At DEI, we are not only committed to providing superior
prepress solutions, and superior customer service, we are also
committed to helping you leverage and extend your current skillset. Therefore,
we have made a special arrangement with Design
Tools Monthly to
reprint topical tips and tricks. If you ever have any questions
or would like to suggest a tip or trick, please contact
us.
Tip 1
Fix Washed-Out Color Scans
You can punch up the color
of washed-out color
scan without damaging
the detail by making a duplicate
of the layer the image
is on, then setting the
duplicate layer’s blending
mode to “Overlay”. This
increases contrast while
preserving tonal values in
highlights and shadows.
Tip
2
File Sharing with Mac
OS 9 and Mac OS X
Not everyone has made
the switch to Mac OS X
yet, so you may need to
share files between Mac OS
9 and X. Here’s how: In
Mac OS X, launch System
Preferences, then click on
the Sharing PrefPane.
Check Personal File Sharing.
Take a look at your
Network PrefPane to make
sure that AppleTalk is active.
Now your Public
folder is visible on the network.
Other users can
connect to your Mac as a
Guest. They can copy
items out of your Public
folder, and put items in to
your Drop Box. No one
can work with a file on
your Mac unless they copy
it to their Mac.
In Mac OS 9, choose Apple
Menu> Control Panels>
File Sharing. Turn File
Sharing on. Now go to the
Desktop and highlight a folder to share. Choose
File> Get Info
(Command-I) on the folder
you want to share.
Choose Sharing from the
Show: pop up menu.
Check “Share this item
and its contents.”Don’t
change the privileges for
the Owner — that’s you. If
you have previously set up
a group of users, select the
group you want to give access
to, and set their privileges.
Unless security is an
issue, change the privileges
for Everyone to the eyeglasses
and pencil icons
(read and write). Now
guests can connect to your
Mac and access files in
your shared folder as if it
was on their own Mac. If
you need a higher level of
security, use the Users
Control Panel to set up
users and groups with
passwords.
To connect to a shared
Mac from OS X, open your
hard drive, then click the
Network icon in the Side
bar (Panther) or use the
Go menu, then Connect to
Server (Jaguar). Double
click on the Mac you want
to connect to. If the OS 9
Mac is set so that everyone
has access, click the Guest
radio button, then click
OK. Otherwise, enter a
user name and password
that you created in the
Users control Panel on the
OS 9 machine.
To connect to a shared
Mac from OS 9, open the
Chooser, click on Apple-
Share, then highlight the
Mac you want to connect
to and click OK. Click the
Guest radio button, then
Connect.
EXTRA TIP: After you’ve
connected to the shared Mac, Command-Optiondrag
its icon to your desktop
to make an alias. Later,
you can double-click that
alias to re-connect to its
original item.
Tip 3
Better Images &
Screen Shots in PDFs
When you use Acrobat
Distiller to make a low resolution
PDF file, screen
captures in your document
can become blurry because
of Distiller’s downsampling
settings. An easy way
to avoid this for any image
is to save it as an EPS file
before using it in your
document; Distiller won’t
downsample EPS files.
Tip 4
Fix Ugly PDFs
from MS Word
PDFs made from Microsoft
Word documents
can be horrendous —
overlapping type or text
flying off the edge of the
page. One thing to try
when this happens is to
save the document down
to an earlier version of
Word, then reopen it in
your current version of
Word. This can remove
any corrupt formatting
added by newer versions
of Word. Then make a new
PDF from this document.
Tip 5
Copy New Graphics
Into PDFs
Last month we ran a tip
for copying an image into
an existing PDF. Sharon
Steuer reminds us that
there’s another approach:
Place the image into a
page layout document.
Make a quick PDF of the
document (you can simply
use the “Save as PDF” button
in the Print dialog of
Mac OS X). Open both this
PDF and the target PDF in
Acrobat. Using the Object
selection tool select the
object and copy, switch to your target PDF and paste.
Click the cursor on the
image to select it, then
drag it into position. You
may also resize the image
by dragging one of its resizing
handles.
Tip 6
Zoom and Undo
Zooming in InDesign
To quickly view an object
or objects at 200% in In-
Design, highlight the objects
and press Command-
2. This will zoom to 200%
and position those objects
in the center of your window.
(If you don’t highlight
an object first, then
the center of your window
will be zoomed to 200%.)
Second tip: You can toggle
back and forth between
any two views by pressing
Option-Command-2.
Kelby & White,
in InDesign Killer Tips, New Riders
Tip 7 Zooming
in QuarkXPress
In QuarkXPress, press
Command-0 to fit the
page to the window. Press
Command-1 for 100%
view. For other views,
press Control-V to highlight
the View Percentage
area at the bottom left corner
of your document
window, and then type in
any view percentage you’d like. (Or type T to view
your document as
Thumbnails.)
To zoom into a particular
area in a QuarkXPress
document, hold down the
Control key and drag a
marquee around an area
of your page. QuarkXPress
will magnify your view of
that area to fill your monitor,
or to 800%, whichever
comes first. Tip 8
Where
Photoshop Pastes
When you Copy and Paste,
Photoshop always pastes
into the exact center of either
the visible image area
or the center of a selection
if there is one. So, to center
something in your document,
cut it to the Clipboard,
then paste it back
into the image. To center
something in a specific
area of the image, drag a
selection marquee around
that area before pasting.
Tip 9
Draw Straight Lines
with the Lasso
In Photoshop, you can use
the lasso tool to select
straight edges of an object:
Option-click on one end
of an object’s straight
edge, continue to hold
down the Option key and
click where you want the
other end of the straight
segment to be. Keep the
Option key held down to
continue the selection in
straight lines, or release
the Option key while the
mouse button is down
continue the selection using
the regular squiggly
Lasso tool.
Fix
1 Mac OS X 10.3.5 & Expert Fonts
If you use Adobe Expert
fonts in non-Adobe applications
in Mac OS X 10.3.5,
they may disappear in your
existing documents. Apple
changed the way character
maps in PostScript fonts
are read, but since Adobe
applications use their own
font reading and rendering
technology, they exhibit no
problems. However,
QuarkXPress,Microsoft
Word and others have serious
problems. The only solution
is to either revert to
Mac OS X 10.3.4 or convert
the fonts to TrueType format
(which may change
text flow in your documents).
Fix
2 QuarkXPress 6.1 & Printing Fonts
If, when printing from
QuarkXPress 6.1 to a Post-
Script printer, your fonts
print bitmapped, you may
instead need to print to a
PostScript file on your hard
drive, then drag that Post-
Script file onto the printer
icon in your Dock. Explanation:
when QuarkXPress
sends PostScript data directly
to a printer, it does
not send fonts, instead relying
on your Mac’s operating
system to supply
them. Sometimes, that
doesn’t work properly.
However, QuarkXPress
does embed fonts in Post-
Script files it creates. Quark
hopes to fix the problem in
version 6.5, due soon.
Tips and Tricks brought to you courtesy of Design Tools Monthly:
www.design-tools.com
