In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel takes you through the basics of the Blend tool along with a lot of tips and tricks.

See more videos at www.LayersMagazine.com

In this video tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel discusses the OpenType panel, which allows you to easily access Alternate OpenType Glyphs in Adobe Illustrator to create beautiful typography.

See more videos at www.LayersMagazine.com

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel describes how to create a custom Crayon Brush in Adobe Illustrator. See more videos at www.LayersMagazine.com

In this video, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel discusses the Span Columns feature in InDesign. This is a sample lesson from an InDesign training DVD from Infinite Skills. Learn more at www.InfiniteSkills.com

Do you know the secret to turning off Ligatures?

One of my clients hates these beautiful combination characters that help adjust the spacing between certain characters. So how can I make sure they never show up in any of his layouts?

In this "quick tips" tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel discusses the simple secret.

See more videos at www.LayersMagazine.com

Do you know how to add a stitched pillow-embossed look to type in InDesign?

In this "quick tips" tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel discusses how to create this unusual type effect in minutes.

This video is an "oldie but goodie" that has stood the test of time. It was created years ago using InDesign CS4, but still works the same way today.

See more videos at www.LayersMagazine.com

Is there a way to automatically place both page numbers from a spread on only one of the pages, i.e., Pages 2–3?

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel, demonstrates a simple solution to this seemingly impossible page-numbering problem.

Designing a beautiful Pattern in Adobe Illustrator couldn’t be simpler.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel, takes a look at the amazing Pattern creation and editing feature in Illustrator.

Learn more at www.LayersMagazine.com

Like other Illustrator users, I was excited to hear that, in CS6, you could finally apply Gradients to Strokes. But when I started to play with this feature, I was blown away with all that it offers.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel demonstrates all the ins and outs of Gradients on Strokes, including how to quickly create neon lettering.

Learn more at www.LayersMagazine.com

Wouldn't it be great if you could automatically check out your InDesign layouts for potential printing problems before sending the files to your printer?

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel discusses setting up your own custom Preflight Profiles.

Learn more at www.LayersMagazine.com

Is there a way to create a Dot-Dash-Dot Stroke in InDesign? Before we go there, is there a way to even create your own custom Dotted Strokes?

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel, demonstrates the secret to creating some very unusual custom Strokes in InDesign.

Learn more at www.LayersMagazine.com

Wouldn't it be great if you could speed up editing of text to complete your projects faster?

In this sample lesson from his new InDesign CS6 training DVD, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel discusses all of the basics of text editing as well as some little-know tips, tricks and secrets to help speed up your workflow.

Learn more at infiniteskills.com

Imagine being able to set up an interactive PDF Form entirely in your InDesign layout.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel demonstrate using the Forms Authoring Tools in InDesign.

See more tutorials at www.LayersMagazine.com

Drawing a perfect curly, swirly Stroke with varying widths used to be a tedious task requiring a steady hand and a tremendous amount of ability using the the Pen tool.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel demonstrate using the Width tool to shape swirly Strokes and other unusual Strokes in seconds.

See more videos at www.LayersMagazine.com

You want to find the perfect color to simulate metal in an Illustration. Is there a way to find the exact colors you're looking for in seconds, and add them as Swatches?

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel demonstrates how to use Color Groups and Gradients, in an unexpected way, to find just the right metal colors for the job.

Learn more at www.LayersMagazine.com

How do you create interlocking rings in Adobe Illustrator? Years ago, this used to be a true test of any Illustrator user's knowledge of the application.

Recently, a student from a local art college emailed me with a question about interlocking rings, because her class was given this age-old problem as an assignment.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel demonstrates the old traditional way of solving this "stacking order" problem along with three better ways to solve the problem that didn't exist until the more recent versions of Illustrator.

See more videos at www.LayersMagazine.com

Illustrator has an amazing collection of Gradient Libraries, but is there a way to use these beautiful Swatches in InDesign? Well, you can't export them out of Illustrator, because only regular Color Swatches are supported. So, are you out of luck and have to recreate these Gradients in InDesign?

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel reveals a secret backdoor that allows users to bring these beautiful Illustrator Gradients into InDesign instantly.

See more videos at www.LayersMagazine.com

You've been working on a branding project and have already helped your client to pick a color for their logo. Is there a fast way to experiment with other colors that will go with your main corporate color?

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel will demonstrate how to use the Color Guide panel in Adobe Illustrator to help in the process of selecting a variety of possible color combinations to go with a selected corporate color.

See More videos at www.JeffWitchel.net

If you just add a Stroke to type in Adobe Illustrator, the Stroke will be in front of the letterforms, which makes an ugly mess of the type and drives typographers crazy.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel reveals some secret backdoors to adding typographically-correct Strokes to your type.

Most InDesign users do not realize that the measurement fields in various panels and dialog windows are actually calculators that can add, subtract, multiply and divide. InDesign can also perform more complex calculations within these fields, for example, 1.25in/2 + 10pts.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel will demonstrate the use of this time-saving InDesign feature to resize, reshape, and reposition objects on a page without doing any math on scape paper or by using a calculator.

To learn more, visit www.LayersMagazine.com or www.JeffWitchel.net

You drew a cartoon by hand on paper. After scanning the drawing into Photoshop, how do you turn it into vector to add color to the cartoon in Adobe Illustrator? Or what about turning a photographic image into a beautiful posterized piece of vector art?

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel, will discuss the new Image Trace feature. This new lightning fast, more accurate tracing feature, in CS6, replaces the old Live Trace feature from earlier versions of Illustrator.

Learn more at www.LayersMagazine.com

If you're used to the way Text Wraps work in InDesign, you may find Illustrator Wraps totally confusing. That's because Wraps in Illustrator are entirely differently than in InDesign and work more like Quark's Runarounds.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel demonstrates the ins and outs of Illustrator Wraps.

To learn more, visit www.LayersMagazine.com

If you look under your Type menu in InDesign, and go to Insert White Space, you will uncover all the mysteries of space.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel discusses the options available for adding White Space to InDesign Type. Along the way, some misconceptions will be cleared up, and some of the innermost secrets of Space will be revealed.

See more videos at www.LayersMagazine.com

Sometimes type just doesn't look like it's lining up correctly down the edge of a column. If you squint at the type, some of the lines look indented even though you know it's not the case.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel discusses Optical Margin Alignment. This feature allows you to align type to the margins according to the characters' relative sizes and shapes, the way that an artist would align type by eye.

See more videos at LayersMagazine.com

Imagine being able to generate your own QR Codes right within a layout in InDesign. Recently these square-shaped codes are being used in all kinds of marketing materials to take the reader to a website, display text, send a text message, or even an email.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel will go through this InDesign CC feature and demonstrate how to set up a QR Code that's part of a layout. You can even test the code at the end of the video with your smartphone to see how it works.

See more videos at www.LayersMagazine.com

In this sample lesson from his new InDesign CC Basic Video Training from Infinite Skills, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel discusses all the basics of selecting and moving objects, including some tips, tricks, and secrets.

Learn more at www.infiniteSkills.com

In this sample lesson from his new InDesign CC Basic Video Training from Infinite Skills, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel discusses creating and saving your own custom Workspaces to help you work more efficiently.

To learn more, visit infiniteSkills.com

Imagine being able to Package your Illustrator files the way you can in InDesign. With a simple menu command, all of the Fonts and Linked Images used in the design, along with a copy of the Illustrator file, would be collected into a neat little folder.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel takes you though the new Package feature in Adobe Illustrator CC.

See more videos at www. LayersMagazine.com.

What's the most powerful type-formatting feature in InDesign? Without a doubt, it's Nested Styles, which allow you to embed Character Styles within a Paragraph Style.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel takes a look inside these "Super Styles" demonstrating how they can quickly apply the most complex formatting saving hours of work on many projects.

To see more videos, visit www.LayersMagazine.com

You're working on a very complex design in Adobe Illustrator with lots of different kinds of objects. How can you select just the objects you want instantly?

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel will explore the Select menu in Illustrator to show off its powerful selection commands that will make any workflow more efficient.

To learn more, visit www.layersmagazine.com

Many lnDesign users think of the Eyedropper tool (I) as a way to pick up color from a photo to use in their lnDesign layout. But this amazing tool has a totally different use.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel takes a look at using the Eyedropper to format type in the most efficient way possible.

Learn more at www.LayersMagazine.com

In each new version of Illustrator, there’s a list of new features added along with new tools to work with those features. With the number of tools in the Tools panel, sometimes it's hard to find the tools you’re looking for. Wouldn’t it be great if you could create your own custom Tools panel that has just the tools you need when you're working on a particular kind of project?

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel demonstrates how to set up your own custom Tools panel and save it as part of a custom Workspace in Illustrator CC.

See more of Jeff's tutorials at www.JeffWitchel.net

Imagine being able to easily change the look of the corners of any object in Illustrator. That’s exactly what you can do with the Live Corners feature in Adobe Illustrator CC.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel explores the various options of the Live Corners feature in Illustrator CC to show the huge advantages of working with live, editable corners.

To learn more, visit www.LayersMagazine.com

If you have a difficult time working with the Pen tool, there’s a viable alternative in Illustrator Creative Cloud. The Pencil tool offers a simple way to accurately draw paths like never before. It’s almost as if this powerful tool is reading your mind as you’re rendering perfect curves and corners with ease.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel demonstrates the little-known settings of the Pencil tool.

To learn more, visit www.LayersMagazine.com

InDesign’s Next Style is one of the features in the General section of the Paragraph Styles Options window. It applies a different Paragraph Style to the paragraph after the current paragraph. This allows you to set up a repeated pattern of Styles and apply them to your text. Problem is, most users never figure out how the feature works.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel will explore setting up Styles utilizing Next Style and show a couple of simple ways to use the feature in formatting long text with unmatched speed and consistency.

Learn more at www.LayersMagazine.com

Objects Styles, which work in a very similar way to Paragraph Styles, are very important in setting up the look of objects in documents quickly and consistently. But they’re equally as powerful when making changes.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel will set up an Object Style for Frames with a very complex appearance and then make changes to all of these objects instantly. And yes, there is a true story that relates to the title of the tutorial.

Learn more at www.LayersMagazine.com

One of the problems artists always run into when working with Tables in InDesign is how time consuming it is to reorder Columns or Rows. Even the best work-arounds involve a lot of manual labor and time.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel will explore the basics of Table editing along with a time-saving feature, which allows you to drag and drop Columns and Rows making edits fast and simple.

Learn more at www.LayersMagazine.com

Many would argue that the introduction of Fixed Layout Interactive EPUBs is the biggest new feature in InDesign since Digital Publishing Suite was introduced quite a few versions ago. Now, not only will an EPUB export look like your original InDesign layout, it can also include interactive elements such as Hyperlinks, Slide Shows, Buttons, InDesign Animation, Hyperlinks, Sounds, and Movies.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel takes you through this breakthrough new feature that is sure to revolutionize interactive books and brochures for devices such as the iPad.

Watch more videos at www.LayersMagazine.com

A lot of InDesign users are not using the Book feature simply because they are not working on books. This is no excuse for not taking advantage of the power of this great feature.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel discusses the basics of the Book feature, everything from setting up a new Book to unusual ways to use this powerful feature to solve problems in documents that are NOT books.

Learn more at www.LayersMagazine.com.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “It’s Impossible to Do that in Illustrator” from long-time users and novices alike.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel takes a look at using Graphic Styles to help solve some impossible problems in seconds.

See more videos at at www.LayersMagazine.com.

For years, InDesign users have be asking for a way to highlight a selected paragraph with a color background. In CC 2015, their wish has been answered with this new Paragraph formatting feature named Paragraph Shading. And as type formatting, “Shading” can be saved as part of a Paragraph Styles to be applied quickly and consistently throughout your text.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel will go through the options of this long-awaited feature.

See more videos at at www.LayersMagazine.com.

If you mention “Tables of Contents” to most InDesign users, they immediate think about books, forgetting that a contents can also be found in magazines, catalogs, manuals, proposals, and lots more. And if you’ve ever tried to set up a Table of Contents manually, you know that this is a time-consuming task with a lot of chance for errors.

In this tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel goes through the ins and outs of using InDesign’s automatic Table of Contents feature, including lots of tips and little-known secrets.

A video tutorial about new Stroke features in Adobe Illustrator produced by Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel. See more videos at www.LayersMagazine.com

I lost count of how many times I’ve been asked by clients “Can’t you just edit the PDF?” With Acrobat, you can be a lot more confident in answering “Absolutely!”

In this tutorial, Adobe Instructor Jeff Witchel goes through the process of editing text and even images in PDFs. He also looks at extraxting editable text in a PDF of a scanned layout. PDF Editing is just one of many huge improvements you’ll find in recent versions Acrobat DC. See more videos at LayerMagazine.com

Categories: Acrobat, Video Tutorials | Tags: 2015, Acrobat, Adobe Instructor, AdobeAce, CC, DC, Document Cloud, Edit, Editing PDF, Extracting Text, Extracting Images, Jeff Witchel, Secrets, Tips, Training, Tricks

In this tutorial, Adobe Instructor Jeff Witchel demonstrates using the Shape Builder tool, in Adobe Illustrator, as a simple way to create puzzle pieces for use in a Photoshop puzzle project.

See more videos at LayerMagazine.com

Categories: Illustrator, Photoshop, Video Tutorials | Tags: Adobe, Adobe Certified Instructor, AdobeAce, class, Complex Shapes, Illustrator, Jeff Witchel, Layers, learn, Photoshop, Puzzle, Puzzle Piece, secrets, Shape Builder, Shapes, Simple, Tips, Training, Tricks, www.LayersMagazine.com

One of the great things about Illustrator is that you can start with simple vector objects and create your own totally custom Brushes.

In this tutorial, Adobe Instructor Jeff Witchel looks at creating custom Pattern Brushes in Adobe Illustrator CC, including the addition of the Corner Options feature, which helps you to easily create beautiful corners for your borders.

See more videos at LayersMagazine.com

Categories: Illustrator, Video Tutorials | Tags: Adobe, Adobe Instructor, AdobeAce, Border, Brushes, CC, Corners, Custom, Illustrator, Jeff Witchel, Pattern, Pattern Brush, Tips, Tricks, Secrets, Training

You’re working on a magazine Table of Contents which will contain all the stories in the issue. You would also like to highlight various feature stories with a large page number and an image from these important stories, is there a way to do this automatically, so the page numbers will always be correct, even if you move the stories to the other pages?

In this tutorial, Adobe Instructor Jeff Witchel will use a feature every magazine artist should know to simply solve this seemingly impossible problem.

For more of Jeff’s Adobe tutorials visit JeffWitchel.net

Categories: InDesign, Video Tutorials | Tags: Adobe, Adobe Expert, Adobe Instructor, AdobeAce, Alternate Glyphs, CC 2015, Character, Character Style, formatting, Glyphs, Glyphs panel, Glyphs popup, InDesign, Jeff Witchel, Secrets, Shading, Styles, Tips, Training, Tricks

Applying alternate glyphs for a specific selected character just got a lot easier using the new popup glyphs feature in InDesign CC 2015. When you hover over a selected character that has alternate glyphs, you can select and apply an alternate right under that character in popup menu.

In this tutorial, Adobe Instructor Jeff Witchel will show how this feature is great for applying swash characters, ordinals, or creating real fractions instantly. And because many of these alternatives are OpenType character formatting, that alternate formatting can be saved as a Character Style, a huge time saver!

For more of Jeff’s Adobe tutorials visit JeffWitchel.net

Categories: Illustrator, Video Tutorials | Tags: Adobe, Adobe Expert, Adobe Instructor, AdobeAce, Alternate Glyphs, CC 2015, Character, Character Style, formatting, Glyphs, Glyphs panel, Glyphs popup, InDesign, Jeff Witchel, Secrets, Shading, Styles, Tips, Training, Tricks

When asked by one of my Kean University students how to create a spiral of dots that get smaller from the outside of the spiral inward, my first thought was to start by drawing a spiral and adding a Dotted Stroke. Makes sense, but is it the best way to accomplish this task?

In this tutorial, Adobe Instructor Jeff Witchel will demonstrate a couple of little-known ways to create dots in a spiral that gets small and smaller as the spiral winds inward. The steps include quite a few tips, tricks, and secrets.

For more about Jeff’s Adobe tutorials visit JeffWitchel.net

Categories: Illustrator, Video Tutorials | Tags: Adobe, Adobe Expert, Adobe Certified Instructor, AdobeAce, Appearance panel, CC 2015, Dash, Dots, Dotted Dash, Effect, Illustrator, Jeff Witchel, Secrets, Stroke, Strokes panel, Tips, Training, Transform, Tricks