Claudia McCue

A number of my clients are construction-related groups who are planning to use InDesign for proposals and other company materials. Previously, they’ve used Microsoft Word and Publisher, and found it frustrating to be creative. If you’ve ever tried been forced to do page layout in Word, I’m sure you can sympathize!

Most of these clients want to keep the “look” of their new InDesign documents in keeping with previous materials. But it’s tough to create templates when you’re still learning the program, so many of these companies have contracted with experienced designers to create the templates for them.

Since I like to see typical client files before training (so I have an idea of what they need to know), I often have the opportunity to deconstruct these supplied template files before the client starts using them. And it’s a good thing I do. With only one exception, I’ve found that the designers are not giving my clients a very good start! Clearly, they need to be asking more questions before cranking up InDesign.

Some considerations when building templates for a client: Continue Reading »

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Don’t you just love the tabbed document display in Creative Suite 4 applications?

If you do, you’re in the minority, judging by the number of people who ask “How do I change that?” often followed by “What were they thinking?!” I can help a bit with the first question, but I can’t answer the second one. I guess it’s part of the increasing Macromediafication of the application interfaces: perhaps the flat gray architecture is meant to be chic and soothing, and maybe the tabs are intended to conserve screen real estate. Whatever the explanation, here are some tips for returning to the Land of Floating Windows, as nature intended.

Photoshop

Open Preferences > Interface. UNcheck “Open Documents as Tabs” and “Enable Floating Window Docking.” If you just uncheck “Open Documents as Tabs,” document windows will still insist on docking if they’re dragged near each other.

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InDesign

As in Photoshop, open Preferences > Interface and uncheck “Open Documents as Tabs” and “Enable Floating Window Docking.” Heave great sigh of relief.

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Illustrator

Alas, Illustrator only lets you get halfway there: You can turn off the option to open documents as tabs, but you can’t prevent documents from docking if you move them too close together. Some strange magnetic force compels them to huddle together for warmth.

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Feature Requests

Here’s an idea: if you dislike the tabbed interface, put a note in the suggestion box. Fill out the Feature Request form on the Adobe website and ask that this compulsive behavior be an option, not the default.

The book — “Real World Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications” (or “Son of RWPP,” as I call it)— is now in stores! It’s thoroughly updated for CS4 apps, including Acrobat 9 Pro. As you might expect, the chapters on QuarkXPress and Freehand are gone, but the general material about printing process and technology reflect some of the improvements in the intervening years, such as the spread of the Adobe PDF Print Engine in many vendors’ RIPs (we live in wonderful times).

The book is available from Peachpit Press, from Amazon, and through other booksellers.

Enjoy!

It’s finished! The book goes to press June 5th.

I’m pleased to announce that Real World Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications will soon be available. I updated it to reflect some of the improvements in print technology (such as the Adobe PDF Print Engine), and the software chapters are updated for Creative Suite 4 and Acrobat 9. I will say it’s easier the second time around, but I truly don’t know how Stephen King churns out what seems like a book a month. Maybe I need more compelling villains: poor press registration just can’t hold a candle to Pennywise the evil clown…

The book will be available from the Adobe Press imprint of Peachpit Press, and, of course, all the usual purveyors of books.

I received a note today from someone who’d upgraded to CS4, and suddenly half the controls in his Control Panel strip were missing. I thought — preferences? No, that wasn’t it. Wrong tool selected? Nope. Then it hit me: InDesign CS4 launches by default with an oversimplified Workspace called “Essentials,” which hides half the contents of the Control panel. Doh! I slapped my forehead. That was the culprit. Once he switched to the Advanced Workspace, all was well. You should do the same thing, so you’re not missing out on all those teeny little controls.

Also, you may not have noticed, but if you go to the Control panel menu, at the very bottom, there’s an option: “Customize.” You can totally customize the contents of the Control panel, controlling which field are displayed, and thus utterly befuddle the poor guy who uses your computer on night shift. Don’t do this.

At least, not yet: April Fool’s Day is coming up, you know

By the way, Photoshop CS4 also offers an “Essentials” workspace, but it’s not the dumbed-down one! In Photoshop, “Basic” is the oversimplified workspace, and “Essentials” is the usable, fully-stocked Workspace. Go figure.

I know a lot of people who have not upgraded to CS4, citing the pricing (especially in light of the current economic downturn). But here’s a warning: if you think the upgrade or purchase price is hefty now, be aware that it only gets worse after 2/28/09. Apparently, the initial price of upgrade/purchase was introductory pricing (from the Latin introductoramus, meaning “it will get worse”). For example, the $599 CS4 Premium upgrade will go up to $799. Complete details on pricing are here.

So if you’ve been on the fence about purchasing or upgrading, now is the time to take the leap, before the price increase. Keep in mind that online catalog sources, such as PCConnection (my fave), don’t discount Adobe pricing, although you can save a bit because you’re usually spared paying sales tax. That’s slightly offset by shipping costs, but you can often save a few dollars. Every little bit helps.

If you’ve recently upgraded to CS4, you may wonder why you can’t find some familiar Photoshop plug-ins: hey, where’s Pattern Maker? And how about Extract?! A number of our old favorites are not installed by default: you’ll find them on the “Content” disk in your Creative Suite disks. If you obtained your software via download, you can also find the missing plug-ins, presets, and extensions here.

PDF Package and Web Gallery are now accessed through Bridge. I guess that makes sense, but you have to play detective to find the features. Choose the Output icon at the left end of the Bridge Application bar (the strip just under the menu items), or select the “OUPUT” workspace at the far right end of the Application bar to access the “Output to Web or PDF” function:

Output to Web or PDF

You’re probably expecting a dialog box, but instead, the righthand panel of Bridge changes to give you the Output options. At the top of the panel, choose the appropriate option, PDF or Web. The panel changes to display your options for PDF or Web output; they’re fairly intuitive.

In previous versions of Illustrator, selecting two or more objects and performing a Pathfinder operation (Add, Subtract, Intersect, etc.) would result in what’s called a Compound Path. The original shapes remained, but only the results of the Pathfinder operation would be visible. The Compound Path approach gave you the ability to “reclaim” the original shapes if you needed to.

Above: Pathfinder creating a Compound Path after a Subtract operation;
note the “leftover” original shapes. They’re not visible,
but they’re still accessible in Outline mode.

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But most users wanted the “pure” finished shape: holding down Option or Alt while clicking a Pathfinder option would eliminate the leftovers without making a Compound Path:

Above: Prior to Illustrator CS4, holding down Option (Mac) or Alt (PC)
while choosing a Pathfinder operation would give you an expanded result,
with the non-visible object fragments permanently deleted.
Neat, but what if you ever wanted the old stuff back?

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If you’re in the habit of holding down Option/Alt while performing a Pathfinder operation, you might want to change your habit when you upgrade to Illustrator CS4. Now, Pathfinder results are automatically expanded, with no modifier key necessary, and Option/Alt now has the opposite meaning: it now prevents expanding, and results in the creation of a compound path. So, if you want just the resulting shapes (with no leftovers), don’t press Option/Alt while performing a Pathfinder operation.

I do a lot of retouching, and I like to create contact sheets of all the images, for two reasons: it helps my client quickly find the correct image on disk, by referring to the contact sheet, and it lets me see all the images together so I can determine if they need more work. This is helpful when there are multiple shots of one environment — for example, a golf course — and I want to make sure the grass and sky color are consistent across the group of images.

I used to do contact sheets in Photoshop, but if a couple of images were kerscrewy, I had to fix them and either manually replace them in the giganto contact sheet image created by Photoshop, or regenerate the contact sheet. Big pain.

But all that changed with the introduction of Bridge with Creative Suite 1, and its ability to use a script to commandeer InDesign for the creation of contact sheets. I whooped out loud when I discovered it. To use it, I’d select a bunch of images in the Bridge window, and choose Tools>InDesign>Create InDesign Contact Sheet. InDesign cranked up, automatically placed images and included the filename below each one. When I modified an image, I just had to update the InDesign link. Much saner!

Thus, I was heartbroken that Bridge CS4 didn’t include it. Waaaaahhhh! Adobe apparently didn’t think the workflow automation scripts were useful (!). So I had to use an older version of Bridge to do my contact sheets; luckily, I never throw away old software (or much of anything else, if my garage is any indication).

But today, courtesy of my friend Bob Levine, I received joyous news: Bob Stucky, the creator of the Bridge CS2/3 Contact Sheet scripts, has brought it to life again. He’s charging a paltry $25 for the script (I’d pay more, but don’t tell Bob that), and I’m back in business. It’s an absolute lifesaver for me. If you’ve been slogging through the Photoshop approach to contact sheets, I highly recommend that you make life easier by letting InDesign do the heavy lifting.

Bob Stucky’s site is here: Creative Scripting. The Contact Sheet page throws up a missing link, but click the “Purchase Services and Scripts” link on the right side and then click the Add to Cart button to purchase.

I’ve just received word that my book, “Real World Print Production” (Peachpit Press, 2006) is going to be revised. I’m pleased that Peachpit is going to let me update the book for current versions of software, and it will also give me the opportunity to expand some of the other content to reflect changes and growth in print and imaging technologies.

It all sounds like such fun now; check back when I’ve been up for 18 hours pounding the keyboard or staring at a stubborn paragraph

No ETA yet; I haven’t started pounding the keyboard. But I’m hoping to have it done by early Spring.