Noob Question 1: Selecting Objects On Layer Like CorelDraw?

Hi,
I'm moving from CorelDraw. (I know this makes a lot of people laugh, but it's a great program. I'm moving to Adobe just because the pre-press house we're using demands it.
Anyhoo... In CorelDraw, there is a button one use to see in a sort of 'tree view' all the objects on a given layer. When you click on the layer, it opens the tree so you see the objects that belong there. This makes it -super- easy to select objects that are deep down/partially hidden.
Is there anything like this in InDesign? Sometimes it's kinda hard to grab a particular object, especially when there are lots of things on top of one another.
Ideas?
TIA,
---JC

No, nothing like that yet. You'll find that in Illustrator and it a requested feature for InDesign so you might just want to chime in here:
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform
That said, you can simply ctrl/cmd click to click down through a stack of objects.
Bob

Similar Messages

PS CS3: cannot select object in layer with keystroke

Hello. I've looked in various places and cannot find the answer to my question; perhaps I'm not asking using the proper description. I hope someone here in this forum understands and can help.
In past versions of PS I've been able to select the object in a layer by hitting control and clicking on the layer. I would get the marching ants and then could use that selection by creating a new layer for it and then manipulate it as I desire. Now it looks like the stroke causes linking to turn on and off.
I very much liked being able to select the object in a layer and used it quite often in my designing. I still want to use it, but how? Does anyone know if this function has been preserved and how do I access it?
Thanks VERY MUCH. -Kat

Well, fabulous. You think I would have figured that out...
Thank you, Ed.

Noob Question 12: Aligning Objects On Screen?

I'm sure there's a way to do this, but when I search for 'Align' in the PDF it seems to refer to 'clips'.
What I want is to left/right/top/bottom align a clip within the video window, either to the edge of the video screen or the center. Sorry if this is ULTIMATE duh but I cannot -stand- PDF help. hate it. hate it. hate it. Almost as much as video help.
THANKS!
---JC

Coming from a career with Photoshop, from when it first hit the PC, there are things that I do miss. Still, if one expands their mind and filters it through "video," there are a lot of similarities, they just look different.
As for Align, you can get that in AfterEffects, andit works more like AI, or PS. Because PrPro is a video editor, there are some things that are done differently, or are not directly available. Still, I am always amazed at how much animation PrPro can do natively. You have to just think about if for a moment.
If you are doing a ton of animation, you will definitely want to look into AE.
That was one of the great things about the early bundles, like Production Studio CS2. It had PrPro, Encore, Audition and AfterEffects (covered 4 big bases with those), plus PS (had it for decades) and AI (had it for decades). Still, the package could do pretty much all that one would want. [Also had the MacroMedia Studio, so Web and Flash were covered elsewhere.] There is littel that cannot be done with the Production Studio, and they all worked well together. As of CS4, there are even closer links amongst the various programs, if one purchases/upgrades the suites.
I know of no one program, that will do everything. Cannot think of a one. I look at these (plus the myriad other NLE's, utilities, etc.) as just tools in my toolbox. I try to use the right tool for the job. I hate "big button" programs as it is. I do not want one that does it all, but would rather have the most power of each to do their job, and then move onto the next.
Sit back, have a glass of great wine and a Cuban. Exhale and then begin to wrap your head around the power of each program. Do not fight this, or you'll only become frustrated. In the course of a normal Project, I might use everything in the suite, plus a half-dozen additional programs. Each does their part perfectly, and then I finish up in Encore.
Good luck,
Hunt

Zoom-in tool and selected objects

Hi there,
I am wondering about the possibility of making the zoom-in tool directs to the selected Object or Layer, and how that increase the accessibility with the shortcuts like CTRL+(+).
Regards,

Hi,
you should make "selection objects" which represent your rect.s.
they could have a drawMe(Rectangle source, Rectangle dest) method which would be called in the rendering loop. While source represents the selected area of the orignal image and dest the destination aera which drawMe would actually draw the image into.
Source would get set on mouse up after dragging, dest would be set after the click equal to your drawing area.
I'm not sure about the actual image scaling but i think it can be done similar like that: http://www.rgagnon.com/javadetails/java-0243.html.
You dhould definately have a look at javax.imageio.*;just some ideas
jEti

Is there a way to shift select multiple objects in layer palette, not just highlight multiple object

Hi,
Is there a way to shift select multiple objects in layer palette, not just highlight multiple objects?
I would want to do this when I have a bunch of objects hidden under some other objects on the artboard. This feature is available in PSD, so I assume Illustrator should have it.
Thanks!

Thanks for the reply, Harron.
I'm using CS4 & below.
Highlighting object - click on object in layers palette & it turns blue
Select object - click on object in layers palette to the right of the circle, which creates a square, and selects the object on the artboard
How do I shift-select multiple objects in the layers palette...select 50 objects with a click, then a shift-click? Shift-select works for highlighting, but not selecting. On most programs shift-select is used to grab a bunch of stuff...:0)
In the past I have inadvertently selected multiple objects in the layers palette, by somehow alt?-dragging over the layers...or something...I can't re-create it.

Selecting objects in a layer to copy and paste into a new doc?

How can I select all objects in a layer and copy and paste the objects into a new document? We are having issues with the copy and paste method. Is this because it uses the operating systems clipboard?

the sample I mentioned describes how to duplicate all selected objects in a document, using
var docSelected = app.activeDocument.selection;
it is usually not advice to use the selection for this kind of stuff, to work with ALL pageItems in a document use
var allPageItems = app.activeDocument.pageItems;
now if you only want to copy items in a layer you can use either the index number (for instance, top layer index = 0) or the name of the layer (for instance "Layer1"), use this, you don't have to select them
var topLayerPageItems = app.activeDocument.layers[0].pageItems;
or using the layer name
var Layer1PageItems = app.activeDocument.layers['Layer1"].pageItems;

Selecting objects like Freehand.

Hi,
I am having a little difficulty in selecting objects that were cloned and sent to the back of the original with a heavier weight. In Freehand (I know, everyone is sick of hearing it), I just clicked on the heavier weight and it selected. In Illustrator, I would have to send the front of the clone to a different layer and then would be able to select the back.
Regards,
David

Or lock the topmost object. Or use layers. Or use the Layers panel to select individual items. Or right-click and Select Next Object Below. Or just use one item and use multiple strokes/fills in the Appearance panel. Or RTFM.

Moving Objects from Layer to Layer

Yes I knwo this is probably a very naive question but I'm
learning Flash 8 here and it says nothing in the documentation
about moving an object from one to layer to another. I'm sure in
Flash 5 you selected the object and then simply clicked the layer
which you wanted it on. This seems to have changed and Adobe/MM
have forgotten to say how you do it now.

When you say "move" an object from layer to layer - you
simply want to cut the object on the stage
in one layer and paste it in place on another? You will have
to manually cut and paste it. Flash 5
or any previous version never had an "auto-move" feature,
esprcially the way you describe: "...you
selected the object and then simply clicked the layer which
you wanted it on..."
That type of functionality would be disasterous - if any
object on stage was selected and then you
clicked on a layer would force that object to move to that
layer, would cause major headaches and
render the program unusable - because 99% of the time, anyone
who was not wanting to move the object
would have a very hard time keeping them on the intended
layer while tying to use other features in
flash (like renaming layers, or moving the stacking order of
layers, or creating layer folders or
motion paths or mask layers, etc...
Are you really asking about "merging" 2 layers together?
--> **Adobe Certified Expert**
--> www.mudbubble.com
--> www.keyframer.com
Sean Sykes wrote:
> Yes I knwo this is probably a very naive question but
I'm learning Flash 8 here
> and it says nothing in the documentation about moving an
object from one to
> layer to another. I'm sure in Flash 5 you selected the
object and then simply
> clicked the layer which you wanted it on. This seems to
have changed and
> Adobe/MM have forgotten to say how you do it now.
>

Script to apply a random CMYK swatches from a group of swatches to selected objects.

I would like to write some scripts for randomising the allocation of swatches to adjacent object.
Example:
Imagine a map of Europe and all her nation states/territories. I have a User Defined Swatch Library. I can open the AI document it was made from as I understand from this thread that having the swatches as objects on the page makes them easier to be referenced in a script.
I want to iterate through the selected objects and randomly assign one of the colours in the swatch document as a fill to each object. It would be great if hidden swatches (they are all small rectangular 'colour chip' filled paths) on page were not included in the reference swatches randomly choosen from.
Iterating the selected objects I can do, but not sure what references I need to use to create an array of swatches to randomly choose from.
I see I can make an array of swatches using the general swatch group from Adobe's CreateSwatchGroup scripts:
JS
var docRef = app.documents.add(DocumentColorSpace.CMYK)
// Create a new SwatchGroup
var swatchGroup = docRef.swatchGroups.add();
swatchGroup.name = "CreateSwatchGroup";
// Get list of swatches in general swatch group
var genSwatchGroup = docRef.swatchGroups[0];
// Collect 5 random swatches from general swatch group and move to new group
var i = 0;
while (i < 5) {
          var swatches = genSwatchGroup.getAllSwatches();
          swatchCount = swatches.length;
          var swatchIndex = Math.round(Math.random() * (swatchCount - 1)); // 0-based index
          // New swatch group does not allow patterns or gradients
          if (swatches[swatchIndex].color.typename != "PatternColor" && swatches[swatchIndex].color.typename != "GradientColor") {
                    swatchGroup.addSwatch(swatches[swatchIndex]);
                    i++;
// Updates swatch list with swatches moved to new swatch group
swatches = swatchGroup.getAllSwatches();
// [… etc etc]
AS
tell application "Adobe Illustrator"
activate
          set docRef to make new document with properties {color space:CMYK}
-- Create a new SwatchGroup
          set swatchGroupRef to make new swatchgroup in current document with properties {name:"CreateSwatchGroup"}
-- Get list of swatches in general swatch group
          set genSwatchGroup to swatchgroup 1 of docRef
-- Collect 5 random swatches from the general swatch group and move to new group
          set i to 0
          repeat until i is 5
                    set swatchesRef to get all swatches genSwatchGroup
                    set swatchCount to count every item in swatchesRef
                    set swatchIndex to random number from 1 to swatchCount
                    set currentSwatch to item swatchIndex of swatchesRef
-- New swatch group does not allow patterns or gradients
                    if class of color of currentSwatch is not pattern color info and class of color of currentSwatch is not gradient color info then
add swatch swatchGroupRef swatch currentSwatch
                              set i to i + 1
                    end if
          end repeat
-- [… etc etc]
If someone can help me to create the Swatch Array object of swatches loaded from a seperate document (or unique layer) then I think I can work my way to changing the fill on the existing paths (the nations in my map of Europe example).
Would be very cool if I could detect neighbooring paths (nieghbooring nations in my map of Europe example) make sure the colour being assigned is not within a certain hue/CMYK range of the random colour and if it is rechoose random colour. I have no idea how to perform the logic of determining neighbooring paths in an Illustartor script. Anybody?!
I'd prefer Applescript for sake of readiblity and also I'm learning AS ATM. Plus I'm using Script Debugger.app (which is excellent) to work with AS and I can't seem to run JSX scripts from within Extend Script Toolkit 2 (perhaps I need to make my scripts point to Illustrator?)
But Javascript is okay if someone has this covered already :-)

I would like to write some scripts for randomising the allocation of swatches to adjacent object.
Example:
Imagine a map of Europe and all her nation states/territories. I have a User Defined Swatch Library. I can open the AI document it was made from as I understand from this thread that having the swatches as objects on the page makes them easier to be referenced in a script.
I want to iterate through the selected objects and randomly assign one of the colours in the swatch document as a fill to each object. It would be great if hidden swatches (they are all small rectangular 'colour chip' filled paths) on page were not included in the reference swatches randomly choosen from.
Iterating the selected objects I can do, but not sure what references I need to use to create an array of swatches to randomly choose from.
I see I can make an array of swatches using the general swatch group from Adobe's CreateSwatchGroup scripts:
JS
var docRef = app.documents.add(DocumentColorSpace.CMYK)
// Create a new SwatchGroup
var swatchGroup = docRef.swatchGroups.add();
swatchGroup.name = "CreateSwatchGroup";
// Get list of swatches in general swatch group
var genSwatchGroup = docRef.swatchGroups[0];
// Collect 5 random swatches from general swatch group and move to new group
var i = 0;
while (i < 5) {
          var swatches = genSwatchGroup.getAllSwatches();
          swatchCount = swatches.length;
          var swatchIndex = Math.round(Math.random() * (swatchCount - 1)); // 0-based index
          // New swatch group does not allow patterns or gradients
          if (swatches[swatchIndex].color.typename != "PatternColor" && swatches[swatchIndex].color.typename != "GradientColor") {
                    swatchGroup.addSwatch(swatches[swatchIndex]);
                    i++;
// Updates swatch list with swatches moved to new swatch group
swatches = swatchGroup.getAllSwatches();
// [… etc etc]
AS
tell application "Adobe Illustrator"
activate
          set docRef to make new document with properties {color space:CMYK}
-- Create a new SwatchGroup
          set swatchGroupRef to make new swatchgroup in current document with properties {name:"CreateSwatchGroup"}
-- Get list of swatches in general swatch group
          set genSwatchGroup to swatchgroup 1 of docRef
-- Collect 5 random swatches from the general swatch group and move to new group
          set i to 0
          repeat until i is 5
                    set swatchesRef to get all swatches genSwatchGroup
                    set swatchCount to count every item in swatchesRef
                    set swatchIndex to random number from 1 to swatchCount
                    set currentSwatch to item swatchIndex of swatchesRef
-- New swatch group does not allow patterns or gradients
                    if class of color of currentSwatch is not pattern color info and class of color of currentSwatch is not gradient color info then
add swatch swatchGroupRef swatch currentSwatch
                              set i to i + 1
                    end if
          end repeat
-- [… etc etc]
If someone can help me to create the Swatch Array object of swatches loaded from a seperate document (or unique layer) then I think I can work my way to changing the fill on the existing paths (the nations in my map of Europe example).
Would be very cool if I could detect neighbooring paths (nieghbooring nations in my map of Europe example) make sure the colour being assigned is not within a certain hue/CMYK range of the random colour and if it is rechoose random colour. I have no idea how to perform the logic of determining neighbooring paths in an Illustartor script. Anybody?!
I'd prefer Applescript for sake of readiblity and also I'm learning AS ATM. Plus I'm using Script Debugger.app (which is excellent) to work with AS and I can't seem to run JSX scripts from within Extend Script Toolkit 2 (perhaps I need to make my scripts point to Illustrator?)
But Javascript is okay if someone has this covered already :-)

Auto-zoom to selected object?

I have a mystery ghost path that I can't find. It shows up in the layer palette. But I can't see it on my artboard. I have Show Bounding Box and Show Edges turned on. I alt/option click the layer to select everything. But there's nothing selected on my artboard. (And my artboard is sized to fit artwork bounds).
Are there any scripts to auto-zoom/scroll the canvas to a selected object? Most 3D apps have a "Frame Object" command that moves and zooms the camera to make the selected object centered on the screen. Is there something like that for Illustrator?

I don't think so. Just lock down anything you want to keep, Select All, and hit delete. The phantom guide should go away.

Some help with selecting objects

Hi all,
Is it possible to use a vector path (like a shape) to select multiple objects behind it (like a grid of dots)?
Thanks,
Chris

I read this back and noticed that it doesn't make as much sense as it could.. Please read my new question instead
Hi all,
Is it possible to use a vector path (like a shape) to select multiple objects behind it (like a repeat pattern of vectorized shapes)?
Thanks,
Chris

Selecting objects or ares of the screen, copy, and paste are missing

Hi,
Why such a standard and important functionality like selecting objects or areas of the screen, then copy and paste them are missing in the product?
A

Hi,
You can't select objects in Ideas, you can copy/paste the whole layer's contents by duplicating it, there is an icon in the layers panel, next to flip and merge down icons.
Emi

Noob Question: Flowing Input Dataset Row/Record IDs Through to the Score Model Output

I've got a noob question that I'm having difficulty finding the answer to: if my input dataset contains row/record IDs and I want to flow these through to the Score Model module output but *don't* want to include this column in model training (because
it's just an arbitrary row tag), how do I go about accomplishing this?
I am able to Project Columns and eliminate the IDs entirely early in the process but then can't really determine which input row a prediction is associated with because I've lost the IDs. I'm not quite sure how to accomplish what I'm trying to do via
the Metadata Editor, either.
Surely somebody else has dealt with this same question. If the solution is implemented somewhere in a Gallery experiment that you'd like to point me at, too, that would also be just as good as a written explanation.
Thanks in advance,
Kevin

Hey Kevin!
Sorry for making this process unclear :( Azure ML has a notion of Feature Columns
(by default everything is a Feature), that is columns/variables that are intended to be treated as part of the observation vector. You can use the Metadata Editor
and (after selecting the column(s) you want), mark the column as
Fields -> Clear Feature. This will have the semantics you desire - data attached to the input data while not being used for training.
Regards,
AK

Selecting objects on multiple arboards

Hello
I can`t find any answer for my question.
I have 2 artboards. Is there any shortcut for selecting objects only on artboard 1. But not usung selection tool. If I use ctrl+A all objects are selected in my work.
Why is not working like in InDesign ? Objects on active page are only selected.

go to Select->All on Active Artboard
if you use it often, assign a keyboard shortcut

Selecting objects below

I am a Freehand fan who has now had to use Illustrator almost exclusively. The whole access to vector points in illustrator bugs me but most of all access to objects below. In Freehand and Indesign and even Photoshop it is possible to hold either the control or command key and click thru the layers. Adobe now own Freehand why cant they make this available in illustrator. It would save me a lot of time. I know placing objects on separate layers is sort of a solution but I have to usually work on other people's work or do something in a hurry.

Back when I worked in Illustrator 8, I had a boss who was a complete Freehand nut. So, seeing I was weak in Freehand, my boss pushed every Freehand job in the shop he could find onto my desk. This made me a lot quicker and better at Freehand. However my skill set had to drop Freehand years ago to survive in the industry. There are many great ways of selecting objects below others, as in the previous example in this thread. There is also clicking the circle on the right side of each layer and sublayer. Clicking the circle in the layer will select everything on the layer. Clicking on the circle on each sublayer selects the individual item. This is not the method I use when picking through a file. I have gotten real good at keyboard shortcuts, which can be easily customized in Illustrator. To select items below others I select the top item and use the Command+3 which is the shortcut to Object>Hide Selection. The other shortcut I use all the time is Command+Option+3 which is Object>Show All. This is just my personal preference of how to get through a lot of objects in a file. If you try this you can get very fast and fluid at these two shortcuts. The best thing about keyboard shortcuts is people who don't use them look at you like you are doing some magic trick.

Noob Question 1: Selecting Objects On Layer Like CorelDraw?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for