Claudia McCue

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.

If you’re a print service provider who’s starting to receive CS4 files for output, you might appreciate the latest revision of the venerable Printing Guide. It’s now available here.

The PDF is fully bookmarked; open the Bookmarks panel (View>Navigation Panels>Bookmarks) to reveal the extensive list of hyperlinked topics. Additionally, the Table of Contents is hyperlinked to internal content, so it’s easy to find your way around.

Designers will find lots of useful content, too. You can select a low-res or high-res version of the 139-page guide, and you’ll also find the CS3 version of the printing guide on the same page. Both offer insights into print-specific features in the Suite applications, and provide cautions and workarounds for each application.

I’m proud to say that I’m responsible for both the CS3 and CS4 revisions, starting with the CS2 version and building on its content. Consequently, some of the content is legacy, some was contributed by other revisers during the early CS3 phase, but the final versions of both are my doing. It was a labor of love, and I’m proud of the finished pieces. I hope you find the guides a valuable resource.

Given recent upheaval at Adobe (600 layoffs yesterday, including some very dear friends), I don’t know if there will be more versions of this resource. If Adobe doesn’t spearhead an update for future CS versions (assuming there will be future CS versions, and I can’t imagine there won’t be), I’ll do it myself.

Here’s a tip for owners of Creative Suite Premium 3.3, the intermediate release that included Acrobat 9: you’re eligible for a discount! Because you’ve already paid for Acrobat 9, which is also included in Creative Suite 4 Design Premium (could they make the name just a little longer?), you don’t have to pay for it again.

Owners of plain old CS3 Premium (the one with Acrobat 8 Pro) pay $599 to upgrade to CS4 Premium. But CS3.3 owners can upgrade to CS4 Premium for $440 ($599 minus the $159 you paid for the CS3.3 upgrade).

The catch? You have to call Adobe customer service to get this special pricing. Here’s the number: 1-800-585-0774. The Adobe customer service line is open 5am-7pm Pacific time, Monday-Friday, and 6am-6pm on Saturday.

Adobe is presenting a preview of an announcement of a look at Creative Suite 4 features on September 23, 2008.

You can sign up here.

This is not, however, a shipping announcement, just a glimpse of upcoming wonderfulness. The announcement of that announcement will come later.

Does your printer ask you to submit PDFs as job files, or do they ask you to send application files (page layout, plus all the necessary fonts and artwork)? Maybe we’re just slow here on the East Coast (or, more likely, justifiably paranoid), but all the printers I know ask for application files. Or, if they encourage clients to submit PDFs, they ask for the application files as a backup. (If you’ve ever tried to edit text in a PDF, you know why.)

Given the difficulty of editing PDFs (even with the big guns of PitStop), I think this is understandable. It goes beyond fixing a comma: sometimes extensive changes are necessary to make a job print predictably. For example: a solid black back cover on a brochure, if built and printed as 100K on an offset press, will be anemic and blotchy (toner-based digital presses have a more robust black). Consequently, a large solid black area is usually converted to a rich black for stronger coverage. Unless you anticipate this when building your page layout, the printer needs to be able to modify the content so the job prints to your satisfaction. Not much fun to attempt fixing this in a PDF. Continue Reading »

The latest version of Creative Suite is now shipping. If you’re expecting CS4, this isn’t it. But the new Creative Suite 3.3 is still a substantial upgrade (thus the dot version designation), thanks to the inclusion of Acrobat 9 and Fireworks. (When you purchase the upgrade, you get a disk with installers for Acrobat 9 and Fireworks only; nothing is changed for the other applications in the Suite.)

As you’ve probably noticed, Acrobat isn’t like the other kids in the box: its schedule is not synchronized with the other products in the Creative Suite stable. And, yet, it’s increasingly an integral part of the creative fabric, and Acrobat 9 Professional is full of features for creative folks to love: Continue Reading »