The Best Utility You’ve Never Used

If you are running Panther on your machine, and you fashion yourself as an Art Director, you have a hidden gem already installed on your computer. It was staring me right in the face, ready to be launched. And I haven’t stopped using it since. On a particularly light day I started to navigate through my preinstalled folders on my hard drive. Here in the Applications folder, amongst Font Book, iCal, and Internet Connect was something that caught my eye: Art Director’s Toolkit 3.

This utility by Code Line Communications has everything an Art Director needs at their fingertips. When you launch ADT, a window pops up with the following features: Numbers, RGB, CMYK, Symbol, Text Size, SCale, Columns, and Swatches. Let me break down this list of features in greater detail.

Numbers:
This category gives you decimal equivalents of fractions which is incredibly useful when setting up documents in Quark Xpress for example. ADT also does the reverse calculation: Decimal to Fraction. Ever need to know how many Picas are in 15.35 centimeters? The unit conversion tool will convert Inches, CM, Points, and Picas. Printing on a A9 envelope? Well A9 is 2.047 X 1.457” The page size feature told me that. Finally, the image size feature will tell you approximately how large memory and px size wise a 4 x 5” 300dpi image is.

RGB
The RGB feature is a basic color slider. It will give you RGB values, hexadecimal equivalents, as well as provide an eye dropper to sample color from anywhere on your desktop.

CMYK
The CMYK feature is similar to RGB only it gives an additional feature. It will allow you to calculate 2 4C breakdowns and calculate the mixes. What this means is you can get a better idea of what it will look like when you overprint a 4C match of PMS 300 with a 60% tint of black. Cool.

Symbol
The symbol feature is sort of like the old Quick Key utility I once had in OS9. It will show you the character set of any preloaded font and give you the key command. I have found this incredibly useful for finding that scissor icon in Zapf Dingbats. (Shift-1 by the way)

Text Size
Text Size allows you to key in text and see how it looks in the set size. It will also allow you to set a target size and it will give you the maximum point size of the phrase to fit in the space. This feature is probably my least favorite. I’m sure there’s a use for it but in my opinion you should never set type based on size, only by legibility.

Scale
I love Scale! This feature gives you the percentages needed to shrink or enlarge a set image to a new set size. For instance: Let’s say you have a document that is 13.75” x 19” and you want to print it on a Letter size sheet (8.5” X 11”) This feature tells me I need to print it at 57%.

Columns
For those designing on a grid, setting columns is a necessity. This feature allows you to type in page sizes, margin sizes, number of columns and gutter widths. ADT then spits out the result, ready to implement in your layout.

Swatches
This feature allows you to key in a Pantone color and instantly see the RGB, HSB, CMYK, and Hex numbers for it. What is very useful is the ability to modify tints on the spot color and see values for that as well. Example: Let’s say you want to print a CMYK (Process match) of 60% tint of PMS540. ADT tells you it is C60 M33 Y0K33.

I have been able to incorporate Art Director’s Toolkit seamlessly into my workflow. If you are an Art Director like myself, I encourage you to check it out.

Code Line has just released ADT4 available for a purchase price of a $14.95 for an upgrade.