Adobe freebies – training and files

At our work, we have come to rely upon Adobe’s InDesign. Pagemaker, the program replaced by the new interloper, was a great program. The best thing about it was its “Make Booklet” function, and we absolutely, categorically despise that not only was that functionality removed from ID, but that it could be bought for an extra price in, confusingly, could be either a different form of the program (from Adobe) or a plug-in from a third party–but it was never made clear which it was. Plus, looking over the functions in each, one is not sure even if one gets what one wants from the extra purchase. Rubbish.

Frankly, we were up for scrapping the entire effort. But as we said, we need it for our work.

We found a nice set of free, online video tutorials for InDesign CS (and blast-all that CS 2 business). We have also uncovered another set of tutorials, but they have not been evaluated yet.

Also interesting, is Adobe’s own print and video Tips and Tutorials. We have checked out a few of these, and they are nice. The site is slow, but the tutorials are nice.
But what we are really loving–head-over-heals, to-die-for loving–is Adobe’s Studio Exchange, where lovely designers and good folk users upload things they have created so that others may use them, too. There are Photoshop and InDesign bits, as well as bits for one of the many banes of our existance, Illustrator. Huzzah.

We have also found some other templates for InDesign from WorldWide Printing and Sheriar Press.

FreeTacoHere is dead. Long live Free Taco!

I began a blog on March 22, 2001. It ran for 4 and a half years, through happy beginings, near endings, real endings, 5 jobs, 3 moves, 2 wars, a massive identity change (for me), the “blogging revolution”, a lot of learning, a firing, and the single largest attack on American soil. It was there when I needed it, listened to my secrets, found me lost friends, and told my troubles.

There was a lot about it that I didn’t like, of course. But one thing that kept me going was that it was free and it was available. Always. But now it’s coming to an end.

I found the other day a message, saying that the service I hosted with will be ending as of December 31, 2005. So I’m moving on to greener pastures. Here. Here is where the Barbaloots have plotted down their parcels and Barbaloot suits for a rest. New service, more streamlined name. The Taco shall survive.