• If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. (Or, What's all that stuff mean, anyway?)
Ok, raise your hand if this ever happened to you: You're on the phone with an art person (either an Art Director, an ad agency person, Graphic Designer, whatever), and they rattle off something along the lines of, "Ok, bleed is 8.5 x 11.5, trim is 8 x 11, live area is 7 x 10. Allow extra room on the inside for grind, and make sure not to oversaturate your blacks. Your film should be 300 dpi and 133 lpi, right-read, e-down. Average dot gain on a web offset is 20%, so keep that in mind when you design your ad." Ooookay. Greeeeaaaat. I ran into a similar situation, not so much to do with graphic design, but moreso with an e-commerce program that is in the works here at MI. After 10 minutes on the phone with "their" computer people, me and my computer whiz (a consultant with about 700 e-commerce sites under his belt) were both picking our jaws up off the desk. He later confided in me that they didn't know what they were talking about, which was why they rattled off a bunch of terms so quickly. It is my belief that people who try to "impress" you with a lot of big words and anagrams (dpi, lip, etc.) are often trying to make up for a lack of knowledge. That said, you should always question the meanins of things you don't understand, even if it makes you feel "stupid" to do so. If someone can't take the time to explain the full meaning of the terminology to you, it means they probably don't know it either, and you probably don't want to do business that way. So, for those of you who are new (or even rusty) to the terminology, below is a little refresher chart. I designed it as something you can clip out and keep, or even pass along to someone else you might know who can use it. Let me know if there's anything I left out, and I'll cover it next time.

dpi/ppi - dots per inch/pixels per inch – The number of points (dots, pixels) per square inch in your image. As a general rule, your dpi should be 2 or 2.5 times your lpi. For instance, an ad with 133 lpi should be 266-332 dpi. The industry standard for "hi res" is 300 dpi.

lpi - lines per inch – The number of lines in one inch of your image. Our printer, and perhaps others, will not guarantee color correctness if the film is not 133 lpi.

bleed – When an image runs off the edge of the page, that's called "bleeding." Standard distance for bleeding an image is at least .25" over the trim, or finished size, of the piece.

trim – The finished size of the piece.

live area/live copy – Sometimes, when jobs are trimmed, they shift, and the trimming is a little smaller than originally anticipated. For this reason, we recommend that all "live" matter (matter of importance ... text, pricing, etc.) is at least 1" in from trim.

grind – The spine of a book (magazine) is called the "grind" area. The larger a book, the more "grind" space is needed, and the more of your image will disappear into the center.

right read/e-down – This is nothing you should have to worry about. It merely means that the emulsion side of the film for your ad will go down on the printing press. Usually the only times we run into problems with this, we also run into the problem of receiving positive film instead of negative, and the film is coming from Europe or the Far East (Taiwan, China, etc.)

dot gain – This refers to how much the ink is going to "spread" when it hits the paper while printing. When the ink spreads, it means that each dot actually overlaps the dot next to it, causing the image to darken some. 20% dot gain (darkening, in essence) is standard in most web offset (large, 4-color printing presses) printing, variable dependent upon paper stock (weight and gloss/matte).

4-color process/CMYK – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black, the four colors that comprise most of the color magazines and books that you see every day.

RGB – Red, Green, Blue, the 3 colors used for most web graphics.

spot/PMS colors – Pantone Matching System, custom ink colors, not created by using the four-color process. Usually, adding a special PMS color to any print job will cost extra, as that special ink needs to be loaded up prior to printing.

jpg, gif, tif, eps, psd, pdf - These are all file types, with different benefits. I have outlined these in these archived tips. Click here to view different benefits.

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• Vector, who? Bitmapped, what?
Images built in programs like Freehand or Illustrator are vector graphics (built with lines) and those built in Photoshop are bitmap graphics (built with pixels or bits). Vectors can be resized as much as you like when imported into Quark without seriously compromising image integrity. However, resized (particularly enlarged) Photoshop images will become “choppy” looking, or ... bitmapped.

• Ever want to edit your clip art?
To edit a vector graphic in Photoshop (to add things like photos, or give some special effects), use the “place” option as opposed to “open”ing the file. This will let you size the image-to-be-placed prior to converting it to bitmap, allowing for the highest quality reproduction.

• Do you do your own scanning?
You will get better scanned images if you scan them larger (dimensionally) and reduce them afterward. The pixels condense and your image is sharper. Conversely, I've not found a correlation between scanning an image at a higher dpi and reducing it. Also, if you have a scanner that offers the option of calibrating a B/W scan as a color image (The Agfa Arcus line is good for this), definitely do so! That will analyze the color levels of your image and give you a higher-definition B/W scan.

• What does “Doc: ##.##M/##.##M” mean?
On the bottom of your Photoshop document, between the view size % (lower left corner) and the horizontal scroll bar, there are two numbers. The number on the right is your current document size. The number on your left is the size the printer sees. I'm assuming it virtually flattens the image before printing, so that it prints quicker.

• What's the best format to save my file in using Photoshop?
Well, that really depends upon what your goal is, and what image you're talking about. EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) is the only format that supports every color module (bitmap, grayscale, duotone, indexed, rgb, lab, and cmyk). It also happens to import into Quark the fastest and with the least amount of errors (in my experience). EPS is also the only format that will import into your page layout programs (Quark, Pagemaker, etc) as a duotone image. EPS uses a Huffman compression (which is also used by jpg) but doesn't appear to have any lowered quality, as it saves with very minimal compression (which is why it saves so very large). The two other most common formats are JPG and TIFF. JPG (JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group) uses what's called a “lossy” compression format. It will save a file very very small, if you choose a low quality (high compression) jpg format, but you have great “loss” in quality of your image. JPG is great for electronic files for use on the internet (i.e. - on web pages, for sending through e-mail, etc). It also only allows you to save your images as grayscale, rgb, and cmyk, and doesn't import into Quark very well. TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is a 100% “lossless” compression format. It utilizes LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch) compression, which doesn't even touch your pixels, so there is absolutely no compromise in quality. While it can be imported into Quark, it takes forever to import and longer than that to print. TIFF will support all color modules except duotones. When I receive files for editorial use, press releases, and for use in building ads, I convert all of them to EPS. It's the easiest, most convenient, least troublesome format I've found.

• One-step cropping.
Here's the scenario: you have a picture of a house. But what you really want is a close crop of the motorcycle sitting in front of the house. Thing is, you want it to fit in a column width of 2.25”. Ok, well, lets see..crop the image to fit the entire bike, then go to image size and change the width to 2.25”. However, if you know the width and height of the desired final size, you can save yourself a step and a generation of quality. When you click on your crop tool, go to your Options palette and choose “Fixed Target Size”. Then pop in your width, height, and dpi, and it'll crop the image to the exact size you need.

• DCS is B-A-D!
Recently an advertiser sent us an ad with their images saved in a Desktop Color Separation (DCS) format. Unbeknownst to me (and our Pre-Press, it seems) when this file format is run to a rip station, it will run the images’ low-resolution FPOs instead of the beautiful hi-res image you see on-screen. Once our Pre-Press opened the DCS files and re-saved them as eps, the ad looked great. So deep-six the dcs format!

• How do I create the smallest graphic file for web use (Photoshop 3.0-4,0)?
Firstly, it's important to remember that a web browser only displays one image pixel for every screen pixel. That means that even if you set your image for 300 dpi (dots per inch. Also known as pixels per inch, or ppi), the screen will only represent it at 72 dpi. So why put large images on the screen and waste the time of the people trying to download your page? I've been guilty, in the past, of thinking myself clever by creating my graphics with 100 dpi to give them a little boost and make my graphics “look better”. Joke's on me. All my graphics are now 72 dpi. Also, save them as .jpg as opposed to .gif. Not only does it offer you higher compression (smaller sized files), but the quality of the finished file is higher than a .gif. Another tip is to turn off all image previews. To do this, go to Preferences –> Saving Files and set the Image Previews option to “Ask When Saving”. Then when you save your image, uncheck off all Image Previews check boxes.

• What if I'm working with line art or vector graphics?
Ok, .gif is probably best in that situation. Due to the way .gif files index colors, large areas of flat color (similar to those that would be used in line art or text or many vector-based graphics), .gif will, 9 times out of 10, do better at representing the compressed graphic. Color indexing, by the way, works just like an index in a book, where all colors (only up to 256 in .gif files) are assigned to a specific “index” for reference by specific locations or pixels.

• What the heck is an 8-bit image? 24-bit? 4-bit? (you get the idea)...
If you're like me, you just kind of go with the flow on this subject. Someone says they're sending you an 8-bit .gif. Uhhh..ok. Well, keeping with the subject of “Back To School”...remember trigonometry? *whew* I know..but bear with me. Computers are all binary, right? 0s and 1s. Well, you know graphics can't be that easy. It's all a matter of bases. An 8-bit image = 2⁸ = 2 to the eighth power = 2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2 = 256 colors. Subsequently, a 24-bit image means 2²⁴, which is 16 million colors. Ok, maybe this doesn't help much..but then again, you never thought trig class would help in the real world either, right? You just never know...

• Fun Stuff (from Halloween Tips & Tricks)...

• Dressed up as Merlin?
In Photoshop, go to Show Layers. If you go to the Palette Options, you should see different sized thumbnails to indicate the size of the previews in the layers palette. Close out Palette options, then open it again, while holding down the Option key. Voila! Merlin Appears! Click on Begone! Now when you open your Palette Options, Merlin's everywhere.

• All this candy is upsetting my stomach.
In Photoshop, hold down the apple key (Ctrl+Alt on a PC) and go to the Apple menu and “About Photoshop”. The “Strange Cargo” splash screen comes up. Type “burp” (without the quotes)...oh...excuse me!

• I wonder what Halloween is like at Adobe.
In Photoshop (4.0 and 5.0 produce different responses for this one), hold the Alt/Option key down and open the About Photoshop option under the Apple menu. Holding down the Alt key while the credits scroll will make it scroll faster. If you let up it'll scroll slowly. Once the credits have made a complete scroll (you'll know because at the end it gives you “special thanks” as being one of their favorite customers), click the empty space between the Photoshop splash screen image and the words “Adobe Photoshop”. Enjoy the wacky messages that begin to flash in that spot. There are about 60-70 different messages. (For the PC the instructions are “wait several seconds for the credits to begin scrolling. While they're speeding, click the big eye once. Now, while still holding the Alt key, press the Ctrl key. Now let up on that Alt key.)

• Watermark weigh-down...

Having worked in an environment (prior to MI) filled with graphic artists trying to backstab and outdo each other, I fully and completely understand and appreciate the need for the Watermark feature in Photoshop. However, not being in that environment anymore, I don't have a whole lot of need for it, and it slows down Photoshop's performance upon opening a file. So, I suggest that, unless you have a strong need to load Copyright information with all your images, you just yank that Plug-in right out of your Plug-In folder (digiopen.8be in Windows). Besides, if you still want to get Watermark info, you can choose Filter -> Digimark -> Read Watermark to search an image.

• Now, where did I see that image, again?
Got so many images on zips or CDs or your hard drive that you can't remember where you found that one perfect picture of that thingamajig? Have you, like me, tried to keep up with your image libraries by opening alllll the images, placing them all in one document, with their names, and printing out that sheet? Well that's just plain silly and tedious and time-consuming...and yes, I've actually done that. Adobe must have heard my sighs of woe, because now there is a way to create contact sheets of images through Photoshop. Put all the images you want on a particular sheet in one folder. Then, in Photoshop, choose File ‘ Automate ‘ Contact Sheet. Then, when the dialog box pops up, click “Source” and locate the folder with your images. Select it and click “Ok”. Then you get to choose the layout for your contact sheet and click “Ok” again. Now, make sure you have plenty of RAM allocated, if you're indexing a lot of photos, because Photoshop is going to open every single image, create a thumbnail, and place the thumbnail (with the filename as a caption..don’t you just love that?) on a contact sheet. Plus, Photoshop will automatically create as many contact sheets as needed for the images in your selected folder. When Photoshop is done creating its magic, just go ahead and print, and voila..nearly instantaneous photo indexing.

LAYER LUNACY (or, “Which layer was that logo on, again?”)
If you’re like me, you don’t “name” your layers as you build a Photoshop document, like you’re supposed to. Well, after about 40-50 layers (don’t laugh..I’ve done that several times!), you start to lose track of which layer has what item on it, and believe me, that gets frustrating! Adobe heard my cries of frustration. Now, if you place your cursor on the item you want to locate in Layers, then control-option-click (command-control-click on the PC) your mouse, the layer for that item will highlight in your Layers Palette. Supposedly, if there is more than one layer that contain pixels for that spot, a menu will open, showing you all the layers. I haven’t experienced that yet, but merely finding my layer has been enough to satisfy me. Well, for now, anyway...

• When you save your psd files as eps why does the file size get larger?
The reason is most likely because you have Photoshop 2.5 Compatibility turned “on” in your Preferences. To find out, go to File–>Prefs–>Saving Files. There, under Options, you should see “2.5 Compatibility” with a box next to it. If it's checked, un-check it. Your eps files should now save smaller than your psd.

• Do you find the longer you mess with a file, the lower the quality?
It's not just because you've been looking at it too long! Every action you do in Photoshop degenerates the quality of the image (even if you “undo”). What I do to assure the highest quality is have 2 versions of my original file. I mess with one, trying different filters, clips, etc., and write down on a piece of paper what effects I finally decide to use. Then I go to the untouched version and do those things in the fewest number of steps.

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• Want to drop out a background without messing with clipping paths?
The “easiest” way to do this is with the magic wand. I put “easiest” in quotes because that's kind of a double-edged sword in Photoshop. If you have something like a studio shot, with a background that is solid or at least almost equal tones and a different color or tone than your main image, you can use the magic wand to select it. Did it select too much? Too little? As a general rule, shift is the “add” button and option is the “subtract”. If you want to select more, hold the shift and click the magic wand on the next section you want to choose (shift and option also work with the lasso). Once you've completely selected the background you want to delete, simply...delete it! Not sure you want it gone forever? Use your layer mask instead.

• Has your clipped image now gotten a choppy look to it?
Ok, then undo what you just deleted and go to Select –> Feather... and then choose a pixel amount. For smaller images I usually choose 1 or 2, otherwise your image begins to look blurry. For larger images (covers, openers, etc.) I may sometimes go as high as 3 or 4. It really depends on what effect you're looking for. Mess with the select and feather options..they’re a lot of fun! And you can get some great blends and fade ins/outs that way.

• Speaking of clipping paths...
Some of you, I've noticed, have lots of images you import to Quark and place on a colored background, so you have to clip every single image (unless you're importing clip art or some other vector graphic). My suggestion to you would be to figure out what layout you want, and create your entire ad in Photoshop (except for the text..bitmapped text doesn't run to film as well as text created in Quark). Use your layers! I've created ads that have upward of 60-70 layers in them. Then what I do is keep a copy of that layered file, in case I need to move some of the images around at the last minute. It's a lot easier to drop out a background of something difficult like a wire wheel (for example) than to create a clipping path around it!

• If it seems "too good to be true", it probably is! Or, The "Cheater's" Clipping Path..
This tip is taken from my February 2001 "LESSONS from MOM". If you've been receiving my Tips & Tricks for a while, you know how much I hate clipping paths. They're troublesome, a pain in the neck, and too time-consuming. Sure, they allow you to do cool stuff in page layout, but it's not worth the tradeoff to me. Oh, I know ... some of you have to use them, particularly if you're putting together something like a catalog, where your pages might have colored or patterned backgrounds. If you're one of those poor, unfortunate souls, here's a tip for you that may save you time and money at pre-press time: do not use the option of creating a clipping path from a selection in Photoshop! I know it looks easy, but please remember what mom said! Here's the easiest way to explain this: Say you have a picture of a tire that you want a clipping path around. now, when you manually create that path, you have what, maybe 5, 10 anchor points at the most? Well, when you use the magic wand to select the background behind the tire, select the inverse and then give Photoshop the command to create a clipping path from your selection, you are going to end up with 200, 300, maybe even 500 anchor points! Now, while this will normally give you a nice close clip, and will 99% of the time print fine on your little desktop printer, your service bureau is going to have a hell of a time reading that file. Especially if you do all your clips like that in a large document! Linotronic equipment has gotten better since I worked with it 5+ years ago, but it's not a miracle worker. It has to process all of those points. What happens is, if it doesn't crash the lino, it will gum up the works so that your job never runs to film. At this point, your pre-press folks have to go into your file and start manually removing some points from your files ... at $60/hour, if you're lucky! Save yourself the headache ... don't use this option!

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• Uh-oh. Deleted something a few actions ago and want it back now? (versions before 5.0)
Unfortunately, you only get one “undo” with Photoshop, as opposed to the number you get in Freehand (and most likely Illustrator, I'm guessing). However, when you are “erasing” things from a layer, you may want to try applying a layer mask instead. In the layers palette (View –>Show Layers if your Layers Palette is not visible), in the lower left-hand corner is a box with a dotted-line circle. That's your layer mask. Click on it, and then mess around with things like the paintbrush and try painting and then erasing in that mask layer to see what happens. The fun part of masks is that you can erase and draw as often as you like, but if you throw the mask away, your image is still intact!

• The secret use for the “New Layer” icon in Photoshop:

Sure, you can use it to create a new blank layer. If you want to be conventional. But did you know that you can also duplicate an existing layer quickly and easily using the New Layer icon in your Layers palette of Photoshop? It's true (I discovered it by accident). Usually I would use the option “duplicate layer” and then wait as it churned through its 7-second process (I know, I know..you say 7 seconds isn't much..but my patience level is pretty thin by the end of a production period). So, click on the layer you want to duplicate, hold down the mouse button and drag it to the New Layer icon (looks like a little page) at the bottom of your Layers Palette. Voila..a duped layer in about a second.

• A new digital whiteout:

As you know, when you have a photo in Photoshop which has a white background, if you want to place a background image or solid color layer behind it, you need to get rid of the white. There are a multitude of ways to do this. 1) Use the magic wand to select pixels of similar value and then delete. But of course if your image has some light spots around its perimeter, you know that this can remove things you don't want removed. 2) Select the entire image, then use the selective color option to choose everything white in the picture, then delete it. The problem here is that if your image has any white in it, that will be deleted as well (this can cause some very cool effects if you feel like playing). Well, here's a new option I just learned about. About 3-4 months ago I sent out a Tips & Tricks sheet on layer modes (multiply, screen, exclusion, etc.). So on a layer where, for instance, you have a logo with white around it and you want to get rid of the white so the image on the layer below can show through, you can merely choose the logo layer and choose Darken or Multiply, so that only the dark pixels of the logo appear. I'm not used to this option, so I'm not proficient with it, but go ahead and play. At the very least you might discover some cool new effects.

• If only michelangelo could have created his own brushes...

If you haven't already, you should load the extra brushes in Photoshop (Load Brushes in your Brushes Palette). Photoshop comes with a bunch of extra ones that don't load with the standard install. And if the eye, the deer, the stars, snowflakes and the duck aren't enough, you can make brushes your own shape. Merely create the shape (or even picture) you want, then select the shape and choose “Define Brush” from the Brushes Palette. You'll see your new brush show up there. This is particularly useful for repeating patterns or for some image that you use a lot (perhaps something with sequins or buttons). As I always say, the most important thing to remember: Play!

• Can't remember how you created that one great effect?
Photoshop 4.0 incorporated an ingenious thing called “actions”. Well, maybe they were there before, but I just “discovered” them in 4.0. Now what I do, even when I'm just messing around, is open that actions panel (Window –> Show Actions) and start recording what I'm doing. It’s a click of a button, just like the record button on a VCR, and it records everything you do (including actual settings, if you’re doing things like adjusting levels or color controls, etc). If you decide you don’t like it, just click the stop icon in the Actions palette and throw the action away. It’s that easy! You can also expand the action and see every single move, as opposed to just the action name. You do this in the same way you would view a folder’s contents on your desktop when looking at a folder as “View –> By Name”. To the left of some actions you see a little box. Sometimes it’s empty, sometimes it has a little box icon in it. Where you see that icon, when you play that action, the action will stop on that step and ask you to enter something manually (you can toggle this on and off). This may be color levels, or a name (if you’ve given a “save” command within the action), etc. The actions are very handy for repetitive tasks..play around with them!

• Recording your favorite actions:
Every once in a while I stumble upon a real winning combination of effects. I’ve gotten in the habit now of recording every new set that I do, even if I don’t want to save it forever, because I may apply 10-12 different patterns or series of effects, and if I like the outcome, I want to be able to replicate it. If you’re not familiar with your actions palette, take a minute to open it (Window–>Show Actions) and try out some of the basic ones that come with Photoshop. To record your own, click on the icon showing a piece of paper (when you hold your mouse icon over it it’ll show “create new action”). You’ll then get a box prompting you to name your action, at which point you can even assign a keystroke to it (F1 or whatever). When you click on “record” it will record everything you do from there on out. To stop recording, it’s just like a tape recorder. Click on the red “stop” button.

• All talk and no action?
That shouldn’t be a problem anymore. If you don’t use Photoshop's Actions palette, it’s something you really ought to look at. It’s particularly helpful if you want to apply the exact same effect to a whole bunch of different images. You can record your own action (as explained step-by-step in a previous ‘Tips & Tricks’) or use some of the actions Adobe included with Photoshop. Also, if you’re web savvy, there’s another new place to find 4 free sets of actions (for both the Mac and the PC) including cool stuff like smoke, waterfall, orange peel, snow top, rain, fog, underwater, frosty lining, pool tiles, steely glint, metal stamp, liquid metal and tons more. Just go to http://www.elated.com/toolbox/actionkits and it’s all self-explanatory.

• If only we could erase parts of our own backgrounds so easily...
Photoshop 5.5 offers a new tool called the Background Eraser tool, which allows you to erase pixels of similar color (wider range of colors with a larger tolerance number and smaller range with a lower tolerance number). Similar to using the eyedropper tool to pick a color you’d like to use elsewhere in an image, you double-click on the Background Eraser tool to open the Tool Options palette. Then set the Tool Options to “Discontiguous”. This will allow you to erase the sampled color wherever it occurs in that layer. Enter your tolerance (experiment with this to see what works best for your current need) and choose “Once” from the Sampling list box. Now you’re good to go..give it a try...see what it erases and what it doesn’t. You have your history palette for multiple undos so don’t worry about making a “mistake”. Relax..play..erase to your heart’s content.

• The manual I read explained “Addition” like this:
Resulting brightness value = (Target + Source) ÷ Scale + Offset

Ooookay. You all understood that, right? Cool..now can you explain it to me?

I’ll explain the “math behind the images” in my own way, and hope it’ll be more helpful to you than the above. Firstly, the way you need to think of this is in terms of two layers. Layer A and Layer B. If you place Layer A above Layer B, you will have an image whose predominance (in most instances) is B. The opposite is also true; if you place Layer B above Layer A, it will usually result in a combined image of predominantly A. So your bottom layer will almost always be the predominant image in applying these effects. For all of my examples, I am going to assume that Layer B is on top, therefore Layer A is usually going to be the predominant image. Apply the following characteristics either by double-clicking on Layer B or changing the upper left-hand box in your layers palette. These are effects applied to Layer B. That said, let’s dive in.

Normal: This is as it sounds. In this instance, you will see only Layer B and none of Layer A. That is, unless you change its opacity (that % number in the upper right-hand corner of your Layers palette). This will average the pixels between the layers.

Dissolve: To me this gives the appearance that ants have been eating the edges of an image. Little tiny chunks start to disappear. Even though the claim is that it randomizes pixels, I still say that somewhere deep inside the computer is a chorus of “The ants go marching one by one...”

Multiply: The computer actually multiplies the pixels of both layers. The best way to imagine this is like the computer is holding two slides, one right behind the other, up to the sunlight. Since light has to travel through both images, you will see a combined, darker set of pixels.

Screen: Using the same two slides, place each in a separate projector and aim both images at the same screen. Seemingly the opposite of multiply, you’ll see a lighter combined set of pixels. Ever see that series of pictures that show movement, like a man jumping from one place to the next, where there are 10-20 images, each a little further along in the jump? That’s a good use of the “screen” function: to show movement or action in overlapping, screened images.

Overlay, Soft Light and Hard Light: Here’s where multiplication of pixels really shines. There are those that say that Overlaying is the best blending tool that Photoshop has. I’m not proficient enough in every aspect of the program to be able to say something like that. All three of these modes multiply the dark colors of Layer B and screen the light colors of Layer A. They all do it to a varying degree, however. Overlay emphasizes the layered (composite) pixels, while hard and soft light favor the segregated layered pixels. A good use for these modes is if you have, say, your company logo that you want to place on a photo of fabric. Make your logo Layer A, and the fabric Layer B. Then apply one of these modes to Layer B. Mess with the soft and hard lighting to see what contrast works best for you. As an added “emblazoned” effect, duplicate Layer B. It kind of drives the effect home.

Color Dodge: Also known as the Photoshop Bleach (at least, to me). When you use this mode, Layer B becomes a “brightness value multiplier”. Lighter colors produce the best effects while black does absolutely nothing.

Color Burn: In essence, the exact opposite of color dodge. It darkens the lighter colors in Layer B and gives an overall “darker” cast to your image. Again, lighter colors produce the best effects while black does nothing.

Darken and Lighten: Kind of like a “smart” color burn, darken will apply the colors on Layer B only if they are darker than the corresponding pixels directly below on Layer A. Subsequently, lighten will apply the colors on Layer B only if they are lighter than the corresponding pixels on Layer A. This employs that old mathematical idea of <> (is less than, is greater than). See? They told you you’d use this stuff after high school!

Difference and Exclusion: The coolest modes for “way out there” effects. Also the most difficult, in my opinion, to grasp enough to have a practical application. If used in a grayscale image, it’s easy to understand as almost a complete inversion of pixels (i.e., white becomes black, and vice versa). However, when you add color it becomes a tad more tricky. Difference inverts Layer A according to the brightness values in Layer B. Exclusion does the same thing, except it takes the medium-colored pixels and grays them, so the contrast is less (kind of like a hard light vs. soft light thing). You may end up with some funky colors. You might even like it. You’ll definitely have to play with it to get the full effect.

Hue, Saturation, Color and Luminosity: All 4 affect only color images, and won’t even work with grayscale images. They are also, in my opinion, the most subtle of all the effects (besides Normal, obviously) mentioned in this issue of Tips & Tricks. They are best used to give a kind of “gloss” or “matte” coating to an image. In the hue mode, the hue values from Layer B are mixed with the saturation and luminosity values from Layer A (h=hB+sA+lA ??). In saturation, the saturation value of Layer B is mixed with the hue and luminosity values from Layer A. When altering the color mode, the hue and saturation of Layer B are combined with the luminosity values of Layer A. Luminosity uses the lightness values from Layer B and combines them with the hue and saturation values from Layer A.

Okay, so maybe this wasn’t as math-laden as originally threatened. But it did make you think, right? As with most effects in Photoshop, the best way to learn more about how they can apply to your images and projects is to get in there and play. Experiment, mess around. I often stay late into the night just “playing” (oops, don’t tell the boss that!) and learning how I can do a better, more thorough job. Please let me know if you come up with some winning combination that I should know about, and have fun!

• If you lost something, retrace your steps. (Or, Reverting beyond the history palette)
(More LESSONS from MOM). I'm not the "most tidy" person in the world. Not that I'm a slob or anything, I just have a hard time keeping my office neat. Or my car. Or my bedroom. Ok, well, pretty much everything in my life is messy. What I'm getting at is, I lose things fairly often. It's a character flaw, I know it. Sometimes in the course of looking for something, I misplace other things. There are times where this characteristic carries over into my designs. Sometimes a Photoshop design just gets out of control ... I place things, accidentally delete them, mess other stuff up by accident – sometimes it's downright ugly. That's why I was so glad Photoshop came up with the History palette. But, in keeping with the "too good to be true" edict, that doesn't always cut it. Sometimes I'm working with a huge image (150-200 mb) and I screw up so badly, I just want to start over. It's a pain in the neck to wait for the file to close, then re-open the original file. Wanna know the shortcut for reverting back to your original image? Sure, you can go to file –> revert. But then you still have to wait for your file to re-open. Instead, scroll to the top of your History palette. At the top you'll see a thumbnail of that original image. Click it once. Voila! You have just instantly "retraced your steps."

• Play Nice! (Or, Merging Layers without upetting the order.)
(Still more LESSONS from MOM). Ok, I admit it. I was a bully. I was a big tomboy, out in the country, and I used to make a habit out of knocking the boys down during our spirited games of "King of the Hill." In fact, quite recently an old grade school friend of mine e-mailed me and asked if I'm still running guys into poles and chipping their front teeth (his still have the chunk missing). Sheesh! A girl just can't live down a reputation! At any rate, my mom was constantly havign to tell me to play nice. As some of your may have noticed, sometimes the layers in Photoshop don't exactly play nice, either. You can have some effects that, when flattened, come out way differently than you originally intended. It really compromises the integrity of your image to flatten and "udno" your image just to preview it. So, how do you get those layers to "play nice?" Here's the trick! Make all the layers you want in your final image visible (that means, click on the little "eye" icon in the lefthand column of your Layers Palette. That means that layer is visible). Then select all (Apple-A on the Mac. Probably Control-A for you PC folks) and press Apple-Shift-C (Ctrl-Shift-C for the PC people) to copy all visible layers information. Then, paste (Apple-V on the Mac, Ctrl-V on the C). Voila! An entire "flattened" layer, with all your other layers still intact. And no one even had to lose any teeth ...

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• When you absolutely MUST E-Mail a 4-color image:
Excluding the new PDF option (which I attended a conference on in mid-March of '99..so I’ll share more info on that in the next Tips & Tricks), there is a sneaky way you can send a fair-sized (my example is a 31mb, 8.5x11”, CMYK document) 4-color image via e-mail. First, convert your image to RGB. This reduced my document to about 21mb. Then, go into your “Channels” palette and where you see the little right-pointing arrow, click your mouse on it, hold it down, and a window pops up. In that window, choose “split channels”. This will make your document into 3 separate documents (one for Red, one for Green, one for Blue..make sense?) Each of these files, in my sample, are about 8mb. Then save each channel separately. Make sure to name it with some indication of which is which color. I saved each as a jpg with compression setting of 8 (which is a higher quality and lower compression), and each file saved as just over 1mb. This means you can e-mail each channel in a separate e-mail, and when the receiver gets them, they choose “merge channels” in the channels palette, match up each file with it’s correct color channel, convert back to CMYK, and voila! There’s your original file. Note: In order for this to work, your 4 separate files MUST be grayscale and they MUST be flattened (you can tell if a file is flattened by looking at its layer name. If the layer name is italicized, it's flattened. Merely the name of "Background" does not guarantee it's flattened.)

• Running 2-color Images through a RIP..and keeping them 2-color.

It seems I’ve been under a false impression regarding duotone eps files all these years. I thought that, if you saved a Photoshop file as a duotone eps, it would go through the RIP process as an actual duotone. Silly me! Recently I learned that the RIP automatically converts the duotone to a 4-color image. Dismayed, I contacted our Pre-Press service bureau, and got the correct instructions for providing an actual 2-color image for RIPing. Below are those instructions, using a Cyan-Black 2-color image as an example.

Starting with a duotone image of cyan and black:

• Image –> Mode –> Duotone
This brings up the “Duotone Options” menu where you will see something like:

Type: Duotone
Ink 1: {Curves Box} {Color Box} {Color Name}
Ink 2: {Curves Box} {Color Box} {Color Name}
Ink 3: {Curves Box} {Color Box} {Color Name}
Ink 4: {Curves Box} {Color Box} {Color Name}

Click on Ink 1’s {Curves Box}. This brings up the “Duotone Curve” menu. Click on the “Save” button and save as “Black Curves” (assuming Ink 1 is Black). Do the same for Ink 2 {Curves Box}, saving as “Cyan Curve” (assuming Ink 2 is Cyan).

• Image –> Mode –> Grayscale
In grayscale mode, under the Channels Palette (Window –> Show Channels), you should have only one channel – black. In your image, select all (cmd-a) and copy (cmd-c).

• Image –> Mode –> CMYK Color
Under the Channels Palette you should have 5 Channels – one for each color and one
composite CMYK channel.
– Click on the Magenta Channel, select all, and delete. Do this in the Yellow Channel as well.
– Click on the Cyan Channel and paste (cmd-v. This will paste the channel you just copied in grayscale mode). While in the Cyan Channel, go to
Image –> Adjust –> Curves (cmd-m). In the Curves Menu, click on “Load...” At this point, you will load the “Cyan Curve” that you saved when your image was a duotone. Follow that same process for the Black Channel as you did for the Cyan Channel, loading the “Black Curve” when adjusting the curve levels. Click on the CMYK Channel to turn all 4 color Channels on.

You now have a 2-color image that has 2 empty channels (Magenta and Yellow) and will truly RIP as a duotone.

** Note: Saving & Loading of Curves is only necessary when you have altered the default curve in setting up your duotone image. If you are not familiar with these options, you should Save & Load curves merely as a safety precaution.

• Applying color to specific tones:
Ok, so you’ve got this great pattern on a layer. It’s wild, crazy, and not at all “regular”. Now you’d like all of the highlights in the pattern to be green, and all the shadows to be gray (I’m using this example, because if you watch for the 1999 Spring Catalog Preview opener in the April issue, this is the effect I used..and I love it!) In my patterned layer, I grabbed a plant off my desk and scanned in the leaves. I worked about 3 different scans together and got great ivy patterns. Once that layer was complete, I duped it and hid the duped layer for the time being. Back in the original layer, I applied the Plaster effect to the entire layer. That done, I turned the duped layer back on. Now, since the leaves were naturally green, this helped. But I didn’t want the entire leafy background green. Only the most predominant leaves. I wanted those to really stand out. So, to the original layer (with the non-plaster effect), I worked in a new effect I recently learned: The “Blend If” layer option (for lack of a better term). What you do is double-click on the layer in your layers palette. It brings up the “layer option” window. There, I changed the opacity to 30 (which, as you know, you can do without bringing up this pop-up box by changing the percentage in the upper right-hand corner of your main Layers palette), and fiddled with the “Blend If” numbers on the bottom. If I’ve learned anything in Photoshop, it’s the importance of playing and experimenting. With my little sliders, I ended up with a setting of “Blend If: Gray” - This Layer, 58 and 255; Underlying, 29 and 247. Make sure and put a check mark in the “preview” box of this pop-up, so you can see what’s happening to your image. While I can’t really tell you why this does what it does, I ended up with all of my “important” leaves highlighted in green and most of the background predominantly gray. I can’t explain it, I just look forward to using it more.

• CMYK Incongruencies between Pagemaker and Photoshop:
Tips and Tricks are short this month. Mainly it's a warning (hey, it's a picture of a skunk...how much more of a warning do you need?) There is a seemingly sporadic incongruency between Pagemaker PDF files and Photoshop 6.0. I've only noticed it recently with one advertiser's ads, and can't seem to duplicate the problem to track down where it lays, but here's what happened: This advertiser happens tobe the first I ever received a PDF from, a couple of years ago, so this problem can't be chalked up to inexperience. Their ad came in and I, as usual, opened the PDF in Photoshop to convert it to a tif (which imports into Quark 4.0 the nicest). I did so, noting no unusual problems, and the ad ran. Uh, let me rephrase that. The ad ran ... wrong. Upon further inspection, when the ad opens in Photoshop (with any color management system chosen), the CMYK values changed between 2% and 15% for each color! That means any of the 4 colors could vary 15%! When I turned the color management system off completely, the values changed again, but unfortunately at that point we were unable to locate the original file to see if they were the original Pagemaker CMYK values. As I said, I've been unable to replicate the situation. When I asked the advertiser to send me another Pagemaker PDF file with some test color blocks, it opened up fine in any color management or even with the color management turned off. So, what's my solution? I don't particularly have one at this point. Unfortunately, more times than not, these are trial & error situations and it takes me some time to find out the answer (Adobe has been no help). What I recommend is this: If you send me an ad as a PDF that was built in Pagemaker, and you have something that needs to be a specific CMYK value (company logo, product label, etc.), send me a short note along with the ad to that effect. That way I can make sure the CMYK values are correct and that your ad looks exactly as it should. As soon as I find a solution or explanation, I'll let you know!

• Color Incongruencies Follow-Up: Photoshop 6.0 and PageMaker 6.5 – Not exactly a marriage made in Heaven
In my last Tips & Tricks, I told you of a potential color discrepancy between Photoshop and PageMaker. I got a couple of responses to my quandary, but unfortunately none of the suggestions fixed the problem. So, thanks to the perseverance of the client whose ad first brought the problem to light, a partial “solution” has been reached. But, like a relationship between a mother hen and a litter of kittens, it ain’t easy! Here’s a recap of the problem, and the “solutions” that were found:

Problem: PDFs created in Pagemaker 6.5, which are then opened in Photoshop 6.0, regardless of color management (or even if color management is turned OFF), don’t retain their color values. The same applies to B/W (grayscale) images, unless they’re opened a particular way.

Solutions: Color Images: The only way to successfully export a color image from PageMaker, which will be opened in Photoshop, is to turn the color management off in both programs, and the PDF must be saved in CMYK.
B/W (Grayscale) Images: These files can only be exported to a PDF in PageMaker if the color management is turned on. If you use CIE in your export options, 100% black will remain 100% black in Photoshop (Photoshop color management can be on or off, no matter). If you export the image with RGB checked, the black opens in Photoshop grayscale mode at 100%. However, if you export the photo with CMYK checked, the black opens at only 91%. And if you open the pdf in Photoshop as CMYK or RGB and then convert it to grayscale, the black will only be 91% as well. This is what I usually did, because I usually don’t know if an ad is coming in as color or b/w, so I figure, “open it in color, then if it’s just grayscale, convert it in Photoshop.” I won’t make that mistake anymore! I think it must be easier to be a chicken-mothered kitten! (This last comment made more sense with the photo that accompanied it – a mother hen sitting atop some baby kittens ... e-mail me if you'd like the picture or the true story ... or both!)

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• Create a Web Photo Gallery...in under 2 minutes! (Photoshop 5.0-5.5)
Want to show someone a gallery of images? Here’s the time-saving way to do it in Photoshop. This will create a thumbnail index page, individual jpg image pages and navigable links.

1. Choose File > Automate > Web Photo Gallery

2. For Source, click Choose to specify the folder containing the images you want to export. Select “Include All Subdirectories” to include images inside any subfolders within the chosen folder.

3. For Destination, click Choose to specify where you want your HTML files.

4. Under Site, enter the information that you want to appear on the gallery pages:
• For Site Name, enter the title of the website.
• For Photographer, enter the authorship credit.
• For Date, enter the date you want to appear on the website.

5. Specify Thumbnails options:
• For Size, choose the size of thumbnail preview you want to use.
• Select Use Filename As Caption to label the images with their original filenames.

6. If you want to resize the source images for placement on individual image pages, select “Resize Gallery Images”, then:
• For Size, choose an option from the menu or your own resize % value.
• For Quality, choose a value, keeping in mind the rules of jpeg compression, that the higher the number, the better the quality, lower the compression and larger the file size.

7. Click OK to create the HTML gallery pages. Photoshop will create the following files in your destination folder:
• A gallery homepage, index.htm. You can view this with any browser
• JPEG images, inside an images subfolder.
• HTML page files, inside a pages subfolder.
• JPEG thumbnail images, inside a thumbnails subfolder.

Voila! Make sure to check out the sample on the site mentioned above..you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Waaaay cool!

• GIF and PNG-8 - What Color Table do I use ??
This is always a problem for me. How do I know what colors to use? Won’t it look different in Mac browsers and PC browsers? Help! Well, here we go..a simplified way to look at color tables when saving web graphics:

• Perceptual - Creates a custom color table by giving priority to colors for which the human eye has greater sensitivity.

• Selective - Creates a color table similar to the Perceptual color table, but favors broad areas of color and the preservation of Web colors. This color table is the default in Photoshop and usually produces images with the greatest color integrity.

• Adaptive - Creates a custom color table by sampling colors from the spectrum appearing most commonly in the image. For example, an image with only the colors green and blue produces a color table made primarily of greens and blues. Most images concentrate colors in particular areas of the spectrum.

• Web - Uses the standard 216-color color table common to the Windows and Mac OS 8-bit (256-color) palettes. This option ensures that no browser dither* is applied to colors when the image is displayed using 8-bit color. (This palette is also called the Web-safe palette). Using the Web palette can create larger files and is recommended only when avoiding browser dither is important to you.

• Custom - Preserves the current perceptual, selective, or adaptive color table as a fixed palette that does not update with changes to the image.

• MacOS - Uses the Mac OS system’s default 8-bit (256 color) color table, which is based on a uniform sampling of RGB colors.

• Windows - Uses the Windows system’s default 8-bit (256 color) color table, which is based on a uniform sampling of RGB colors.

So hopefully, after assessing your own personal web needs, you’ll be able to figure out which format you should use when saving your web graphics. However, you should always preview your images prior to publishing them on the web. Luckily, you can do that right from Photoshop. Choose File > Save For Web. Select your web browser from the box in the bottom right corner of the dialog box. Photoshop will create a temporary HTML file containing the graphic, launch your browser, and display the graphic.

* Browser Dither is when a browser looks at two colors right next to one another and tries to manually create a third color to blend the harsh line between the one color and the other. Often times you can’t even really notice a dither, and I can’t imagine any instance, excepting a very high-quality, large image whose integrity you want to remain intact, where you would be too worried about the browser dither.

• I Need a Graphic under 8k...Do I Have to keep Guessing Which Web Graphic setting to use ?
Nope! Once again, Adobe thought of this for us. Choose File > Save For Web, then choose “Optimize To File Size” in the dialog box. Then choose “Auto Select GIF/JPEG” and enter the file size you’d like (in my example, 8). Photoshop will keep trying until it finds the best possible setting that is under your required file size.

• Web Design/Search Engine Tips:

You’ve heard it before – “ You can have the best looking site in the world, but if no one visits it, it’s worthless.” We all know it’s true. While I think it’s a good idea to advertise your site (warning, advertising plug coming up) in something like MI’s Website Preview section, we all know that’s not enough. I’ve been battling search engines for a couple years now, and if you, like me, just kind of fell into this website design stuff, you probably don’t have time to research all of this. I am extremely lucky and got turned on to a phenomenal guy named Tom who runs a company called Weboshawa a couple years ago (if anyone needs any help, he is extremely reasonable and easy to work with. You can visit his site at www.weboshawa.com, or reach him at tom@weboshawa.com. He’s been a lifesaver for MI’s site.) However, it’s good to know some things about the hidden html of your site with regards to what different search engines look for, so here are some quick guidelines:

• The main challenge in designing a website is remembering that, while it’s important to be aesthetically pleasing to your audience, it’s even more important to please the search engines – and that ain’t easy! The people are forgiving ... the search engines aren’t.

• It used to be that <keywords> were considered the hot thing. From what I understand, the only main engine that looks at keywords anymore is AltaVista, so it’s good to have them, but don’t depend only upon them.

• The gospel according to Excite is the <title> of your page (also to Google and some others), so don’t make the mistake I did for a long time: Don’t make your <title> just your company name unless it also explains what you do. Ours now reads, “Motorcycle Industry magazine - The #1 Powersports Industry Trade Publication!” Make it as long as it needs to be. It will only display about the first 45 characters, anyway.

• Many of the search engines pick up the first paragraph of the <body> content (or text) on the page. It’s recommended that you don’t confuse it with “last updated on” and counters, etc. You should just have a paragraph that explains what you do, what you’re about, what you offer, etc. Also, according to Tom, you shouldn’t try to “cheat” (like I did, of course) and put your text in the same color as your background, so that it’s there, but not seen by the viewer. I guess the engines know you’re cheating and you get penalized. So much for me thinking I was a genius!

• Tom recommended a line for my html that goes like this: <meta name=”robots” content=”index, follow”>, which tells the robots to follow links on the page and to index the pages (doesn’t work with all of them, he says, but it works well with the ones it does work with).

• Some search engines don’t follow graphic links, so that when it gets to the home page, it sees only that page, even if you have your entire 200-page catalog linked from that page. So, you won’t get ranked very high, because it lists you as a site with only one page. There are two ways around this: 1) add textual links to the bottom of your page, which I think is a good idea, anyway, in case someone is using an ancient browser that has troubles displaying your graphics. 2) add hidden <a href> links within your html that people can’t see but search engines can.

Annotations

If any of you use Adobe Acrobat (the writer, not just the freeware reader) you are familiar with the ability to embed notes and other things into your document. Now you can do it in Photoshop! Notes and audio clips to boot! And not only that, if you save your document as a pdf, those with the Acrobat program can view/hear them as well.

Perspective Cropping

Nope, nothing to do with farming. Have you ever cropped an image 37 times just to get the right look? Well, Adobe felt your pain, and now when you use the cropping tool, it darkens (or, grays) the part that’s being cropped out, which gives you a lot better idea of what exactly you’re cropping to.

Reorganized and Expanded Print Options

Ok, and if you’ve cropped 37 times to get it right, how many times have you tried to print something that’s too big, so you keep doing the whole percentage dance? You try 95% and it still says “Some parts of this image may be cropped...” so you try 94%...93%...92%..etc. Well, now not only does the “Print” command incorporate many of the “print setup” options, but you can adjust and preview the position and scale of an image prior to printing. Yay!

Expanded File Format Support

A dream come true! You’ve worked on, say, the cover of a magazine (an ad, catalog cover, whatever) for about one week, the file has 53 separate layers, many with different effects and transparencies. On the last day, it’s done, ready, complete...well, in your mind, anyway. It still needs to be approved and go through proofing. So, in order to print a proof, you flatten your layers and save a copy as a tif, which is a nice lossless compression, and then print it. Now, you did save that tif as a copy, right? Not over your original!? Your face loses all color and with shaky fingers you open the only version of the project that appears in this folder. Oh no..no way...no nonononooooo. Yep. The only version left is the flattened one. This is kind of akin to that whole “showing up for a test naked” dream, right? Well you can now save a tif file and preserve layers and transparency (and something called “multiresolution pyramid data”..which I have no idea about) within your document!

Enhanced Layer Management

Here’s another scenario: You have that same 53-layered image, and you need to move the layers that pertain to the very upper-right corner. Did you remember to link them? Can you squint your eyes enough to find them in the layer thumbnails? Well now you can create Layer Sets, to group layers together under what looks like a little folder icon in your Layers Palette. Problem solved! Ah, and the thing that I do most often and that drives me out of my ever-lovin’ mind: Layer 1 has a picture of a person’s face. Layer 2 has the mustache you want to add. Layer 3 makes his eyes blue. You create Layer 4 so that you can give him more hair. However, you, for whatever reason (perhaps to copy a pattern of his hair so that you can make more), click on Layer 1 and forget to click on Layer 4 before you start drawing in a bunch of fake hair. After about 20 minutes later, you look at it and decide Naaah, you don’t like the look, let’s trash Layer 4...but oops! You did all of this on Layer 1 by accident, and you did waaaay too many actions to go back in the history palette. I have had to start over on more images than I care to remember, due to making this stupid mistake. But no more! Now you can Lock your Layers. Any layer you don’t want to edit, throw a lock on it and voila! No more accidental editing. Also, you can now copy effects from one layer to another, so that you don’t have to record the actions unless you want to use them in a completely different image.

Vectors!

That’s right, Photoshop now has fully supported vector graphics! It’s obviously not quite as extensive as Illustrator, but I bet you it won’t be long until they roll the two pretty much together into one kick-ass, all-encompassing program. Pardon me while I drool.

Expanded Text Features

This is probably the most exciting to me. “Back in the day”...when Photoshop was still in versions 2.5 and 3.0, creating text in your images wasn’t such a hot idea. The edges weren’t so crisp and you could notice little wavery-looking things in place of straight lines. These days (5.0 and above), text is handled extremely well, and I often build entire full-page 4 color ads in Photoshop. Ok, ok, suppress your gasps of horror. I bet you $50 you can’t pick out my Photoshop-based text in the magazine. However, now Adobe adds another dimension: Paragraph options! That’s right..now you can specify alignment, leading, spacing, punctuation and left-, right-, and first-line indents on a per-paragraph basis. You can also now change the text color of independent characters without changing the entire text box. Another cool feature: Direct Text Editing in the Image. That means you don’t have to keep opening the text dialog box..you can edit your text right on the screen. And again, another nice Illustrator feature, Type-Warping. You can distort type in the forms of special arcs and waves. For those of you dealing with oriental products and companies, there are new formatting options for Asian type as well.

Adobe’s hit a homer with this upgrade! I fully recommend it to everyone, and, as I learn, I’ll pass along more tips and tricks.

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A few months back, we had a situation arise that put us in a quandry: Two full-page, four-color ads that ran in one issue, ran with the wrong background colors. One was supposed to run beige, the other red. Both of them ran with a green background. Unfortunately, it didn’t show up to us, as we proof via blueline (which, as some of you may or may not know, shows the entire issue in varying degrees in blue), and our printer did not notice the discrepancy. One advertiser called to complain, one did not. You can bet I would have complained! The problem was...I couldn’t figure out how it happened! Well, I just stumbled across the problem completely by accident, when it happened again on this latest January 2001 issue of MI that just went in the can. I won’t bother explaining the whole path of enlightenment, but here’s the bottom line:

If you create a new color for your ad, in Quark, using the Edit–>New Colors option, make sure to give your color a custom name!! Do not allow the name to remain the defaulted “New Color”.

What happens is that there was already a “New Color” set up in the Quark document I use for the magazine (assumably from a previous ad, since I always name my colors). When I placed the ads within that document, it used the previous “New Color”...not theirs! I now have my document’s “New Color” set up as a funky green, to alert me to this problem in the future. The reason for that is, say I have 3 ads...all of them have a custom color named “New Color”. The “New Color” in my Quark document is going to be set by the first ad with a “New Color” that I place within that document. For instance, if Ad #1’s “New Color” is blue, Ad #2’s “New Color” is yellow, and Ad #3’s “New Color” is red, and I place Ad #2 first, Ad #1 and Ad #3 will have whatever’s supposed to be, respectively, blue and red, running as Ad #2’s “New Color” ... yellow. So now that I have this funky green as the “New Color” within my document, I’ll know that anytime I see that color in an ad, it’s probably wrong, and I can rename the “New Color” in the offending ad’s original document.

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Creating an instruction form?
If any of you, like me, double up not only as Art Director but also somewhat of an Information Services type person, this may be helpful. I also program our advertiser database here at MI, and I decided to put some of the more common production questions on the server, just a button’s click away. Now when employees have questions about what media we accept, whether we can use PC media, etc, right from their computers they can click over to the “Production HELP” screen and find most of their answers. This not only makes the salespeople look (and feel) like they know more about production, it helps when I’m not around to answer questions.
What I also started doing was creating instruction forms to show people how to do some of the basic things I do. This includes checking e-mail, restarting the server if it goes down, etc. If any of you are the “irreplacable” person in your company or department, you know that, while it’s a great feeling to feel needed, if you do something silly like me and wreck a motorcycle right before deadline, you’re gonna have to work through the pain (see October ‘96 for what we lovingly call here at MI, “The Percoset Issue”).
The tip that I’m passing along is called “snapshot” (shift-apple-3). You may have no use for something like this, but it has come in VERY handy for me over the years. You can show what each step actually looks like on your screen, so the person can follow along and make sure each step “looks” right. This will capture ANYTHING on a screen (so don't believe the people who tell you "NO ONE can capture my website"...They know not what they say...we Mac people are brighter than we look!)

For you PC vs. Mac folks...
I used to use a PC at home and a Mac at work. I started out with a C-64 back in the 80s (anyone remember those?) and the older Vic-20s and TRS-80s at school at that time. I grew up with PCs, spent some time afte college programming COBOL, providing support on an AS400, and throughout all that time, I used a PC. When I started getting into Graphic Art in college, that's when I became exposed to the world of Macintosh. I think both platforms have plusses, though I have to admit, I’m leaning more and more toward being a “Mac” Person. I used to have a problem with the old MacOS where I would come to work after working at home on my PC and try to alt-tab to switch between programs. Invariably I’d get that grating little “uh-uh, you silly user” tone. Well guess what? Now you can do it on a Mac too. Apple-Tab will switch you between applications without reaching for your mouse. Yay Apple!

1. Playtime is the most important time of the day!
If you’ve been receiving my Tips & Tricks for a while, you know I’m a huge advocate of “playing”. Probably 40% of my T&T ideas come from something I discovered while playing. One of the ways I’ve found to maximize “playtime” is to find an ad or effect somewhere in a magazine or online, whatever, and try to duplicate it. That’s what I did at my last job during free time (of which there was far too much) and I learned a ton about Photoshop and Freehand. Remember...necessity is the mother of all invention. Even if you don’t figure out the “right” way to do it, you may discover some different way to do something that will help you down the line.

2. Unconditional love is the best kind (or, “using your Preferences”).
Yep, it’s true..your programs love you unconditionally! Ok, well, maybe that’s a stretch. But they do remember how to make you happy. If you aren’t familiar with your Preferences, you should take the time to become so. If you find yourself making the same settings changes every time you work on a project, whether it’s in Photoshop, Freehand, Illustrator, Pagemaker, Quark..any program you use, check out the Preferences for the program. Chances are, it’s something you can change within those settings, and then you won’t have to waste the time worrying about it next time you open the document. Conversely, if your application program starts to act screwy over time, crashing at odd times, locking up, running things incorrectly, before you try to reinstall the program or do something drastic that includes your hard drive and an open (or closed, for that matter) window, try throwing the Preferences file for that program in the trash. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt anything. The next time the program runs, it resets the Preferences to default, and you’ll just have to redo your custom settings. I’d say maybe 25% of my “major” problems with Quark and Photoshop have been corrupted Preferences files.

3. A wagging tail is sometimes a dangerous thing (especially with a great dane).
It’s true. A wagging tail is usually a sign of a happy dog, but not always. Likewise, a speedy computer is usually the sign of a happy computer, but not always. Last weekend, my overzealous dane, happy as usual, turned the wrong way while wagging his tail and wiped out my entire coffee table top. Off flew the candles and coffee cup and tissue box. This instance aside, anyone who knows dogs knows that some dogs wag their tails even when they’re about to attack. You have to be cautious. Likewise, some computers go fast even when they’re about to send your data into never-never-land. You use your computer a lot. Just like your car or motorcycle, you’re used to how it responds and its idiosynchrosies. If you’re saving a file and it’s saved a little “too quickly”, beware. I had a recent situation where, after working on an ad for about 3 hours (and not having saved it for the last hour), I saved, was mildly surprised at how quickly it saved, and didn’t think much more about it. I closed out the file, and guess what? Yep..no file to be found. I’m not sure what happened..some cosmic glitch or whatever. All I know is, my file was kaput. Another heads-up: If you tell a file to save, then go away from your computer to the bathroom, a meeting, the kitchen, whatever, make sure it saved before you close the file out. Some computers are set to auto-close “alert” boxes after a certain amount of time if there is no response, and you may have gotten an error regarding available space or scratch disks being full and missed it due to being away too long.

Here at MI, as many of you know, I am not only the Art Director, but also the Network and Web Administrator, and recently sequestered to be an Advertising Accounts Manager (of course, as you other multi-hatted people know, that merely means more responsibility, more overtime, more headaches). However, due to my different jobs, I get some different questions from different places. Therefore, I thought I’d list a couple of Q&A subjects I’ve received lately via e-mail. I've also included some of the feedback I've gotten regarding my Tips & Tricks sheets, just because it tickles me to hear that they're helping people!

Q. Is there any way to convert a PageMaker file into Quark? Since I converted from PageMaker to Quark about a year-and-a-half ago, I see no reason to open that silly little Adobe program any more.

Chris from Chicago

A. Yep, Chris, there sure is. A company named Markzware created a QuarkXPress XTension called PM2Q. Also, not only can you convert documents from PageMaker to QuarkXPress, you can convert them from PC to Mac and vice versa. You can find the PM2Q extension at http://www. markzware.com/data/product/pm2q.html. I personally have not tried this extension, so I don’t know how well it works, nor do I know if you need to have a copy of PageMaker on your system in order to do this conversion. I would think all of the answers would be found on Markzware’s site.

Q. How can I get a nice crisp graphic such as a corporate logo (which may be created in Corel Draw or Illustrator) into QuarkXPress on a coloured page background without a white box around it, assuming I finally want to output to film for printing?

Kevin from Australia

A. Well, Kevin, if the graphic is a vector graphic (created in Illustrator, it should be ... I’m not overly familiar with Corel Draw ... it’s been years since I used it), it should import into Quark without the white background. There are only two things that I can think are happening:

1. If the logo uses a bitmap import (in other words, part of the logo was created in or imported from a Photoshop file, for instance), it will have white around that part of the image.

2. In Quark, if the box you’re placing your logo in has an automatic runaround set, it will fill the box with white. There are 2 ways to get rid of this:
a. Open your colors palette, click on the little box image at the top and change the color to “none” from “white”.
b. Click on the box in question, then go to Item –> Runaround and set the runaround to “none” instead of “item”.

If neither of these options works, there is one more, but it’s not the best. If you’re placing your logo onto a solid colored background, you can find the cmyk values of that color, then, in Illustrator or Corel, set a background color for that logo of that same cmyk color. The problem with that is that you can only use that particular logo for something with that background color and it won’t work on a patterned background. If this is the option you choose, don’t panic if the color inside the box and the color of your background in Quark look like different colors. Quark displays other programs’ colors poorly, but if the cmyk values are the same, you should be fine.

Kevin wrote back again, asking which way to save his Illustrator/Corel graphics: eps or tif. I advised him to save as eps, which, again, shou