Nov 14 2012
About
To contact me: claudia [at] claudiamccue.com
For more information on my training offerings, please visit my my training site, Practicalia, LLC.
Over the Years…
There was artboard and India Ink, and 6×0 jewel-tip Kohinoor Rapidographs I carefully cleaned. Prestype, striping tape and ruling pens. The production art job was a respite from life in the lab as a chemistry major. “I’ll take a break,” I thought. “Then I’ll go back and finish my degree.”
My toolbox was well-stocked: two Ulano knives for Rubylith, assorted sharpening and polishing stones, double-headed cutters, every size of technical pen and marker. The same love of pattern and form that had made Chemistry appealing was repurposed. Once, I had contemplated the Periodic Table, but soon atomic weights gave way to Pantone numbers.
When color electronic prepress systems came on the scene, I was fortunate to get in on the ground floor, running a Crosfield 820 system in 1981. No color monitor: just a keyline display to show where graphics were positioned. In those days, that was high-tech stuff! In 1984, my employer sprung for a Crosfield 860, with a color monitor. I went on to run Scitex systems, and bought a Mac in 1990 so I could learn Photoshop. After years of production, I did a stint as a shift supervisor, then took a fork in the road and became a software trainer.
Now I’m a trainer, consultant, and writer in the graphic arts realm. I’m the author of Real World Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications (Peachpit Press, 2009) and Fearless Flash: Use Adobe InDesign CS5 and the Tools You Already Know to Create Engaging Web Documents (Adobe Press, 2010). I’ve also contributed to Real World QuarkXPress 7 (Peachpit Press, 2007) and Professional Design Techniques with Adobe Creative Suite 3 by Scott Citron (Peachpit Press, 2007). I’m a contributor to InDesign Magazine and InDesign Secrets in addition to the blog you’re reading. I’ve spoken at PePCon, the HOW Interactive Conference and AdobeMAX, and presented hundreds of seminars devoted to Adobe products for print.
I’ve also been fortunate to record a number of video courses for the premier provider of online training, Lynda.com, including:
- Print Production Fundamentals
- Acrobat X: Creating Forms
- Up and Running with Acrobat XI Pro