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*** DesignGeek ***
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Tips and techniques for the digital designer
In this issue:
-- Raster Resolution Tips in Illustrator
-- Acrobat 8 Converts Plain PDFs to Forms
-- InDesign's Hidden "Save for Web"
Issue 58, 11/14/06
Written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion
... for her clients, colleagues, random contacts and interested subscribers
(unsubscribe link at the bottom)
(c) 2006 Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
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Raster Resolution Tips in Illustrator
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I think most Illustrator users have learned that there's a deceptively innocuous little command in the Effects menu that can ruin high-res output if not attended to: Document Raster Effects Settings. Artists who've been burned once by its default 72 ppi setting will never allow that to happen again.
Yet I think few users realize that the settings in this dialog box govern some other rasters generated by Illustrator, not just the ones from the Effect menu. (I have no idea why it's a menu command -- it should be a Preferences setting.) If you think you never have to choose Document Raster Effects Settings because you're not using any Effects, think again.
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Newbie Review: What's a Raster Effect
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Graphic Design 101 tells us that Photoshop is a "paint" program, and Illustrator is a "drawing" program. You paint with colored pixels in Photoshop, and in Illustrator you draw paths which you fill and stroke with color. The technical term for these two general types of image formats are raster (paint) and vector (paths). Rasters give you soft edges that fade into the background and are hard to edit, vectors give you hard edges that are easy to edit.
However, in Graphic Design 201, we learn that the software world is not quite so delineated. You can draw with vectors in Photoshop (the Pen tool and vector shape layers are two examples), and you can create rasters in Illustrator (a common one is Effects > Stylize > Drop Shadows).
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Raster Resolution Settings
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Unlike vectors, which are resolution independent, the output quality of raster images depends upon their resolution. When you're creating a raster image, you need to tell the program how large the pixels should be -- that is, how many pixels can fit in an inch, aka ppi (pixels per inch). Raster images for a web page need only be 72 ppi (relatively large pixels), but those for high-res print output need to be more like 225-300 ppi so they don't look pixellated (the tell-tale stair-stepping) in the printed output.
In Photoshop, we're asked for the ppi resolution right up front in the New document dialog box, but not in Illustrator (another missed opportunity, in my opinion). Yet, as I mentioned earlier, the default resolution for rasters in Illustrator is 72 ppi, as it has been for ages, even though most Illustrator artwork is destined for print, not web sites.
Why, Adobe? Is it because you think Illustrator users seldom, if ever, create drop shadows or blurs? The engineers like to embed land mines in the program for sport? Tis a puzzlement.
So, savvy Illustrators know that if they use any of the Effects that create rasters -- such as drop shadows, feathers, or glows -- and their artwork is destined for print, they need to change the resolution for these raster effects before saving the file a final time. It's easy, just go to the Effects > Document Raster Effects Settings dialog box and click the "High (300 ppi)" radio button, or enter a custom resolution suitable for your project.
Even if you inadvertently created all your raster effects with the default setting of 72 ppi, you can still correct the file. Since these are live effects, changing the resolution will force Illustrator to redraw all raster effects in the document (note the word "Document" in the command) on the fly at the higher resolution.
For some users this is a good workflow ... 72 ppi raster effects keep the file size relatively small so the response time is quicker. They save the "change to 300 ppi" step for last. These users also ride motorcycles without helmets while picking up Mother's Day carnations from the 7-11 on their way to Mom's special brunch.
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When it's Too Late
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A lot of Illustrator users are not clear on the difference between the Effects and the Filters menus, which share many of the same commands. Effects are "live" and can be edited on the fly (including changing their resolution); Filters are permanent changes to the artwork and can only be changed by Undoing, if you're lucky.
Most of the time, when you're using filters, you're going to be aware of the resolution Illustrator is using because most of the filters only work on raster images. If you really want to use that filter, you'll have to convert the selected vector artwork to a raster first, via Object > Rasterize, and doing so forces you to set the resolution in the Rasterize dialog box. No surprises, then.
But there's one filter which, while it generates a raster, doesn't require you to rasterize the vector artwork first. This is Filter > Stylize > Drop Shadow. So how does it know what resolution to use for the shadow? Why, whatever you've set in the menu next door, the Effect menu, son! Makes perfect sense!
Changing the resolution in Effects > Document Raster Effects Settings will not redraw the shadow you created with the Filter command, since filters are a permanent change. If you accidentally created a blocky 72 ppi shadow, you're not the first to so. Luckily, the default setting for the Filter drop shadow is to "Create Separate Shadows", meaning the shadow is on its own layer. You can find that in your Layers palette, delete it, and then re-apply the drop shadow filter after you've increased the resolution in the Document Raster Effects Settings dialog box.
Or, just ignore the Filter for drop shadows from now on. Stick to its twin in the Effects > Stylize submenu and you'll never have to worry about making a permanent boo-boo again.
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Fix the Default Setting
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If most of your Illustrator work is for print, and your computer has a decent speed and amount of RAM, why not just change the default setting for Document Raster Effects from 72 ppi to 300 ppi?
As with most of Illustrator's application defaults, you do so by changing the hidden template Illustrator uses for new documents. There's two of them, one for RGB docs and one for CMYK docs. They're in the Illustrator application folder, so you'll probably need to have an admin account (not a restricted user account) on your Mac or PC to get in there and edit these 2 files.
You find "Adobe Illustrator Startup_CMYK.ai" and "Adobe Illustrator Startup_RGB.ai." in the Adobe Illustrator > Plug-ins folder. Double-click them to open them up in Illustrator, then for each one, go to Effects > Document Raster Effects Settings and change the resolution to 300 ppi (or whatever default resolution you prefer). Click the Okay button and close the document, saving your changes.
From now on, any new document you create in Illustrator will use your setting as the default resolution for raster effects from the Effects menu, and for that Filter > Stylize > Drop Shadow land mine too.
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Acrobat 8 Converts Plain PDFs to Forms
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I used to go insane in QuarkXPress and InDesign, selecting URLs in the text and setting up hyperlinks to web sites when I wanted the resulting PDF to have live links. Neither layout program makes it easy to do so.
A few years ago I discovered that Adobe Acrobat had a nifty "detect and convert" feature that scanned through the PDF and converted any web URL or e-mail address into a hyperlink on its own. You don't have to create links in the layout program first, just make a PDF out of the document and let Acrobat do the work.
In Acrobat Pro v7, you'll find this command at Advanced > Links > Create from URLs in Document. It's not perfect, but it does the trick for most of the links, shaving off about 80% of the time I used to spend on the task. Now I leave the linking to Acrobat whenever possible.
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Now it Finds Form Fields, Too
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I was thrilled to learn that a new feature in Acrobat 8 (Pro and 3D only) uses the same sort of "detect and convert" scan for form fields! You can design a form in your layout program (or any program, for that matter), export it to PDF, open it in Acrobat 8, and choose Forms > Run Form Field Recognition.
Acrobat searches for anything that looks like a form field (such as "Name: ___________") and adds an interactive form field on top of the underscore part. The form field is named the same thing as the text preceding the underscore ("Name" in this case) and is sized appropriately. While the form field is ready to accept data as is, you'll have to use the Form editing tools to do things like change its appearance, add actions, and so on. It can't read your mind yet ... maybe in version 9.
Choosing the Run Form Field Recognition command not only instantly (it's very fast) creates the fields, but it puts up a "Recognition Report" that lists all the fields it detected -- each one linked to the actual field for easy selection -- and includes "Hints for Repair" that explains why some of your fields may not have been detected. (It doesn't do very well with radio buttons or check boxes.)
I was spending way too much time testing the limits of Acrobat's field recognition when I happened upon Ted Padova's excellent blog entry on this very topic:
http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/tedpadova/?p=59
Ted Padova is the author of many of my very favorite, well-thumbed books on Acrobat, and his blog doesn't disappoint. In the entry linked to above, he shows you how you can create a layered PDF from InDesign or Illustrator (QuarkXPress can't create layered PDFs) that allows Acrobat to easily detect form fields in a "complex and graphically intense" design.
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Acrobat 3D?
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If your brain went into "whaaa?" mode above, when I said that the feature is only available in Acrobat Pro and 3D, you haven't been keeping up with the beehive of activity in Acrobat-land.
Acrobat 8 Professional and Standard are out now; the difference between the two is similar to the difference between Acro 7 Pro and Standard. Coming up in 2007, we'll also have Acrobat 8 Elements (sort of an Acrobat Light ... there's an Acrobat 7 Elements out now but they only sell it in batches of 100+ seats, not sure if it'll be the same for v8) and Acrobat 8 3D (everything in Pro plus very cool 3D features specifically for CAD cutaway sorts of things.)
You can see the full glory of the Acrobat family at this feature matrix, if you're curious:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/matrix.html
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InDesign's Hidden "Save for Web"
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Last week during the InDesign Conference: Master Class in Seattle, one of the seminars I presented was called "Repurposing: Print to Web." If there ever was an exercise in frustration, it was trying to come up with content for this seminar. I spent weeks fretting about it, scouring the web for an answer that wasn't there.
How do you get content that's sitting in a regular InDesign layout file out onto a web site? Other than making a downloadable PDF? Or copying and pasting text from frames to text editors?
InDesign v2 (not CS2, I mean circa 2002 version 2) had an Export to HTML feature that was dropped in CS and stayed dropped in CS2, with nothing to replace it. (Except Package for GoLive, which is a nightmare. And I love GoLive, so I've tried, believe me.)
Oh, and we have XML, which is not quite the same thing, but it's got that "ML" in there so you think it should help. Have you tried it? It doesn't help. Well, not without a phalanx of content management consultants and programmers at your side, armed with scripts and tags and XSLTs and the Book of Runes and holy water just in case.
I was whining about this with a friend at the conference, wondering what I could possibly show people during the session that they didn't already know or hadn't already tried. He joked (joked, since the conference took place *at* Adobe's campus in Seattle) that I should demo converting an InDesign document to QuarkXPress with Markzware's ID2Q plug-in:
http://www.markzware.com/id2q/
... then convert the Quark layout from print to web by changing the Layout properties. Hey, I thought about it! I was desperate!
But in the end, I didn't do that, because I've tried it before, and Quark-generated web pages (especially those that started life as a print project) need a LOT of work if you're trying to get that content into an existing web site with its own CSS. I once spent ten hours with XPress trying to wrestle a converted annual report into submission before I admitted defeat and went the copy/paste route. It was tedious, but much faster, in the end.
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XML Does Save for Web
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One thing that I showed during that session that was actually worth something, I think, was how a mere mortal (a print designer, in other words) could use InDesign's XML features to at least get the graphics in web-ready state.
Yes, you could collect all your placed images via File > Package, and then run them through a real Save for Web feature (in Photoshop, Illustrator or GoLive) one by one to get optimized GIFs and JPEGs. The problem, besides the extra work, is that often what you want for the web site are the graphics as they appear in your layout, after you've cropped and scaled them, applied transparency, hidden layers via Object > Object Layer Options, and so on.
Guess what: You can do this with XML. Very simply! You don't need to know anything about XML to do so, either. Basically, you just tag your images, then export the XML. You don't even have to look at the XML file ... just find the images folder that it creates, and your JPEGs and GIFs will be in there.
Here are the detailed steps (yes, one day I'll include screen shots ... in the meantime I'll just try to be very clear):
1. Open the Tags palette from InDesign's Window menu.
2. Create a new tag called "image" (choose New Tag from the palette's menu or click the New icon at the bottom).
3. Zoom out so you can see a full spread or two at a time, and with the Selection tool, shift-click all the images you want to export as GIF or JPEG. You'll have to do this for each spread.
4. With the images selected, click the "image" tag in your Tags palette. (If "Show Tagged Frames" is turned on in your View > Structure submenu, you'll see the frames gain a non-printing colored border as you tag them.) If you accidentally tagged a text frame or something, just click the Untag button in the Tags palette.
5. Repeat for the other spreads until all the images you want to export are tagged with "image."
6. Choose File > Export and in the Format dropdown menu, choose XML.
7. The Export dialog box asks what to name and where to save the XML file. You're not actually going to use this file, so just note where it's saving it. That's where your images folder will be, too. Click the OK button.
8. In the resulting Export XML dialog box (nice and small), ignore the General settings and click on the Image button. In Image Options, choose Optimized Formatted Images if you want to retain the modifications you applied to the images in your layout. Otherwise, choose Optimized Original Images to make GIFs and JPEGs out of the original image files. In GIF and JPEG options, choose the settings you'd like applied.
9. Click the Export button, and bang! Your images are good to go. Where are they? They're in a folder called "images" in the same folder you saved the XML file to (in step 7). You can toss out the XML file, you don't need it.
Okay, so it's not quite Save for Web, but it's pretty close! And with an image-heavy publication, this could save you a ton of time.
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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:
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Copyright 2006 by Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
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