Graphic Designing Solutions

Tips for Indesign Lover

2011-07-13T03:21:00.000-07:00

TIP: Align Left Edge of Drop Caps
Often, when you create a drop cap in InDesign, the left edge of the character is not perfectly aligned with the left edge of the text frame. Some folks still use this old and painful trick: Insert a white space character in front of the drop cap and then manually add negative kerning to it. Ick! Instead, simply choose the Align Left Edge option in the Drop Caps and Nested Styles section in Paragraph Style Options. (Note: This is now enabled by default in CS5.)

TIP: I Need My Space(bar)!
Did you know that you can reposition an object while you're drawing out a frame? As you draw out the frame, don't release the mouse button. Instead, hold down the spacebar and drag the object to a new position. Then release the spacebar and finish drawing the object.

TIP: The Incredible Growing Text "Frame"
Need a text frame that grows or shrinks depending on the amount of text it contains? Try a one-cell table. You can turn off the strokes, add a fill, and text inset. As long as the row height is set to At least (the default), the cell will change height according to the amount of text within.

TIP: Color-Coded Highlighting
Just about everyone has opened a document or placed copy only to see the text highlighted in a color. Here's what those highlight colors are telling you:
Pink: Missing font. Yellow: Hyphenation and Justification (H&J) settings have been violated. Amber (dangerously close to yellow): One or more alternate glyphs have been substituted for one or more glyphs in a font's standard set. Green: Someone has applied manual kerning or tracking.
You'll always want to fix the missing font problem. But the other three colors don't necessarily mean anything is wrong; InDesign is simply alerting you to a change.

EUROPE from 14th - 20th Century

2011-06-21T06:35:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends,

It is long time.........................., I am sorry I couldn't serve Art Lover. Here are some images just to show my existance..........lol, Take care........... Your friend , AZii (profesorazii)

Creating Rain Drops Using Photoshop.

2011-01-09T05:38:00.000-08:00

See the images below........

Today let's try to make something special like an artificial rain drop using our Adobe Photoshop. Just follow the simple steps. Hope that you will enjoy this .
Ok ready?
- Open an image. Better take a picture of a greenish leaf. So that it will looks more attractive.
- Create a new layer named “Drop1” and select the Elliptical Marquee Tool and make a selection which looks like a drop on the leaf.
- Set the foreground colour as “Black” and the Background colour as “White”.
- Click the Gradient Tool
- Then drag the mouse from the left side of the selected oval to the right.
Now Set the blending mode for the layer to “Overlay”
Also Enable the Inner Shadow and set the values for opacity 75, Angle 158, Distance 5, Spread 0, Size 5
Similarly you can make more drops
For making the curved drops select the drop layer and go to Filter>>>Liquify and make appropriate shap and hit OK
- Save the Picture as a JPG File

2010-11-29T12:45:00.000-08:00

Step 1
First we'll create the frame. Although our final image will be 1200 pixels wide and 800 pixels high, we'll start by drawing a frame which is bigger than our final image. Thus we'll have more detail on the frame, then we'll scale it down to fit in our final composition. Now create a new document
Step 2
Create a new layer and name it "Wood." Set your Foreground Color to #994400 and Background Color to #ffcc66. Fill the layer with your Foreground Color. Go to Filter > Render > Fibers. Set the Variance to 16 and Strength to 55, then apply.

Step 3
Hit Command + T to enter Free Transform mode, set the Reference Point Location to middle-left, set the Horizontal Scale to 30%, and hit Enter twice to apply. Scaling the layer down horizontally makes the texture more dense.
Step 4
Get the Rectangular Marquee Tool, set the Style to a Fixed Size and set the Width and Height to 125 pixels. Click anywhere on the canvas, then move the selection to the top-left corner of the canvas. Drag two horizontal and two vertical guides from the rulers (Hit Command + R to make them visible if they are not) and snap them to the edges of the selection. Move the selection to the bottom-right corner of the canvas, then drag the guides around the selection.
Step 5
Create a new layer and name it "Dent 1." Get the Rectangular Marquee Tool, make sure Style is set to Fixed Size, then set the Width to 38 pixels and Height to 1200 pixels. Make a selection. The selection I made is 20 pixels away from the left edge, so you can place the selection to the most left of the canvas and move it 20 pixels right by hitting the Right Arrow key two times, do this while holding the Shift key. Fill the selection with the Foreground color and the Deselect.
Step 6
This rectangle is going to be one of the dents in our wooden frame. We'll now apply two layer styles to it. First set the layer's Interior Opacity (Fill) at 0%. Now apply a Bevel and Emboss layer style to the layer using these settings: Style set to Inner Bevel, Depth set at 75%, Direction set to Down, Size set to 40 pixels, and Highlight Mode Opacity set at 100%. Next, apply a Gradient Overlay and use the following settings: Blend Mode of Multiply, Gradient set at Black to White, Opacity set at 70%, Angle set to 0 degrees, and Scale set at 150%.
Step 7
We are going to make two more dents. Create a new layer named "Dent 2." Get the Rectangular Marquee Tool and set the Width to 32 pixels and make a selection. Snap the right edge of the selection to the second vertical guide and move the selection 18 pixels left. Fill the selection with the Foreground Color. Create another new layer and name it "Dent 3." Make another rectangular selection which is 12 pixels wide and place it 2 pixels left from the second guide, as you can see in the below image, then fill with the Foreground Color again and Deselect. Now go back to the "Dent 1" layer in the Layers palette, go to Layer > Layer Style > Copy Layer Style. Select both "Dent 2" and "Dent 3" layers in the Layers Palette, then go to Layer > Layer Style > Paste Layer Style.
Step 8
Now we're almost done with the left piece of our wooden frame. Select all Dent layers and the "Wood" layer in the Layers Palette and go to Layer > New > Group From Layers. Name the group "Left." Duplicate the "Left" layer group and name it "Right." Make the "Right" layer group invisible for now.
Step 9
Go back to the "Left" layer group, open it, then go to the "Wood" layer. Also, make sure Guides are visible. Grab the Rectangular Marquee Tool, set the Style to Normal, and make a selection as shown below, and hit Delete to clear the selected area. Deselect by hitting Command + D. Select the "Left" group in the Layers palette and go to Layer > Merge Group (Command + E).
Step 10
Go to the "Right" layer group in the Layers Palette and open it. Select the "Wood" layer and go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal. This way we won't have the exact same texture in for the left and right pieces. Get the Rectangular Marquee Tool and make a selection, then clear by hitting Delete. Deselect by hitting Command+ D.
Step 11
Select the "Right" Layer Group and go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal. Move the layer group to the right of the canvas as shown. Open the layer group and change the Blend Mode of each Dent layers' Gradient Overlay Layer Style from Multiply to Screen. Select the "Right" Layer Group in the Layers Palette and hit Command + E to merge.
Step 12
Duplicate the "Right" layer and name it "Bottom." Hit Command + T and rotate it 90 degrees, then place it at the bottom of the canvas. Duplicate the "Left" layer and name it "Top." Rotate it 90 degrees, then place it at the top of the canvas. Go to the Layers palette and drag the "Top" layer above the "Right" layer.
Step 13
Grab the Polygonal Lasso Tool and make a selection with the help of the guides, then hit Delete to clear.
Step 14
Go to the "Bottom" layer in the Layers Palette and do the same thing for the bottom part: Make a selection with the Polygonal Lasso Tool and hit clear. Go to the Layers Palette and select all layers except for the "background" layer, then merge them by hitting Command + E. Name the merged layer "Frame."

Step 15
Hit Command + A to select all and then hit Command + C to copy. Go to the Channels Palette and create a new channel. Hit Command + V to paste. Go to Filter > Artistic > Paint Daubs. Set the Brush Size to 1, Sharpness to 10, and set the Brush Type at Simple. Command-click the Alpha Channel to load the white areas as a selection.
Step 16
Go to the Layers Palette and select the "Frame" layer. Go to Layer > New > Layer via Copy and name the new layer "Bumps." Apply a Drop Shadow to the "Bump" layer with these settings: Blend Mode set to Multiply, Opacity at 90%, Angle set to 120 degrees, Distance and Size set to 3 px. Apply an Inner Shadow layer style using these settings: Blend Mode set at Color Burn, Opacity at 100%, Angle set at 120 degrees, and Distance and Size set to 0 px. Next, apply a Bevel and Emboss layer style and use these settings: Style set to Inner Bevel, Depth at 1000%, Direction set at Down, and Size set to 0 px.
Step 17
Now select all the layers other than the "Background" layer and merge them by hitting Command + E. Name the merged layer "Frame." Now we need a photo to put inside the frame. Open it in Photoshop and drag the image into your "Frame" document, place it beneath the "Frame" layer, then scale and position. Name this layer "Photo." Go to the "Frame" layer and apply an Outer Glow Layer Style using these settings: Blend Mode of Multiply, Opacity set at 40%, Color set to black, and Size set to 9 px. Now apply a Drop Shadow with these settings: Blend Mode set to Multiply, Opacity at 35%, Angle set to 120 degrees, Distance set to 3 px, and Size set to 9 px.
Step 18
It is now time to make the glass. Actually, we'll make the reflections. You can get the image that is reflected on the glass anywhere from internet. Open it in Photoshop and drag it into your "Frame" document, then scale and place as shown below image. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and apply with a Radius of 3 pixels. Set the Layer Blending Mode to Screen and Opacity at 15%. Name this layer "Ref 1." We need two reflections on the glass, so duplicate the "Ref1" layer and name it "Ref 2." Move the "Ref2" layer five pixels left.
Step 19
Create a new layer above the "Ref2" layer and name it "Highlight." Grab the Rectangular Marquee Tool and make a selection as shown. Get the Gradient Tool, set the Gradient to Foreground as Transparent and set it to a Radial Gradient. Select white as the Foreground color. Fill the selection and Deselect.
Step 20
Hit Command + T and scale the highlight down horizontally and up vertically, as shown below. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and apply with a Radius of 3 pixels.
Step 21
Now we'll make the dirty edges of the glass. Go to the Channels Palette, create a new channel, and name it "Dirt1." Go to Filter > Render > Clouds. Go to Filter > Artistic > Film Grain, set the Grain to 9, set the Highlight Area and Intensity to 0, and hit OK. Go to Filter > Brush Strokes > Accented Edges, then set the Edge Width to 1, Edge Brightness to 20, Smoothness to 1 and apply.
Step 22
Create another channel and name it "Dirt Area." Make sure the guides are visible. Grab the Rounded Rectangle Tool, set it to Fill Pixels, set the Radius to 25 pixels, and choose white as your Foreground color. Draw a rectangle vertically.
Step 23
Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and apply with a Radius of 15 pixels. Go to Image > Adjustments > Levels (Command + L) and set the Shadow Input Level to 200 and Highlight Input Level to 220. Now apply another Gaussian Blur filter, this time with a Radius of 7 pixels. Now go to Image > Adjustments > Invert (Command+I). This channel will define the area that the dirt will be visible in. Now Command-click the channel in the Channels Palette to make a selection out of the white areas. Alt + Command-click the "Dirt" channel to select where the white area of the "Dirt" channel intersects the already selected area.
Step 24
Go to the Layers Palette and create a new layer below the "Frame" layer, then name it "Dirt1." Fill the selection with the color #a79988. Go to the Channels Palette again, then Command-click the "Dirt Area" channel to load the selection. Go back to the Layers palette and create a new layer above the "Dirt1" and name it "Dirt2." Fill the selection again with the color #a79988.
Final Step
The frame is almost finished. Before we merge the layers, lets make some final adjustments. Go to the "Frame" layer and hit Command + U to bring up the Hue/Saturation dialog. Set the Saturation to -15. Go to the "Photo" layer, press Command + U again and set the Lightness to -10 and apply. Now we're ready! Go to Layer > Flatten Image.

How to make a real eye in Photoshop?

2010-09-28T02:16:00.000-07:00

Note: follow the image sequence (A,B,........, I)

Sketch
Before laying down a single brushstroke, it’s important for me to create a rough sketch. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but we need to get our point across here. This will only make things easier during the painting process. Create a new layer and sketch in an eye.

Laying down the Base Color This step is simple enough; here we lay down the base color for the skin. Simply use the Gradient tool here and fill the background layer with your color choice. In general try not to go too light or too saturated here.
Defining Form
Using the HSB Slider, (Windows>Color), pick a darker more saturated color for the darker areas of the skin, and paint it using a simple Hard Edged brush. I also pick a lighter, less saturated tone for the highlights of the skin. I choose a color for the eye, in this case, a bright blue and paint that in as well. Bringing Life to the Skin
The values of the skin need some work here. I choose an even brighter, lighter color to define the form of the skin. I introduce the lighter tones according to the lighting here, which is a standard front light. I add the lighter tones to the tone, the bridge of the nose, near the eyebrow, and around the eyelid to make things appear more realistic.
Smoothing Out the Skin
At this point, all my work was done using a standard Hard Edged brush, which is great for defining form quickly. To blend the skin and give it a more photo realistic look, I now switch to a soft brush (Hardness at 0%) and Opacity at 50%. I blend all the sharp transitions until things appear much smoother. Additionally, I paint darker tones on the blue iris to give it more depth.
Bringing More Life
At this point I work a bit more on the skin tones, adding some more saturated reddish tones on the area around the eye, as well as the cheek. I also add a more saturated blue to the eye as well. I do this all with a soft airbrush at a fairly low opacity on a new layer, then merge it down when I’m satisfied with how things are looking. I also do some more detail work using a softer Hard Edged brush as well. Details
I’m satisfied with how things are looking at this stage, so I start working on the details. Using a fairly small brush, I begin to add some ‘bumps’ around the eye to give it a more realistic looks. I also create bumps around the eyebrow using a both a fairly light as well as dark color to help it pop for a realistic look. I also add details in the iris using a lighter bluish color to really bring the image to life. I work in at a very large zoom at this stage as well to make things easier and more accurate.
Refinement
I go over everything with a Soft Edged brush at a low opacity for a more realistic look. Additionally I bring out the details more using fairly small, hard edged brushes. I work on the eyebrow, painting each strand in, as well as the eyelashes.
Color and Texture Enhancement
Things are looking a bit too muddy for my taste, so what I do here is create a new layer set to soft light, and enhance the colors quite a bit. I introduce much warmer tones around the eye to give it more life. Finally, I slightly overlay a leather photo texture to give the skin a slightly more realistic effect.

How to build Scripting in Indesign?

2010-09-27T04:53:00.000-07:00

To one degree or another, anything you can do manually in InDesign can be automated via a script. Such scripts can be written in Mac-only AppleScript, Windows-only Visual Basic Script, or cross-platform JavaScript. They can do something as simple as preload the Swatches panel with your corporate colors and they can perform highly complex, multistaged operations such as turning a blank page into a press-ready layout. Using scripts, InDesign can also be connected to other applications—for example, data from a spreadsheet or database can be sucked into InDesign and laid out automatically. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination and coding skill. Covering what can be done and how to do it is far beyond the space available in this tome. Entire books have been written on the subject, and Adobe wrote one of the best—the InDesign CS3
Scripting Guide. There are three variations of the InDesign CS3 Scripting Guide: one each for Apple- Script, Visual Basic Script, and JavaScript. You’ll find them as PDFs in the Adobe InDesign Documentation\ cripting folder on the InDesign or Creative Suite DVD. If you don’t have your DVDs on hand, you can also grab copies free of charge from www.adobe.com/go/scripting_id. You’ll want to begin with the Adobe Intro to Scripting, progress through InDesign CS3 Scripting Tutorial, and use the JavaScript Tools Guide CS3 and the three script-language-specific versions of the InDesign CS3 Scripting Guide for reference. Accompanying the scripting tutorial and reference documents are hundreds of sample scripts that do everything from creating printer presets to unlinking text frames, placing text files to laying out events calendars. In addition to those, there are hundreds of other scripts floating around the Internet, most created by other InDesign users to address specific workflow needs. A great place to look for them is the Adobe Exchange at www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/. There you can find many scripts (and more!) for InDesign and every other Adobe product. I would hope you’ll find ones that function on your platform.
When you’ve written or obtained scripts you’d like to use, you have to give them to InDesign. Do that by closing InDesign and copying the scripts to the correct location for your platform: Mac OS X: Users/[username]/Library/Preferences/Adobe InDesign/Version 5.0/Scripts Windows XP: Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Adobe\InDesign\ Version 5.0\Scripts Windows Vista: Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\InDesign\Version 5.0\Scripts When you relaunch InDesign, the scripts will be available in the User group on the Scripts panel, which can be opened by choosing Window >Automation >Scripts. Under Application in the panel, you’ll also see numerous sample scripts that are not in the locations noted above. If you want to delete these, you’ll find them in the InDesign application installation location:
Mac OS X: Applications/InDesign CS3/Scripts/Scripts Panel/Samples Windows: Program Files\Adobe InDesign CS3\Scripts\Scripts Panel\Samples To execute a script on the Scripts panel, double-click it.
Note that many scripts function only when a specific condition has been met—such as pre-selecting certain types of objects or highlighting text. Indeed, many scripts that manipulate or work from objects require that objects be named. This is where the Script Label panel comes into play. The Script Label panel (Window >Automation >Scripts) has no buttons, no flyout menu, and, apparently, nothing else. Actually, the entire panel is a single text field. Select an object on the page or pasteboard, click once inside the Script Label panel, and begin typing a name or label for the object. That’s it. That’s all it does. But, once named with the label a script expects, the object can then be manipulated by the script.
Script writers can attach scripts and scripted functions to InDesign documents and to menu commands; doing so, while incredibly powerful, represents a security risk. Consequently, Adobe shipped InDesign with the ability to run such scripts turned off. In InDesign’s preferences, on the General pane, the Enable Attached Scripts option is that control. To allow the execution of scripts attached to documents, check Enable Attached Scripts.

How to Perform Quick Apply in indesign?

2010-09-27T04:43:00.000-07:00

Quick Apply was introduced in InDesign CS2, although most users have no idea it’s there or what it does. Even if you do know Quick Apply, don’t skip over this section—CS3 is the Col. Steve Austin version Quick Apply. Adobe sat down with InDesign, with Quick Apply, and Kevin Van Weil said, “Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic application menu. Quick Apply will be that application menu. Better than it was before. Better… stronger… faster.”
In the last version, Quick Apply was a menu that consolidated all paragraph, character, and object styles into a single list for rapid access to any of them. Now, in InDesign CS3, its bionics enhance Quick Apply to include all those styles, table and cell styles, and menu commands and scripts all together in a single, rapid-action list. In other words, you might be able to hide the Paragraph Styles, Character Styles, Object Styles, Table Styles, Cell Styles, and Scripts panels and reclaim screen real estate they consume. You really have to see Quick Apply to understand it. Press Cmd+Return/Ctrl+Enter and the Quick Apply menu will appear (see Figure A).
The basic operation of Quick Apply is simple: In the search field above the list, begin typing the name of a style in the current document. As you type, the list of available options will shrink, filtered to those styles, commands, scripts, and variables that begin with what you typed. The first option matching your input will be highlighted. To choose it, applying the style or whatever to a selected object or text, simply press Return/Enter. If the highlighted item isn’t what you want, type more of the name or use the up and down arrows on your keyboard to navigate the list. Can I select something with the mouse? Of course; it’s a scrollable list, after all. But the main point of Quick Apply, with its simple Cmd+Return/Ctrl+Enter activation shortcut—the ability to type a part of a name and use Return/Enter to apply it—is to spare you the need to take your hands off the keyboard. Its secondary point, which does just as much for productivity, saves you from searching through various panels and menus hunting for something whose name—but not exact location— you already know. When you press Return/Enter to apply a selected style, Quick Apply will retreat out of your way.
At the top of Quick Apply you have two buttons (see Figure B). The lightning bolt hides the Quick Apply menu itself. You may recognize it as appearing on all the individual styles panels where the same button will hide or show Quick Apply. Next, the down-facing arrow lets you choose what to show in the Quick Apply menu (see Figure B). That’s right, Quick Apply includes not only all the styles, but also text variables, scripts, and every menu command in InDesign: those on the menu bar at the top of the application, those on panel flyout menus, and even many that don’t appear anywhere else in the user interface. You can quite literally run InDesign exclusively from Quick Apply. (Note that scripts are, by default, not included in Quick Apply. To include them, activate that option from the Show/Hide menu.) You can even include in Quick Apply menu commands hidden by customizing menus.
Beside each type of entry in the Show/Hide menu is a parenthetic special code—for instance (p:) beside Include Paragraph Styles. With so much now added to the Six Million Dollar Menu, typing just a few letters into the search field will undoubtedly return numerous commands, styles, and so on. The expanded focus of Quick Apply therefore becomes a hindrance to its own utility. Rather, it would, but for the filter codes. If you want a table style, for example, preface your search with t:, which filters the Quick Apply list to show only table styles. Use m: for menu commands, v: for text variables, p: for paragraph styles, and so on. The Show/Hide menu is a complete key to filter codes.
Quick Apply even makes it easy to edit a style. Pressing Cmd+Return/Ctrl+Enter opens Quick Apply, but pressing the shortcut again while Quick Apply is open will open the editing options for the selected style, command, script, or variable. With an object style selected, for instance, Cmd+Return/Ctrl+Enter will open the Object Style Options dialog editing that particular style. With a text variable selected, Cmd+Return/Ctrl+Enter opens the Text Variables dialog.

What are styles shortcuts in indesign

2010-09-27T04:39:00.000-07:00

All styles—paragraph, character, table, cell, and object—may be assigned to keyboard shortcuts on the General pane of their options dialogs. To set a keyboard shortcut, click in the Shortcut field and press the keyboard keys that will serve the particular style—for instance, Cmd+5/Ctrl+5. Assigning keyboard shortcuts to styles is not a new feature; neither is the fact that it’s so limited as to be almost useless.
The primary limitation to style shortcuts, you see, is that they require use of the numeric keypad— the set of number keys out to the right of full-sized keyboards. Every shortcut must be one or more modifier keys—Cmd, Opt, Ctrl, Shift on Mac or Ctrl, Alt, Shift on Windows—plus a numeric keypad number. Thus, the first limitation is that usually alphabetically named styles must be bound to arbitrary numbers. (Did I put the RunIn Head paragraph style on Ctrl+Shift+Num 5, Ctrl+Num 5, or was it something plus the 6?) Next, you have to recognize that, on most keyboards, any of these options are two-handed keyboard shortcuts, which are only—and not always—slightly more convenient than reaching for the mouse and clicking an entry on a panel. The choice of shortcuts is also limited by the fact that many key combinations are reserved for use by the operating system. On Windows, for example, you cannot use Alt and a number without also choosing Shift or Ctrl because Alt plus the numeric keypad numbers is reserved for system-wide insertion of special characters—for example, to insert a copyright symbol, press Alt+0169. Finally, the biggest limitation to keyboard shortcuts for styles is again the numeric keypad. Laptops don’t have them, nor do many slim desktop keyboards. Most laptop keyboards have a pseudo-numeric keypad created by depressing the Function key (often labeled as Fn and unique to laptops) and then pressing other keys (such as U, I, and O for 4, 5, and 6 or another mapping of numeric keypad functions to existing keys). So, in addition to pressing one, two, or three modifier keys and a number key, those using laptops or slim keyboards must press Function. Worse, pressing Function often changes the function of a modifier key. Option on a Mac PowerBook, for instance, becomes Alt when the Function key is depressed. Therefore, it is impossible to press Opt+Shift+Num 6 on a PowerBook’s built-in keyboard.
Until Adobe adds styles to the customize Keyboard Shortcuts dialog and opens up the rest of the keyboard to style shortcuts, the feature is more of a hindrance than a help. The only exception I would proffer is default styles. Leave your custom styles unassigned to shortcuts, but binding the Basic Paragraph paragraph style, the None character style, and similar defaults for table, cell, and object styles to shortcuts can be very useful and universal because every document you create has these defaults (though you may not use them). For instance, some people find it very helpful to put Basic Paragraph on the numeric keypad’s 1 key, the None character style on 2, and so on. For the rest of their styles they use something far more efficient: Quick Apply.

Creating Snippets in Adobe InDesign

2010-09-27T04:36:00.000-07:00

Snippets are reusable content similar to libraries but with two key differences. First, whereas libraries collect multiple objects into a single list, snippets are new external assets not gathered together into a panel. Second, library objects do not remember positioning data, but snippets do. A snippet is an encapsulated segment of XML code, but don’t let that put you off—after finishing this sentence, you need never again consider the words snippet and XML together. What is important, and the reason I mention it, is that XML can contain text, path data, imagery, attributes— all the structural data and everything InDesign needs to re-create a container, its content, and their attributes. Snippets even remember their relative location on the page and the layer(s) on which they originated. In the simplest terms, a snippet is a piece of an InDesign page externalized.
Snippets may be passed around and traded like baseball cards.
Create a snippet by selecting one or more objects with the Selection tool, and then drag the object(s) out of InDesign to drop on your desktop. An INDS file will be created, which is like any other file and can be managed through the file system, Bridge, or what have you. If the idea of dragging something out of an application onto the desktop gives you the heebie-jeebies, use File > Export; in the Export dialog, set Save As Type to InDesign Snippet. Placing snippets in documents is just as easy—through File ?Place or by dragging from the desktop into InDesign. Upon dropping (or placing), the object(s) dragged to the desktop will instantly appear with all formatting and appearance intact and on the layer(s) from which they originated.
By default in InDesign CS3, snippets will drop at the cursor location rather than at the position on the page from which they originated. Changing that behavior is a toggle. In Preferences, on the File Handling pane, change the Snippet Import option. Position at Original Location will place the snippet in exactly the same place on the page as the original set of objects from which the snippet was created. Position at Cursor Location will place the snippet content wherever a loaded place cursor is clicked or where a snippet dragged from the desktop is dropped.

Creating Libraries in Adobe InDesign

2010-09-27T04:22:00.001-07:00

The utility of proprietary application object libraries has been greatly diminished with modern innovations such as placing native format graphic files (e.g., PSD, AI, PDF) into the layout; the ability to place one InDesign file as an asset inside another; snippets; accessible visual digital asset managers (DAMs); and the ability to drag and drop pictures from a DAM, the file system (e.g., OS X Finder and Windows Explorer), and other applications. Once upon a time, a library palette was the pinnacle of convenience and productivity. Now, libraries are no longer essential, but they’re still very handy for improving efficiency in many solo and group workflows. Besides, they’re kind of fun.
Libraries are floating, mini DAMs inside InDesign (see Figure A). They allow objects created or placed in InDesign to be duplicated and placed elsewhere in the same or other documents without copying and pasting. Objects added to a library may be linked images that are, in reality, scattered about one or more hard drives or network resources. Library assets can be text frames (with or without text), native InDesign paths, objects with effects, groups of objects, even an entire page. These objects can be arranged and sorted in various ways within the library and then added to a document simply by dragging them out of the library and dropping on the page or pasteboard.
If you’re a freelancer with no repeat clients or the print shop’s in-house document fixer, you probably won’t have much use for libraries these days. I recommend everyone else at least try using a library—or two, three, or more—because having at your fingertips all your frequently used objects can save massive amounts of time and effort over other methods of inserting objects. Consider some of the following uses:
- All your company’s or client’s logos can be stored—versions in RGB, CMYK process, CMYK plus spot colors, grayscale, black and white; logos with and without the tagline; full logos; iconic logos.
- Advertising-supported publications can store all their variously sized ad space placeholders and ready-for-content frames in a library ready for drag-and-drop placement (instead of keeping a list of ad sizes taped to the side of the monitor).
- Periodicals, catalogs, and other longer documents that use several layout templates for different types of pages can insert each page layout—inclusive of its text frames, graphic frames, and all other elements—as a single library entry and place all the pieces onto a blank page by dragging just one entry from the library.
- Photos and illustrations slated as potential use in a document can be collected from various sources and locations and organized together into a library for side-by-side evaluation.
- Any object or bit of text used once in a while in documents created for the same client or project can be collected into a library, keeping them always available for the next new document for the client or in the project.
Now that you’re beginning to see the value of libraries, let’s make one:
1. Open or create a document with several objects on a given page. These can be any type of object—text, placed imagery, paths drawn in InDesign, and so on.
2. Choose File >New >Library. InDesign will prompt you to save the library, which creates
an INDL file.
InDesign suggests the default name of Library.INDL. Don’t use the default. Give the library a meaningful name. If this will be a library of logos for your client XYZ Corp., name the file XYZ Logos.INDL and save it in the folder where you save XYZ Corp. assets or documents. If you use libraries well, you’ll probably find yourself creating them for several clients, projects, and other purposes. Naming them all Library.INDL and saving them to a default location like My Documents or your Home folder won’t seem like a very smart decision when you need to archive all documents related to one client or project to DVD-ROM.
3. After you save the library, a new panel will appear bearing as its title the filename you chose (e.g., XYZ Logos). The library itself will be blank. One at a time, select objects on the document page and drag them into your library panel. Notice how each becomes a new library entry with a thumbnail and Untitled as its legend. We’ll set aside the legend for now.
4. Move to another page in the document, and then drag an object out of the library panel onto the page. An exact duplicate of the original object appears on the page.
5. Create a new document (File >New >Document), and then do the same, dragging an object from the library panel onto the page. Now think about doing that for an identity package, quickly adding the client’s logo and textual information—in the correct colors and typefaces—across the business card, letterhead, envelope, and other layouts.
Adding items to a library, as you saw, is as easy as drag and drop. If you need to add several items from the same page, however, there’s an easier way. On the library panel’s flyout menu, choose Add Items on Page or Add Items on Page as Separate Objects. The former adds all items on the page as a single library entry. Thus, if your page contains five objects, all five will be added as a single library entry. Dragging that entry from the panel to the page places all five objects back into the document simultaneously and as five separate objects. The latter menu command, Add Items on Page as Separate Objects, adds all items on the page as separate entries, one per object. A trick to quickly and easily populate a library is to place assets onto a page by dragging and dropping from their various locations in Bridge, Finder/Explorer, or elsewhere and then, once all objects are on the page, use the As Separate Objects command.
To delete items in the library, drag the items to the trashcan icon at the bottom, select them in the palette and click the trashcan icon, or select items and use the Delete Item(s) command on the flyout.
Each item may have a title, a type, and a description. Double-click the item or choose Item Information from the panel menu to open the Item Information dialog (see Figure B). In a library with only a handful of items, names, description, and object type—collectively meta information— aren’t very important because organization will be done visually. However, with larger libraries, or when the thumbnail detail in the panel isn’t sufficient to differentiate items, adding meta information can be very helpful. Give the item a name and, optionally, a description. And then choose the type of object—image, EPS, PDF, Text, InDesign File (INDD), Structure (e.g., XML code chunk), Page (an entire page of objects as a single item), or Geometry (a vector path). None of the meta information is required; its only purpose is to help you or someone else find and identify items.
Large libraries may be sorted by, filtered to, and searched for specific items. All of these features depend on the meta information attached to each item. To search or filter the list, click the binoculars icon at the bottom of the panel (refer back to Figure A), or choose Show Subset from the panel flyout menu. Up will pop the Show Subset dialog (Figure C), which allows you to search across potentially thousands of library items (in the same library) for data that does or does not appear as Item Name, Creation Date, Object Type, or Description meta information. In fact, if you click the More Choices button, additional parameter rows may be added for highly focused searching and filtering. When you click OK, the library panel will filter to show only those results matching the query. To clear the query and see all items in the library, choose Show All from the menu.
If, when adding content from a library to a new document, you choose an entry that includes a linked placed asset, the Links panel in the new document will show a link to the original asset just like the entry that appears on the Links panel in the document from which you dragged the object into the library. It’s important to recognize that linked assets are not stored within the library any more than they are stored within documents; in both documents and libraries, only the link—the actual location on disk—is recorded. Don’t make the common mistake of adding a linked image to a library and then deleting the original from your hard drive. If the object included any custom swatches, strokes, or paragraph, character, table, cell, or object styles, they will be added to their respective panels as well. Items in a library are independent of their original instances, the ones from which they were created. Similarly, items placed on the page from a library are not tied to the library instances.
Changing one does not update the other. Think of a library as a sort of copy and paste operation; when copying and pasting, neither the original nor duplicate will update to reflect changes in the other. The same is true of library items. On the flyout menu, the Update Library Item command lights up when an object is selected on the page. Executing that command will replace the selected library item with the object selected on the page. That will not, however, alter any instances of the original library item added to the document. It only changes the copy stored in the library. Confused? Let’s try an example. Say you’ve created a black square as a library object and then dragged that black square from the library onto a document page. You now have two distinct, unrelated black squares—one on the page, one in the library. On the page, you can recolor the square to green, but the version in the library will remain black. Similarly, if you change the color of the black square in the library to blue, the copy on the page remains black (or green). Deleting one instance also doesn’t affect the other.
You may have more than a single library open at any given time, and libraries are not dependent on a particular document. I, for instance, often work with several libraries at once, and with numerous documents, depending on the client or project. Except for the fact that library panels are tied to specific external files, they behave like any other panel—they can be docked, tabbed, stacked, rolled up, rearranged, and resized. Their inventory can be sorted by name, by newest or oldest addition, or by the type of asset, all from the Sort Items menu on the panel flyout menu. Closing a library is as simple as clicking the close button in its title bar or choosing Close library from the flyout menu; open libraries with InDesign’s File >Open command. InDesign saves libraries automatically every few minutes, so changes you make to the panel’s inventory are saved almost as you make them. Libraries can be shared from one user to the next, which is among the most productive features of libraries for workgroups. If the library contains linked images, they will work as long as everyone using the library has access to the same images in the same path. Otherwise, InDesign will prompt them to locate missing links as it would with any document.

chicklogo.flv

2010-09-24T02:39:00.000-07:00

chicklogo2

2010-09-24T02:25:00.000-07:00

Working Efficiently with Objects

2010-09-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

Working efficiently with objects also entails employing reusable styles but goes beyond to reusable objects as well.
Object Styles
Let’s review: InDesign operates on a container-to-content model where everything in the document is either content—text, images, paths—or a container to hold content. Text, for instance, must be contained in either a text frame or a path text object. In addition to container and content, InDesign also cares about attributes. Thus, InDesign deals with containers and content and with the attributes of each. Paragraph and character styles govern text content formatting attributes but not the attributes of the frame containing the text. Paragraph styles, for instance, have no bearing on the number of columns in the text frame or the transparency of text. That and much more is left to the dominion of object styles, which record and apply the attributes of containers. If you open the Object Styles panel from the Window menu, you’ll find three preloaded entries—None, Basic Graphics Frame, and Basic Text Frame (see Figure A). Each style is listed in brackets denoting that it is undeletable; you can edit these styles and change their definitions, but you can’t get rid of them. The None style you want because it wipes out pretty much every attribute—fill, stroke, effects, everything. Basic Graphics Frame and Basic Text Frame reduce a selected object to default options; for a graphics frame, for example, that means 1 pt black stroke, no fill, nothing else. One extremely useful option is the ability to set a user-created object style as the default for newly created graphics or text frames. Remember, a graphic frame is not only one into which you’ll place imagery; it’s also any unfilled decorative path such as a block of color, an ellipse, and so on. On the Object Styles panel flyout menu, choose any existing object style from the Default Graphic Frame Style submenu to format every new graphic frame as you draw it, which is an even faster and more efficient method of styling multiple objects than drawing and then applying the style. The Default Text Frame Style offers the same choice for text frames. The rest of the panel is remarkably similar to the other four Styles panels, with a re-orderable style list, the ability to group styles in nested folders, and buttons for New, Delete, Clear Overrides, and Clear Attributes Not Defined by Style. What’s the difference between the latter two? Object styles can be defined to include every possible attribute but are rarely so defined. Instead, many attributes are simply not enabled. For instance, you may have an object style that doesn’t include a drop shadow. Now, if you applied the style to an object and then selectively gave the object a drop shadow, that effect is an attribute not defined by the style. Clear Overrides, on the other hand, is relevant if the style does define a drop shadow but you later change the shadow angle on the individual object. Double-clicking a style or choosing Style Options from the panel flyout menu will open the robust Object Style Options dialog (see Figure B). Every attribute that may be given to a container— and many for content—is organized within this dialog. On the General pane, in the Style Settings area, is an expandable tree detailing the attributes defined in the style. The list of attributes on the left matches the summary of Style Settings and offers in one place access to just about every option you can set on the Swatches, Stroke, Effects, Story, Text Wrap, and other frames and in the Corner Options, Text Frame Options, Anchored Object Options, Effects Options, and other dialogs. Beneath the deceptively named Basic Attributes list is a replicated Effects Options section. Using the Effects For drop-down menu to select the element affected, you can apply the various Photoshop-esque transparency effects to containers and contents and individually to fills, strokes, text, and images. Although most creatives prefer to design a live object on the page or pasteboard, applying needed attributes, and then produce an object style from the object, others know precisely what they want and can build the style in Object Style Options from scratch, by setting options without an object ready. Which way you choose depends on your particular work style. The Preview box at the bottom of the dialog will show changes in a selected object as you make them either during initial style creation or later tweaking.

next to come............
Libraries
Snippets
Style Shortcuts
Quick Apply
Scripting

Sharing Reusable Settings in InDesign

2010-09-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

Collaboration doesn’t just mean sharing a page or a document. Often designers work together on separate documents within the project, on different projects of a larger campaign, or, especially within in-house creative and production departments, with a variety of different projects and campaigns that share common attributes. Whenever a designer re-creates something that would more easily be obtained another way, time and money are wasted. I don’t know about you, but I hate blowing time or money on anything that doesn’t bring a smile to somebody’s face. Although everything that follows has been covered, in depth, in other chapters, a review is warranted. Besides, here it’s all in one place, in succinct how-tos. The following settings may be saved out of InDesign as reusable settings and then shared to other InDesign or InCopy users.

Dictionaries

User dictionaries, including added, removed, ignored, and excepted spellings and hyphenations.

Export Go to Edit ➢Spelling ➢Dictionary and click the Export button. You’ll be prompted to save a Word List.txt file. Change the filename to something unique and meaningful in case the recipient receives multiple exported dictionaries.

Import Go to Edit ➢Spelling ➢Dictionary and click the Import button. When prompted, locate the TXT file you received from a collaborator. Importing a dictionary adds it to the current document’s document-level dictionary. If you import a dictionary with all documents closed, the word list will become part of the default InDesign dictionary and thus applicable to all new documents you create.

Paragraph, Character, Table, Cell, and Object Styles

The various styles aren’t saved to external files but rather become part of the INDD documents

in which they’re used. Thus, there is no export instruction.

Import On each of the styles panels there is an Import command—for example, Import Character Styles on the Character Styles panel. Execute that command, and then, in the resulting Open dialog, navigate to and choose the INDD InDesign document or INCX InCopy document containing the styles you’d like to load into the current document. Loading styles with all documents closed make those permanent parts of InDesign, and the styles will therefore be available in every new document you create.

Both the Character Styles and Paragraph Styles panels offer the Load All Text Styles command, which will load both character and paragraph styles in one step. Similarly, the Table Styles and Cell Styles panels have a command to load both of those in a single step as well.

Swatches

As are styles, color swatches are saved as part of the documents in which they’re used. Unlike styles,

however, they can also be saved to external files that can then be shared among other InDesign documents

as well as saved to Photoshop and Illustrator.

Export On the Swatches panel flyout menu, choose Save Swatches. This command is disabled until you select a nondefault swatch in the panel itself. When prompted, save the Adobe Swatch Exchange ASE file to disk.

Import Choose the Load Swatches command from the Swatches panel flyout menu in InDesign, Illustrator, or Photoshop and load the ASE file.

Stroke Styles

Custom-designed striped, dotted, or dashed stroke styles.

Export On the Strokes panel flyout menu, choose Custom Stroke Styles. If you have created any custom stroke styles, the Save button will be available. Click it and choose a destination for your stroke styles.

Import To import, return to the Custom Stroke Styles dialog and choose the Load button.

InDesign: tips and tricks session

2010-08-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

Apply Colors Quickly

To apply a color quickly, drag a swatch onto a frame, stroke, or table cell. This is also the easiest way to colorize a gray-scale TIFF or PSD image.

Keep Tabs on Preflight Errors

Look in the lower-left corner of InDesign's document window to see whether you have any preflight errors. If the error number starts creeping up, go to the Preflight panel for more information.

Dynamic Rotation Cursor

In InDesign CS5, you can forever eliminate trips to the Tools panel to choose the Rotate tool. Hover just beyond any object's corner with the Selection tool, and the cursor switches to a rotate icon. If you've selected multiple objects, they all rotate together -- no need to group them.

Bring Hidden Characters to Light

Hidden characters (also called invisibles) indicate the presence of non-printing characters, such as spaces, tabs, and paragraph returns. Most of the time, you don't need to see these, but when you do, Choose Type > Show Hidden Characters. The characters will be in the same color as layer they're on. When that's light yellow, for example, the hidden characters may be hard to see even after you choose Show Hidden Characters. In that case, just change the color of layer in the Layers panel.

No More All-Caps in Panel Names

When text is in all-caps, it can be difficult to read. Why then are the names of InDesign's panels in all caps? To change that, create a new, empty folder and name it "noallcaps". Place that folder in the InDesign application folder. The next time you restart InDesign, all panel names will be the more-pleasing upper/lowercase!

Add Tabs to Table Cells

To jump from cell to cell in an InDesign table, just press the Tab key. Handy, right? But to insert an actual tab character in a cell, you'll have to go to Type > Insert Special Character > Other > Tab.

InDesign Six Small Things, Six Big Results

2010-08-14T11:45:00.000-07:00

The big, flashy features of InDesign seem to get all the attention. But for long work sessions, it's the little things that make InDesign a pleasure to use. Here are six favorites.
You can use these six techniques in InDesign.
1. Single-click on field labels
Many InDesign users know that you can double-click on a value in a palette field to highlight the value. But you can do the same thing with half the effort by simply clicking once on the icon or text to the left of any numeric or text field in any palette or dialog box (Figure 1). The entire field value will highlight, so you can easily type the new replacement value.

Figure 1. InDesign, click once on the "W" to highlight the entire field value to the right. Same goes for any numeric or text field in any palette or dialog box. To see a larger version of this screenshot, click on the image.

2. Do the nudge…the power nudge!
No, this isn't a new dance step. The little up and down arrow buttons to the left of all numeric fields are called "nudge buttons" (Figure 2). Clicking these buttons lets you quickly move the numeric value up or down in small increments. Add the Shift key when you click and you do the "power nudge," increasing or decreasing the value in larger increments. Figure 2. My cursor is pointing at the down arrow, which I can turn into a power nudge by Shift-clicking on it.

You can also nudge with the cursor (arrow) keys on the keyboard. Just highlight the field value (see the above tip), then use the up and down arrow keys to nudge, or Shift+up and down arrow keys to power nudge the field value.
3. Sneaky access to options
Many of the icons in the Control Palette have a hidden back door that will display preferences or options related to that icon. To open the door, just Option- or Alt-click an icon. For example, Option/Alt-click on the superscript button to display the Preferences panel for superscript and subscript size. Option/Alt-click on the number of columns icon to display the Text Frame Options dialog box, where you can designate column width, gutter, and text inset for the frame. Option/Alt-click on the rotate field to display the rotation options dialog box, where you can rotate the content of a box independent of the frame. Spend some time Option/Alt-clicking in the Control palette,and you'll discover many ways to speed up your work (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Option/Alt-click any of the icons highlighted above to display options related to that icon. To see a larger version of this screenshot, click on the image.

4. "i" is for inches
Do you prefer to work in inches, but the default measurement system is in picas or millimeters? Sure, you can change the measurement system in Edit> Preferences> Units & Increments, but the nudge buttons function with more precision when you leave the measurement system in picas or millimeters. Here's how to maintain that precision while still entering a measurement in inches: Just enter an "i" after the value. As soon as you hit the Tab key to move out of the value field, InDesign automatically converts the measurement from inches to the default measurement system.
5. Let InDesign do your math
Did you know that InDesign can "do math" in any numeric field in palettes and dialog boxes? To see for yourself, type one of the following symbols and the appropriate numbers, just like your elementary school math homework:
+ (addition)
- (subtraction)
* (multiplication)
/ (division)
This ability is particularly useful when you're mixing measurement systems. Need an image to be one-third the existing size? Enter 100%/3 in the scale field of the measurements palette. Need to subtract two and a half picas from a 5.125" margin? Enter 5.125" - 2p6. Need to make a 39p6 frame three times larger? Enter 39p6*3 in the width field of the measurements palette.
6. Keyboard shortcuts for palettes
In InDesign, "focus" refers to where text will appear when you begin to type. To move the focus to the first field of the Control palette, press Command-6 (Mac) or Ctrl-6 (Windows). If the first field is the typeface field, you can then type the first few characters of the typeface you want to quickly select it. Once the focus is on the Control palette, you can also tab from field to field.
To move the focus from the current page to the last-used palette field, press Command-Option-` (Mac) or Ctrl-Alt-` (Windows). To toggle between the paragraph and character modes in the Control palette, press Command-Option-7 (Mac) or Ctrl-Alt-7 (Windows).

Create a support structure for InDesign users

2010-08-14T11:37:00.000-07:00

Before you start training QuarkXPress users how to use InDesign, you should develop a support structure for your InDesign users. A good first step is to put together a group of in-house InDesign experts. Make them the first group to receive training). After they’ve been trained, ask them to evangelize the benefits of switching to InDesign and the relative ease of learning the pro¬gram, as well as to provide on-demand training and support. Designate your top InDesign users as the resident experts and task them with collecting and distributing information about product and plug-in updates, common problems, tips and tricks, frequently asked questions, and so on.
In-house support can also include:
• A library of InDesign reference books. Several titles are available, including:
Adobe InDesign Classroom in a Book from Adobe Press (available for purchase at www.adobepress.com/bookstore.
Real World Adobe InDesign CS by Olav Martin Kvern and David Blatner (Peachpit Press).
InDesign CS for Macintosh and Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide by Sandee Cohen (Peachpit Press).
Moving to InDesign: Use What You Know About QuarkXPress and PageMaker to Get Up to Speed in InDesign Fast! by David Blatner, Christopher Smith, and Steve Werner (Peachpit Press).
InDesign for QuarkXPress Users by David Blatner (Peachpit Press).
Adobe InDesign CS One-on-One by Deke McLelland (Deke Press).
How to Do Everything with Adobe InDesign CS by David Bergsland (McGraw-Hill Osborne Media). Adobe InDesign for Dummies by Deke McLelland and Amy Thomas Buscaglia (Hungry Minds).
• Subscriptions to the InDesign Talk mailing list. This free e-mail discussion list, hosted by OmniPilot Software, Inc., lets you post and reply to messages about InDesign. If you have a question or encounter a problem, you can post a message to the list, and you can search the list archives to see if your question has already been discussed. To subscribe, unsubscribe, and search the list’s archives, go to the list’s home page at www.listsearch.com/indesigntalk.lasso?tab1=about&tab2=lists.
Other support resources
In addition to the in-house support resources you provide, you can also point InDesign users to support options available on the Adobe website:
• Adobe CustomerFirst Technical Support offers two pay-as-you-go support options: (1) Per minute. Pay $2/minute. The cost is charged to your phone bill. For the Windows version of InDesign, call 900-555-2200; for the Macintosh version of InDesign, call 900-555-3300. This option is available only in the U.S. (2) Flat fee. Pay $25 per incident. For the Windows and Macintosh versions of InDesign, call 206-675-6126. Adobe CustomerFirst Alliance support plans let you purchase one year of toll-free support. Several options are available. For informa¬tion, call 800-685-3652.
• The Adobe InDesign Support page on the Adobe website (www.adobe.com/support/products/indesign.html) includes links to top support issues, tutorials, support-related announcements, and user forums. You can also subscribe to an InDesign RSS (Really Simple Syndication/Rich Site Summary) feed to receive current support information.
• The Adobe Support –User to User Forums home page at www.adobe.com/support/forums/main.html includes links to user forums for all Adobe products. These forums let you share questions, suggestions, and information with other Adobe software users around the world.
• InDesign User Group chapters have formed in major cities throughout the United States. The InDesign User Group home page at www.indesignusergroup.com/ has links to each of the InDesign user group chapters, as well as a link for meeting topic archives. The archives include meeting notes, presentations, and documents. The home page also includes links to other InDesign-related resources, including news and events, tips and techniques, and services and support.
Leveraging your legacy documents
Although InDesign can open some QuarkXPress documents, the recommended best practice for ad agencies with legacy documents is to rebuild them using InDesign. Attempting to convert a potentially corrupted QuarkXPress document and then making it the foundation for years of future work can lead to unexpected results and other problems. After years of use, QuarkXPress documents can become bloated with unused and unnecessary fonts, colors, and style sheets, as well as other unneeded objects and information. Building new documents and templates with InDesign is a good way for new users to learn the program and ensures that you’re starting out with clean, correctly constructed files.
Opening a QuarkXPress document with InDesign isn’t the only way to move content between the two programs. Here are some other options:
• Save Page as EPS. If you need to use a single page of a QuarkXPress document in an InDesign document and you don’t need to modify any of the page’s content within InDesign, you can use the Save Page as EPS command (File menu) in QuarkXPress to save the page as an EPS file, and then use the Place command (File menu) to import the file into an InDesign document.
• Export Document as PDF. If you would rather work with PDF files than EPS files, you can use the PDF export feature in QuarkXPress to create a PDF file of the pages you want to place into an InDesign document.
• Copy and paste. If you need to move text from a QuarkXPress document into an InDesign document and you don’t need to retain the formatting, you can use the Copy and Paste com¬mands. You can also copy and paste pictures, but in most cases you shouldn’t use this method because the link to the original graphic file is not maintained. Use copy and paste only for pictures that have no disk file (for example, screen captures).
• XML. You can export XML from QuarkXPress and import the XML file into InDesign.
Converting versus recreating QuarkXPress documents
If you’re thinking about converting QuarkXPress documents into InDesign documents, you should begin by doing some experimenting. In general, the longer and more complicated a QuarkXPress document, the more likely you are to discover differences when you open the document in InDesign. If possible, it’s best to recreate your QuarkXPress documents using InDesign. In addition to being an effective way to learn to use InDesign, recreating documents eliminates the possibility of conversion-related problems.
If you choose the conversion option, keep in mind that the process of converting everything in a QuarkXPress document—text formatting, graphics, character and paragraph styles, master pages—is not an exact science. While the programs are similar in many ways, there are also many differences. At best, a QuarkXPress document that’s opened with InDesign is a starting point. You may discover that you need to modify the InDesign document to make it match the original QuarkXPress document. In some cases, you may find it easier to recreate a document than to find and change all of the differences.

Determine hardware and software requirements

2010-08-14T11:29:00.000-07:00

Before you install InDesign and begin to use it at your site, you should evaluate your current hardware and operating system software and determine if upgrades to either or both are neces¬sary. (For example, InDesign CS2, as well as the entire Adobe Creative Suite, is not compatible with Mac® OS9. All Adobe Creative Suite components run only under Mac OS X.) You may find that upgrades aren’t necessary but are nonetheless desirable. That is, InDesign may run perfectly well on your current computers with your current operating system, but the program will run even better on a newer, faster computer with the latest operating system. (For a complete list of InDesign system requirements for Mac OS and Windows®, go to the Adobe InDesign System Requirements page at www.adobe.com/products/indesign/systemreqs.html.)
Regarding hardware, the faster the computer, the faster any software, including InDesign, will run. And the more RAM you have, the better all of your programs will run and the more programs you can run simultaneously. It’s worth noting that the performance of InDesign has improved significantly since the first version was released in 1999.

Illustrator: Creating an art brush

2010-07-13T13:22:00.000-07:00

You use artwork from an illustration to

define the art brush. You can change the direction and size of objects painted along a path with art brushes and also flip the objects along the path or across the path.

To create an art brush:

1 Select the artwork to be used as an art brush.

2 Click the New Brush button in the Brushes palette, or choose New Brush from the palette menu. Select New Art Brush and click OK.

3 In the Name text box, enter a name for the brush (up to 30 characters).

4 For Direction, click a button for the direction in which you want the art to be drawn as you drag the paintbrush. In each button, the arrowhead represents the end of the brush stroke.

When you drag the paintbrush in the artwork window, the art is drawn as follows:

• For , the left side of the art is the end of the stroke.

• For , the right side of the art is the end of the stroke.

• For , the top of the art is the end of the stroke.

• For , the bottom of the art is the end of the stroke.

5 For Size, enter a percentage by which to scale the art in the Width text box. To preserve the proportion, select Proportional.

6 To change the orientation of the art on the path, choose Flip Along or Flip Across.

7 Choose a method of colorization from the Method pop-up menu.

8 Click OK.

you are done...........!

see how to create scatter brushes in illustrator?

see how to create calligraphic brush in illustrator?

Illustrator: Creating a scatter brush

2010-07-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

You use artwork from an illustration to define the scatter brush. You can change the size, spacing, scatter pattern, and rotation of objects painted on a path with scatter brushes.

To create a scatter brush:

1 Select the artwork to be used as a scatter brush.

2 Click the New Brush button in the Brushes palette, or choose New Brush from the palette menu. Select New Scatter Brush and click OK.

3 In the Name text box, enter a name for the brush (up to 30 characters).

4 Drag each Minimum slider or enter a value in each leftmost text box for the brush’s size, spacing, scattering, and angle of rotation:

• Size controls the size of the objects.

• Spacing controls the amount of space between objects.

• Scatter controls how closely objects follow the path independently on each side of the path. The higher the value, the farther the objects are from the path.

• Rotation controls the angle of rotation of the objects.

5 From each pop-up menu, choose the way in which you want to control variations in the size, spacing, scattering, and rotation:

• Choose Fixed to use the value in the associated text box. For example, when the Scatter value is 50%, Fixed always uses 50% to scatter objects along the path.

• Choose Random to use a random value. When you choose Random, you also need to enter a value in the rightmost text box, or use the Maximum slider, to specify the range by which the brush characteristic can vary. For each stroke, Random uses any value between the Minimum and the Maximum value. For example, when the Minimum value is 50% and the Maximum value is 100% for Size, the objects’ sizes can be 50%, or 100%, or any size in between.

• Choose Pressure (if you will use the brush with a graphics tablet) to use a value determined by the pressure of your stylus. When you choose Pressure, you also need to enter a value in the rightmost text box, or use the Maximum slider. Pressure uses the Minimum value for the lightest tablet pressure and the Maximum value for the heaviest pressure. The heavier the stroke, the larger the objects.

Note: To keep the same range of values between the two sliders, Shift-drag the sliders. To move the sliders an equal value apart or together, Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac OS) them.

6 Choose a relative orientation from the Rotation Relative To pop-up menu:

• For Page, the angle of rotation of scattered objects is relative to the page (0 degrees points to the top).

• For Path, the angle of rotation of scattered objects is relative to the path (0 degrees is tangent to the path).

7 Choose a method of colorization from the Method pop-up menu.

8 Click OK.

See How to create Calligraphic Brush in Illustrator?

See How to create art Brush in Illustrator?

Note: see the images at the end of this tutorial.....

Illustrator: Creating a calligraphic brush

2010-07-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

Creating brushes

You can create each of the four types of brushes in the Brushes palette. All brushes must be made up of simple open and closed path vectors. Brushes cannot have gradients, blends, other brush strokes, mesh objects, bitmap images, graphs, placed files, or masks.

• Art brushes and pattern brushes cannot include type. However, to achieve a brush stroke effect with type, create an outline of the type and then create a brush with the outline.

Creating a calligraphic brush

You can change the angle, roundness, and diameter of strokes painted with calligraphic brushes.

To create a calligraphic brush:

1 Click the New Brush button in the Brushes palette, or choose New Brush from the palette menu. Select New Calligraphic Brush and click OK.

2 In the Name text box, enter a name for the brush (up to 30 characters).

3 Specify values for the angle, roundness, and diameter of the brush (the preview in the dialog box reflects your settings):

• To set the ellipse angle of rotation, drag the arrowhead in the preview, or enter a value in the Angle text box.

• To set the roundness, drag a black dot in the preview away from or toward the center, or enter a value in the Roundness text box. The higher the value, the greater the roundness.

• To set the diameter, use the Diameter slider, or enter a value in the Diameter text box.

4 From each pop-up menu, choose the way in which you want to control variations in the angle, roundness, and diameter:

• Choose Fixed to use the value in the associated text box. For example, when the Diameter value is 20, Fixed always uses 20 for the brush diameter.

• Choose Random to use a random value within a specified range. When you choose Random, you also need to enter a value in the Variation text box, or use the Variation slider, to specify the range by which the brush characteristic can vary. For each stroke, Random uses any value between that in the text box for the brush characteristic plus or minus the Variation value. For example, when the Diameter value is 15 and the Variation value is 5, the diameter can be 10, or 20, or any value in between.

• Choose Pressure (if you will use the brush with a graphics tablet) to use a value determined by the pressure of your stylus. When you choose Pressure, you also need to enter a value in the Variation text box, or use the Variation slider. Pressure uses the value in the text box for the brush characteristic minus the Variation value for the lightest tablet pressure. It uses the value in the text box for the brush characteristic plus the Variation value for the heaviest pressure. For example, when the Roundness value is 75% and the Variation value is 25%, the lightest stroke is 50% and the heaviest stroke is 100%. The lighter the pressure, the more angular the brush stroke.

5 Click OK.

See how to create art brush in illustrator?

See how to create scatter in illustrator?

Note: see the images at the end of this tutorial.............

Illustrator: Why colors sometimes don’t match?

2010-07-13T13:10:00.000-07:00

No device in a publishing system is capable of reproducing the full range of colors viewable to the human eye. Each device operates within a specific color space which can produce a certain range, or gamut, of colors.

The RGB (red, green, blue) and CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) color models represent two main categories of color spaces. The gamuts of the RGB and CMYK spaces are very different; while the RGB gamut is generally larger (that is, capable of representing more colors) than CMYK, some CMYK colors still fall outside the RGB gamut. In addition, different devices produce slightly different gamuts within the same color model. For example, a variety of RGB spaces can exist among scanners and monitors, and a variety of CMYK spaces can exist among printing presses.

Because of these varying color spaces, colors can shift in appearance as you transfer documents between different devices. Color variations can result from different image sources (scanners and software produce art using different color spaces), differences in brands of computer monitors, differences in the way software applications define color, differences in print media (newsprint paper reproduces a smaller gamut than magazine quality paper), and other natural variations, such as manufacturing differences in monitors or monitor age.

How to make an Human Eye

2010-05-27T06:10:00.000-07:00

Create a new document of 1560 x 1040 px
Create 17 layers and name them as : layer 00, layer 01 ... layer 16

Abbreviation
L: Layer
SRB : use a soft round brush
W : Width
C : Color
O : Opacity
E : eraser
GB : Apply a gaussian blur

Layer00 . Apply the color #8d8d8d
layer16 . Draw the shape : SRB (C : black ; W : 15 px ; O : 100%)
layer01 . Color each part : SRB (W : 100 px ; O : 100%) C : #5a5a5a / black / #f2f2f2
layer01 . GB 7 px

layer 02 . SRB (C : #3a3a3a ; W : 100px ; O : 100%)

The skin crease is more marked in the upper eyelid than in the lower eyelid
layer 02 . GB (30px)
layer 02 . Erase if the shadow is too large : E (W : 100px ; O : 100%)

layer 03 . SRB (C : black ; W : 50px ; O : 10%)

layer 03 . GB (15px)
Hide L16

layer 04 . Continue to work on the shadows (don't forget the eyeball) : SRB (C : black ; W : 100px ; O : 5%

layer 04 . GB (30px)
layer 05 . Start to work on the lights : SRB (C : white; W : 65px ; O : 15%)

layer 05 . GB (15px)
layer 06 . Work again on the shadows with a different size of brush : SRB (C : black ; W : 200px ; O : 15%) & SRB (C : black ; W : 45px ; O : 15%)

layer 07 . Use this layer to work on the detailed lights (iris...) with a little brush : SRB (C : white ; W : 20px ; O : 10%)
layer 08 . Use this layer to draw the largest light : SRB (C : white ; W : 100px and 200px ; O : 10%) and adjust with E (W : 65px ; O : 100%)

Merge all the layers : layer 00+ layer 01+...+ layer 08

Use dodge and bum (expo : 4% ; W : 200px/50px) to correct shadows and lights as you want

Eyelashes : The eyelashes belonging to the upper lids and the lower lids vary from each other. The upper lid eyelashes are longer, tend to curve in an upward direction, and are more noticeable than the lower lid eyelashes, which are shorter and tend to be stumpy without much curve. There are two or three rows of eyelashes in the upper eyelid and one or two rows of eyelashes in the lower eyelid.

layer 09 . Draw eyelashes on upper lids : SRB (C : black ; W : 17px ; O : 100%)

layer 09 . Smudge the extremities of eyelashes : Smudge (W : 45 ; strength : 25%) and correct if it's too long with E (W : 65% ; O : 100%)

layer 10 . Use the same tools for eyelashes of lower lid

layer 11. Add some shadows with a big brush under the eyelashes : SRB (C : black ; W : 100px ; O : 10%)
layer 11. GB (25px)

Create a New Adjustment Layer : Gradient Map :

Black (0 %) #421706 (16%) # c18362 (44%) #ffdba3 (70%) #ffe2c8 (88%) white (100%)

layer 12 . Change the layer blending mode to Hue and its opacity to 70% and color the iris : SRB (C : #175769 ; W : 100px ; O : 100%)

layer 13 . Change the layer blending mode to Color burn and draw with a SRB (C : #cfc179 ; W : 100p x ; O : 100%)

layer 14 . Change the layer blending mode to Hue and its opacity to 80% and color the eyeball : SRB (C : #436d94 ; W : 100px ; O : 100%)

layer 15 . Change the layer blending mode to Multiply and draw the outline of the iris : SRB (C : #366561 ; W : 30px ; O : 15%) GB (8px)
Make any necessary corrections...

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial

7 Killer Stratigies for Unlimited Traffic II

2010-05-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

Continue from previous

4. Video Marketing

Video marketing is one of the best ways to tap into the massive amount of traffic on sites like YouTube, Viddler, Veoh, and Google Video.
Create 3-5 minute videos that you can post to all of the top video submission sites.
Use http://www.tubemogul.com to automate your video submissions.
Send people from your video to your squeeze page. You’ll be surprised at just how powerful this technique can be.
Quick Tip: Create 2-part videos to increase click-through rate.

5. Viral Pushes

Once you have built an audience for your website and a list of subscribers, it’s now time to leverage that existing audience with some viral pushes.
This is where you do some extra promotion for the best articles on your blog. For this technique to work properly, you must be promoting a killer article that over-delivers on value.
Once you have a top-notch article, now it’s time to create a viral push!
You can do this in a number of different ways. One of my favorite strategies is to use StumbleUpon
Ads. StumbleUpon allows you to put your content in front of your target audience for just 5 cents a click.
Once people start coming to your site, they will give it a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. By paying for this initial base of visitors, you can easily start a viral campaign that will spread throughout
StumbleUpon and onto many of the other popular social sites online.
Buying StumbleUpon ads is an excellent way to give your content the push it needs to get over that tipping point.
Another excellent strategy for giving your content a viral push is to ask your subscribers to tweet your article. Simply by asking your subscribers to do something specific, you will get a much higher response rate.

You can also allow your readers to automatically tweet your post using Tweet Meme.
Create at least one viral push every week and watch your traffic soar!

6. Ad Swaps

Once you’ve built a list of 1,000 subscribers, start using ad swaps to grow your list exponentially.
This is an extremely valuable technique that can add hundreds of subscribers to your list at a time.
Here are some places online where you can find other list owners who are looking to do ad swaps:
http://www.imadswaps.com
http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-joint-ventures/

7. Paid Advertising Options

Paid advertising is another excellent option AFTER you have optimized your sales process. Here are some of the top paid advertising options for those in the Internet Marketing field…

http://paydotcom.com/advertise.php
http://www.probiztips.com/advertising.html
http://www.associateprograms.com/pages/Advertising-opportunities
http://www.clickbanksuccessforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=219
http://www.alexandriabrown.com/adsales.php
https://www.clickbank.com/advertise.html
http://www.bizweb2000.com/ads.htm
http://www.internetmarketingsecrets.com/ (Michael Campbell)

previous........ part 1

7 Kiler Strategies for Unlimited Traffic I

2010-05-19T09:52:00.000-07:00

In this report, I’m going to share with you 7 killer traffic strategies for attracting thousands of visitors

to your website each and every week. They include:

1. High-Profile Article Marketing

2. Forum Marketing

3. Ebook Syndication

4. Video Marketing

5. Viral Pushes

6. Ad Swaps

7. Paid Advertising

These are the exact strategies I have used to build a mailing list of over 7,000 subscribers.So without further ado, let’s dive into the details…

1. High-Profile Article Marketing

As you probably know, article marketing is one of the best ways to drive highly-targeted traffic to your website. However, if you re-focus your efforts towards high-profile article marketing can generate 10x as much traffic.

Instead of submitting your articles to article directories, you submit them to the top websites and blogs in your market.

So, for example, if you have a blog about sports, you could submit your articles to

http://bleacherreport.com/ , one of the most popular sports websites online. If you have a website about weddings, you could submit articles to http://www.favorideas.com/submit-wedding-articles/

If you have a website about parenting, you could submit articles to

http://www.momsnetwork.com/submit-articles.shtml

If you have a website about finance, you could submit articles to

http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/submitarticle.html

Are you starting to get the idea here? No matter what market you’re in, there are very popular websites that you could be submitting articles to for massive traffic.

Here’s a list of very popular websites that I personally submit articles to. The list below is a gold mine for building a list of thousands of subscribers. If you published just ONE really good article every day to the following websites, and had a good call to action in your resource box that sent people to your squeeze page, then you would have a highly responsive list of AT LEAST 1,000 subscribers by the end of the month.

http://sitefling.com/blog/steal-our-traffic-be-a-guest-poster-today/

http://www.associateprograms.com/authors/register

http://www.site-reference.com/submit.php

http://moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com/2008/12/im-looking-for-guest-bloggers.html (This site ranks #2 for “make money online” and they are looking for guest bloggers!

http://www.tutorialized.com (Submit your articles in the Marketing or SEO sections. This site will send traffic directly to your blog or website. So you will need to have a website set up to submit your articles here. But they can drive hundreds of visitors to your site.)

http://mashable.com/writers/

http://www.searchengineguide.com

http://www.evancarmichael.com/Author/partnerLeads.php

http://www.isedb.com/db/pages/Contribute-Articles-to-ISEdb.com

http://www.netprofitstoday.com/blog/become-an-npt-guest-blogger/

http://www.imnewswatch.com

http://www.carlocab.com/get-featured-for-free/

http://www.bloggingtips.com/write-for-us/

http://www.sitepoint.com/about/writeforus

http://www.zeromillion.com/involve/

http://www.promotionworld.com/submit/submitcontent.html

http://www.lifehack.org/about/contribute

http://www.copyblogger.com (a very popular IM blog that accepts guest bloggers.)

The following is a list of sites where you can syndicate your articles.

http://www.instablogs.com/write_article.php

http://blogcarnival.com/bc/ (Submit all of your articles to blog carnivals for extra traffic.)

http://www.gather.com/

http://www.nowpublic.com/

http://www.scribd.com/

2. Forum Marketing

Forum marketing is another excellent strategy for building a list of subscribers and sending tons of traffic to your website.

Forum marketing is a highly underrated, but extremely effective strategy for building a list of

subscribers, driving highly-targeted traffic, and establishing yourself as an authority in your particular market.

Forums put you directly in front of your target market, making it a goldmine for driving thousands of highly targeted visitors to your website.

But keep in mind here that the key to successful forum marketing is to become an active participant in the community. Your first priority is to deliver lots of value. And that means posting highly valuable content in the forums and helping people with their questions.

Once you’ve become a trusted member and delivered some great value in your posts, people will

naturally want to learn more about what you have to offer.

This is where your signature link comes in…

You’ll want to use your signature link to send people to your squeeze page where you can build your list of subscribers.

Here’s an example of a good signature line:

“Find out how to get front-page Google Rankings in 24 hours with my FREE Google Domination

Video series… http://www.yoursqueezepagehere.com ”

The key here is to entice them with some sort of benefit to get them tocome to your website. Keep your signature file short and to the point.You should only be promoting one page in your signature file.

Don’t confuse people with multiple options.

Also keep in mind that it’s the value of your post that drives people to look at your signature. If you provide people with extraordinary value, then they will naturally want to check out more of your content.

So focus on providing value. One extremely valuable post is worth 10x

Tips & Tricks Session

2010-05-19T07:25:00.000-07:00

TIP: Meet the Content Grabber

In the past, you had to do the Texas two-step to select a graphic in an InDesign frame: Double-click to get the Direct Selection tool, click again to select the image, double-click again for the Selection tool. Rinse and repeat as necessary. In InDesign CS5, you just hover over a graphic frame with the Selection tool and a viewfinder-like icon appears. (I call it the Donut.) Click, and--poof--you've selected the graphic, without even changing tools. To leave this mode and return to dealing with the frame, press Escape or double-click.

TIP: Clean Up Imported Word Documents

If you've imported a Microsoft Word document that's riddled with problems (for example, two hyphens instead of an em dash, or tabs instead of paragraph indents), don't repair your file line by line. Instead, use Edit > Find/Change and correct the problems with a single mouse click. In the Find/Change dialog box, on the Text tab, first define the scope of your search with the Search dropdown menu. Then use these Find What/Change To pairs to solve common problems:

Replace two hyphens with an em dash.

Find what: --

Change to: ^_

Multiple spaces after punctuation or used for indent.

Find what: [space][space]

Change to: [space]

Replace multiple tabs with a single tab.

Find what: ^t^t

Change to: ^t

Replace three periods with an ellipses.

Find what:...

Change to: ^e

Space before a carriage return.

Find what: [space]^p

Change to: ^p

Space at beginning of paragraph.

Find what: ^p[space]

Change to: ^p

Tab before a carriage return.

Find what: ^t^p

Change to: ^p

Tab after a carriage return.

Find what: ^p^t

Change to: ^p

TIP: Convert Spot Colors to Process Colors

To convert a spot color to process, double-click the name of the swatch in the Swatches panel and change the Color Type from Spot to Process. If you used the Pantone color library to define the color, first change the Color Mode to CMYK. You can also specify that all spot colors are automatically converted to process to automatically converted to process when the job prints. Choose Ink Manager from the Swatches panel menu. You'll see all the colors in your document. Click the All Spots to Process option and the spot color will be converted to process.

Welcome Back to Tips & Trick Session

2010-05-19T07:21:00.000-07:00

TIP: Two Baseline Grids in One Document

When you want the first line in a custom baseline frame to always line up with the main baseline grid, follow these steps:

1. Set the baseline grid for the document (Preferences > Grids). Let's say the increment is 18 points.
2. Apply the paragraph command Align to Baseline Grid to force the text to align to the document-wide baseline grid.
3. Select the text frame that needs the custom baseline grid. Choose Object > Text Frame Options and click the Baseline Options tab. Set a custom baseline to, say, 12 points.
4. Set the Start of the baseline grid to be 18 points from the top of the frame. When the top of the text frame is positioned along the baseline grid for the main document, the first line of text in the custom text frame will automatically align on the document baseline grid. Then, the rest of the text aligns to the custom baseline grid.

TIP: Update TOCs

The easiest way to create a TOC for a long, structured document is to use InDesign's automatic Table of Contents feature: Create your document, assign unique paragraph styles to the paragraphs you want in the TOC, choose Layout > Table of Contents, and tell InDesign which Paragraph Styles to include in the TOC.

InDesign won't auto-update this TOC when your text or page numbers change, but that doesn't mean you have to resort to manually updating the content yourself. Just choose Layout > Update Table of Contents at any time, and InDesign will make it so.

TIP: Convert RGB Swatches to CMYK

If you import swatches, you may introduce quite a few RGB colors into your four-color print publication file. To quickly convert them, download and run the free RGB to CMYK script from InDesign scripting master Dave Saunders.

Note that the colors may shift significantly because many RGB colors can't be reproduced in CMYK. Also, the printed colors may not match what you see on screen. It's always better to pick CMYK colors from a current printed swatch book.

THE FIVE C’S

2010-05-18T13:29:00.000-07:00

After FIVE P'S Here we go for FIVE C'S

Conception, Construction, Contour, Character, Consistency

1 CONCEPTION

A rough indication of an idea

2 CONSTRUCTION

An attempt to establish the forms from life or from basic knowledge

3 CONTOUR

The limits of forms in space, according to viewpoint

4 CHARACTER

The specific qualities of individual units of your subject in light.

5 CONSISTENCY

All the essentials of construction, lighting, and pattern, organized as a unit
See Also Five P's

THE FIVE P’S

2010-05-18T12:56:00.000-07:00

This is how you can make your drawings and sketch perfect!

Proportion, Placement, Perspective, Planes, Pattern

Here we go..........................!

1. PROPORTION

The three dimensions

2. PLACEMENT

A position in space

3. PERSPECTIVE

Relationship of viewpoint to subject

4. PLANES

Surface appearance as defined by light and shadow.

5. PATTERN

The deliberate arrangement of the tones of the subjects
See also Five C's

How to Draw Prospective View? part III

2010-04-28T23:27:00.000-07:00

Here comes the 3rd and last part for drawing prospective view...........

Enjoy............!

Note: please collect all images and re-arange them in sequence of "draw comic_pros1, draw comic_pros2 ...................................................... draw comic_pros10"

waiting for your beedback

profesor AZii

Art Lover

How to Draw Prospective View? part II

2010-04-28T23:22:00.000-07:00

Here is Part II of how to draw prospective view

Enjoy.............!

How to Draw Prospective View? part I

2010-04-28T23:16:00.000-07:00

I am sharing this tutorial so that you can be able to draw so sketches with prospective view.

here we go...........

Enjoy....................!

UN Commission Inquiry Report

2010-04-23T06:52:00.000-07:00

Report of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry into the facts and circumstances of the assassination offormer Pakistani Prime Minister Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto

On 27 December 2007, former Pakistani Prime Minister Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto was assassinated as she left a campaign event at Liaquat Bagh, in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi. In the attack on Ms Bhutto, 24 other people were killed and 91 injured.
After a request from the Government of Pakistan and extensive consultations with Pakistani officials as well as with members of the United Nations Security Council, the Secretary-General appointed a three member Commission of Inquiry to determine the facts and circumstances of the assassination of the former prime minister. The duty of carrying out a criminal investigation, finding the perpetrators and bringing them to justice, remains with the competent Pakistani authorities.
The Secretary-General appointed Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz, the Permanent Representative of Chile to the United Nations as head of the Commission as well as Mr Marzuki Darusman, a former Attorney-General of Indonesia, and Mr Peter FitzGerald, a former Deputy Commissioner of the Irish Police, the Garda Siochána.
The Commission commenced its activities on 1 July 2009 and provided its report to the Secretary-General on 30 March 2010.
In the course of its inquiry, the Commission received significant support from the Government of Pakistan and many of its citizens. The Commissioners and staff traveled freque ntly to Pakistan in the furtherance of its mandate. The Commission conducted more than 250 interviews, meeting with Pakistani officials and private citizens, foreign citizens with knowledge of the events in Pakistan and members of the United Kingdom Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) team that investigated aspects of the assassination. The Commission also reviewed hundreds of documents, videos, photographs and other documentary material provided by Pakistan’s federal and provincial authorities and others.
The Commission also met with representatives of other governments such as Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. Some relevant senior officials were not made available to the Commission, but the Commission is satisfied that this did not hinder its ability to establish the facts and circumstances of the assassination. Pertinent information from these sources, including on threats to Ms Bhutto, nevertheless, was already in the possession of Pakistani authorities and eventually came to be known by the Commission.
The Commission was mystified by the efforts of certain high- ranking Pakistani government authorities to obstruct access to military and intelligence sources, as revealed in their public declarations. The extension of the mandate until 31 March enabled the Commission to pursue further this matter and eventually meet with some past and present members of the Pakistani military and intelligence services.
The report addresses the political and security context of Ms Bhutto’s return to Pakistan; the security arrangements made for her by the Pakistani authorities, who bore the primary responsibility to protect her, as well as her political party, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP); events immediately before and after the assassination; and the criminal investigations and actions of the Pakistani Government and police in the aftermath of the crime.
Ms Bhutto’s return to Pakistan on 18 October 2007 and assassination on 27 December 2007 culminated a year of intense political conflict, revolving largely around the elections scheduled for later that year and their potential for opening a transition to democracy after eight years of military rule. It was also one of the most violent years in Pakistani history. She returned in the context of a tenuous and inconclusive political agreement with General Pervez Musharraf, as part of a process facilitated by the United Kingdom and the United States.
Ms Bhutto’s assassination could have been prevented if adequate security measures had been taken. The responsibility for Ms Bhutto’s security on the day of her assassination rested with the federal Government, the government of Punjab and the Rawalpindi District Police. None of these entities took the necessary measures to respond to the extraordinary, fresh and urgent security risks that they knew she faced.
The federal Government under General Musharraf, although fully aware of and tracking the serious threats to Ms. Bhutto, did little more than pass on those threats to her and to provincial authorities and were not proactive in neutralizing them or ensuring that the security provided was commensurate to the threats. This is especially grave given the attempt on her life in Karachi when she returned to Pakistan on 18 October 2007.
The PPP provided additional security for Ms. Bhutto. The Commission recognizes the heroism of individual PPP supporters, many of whom sacrificed themselves to protect her; however, the additional security arrangements of the PPP lacked leadership and were inadequate and poorly executed.
The Rawalpindi district police’s actions and omissions in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Ms Bhutto, including the hosing down of the crime scene and failure to collect and preserve evidence, inflicted irreparable damage to the investigation. The investigation into Ms Bhutto’s assassination, and those who died with her, lacked direction, was ineffective and suffered from a lack of commitment to identify and bring all of the perpetrators to justice. While she died when a 15 and a half year-old suicide bomber detonated his explosives near her vehicle, no one believes that this boy acted alone.
Ms. Bhutto faced threats from a number of sources; these included Al-Qaida, the Taliban, local jihadi groups and potentially from elements in the Pakistani Establishment. Yet the Commission found that the investigation focused on pursuing lower level operatives and placed little to no focus on investigating those further up the hierarchy in the planning, financing and execution of the assassination.
The investigation was severely hampered by intelligence agencies and other government officials, which impeded an unfettered search for the truth. More significantly, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) cond ucted parallel investigations, gathering evidence and detaining suspects. Evidence gathered from such parallel investigations was selectively shared with the police.
The Commission believes that the failure of the police to investigate effectively Ms Bhutto’s assassination was deliberate. These officials, in part fearing intelligence agencies’ involvement, were unsure of how vigorously they ought to pursue actions, which they knew, as professionals, they should have taken.
It remains the responsibility of the Pakistani authorities to carry out a serious, credible criminal investigation that determines who conceived, ordered and executed this heinous crime of historic proportions, and brings those responsible to justice. Doing so would constitute a major step toward ending impunity for political crimes in this country.

for further detail send your feed back through...

comments..........

email...........

InDesign: Tips & Tricks Session

2010-04-23T06:42:00.000-07:00

TIP # 1: Break Facing Pages into Single Pages

Here's how to convert a facing-pages document into a single-page, non-facing pages document without affecting master page items:

Open the facing pages document. In the Pages panel menu, choose Allow Document Pages to Shuffle (CS3-CS4) or Allow Pages to Shuffle (CS2). (This should uncheck, or deselect, this option.) Grab the right-hand page of each spread and pull the page to the right of the spread until you see a vertical black bar appear and then release the mouse. This will separate the page from the spread, but the page will remain a right-hand page.

TIP # 2: What Is the Registration Color Good For?

The InDesign Swatches panel includes four undeletable swatches: None, Black, Paper, and Registration. The purpose of the first three is obvious. You probably know not to use Registration for any object to appear on the printed page, but do you know why?

The Registration color prints on every ink plate. In CMYK, that means anything with Registration applied to it prints in cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The result is usually not a nice rich black but rather the color of old mud. That's why the Registration swatch should be reserved for registration marks and other information or structures that need to print on all plates (usually in the slug area), such as the client name, job number, and other specific information. The easiest way to include that information on the film is to set it in the slug area, in the Registration color swatch.

TIP # 3: Wrap Text around a Silhouetted Image

Place an image with a solid, contrasting background or an alpha channel or clipping path masking the background. Open InDesign's Text Wrap panel, choose Show Options from the panel's menu, and you'll see seven Contour Options. From the Text Wrap panel's Type pop-up menu, choose a contour option. Some, like Alpha Channel and Photoshop Path, are only available if they're embedded in the image file. But this doesn't mean you have to use a collage of empty frames to wrap text around a silhouetted image! Arranging the image behind the text (Object > Arrange > Send To Back) and choosing Detect Edges from the Contour Options' Type pop-up menu often does the trick.

Indesign Tips & Tricks Session

2010-04-16T03:47:00.000-07:00

TIP #1: Optical Alignment Makes You Look Good

By default, InDesign vertically aligns type in a text frame by moving the character as far left or right as it can go. Unfortunately, smaller characters (such as punctuation marks) and characters with slanted strokes (such as A, W, and V) can look indented instead of flush to the edge. You can solve this problem by selecting the text frame, opening the Story panel (Type > Story), and checking the panel's Optical Margin Alignment box.

TIP#2: When Saving Copies, Control Which File Stays Open

In InDesign CS3 and CS4, the keyboard shortct Command+Option+S/Control+Alt+S saves a copy of your document and leaves the old document open. If you want to save a copy of your document and leave the copy open, use Command+Shift+S/Control+ Shift+S.

TIP #3: Sort Paragraphs Alphabetically

For basic alphabetical sorting of paragraph text -- bulleted lists, numbered lists, or just plain paragraphs -- use SortParagraphs.jsx, a script that comes with InDesign.
In InDesign CS3 and CS4, go to Window > Automation > Scripts to open the Script panel, click the spinning arrow beside the Application folder to see its contents, then Samples, and finally JavaScript. That's where you'll find SortParagraphs.jsx. In InDesign CS2, first grab the script from the Adobe Web site, then drop it into the Presets/Scripts folder under your InDesign CS2 installation folder.
To sort your list, highlight a selection of paragraphs and double-click SortParagraphs.jsx on the Scripts panel.

TIP #4: Document Repair With IDML

IDML (InDesign Markup Language) is an XML-based file format that InDesign CS4 can read and write. It can also help clear the cobwebs from a creaky old document. If you're having trouble with a document (especially one created in a previous version of InDesign or converted from QuarkXPress and PageMaker), export it to IDML, then open the IDML file and work with the new InDesign document. You can even strip a document of third party plug-in information by disabling those plug-ins prior to opening the IDML file.

InDesign Tips & Tricks Session

2010-04-12T23:33:00.000-07:00

TIP #1: No Kerning Pairs? No Problem
In many typefaces, there are no kern pairs for the number characters, and these characters occupy equal widths -- a narrow number like a 1 uses the same amount of space as a 9 or 0. This is great for making numbers line up perfectly in columns down a page, but it can look awful when numbers are in body text. To make the numbers as beautifully spaced as the rest of the characters, place your cursor between the characters you want to kern and select Optical in the Character panel's Kerning menu. By the way, InDesign has had the Optical kerning option since version 1

TIP #2: Change One Corner of a Rounded Rectangle to a Point
Once you've applied rounded corners to a rectangle, you can change one or more curves to a corner point. Select the path you want to expand, and then click either the Open Path or Close Path icon in the Pathfinder panel (Window > Object and Layout > Pathfinder). Either one converts the electronic corner effect into actual path points. Choose Open Path if you're converting an open path (like a Bezier line), or Close Path if you're converting a shape (like a rectangle).

TIP #3: Change the Default Font
To change InDesign's default font, open InDesign but don't open any documents. On the Character panel, change the Font Family and Font Style dropdowns to your preferred default. Edit the "[Basic Paragraph]" style on the Paragraph Styles panel to match your new font. Quit or restart InDesign. From now on, every new document you create will use your chosen font. Note: You will lose this Basic Paragraph Style custom formatting if you copy-and-paste a paragraph into another document. If you're sure all your documents will be created with this custom Basic Paragraph style, it's probably okay. If not, create a new paragraph style and click on it while no documents are open. That, then, becomes your default paragraph style instead of the undependable Basic style.

TIP #4: Find Out if an Image Is Flipped
In the past, editors and fact checkers couldn't tell for sure if an image was flipped after it was placed in InDesign. But in CS3 and CS4, you can find out the truth by clicking on the image with either selection tool. If the image was flipped in InDesign, you'll see a reverse "P" symbol in the Control panel. But beware! If the image was flipped in Photoshop, saved, and then placed in InDesign, there's no trail of evidence left behind.

Enjoy this session from AZii

Tips and Trick Session

2010-04-12T01:42:00.000-07:00

I am posting some links.I hope you will enjoy and learn the cool tips & tricks.

Expression Web Quicktips: ASP.NET Master Pages (Part 1 of 2)

Expression Web Quicktips: Creating a CSS Photo Lightbox (Part 2 of 2)

Expression Web Quicktips: Creating Cascading Style Sheets

Expression Web Quicktips: Finding and Fixing Code Errors

Yours Profesorazii

Tips & Tricks Session

2010-04-09T23:53:00.000-07:00

TIP # 1: Put Automatic Page Numbers on Top

To ensure that a text frame that contains an automatic page number always appears in front of document page elements, simply place the text frame on a master page and move it to its own top-most layer.

TIP # 2: Horizontal Pages Panel

By default, InDesign's Pages panel has a vertical orientation. If you'd prefer your Pages panel to be horizontal, choose Panel Options... from the Pages panel menu. In the Panel Options dialog box, you'll see a checkbox labeled "Show Vertically." Deselect the option for the pages and/or the masters.

TIP # 3: Hyphenate Words Your Way

To tell InDesign exactly where to hyphenate a word, open InDesign and go to Edit > Spelling > Dictionary. Do this with no document open to set the default for all new documents. Type the word in the Word field and then click Hyphenate. The tilde (~) characters indicate how InDesign will hyphenate the word. To change those settings, retype the word in the Word field using tildes as follows:
• One tilde (~) indicates the most desirable hyphenation position. • Two tildes (~~) indicate a slightly less desirable hyphenation position. • Three tildes (~~~) mark the least desirable hyphenation position. • A tilde inserted before the word tells InDesign never to hyphenate the word at all.
Finally, click the Add Button to change the word to your customized setting.

Tips and Tricks Session

2010-04-09T03:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Art / Graphic Designers/ I am going to lauch a new TIP session for you.

These Tips are from my friends/Buddies. Here are some...............

TIP # 1. What To Include When Exporting Interactive InDesign Files to PDF

In InDesign, choose File > Export Adobe PDF to open the Export Adobe PDF dialog. If you have included bookmarks, that item must be checked in the Include section at the bottom. For buttons, transitions, and hyperlinks to appear in the PDF file, check Hyperlinks and Interactive Elements. If you've placed a movie or sound file, you'll get the best results if you choose the Compatibility to be Acrobat 6 or higher.

TIP # 2. Enlarge Characters in the Glyphs Panel

InDesign's Glyphs panel (Window > Type & Tables > Glyphs) reveals all the characters in a font. If you're having trouble seeing exactly what those characters look like, make the glyphs larger by clicking the mountain button in the lower right corner. You can also filter the display by choosing options from the Show menu.

TIP # 3. Quickly Escape Quick Apply

You open the Quick Apply window and begin typing, then change your mind. A menu command is currently highlighted in the Quick Apply window. The fastest way to close the Quick Apply window without triggering the selected menu command is to press the Esc key.

Using Effects in Freehand 11

2010-04-03T01:41:00.000-07:00

The commands listed under the Effect menu alter the appearance of an object without changing the underlying object itself. For example, you can apply the Roughen command, transform the object with the rotate tool, scale it, and fill it with a 50% opaque red. You can then edit the roughen amount or remove it entirely, change the rotation, or adjust the opacity with no need to redraw the original object.
Editing object with effect applied
Most commands in the Effect menu have the same function and name as commands found elsewhere in the application.
Note: Many effects are available only for RGB documents. If you apply an effect, and then change the document’s color mode to CMYK, Illustrator will not be able to preserve the effect.
To apply an effect:
1 Do one of the following:
• Select artwork on the art board.
• Target an item in the Layers palette.
• Select a stroke or fill in the Appearance palette.
• Select a style in the Styles palette.
2 Choose a command from the Effect menu.
3 Specify settings, and apply the effect.
4 If you selected a style, the appearance attributes are unlinked from that style. In this case, you can do any of the following:
• Create a new style
• Leave the appearance attributes unlinked. Note: You can apply effects to type objects, but not to selected characters within the type objects.

See also ............ Using Styles in Freehand 11
See also............ Using Apearance in Freehand 11

Using Styles in Freehand 11

2010-04-03T00:55:00.000-07:00

A style is a named set of appearance attributes. By applying different styles, you can quickly change the look of an object; for example, you can change its fill and stroke color, transparency, and Effect menu settings in one step. All the changes you apply with styles are completely reversible.
Using the Styles palette
The Styles palette lets you create, name, save, and apply sets of appearance attributes.
Displaying the Styles palette Choose Window > Styles.
Changing the order of styles Drag the style to a different position in the palette. When the outline of the style appears in the desired position, release the mouse button.
Using the Styles palette menu Click the triangle in the upper right corner of the palette to access commands for working with styles.
Renaming styles Double-click a style, or select a style and choose Style Options command from the palette menu. Enter a style name, and click OK.
Changing the palette display Choose a view option from the Styles palette menu: Thumbnail View to display a scrollable list of thumbnails; Small List View to display a scrollable list of named styles with a small thumbnail; or Large List View to display a scrollable named list of styles along with a large thumbnail.
Applying styles
You can apply styles to objects, groups, and layers. When you apply a style, the new style overrides any style that the item had before.
When you apply a style to a group or layer, every object on the group or layer takes on the attributes of the style. For example, assume you have a style that consists of 50% opacity. If you apply the style to a layer, all objects in or added to that layer will appear 50% opaque. However, if you move an object out of the layer, the object’s appearance reverts to its previous opacity.
Note: You can’t apply styles to type objects that use outline-protected fonts or bitmap fonts.
To apply a style:

1 Select artwork on the art board, or target an item in the Layers palette.
Note: If you selected a type object, select Override Character Color from the Styles palette menu to apply the style’s fill, stroke, and transparency attributes to the characters; or deselect Override Character Color from the Styles palette menu to preserve the current color of the characters.
2 Apply the style from the Styles palette:
• Click a style in the list.
• Drag the style onto an object on the art board. The object does not have to be selected
First.
• Copy and apply a style using the eyedropper and paint bucket tools. Depending on
What you specify in the Paint Bucket/Eyedropper Options dialog box, you can copy and paste the entire style or selected attributes.
Creating and modifying styles
A style can contain any combination of color, fill, stroke, pattern, effect (that is, any command listed under the Effect menu), transparency, blend mode, gradient, transformation, and the like. Each style can contain multiple attributes. For example, you can have three fills in a style, each with a different opacity and blend mode that defines how the various colors interact. Similarly, you can have multiple strokes.
To create or modify a style:

1 Do one of the following:
• Select an object.
• Select a style in the Styles palette to use as a starting set of attributes.
• Start with no object or style selected.
2 Specify the appearance attributes you want, such as the fill or the stroke. You can use the Appearance palette to help specify and order the appearance attributes.
3 Do one of the following:
• Click the New Style button at the bottom of the Styles palette.
• Drag the thumbnail from the Appearance palette into the Styles palette or onto the
New Style button at the bottom of the Styles palette.
Dragging a thumbnail from the Appearance palette to the Styles palette.
• Drag the object with the appearance attributes you want into the Styles palette or onto
the New Style button at the bottom of the Styles palette.
• Choose New Style from the Styles palette menu, enter a name for the style, and click OK.
The new style appears at the bottom of the list in the Styles palette.
• Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) the New Style button, enter the name of
the style, and click OK.
To create a new style by merging existing styles:

1 In the Styles palette, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) to select all the styles you want to merge.
2 Choose Merge Styles from the palette menu. The new style contains all the attributes of the selected styles and is added to the end of the list of styles in the palette.
To replace style attributes:
Do one of the following:
• Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac OS) the style you want to use onto the style you want to replace.
• Select artwork (or target an item in the Layers palette) that has the attributes you want to use. Then Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac OS) the thumbnail from the Appearance palette onto the style you want to replace in the Styles palette.
• Select the style you want to replace. Then select artwork (or target an item in the Layers palette) that has the attributes you want to use, and choose Redefine Style _ Style name_ from the Appearance palette menu.
The replaced style keeps its name but takes on new appearance attributes. All occurrences of the style in the Illustrator document are updated to use the new attributes.
To duplicate a style:

1 In the Styles palette, select the style you want to duplicate.
2 Choose Duplicate Style from the Styles palette menu. The new style appears at the bottom of the list in the Styles palette.
Unlinking styles
You can remove a style from an object, group, or layer by breaking the link to the style. The object, group, or layer retains the same appearance attributes; however, these attributes are no longer associated with a style.
To break the link between a style and a selection:

1 Select the object, group, or layer that has the style applied to it.
2 Do one of the following:
• Choose Break Link to Style from the Styles palette menu, or click the Break Link to Style button in the palette.
• Change any appearance attribute of the selection (such as a fill, stroke, transparency, or effect).
Deleting styles
Deleting a style removes it from the Styles palette. Any objects, groups, or layers that used the style retain the same appearance attributes; however, these attributes are no longer associated with a style.
To delete a style:

1 In the Styles palette, select a style you want to delete.
2 Delete the style:
• Choose Delete Style from the Styles palette menu.
• Click the Trash button in the palette.
• Drag the style onto the Trash button in the palette.
Using style libraries:
You can import styles from other files into a palette associated with the current file using the Style Libraries command. These libraries are stored in the Presets/Styles folder inside the Adobe Illustrator application folder. You cannot add, delete, or edit styles in a library; however, once you import a style, you can change its attributes using the Appearance palette.
To import a style from a Style Library to the current Styles palette:

1 Make sure the Styles palette into which you want to import a style is open.
2 Choose Window > Style Libraries > Style Library name. To locate a Style Library not stored in the default location, choose Window > Style Libraries > Other Library.
3 Select a style you want, and then do one of the following:
• Use the selected style in the current artwork (recommended for one or two styles at a time). Once you use it in the artwork, the style is copied from the Styles Library to the Styles palette.
• Drag the selected style to the current Styles palette (recommended for multiple styles at a time).
To create a Styles Library:

1 Create a file containing the styles you want in the Styles Library.
Delete all unused Swatches, Brushes, Symbols, and Styles to reduce the library’s file size.
2 Save the file.
3 Choose Window > Style Libraries > Other Library, and navigate to the location where you saved the file.
To have a Styles Library appear in the Styles Libraries menu:

1 Do one of the following:
• When you save your Library file, save it into the Presets/Styles folder inside the Illustrator application folder.
• Drag the Styles Library file into the Presets/Styles folder inside the Illustrator application folder.
2 Restart the program.

see also ....... Using Effects in Freehand 11

see also ....... Using Appearance in Freehand 11

Using Appearance Attributes, Styles, and Effects in Freehand 11

2010-04-03T00:47:00.000-07:00

About appearance attributes, styles, and effects
Appearance attributes are properties that affect the look of an object without altering its underlying structure. If you apply an appearance attribute to an object and later edit or remove that attribute, it does not change the underlying object or any other attributes applied to the object. Fills, strokes, transparency y, and effects are all types of appearance attributes. A style is a named set of appearance attributes. The Styles palette lets you store and apply a set of appearance attributes to objects, groups, and layers. This gives you a fast and consistent way to change the look of artwork in documents. If the style is replaced (that is, if any appearance attributes that make up the style are changed and the new attributes are saved as that style), all objects with that style change to the new appearance.
Effects are a type of appearance attribute and are listed under the Effect menu. Most effects have the same function and name as commands found elsewhere in the application. However, Effect menu commands do not change the underlying object, only it appearance. You can distort, rasterize, and modify any path using any number of effects, but the original size, anchor points, and shape of the path never changes—only the way it looks. The underlying object remains editable, and an effect’s parameters can be changed at any time.
Working with appearance attributes
The Appearance palette is your gateway to working with appearance attributes, including styles and effects. Because you can apply appearance attributes to layers, groups, and objects, the hierarchy of attributes in your artwork can become very complex. For example, if you apply one effect to a layer and another effect to an object in the layer, it may be difficult to determine which effect is causing the artwork to change. The Appearance palette shows you exactly the fills, strokes, styles, and effects that have been applied to an object, group, or layer.
Using the Appearance palette
The Appearance palette shows you the hierarchy of appearance attributes in your artwork. When you make a selection on the art-board or target an item in the Layers palette, the Appearance palette displays the attributes associated with the artwork. Fills and strokes are listed in stacking order (front to back); effects are listed in the order in which they are applied to the artwork.
Layers, groups, type, meshes, linked files, bitmap images, blends, envelopes, Ares, symbols, symbol sets, and graphs all function as containers in the Appearance palette. When you apply appearance attributes to a container, all artwork in the container takes on these additional attributes.
A. Path with stroke, fill, and effect

B. Layer with transparency

C. Group with effect

D. Stroke with effect
Displaying the Appearance palette Choose Window > Appearance.
Displaying attributes in the Appearance palette Make a selection on the art-board, or target an item in the Layers palette. The attributes of the selected item appear in the Appearance palette. If the item is a container (such as a layer or group), double-click the word Contents in the Appearance palette to display the attributes of artwork in the container. Click the name of the container to redisplay its attributes.
Expanding and collapsing fills and strokes click the triangle to the left of the fill or stroke in the Appearance palette. Click again to collapse the fill or stroke.
Reordering appearance attributes Drag an appearance attribute up or down in the palette to change the order that strokes, fills, and effects are applied. (If necessary, expand fills and strokes.) When the outline of the appearance attribute you are dragging appears in the desired position, release the mouse button. The stacking order of strokes and fills directly affects an object’s appearance. For example, if the fill attribute is below the Contents entry, any fill attributes applied to objects will be applied in front of the fill.
If you apply a style to an object, but the style’s fill color doesn’t appear in the artwork, drag the Fill attribute above the Contents entry in the Appearance palette.
Using the Appearance palette menu Click the triangle in the upper right corner of the palette to access commands for working with appearance attributes.
Showing and hiding thumbnails.
Choose show thumbnail or hide thumbnail from the appearance palette menu.
Modifying and removing appearance attributes
The Appearance palette makes it easy to modify appearance attributes. You can edit effects; copy attributes to items, duplicate attributes, and remove attributes.
Note: Changing the attributes of an item that has a style applied to it breaks the link between the item and the style.
To display the dialog box for an effect:
Double-click an effect name in the Appearance palette.
To copy attributes to an object:

1 if a thumbnail isn’t showing in the Appearance palette, choose Show Thumbnail from the palette menu.
2 Drag the thumbnail onto an object on the art board. The object does not have to be selected first.
To duplicate an appearance attribute:
Select an attribute in the Appearance palette, and do one of the following:
• Click the Duplicate Selected Item button in the palette, or choose Duplicate Item from
The palette menu.
• Drag the appearance attribute onto the Duplicate Selected Item button in the palette.
• If the attribute is a fill or stroke, choose Add New Fill or Add New Stroke from the
Appearance palette menu.
To remove appearance attributes:
Do one of the following:
• Select an attribute, and choose Remove Item from the palette menu.
• Select an attribute, and click the Trash button in the palette.
• Drag an attribute to the Trash button.
• To remove all appearance attributes, including any fill or stroke, choose Clear
Appearance from the palette menu or click the Clear Appearance button in the palette.
• To remove all appearance attributes except a single fill and stroke, choose Reduce to
Basic Appearance from the palette menu or click the Reduce to Basic Appearance button in the palette.
Applying appearance attributes to new artwork
You can specify whether you want new objects to inherit appearance attributes or have only basic attributes.
To specify how appearance attributes are applied to new objects:
Do one of the following:
• To apply only a single fill and stroke to new objects, click the New Art Has Basic
Appearance button in the Appearance palette, or select New Art Has Basic Appearance from the palette menu.
• To apply all of the current appearance attributes to new objects, click the New Art
Maintains Appearance button in the Appearance palette, or deselect New Art Has Basic Appearance from the palette menu.

Applying fills and strokes to containers
Adding fills and strokes to a container (such as a group or layer) applies the fills and strokes to all artwork in the container.
To apply a fill or stroke to a container:

1 Target a container in the Layers palette.
2 Do one of the following:
• Choose Add New Fill or Add New Stroke from the Appearance palette menu.
• Click on a brush in the Brush palette to add a brushed stroke to the container.
• Click on a style in the Styles palette which has a fill or stroke.

See Also ...... Using Styles in Freehand 11

See Also...... Using Effects in Freehand 11

Creating Multicolored Objects With The Mesh Tool

2010-01-26T22:33:00.000-08:00

The mesh tool, the Create Mesh command, and the Expand command can all be used to transform an object into a mesh object. A mesh object is a single, multicolored object on which colors can flow in different directions, and transition smoothly from one point to another. By creating a fine mesh on an object and manipulating the color characteristics at each point in the mesh, you can precisely manipulate the coloring of the mesh object. You can also apply color to four mesh points at the same time by clicking the patch between them, to create broad color changes on part of the object.
About meshes
When you create a mesh object, multiple lines called mesh lines crisscross the object and provide a way to easily manipulate color transitions on the object. By moving and editing points on the mesh lines, you can change the intensity of a color shift, or change the extent of a colored area on the object.
At the intersection of two mesh lines is a special kind of anchor point called a mesh point. Mesh points appear as diamonds and have all of the same properties as anchor points but with the added capability of accepting color. You can add and delete mesh points, edit the mesh points, or change the color associated with each mesh point.

Diagram of a mesh object
A. Mesh line B. Anchor point C. Mesh patch D. Mesh point
Anchor points also appear in the mesh (differentiated by their square rather than diamond shape), and can be added, deleted, edited, and moved as with any anchor points in Illustrator. Anchor points can be placed on any mesh line; you can click an anchor point and drag its direction lines to modify it.
The area between any four mesh points is called the mesh patch. You can also change the color of the mesh patch using the same techniques as changing colors on a mesh point.
Tips for creating mesh objects
You can create a mesh object out of any path object, or any bitmap image (such as a photographic image imported from Adobe Photoshop).

There are a few important guidelines to keep in mind when creating mesh objects:
• You cannot create mesh objects from compound paths, text objects, or linked EPS files.
• Once a mesh object has been created, it cannot be converted back to a path object.
• When converting complex objects, use the Create Mesh command for the best results.
• When converting simple objects, use either the mesh tool or the Create Mesh command. However, if you want to add a highlight to a particular spot, use the mesh tool and click at the point you want the highlight to appear.
• To create a mesh object with a regular pattern of mesh points and mesh lines, use the Create Mesh command.
• When converting complex objects, Illustrator can add hidden anchor points to maintain the shape of a line. If you want to edit, add, or delete one or more of these anchor points, use the add-anchor-point tool or the delete-anchor-point tool.
• To improve performance and speed of redrawing, keep the size of mesh objects to a minimum. Complex mesh objects can greatly reduce performance. Therefore, it is better to create a few small, simple mesh objects than to create a single, complex mesh object.

Creating a mesh object
Use the mesh tool or the Create Gradient Mesh command to convert objects to mesh objects. You can also use the Expand command to convert radial or linear gradient path objects into mesh objects.
To create a mesh object with the mesh tool:
Choose the mesh tool and click a filled object. The object is converted to a mesh object with the minimum number of mesh lines.
To create a mesh object with the Create Mesh command:
1 Select a filled object.
2 Choose Object > Create Gradient Mesh.
3 Enter the number of horizontal rows of mesh lines to create on the object in the Rows text box.
4 Enter the number of vertical columns of mesh lines to create on the object in the Columns text box.
5 Select the direction of the highlight from the Appearance pop-up menu:
• To Center creates a highlight in the center of the object.
• To Edge creates a highlight on the edges of the object.
• Flat applies the object’s original color evenly across the surface, resulting in no highlight.
6 Enter a percentage of white highlight to apply to the mesh object. A value of 100% applies maximum white highlight to the object; a value of 0% applies no white highlight to the object.
Creating a mesh object using the Expand command:
1 Select an object containing a radial or linear gradient fill.
2 Choose Object > Expand.
3 Select the Gradient Mesh option in the Expand dialog box and click OK. The selected object is converted to a mesh object that takes the shape of the gradient, either circular (radial) or rectangular (linear).
Editing mesh objects
Once you have created a mesh object, you can adjust or edit its mesh points, anchor points, and mesh lines. Anchor points can be added with the add-anchor-point tool or deleted with the delete-anchor-point tool on any mesh line.
To add or delete mesh points and mesh lines:
1 Select the mesh tool .
2 Do one of the following:
• To add a mesh point colored with the current fill color, click anywhere in the mesh object. The corresponding mesh lines extend from the new mesh point to the edges of the object. Clicking on an existing mesh line adds a single intersecting mesh line.
• To add a mesh point without changing to the current fill color, press Shift and click.
• To delete a mesh point and the corresponding mesh lines, Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) directly on the mesh point.
To edit a mesh point:
1 Select the mesh tool and click directly on a mesh point. Direction lines appear on the mesh point.
2 Do one of the following:
• Drag the direction points on the direction lines to edit the mesh point as you would any anchor point. For more information about editing anchor points,
• Shift-drag a direction point to move all direction lines from the mesh point at once.
• Use the direct-selection tool, the convert-selection-point tool, or the transformation tools to edit mesh points.
To move a mesh point:
1 Select the mesh tool.
2 Do one of the following:
• Click a mesh point and drag to freely move the point and the connecting mesh lines.
• Press Shift and drag the mesh point to constrain the movement to follow a mesh line. This is a convenient way to move a mesh point along a curved mesh line without distorting the mesh line.

Dragging to move mesh point (left) and Shift-dragging with the mesh tool to constrain to mesh line
(right)

What is Blending Mode and How it Works?

2010-01-26T22:27:00.000-08:00

To specify the blending mode of an object:
1 Target the desired object, group, layer, or sublayer.
2 In the Transparency palette, choose one of the following blending modes from the menu:
Normal Paints the selection with the blend color, without interaction with the base color. This is the default mode.
Multiply. Multiplies the base color by the blend color. The resulting color is always a darker color. Multiplying any color with black produces black. Multiplying any color with white leaves the color unchanged. The effect is similar to drawing on the page with multiple magic markers.
Screen. Multiplies the inverse of the blend and base colors. The resulting color is always a lighter color. Screening with black leaves the color unchanged. Screening with white produces white. The effect is similar to projecting multiple slide images on top of each other.
Overlay. Multiplies or screens the colors, depending on the base color. Patterns or colors overlay the existing artwork, preserving the highlights and shadows of the base color while mixing in the blend color to reflect the lightness or darkness of the original color.
Soft Light. Darkens or lightens the colors, depending on the blend color. The effect is similar to shining a diffused spotlight on the artwork.
If the blend color (light source) is lighter than 50% gray, the artwork is lightened, as if it were dodged. If the blend color is darker than 50% gray, the artwork is darkened, as if it were burned in. Painting with pure black or white produces a distinctly darker or lighter area but does not result in pure black or white.
Hard Light. Multiplies or screens the colors, depending on the blend color. The effect is similar to shining a harsh spotlight on the artwork.
If the blend color (light source) is lighter than 50% gray, the artwork is lightened, as if it were screened. This is useful for adding highlights to artwork. If the blend color is darker than 50% gray, the artwork is darkened, as if it were multiplied. This is useful for adding shadows to artwork. Painting with pure black or white results in pure black or white.
Color Dodge. Brightens the base color to reflect the blend color. Blending with black produces no change.
Color Burn. Darkens the base color to reflect the blend color. Blending with white produces no change.
Darken. Selects the base or blend color—whichever is darker—as the resulting color. Areas lighter than the blend color are replaced, and areas darker than the blend color do not change.
Lighten. Selects the base or blend color—whichever is lighter—as the resulting color. Areas darker than the blend color are replaced, and areas lighter than the blend color do not change.
Difference. Subtracts either the blend color from the base color or the base color from the blend color, depending on which has the greater brightness value. Blending with white inverts the base color values; blending with black produces no change.
Exclusion. Creates an effect similar to but lower in contrast than the Difference mode. Blending with white inverts the base color components. Blending with black produces no change.
Hue. Creates a resulting color with the luminance and saturation of the base color and he hue of the blend color.
Saturation. Creates a resulting color with the luminance and hue of the base color and the saturation of the blend color. Painting with this mode in an area with no saturation (gray) causes no change.
Color Creates a resulting color with the luminance of the base color and the hue and saturation of the blend color. This preserves the gray levels in the artwork and is useful for coloring monochrome artwork and for tinting color artwork.
Luminosity. Creates a resulting color with the hue and saturation of the base color and the luminance of the blend color. This mode creates an inverse effect from that of the Color mode.
Note: The Difference, Exclusion, Hue, Saturation, Color, and Luminosity modes do not blend spot colors—and with most blending modes, a black designated as 100% K nocks out the color on the underlying layer. Instead of 100% black, specify a rich black using CMYK values.

What is Color Management in Illustrator

2010-01-26T22:23:00.000-08:00

About color management
Because color-matching problems result from various devices and software using different color spaces, one solution is to have a system that interprets and translates color accurately between devices. A color management system (CMS) compares the color space in which a color was created to the color space in which the same color will be output, and makes the necessary adjustments to represent the color as consistently as possible among different devices.
The following components are integral to a color-managed workflow:
Device-independent color space. To successfully compare different device gamuts and make adjustments, a color management system must use a reference color space—an objective way of defining color. Most CMSs use the internal CIE (Commission International ed’ Eclairage) LAB color model, which exists independently of any device and is large enough to reproduce any color visible to the human eye. For this reason, CIE LAB is considered device-independent.
Color Management Engine. Different companies have developed various ways to manage color. To provide you with a choice, a color management system lets you choose a color management engine that represents the approach you want to use. Sometimes called the color management module (CMM), the color management engine is the part of the CMS that does the work of reading and translating colors between different color spaces.
Color Profiles. The CMS translates colors with the help of color profiles. A profile is a mathematical description of a device’s color space, that is, how the reference CIE values of each color in the color space map to the visual appearance produced by the device. For example, a scanner profile tells a CMS how your scanner “sees” colors so that an image from your scanner can be translated into the CIE color space accurately. From the CIE space, the colors can then be translated accurately again, via another profile, to the color space of an output device. Illustrator uses ICC profiles, a format defined by the International Color Consortium (ICC) as a cross-platform standard.
Rendering Intents. No single color translation method can manage color correctly for all types of graphics. For example, a color translation method that preserves correct relationships among colors in a wildlife photograph may alter the colors in a logo containing flat tints of color. Color management engines provide a choice of rendering intents, or translation methods, so that you can apply a method appropriate to a particular graphical element.

Book File Portfolio Eases Proposal and Bid Generation and Provides a Competitive Edge

2009-12-13T03:56:00.000-08:00

Book files are useful for many things. For example, a designer (me) who values economy of motion might connect a dozen separate portfolio pieces together via a Book file. The portfolio documents wouldn’t be sequentially numbered and certainly wouldn’t want style synchronization. However, instead of opening and printing each of the 12 documents individually, documents that are most likely spread throughout numerous folders on the designer’s computer, you can print the entire portfolio, exported to PDF, or packaged with a single command—possibly without opening even one of the documents.

I do this very thing, as a matter of fact. Often, as part of a project bid, I’ll be asked to send samples of my previous work. Like most of you reading this, my body of work is broad and varied, but a client or prospective client only needs to see what is relevant to the project at hand. You wouldn’t, for instance, send photos of product packages you’ve designed to accompany a proposal to design a travel agency’s intranet website. Each set of work samples should usually be a subset of your entire portfolio, with pieces chosen specifically to convey to the client, I know how to do the job you want done. See? I’ve done similar work before to the benefit of other clients.

Some of my previous work is in native InDesign documents, some in QuarkXPress documents, some in Illustrator, PDF, websites, scans, image files, and so on. I include all of them in an InDesign Book file. QuarkXPress documents I convert to InDesign just for the portfolio, for websites I take screen shots, and for all other assets, I simply place them into their own InDesign documents. All of these purpose-built INDD documents reside in a single folder with the INDB Book file, but the pieces that are natively InDesign, as well as the placed assets, remain wherever they happen to live on my hard drives—client folders, other project folders, and so on; the Book file will happily manage them from multiple locations.

All the pieces I might want to send along with any proposal or request for samples are added to, and managed through, a single Book file. When I need to print or create a PDF to accompany a proposal, I choose the relevant pieces, select them individually in my portfolio’s Book panel, and then choose Print Selected Documents or Export Selected Documents to PDF from the panel’s flyout menu.

For instance, if I’m proposing a magazine template design, I include only my previous magazine work; if I’m bidding on an advertising job, I include primarily ad-centric prior work; and so on. I selectively choose which pieces to include from the Book panel that includes all of my portfolio pieces. When I output, the result is a single print job or PDF, displaying only what I want included and nothing I don’t, without the hassle of hunting down and printing each piece individually or converting each to a PDF and then combining PDFs. Naturally, in addition to being less work, it’s faster to open a single file—the INDB—select a few entries, and then choose one menu command—than to deal with the documents individually. Thus I can nearly always get a PDF of selected pieces in front of a prospective client’s eyes while we’re still on the initial phone call. And that gives me an edge over any competitors the client called before me, competitors who promised to get some samples together and off to the client the next day or even later in the same day.

Using the Ink Manager to Correct Photoshop Channel Disasters

2009-12-13T03:49:00.000-08:00

Every few months I see in person or read about in online forums someone who, through some weird accident, wound up creating a two- or three-color image in Photoshop using a dozen or more channels. In the document’s Channels panel, he has multiple channels (plates) for each of the two or three spot colors. Why is this a disaster? Because each of those channels will be treated as a separate plate, turning a 2- or 3-color job into a 10- or 12-color job; the price of printing goes through the roof, as does the poor pressman who has to run the thing. The worst I ever saw personally was a two-color PSD with 14 channels for a single spot and 11 more for the second color. As near as I could figure, the designer, whom we’ll call Jane, had mistakenly used channels like layers, creating a new channel for every new object or section of color while she painted.

When these types of Photoshop images pop up, there isn’t a great deal that can be done to fix them within Photoshop. Sometimes cutting all image data off the extraneous channels one at a time and pasting onto a single target channel works, sometimes it doesn’t. Splitting the image into two, one to hold each color, merging the channels down into a single channel each, and then reconsolidating the images also works once in a while. Converting the image to grayscale and then back to duotone in Photoshop consolidates the channels easily but destroys the original color separations and usually requires copious recoloring work.

InDesign’s Ink Manager has provided the solution to Jane’s problem via ink aliases. If you find yourself dealing with such a Photoshop document, place it into InDesign and output from there.

Select one instance of each doppelganger ink as the primary, and, using the Ink Manager, alias all the others to their primary. Upon output, you’ll have just one plate for each color. Often images such as those previously described are set in multichannel color mode, and InDesign does not support placing PSD images in multichannel. InDesign only handles images in the CMYK, RGB, and Lab color spaces.

To get around the limitation:

1. Re-open the image in Photoshop.

2. On the Channels panel, create four empty new channels, and drag them to the top of the channels list.

3. Convert the document color mode to CMYK via Image >Mode >CMYK Color. The conversion will automatically turn the four empty channels into empty Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black channels. Spot channels—the ones containing all the image data in this case—will be preserved, and upon save from Photoshop, InDesign will now be able to import the image.

Note: If the image will be the only content of the InDesign document, you’ll wind up outputting blank

C, M, Y, and K plates. When it’s time to output, disable printing of the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks in the Print dialog Output pane.

Often when channel disaster images are made, they contain several identically named channels (e.g., PANTONE 462 C). Photoshop doesn’t care that these are the names of spot colors, only that they’re the name of channels, which is what leads to this problem in the first place. InDesign, however, does care about taking in two or more spots with the same name, and it will complain, preventing you from importing the image. If you get this, just go back to Photoshop’s Channels panel and rename the duplicate channels to something like PANTONE 462 C copy 1, PANTONE 462 C copy 2, and so on. This will also make it easier to identify the target and aliased colors in InDesign.

Once correctly aliased, the extra inks will disappear off the Separations Preview panel, leaving only one of each ink.

The Importance of Google

2009-12-13T03:42:00.000-08:00

Why a special guide just on Google? Aren’t there hundreds, if not thousands, of search engines

out there that need to be worried about? There are many other search engines and search directories that exist, but Google is the most prominent, most used, and most important of them all. At the very least, it is the search engine you should focus your website promotion efforts on first. So let’s discuss why this is so…

Without a doubt, Google is the largest and most used search engine in the world today. Google currently indexes over 3.3 billion Web pages (as well as PDF, Word, Excel and other files), over 425 million images, over 800 million Usenet (newsgroup) messages, and performs more than 200 million searches per day (as of September 2003).

Google also currently provides search results to other search engines and directories, notably Yahoo!, AOL, Netscape, Lycos, CompuServe, Earthlink, and AT&T Worldnet. This means a # 1 ranking on Google also mostly likely will land you a # 1 position on these partner sites as well! I say “likely” because the partner sites

tend to blend their results a little bit so the rankings across the partners may not be exact. To repeat:

a #1 ranking on Google also generally means a #1 ranking on:

Lycos (Sympatico)

With its partners included, Google is now responsible for powering over 76% of all search engine traffic to websites.

In addition, the chart illustrates that more people are spending time on Google searching for what they need than on any other search firm. If you also include Google’s two major search partners AOL and Yahoo!, this is a lot of time web surfers spend in just a few places.

Clearly then, Google is where you need to focus your website promotion efforts. After you have applied the techniques, have monitored your results, and then refined your efforts over several months time, you should start seeing dramatic results. As an aside, the other major search engines are starting to look for the same elements as Google. So if you get it right for Google, you have also gotten it right in general for all the other search engines!

Thread and Unthread Text Frames

2009-12-11T00:26:00.000-08:00

Thread and Unthread Text Frames and Flow Text Threaded text frames are the foundation of multipage documents, and, whether manual, auto, or semi-auto, flowing text is the way to pour that foundation.
Master It Create a new document with a two-column master page text frame and employ the skills learned in this chapter to lay out a multipage Word or other text document. There should be no overset text when you’ve finished.
Solution Learners will create a new document with two columns and the Master Text Frame option checked in the New Document dialog. They must then override the master text frame on the first page of the document, and pursue the technique described in “Autoflow in Master Page Frames” to lay out a multipage textual document in threaded frames.
Create Bulleted and Numbered Lists. InDesign CS3 offers more creative and structural control in updated bullets and numbering features and the new Lists property.
Master It In a new document, use Lists and Bullets and Numbering to re-create the headings from this chapter’s section “Threading and Unthreading Text Frames” as a hierarchical list.
Solution Learners should create three levels of lists in the Lists dialog, and then in Bullets and Numbering, set options to create the following hierarchical list, although the numbering systems may vary.
1. Threading and Unthreading Text Frames
A. QuarkXPress vs. InDesign
B. Threading Frames
i. Threading Pre-Created Frames
ii. Threading without Pre-Created Frames
iii. Threading Upon Import
iv. Threading without Text
C. Threading Tips
D. Viewing Threads
E. Managing Threads
i. Unthread Text Frames
ii. Removing Frames from a Thread
iii. Adding Frames into a Thread
iv. Duplicating Frames in a Thread
F. Autoflowing Text
G. Autoflow in Master Page Frames
i. Autoflowing Immediately
ii. Use the Master Text Frame
H. Jumplines
Write and Word Process in InDesign The world is changing, and writing and editing in the layout application is no longer such a crazy idea.
Master It In Story Editor, write a paragraph or two discussing how something you’ve learned in this chapter will benefit your work. Include at least one footnote, and set its options for a pleasing appearance on the page.
Solution After creating a new text frame, learners should open Story Editor with the menu command or keyboard shortcut and write the essay. They should also insert and, through
the Type > Document Footnote Options, style the footnote.
Fixing, Finding, and Changing Text and More. In addition to beefing up its already solid text support systems of spell checking, hyphenation, and Autocorrect, InDesign CS3 completely revamps Find/Change with incredible new capabilities.
Master It Using the two-column, multipage document created just a few moments ago, use the new Find/Change features to convert the text frame to three-columns with a 0.25-inch column gutter. At the same time, give the text frames a semitransparent background color (while keeping the text fully opaque) and a frame inset.
Solution Learners should use the Object tab in Find/Change, searching for all text frames, and setting the described graphical attributes in the Change Object Format Options dialog.

Interact with Documents

2009-12-11T00:23:00.000-08:00

Interact with Documents Visually, Change Zoom Level, View Modes, and Display Performance
InDesign provides numerous means of changing the way you interact with documents, how fast they move, how you see them, and what you see.
Master It Open any InDesign document containing text and images on the same page. Open three different views of the same document, arranged simultaneously onscreen, zooming all to fit the page within the document window, and compare the views according to the following options:
· View 1: Preview mode with High-Quality Display display performance.
· View 2: Layout mode with Fast Display display performance.
· View 3: Bleed mode with Typical Display display performance.
Solution Learners should open a document and then, using the Window >Arrange >New Window command, create two other views on the same document. They should then manually arrange the trio comfortably onscreen, and by changing the View >Display Performance setting and the different modes at the bottom of the Tools panel, establish the comparison described above.
Build and Manage Grids and Guides The foundation of any well-laid-out document is a well-thought-out grid.
Master It Create a new document and build a grid on the master page consisting of six equal columns and three equal rows within the page margins. Once that’s done, apportion the top row into three equal sections.
Solution Learners should use the Layout >Create Guides utility to create the initial grid with six and three, no gutters, and Fit Guides to Margins. Next, to divide the top row, they will have to manually drag down two horizontal ruler guides. After unlocking guides, they will precisely position the new manually created guides with the Transform or Control panel’s Y field.
Create and Manage Book Files Often one person finds it easier to work on longer documents by breaking them up into chapters or sections and connecting them via a Book file. For workgroups wherein different people are responsible for different sections of the document, a Book file is essential to productivity.
Master It Working alone or in a group, create at least three InDesign documents of several pages of text each. Save each document, and then create a Book file to connect the documents. Finally, create a single PDF from the entire book.
Solution Learners should preferably team up to create InDesign documents and then designate one individual to create the Book file. Once the book is set, the Export Book to PDF command should be chosen from the Book panel flyout menu.
Index Terms and Create an Index An index helps readers find content. From simple keyword lists to complex, multilevel, topic-driven indices, InDesign handles them all, marrying index entries to referenced text through index markers.
Master It Open or create an InDesign document containing a story of at least three pages in length. Working through the document, create index entries and cross-references for at least 10 words, one of which should be a word that repeats numerous times throughout the story (use a common word such as the if needed). Once the terms are indexed, generate and place the index story on a new page.
Solution Learners may take several routes to accomplishing the indexing depending on the story and words chosen, although their methods should conform to those described in the sections “Creating Index Entries,” “Cross-References,” and “Power Indexing” under “Indexing” in this chapter. With all the options available to them in the Generate Index dialog, the final output will likely vary as well from learner to learner.
Create Tables of Contents Tables of contents direct readers in logical or virtually any order to content, and InDesign’s TOC options are varied and powerful for myriad uses.
Master It Open or quickly create a rudimentary book-style document containing body text and several heading paragraphs utilizing at least two levels of headings. Create and assign paragraph styles for the body text and headings. Using what you’ve learned in this chapter, generate and place a hierarchal TOC.
Solution Before beginning with the Layout >Table of Contents command and the corresponding dialog, learners should create a document that has text and styles in the format of Heading 1, Heading 2, and Body Text, with several paragraphs of each style. Then, in the Table of Contents dialog, the Heading 1 and Heading 2 styles should be moved into the Include Paragraph Styles list, assigned Levels 1 and 2 respectively, and then the TOC placed into the document. The other options available for formatting the TOC will vary by learner.

Efficiency with InDesign

2009-12-11T00:20:00.000-08:00

Work Efficiently with Text Text comprises the most space in the average InDesign document. Unfortunately, editing and restyling text occupies the majority of a creative’s time in the document. Used wisely, paragraph and character styles, nested styles, text variables, and data merge eliminate repetitive actions and hours of work.
Master It Use Excel, a database, or Notepad/TextEdit to create a new flat-file database of information. The data may be anything you like—a mailing list, product listings for a catalog, directory listings, etc.—but should include at least three fields and three rows. Save the file as either comma or tab delimited; this will be your data source file. Beginning with a blank InDesign document, build a variable data target document to hold the records from the data source file. Include static information as well as field placeholders. Format all text—static and placeholders—and create paragraph and character styles to make the initial and follow-up formatting easier. If you have appropriate places to employ nested styling, do so. When the target document is ready, effect a data merge to generate a press-ready variable data project.
Solution Owing to the multiple steps and complexity of this exercise, a great deal of variance in learners’ results is to be expected. Upon completion, the learner should have a merge document with all data correctly imported. Additionally, all text in the document should be assigned to paragraph and/or character styles.
Work Efficiently with Tables Barring additional investments in third-party plug-ins, each table created in prior versions of InDesign had to be individually and manually formatted. The more creative the formatting, the more arduous the task of styling multiple subsequent tables to match. New table and cell styles make it a one-click operation to format tabular data and to instantly update all tables to match future formatting changes.
Master It Begin with a table of data. If you have tables in preexisting InDesign documents, use those (save the document under a different name, just in case). If you don’t have such documents already, create a new layout and add at least two tables; the sports or financial sections of today’s newspaper are excellent places to find tabular data you can use for FPO. Style one table with alternating fills, custom strokes of your choosing, and with appropriate text formatting using paragraph styles. When the first table is styled to your liking, build table and cell styles, and then use them to format the second table.
Solution Results will vary, but learners should end up with two (or more) identically formatted tables. Additionally, all text within the tables should be assigned to paragraph styles and cell styles.
Work Efficiently with Objects Working efficiently doesn’t end with text and tables. Graphics, paths, and containers are part of any InDesign document, and creating and editing them productively is also important to the efficient InDesign-based workflow.
Master It Using either your own or a client’s various media logos (RGB, CMYK, grayscale; with and without taglines; iconic and full logos; and so on), build a shareable, reusable logo library. Now create a second library of text frames and other objects you use at least occasionally. Make sure to give each an object style before adding them to the library so that other objects can quickly be styled to match and so that formatting changes don’t take too much time. Don’t forget to label objects in both libraries for rapid identification and filtering by you or your coworkers.
Solution When finished, learners should have two INDL libraries. Every object in each library should be labeled. The majority of objects in the second library should have object styles assigned to them.

Collaboration in InDesign

2009-12-11T00:16:00.000-08:00

Collaborate with Other Designers Teamwork and workgroup-based creativity is common among larger publications. Collaborating efficiently is crucial but rare—until now.
Master It Working alone or together with colleagues, create or convert a pre-existing, multi-page document into a candidate for the Placed Page Collaboration Workflow. Assign content to coworkers, and have them design or alter the existing design of their portions of the publication and deliver their respective INDD documents back to you so that you may update and finalize the overall publication.
Solution Learners should apportion a multi-page document such that one or more separate pages are assigned to each member of the learner’s workgroup. Content on those pages should be removed to separate InDesign documents and then placed back into the original locations as placed and linked INDD documents. The other members of the workgroup should edit their assignments and return the art to the team leader working with the core document. The leader will then update linked assets to bring the document current. Watch out for pages with duplicated content, which indicates that the learner forgot to delete the original objects from the core document subsequent to generating the assigned component documents.
Collaborate with Writers and Editors It’s a control thing, man. Laying out the page is the domain of the designer; editing the copy is the realm ruled by editors. Neither group wants governorship of either material forced upon (or even really given to) the other group. Thankfully, with InCopy, Adobe’s best-kept secret, there’s no longer a need for either editorial or design to give up its control, freedom, or field of view.
Master It Open or create a layout containing at least two separate stories. Create assignments for two collaborators, assigning at least one story to each, and then generate and email an InCopy package for each assignment to its assignee. If your collaborators have InCopy CS3 on hand, have them edit the stories and return them to you as InDesign packages. Finally, update the content in the layout from those packages.
Solution If learners do not have access to InCopy or coworkers with InCopy, forgo the second part of the exercise. In the first part, the result should be an Assignments panel that lists two assignments with at least one content item each. Both assignments should display the purple gift box icon denoting that they’ve successfully been packaged. Also check File>User to ensure that the learner correctly identified himself to InDesign, per the instructions in this chapter.
Share Reusable Settings They say the definition of the word insane is doing something over and over while expecting different results. I agree with that definition, but I would like to propose my own addendum: doing the same thing over and over when there’s no reason to do it more than once is also insane. In this thing we do, there is more than enough insanity thrust upon us by deadlines, clients, limited budgets, malfunctioning software, temperamental RIPs, and so many other sources; we must do what we can to salvage our own peace of mind and maintain productivity. Save a brain cell; share a setting.
Master It Examine your work, the typical documents you create and contribute to, the styles, swatches, and other reusable settings you use at least once a month. Save them all. Put them on a USB flash memory stick or email them home to yourself. Then, send them to your coworkers or lab partners, and ask for their reusable settings in return. Each of you should then load pieces you’ve exchanged into your respective versions of InDesign. It’s time to collaborate efficiently. Solution Given that each learner will likely opt to save and share different types of reusable settings, there is no check against their progress other than that something was transferred between the InDesign users and successfully loaded into their copies of InDesign.

use of plugin shag hair part 2

2009-11-20T11:15:00.000-08:00

Due to some bussiness I couldn't upload the part 2, please accept my apology.

here starts the "use of plugin shag hair"......

In the following tutorial, you will take the file from the previous tutorial and create both dark brown hair using sub-material ID’s, then create a clown-like hair style by applying a material directly to the ShagView object.
First up, let’s use a SubMaterial ID. To begin, we need a new material for the head, so open up the Material Editor.
1. There, you will find a beige skin colored material. Select that material preview window if it isn’t already selected.
2. Click on the Material Type button. This launches the Material/Map browser.
3. Select a Multi/Sub-object material and choose to keep the material as a sub-material. Then click OK.
4. This places the beige material in the Material ID slot #1. Copy that material to slot #2 as well. When you do, if you have a shaded camera view, you will see the area where the hair is emitting has turned gray.
5. Click on the Material located in slot #4. This takes you to the Standard Material rollout for that sub-material.
6. Click on the blank button next to diffuse to apply a map. This launches the Material/Map browser. Select Bitmap and choose OK.
7. When the Bitmap rollout appears, click on the blank button. This launches a file selection dialog box. Select the file Dryleave.JPG from your MAPS/Ground folder.
8. Once you have selected the Map, turn on Show Map in Viewport.
9. Choose Go to Parent twice, and then assign the material to the Head object. Now, the map doesn’t appear yet because we need to have mapping coordinates.
10.Select the head and go to the Modify command panel. Apply a UVW Mapping modifier. Set the mapping type to Box with a size of 70 in the X,Y, and Z directions. You should now see the map on the head.
11.Now, let’s setup the hair. Go to the Environment dialog box. You should see the Shag:Hair and Shag:Render entries from the last exercise. Click on Shag:Hair.
12.Scroll down to the Shading, Geometry, Quality rollout. For the Tip color, enable the Sub-Mat ID spinner and set the spinner to 4. Repeat for the Base color as well.
13.Close the Environment dialog box and render the scene. At this point, the Shag: Hair strands will take their coloration from the underlying material on the scalp of the head. This is great when working with animals such as zebras or leopards, where you want a specific pattern applied to the strands.

Another method for applying materials is to simply select the ShagView object and add a material directly to it.
14.Now, let’s create a clown hairstyle this way. Open the Material Editor and select an empty material slot.
15.In the Diffuse Map slot add a Gradient Ramp material. The default colors of Red, Green and Blue work fine here. Under the Coordinates rollout, change the W Angle value from 0 to 90. This will rotate the map 90 degrees so that the gradient will run along the length of the individual strands, and will start out blue, and change through green to red.
16.In the scene, select the ShagView object. Assign the material you just created to this object.
17.Re-render the scene.

part 1: http://profesorazii.blogspot.com/2009/04/3d-studio-max-use-of-plugin-shag-hair.html

v2 versus v1?

2009-11-11T07:02:00.000-08:00

A number of broad ICC profiles ship with Creative Suite and its constituent applications. Many of these, for instance U.S. Web Coated (SWOP), carry the v2 version number suffix. If you’ve continuously upgraded from earlier Adobe applications, you may also have v1 profiles hanging around. Use the v2. The v1 ones were created with older software (Color Savvy for Adobe PressReady), whereas the v2 profiles were built using a special version of Photoshop and perform better in multistaged color conversions wherein an image is converted from one profile to another and then either back to the first or into a third profile.
A Color Management Off set is also there, but it’s a misnomer—there is no off switch to color management in Creative Suite. Instead, this set will define defaults just like the rest, which, come press time and depending on your work, can cause either barely noticeable color shifts or disastrously wide spectral swings. It assumes that all your RGB images were created directly on your monitor, in its color space, and that everything will be printed in the U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 CMYK space.
Here is what Color Management Off really gives you:
RGB Working Space (Your monitor’s ICC/ICM profile)
CMYK Working Space U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2
RGB Policy Off (Leave it as is, without considering the source profile and without converting it to the current working space, and upon print, just convert the RGB numeric values to CMYK numeric values.)
CMYK Policy Off (Print it as is, without considering the source or output profile and without converting it to the current working space.)
Profile Mismatches Ask When Opening
Missing Profiles N/A
Rendering Intent Relative Colorimetric
Black Point Compensation Yes
I vigorously advise against using Color Management Off if color matters in the least to your work. Even one of the out-of-the-box presets would be a (marginally) better option.

Find/Change Styles to the Rescue

2009-11-11T06:59:00.001-08:00

Mr. X worked as the final stop in a publication workflow that involved nine layout artists, each working on different portions of a 320-page quarterly. His job was to collect and proof everyone’s work, stitch it all together into a single publication managed by an InDesign book, and fix any mistakes before imposing the issue and sending it to press. Ofcourse, the publication had a style guide, templates, and preconfigured paragraph and character styles; invariably, however, the articles and sections Mr. X received from the other creatives contained numerous style overrides in the form of local formatting—all of which Mr. X had to fix before the publication went to press. Making matters worse, the publication also ran per issue anywhere between 1 and 10 articles and pieces of articles from outside agencies and filler libraries. The outside contributions were formatted in ways that rarely bore any resemblance to Mr. X’s templates.
Wrangling these wild styles should have been as easy as selecting paragraphs and applying or reapplying paragraph styles. Unfortunately, doing so cleared out desired overrides, most notably italic. Consequently, Mr. X found himself spending days staring at side-by-side comparisons of original pages and pages with correct paragraph styles, locating italicized words in the former, and manually italicizing the same words in the latter. The process took so long that Mr. X had to push up the issue closing date—which, of course, some members of the team understood to mean more time between submission and press for making last-minute rewrites, leading to more formatting cleanup and often on the same story more than once.
The real solution to Mr. X’s problem lay with stricter enforcement of the publication’s style guide, which was in the offing but still left Mr. X with a lot of extra work in the interim. Although style enforcement might improve the consistency of work from Mr. X’s coworkers, policy changes for content from external agencies wasn’t likely to improve as quickly as internal policy changes. By way of retaining Mr. X’s direct control over fixing the publication, there is a two-step solution.
First, Mr. X should identify all the formatting options that fell under the heading of “desired override”— in other words, any appropriately used character-level formatting such as italic, a couple of different underline and coloring styles used for assorted kinds of URLs listed in stories, and small caps for acronyms and occasional other uses. Mr. X should create character styles to hold each of the settings—one for small caps, one each for the types of URLs, one each for italic, bold-italic. Mr. X also should create a Regular character style that specifically disallowed all the formatting options of all the other character styles; using the Regular style would instantly strip off the effects of, say, the bold-italic style, reverting the selected text to non-bold, non-italic. Mr. X should add these styles to the main template.
Step two is building and enacting a procedure to replace wanted style overrides with character styles and then remove all unwanted overrides. No sweat. Using Find/Change (Edit > Find/Change), Mr. X should search for any italic glyph and assigned it to the Italic character style. You see those settings in the screenshot of the Find/Change dialog. Similar searches were run for each of the other format overrides that had matching character styles. Each replacement criteria set was saved as a reusable query.

To revert undesirable overrides back to their correct paragraph styles, additional searches were performed, one for each paragraph style. In that case, it was even simpler: both Find Format and Change Format were set to the same paragraph style and no other options.

When InDesign performs a Find/Change with such criteria, it automatically strips off any overrides—but not those properly assigned to character styles. So, to remove any unwanted overrides on the Body Copy style, Mr. X set the Find Format to search for Paragraph Style: Body Copy; the Change Format was also set to only Paragraph Style:
Body Copy. InDesign rolled through all the stories in the document, finding every instance of text in the Body Copy style, and force reapplying the paragraph style. Mr. X’s problem was solved.

To make things even faster, and with the help of a JavaScript programmer in Mr. X’s IT department, even all the Find/Change queries were automated. Now Mr. X just executes the Style Cleanup script from the Scripts panel. Formatting cleanup that used to take his days is finished within a couple of minutes.

Difference between InDesign and InCopy

2009-11-09T05:32:00.000-08:00

InCopy is Adobe’s best kept secret, the least marketed of all of Adobe’s products, and a tool whose success is due almost entirely to the passionate handful of InCopy experts running around praising it to anyone who will listen. The difference between Story Editor in InDesign and the entire InCopy application is like the difference between the farm teams and major league baseball— steroids…um, I mean, greater talent and vastly expanded training.
InDesign and InCopy share a code base, meaning that they are, for all intents and purposes, the same application at heart. Their differences are the result of different sets of plug-ins stacked atop that code base. Many features are identical. For example, InCopy has InDesign’s full text styling and formatting capabilities, including lists, bullets and numbering, and tables and even identical Character, Paragraph, Character Styles, Paragraph Styles, Tabs, Swatches, Table, Story, Glyphs, Links, and Layers panels. Anything you can do with text in InDesign you can do in InCopy, its editorial counterpart. It also introduces features far beyond InDesign’s, features like an advanced thesaurus (and accompanying panel); Word-esque change tracking; text macros; constantly updating line, word, and character counts; and the ability to edit one, some, or all stories and text frames in an InDesign document concurrently, in several windows or just one. Whereas InDesign has two editing modes, InCopy has three: Story, Layout, and Galley. Story view (see Figure A) is identical to InDesign’s Story Editor, a pure word processor without accurate line breaks or composition. It also has the same pros, cons, and customization options.
Of course, InCopy can open its own INCD and INCX file formats, as well as Microsoft Word DOC files, ASCII text, Rich Text format, and other common textual document formats, but it can also open InDesign documents. Lacking layout tools, frames cannot be moved or modified in InCopy, but their contents—text and imagery—can, which is what enables offloading editorial work from design and production to the editorial department. Editors who want to proof or even edit copy within the final layout can do so through InCopy’s layout view (see Figure B). The document in layout view is 100% accurately copy fit.
Finally, galley view is a combination of both (see Figure C). It’s a story editor but with accurate line breaks, hyphenation, composition, and copy-fitting. Working together, InDesign and InCopy fill both sides of the design-editorial dynamic, allowing one department to concentrate on its specialty and allowing the other group to do the same. Native editing of both applications’ files in the other, live copy and layout update links between them, and for more robust needs, the ability to assign frames, pages, and spreads to specific InCopy users are the reasons InCopy is rapidly supplanting Microsoft Word in collaborative publishing workflows. If you’re part of such a workflow, whether design and editorial are at the same or different sites, migrating writers, editors, and proof readers to InCopy could be the most valuable idea you gain from this book. I say that with all sincerity, and I have the experience migrating publishing clients to back up the claim.

Footnotes
Footnotes are citations or resources placed at the end of a story and referenced from within the main text of the story. Figure D shows a typical footnote.
Inserting a footnote is easy. Position the cursor in the text immediately after the word or phrase to reference the footnote, and then select Type > Insert Footnote. Using the current footnote options, a new footnote reference will be added to the text at that point and the footnote itself at the bottom of the column; your cursor will stand ready to type the footnote. The easiest way to edit footnotes and their reference numbers is in Story Editor where they magically appear together. In Figure E, you can see both collapsed and expanded footnotes in their colored boxes. To collapse or expand, just double-click the colored box. To collapse or expand all footnotes at once, choose Collapse All Footnotes or Expand All Footnotes from the context sensitive menu or from the View > Story Editor menu.
Footnotes are anchored to their reference numbers. If text reflows, moving the reference to another column or page, the footnote follows to the bottom of that column or page. Similarly, pasting or dragging text containing a reference to a different place in the same document takes the footnote with it. The same occurs when pasting or dragging into a different document with the added benefit that both the reference and footnote itself will pick up the footnote formatting options in effect in the new document. Deleting a footnote is even easier than inserting it—delete just the reference number and the entire footnote goes along with it. You can delete the footnote number or other identifier at the beginning of the footnote itself, but you really shouldn’t—readers match the reference to the footnote by that mark. If you’ve deleted the number and want to reinsert it, choose Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Footnote Number with the cursor ahead of the footnote.
Formatting Footnotes
Extensive footnote formatting controls are available from Type > Document Footnote Options. The first tab of Footnote Options, Numbering and Formatting, is largely concerned with the appearance and sequence of footnotes (see Figure F).

What does it all mean?

Style Footnotes may take on numerous styles, including the most common Arabic numerals; the second most common, a system of symbols including the dagger (†), double-dagger (‡), and so on; incrementing asterisks; Roman numerals in both cases; and alphabetic enumerators in both lower- and uppercase.
Start At. InDesign automatically increments footnote numbers in the same story, and renumbers them to reflect additions, deletions, and rearrangement of footnote references. By default, each first footnote in the story will begin with 1 and ascend from there. In cases where a single chapter or document comprises more than a single story, you’ll want to either manually choose the starting number in the Start At field, or set an appropriate Restart Numbering Every option.
Depending on the type of document being written or laid out, you may want footnotes to continuously increment throughout the whole document or just per-section, spread, or page. For the former, leave Restart Numbering Every unchecked. However, to start the footnote reference numbering over at the Start At value for every section, spread, or page, check this box and choose the appropriate divider in the drop-down menu to the right.
Show Prefix/Suffix Between the check box, drop-down list, and specific Prefix and Suffix fields, you can add brackets [],parentheses (), hair spaces, thin spaces, or custom glyphs to either or both the footnote reference number and footnote text. The spaces in particular are handy when footnote references are rendered in a typeface too close to preceding or succeeding glyphs.
Footnote Reference Number in Text In the Position drop-down, determine if you’d like to format footnote reference numbers in the usual fashion of superscripted numbers or if you’d like them subscripted or even rendered as normal position, full-size numbers. By creating beforehand and assigning here a character style, every aspect of reference numbers’ appearance is open to customization distinct from surrounding copy.
Footnote Formatting Footnotes themselves are paragraphs and can be styled while editing. Here, though, you have the ability to specify a particular paragraph style to set the majority of global appearance options. In the Separator field, enter the glyph(s) or marks to divide the identifying reference number from the footnote text it keys. The default, ^t, is code for a tab. On the Layout tab, more advanced formatting as well as footnote placement is stipulated (see Figure G).
Spacing Options. Enter in these fields the amount of vertical spacing between the end of the story column and the first footnote as well as the amount of vertical paragraph space separating multiple footnotes from each other. The latter option has no effect with single footnotes.
First Baseline. Baseline offset sets the vertical distance between the baseline of the first line of footnote text and the (by default ruled) top of the text frame holding footnotes. Control text baseline offset using the same options as in normal text frames—by ascent, cap height, leading value, x-height, or a fixed amount. The Min field refines Baseline Offset values of Leading or Fixed by specifying the minimum amount of space between the top of the line and the baseline of its text.
Place End of Story Footnotes at Bottom of Text. This option specifies where footnotes appearing in the last frame of a threaded story appear. In all other frames but the last, footnotes are placed at the bottom of the column in which their reference numbers appear. In some publications and according to some style guides, however, it’s preferable to place all footnotes from the last frame of a story not at the bottom of each column but beneath the last column. Checking this option sets the latter condition.
Allow Split Footnotes. When footnote text outgrows the amount of space allotted to hold footnotes, how should it be handled? Checking this option splits long footnotes across columns (and perhaps even pages), creating effectively threaded footnote frames at the bottoms of successive columns. Unchecking Allow Split Footnotes can force InDesign to move the body copy line of text containing the footnote reference number to its next column, which could result in large, multiline gaps at the bottom of main story columns. If the resulting gap is too large, InDesign will instead overset the footnote text. One way to help control footnote cohesion is to ensure that you’ve assigned to it a paragraph style with appropriate keeps options defined (e.g., keep X number of lines together or keep all lines together).
Rules. Mirroring the options of a paragraph rule above the paragraph, this section lets you create visually interesting separators above the first footnote section and/or above all footnote sections (for split footnotes). To disable the rule entirely, uncheck the Rule On box. In addition to all the formatting options in Footnote Options, you can still manually and individually style footnotes. For instance, you could select the footnote text (press Cmd+A/Ctrl+A with the cursor inside a footnote to select the entire text of just that footnote) and apply character styles, font or color changes, or anything else you can normally do with text. You can also manually style the footnote reference numbers, but it’s a much better idea to do it in Footnote Options with character styles. Even doing it that way, though, styles will be lost if you clear overrides and character styles in the paragraph containing the footnote reference.
Endnotes
Endnotes are similar to footnotes except that, instead of appearing at the end of columns, endnotes appear at the end of the story. InDesign does not have any actual endnote creation features beyond pressing Cmd+Shift+End/Ctrl+Shift+End (the shortcut to go to the end of the story) and typing the endnote. Microsoft Word does have endnote features, which means you could potentially import Word documents including them. Checking Show Import Options in the Place dialog presents the option of whether to import endnotes in Word files. If they’re imported, InDesign will convert Word endnotes to normal,

Table Of Contents in InDesign

2009-11-09T05:10:00.000-08:00

Creating a table of contents for the document (or book) is far less involved than creating an index, as long as you practiced efficient composition by assigning paragraph styles to the elements that should be listed within the TOC. The basis for TOC generation is paragraph styles—in other words, any text assigned to this style or that style will be included or excluded based solely on its paragraph style.
InDesign supports an unlimited number of tables of contents. Thus, you can create the standard document TOC like the one at the front of this book, but you can also create per-chapter tables of contents, lists of figures or tables, alphabetized lists of topics, and just about anything else you can imagine (and manage with paragraph styles).
Begin creating the table of contents by choosing Layout > Table of Contents, which opens the Table of Contents dialog (see Figure A). Click the More Options button to reveal the full depth of the dialog.

TOC Style. All of the options incorporated into the Table of Contents dialog may be saved as a preset called a TOC style. After setting the options, click the Save Style button on the right and give the style a name. TOC styles can also be created and edited from Layout > Table of Contents Styles. If a style has been pre-created, it will appear in the TOC Style list; choose it, and all the below options will fill in with their style-defined values.
Title. When the TOC is generated and placed, it will have a title as the first line of the story. By default, the title will be Contents, but it can be anything you like. Leaving the Title field blank removes the title from the generated TOC entirely, without leaving a blank carriage return where it would have been.
Style. The paragraph style for formatting the TOC title.
Styles in Table of Contents. This is the root of creating a TOC. On the right, in the Other Styles list, are all the paragraph styles defined in the document. Click a style on the right to highlight it, and then use the Add button to move it to the left, the Include Paragraph Styles list. You can also double-click an entry in either column to move it to the other. Each style included on the left will cause all text assigned to that style to be listed in the resulting

TOC; styles not in the list will not have their dependent text referenced by the TOC. The order of styles in the Include list establishes the TOC hierarchy. In other words, the first listed style is the most important, highest level of the generated TOC, with the next appearing below it, the next below that, and so on. If you insert styles in the wrong order, drag them up or down in the list just as you reorder styles in the Paragraph or Character styles panels. But you must also change their Level value in the Style section below. Figure B shows an example of the Include Paragraph Styles list and the TOC it would generate.

Click to highlight a style in the Include Paragraph Styles to set its options below in the Style section. Each included style may have its own entry style, page number options, and so on.
Entry Style. When the TOC is generated, the text for each entry level can have its own paragraph style. Unlike index styles, InDesign will not automatically created level-based paragraph styles. You’ll need to pre-create your TOC styles and then select them from the list for each Include Paragraph Style option. Alternatively, leave the default of [Same Style] to include the same style in the TOC as on the document pages.
Page Number. Choose whether to place the page number before or after the entry text or to omit the page number entirely. With the Style field to the right, the page number can be given its own character style for customized formatting.
Between Entry and Number. The separator character or characters to appear between the entry text and its number (or number and text, if the page number is placed before the text). The pop-up menu to the right offers many symbols, markers, and special characters. To create a leader dot separator, specify a tab (^t) in the field and then modify the paragraph style (outside of the Table of Contents dialog) to include a leader dot separator at that tab stop. The dropdown menu at the right allows assigning a character style to the separator itself, enabling any unique styling to be applied to just the separator.
Sort Entries in Alphabetical Order. By default, and in most cases, TOC entries are sorted in order of appearance in the document. However, especially when creating documents for electronic distribution as PDFs, this option opens numerous other possible uses for the Table of Contents feature beyond creating a standard TOC. When InDesign generates a TOC, it creates hyperlinks connecting the TOC entries to the text they reference. Exporting to PDF preserves these hyperlinks, enabling a reader of such a PDF to click on the TOC entry and jump to the content. Thus, the option to sort entries alphabetically rather than logically opens the possibilities of creating vastly different lists such as lists of product names, personnel referenced in the document, or even a replacement for a standard index—without having to manually create index entries. The only significant limitation to using the Table of Contents functions in place of index and other features is that InDesign’s Table of Contents is dependent upon paragraph styles; it cannot create an entry from a character style or a specific word in the middle of a paragraph.
Level. In a hierarchal TOC such as the one at the front of this book, entries from each successive style are considered inferior to their predecessors—Heading
1, for instance is superior to Heading.
2, which is superior to Heading.
3. The Level field defines that hierarchy. As each style is moved from the Other Styles list to the Include Paragraph Styles list, InDesign automatically assigns a successive level. If you have reordered the include list by dragging and dropping, you will also need to change the level for each affected style.
Often successive TOC entries are indented as visual cues to the hierarchy. The Include list mimics the hierarchy by indenting styles in the list, giving you a visual representation of how the generated TOC may look. The Level field is nonexclusive, meaning that you are not required to have only a single level 1 or level 2 entry. If you have two or more equally important styles, they can all be set to the same level.
Create PDF Bookmarks. Similar to the way each entry on the page itself will be hyperlinked to its content, InDesign can automatically generate PDF bookmarks, which are hidden until PDF export time. Adding these, and choosing to include bookmarks when exporting to PDF, creates something —a Bookmarks panel sidebar TOC-style list of topics that, when clicked in Acrobat or Adobe Reader, become hot links and jump the reader to the referenced content.
Replace Existing Table of Contents. If you have previously generated and placed a TOC, this option will replace (not update) it. When using the Table of Contents to build separate styles of tables, you want this option unchecked.
Include Book Documents. When generating a TOC for documents managed through an InDesign Book file, check this option to generate a single TOC that points to all instances of the included paragraph styles in all documents within the book.
Run-In By default, all TOC entries are given their own line, with a carriage return at the end. An alternate style is to use the run-in method that, like the same option within an index, only separated by top-level styles. All entries lower in the hierarchy than the top will be placed together in a paragraph (see Figure C).

Include Text on Hidden Layers Choose whether to include in the TOC text on hidden layers.
Numbered Paragraphs New to CS3, this option tells InDesign how to handle paragraphs that have been numbered through the List and Numbering functions. Note that InDesign does not recognize numbers that have been converted to standard text and will include them in the TOC regardless of this setting. The options are as follows:
Include Full Paragraph lists the text in the TOC exactly as it appears on the page, with all text automatic numbering intact. For example, you choose table 9 (if you have in the document) in a chapter whose number is defined within the paragraph Numbering options to include the prefix Table 9 and whose table caption is XYZ or ABC Products will list in both the main story and the TOC as Table 9. XYZ or ABC Products.
Include Numbers Only. ignores the text in the paragraph and includes only the automatic number and any prefixes. For example, to include a TOC entry for Table 9.9 without the table’s caption, choose Include Numbers Only.
Exclude Numbers. includes in the TOC the text of the paragraph but not the automatic number. The TOC output using the above example would therefore be simply KDY Capital- Class Products.
Click OK to return to the document with a loaded cursor ready to place the TOC story, which may be placed and flowed like any story. If any stories in the document contain overset text assigned to the included styles, you will be prompted after clicking OK whether to include those instances in the TOC.
Unlike an index, tables of contents don’t have their own panel. Also unlike an index, you needn’t go through the entire generate process to update a TOC. Instead, select a text frame holding the TOC style, and choose Layout > Update Table of Contents. Shortly, an alert dialog will inform you that the table of contents has been updated successfully. When creating a comprehensive TOC for book documents, it’s often better to place the TOC into its own self-contained document and to add that document to the Book panel.

How to rotate text?

2009-11-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

Ans. There are times when, for creative reasons, you’d like to rotate text without rotating the frame in which it resides. Maybe the frame is a bezier path, or maybe it’s just a rectangle. For whatever reason, however, rotating the frame and its content and then using the direct selection tool to manually restore the rotated frame to its original shape and location are too time- consuming. There is a way to accomplish this task quickly using InDesign’s Pathfinder feature.
Rotating text in frames
We start with our text un-rotated and in a bezier frame.Draw a new frame on top and completely within the bounding box of the text frame, as shown in the screenshot at right. It doesn’t matter how big this new frame is, as long as it fits completely inside the original text frame. Text frame that contains text you want to rotate.
The new frame that you draw on top of the first text frame.
Next, Cut the text from the text frame, and paste it into your new frame. Then rotate the new frame to your desired angle, and select both frames.
Rotating text in frames
Using the Pathfinder palette, click on the Add button to combine the two shapes. When the Pathfinder combines multiple shapes with Add function, the stroke, fill, content, angle of rotation and other properties for the resulting shape are taken from the topmost object.

blog adversiting store review

2009-10-16T09:06:00.000-07:00

Computers. They pretty much dictate our daily lives by now. The plans of the store you bought it in were most likely drafted on one.
Reading this article through this blog/site means that you’re probably a computer junkie, and you’re looking for a way to make your next fix more interesting. While looking through this site, You feel the need to enhance your life on the Internet. You probably spend over half of your day online . . . and you love it.
has lot of information about what you try to see.

What I found on this
A Web site that provides updated headlines and news articles of all aspect of life and also enhance the living status of the user; Also may include journal entries, commentaries and recommendations compiled by the Who's (site owner).

For some people, it’s a release. They might keep a daily diary of how they’re coping with cancer, so they don’t have to constantly tell friends and family the same news over and over, but also so they can say the things that they find too hard to discuss face to face with people, simply, they have name of the site on their lips.

Anyone can find info about Others because they’re isolated from the world—whether physically or mentally. Maybe they live in the middle of war-torn Iraq, like Salam Pax, the “Baghdad Blogger”. Writing their thoughts as a web page helps these people feel like part of something and gives them hope. The has a big network.
blog advertising

There is also a choice of the advertiser that where he/she wants his/her product info should apear, I mean to say this store has several registered and well known blogs to its directory.

Finally I concluded that provides and financial enhancement for both parties (blogger and advertiser) and also provides the relavant information to the user.

blogadversitingstore review

2009-10-16T08:02:00.000-07:00

Computers. They pretty much dictate our daily lives by now. The plans of the store
you bought it in were most likely drafted on one.Reading this article through this blog/site means that you’re probably a computer
junkie, and you’re looking for a way to make your next fix more interesting. While
looking through this site, You feel the need to enhance your life on the Internet. You
probably spend over half of your day online . . . and you love it. www.blogadvertisingstore.com/ has lot of information about what you try to see.
What I found on this http://www.blogadvertisingstore.com/....A Web site that provides updated headlines and news articles of all aspect of life and
also enhance the living status of the user; Also may include journal entries,
commentaries and recommendations compiled by the Who's (site owner).
For some people, it’s a release. They might keep a daily diary of how they’re coping
with cancer, so they don’t have to constantly tell friends and family the same news
over and over, but also so they can say the things that they find too hard to discuss
face to face with people, simply, they have name of the site on their lips.
Anyone can find info about Others because they’re isolated from the world—whether
physically or mentally. Maybe they live in the middle of war-torn Iraq, like Salam
Pax, the “Baghdad Blogger”. Writing their thoughts as a web page helps these people
feel like part of something and gives them hope. The
http://www.blogadvertisingstore.com/ has a big network.blog/'>http://www.blogadvertisingstore.com">blog advertising
There is also a choice of the advertiser that where he/she wants his/her product info
should apear, I mean to say this store has several registered and well known blogs to
its directory.
Finally I concluded that http://www.blogadvertisingstore.com/ provides and financial
enhancement for both parties (blogger and advertiser) and also provides the relavant
information to the user.

ATTRIB: Understand Your Computer

2009-10-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

In Windows, files and folders have certain properties (called attributes) that can be configured. If you right-click on the file or folder's icon, you'll see some check boxes that allow you to change these attributes. The ATTRIB command allows you to do this when the Windows GUI is not available. The possible attributes, which vary based on Windows version and other factors, are as follows:
Read only: When set, this allows the file to be opened and viewed, but not changed or deleted.
Archive: This attribute affects whether the file will be backed up in certain backup schemes using a backup program, or whether running the XCOPY command will copy that particular file. For more information, see Windows Backup help files.

System: This indicates that the file is necessary for some Windows process.
Hidden: Windows hides certain files by default; however, any file can be hidden or displayed by changing this attribute. In 2000 and XP, when the user has enabled the showing of hidden files (in any Windows folder in Tools > Folder Options > View tab), icons for hidden folders and files appear translucent.
The most common repair use for the ATTRIB command is to replace corrupted registry files in 9x).
When run without switches, ATTRIB shows the attributes of each file in the current folder.
ATTRIB displays, sets, or removes the read-only, archive, system, and hidden attributes assigned to files or folders. Used without parameters, ATTRIB displays attributes of all files in the current folder.
Use
ATTRIB uses the plus sign (+) to turn on an attribute, and the minus sign (-) to turn off an attribute. To use ATTRIB, navigate to the folder where the desired file is located, and type the command followed by the filename (with or without wildcards) and the desired parameters and switches.
Parameters:
+r: Sets the read-only file attribute.
-r: Clears the read-only file attribute.
+a: Sets the archive file attribute.
-a: Clears the archive file attribute.
+s: Sets the system file attribute.
-s: Clears the system file attribute.
+h: Sets the hidden file attribute.
-h: Clears the hidden file attribute.
Switches:
/s: Applies the command to matching files in the current folder and all its subfolders.
/d: Applies the command to the entire folder.
Note:
To apply a change to a group of files using wildcard characters, files with their system and/or hidden attributes will not be affected unless you turn off the hidden and system attributes first.
Examples:
To display the attributes of a file named chapter07.doc, navigate to the folder and enter:
ATTRIB chapter07.doc
To assign the read-only attribute to the file, enter:
ATTRIB +r chapter07.doc
To remove the read-only, hidden, and system attributes from all .reg files on the C: drive, including in all subfolders, navigate to the C: drive and enter:
ATTRIB -r -h -s *.reg /s

CHKDSK: Understand Your Computer

2009-10-15T08:19:00.001-07:00

CHKDSK (present in all versions, useful in 2000 and XP only)
CHKDSK is a program used for checking the status of magnetic drives/disks, fixing certain errors, and even recovering readable data from bad disk sectors. It isn't particularly useful in 9x, except for obtaining a report on files on the disk. To correct any disk errors on 9x, run ScanDisk. In 2000, and XP, CHKDSK replaces 9x's ScanDisk. In 2000 and XP, it is easier to run CHKDSK from Windows, so you might as well save the command-line version for when the computer is booted into Safe Mode, Command prompt only. When invoked with the /f and/or /r switches to run on a disk in use, CHKDSK will prompt you to run at the next boot.
Use
Type CHKDSK followed by the drive letter and colon (:), followed by any switches (each switch must be preceded by a space character).
Switches
/c: Use with NTFS-formatted drives only. Skips folder structure cycle checking, resulting in a faster completion.
/f: Fixes file system errors on the disk. If run on a disk currently in use, /f causes CHKDSK to be run on the next boot.
/i: Use with NTFS-formatted drives only. Performs a less exhaustive check of index entries, resulting in a faster completion.
/r: Recovers readable information from bad disk sectors. If run on a disk currently in use, /r causes CHKDSK to be run on the next boot. See the listing for the RECOVER command for another tool that can recover lost data.
/v: Displays the name of each file in every folder as the disk is checked.
/x: Use with NTFS-formatted drives only. Makes all necessary changes to any network-mapped drives in order for CHKDSK to work on them. /x also includes the functionality of the /r switch.
Notes
· Running CHKDSK without the /f, /r, and/or /x switches is usually pointless and might report false disk errors.
· If you are prompted to convert lost chains (unidentified file fragments) to files, do so by typing . You can then find the files in the root folder (C:\ in the C: drive). The files are named File****.chk (the asterisks stand for any character). If the files don't contain any data you need, you can delete them. If you type (answer no) to the prompt, the fragments will be deleted automatically.If you use the /f or /x switch on a very large disk such as 80GB, or one with huge numbers of files (e.g., millions of files), CHKDSK might take several days to complete. CHKDSK cannot be stopped while it is running, so the computer will not be available for this time.