Did you ever hear voices when you use certain applications? I don’t mean the kind of voices that would call your mental health into question. I mean the voices of the folks who are famous for training in that application. For example, InDesign has many voices in my head. When I’m tweaking some type or setting up a grid, I hear Nigel French. If I’m exporting EPUB, it’s Anne-Marie. Illustrator sounds like Mordy Golding and Justin Seeley. And Photoshop speaks to me with the voice of Deke McClelland. It was great seeing (and hearing) Deke in person at the Photoshop Conference last month, and it reminded me to check out some of his latest efforts at Lynda.com.
Here’s a course of Deke’s that is especially valuable since it teaches you skills that apply across several applications, including InDesign: Adobe Pen Tool Fundamentals.
I know, I know, the Pen tool is not intuitive to most human beings. It can be frustrating and tedious to use at first. But if you spend a little time to really get the hang of it, the payoff is that you can make any vector path you can imagine. And that’s huge. And in fact, there are only a few key concepts and techniques to master.
Among the free videos in the course are the following:
Meet the Black and White Arrow tools
Working with corner points
Getting to the Arrow tools on the fly
For Lynda.com members, if you are currently signed in to your account, you can also check out these videos from the series.
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Anchor points, segments, and control handles
Creating cusps in Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop
Real-world moving and nudging
This article was last modified on March 5, 2025
This article was first published on December 4, 2015
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