scott

scott

Scott has 20 years' experience in the printing and publishing industry and is an accredited trainer holding the CIPD Certificate in Training Practice. He is an Adobe Certified Expert in InDesign, Acrobat and Photoshop as well as being an Adobe Certified Instructor and Adobe Certified Design Specialist.

What is Creative Cloud?

 DreamWeaver, HTML5, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop  No Responses »
May 042012
 

Screen shot of Creative Cloud graphic

Creative Cloud is Adobe’s online service which will bring together many of the leading design and production applications together with a collaborative workspace and online storage facility.

Creative Cloud is a subscription service, membership of which allows access to all of the forthcoming Creative Suite 6 applications plus Adobe Muse (for building web sites without coding), Adobe’s Touch apps (such as Photoshop, Adobe Ideas etc for mobile devices) and 20gb of free storage.

Members will be able to manage and download their software applications from Creative Cloud. Note that this does not mean the apps are streamed over the cloud, InDesign, Photoshop etc are still downloaded and installed on your desktop.  Read more...

 Posted by scott on May 4, 2012  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Adobe releases InDesign 7.5.3 update

 InDesign  No Responses »
May 042012
 

Today Adobe has released an update (7.5.3) for InDesign and InCopy, addressing numerous issues.

John Hawkinson has posted an extensive list here, but notable fixes include:

Stability enhancements due to fixes to apparently random crashes when copying & pasting, exporting to PDF with text variables, file recovery, packaging & preflighting and with certain fonts in balanced text frames.

Performance improvements when moving objects when display is set to High Quality and general redraw performance improvements.

Improved graphics handling including white stitching line in JPEG export with certain placed images scaling percentage and JPEG export resolution and reduced transparency support for TIFF files from Photoshop CS6.  Read more...

 Posted by scott on May 4, 2012  Tagged with: , ,

Roundup of recent Adobe DPS news

 InDesign  No Responses »
Apr 022012
 

Adobe recently updated the DPS components for InDesign. Before you rush to upgrade you should take a moment to consider you workflow requirements. DPS works across several systems and suppliers, not all of which update at the same time. Though Adobe updates all of its components simultaneously, Apple can take some time to approve the Content Viewer for iPad. If you upgrade InDesign’s Overlay Creator too soon, you’ll find you have generated publications that can’t be previewed on your iPad. To make sense of all the components and the best time to update, Johannes Henseler has created the Caniupdateadobedps? web page. Keep an eye on this to judge when it’s safe to update.  Read more...

 Posted by scott on April 2, 2012  Tagged with: , ,

6 ways to Copy objects with InDesign

 InDesign  No Responses »
Mar 082012
 

Copying objects is one of those tasks we all do all the time. I regularly come across users who aren’t aware that there are many ways to copy beyond the standard copy and paste commend. Duplicating items in precise ways can be one to the most powerful ways to get a job done quickly and InDesign has numerous ways to do it.

I want to make duplicates of my sample logo. I can do it in the following ways:

1) Select the object then Edit>Copy followed by Edit>Paste

The resulting copy is placed in the middle of the page but the location  is not controllable.  Read more...

 Posted by scott on March 8, 2012  Tagged with: , ,

Creative Suite Workspaces

 InDesign, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jan 312012
 

Another often overlooked aspect of most Creative Suite apps is their ability to store preset panel combinations. Adobe call these workspaces and they can be extremely useful for rapidly loading specific panel sets or just carrying out general tidying up.

Workspaces can be found in two locations: under the View>Workspaces drop down menu or, in the Application bar on the right hand side.

Screenshot of InDesign workspace switcher

InDesign workspace switcher

I this example I’m using InDesign. The current workspace (Essentials) is displayed in the application bar next to the search field. Click on the downward triangle to see a list of preset workspaces (this is known as the workspace switcher).  Read more...

 Posted by scott on January 31, 2012  Tagged with: , , , ,

Boxoffice for iPad

 HTML5, InDesign  1 Response »
Jan 132012
 

Here’s another interesting DPS generated iPad app I downloaded recently. Boxoffice is a movie industry weekly magazine. It features the usual range of industry news & gossip, celebrity interviews and film previews. I think the Boxoffice design team has made very interesting use of the features of DPS to make an engaging and genuinely entertaining app.

Screenshot of Boxoffice cover 1

Boxoffice cover 1

Boxoffice makes use of DPS’s horizontal and vertical layouts to create two entirely different covers for each edition. Just rotate to switch between them. This theme is repeated in various locations in the magazine.

Screenshot of Boxoffice cover 2

Boxoffice cover 2  Read more...

 Posted by scott on January 13, 2012  Tagged with: , ,

Exchanging data between Creative Suite apps part 2

 Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop  No Responses »
Dec 192011
 

In the first part of this article I described how to create and share content between Illustrator and Photoshop. Now we’ll take the artwork and use it in Illustrator and InDesign.

After clicking ok to apply my 3D adjustments I can now save the logo for use in other applications. If I were using a traditional export format such as EPS and TIFF, I’d have to flatten my Photoshop document. This would reduce the file size but it would also make editing my various text, smart object and 3D layers impossible. As most Adobe apps understand each other’s native formats, saving as TIFF and EPS are not necessary and, therefore, neither is flattening.  Read more...

 Posted by scott on December 19, 2011

Exchanging data between Creative Suite apps

 Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop  No Responses »
Dec 122011
 

Chances are, if you use one Adobe application, you use two or even more. As each has unique features and functions, it’s often necessary to transfer data between apps to get the results you want. Years ago it was necessary to save data in flat, exchange formats such as EPS and TIFF to get this done. Though many people still use this approach it is now very inefficient and time consuming and restricts the capacity to use layers, transparency and other effects. This two-part article presents a quick overview of some of the flexible ways to exchange data in CS5.  Read more...

 Posted by scott on December 12, 2011  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Digital pre-press checklist

 Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop  No Responses »
Nov 272011
 

With all the focus on new kinds of dynamic electronic publishing, it’s easy to forget that printing still plays a major part in design and communication. Most of us have to create printed material and making sure colours are consistent and accurate, pictures are sharp and documents are technically correct is a big part of getting that right.

Here’s a checklist of digital pre-press essentials for print production.

1) Calibrate monitors and adjust lights and other visual distractions (such as strong colours on walls, coloured desktop patterns, strong natural light sources) so you can be confident you’re seeing the most accurate colours onscreen.  Read more...

 Posted by scott on November 27, 2011  Tagged with: , , ,

Roundup of recent Adobe announcements

 InDesign, Photoshop  No Responses »
Oct 222011
 

Adobe has released a plethora of announcements and updates recently. You could be forgiven for missing a few important ones amidst the blaze of AdobeMAX publicity. Here’s a roundup of some of the more practical ones.

InDesign CS5.5 update 7.5.2.

A bug fix addressing a number of problems including: several ePub and XML import and output errors, unexpected quits, layer panel instability and PDF export random quits. Full details here.

End of support for Acrobat 8.  Read more...

 Posted by scott on October 22, 2011  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,
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