Take the "Red Pill" with Adobe Photoshop CS3

It would seem that the Adobe Photoshop CS3 engineers are fans of the Matrix.The movie the Matrix featured Neo, a man striving for the answer to a question. After much difficulty he reaches a guru (Morpheous) who can answer his question. Neo is offered two pills, a blue pill, the safe choice that will let life go on as before and a red pill that would show him the truth and potentially change his life forever.

Taking the red pill has since become a metaphor for being willing to move beyond the known, the safe, and become a trailblazer. Adobe Photoshop CS3 takes digital design to a whole new level and one presumes the red pill is the Adobe Engineers invitation to dive into this new world.

1. Launch Adobe Photoshop CS3
2. Hold the Ctrl-key and choose Help > About Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Red Pill Reloaded

Hidden within the red pill is a freaky little feline.

1. Take a screen capture of the red pill about screen.
2. Load it into Photoshop CS3
3. Adjust the levels by choosing Images > Adjustments > Levels and drag the highlight slider to the left.

InDesign CS3's Butterfly Mania

1. Launch InDesign CS3
2. Choose Help > About InDesign
3. Type the word "butterfly"
4. Click on the butterflies that appear to pin them
5. Click on the butterflies again to free them.
6. Opt (mac) or alt (win) click on them and they'll fall down
   
7. Pin a bunch of them and wait for the friendly alien
8. Opt-click (mac) or alt-click on the alien and he'll fall down too.
   
   

The Real Photoshop Wizard

Talk about a Photoshop Guru. To see the Merlin Lives! window hold down the alt-key and select palette options from the layers fly-out menu.

When you are finished admiring Merlin click the Begone button to close the window.

Photoshop CS2's Space Monkey

Enjoy this science fiction themed easter egg found hidden in the Adobe Photoshop's help menu.

Windows

Hold down the Ctrl + Alt key then click on the help menu and without releasing the Ctrl and Alt keys scroll down and click on About Adobe Photoshop CS2.

Macintosh

Click the Photoshop menu then hold down the Command (Apple) and Option keys and click on the "About Photoshop" menu item .

How Many Shopping Days till Christmas

Do you desperately need to know how many shopping days till Christmas - Illustrator can help.

Choose File > New to create a new file

The status bar menu at the lower left of the document screen usually displays such helpful information as the current tool, and can additionally be set to display Date and Time, Number of Undos, and Document Color Profile by clicking on the status bar and using the fly-out to select another option.

By holding down alt+shift and then clicking on the status bar menu you get a whole new bunch more options when you click on the status bar. Choose from the flyout to display the number of shopping days till Christmas, the current phase of the moon or someone named Morty's home number. Choose eyes to display a pair of eyes that track your mouse movement.

As I write this, I see I have 41 days till Christmas - guess I don't have to panic just yet.

Illustrator's Birthday Cake

This Illustrator Easter Egg comes to us from Deke McClelland's Real World Illustrator.

1. In the brushes palette, double-click on any of the caligraphic brushes to open the brush Calligraphic Brush Options dialog box.
2. Set the Angle to 5 degrees
3. Set the Roundness to 26%
4. Set the Diameter to 56pt
5. Click anywhere within the Calligraphic Brush Options dialog box to see the birthday cake appear.

Unfortunately you can't actually draw with this brush but still - its kind of neat!

InDesign's Friendly Alien

This Easter Egg first showed up in previous versions of InDesign but still works in CS2.

1. Open InDesign
2. Choose File > Print Presets > Define
3. Define a new print preset called Friendly Alien (note uppercase first letters).
4. Choose File > Print
5. Select your "Friendly Alien" preset 6. Click on the page thumbnail in the lower left corner