Quark has a handy function which allows you to create interesting effects with text. With the text box option there are only limited options. You can apply colours to the text but the “text to box” function enables the use of blends. To use it first create a text box and type your text in the size and font that you wish to use.  This example I have Apple Chancery. From the style menu choose the text to box option. A duplicate of your text is created.  The difference is that the created text is no longer treated as text but as a picture box and now has all the functions associated with this. You can now delete the original text and apply colours and blends to your picture box. In this example I have applied a linear blend of blue and red.

To add a drop cap in Quark use the format box under the style menu (Apple key and F). Tick the drop cap box so the options become available. The character count option specifies how many characters you wish to drop. In this example I have chosen to set the first two characters as drop caps, so I would put a 2 in the this box. The second option specifies how many lines of text the drop cap will take up. You can set this from 2 lines to 16 lines. In my example I have set this to 3 so the drop cap will take up 3 lines of normal text. Once you have set the options click apply to make the changes.

There is nothing more frustrating than to have a perfect layout only for items to be accidentally moved and thus appear misaligned when it goes to print. A simple shortcut can help prevent this. To lock the items on a page simply select them and press F6. A black padlock icon will appear when you hover over the items to indicate that they are locked and no amount of dragging will move them. The only way to unlock them is to press F6 again to reverse the process or choose unlock from the item menu.

The find and replace option in Quark (Apple key and F) can help save a lot of time. I use it primarily for removing double spacing from documents or for making changes to font size and style.

To remove double spacing make sure the text option is ticked and also tick the document option at the bottom of the box. In the first text box type two spaces by pressing the space bar twice. In the second text box type one space. Then click “find next” to locate the first double space. To change all the double spaces in the document at once just click the “change all” button.

You can also use the find and replace option to change styles within the document. Instead of ticking the text option instead tick the style option. Select the style you want to change in the first box and in the second box select the new style that you want to apply. Then click the “find next” button or the “change all” button as before.

Other options available with find and replace are searching by font, font size, colour and type style. These are also very useful: for example you may wish to change the fonts in the document from Ariel to Times New Roman or change all the fonts that are 16pt to 12pt. It is also possible to change font attributes such as making something bold or italic or underlining it by using the type style option. These options allow you to do this just once rather than manually going through the whole document.

To make a new colour in Quark, choose colours from the edit menu or the shift key and F12. Then select new from the options. Give your colour a name and select the type of colour from the “model” drop down list, this will usually be CMYK when typesetting a job for print. Uncheck the spot colour option and then select your colour either by clicking on the colour wheel, using the colour sliders or entering the percentages of colour in the CYMK boxes. Then click OK and your new colour will appear in the colours palette. If you need to make a colour from another document for example a PDF you can always open it in Photoshop and use the colours from the CMYK hex values to get a good match in Quark.

In many layouts it is necessary to link text so that it flows from one text box to another. This can be done by using the linking tool (shown below). Simply choose the tool from the toolbox, then click on the first box to be linked, followed by the box you wish the text to flow into. You will now see an arrow linking the two boxes to show the direction that the text will flow. You can link any number of text boxes as well as linking text boxes across several pages. If you need to unlink boxes you can do this by choosing the unlink tool, which is found in the toolbox right underneath the linking tool. Simply select the unlink tool and click on the base of the grey arrow which links the boxes to unlink them.

Often layouts require several different text or picture boxes to be aligned along the page. For a long time I used to do this manually, either by eye or by typing the values into the measurements palette. A quicker way is to use Quarks Space/Align items command under the item menu (Apple key and ,). Just select the items that you wish to line up and use Apple , to bring up the dialogue box. Here you can align items either horizontally or vertically and specify how much space appears between each item thus saving you quite a lot of time and creating a neater looking layout.

In Quark the position of objects placed on the page is measured by the position of the ruler origin. When you start a new project the ruler origin starts as default from the top left hand side of the page. This means that the x and y coordinates in the measurements palette show the position of a selected object from the top left of the page. However, when setting some documents it can be necessary to change the ruler origins so that objects can be measured from a different point on the page. This can be done by locating the ruler origin currently at the top left of the page. It appears in between the two rulers as show here.

It is then possible to click on the ruler origin and drag it to a new position on the page. You will see a cross appear on the page as in the picture above to show that the ruler origin is moving. Once you have done this you will notice that the ruler no longer measures from the top left hand side of the page, but now starts at 0 from your new origin point. To reset it to the default setting simply double click on the box where the two rulers join and its back to measuring from the top left of the page.

It might come as a surprise to users of programs such as Word but Quark does not have the ability to produce automatic bullet points. There are two way to create the actual bullet point. You can either press the alt (option) key and 8. This creates a small bullet point but it can be a little hard to resize it in proportion to the text as it doesn’t always line up very well the text. Personally I prefer to use the Zapf Dingbats font and simply type a lower case l (L). This produces a bullet point that can be easily resized in the measurements palette in the font size section.

The other problem with bullet points in Quark is that when the text runs onto two lines it does not automatically indent. To combat this problem I insert a tab on the first line of the text after the bullet. Then simply use the format menu to set a left indent also set a first line indent but set it as a minus number. For example if your left indent is set to 5mm set your first line indent to minus 5 mm. This will have the effect that the bullet point is set back flush with the left margin of your text box and the text will be neatly lined up underneath each other.

It occurred to me the other day whilst I was doing some typesetting how much I rely on shortcuts in Quark, so I thought I would post a series of handy tips which I use frequently.

Sizing pictures can take a little while when using the measurements palette so I use the following shortcuts.

To size a picture proportionally without using the measurements toolbar, first draw a picture box of the size you want the picture to be. Then import your picture using the get picture command (apple key and E). Next hold down the apple key, the alt (option) key and shift, press F and the picture is automatically sized to fit into your picture box. It might sound complicated at first but I find it saves a lot of time as you only need to press the combination of keys once rather than typing different percentage values into the measurements palette.

If you want to change the size of the picture once you have imported it into the picture box, then it’s also possible to do this without typing values into the measurements palette. Simply hold down the apple key, the alt (option) key and the shift key and press < to make your picture smaller or > to make it larger. Using this shortcut also keeps the proportion of the picture so you know that’s its not going to appear squashed out of all proportion on your final layout.

While working on my Mac mini the other day I encountered an easily fixed but very irritating problem. When I tried to load my creative suite programs (Photoshop CS, Illustrator, In Design etc) they all failed to load. Instead they got to the stage where they were initializing and then just hung. After reloading creative suite and many hours of frustrating research trawling through forums looking for a solution I finally found an off the wall fix. Apparently if you change the time zone in the Macs settings and then restart the computer everything will work. I must admit to being very sceptical about whether this would solve my problem but after nearly 3 hours of trying to fix the problem I was on the verge of throwing my Mac out of the window. So try it I did. After changing the time zone from London to Dublin, restarting the computer and then changing it back to London again everything was back to normal and Creative Suite worked as usual.