When you work in Adobe CC, you may notice that many menus, commands, and keyboard shortcuts are similar across the applications. These similarities can help you migrate more easily from one application to another. This chapter provides an overview of some of the common menus, dialog boxes, options, shortcuts, and preferences that exist in most or all of the applications in Adobe Creative Cloud.
Discovering Common Menus
When you work with applications in Adobe Creative Cloud, you may notice that many of the menus on the main menu bar are the same. Similar functionality makes finding important features easy, even when you’re completely new to the software.
Menu items contain features that control much of the functionality in each application. A menu item may also contain features that are related to a particular task. For example, you might save from the File menu, or change your text in the Type menu. Some of the menu items that commonly appear in the Creative Cloud applications include the following:
File: Contains many features that control the overall document, such as creating, opening, saving, printing, and setting general properties for the document. The File menu may also include options for importing or exporting data into or from the current document.
Edit: Contains options and commands for editing the current document. Commands include copying, pasting, and selecting as well as options for opening preferences and setting dialog boxes that are used to control parts of the document. Commands for spell-checking are also common parts of the Edit menu.
Type: Contains options related to type and typesetting, such as font selection, size, leading, and more.
View: Contains options for changing the level of magnification of the document. The View menu also sometimes includes options for viewing the workspace in different ways; showing rules, grids, or guides; and turning alignment snapping on and off. Snapping helps with precise placement of selection edges, cropping marquees, slices, shapes, and paths.
Window: Contains options primarily used to open or close whatever panels are available in the application. You can also choose how to view the workspace and save a favorite arrangement of the workspace.
Help: Contains the option to open the Help documentation that’s included with the application. This menu may also include information about updating the software, registration, and tutorials.
Figure 4-1 shows a list of items that appear under the File menu in Photoshop.
Each application has additional application-specific menus determined by the needs of the software. For example, you can use the Photoshop Image menu to resize the image or document, rotate the canvas, and duplicate the image, among other functions. InDesign has a Layout menu you can use to navigate the document, edit page numbering, and access controls for creating and editing the document’s table of contents; we discuss these menus where appropriate throughout this book.
FIGURE 4-1: Menus in Photoshop let you choose and control different options.
Using Dialog Boxes
A dialog box is a window that appears when certain menu items are selected. It offers additional options in the form of drop-down lists, panes, text fields, checkboxes, and buttons that enable you to change settings and enter information or data as necessary. You use dialog boxes to control the software or your document in various ways. For example, when you open a new file, you typically use the Open dialog box to select a file to open. When you save a file, you use the Save As dialog box to select a location for saving the file, to name the file, and to execute the Save command.
Some dialog boxes also include tabs. These dialog boxes may contain many settings of different types that are organized into several sections by using tabs. A dialog box typically has a button that executes the particular command and one that cancels and closes the dialog box without doing anything. Figure 4-2 shows a common dialog box.
FIGURE 4-2: Using a dialog box to change filter settings.
A dialog box in Windows offers the same functionality as a dialog box on the Mac. Dialog boxes perform similar tasks and include the same elements to enter or select information. For example, here are some tasks you perform by using dialog boxes:
Save a new version of a file
Apply a filter to a selection
Specify printing or page-setup options
Set up preferences for the software you’re using
Check the spelling of text in a document
Open a new document
Encountering Alerts
Alerts, which are common on any operating system and in most applications, are similar to dialog boxes in that they’re small windows that contain information. However, alerts are different from dialog boxes because you can’t edit the information in them. Alerts are designed simply to tell you something and give you one or more options that you select by clicking a button. For example, an alert may indicate that you can’t select a particular option. Usually you see an OK button to click to acknowledge and close the alert. You may see other buttons on the alert, such as a button to cancel what you were doing or one that opens a dialog box. Figure 4-3 shows a typical alert.
FIGURE 4-3: A simple choice: OK or cancel.
