About jeff witchel

Jeff Witchel graduated from Pratt Institute in 1973 with a B.F.A. (Cum Laude) in Advertising Design and Visual Communications. He has been an award-winning advertising art director, writer, designer, illustrator, and TV producer ever since. Before starting his own advertising agency in New Jersey, Jeff built his career at top New York ad agencies such as Young & Rubicam, Grey Advertising, and Wells, Rich, Greene. Over the years, he has created award-winning work for many clients including AT&T, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Jell-O Pudding, The Plaza Hotel, and Pfizer. His many prestigious awards include N.Y. Art Directors Club Gold Award, One Show Gold Award, N.J. Art Directors Club Award, multiple Andy Awards, Graphis Annual, numerous readership awards, plus an Emmy Award nomination. Jeff is a self-taught computer artist with over 19 years of experience. His initial introduction to the computer was with PageMaker, but he switched to Quark 1.0 when it was first introduced in 1987. Having arrived on the desktop publishing scene so early, Jeff became the “go to” guy for answers when others started getting into computer graphics. As an Adobe Certified Expert, he’s provided online support for Adobe and is now an Adobe Certified Training Provider for both Adobe Illustrator CS2 and Adobe InDesign CS2. Jeff is one of just a handful of Adobe Certified Instructors in the New York metropolitan area. He also is a Quark Certified Expert in QuarkXPress 6 as well as a master of Adobe Photoshop and related applications. He counts among his training clients ad agencies, design studios, magazines, illustrators, and photographers in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.

Quickly Unlocking Options in InDesign

Using a combination of keyboard shortcuts, Jeff Witchel shows how to quickly access options for some of InDesign’s popular tools.

Creating Dashed Lines in Illustrator CS5

In Illustrator CS5, there are some new features in the stroke panel for creating dashed lines. Follow along with Jeff Witchel as he goes through options for setting up a dash pattern, creating rounded dashes, dotted dashes, and adding color to dashes and even the gaps in between the dash marks.

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Creating Quick Captions in InDesign CS5

Learn how to use InDesign to create image captions automatically. In this video, the first example is a contact sheet where InDesign automatically creates captions based on the image file names. In another example, use InDesign to add captions to images in a newsletter using the image metadata.

Applying a Gradient to Editable Type in Illustrator

Jeff Witchel has worked out a backdoor workaround to apply a gradient to type while keeping it editable. Watch this video to learn Jeff’s method.

Using Mini Bridge with InDesign CS5

Jeff Witchel talks about the integration of Mini Bridge into InDesign CS5, which has made it much easier to use. Use Mini Bridge to open InDesign files, edit file names, show linked files, save snippets, and place images.

Illustrating with the Gradient Mesh Tool

Learn the secrets to mastering the gradient mesh tool in Illustrator. This tutorial covers techniques like transparent overlay and adding anchor points, as well as sampling color.

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