Claudia McCue

If you’ve watched much science fiction, you know things always go wrong in time travel. Somebody drops a USB drive in ancient Mesopotamia, and next thing you know, dinosaurs are roaming the streets of New York.

Same thing goes for back-saving files for earlier versions of software; I always caution designers to avoid this if possible. However, I realize that designers often encounter mixed versions of applications, especially when freelancers are involved. I try to always keep files in their native habitat, in terms of software version and platform. The notion of opening up an innocent PC Illustrator CS5 file in a Mac CS4 version of Illustrator makes me twitch.

I’ve had my convictions strengthened this week; I’m working on a book in InDesign CS5, but the publisher wants the final files in InDesign CS4. I’m taking advantage of the Track Changes feature in CS5 to work with the editor, and that’s working great. However, when I export to InDesign Markup (IDML) — the only way back to CS4 — things fall apart. Paragraph formatting goes wonky. Styles based on other styles have forgotten the overrides that separated them from the parent styles, and the original formatting (mainly nested styles that I’d un-nested) bubbles back up. Like a zombie movie.

I don’t recall this happening when I back-saved from InDesign CS4 to CS3. I don’t know if I was lucky, or if back-saves have become more dangerous in the new version. The moral of the story? If you are forced to time-travel, make a PDF before you jump. Place the PDF in a separate layer in the converted file, and turn its visibility off and on, so you can check for issues.

Be careful out there. Watch for dinosaurs.

If you’ve used the built-in contact sheet generator in Adobe Bridge, you know it only gives you the option to generate PDFs (or Web galleries). That’s nice — but there’s a much better way.

I’ve blogged in the past about Bob Stucky’s great scripting solution, which enables you to invoke InDesign from within Bridge, in order to generate a truly editable InDesign contact sheet.

I’m tickled to announce that Bob has updated the script for CS5, and it’s even better than before. You can now include your Bridge ratings (in color!), and create separate masters for the first page and the remainder of the document. You can completely customize a template and invoke it when you create the contact sheet. It’s quick, it’s slick, it’s really trick (and I love it).

Bob has posted a video here, showing all the cool new features. Continue Reading »

JUST TO CLARIFY: This is only true for images in which the first layer comp hides some effects (aka layer styles). If the first layer comp only involves hiding some layers, without hiding any effects, all is well. It’s not a showstopper (once you know about it) — it’s just One Of Those Things. This advice applies whether you’re using the image as button artwork, or just as static artwork in the InDesign document.

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When you’re building complex Photoshop files, Layer Comps are a great way to store the visibility of layers that constitute versions of the image. For example, if Layers 1, 3, and 5 are Version A, Layers 2, 4, and 6 are Version B, and Layers 7, 8, and 9 are Version C, you can create three layer comps that let you access each version of the image with a single click. A Layer Comp can also store the position of layers, as well as the visibility of Layer Styles (such as drop shadows, inner glows, bevel & emboss, etc.). Layer Comps make it easy to keep track of versions while you’re experimenting, and when you want to quickly show a client those versions without trying to remember which eyeballs to turn on/off. 

Layer Comps can also be invoked by InDesign’s Object Layer Options feature, to control the visibility of layers and effect in placed PSD files; this is especially handy when you’re creating different appearances for interactive buttons. It was while creating buttons that I discovered a bug in the way InDesign handles Layer Comps. If you use Object Layer Options to manually turn layers off and on, all is well. My images had just one layer, but multiple effects (aka fx, aka Layer Styles) applied to the single layer. So I couldn’t invoke separate layers in InDesign, and had to rely on Layer Comps to control the visibility of effects that constituted each version of the button art.

I discovered that, unless you have the first Layer Comp in the Layer Comps panel list selected when you save the file out of Photoshop, you’ll never be able to reveal that first Layer Comp in InDesign. It allows you to select the Layer Comp, but ignores its settings and instead displays the layer comp that was selected when you saved the file. So you can never invoke the first layer comp in InDesign, unless it’s the selected comp when the image is saved.

As you can see in the image above, the first layer comp should just be the plain green text. But InDesign displayed the “Add Rocks” layer comp when I invoked the plain green text comp. Aaarghh (and, of course, it was late at night).

Moral of the story? If you’re relying on Layer Comps in InDesign, make sure the first layer comp in the Layer Comps panel is selected when you save the image, even if you think you won’t use it. It’ll save you the confusion and frustration that had me banging my head on the keyboard at midnight!

…and I shouldn’t HAVE to.

I’ve been sort of mentoring a woman who’s transitioning from marketing to doing freelance design work. Even though she didn’t train as a designer, she has very good instincts for what looks good, and she’s done a very good job of teaching herself InDesign; I just sort of fill in the blanks, and help her anticipate printing issues.

Currently, she’s designing a pocket folder with an 8-page stitched-in insert for a client whose budget dictates that the short-run job be printed at a nationally franchised quick-print place which shall remain nameless unless they keep being stupid. Then I will name them.

The digital printing revolution has made color printing available to individuals and small businesses who couldn’t afford long-run offset work. But the downside is that these places may be staffed by people who either don’t have any commercial printing background, or see the endeavor as a variation of “d’you want fries with that?”

She’s been asked to provide the 8-page 9″x12″ insert as four 18″x12″ single-page printer spreads. I made her call them and ask, “Do you have imposition software?”

“Uh, well, yeah…”

“So can’t I design in two-page reader spreads as Nature intended, and you can impose to the correct final pagination?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess.”

What— is it that hard to crank up Preps or Quite Imposing, call up a standard 8-page saddle-stitch form, import the PostScript or PDF file, click OK, and eat a Twinkie? Shoot, you could just export PDFs, do homegrown imposition in InDesign and hit File>Print, for that matter.

The moral of this story? Don’t let counter jockeys buffalo you. And find a genuinely well-equipped digital printing place, such as Imagers in Atlanta. They’re professionals with the necessary background, plus a nice helping of Good Sense(TM), something apparently lacking in the place my friend is forced to deal with. And they do high-quality work at a reasonable price.

There. I feel better.

Little on the outside, big on the inside: the Seagate FreeAgent Go 640GB (that’s 671,088,640MB) drive is currently on sale for about $110 at Best Buy (regularly priced from $129-$145 at other sources). Available in Ruby Red and Tuxedo Black. Other capacities are also available, from 250GB-1TB. The drives are petite — only 5.125″x3.125″x.4375″.

Seagate FreeAgent Go 640GB USB 2.0 drive

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I wanted to test Snow Leopard on the MacBook Pro I use for public demos and classes, and didn’t want to munge the drive irreversibly. So I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the drive onto the Seagate drive, then ran the Snow Leopard install on the Seagate — it’s a bootable drive. So far, all the necessities (applications, printer drivers, scanner driver) seem to work fine.

Consider this my public confession that I am not a bleeding-edge adopter of a new operating system: I used to be more intrepid, but I didn’t want to take chances with my demo machine. Carbon Copy Cloner is great for this, and it also provides an incremental backup feature. CCC is donation-ware: if you like it, you can donate to the developer. I guarantee that you’ll like it, and I encourage you to generously support Mike Bombich and other developers who contribute so much to the software ecosystem.

Note: while the Seagate drive can be used on Mac or PC, Carbon Copy Cloner is Mac-only.

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…

Continue Reading »

I realize this doesn’t fall under the heading of “graphics,” but I’ll bet a lot of you have an iPod touch. Even though I’d heard that the screen is sturdy and scratch-resistant, I wanted to ensure its smooth surface would remain unmarred.

There are a bazillion products to protect these things; I first bought a protector for about $20 that used a squeegee, sponge, and a small container of liquid to adhere the film. I made quite a mess, but with a lot of squeegeeing (is that a word?) I finally eliminated all the bubbles, only to find a piece of lint trapped smack in the middle. Aargh!

Then I found this product, absurdly priced, on Amazon. At first glance, you might get the idea that this is a cheap product. Its enthusiastic tagline — “The greatest guarder for LCD screen” — is quaint. The back of the package says “For iTouch II,” but it fit my iPod Touch 3rd gen perfectly. (Despite the illustration, it wouldn’t be appropriate for iPhone, unless you’re willing to cut a little hole for the speaker.) But it’s very well made, smooth and flawless, and the application procedure is painless and well thought-out.

It’s currently priced at $3.00, so I ordered 5 of them (in case I botched the installation–still cheaper than the one protector I’d already used). This protector provides a “tack cloth” to clean dust off the screen (I recommend using a good glass cleaner first). And it has a unique approach: there are two sheets protecting the screenguard: one covering the adhesive side, and one to act as a thick carrier sheet as you position the protector. A small protruding tag on the carrier sheet makes it easy to position the protector and use your fingers (or the tack cloth) to “roll across” the sheet and anchor it. The surface is smooth (not “rubbery” like the previous protector I used). It’s crystal clear, and you don’t even know it’s there. Highly recommended.

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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.

You’re probably familiar with Helvetica Neue. On the Mac, it’s even one of the built-in System fonts. It’s a commonly-used font — and commonly mispronounced.

It’s not “Helvetica Nu.” It’s “Helvetica Noy-yeh.” Sparked by my teenage love of German cars and a stint in high-school German classes, I long ago learned to love the Germanic economy of language. I always considered it wasteful that the French would put a perfectly good “T” at the end of a word, and then not pronounce it. The Germans, however, don’t waste letters. Porsche is pronounced “Porsh-eh,” not “Porsh.” It’s Noy-yeh, not Nu.

This has been a public service announcement

At first glance, you may have read this as “Hotel HelvetiCa,” just because we’re all so accustomed to the common font name. Our brains just want to fill in the “missing” C.

Helvetia was the Latin name for Switzerland in the Middle Ages. The label HELVETIA can be found on Swiss coins and postal stamps, while the abbreviation “CH” stands for “Confoederatio Helvetica,” the Latin version of “Swiss Confederation” (hence the CH sticker on Swiss cars and Switzerland’s top level internet domain, .ch.)

This is the Hotel Helvetia, in Lindau, Germany, on the beautiful Lake Bodensee.