Design software is becoming more functional and sophisticated but as far as productivity goes — us humans still have to press the buttons to make stuff happen.
Don’t get me wrong, if you are just starting out in design college it is ok to mouse through the menus to get to a function for those 20 objects you are working on. But when you are trying to get the job done as quick as possible, nothing beats the speed and satisfaction of using keyboard shortcuts and pre-defined macros.
Adobe software is generally great with keyboard shortcuts and in this example scenario I will go through using the Wacom Intuos Pro’s ExpressKeys to improve on built in shortcuts by applying custom text heading styles to an Indesign project using the physical buttons of a Wacom tablet.
You can of course apply the custom styles via the character style menu
Or you could press Ctrl+Enter and use the quick apply to look up the style by typing your custom style name
But if you have a Wacom tablet you can program the tablet’s physical buttons that will apply up to 8 commonly used styles and boost your performance. To do so, you will need to open the Wacom Tablet Properties, click on the Functions icon and pick the application you want to define the functions for.
Pick the Keystroke option for the button you are programming and type Ctrl+Enter followed by the custom style name and then enter again exactly as if you were doing a quick-apply:
That’s it, you’ve just created a physical button to save yourself over a dozen keypresses to get to the page title style. Repeat this for all the actions you will be using and enjoy the quicker and easier workflow.
