Claudia McCue

True confession: I don’t have an iPhone (what?! What’s wrong with you?!).

That’s right — I’m a cellphone infidel. I’d like to have a sleek, hip iPhone, but I’m not willing to abandon Sprint for the more expensive AT&T service that’s spotty out here in the sticks where I live. Yet, I lust after the thousands of apps.

However, I do have an iPod Touch, so I can watch videos and listen to music while stuck on a plane, so I can run most of the apps I want, including the spiffy Color Expert app from Code Line Communicators. While it’s true that you’d get the most out of Color Expert with an iPhone (because of the camera), it’s still quite useful (and fun) on an iPod.

Some of the app screens in Color Expert. Note the photo at upper right, being sampled to pick a starter color for the palette-generation process.

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Choose from Color Wheel or Swatch mode, and then choose a color. Better than that? If you have an iPhone, use the camera to take a photo, and pick colors from that (on the iPod, you can pick colors from a stored photo). Then, choose the method for generating additional colors (e.g., Split Complementary, Triadic, etc.) If you’ve started with a color in the Pantone swatch book, all secondary colors are Pantone colors as well — very slick. A plus: Color Expert will display the CMYK, RGB, HSB, and Lab values for Pantone swatches. Is it a replacement for your Pantone fanbook? No, of course not — but it’s a great portable quick reference. Besides, you can’t play music on your Pantone Color Bridge swatchbook.

Once you have these palettes, what do you do besides admire your little screen? Well, you can save color palettes and email them. Unfortunately, they aren’t in a standard Adobe Swatch Exchange format, but at least you have a record of the swatch numbers or recipes. More than anything, I think, it’s a great way to brainstorm.

And it helps me justify having the iPod Touch

If you’ve ever had to silhouette a girl with windblown hair, you know what a challenge it can be to create the perfect mask. I’ve always used channels, duplicating the best one and using Levels, Curves and judicious handwork to create a mask. As long as the subject has some contrast with the background, there’s hope, but, even then, it can be time-consuming.

The ideal masking solution faithfully captures the shape of the subject, maintains translucency and soft transitions, and can be used non-destructively. It’s not a simple problem to solve, which is probably why I haven’t found a product that fit all requirements — until now. All of the other products I’ve tried erase background pixels rather than creating a separate mask. Some do a better job of maintaining transparency, some aren’t much better than using the Magic Wand. But I’ve found only two products that create non-destructive masks with nice, transitional edges: Power Mask, and EZ Mask, both from Digital Film Tools.

Both products do a great job; EZ Mask is just a bit, ah, easier (natch). When you see a product named “EZ Mask,” it’s tempting to think… well, you know. But trust me: it’s wonderful! Let me show you…

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I absolutely love the FOLDRite Template Master plug-in for InDesign. It’s a template creator and an educational resource, all rolled (well, folded) into one. It generates templates with correct panel sizes and an abundance of guidelines to keep you oriented. If you’ve done the math for a simple three panel fold-in brochure, you know it’s a bit of a challenge. But what about laying out much more complex pieces? Check out the FoldFactory site.

Not only the the FOLDRite Template Master plug-in generate complete templates, it provides extensive information about appropriate stocks for the form factor it’s created, along with advice about mailing issues and more.

And now you can have it for $99! If you build folded pieces, you really need this little gem. And check out “A Field Guide To Folding,” Trish Witkowski’s very readable and useful resource. If you want to dig deeper, consider her fantastic, encyclopedic instant classic, “FOLD: The Professional’s Guide To Folding.” At 850 pages, it will last you at least a week at the beach, but prepare you for a lifetime of first-class folding.

And since Trish is my Folding Hero, I may have to spring for the Trish Witkowski bobblehead doll, also available on the FoldFactory site. Way too cool!

It’s worth highlighting David Baldaro’s latest comment on the original post. There have been some discoveries.

“Folks, I’ve been chatting with the R&D team on this issue. For all the details check out my blog, http://david.baldaro.me.uk/2009/03/xmpie-and-the-missing-plug-in-issue/”

Here’s an excerpt from David’s blog:

[From one of the XMPie R&D folks]   “The problem that is experienced is a result of XMPie adding properties to certain components of the document. For example – A spread gets the property of whether it has a visibility ADOR or not. A box gets the property of whether it has text length handling (auto flow, copy fitting) and if so In what way.”

“The way this is implemented is by using the only technology available for this by Adobe which as a by-product forces that the properties are added to the document whether you actually place valid values or not (meaning – whether you set them or not).  If they are not set to specific values they simply get null values – but still the properties are there.  Since the properties are there taking the document and opening it in another InDesign installation provides a warning that there is no support for these properties – i.e. the “missing plug-in” warning.”

David continues:
“So, the answer here is not straight forward, and XMPie is talking to Adobe about this matter it would seem. Gal goes on to mention that they have seen this issue replicated in several other Adobe Plug-ins that make changes to the document in the same way; so it would seem that this is not solely an XMPie issue.

The best way to overcome this?
* You could always install the XMPie plug-in I guess; free-of-charge and fully functional from www.xmpie.com.
* If you are the creator of the document then disabling or removing the XMPie Plug-in; before resaving the document should work.
* Exporting the document to an INX or IDML file will also do it’s best to remove any conflicting tags.”

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My thanks to David for doing all this detective work. Clearly, the problem is not solely an XMPie issue: it seems that some of the normal interactions required for a plug-in may force the plug-in to modify the document in ways that permanently alter the underpinnings.

Have you encountered similar circumstances with a plug-in? We’d like to hear about it!

A client sends their InDesign CS3 files to a printer, who makes any correx, then returns the corrected file to my client. When the client reopens the file, they receive an error message indicating that they are missing plug-in “XMPBackEnd5.pln.InDesignPlugin.” Usually, this is just a courtesy announcement; plug-ins for InDesign are supposed to be written so that their absence doesn’t mess things up for a recipient who doesn’t have the plug-in.

But in this case, it’s not so innocuous: the file opens, but my client cannot package it after they have worked on the file. The only solution is to run it through InDesign Interchange and open the INX file; this removes all desire for the missing plug-in. Then, the file behaves normally, and can be packaged successfully. Nice that there’s a workaround, but this is no way to live.

LATER NOTE: the XMPie uDirect plug-in seems to leave this residue only if personalization data is added to the file. If a clean file is simply opened, worked on and saved, there’s no problem down the line. The issues arise when personalization data is added, and then the file is passed on to someone who doesn’t have the uDirect plug-in. So it’s not universally dangerous.

I received this response from XMPie support: “Thank you for pointing us into this problem. I have sent this request to our Product Manager and I hope that this problem will be handled in future versions of XMPie.”

If you don’t know what XMPie is, it’s a powerful and nimble variable-data solution for InDesign. I’ve seen it in action, and it is very cool. But beware of this glitch until it’s fixed.

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.

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.

If you create an EPS or PDF from an Illustrator file, everything is all glommed together in the resulting file: there’s no need to keep track of graphics and fonts — they’re automatically embedded. If you choose the “include linked files” option when saving an AI file, graphics are embedded.

While embedding graphics makes the file portable, it limits editability; you can’t extract the embedded graphics to restore them, as you can in InDesign. If you created the file, you probably still have the images lying around somewhere: you can edit the images, then replace the embedded images in the Illustrator file.

But what if your print service provider needs to color-correct an embedded graphic? You’ll have to hunt down the image and send it. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to package an Illustrator file like you can an InDesign file?

Well, with the spiffy Scoop plug-in, you can! (Oh, gee. That sounds like a cheesy late-night infomercial. Sorry.) Available from the Orwellian-named Worker72a, Scoop ($47) gathers up all placed artwork, as well as fonts. It’s just like the Package feature in InDesign, or Collect for Output in QuarkXPress. It’s reasonably priced and painless to use. It’s handy, too, when you need to archive an Illustrator job; you can quickly gather all the pieces without wondering if you got it all. Worker72a also offers a bunch of other nifty plug-ins for Illustrator; check ‘em out.

As of this writing, Scoop is available for Illustrator up through CS3. I’ll let you know when it’s updated for CS4.

LATER NOTE: Scoop CS34 has been released; it works with both CS3 and CS4. See my updated post here.