10 Essential InDesign Productivity Tips and Tricks

Let’s kick off Day 2 with a fast-paced, fun-filled tip-a-palooza to boost your productivity! We’ll zip through a ton of handy tips and tricks that every InDesign user needs to know. Plus, you’ll get primed to soak up all the InDesign goodness the rest of the conference will bring.

Topics include:

  • If you’re not customizing InDesign, you’re missing out
  • Essential shortcuts
  • Handy tricks
  • Interoperability Accelerators

 

Illustrator for iPad: Take it Anywhere!

You own a laptop but you still keep it on your desk, right? It’s time to break free and move around… your body will thank you and your creativity will soar. The mobile version of Adobe Illustrator is amazingly good, not just for ideation or sketching, but even detail work. And you can always seamlessly move your artwork to your desktop or laptop later for finishing.

Learn what you need to know to break free today!

Accessible Long Docs

Creating accessible documents of any length can be a challenge. But when you’re working on long documents like books, reports, proposals, and other large publications, it’s critical that you build for accessibility from the start. Join internationally-renowned expert and art director Bevi Chagnon as she explains the best practices, and shows how to apply them.

Topics include:

  • Maximizing InDesign’s tools for long documents
  • Maintaining accessibility across a multi-chapter layout
  • When to keep the document in one INDD layout file, and when to use InDesign’s book utility
  • Strategies to manage the editorial – production workflow and keep everything accessible at the end

Deconstructing Illustrator Graphics: How’d They Do That?!

Join us for an educational and inspirational session, as we showcase some of the world’s most amazing vector illustrations. From infographics to diagrams, commercial art to crazy special effects, you’ll not only see the art, but how the art was made.

Three Minutes Max: Photoshop + Illustrator

Everyone loves Photoshop and Illustrator tips — from amazing (but useful) special effects, to essential productivity enhancements, every trick helps! Join us as 8 experts from around the world each share their best Photoshop or Illustrator tip or trick in under 3 minutes. Even better: you get to vote for which one is best! This is traditionally one of the highlights of CreativePro Week, when attendees gasp with delight and astonishment.

Essential Tools and Services for Accessibility

When it comes to creating accessible documents, you can do most of what you need in InDesign and Acrobat… but a third-party tool or online resource can often help you work smarter and faster. Discover this art director and accessibility expert’s favorite add-ons and services that can upgrade your accessibility workflow from good to great.

Topics include:

  • Demos of 3rd party plug-ins for accessibility
  • Reviews of online tools and resources for accessible design

Coloring and Recoloring in Illustrator

Choosing the right colors for your project usually isn’t hard, but applying them properly to maximize efficiency and flexibility can be tricky! Even harder: hearing from your boss or client that the colors need to change.

In this deep dive, you’ll learn the techniques of the Illustrator power users and never have to worry about color changes again.

Amazing Infographics

If you’ve ever tried to build an infographic, you know that telling a story through visual design is not as straightforward as it might seem!

This focused session will explore:

  • Let’s get clear: what is an infographic (and what isn’t!)
  • Why Illustrator is an excellent tool for creating many infographics
  • Handy techniques for infographics with Illustrator
  • Examples of amazing and inspirational infographics we can all learn from

 

Retouching Images

Speed up your retouching using some extremely powerful Photoshop tips and techniques. AI Technology is revolutionizing the way we retouch and you should be aware of all the time saving techniques Photoshop is silently integrating into their tools. Join retoucher Kristina Sherk as she shows you some of the new ways Photoshop is integrating AI technology into their interface and how these improvements are guaranteed to save you time.

We’ll cover:

  • Making a plan of attack, how marking up can increase your workspeed
  • Clean up methods that are fast and easy
  • Take out objects in a snap
  • Using Frequency Separation (don’t be scared, we’ll make it easy)
  • Color: Matching made simple, Adding Color effects
  • Shaping
  • Using Photoshop plug-ins to cut down on your editing time.

Accessible PDF Files: Key Acrobat Techniques

In the two earlier sessions (Accessibility Fundamentals for InDesign and Next Steps in InDesign Accessibility), we explored how to set up Adobe InDesign documents to export accessible PDFs. But there’s only so much InDesign can do! In this session, we’ll see the critical next steps you need to take in Acrobat.

Topics include:

  • Key Checkpoints to Check Every time
  • Accessibility versus Usability
  • Testing with a Screen Reader without being an Expert
  • How to Use the Preflight Panel to Your Advantage
  • Testing Tools You Should be Using