in to (in my case) get into very small and tight little crevices with the Pen Tool. How do you make a good selection with that thing in the way, and when did this happen? Or a better question, why did this happen? It seems to be new in CS5.
Yes, TJ, you can turn off the pixel grid
I seem to recall the pixel grid arriving with CS4. I know because I actually like it, but I can see it being annoying, especially when you’re using the pen tool. To get rid it choose View > Show and click Pixel Grid to turn off its check mark.
Ninness says, Don’t be a whiner, turn off Content Grabber in ID
OK, after just telling TJ he could turn off the Pixel Grid in Photoshop, along comes some analogous advice for me.
According to Michael Ninness, that thing that Deke and I were calling the Page Reinforcer (that icon that allows you to grab the content of a frame by clicking it, regardless of which selection tool you have) is called the “Content Grabber” or, colloquially, “the Donut.” Turn it off by choosing View > Extras > Hide Content Grabber.
Michael is former Senior Product Manger of InDesign, but more importantly VP of Content at lynda.com and, um, drumroll, my new boss! So it’s good that he’s a) handy with InDesign and b) opposed to whining.
Guide colors
Mordy beat me to it but I change guide colors all the time since I hate the default cyan. Maybe you meant the grid colors?
As for opening currency I haven’t had any problems yet on opening Currency in Photoshop CS4 but maybe it’s changed again or it depends on resolution of the scan. I’ve always wondered how Photoshop decides what is currency and what isn’t.
Jerry
www.vectorgeek.com
Ill & Indd working the same
Creating styles in Ill is a pain - and then applying them you can’t remove para overrides without selecting all the text—uugh make them speak InDesign!
How about the Layers panel and artboards - I love the Ill look Layers in InDesign - but I hate the Ill every layer in whole document - wouldn’t it be nice to disply only layers for active artboard?
Illustrator Arrowheads
I have to throw in one more gripe. The way Illustrator handles Arrowheads. I know this feature has been updated in CS5 (I’m still on CS4) It’s just that since most of my day job consists of editing or creating technical artwork, arrowheads are almost always a part of my art process. The way they are implemented in Illustrator has never been right especially for technical art. For diagrams you always want the arrow to end at the point of a line not extend beyond it.
I can draw a nice neat flow chart or wiring diagram with all the lines perfectly aligned only to have to adjust each arrowhead line so it doesn’t overlap the line or object it is pointing to. It is a royal pain in the patootie. Adjusting the arrow size is cumbersome too. Instead of a handy slider/scrubber to increase or decrease the size you are stuck with manually typing in a percentage value. It seems like they’d take a queue from Photoshop and implement sliders for all adjustments like that. Scrolling through the different arrowhead selections is laborious too especially if you like a certain arrow like arrow 13. You have to click the mouse 13 times to select it.
Custom end points would really be nice but I see where the implementation of that could be quite difficult. There are so many variables you could end up breaking the way it currently works and making things worse. To really do it right you’d have to change the whole gui for arrows and that takes time and a lot of testing.
That said, I love the developers of Illustrator and I know the huge task they have of implementing new features I just hope someday more attention will be applied to this one small area of Illustrator.
lynda.com
As a new subscriber to lynda.com, I’ve been watching various adobe tutorial videos on, and often wondered why anyone would search for a course by author. Having watched a few of yours, I now find myself seeking out your tutorials using this very search criteria.
I love the detail, pace, explainations and energy that goes into all your courses.
If you keep making them, then I’ll keep learning from them.
Chris
Hampshire, United Kingdom
Me, too
I agree with you and Deke, and with Michael! (I turned off that thing really quickly after I started using CS5, and yes, one should abstain from egregious whinery). The content grabber is a fantastic tool unless a) you work quickly, or b) its little bagel thingie shows up under some other frame in the layout. It’s an amazingly well thought out way to make designers slow down and be v-e-r-y careful where they click, terrific for those who charge by the hour.
Like the scrubby zoom in Photoshop (which works in only one part of the UI of one application in the entire Creative Suite, so as to totally creep out your muscle memory), it probably seemed like a great idea when someone thought it up, but it’s a royal pita in real life and thank God they gave us a way to turn it off!