When I think back on the places I have worked over the years, a large amount of Adobe software knowledge came to me from other designers. Whether it’s looking over someone’s shoulder and asking “how did you do that?” or the morning coffee brainstorming sessions where people would point out tips and tricks in case someone did not know them. Now I am not claiming to know it all, but I have been using this software since I first opened photoshop 7. No matter how long you have been using the software, in my opinion if you think you know it all, you are a dead duck.

I wanted to focus some of my blog post on some of the things you can do in creative suite that I myself have seen other designers overlook over the years. Now I am sure, especially on this fist post about the eyedropper tool, some of you might say “no duh”, but… I remember the first time a designer showed me this and I was like “wow, that is awesome”.

This is an easy way to create a color palette based off of a photo you may have in your project you are working on. First off I like to make sure my color on the toolbar is set to the fill color so I can see what the color I choose looks like. Select the Eyedropper tool on your toolbar and as you bring it over your image you will notice it has an empty white fill to the eyedropper. Go ahead and click on any area of the photo and you will then see the eyedropper has a black fill to it, this means you have selected a color from the image. The fill color on your toolbar now shows the color you selected. If you are happy with the color selected you can add it to your color palette by clicking “New Swatch”. If you do not like the color the eyedropper picked up a simple way to clear it (have it turn white again) is to just hit the letter “i” on your keyboard, you can then select another area of the photo. It’s that easy. The photo below shows three areas that I selected marked a with a yellow box that created the three new colors in my color palette.

One thing you can also play with is using this tool to color type, or create a stroke or fill color based off the same eyedropper tool technique. Highlight your text in a text box, make sure your toolbar color is on fill color, select an area in the photo with the eyedropper and your text will pick up that color. This works for fill and stroke as well on both type and objects as long as the item is selected when you use the eyedropper tool to select a color.

If you are new to Indesign or have overlooked this feature go play with some photos and see what you come up with. Next blog post I will be featuring a great plug-in from Flux Consulting that allows you to style your text in a very similar way as the eyedropper tool without ever leaving the type tool. A must have plug-in in my opinion!

Well after a couple months of trashing layouts, not having enough hours in the day to work on it, and being overly critical of myself, my site is now live.

Check back for blog post on everything from design to surfing to amusing stuff I come across during my long days at a computer. Make sure to check out my friends links especially Antonea Nabors who I have been working with on several projects and who is an amazing web and print designer.