I used this script when I had a list of over 50 donors for a charity event that I needed to alphabetize, and it saved me a lot of time. A while back, I also found a calendar script online called Calendar Wizard that will create a calendar for you can you customize and edit. You can download it here

It works the same way for objects as well, but you will need to be on either the Selection Tool or Direct Selection tool. With either tool selected, select an object, then hold down option/control and you can click on a styled object.

One thing you need to look out for is if another object is in front of the object you are trying to pick up the style from it will pick up the style from that top object, so you will have to rearrange the order of objects to get the one you are trying to select on top. On a side note a quick way to toggle through objects that are layered on top of each other is to choose your Selection tool, hold down the command key and continue to click on one area and you will see the objects be selected one by one. Once you select the object you want to be on top, you can either go to Object/Arrange/… or a simple key shortcut is select the object, hold down shift/command and click the ] key to bring it forward or the [ key to send it to the back.

The plug-in for CS4 is only $29.95 and CS3 is now only $20. It is well worth it in my opinion. You can download either CS3 or CS4 versions at Flux Consulting’s website on this page:

http://fluxconsulting.com/software.html

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!