Like most other applications, Adobe CS5 offers keyboard shortcuts so that you can access features quickly and easily with the touch of a key or two. Explore the Adobe CS5 shortcuts that are used the most by both Windows and Mac users.

Adobe CS5, like any software, gives you menu options to open, close, and save your files. Menu options also enable you to import and export documents and undo changes, in addition to other basic commands. Here's a table that shows common Adobe CS5 options and what they do.

Using AutoCAD 2010 enables you to do amazing things if you just set it up right before you get started. The following table shows AutoCAD commands in both the ribbon application and classic menus and describes what each does:

AutoCAD 2010 helps you design nearly anything you can think of, but you do have to recognize some limits. The following table shows limits for drawing scales from 1/16 of an inch to 3 inches to a foot:

Certain tasks in Google SketchUp 7 can be performed in a variety of ways, but if you're looking for the simplest or quickest way to do things in SketchUp 7, then take a look at this chart:

Follow these steps for some of the functions in Google SketchUp 7 to improve your work rate, finish your tasks quickly, and move onto your next project.

To divide an edge into a number of shorter edges:

1. Right-click an edge with the Select tool.

2. Choose Divide from the context menu that pops up.

3. Type the number of segments you'd like and press Enter.

To resize your whole model based on one known measurement:

1. Select the Tape Measure tool.

2. Press Ctrl (Option on a Mac) until you don't see a + next to your cursor.

3. Measure a distance; click once to start measuring, and again to stop.

4. Type a dimension for the distance you just measured and press Enter.

5. Click Yes in the dialog box that pops up.

To set up your own keyboard shortcuts:

1. Choose Window→Preferences (File→ Preferences on the Mac).

2. Click the Shortcuts panel.

When you design a Flash Web site, you need to ensure that your interface, and every movie that loads into it, plays flawlessly and that your ActionScript executes without a hitch. If you can see what's going on in each Flash movie as it is playing, you stand a better chance of exterminating the bugs before you publish the Web site and upload it to a Web hosting service. Failure to eliminate every bug in your Flash Web site will not gain you any favor with your client or your client's intended audience, which will dwindle rapidly after encountering a bug or four. For this sundry task, you use a device with the ubiquitous name of Debugger:

1. Choose Control --> Debug Movie from the menu.

This publishes the movie in another window and displays the Debugger window

2. Click the Continue button (it looks like a Play button) in the Debugger to begin playing and debugging your movie.

The status bar at the top of the Debugger window tells you the location of the movie you are debugging. The window below the status bar displays all of the movie clips in your movie, including those external movies that load into your interface when you click a button. Notice the tabs just below the movie clip list in the Debugger window. These tabs are populated with values after you click the Continue button, which begins playing the movie. These allow you to further analyze individual elements in your movie to detect any glitches:

• Properties: This tab enables you to view the properties and the values of properties of a selected movie clip and change them as the movie runs. To do this, click a movie clip in the top display list; the Properties tab values update. Double-click any of the active values in this tab and enter a different value to preview the effect it will have on your movie.

• Variables: This tab allows you to view the variables and the values of variables used in a selected movie clip. Click the Variables tab to view variables associated with the currently selected item from the display list. The variables update as the movie plays. To see the effect a different value will have, double-click a variable value in this tab and then enter a new value.

• If the properties and variables are not visible, click the divider bar above Call Stack and drag down to reveal them.

• Locals: This tab displays the local variables used in the movie and the value of each variable.

• Watch: This tab allows you to monitor selected variables closely. When you first launch the Debugger, no variables are on the Watch list. You can add variables to this list by selecting them in the Variables tab and then choosing Add Watch from the Debugger Options menu. Alternatively, you can select the variable, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Macintosh), and choose Watch from the context menu. In the Variables tab, a blue dot appears to the left of a watched variable.

• To remove a variable from the Watch list, select the variable in the Watch list and choose Remove Watch from the Debugger Options menu. Alternatively, you can select the variable in the Watch list, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Macintosh), and choose Remove from the context menu.

Flash offers a powerful system for creating animation on the Web. Here's an overview of what you can do with the system:

• Create a Flash movie by creating graphics and animating them over the duration of the movie.

• Use the Publish command within Flash to publish the movie into a Flash player file. At the same time, Flash creates HTML code that you need for your Web page.

• Insert HTML code into your HTML document that creates the Web page to reference the Flash player file. It's similar to adding a graphic to a Web page. Alternatively, you can use the HTML code alone as a new Web page.

• Upload the new or edited HTML document and the Flash player file to the location where you keep other files for your Web pages.

• Open your browser, navigate to your Web page, and presto! There's your cool animation on your Web page.

You need a Flash viewer to see the effects that Flash creates. These days, Flash viewers come installed in most computer systems and browsers so most people can view Flash-driven Web sites immediately without any special download or preparation. When you display a Web site that contains Flash effects, your system uses the Flash viewer to play the animation. Users who don't have a Flash viewer can download it free from Macromedia.

Web sites are becoming increasingly sophisticated. By using animation and special effects, you can distinguish your Web site from the also-rans. Using animation isn't hard, and you don't have to be a professional graphic artist, either. Anyone can create simple animations to enhance a Web site; it just takes a little time.

Knowing what you can create with Flash 5

You can use Flash 5 to create simple animation to add to your Web page. You also can create an entire Web page or site and incorporate text, graphics, interactive buttons, and animation.

The following list describes some of the ways you can manipulate text, graphics, and sound by using Flash 5:

• Create simple or fancy text that remains still or appears animated on your Web page. You can choose to stop the animation after a few seconds or repeat it while your viewers view the page.

• Use Flash tools to create your own graphics for your Web page, or import graphics. You can lay out a Web page graphically or add graphics to only a part of a Web page.

• Animate graphics and make objects appear and disappear by using the transparency feature. Objects can move, get bigger or smaller, or rotate. Flash also enables you to morph — that is, transform — shapes into new shapes.

• Fill shapes and text with gradients, which are colors that gradually change into new colors. You can even fill shapes and text with bitmap images that you import into Flash. For example, you can fill the letters of your name with dozens of flowers.

• Create Web page buttons that not only lead your viewers wherever you want them to go but change shape or color at the same time. You can make buttons change as you pass your mouse over them. People who view your page can click a button to display a movie (animation). In other words, your viewers can decide which movies they want to see.

• Add sounds or music to your movie. You can control how long the sound or music plays and whether it loops to play continuously.

• Create pop-up menus that viewers can use to navigate your site.

Determining when not to use Flash 5

If Flash 5 is so wonderful, why doesn't every Web site designer use it? Why aren't most Web sites created completely with Flash?

Here's the other side of the story.

Although the vector graphics and animation of Flash load quickly, they don't load as quickly as plain text and simple graphics. Adding a movie to your Web page creates some overhead. There's no point in using Flash if you want simple pages consisting of mostly text and a few graphics that you want to stay put and not move.

You can create certain graphic effects much more easily by using bitmapgraphics. Painted brushstroke and textured effects are examples. Graphic artists create these types of graphics by using graphic editing software, and the results are bitmaps. Similarly, to add photographs to your Web page, you need to scan the photographs as bitmaps. Flash creates vector graphics (defined mathematically), which are different from bitmap graphics (defined by lots of dots).

If you want simple animation, such as a few blinking dots or a marquee effect, animated GIFs (the animated bitmap graphics you often see on the Web) are smaller than Flash movies, so they load faster. You can create animated GIFs by using animated GIF editing software.

Flash provides little in the way of 3-D graphics or animation. For those, you need to go to more sophisticated software such as Poser or 3D Studio Max.

Video clips that you capture or import into Adobe Premiere Elements all wind up in the Media Window. When you select a clip in the Media window, a preview of it appears in the tiny preview window in the upper-left corner. If the clip is audio or video, you can play it by clicking the Play button just to the left of the preview window. You can move to specific parts of the clip by using the slider underneath the preview window.

The clip previews provided in the Media window are pretty small. If you get tired of squinting, you may want to load the clip into the Monitor window to preview it. Besides giving you a bigger window in which to preview the clip, the Monitor is also where you will pare the clip down to just the portion you want to use in your movie.

Follow these steps to play your clip in the Monitor window:

1. Switch to the Editing workspace mode by choosing Window --> Workspace --> Editing.

Alternatively, you can click the Edit button on the Premiere Elements toolbar.

The Monitor window appears, if it wasn't already open.

2. Click and drag a clip from the Media window and drop it in the Monitor window.

The clip appears in the Monitor window.

3. Use the playback controls at the bottom of the Monitor window (as in Figure 1) to preview the clip.

The Monitor window offers buttons and tools for controlling playback and various other editing actions. Take a close look at the playback controls right now by loading a clip into the Monitor and clicking the Play button. Somewhere in the middle of the clip, click the Pause button (the Play button turns into the Pause button after you click Play). Now you can play with some controls that help you identify specific frames in a clip:

• Click the Step Forward button.The clip moves forward by one frame. You can also press the right-arrow key on your keyboard to move forward one frame at a time.

• Click the Step Back button. The clip moves back a frame. You can also control the Step Back function by pressing the left-arrow key.

• If you want to remember a certain spot in the clip, move to the spot and click the Set Marker button.This places a marker at the current location in the clip. A marker is kind of like a virtual stick-on note.

• Place the mouse pointer directly on the Shuttle control. Click and drag the control to the right. Notice that as you drag the Shuttle farther to the right, the clip advances forward at an increasing rate. Drag the Shuttle left to play the clip backward. Let go of the Shuttle by releasing the mouse button. The Shuttle snaps back to the middle and the clip stops playing. Shuttle controls have been common on professional video equipment for years because they provide quick yet precise control over playback.

• As a clip plays, notice that a pointed indicator moves to show you your current location in a clip. This pointed indicator is often called the CTI, short forcurrent time indicator. Another common name for the CTI isplayhead.

In addition to the visible Monitor window controls, Adobe Premiere Elements allows you to rely heavily on keyboard buttons as well. Premiere Elements uses the industry-standard key combination of J-K-L to control shuttle operation in the Monitor window. Press J to shuttle back, L to shuttle forward, and K to stop. Notice that the J, K, and L keys are conveniently located right next to each other on your keyboard.

Vector graphics — graphics that are defined by equations, rather than dots used in bitmap graphics — from any drawing program become a grouped object that you can use like any other Flash object. The WMF format, a Windows vector graphics format, also imports in this way. These formats work especially well when imported into Flash. You can sometimes find WMF graphics in clip art collections and on the Web.

Preparing for import

You can import text from a text editor and Flash turns it into a Flash text object so that you can edit and format it within Flash. When you import a bitmap graphic, you often need to take some steps before you can use the graphic in your Flash file. You can manipulate your graphics in several ways to make them more Flash-friendly:

• Delete the background: In many cases, Flash imports not only the shape you want, but also a rectangular background that you don't want. To get rid of that background, deselect the imported object, select just the rectangular background, and press Delete. If that doesn't work, read on.

• Ungroup the graphic: Ungrouping separates grouped elements into individual elements. Ungrouping retains most of the features of your graphic. Select the graphic and choose Modify --> Ungroup. If you find that you still can't work with your graphic properly, read the next item.

• Break apart the graphic: Break imported graphics to separate them into ungrouped editable elements. Breaking apart is useful for reducing the file size of graphics that you have imported. Breaking apart converts bitmaps to fills, converts text to outlines, and breaks the link between an OLE object and its source application. In other words, the Break Apart command is a powerful tool. Select the graphic and choose Modify --> Break Apart.

• Trace the bitmap: Flash can work magic. If you want total control within Flash, convert a bitmap to a vector graphic.

To trace a bitmap, follow these steps:

1. Import the bitmap — don't deselect it or perform any other action on it.

2. Choose Modify --> Trace Bitmap.

The Trace Bitmap dialog box opens.

3. In the Color Threshold text box, type a number to represent the threshold.

The higher the number, the fewer colors you get in the final vector graphic. For close results, try a value of 10.

4. In the Minimum Area text box, type a number to represent the number of nearby pixels that Flash considers when assigning a color to a pixel.

For greatest fidelity, try a value of 1.

5. From the Curve Fit drop-down list, choose an option to represent how smoothly Flash draws the outlines.

For the most exact results, choose Pixel.

6. In the Corner Threshold drop-down list, choose an option to represent how Flash reproduces sharp edges.

For sharpest results, choose Many Corners.

7. Click OK to close the Trace Bitmap dialog box and then deselect the graphic to see the result.

When you import a bitmap graphic, Flash places the graphic in the current movie's Library. For best results, don't delete the original graphic from the Library, even if you have modified it. Flash continues to refer to the graphic after you have converted it to a symbol.

If you're working in the Windows environment, you can also paste a graphic into Flash as an embedded object. To edit the object, double-click it to open the original application and use that application's tools.

To embed an object, follow these steps:

1. From within the object's native application, select the graphic and choose Edit --> Copy.

2. Close the other application and return to Flash.

3. Choose Edit --> Paste Special.

The Paste Special dialog box opens.

4. In the dialog box, select the type of object you want to embed, if you have a choice.

5. Click the Paste Link check box if you want to retain a link to the original file so that Flash updates the graphic if it changes.

6. Click OK to close the Paste Special dialog box.

Selecting objects for editing

Whether you created your graphics in Flash or imported them, you need to edit them in many ways. You can manipulate objects to suit your artistic fancy; the possibilities are in the zillions. The Flash editing tools can give you precisely the results you want. Some of the more interesting features enable you to smooth curves, soften edges, and add interesting fills inside objects.

To select an object for editing, choose the black Arrow tool. That sounds pretty basic. But what is an object? If you draw a shape with an outline (also called a line or a stroke) and a fill, such as a filled-in circle, you have two objects — the outline and the fill. Here are some pointers for selecting objects:

• If the object doesn't have an outline and is just a fill, you're home free. Click the object with the Arrow tool, and it's selected.

• If the object has an outline and a fill, clicking the fill selects only the fill. The outline remains unselected. You can use this feature to move the fill away from its outline. To select both the fill and the outline, double-click the object.

• You can also use the Arrow tool to create a selection box. Click at one corner and drag to an opposite corner, making sure that the bounding box completely encloses the object or objects you want to select.

• To select just a line, click the line with the Arrow tool. Still, you never know when an outline is really several objects. To select the entire outline, double-click it. This technique applies to any connected lines.

• To select several unconnected objects, select one object, press and hold the Shift key, and select additional objects. When you press Shift, you can add to already selected objects and select as many objects as you want.

To deselect selected objects, click any blank area.

So you're happily drawing away, using the various drawing tools. Then you want to select one of the objects, but you forget to change to the Arrow tool. Oops! You draw another object by accident. Immediately, choose Edit --> Undo. Then use one of the Flash arrow shortcuts:

• Press the V key to switch to the Arrow tool.

• To temporarily switch to the Arrow tool while you're using another tool, hold the Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) key while you select an object or objects.

When you scan a document directly into a PDF file, Acrobat captures all the text and graphics on each page as though they were all just one big graphic image. This is fine as far as it goes, except that it doesn't go very far because you can neither edit nor search the PDF document (because, as far as Acrobat is concerned, the document doesn't contain any text to edit or search, just one humongous graphic). That's where the Paper Capture plug-in in Acrobat 5 for Windows comes into play: You can use it to make a PDF that you can just search or both search and edit.

For some unknown reason, some of the first copies of Acrobat 5 for Windows shipped without the Paper Capture plug-in. If you find that your Tools menu in Acrobat 5 is missing the Paper Capture item, you need to download and install the Paper Capture plug-in from the Adobe Web site. Note that the Paper Capture plug-in has a 50-page document limit. If you need to process PDF documents over 50 pages in length, you need to look into purchasing Adobe Acrobat Capture, a full-blown version of the Paper Capture plug-in that can handle longer documents.

To use Paper Capture, all you have to do is choose Tools --> Paper Capture to open the Paper Capture Plug-In dialog box, select the page or pages to be processed (All Pages, Current Page, or From Page x to y), and then click the OK button; the Paper Capture utility does the rest. As it processes the page or pages in the document that you designated, a Paper Capture Plug-In alert dialog box keeps you informed of its progress in preparing and performing the page recognition. When Paper Capture finishes doing the page recognition, this alert dialog box disappears and you can then save the changes to your PDF document with the File --> Save command.

When doing the page recognition in a PDF document, the Paper Capture plug-in offers you a choice between the following three Output Style options:

• Formatted Text & Graphics to make the text in the PDF document both editable and searchable. Select this setting if you not only want to be able to find text in the document but also possibly make editing changes to it.

• Searchable Image (Exact) to make the text in the PDF document searchable but not editable (this is the default setting). Use this setting if you're processing a document that needs to be searchable but should never be edited in any way, such as an executed contract.

• Searchable Image (Compact) to make the text in the PDF document searchable but not editable and to compress its graphics. Select this setting if you're processing a document whose text requires searching without editing and that also contains a fair number of graphic images that need compressing. When you select this setting, Paper Capture applies JPEG compression to color images and ZIP compression to black-and-white images.

To select a different output style setting, click the Preferences button in the Paper Capture Plug-In dialog box to open the Preferences dialog box. This dialog box not only enables you to select a new output style in the PDF Output Style pop-up menu but also to designate the primary language used in the text in the Primary OCR Language pop-up menu (OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition, which is the kind of software that Paper Capture uses to recognize and convert text captured as a graphic into text that can be searched and edited).

If your PDF document contains graphic images, you can tell Paper Capture how much to compress the images by selecting the maximum resolution in the Downsample Images pop-up menu. This menu offers you three options in addition to None (for no compression): Low (300 dpi), Medium (150 dpi), and High (72 dpi). The Low, Medium, and High options refer to the amount of compression applied to the images, and the values 300, 150, and 72 dpi (dots per inch) refer to their resolution and thus their quality. As always, the higher the amount of compression, the smaller the file size and the lower the image quality.

After processing the pages of your PDF document with the Paper Capture plug-in, use the Find feature (Ctrl+F on Windows and Command key+F on the Mac) to search for words or phrases in the text to verify it can be searched. If you used the Formatted Text & Graphics output style in doing the page recognition, you can select the TouchUp Text Tool by clicking its button on the Editing toolbar or by typing T, and then click the I-beam pointer in a line of text to select the line with a bounding box to verify that you can edit the text as well. Always remember to use File --> Save to save the changes made to your document by processing with Paper Capture.