Back to Dye Printing Tricks & Tips
Just a few things stuck in nooks and crannies
Besides using your Snap to Grid, Snap to Points, Snap to Guide (All found under View) to get stuff to align better than "almost but not quite" you can switch around your Units of Measure with a pop up menu. Suppose you are working on an 8.5" x 11" page and you need to move something a little more than three-eighths of an inch, but not really twenty-seven-sixty-fourths. Sure you could do the math and deal with .375" and .421875" of you could tap the little menu at the bottom (Default "Points") and choose between inches, points, picas, decimal inches, and millimeters. (Need Decimals? Click Here.)
To hear the various "Snap To's" (which can actually be helpful) Go to >File>Preferences>Sounds. Mix up the sounds and you'll know when you're snapping to a point, the grid, or to a guideline.
No really, this is a time-saver, not a techno-geek frill. You can bring in buttons to do dozens of things like blending, cutting, punching, simplifying, bring to front, etc.
Go to >Windows>Toolbars>Main if your "Main" selection is not already visible.
Then go to >File>Customize>Toolbars and you'll get a window list of the various categories of Buttons to do most actions. Whether you'd like a button to automatically bring you to 1600% or a button to call up the tint mixer they are in there. Look around. Float your mouse or stylus over the various icons to see what each is. If you like it, drag the icon to the "Main" toolbar.
Here are the basic buttons like "Open" and "Print"
Plus buttons for "Revert" "Export" and "Set Output
Specs"
Under Modify you've got buttons for "Bringing to Front" "Union"
"Lock"
Under Text you've got lots of nice controls for "Style" "Leading>Solid,
etc." 'converting Case" "Inserting Special Characters,"
and my personal favorites: "Attach/Detach to Path"
Under Windows you've got the familiar buttons for pulling up the basic
windows for the "Inspector" and "Color Mixer" but why
not add buttons for hopping to "Layers" "Tints" "Styles"
"Align" and "Transform?"
("Box Three Five Oh, Boston Mass, Oh Two One Three
Four")
| To | Use (Mac) | Use (PC) |
| View to Fit Selection | Command+Zero | Control+Zero |
| Fit View to Current Page | Command+Shift+Zero | Control+Shift+Zero |
| Fit View to All Pages | Command+Option+Zero | Control+Alt+Zero |
| View at 50% | Command+5 | Control+5 |
| View at 100% | Command+1 | Control+1 |
| View at 200% | Command+2 | Control+2 |
| View at 400% | Command+4 | Control+4 |
| View at 800% | Command+8 | Control+8 |
| Zoom In | Command+Space Bar | Control+ Space Bar |
| Zoom Out | Command+Option+Space Bar | Control+Alt+Space Bar |
You can create your own custom magnification (you know if you have a specific enlargement that would be just PERFECT for your job); Zoom in with your click and dragged Magnifier Tool, or type in a weird magnification in the Magnification Entry Field (the box that shows you a percentage in the lower left, next to the Page Selector buttons. Go to >View>Custom>New and name it. You can access it from >View>Custom (It will appear under the "Previous" selection. You can name it Teddy Bear if you want). Of if you go to the Magnification Entry your new "view" will be the bottom selection (Because while 100% was good, 200%was too much so you needed 153%).
This function is good on a "project specific" basis. If you are doing basic stuff, The Preview Mode is fine. If you're adding a bunch of fills and gradients, and you need to move around the scrolling faster, chose "Fast Preview" and FreeHand will "average out" the various fills and get you to where you want to be without the more exact redraw.
Need to go faster Speed Racer? Click on Keyline and you'll lose all those annoying fills altogether (TIFFs EPS files, etc. become bounding boxes). Hyperspace feels slow to you? Okay you have one more option: Fast Keyline!