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*** DesignGeek ***
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Tips and techniques for the digital designer
In this issue:
-- Acrobat 6 Discoveries
-- AdobeCS in the Real World
-- Special Character Shortcuts in Windows
-- Printing Finder Windows in OS X
Issue 13, 1/14/04
Written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion
... for her clients, colleagues, random contacts and interested subscribers
© 2004 Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
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Acrobat 6 Discoveries
In preparation for my Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) exam for Acrobat 6 at the end of December, I spent far more time in that application than I normally do, trying out every button and panel, investigating all the nooks and crannies. Not surprisingly, I discovered some interesting functions in Acrobat 6 that I find enormously useful, and perhaps you may as well. (And yes, I passed the test.)
First, if you have Acrobat 6 (Standard or Pro), make sure you download Adobe's patch, bringing it to 6.01:
Macintosh: <http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=1&platform=Macintosh>
Windows: <http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=1&platform=Windows>
If you don't have Acrobat, you can download a free tryout of Acrobat 6 Professional (Windows only) here:
<http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/tryout.html>
For the remainder of this section, when I say "Acrobat," I mean the Professional version, not the Standard version.
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Adding text
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I always knew you could edit text in a PDF, right in Acrobat, via the Touch Up Text tool. But I didn't know that you could *add* text to an area of a PDF where none exists. To do that, Option/Alt-click with the Touch Up Text tool, wait for the dialog that asks which font and what size you'd like to use, then start typing.
As in previous versions, Acrobat has a quite well-hidden Text Palette for more control over text formatting. In this version it's hidden in the Contextual pop-up menu, which you open by right-clicking (with a 2-button mouse on either platform) or Control-clicking (Mac users with a one-button mouse) while your Touch Up Text tool is active in a text block.
Choose "Properties" from the Contextual menu and go to the Text panel. Here you can change the typeface, size, character and word spacing, fill and stroke color, and even choose whether or not you want to Embed and/or Subset the font you select.
Your ability to add text to a PDF is limited by any security added to the PDF in question, but that's always been the case.
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Separations Preview and RGB
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Like InDesignCS, Acrobat 6 has a Separations Preview palette that lets you preview all the color-separated plates in your document. It's a handy way to catch errant spot color plates, or items falling on the wrong separation, before sending the file (the PDF or the layout file it was exported from) off to your printer.
Keep in mind, though, that neither Acrobat 6 nor InDesignCS will alert you to errant RGB images in your CMYK or spot-color publication with the Separation Preview palette. All that the palette is showing you is a preview of how RGB elements will *convert* to CMYK upon output.
Is that a feature or a bug? I'll leave it up to you.
In either application, the only way to tell if there are any RGB elements in your file is to run a Preflight on it. Luckily, both applications have that capability built-in. While Acrobat's Preflight function is far more powerful and customizable, InDesignCS's will do the job too, as far as RGB alerts are concerned.
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Reducing File Size
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Acrobat 6 has two different ways to make a PDF smaller in file size: The Reduce File Size command under the File menu, and the PDF Optimizer under the Advanced menu. For the most control over *what* Acrobat does to your file, exactly, when it reduces file size, use PDF Optimizer.
When you choose Reduce File Size, the only settings you can specify is the level of compatibility (Reader 4, 5, or 6) of the resulting PDF. You have no control over what happens to the fonts, if the images are downsampled (fewer, larger pixels) or not, and to what degree.
Everything you can do in Reduce File Size, you can also do in PDF Optimizer, but with much greater information and control.
You can start out by seeing what exactly is contributing to the size of the file via the Optimizer's "Audit Usage" function. For example, sometimes it's not the images, but the overhead in the file from the originating application (e.g., from PDFs created with Photoshop or Illustrator's "Save As PDF" format) that is the major contributor to a bloated PDF. Audit Usage will tell you that, and the Clean Up tab in the Optimizer will let you eliminate it.
Like Reduce File Size, the PDF Optimizer lets you specify the level of Reader compatibility for the optimized PDF. But Optimizer also has Distiller-like controls over image and font compression. You can set exactly what ppi resolution you'd like the images downsampled to (or turn off downsampling altogether), what method it should use for compressing the images (or turn off compression altogether), and if it should unembed fonts that are embedded, even allowing you to choose which fonts get the boot.
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AdobeCS in the Real World
This is not a tip, exactly, but simply an alert to something I've written elsewhere that you might find illuminating.
Late last year I completed a print project for a client -- a direct mail brochure -- using most of the Creative Suite applications. In our studio, it was CS's "maiden voyage" with a high-end project from start to finish.
I wrote an article about the project -- what new features came in handy, what mistakes I made -- and titled it "Adobe CS in the Real World" (Original title: "I Am Joe's Brochure With Transparency."... if you've never read a Reader's Digest, you're probably going "huh?" ... never mind.)
The article appears on my web site, on the home page:
<http://www.senecadesign.com>
Check it out if you get a chance, I think you'll like it. Much of the information is about InDesignCS, but I do touch on some of the other apps in the suite. And it was so great to be able to include screen shots, something I can't do in DesignGeek!
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Special Character Shortcuts in Windows
A significant number of Windows-based designers have difficulty getting special characters (bullets, em dashes, etc.) into their layout files. I see this a lot when I'm doing on-site training. They use the old ASCII code method of pressing ALT while entering a 4-digit code on their keypad, and often have cheat sheets of these taped to their monitors. Or they've got one "good" digital file containing the characters which they keep handy on their desktop, and copy/paste the characters from there when they need them.
Both Quark and InDesign for Windows have simple, "Mac-like" keyboard shortcuts for these:
QuarkXPress (v4-v6):
Bullet: Shift-Alt-8
Registration Symbol: Shift-Alt-R
Copyright Symbol: Shift-Alt-C
Trademark Symbol: Shift-Alt-2
Em Dash: Control-Shift-=
En Dash: None, as far as I know.
Discretionary (soft) hyphen: Control-hyphen
InDesign (v2-CS)
Bullet: Alt-8
Registration Symbol: Alt-R
Copyright Symbol: Alt-G (note: a G, not a C)
Trademark Symbol: None (see note)
Em Dash: Alt-Shift-hyphen
En Dash: Alt-hyphen
Discretionary (soft) hyphen: Shift-Control-hyphen
Note for InDesign:
Use the Type-->Insert Special Character menu to insert a Trademark symbol, or create your own keyboard shortcut for it in Edit-->Keyboard Shortcuts.
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Printing Finder Windows in OS X
No version of OS X to date has included the ability to print the contents of a Finder window as we had in OS 9. I have no idea why this is apparently such a tough nut for the wizard programmers at Apple.
Many workarounds abound, but none achieve the simplicity of making a window active, pressing Command-P, and getting a printout of the entire contents of the window, including what was hidden in the scroll bars, and including all the columns (date, size, etc.).
Until this little gem I just learned about:
Print Window v2.1
<http://www.swssoftware.com/products/printwindow.html>
SearchWareSolution's little app is quick to download, simple to install (just drag it to your Applications folder and double-click it), and is easy on the pocketbook. It's donationware -- if you feel like supporting them, send them "$5 or $10".
Once it's running, you can press Command-P in the Finder to print a window, same as in OS 9. But the Print Window program also lets you optionally expand all the window's folders (in the printout only, very cool) to the number of levels you specify, and to turn headers or icons on or off. There are lots of other features, be sure to read the Read Me that comes with it.
The page says it requires Mac OS X 10.1.5 or higher, but I'm not sure if it works in Panther or not. It works great in Jaguar, though!
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IS 2004 YOUR YEAR TO MASTER YOUR DOMAIN?
You can fully master the latest versions of OS X, Photoshop, InDesign, QuarkXPress, Illustrator, Acrobat, GoLive, and the rest of the designer's toolbox in far less time than you think! Just call in HerGeekness for an enjoyable session or two of targeted training (Mac or Windows) for you or your staff in the program of your choice -- starting at the level you're at, going to the level you want to attain, using the files you actually work with.
All clients receive three years of 24/7 follow-up support by phone or e-mail, too -- it's like having your own personal consultant at your beck and call, and can save you hundreds of dollars in per-incident support calls direct to the software companies.
Anne-Marie provides authorized Quark and Adobe training at your workplace for groups of one to ten or more, in the Chicago area and throughout the country. Out-of-the-office training in Seneca's bi-platform studio or Mac classroom is also available. Recent clients include the Chicago Tribune, World Book Publishing, and McGraw-Hill.
Detailed information including pricing, student pix and unsolicited feedback are here:
http://www.senecadesign.com/training/
... or contact her directly to talk about your training needs and get a friendly, no-obligation quote:
mailto:amarie@senecadesign.com
Phone: 312-946-1100
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DesignGeek is a free bimonthly publication written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion, a cross-media designer and authorized Adobe and Quark training provider. She owns Seneca Design & Training, Inc. in Chicago, Illinois (http://www.senecadesign.com/).
To subscribe to DesignGeek or read archived issues, go to its home on Seneca's site: http://www.senecadesign.com/designgeek/subscribe.html.
To unsubscribe, follow the link at the bottom of this page.
Contact Seneca by phone at 312-946-1100 or email at info@senecadesign.com
Copyright 2004 by Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
Please forward without cutting. Please contact Seneca for reprint permissions. We don't guarantee accuracy of articles. Company or product names mentioned in DesignGeek may be registered trademarks, we use the names in an editorial fashion with no intention of infringement.
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