Creative Progression offers Training & Design Services

By on March 28, 2011 in Administrative, Front Page

Welcome! I am Paul Erdman, Adobe Certified Instructor and owner of Creative Progression. The Creative Progression website provides a venue for me to share valuable information usually included in my training. I hope you find the content useful. If you are in need of training or document design services, contact me!

Creative Progression specializes in:

  • Book interior design for print and eBook publication
  • Technically challenging design projects, such as catalogs, reports, etc.
  • Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and Acrobat training, delivered on-site or online.
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InDesign Defaults & Preferences (CC 2018 Update)

By on February 17, 2018 in Basics, General, InDesign

Quick List of Recommended Changes to Factory Settings I recommend making the following changes after installing InDesign, before using it. Making these changes with no documents open will make them the new default settings. Preferences (Mac: InDesign menu: Preferences; Windows: Edit menu: Preferences) General: disable “Show ‘Start’ Workspace When No Documents Are Open.” This Start […]

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GREP Resources

By on May 19, 2014 in Featured, Front Page, InDesign

The May meeting of the Portland InDesign User Group focused on Paragraph & Character Styles, with a considerable portion of the time devoted to Nested Styles and GREP. The purpose of this article is to summarize the information I presented in the meeting. Key Concepts Apply Paragraph Styles to everything. Apply Character Styles only to […]

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Inflationary English: A GREP Tribute to Victor Borge

By on May 19, 2014 in Featured, Front Page, InDesign

The musician/comedian Victor Borge invented the concept (as far as I know) of “inflationary English.” The premise is that because prices are always going up, our language should also keep pace. Thus, each spoken number (including homonyms)  should increase by one. So, for example, one would say, “I’m going three the store befive it closes.” As […]

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Five Great New-ish (but little-known) InDesign Panels

By on December 2, 2013 in Featured, Front Page, General, InDesign

In the recent November Portland InDesign User Group Meeting I presented five panels that are relatively new and, in my experience as a teacher, not often used. Most of these have been around since CS5. 1. Tool Hints (Window: Utilities) Gives helpful information for each tool button in your tool panel as you select it. […]

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Finding & Fixing Disproportionately Scaled Images in InDesign

By on June 19, 2013 in Basics, Featured, Front Page, InDesign

Disproportionate scaling (stretching an image out of proportion, so that its vertical and horizontal scales do not match) will result in distorted, “stretched” images. If the distortion is slight it may be acceptable, and in rare cases it may even be desirable, but most often images are stretched out of proportion unintentionally. Disproportionate scaling of images […]

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Font Troubleshooting Tips

By on June 17, 2013 in Featured, Front Page, InDesign

Problem: I was doing some testing recently was surprised to see that arbitrary fractions were not working in the Myriad Pro font. Solution: My system had been “infected” by an older 1.006 version of the font that does not support arbitrary fractions. InDesign’s Find Font utility showed that it was in my User: Library: Fonts folder. […]

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Alternating Table Row Fills—Clearing Table & Cell Style Overrides

By on June 12, 2013 in Feature Requests & Bugs, Featured, Front Page, InDesign

I love table and cell styles, but I’ve run into some strange issues with them over the years. After encountering it again today I decided to figure out exactly what is going on, because I couldn’t find any other write-ups on the issue on the net. Hopefully others find it helpful. Problem: You have a table […]

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Scaling QR Codes (and other Pixel Art) in Photoshop

By on May 28, 2013 in Featured, Front Page, Photoshop

If you’ve seen the preview videos, then you’ll now that in InDesign CC (otherwise known as CS7) we will be able to generate our own QR Codes right in InDesign. And of course there are many QR code generators available on the Internet. But this article will still be relevant for some workflows, so I’ve […]

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Optimal Online PDF Export Preset

By on May 23, 2013 in Featured, Front Page, InDesign

Quick version: Start with “Smallest File Size,” turn on “Tagged PDF,” “Hyperlinks,” “Bookmarks,” “View after export,” adjust compression settings to optimal (aim for “High” quality), save preset. Settings File Location: PDF export presets have the .joboptions extensions and are saved in the following locations: Win: Users/[username]/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Adobe PDF/Settings Mac: User/[username]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe PDF/Settings note: the AppData and Library folders […]

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Packaging InDesign Files (detailed instructions)

By on May 13, 2013 in Basics, General, InDesign

Many new InDesign users have discovered “the hard way” that simply e-mailing their InDesign file to someone will not allow that person to properly use their file. Their InDesign file depends on fonts and linked graphics that must be sent along with it in order for it to work properly.Fortunately, InDesign has a built-in Package […]

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