| Magazine > 2008 > July - August > Secrets of the Juicer |
Secrets of the Juicer
6 tips & tricks to help you shine
by John Chacho
The design of Juicer 3 is very straightforward. There has been a deliberate effort to keep most functions up-front and easy to find. The main menu of the Juicer is quite simple and the application does not employ a lot of repetitive dialog boxes that can interrupt work flow. That said, there are still a few useful functions that can be easily overlooked by experienced users who have settled into a comfortable routine of rendering content via the Juicer. This article is meant to break you out of that comfort zone and to get you try a few things that we suspect may be new to you.
1. Let’s start with a simple one, the F2 key. Open the Juicer and hit F2 key on your keyboard now. Impressed? Here’s what it does: It toggles the Tree Panel view between “My Products” and “All Products” modes, allowing you to switch between seeing product buttons for content you have purchased and installed; and everything else. This function is normally accessed via the little arrow button (something we refer to internally as a “twirly button”) in the upper right hand corner of the Tree Panel.
2. The F3 key replicates another Tree Panel function, switching Shy Mode on and off. Turning Shy Mode to "on" restricts the Tree Panel to showing only the currently selected product while setting it to "off" (the default) returns the Tree Panel to showing all Digital Juice product lines.
3. Conveniently located above the Browser Panel, the Juicer’s search feature works in very much the traditional way—you enter a keyword and hit “Go”. However you may not always get the results you expect. Sometimes you’ll be flooded with results for a variety of content types. To limit search results to only a particular content type, select that product line from the Tree Panel and enter the search query again. Only results for that product line will appear. Other times you may want to restrict the search to only products you own. To do this you need to first select My Products from the Tree Panel twirly button (or hit F2) before entering the search query.
4. One key that provides a function not offered by an interface button or menu item within the Juicer is the F7 key. While the F2 & F3 (as well as the F5 & F6) key functionalities can also be accessed via the Juicer’s interface, the function of the F7 key cannot. So if you want to hide both the Tree Panel and the Batch Panel in one fell swoop, the F7 key is your only option.
The Juicer’s Search feature can produce a flood of results when using a common term like the color “blue”. To limit the results to one product line, first select that product from the Tree Panel.Pressing the F7 key will hide the Tree Panel and Batch Panel for a clearer view of your results.
5. Now for a little unexpected fun with the Colorize options in the Settings Panel (under Layer > Effects > Add Effect>Simple/Duo/Tri Colorize). Place your mouse over the color palette area in the Color Picker dialog. While keeping your mouse button pressed down, hold and drag the cursor off the Color Picker, out of the Juicer interface and onto your desktop or another application.
Notice how the RGB sliders dynamically update the color values?
The Juicer’s Color Picker dialog has some hidden
features.
While you are hovering over the color that you want to apply, release the mouse button. The color swatch is updated with the new color picked from your desktop or application.
6. Another feature that seems to get overlooked is the Juicer’s skins capability. This is a shame, because downloading and applying a Juicer skin is fast and easy. Go to the “Edit” menu > “Select Skin...” to open the Skin Selector interface. If you haven’t installed a skin before, select “More Skins” to see a list of available skins. Currently nine are available and it takes about ten seconds to download and apply one, giving your Juicer a whole new look.
Downloading and applying a new skin for the Juicer is quick and easy.
So there you have it—a handful of tips that will hopefully make your Juicer experience more fun and efficient. If you have any tips of your own, or have ideas about how to make the Juicer even better, please be sure to share your thoughts online in the DJ Forums available at www.DigitalJuice.com.
John Chacho is the Director of Product Research and Development for Creative Genius, a Digital Juice software and services company.
