Random Prepress Tips

Change "Cancel" to "Reset" in Adobe application dialog boxes

2006-01-03T14:17:00.000-05:00

Heres a simple one that is darn handy:

If you wish to reset settings in a dialog box, simply hold down the
Option (Alt - PC) and the Cancel button changes to Reset.

Straightening Scanned Photos

2005-12-17T20:38:00.000-05:00

I drink a lot of coffee which makes my hands shake and I can never seem to get a perfectly straight scan. But there is an easy fix.

1. In Photohop locate an area that is supposed to be straight and choose the measure tool from the tool pallet. (Its hiding under the Eyedropper tool)

2. Click and drag along that edge of the image.

3. Choose IMAGE>ROTATE IMAGE>ARBITARY when the dialog box opens you'll notice that Photoshop thoughtfully inserted the measurement into the value box. Click ok and your image is now perfectly straight.

Bring on the double lattes!

Preview CMYK While Working in RGB

2005-12-17T20:11:00.000-05:00

It's usually a good idea to work in Photoshop RGB and hold off converting to CMYK until absolutely necessary. But what if you want to see how your work in progress will look like printed in CMYK?

Simple
1. Go to VIEW>PROOF SETUP and choose "WORKING CMYK"
2. Then choose PROOF COLORS from the VIEW menu
That way you can still work in RGB mode but have a better idea how the image will look printed. Of course it works best if you have taken the time to set up your color management options.

But wait theres more!
In the PROOF SETUP you can also choose to preview how the individual color seperations will look.

You can also see how your image will look on a Windows or Macintosh screen which is great for web graphic designers.

If that isn't enough you can choose "Custom" from the PROOF SETUP and see how you image would look with various press profiles. Sending the image to Europe for publication? Proof it with the Euroscale Coated profile.

And finally you can use the gamut warning to limit the color picker to colors that can be reproduced in CMYK
1. Choose VIEW>GAMUT WARNING
2. Go into Photoshop's color picker and you see that some of the colors are grayed out. Those are outside CMYK's color gamut and can't be reproduced accurately.

Write your History States To Image Metadata

2005-12-16T11:43:00.000-05:00

Ever open a Photoshop file and try to remember what steps you took to create that great effect? Well wonder no longer with this little tip.

1. In Photoshop turn on History Logging to Metadata (PREFERENCES>GENERAL>HISTORY LOG) Make sure you have "Edit Log Items" set to "Detailed"

2. Give yourself plenty of History States. This is in option in that same General Preferences dialog box. I use 250, you can have up to 1000, but the more states you have the more ram it takes up, so your mileage may vary.

Once you have that set every edit you make to an image is recorded in its Metadata. You can view the images metadata by choosing FILE>FILE INFO and choosing "History" in the File Info dialog box. It will give you a run down of all the edits you did to an image and help you to remember how you made that great image effect that you want to recreate.

Toggle Between Preview and Normal View In InDesign

2005-12-14T14:01:00.000-05:00

Say you editing text and you wanted to momentarily switch from normal to preview mode (to hide bleeds etc) well if you hit the defalt "w" you end up typing a "w" which sucks especially if you forget you do it and it goes to press :(...so what I did was go into the Keyboard shortcuts dialog and assigned shift + command + F1 to toggle the views while I'm in text mode and now life is all peaches and cream.

Printing Discontinuous Pages in Acrobat

2005-12-13T08:25:00.000-05:00

Say you have a multi-page PDF document and you just want to print
certain pages.

1. Open the PDF document in Acrobat
2. Click on the "Pages" tab to display the page thumbnails
3. Hold down the Command key and click on the page thumbnails that you want to print.
4. Chose FILE>PRINT
5. In the print dialog click on the "Selected Pages" radio button

Zing zang happy days!

Complimentary Color Swatches in Illustrator

2005-12-08T19:50:00.000-05:00

Stop guessing what the complimentary colour for a given swatch is.

1. In Illustrator, duplicate the swatch you're using.
2. Double-click on it to edit it, then hold cmd (ctrl if you're on windows) and click on the colour box in the edit box.

It'll then give you the complimentary colour for the original swatch.

Thanks to Gary for that tip.

Smart Sharpen is the New Unsharp Mask

2005-11-29T08:34:00.000-05:00

The new Smart Sharpen filter in Photoshop CS2 is well worth considering for your sharpening needs.
Check out http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/smart-sharpen-cs2-and-more.html

Using Photoshop for Vector Tracing

2005-11-25T14:16:00.000-05:00

Say you had a bitmap logo that needs to converted to a vector illustration.
Also say that you don't have Adobe Streamline or Illustrator CS 2 with Live Trace.
Are you going to be stuck redrawing the whole logo?
Not at all...let's have Photoshop do most of the heavy lifting.

1. Open the bitmap image in Photoshop
2. Us the magic wand tool to select the logo (if is a complicated logo you might have to hold down the SHIFT KEY and click on the other parts of the logo with the magic wand.)
3. Once you have everything of the logo selected, open the Paths Pallet (WINDOW>PATHS)
4. In the Paths Pallet click on the side menu and choose MAKE WORK PATH, in the resulting Tolerance Dialog set it to One Pixel. This creates a vector path of your selection. Now we have to get this vector path to Illustrator or god forbid...Freehand
5. FILE>EXPORT>PATHS TO ILLUSTRATOR This will save your vector work path as an Illustrator file that you can then open in Illustrator apply fills to and clean up any stray paths.

Not always 100% perfect but it does take quite a bit of the sting out of redrawing the logo from scratch.

Using Text as an Image Adjustment Mask

2005-11-25T14:05:00.000-05:00

This effect is easy to create in a few simple steps
1. Set your text in Photoshop over an image
2. Convert the Text to a Shape Layer (LAYER> TYPE> CONVERT TO SHAPE)
3. This will give you a shape layer with a color fill, lets change this color fill to an image adjustment (LAYER>CHANGE LAYER CONTENT and choose HUE & SATURATION from the sub menu)
4. The Hue & Saturation dialog box will appear, increase the Saturation and decrease the lightness
5. You can then add a Outer Glow layer style (LAYER>LAYER STYLE>OUTER GLOW) and adjust to taste.

You can also use this method with any of the other options in the Change Layer Content list.

Enjoy!

Double Stroke Text in Photoshop

2005-11-25T13:44:00.000-05:00

How to create a quick doublestroke text effect in Photoshop.
1. Set your text
2. Add a Stroke Layer Style (LAYER>LAYER STYLE>STROKE)
3. In the Stoke Effect Dialog change the Fill Type to Gradient
4. Click on the Gradient Bar to bring up the Gradient Editor
5. In the Gradient Editor slide the Color Stops on the bottom of the gradient bar right next to each other to get rid of the transition
6. Click ok and make the Style a Shapeburst then click ok in the Layer Style Dialog box
7. Double Stroke Text! Yippie!

Avoid Screened Text

2005-11-23T14:14:00.000-05:00

This one is pretty basic. If you notice that you are getting screened type when you output jobs from InDesign to a compoiste printers such as a black and white copier or color printer, make sure to check "Composite Leave unchanged" in the Output section of InDesign's print dialogs.

If you choose Composite (Gray, RBG, CMYK) InDesign trys to mimic how the text will look if it was printed on an offset press which tends to have a little lighter black than tonor machines.

Copy Links in InDesign

2005-11-23T14:05:00.000-05:00

We have a lot of repeat jobs at the shop, business cards and the
like. I found a quick way to copy over all the needed links into a
new job folder.

1. Open the file that needs to be updated
2. Save the updated file to a new job folder
3. Open the Links pallet (WINDOW>LINKS)
4. In the Links pallet click on the small side menu (its the tiny
arrow on the side of the pallet)
5. Select "Copy Links to.." from that side menu and then navigate to
the new folder you created and InDesign will copy all the needed
links into that folder.)

Sweet!

Change all Text Layers at the Same Time in Photoshop

2005-11-22T10:19:00.000-05:00

If you wish to make a global change to text layers such as changing
the point size or font, you can link the text layers together in the
layers pallet and then any change you make to one text layer will be
applied to all the other linked text layers.

Duplicating Pages in Acrobat

2005-11-21T11:27:00.000-05:00

With the page icons visible in Acrobat Professional you can duplicate
pages but simply holding down the option key (Mac) or Alt key (PC)
and drag a copy of that page anywhere in the document.

Cool Troubleshooting Tool For OS X

2005-11-21T10:31:00.000-05:00

http://applejack.sourceforge.net/

This a great little add on that provides some useful tools for
troubleshooting problem on your mac. Its kinda geeky but geeky is
good..it builds character.

Pump up the Curves Dialog

2005-11-19T21:59:00.000-05:00

Curves is a very powerful image adjustment tool. However in its default state it doesn't give you a lot of room to make your adjustments. However this can be easily fixed.

1. Click on that mysterious icon at the bottom right of the dialog box to increase the dialog box size.

2. Hold down the option (Mac) or alt (PC) key and click on the grid to display a finer grid.

Now your cooking with gas!

Vector Text in Photoshop

2005-11-19T21:25:00.000-05:00

"What did you create the business card in?"
"Photoshop!"

I've lived that nightmare many times. Photoshop is a great program, probably my favorite. But a page layout app it isn't. Fuzzy bitmapped 72 dpi text isn't my idea of a good time. However there is a way that a text heavy layout can be done in Photoshop and sent to a prepress tech without them burning you in effigy.

1. Create the document
2. Add in your text making sure not to rasterize it.
3. Save it as a "Photoshop PDF"
4. In the PDF file format options make sure to check "Include Vector Data" and Embed fonts.
5. This will produce a PDF with embedded fonts that any prepress monkey worth his salt will embrace with open arms.

The Ghetto Method for Spot Color in Photoshop

2005-11-19T21:11:00.000-05:00

Say you have a rgb image of a logo that needs to be printed two color. Ok so you could recreate the image in Illustrator and apply spot colors in that.

Or... You could convert the rgb file to cmyk in Photoshop and delete the contents of two color channels, say the cyan and yellow channels leaving you with the k (black) and the magenta channels which would seperate into two color plates.

But seldom is life that simple. Many times the black portions of the rgb file will be present in all the cmyk channels. BUT! you could go to the color settings in Photoshop choose Custom CMYK setup and change your black generation to maxium. Ahh much better. Just remember to change it back to your previous settings before you do any other cmyk conversions :)

You probably want to use the Levels or Curves image adjustment to increase the contrast in the color channels so you get nice solid spot colors in your print output.

Or you could just bite the bullet and recreate the sucker...but what fun is that?

Sharpening Images in Photoshop

2005-11-19T20:39:00.000-05:00

Just about every photo and image that is to be printed benefits from some degree to sharpening.

Printing isn't a perfect laser precise proposition. You get some degree of blurring when the image is reproduced. To offset this (get it? printing.. offset har!) you want to increae the apparent sharpness of the image so that when its printed and is blurred a bit it will come out perfect.

So thats all well and good...how do we decide how much sharpening do we want to apply? It depends on the output device.

In order of sloppiness/blurring

Inkjet
Color Laser Printer
Film>Plate>Offset Print
Computer to Plate>Offset

So if your outputting your image to a Color laser Printer you wouldn't have to use as much as sharpening as you would for Inkjet.

Ok how do we sharpen the image?
9 times out of 10 Unsharp Mask (FILTER>SHARPEN>UNSHARP MASK) will acheive the goal. I usually keep my Radius set at 1 and my Threshold set to 0 Levels and adjust my Amount to the point that it looks a bit too sharp.

If you find you are getting weird color artifacts after you sharpen your image, try converting the image mode to LAB first and then select the Lightness channel and apply the UnSharp Mask to that channel only.

Scanning Grayscale

2005-11-19T20:27:00.000-05:00

Well since I talked about scanning black and white images, I figured I'd ad this quick thing about scanning grayscale images.

1. I would scan it as RGB color. (Again to capture as much info as possible from the scanner.)
2. Open it in Photoshop and then use the Channel Mixer (IMAGE>ADJUSTMENTS>CHANNEL MIXER) In the Channel Mixer dialog click on the Monochrome option and use the sliders to adjust what colors are going to be prominant in the resulting grayscale conversion. Once you get it how you like it click ok.
3. Then do the final conversion to grayscale (IMAGE>MODE>GRAYSCALE)

Scanning Black & White Artwork

2005-11-19T20:15:00.000-05:00

Every once in awhile I have to scan a black and white logo in for a client. here's what I do to get the best possible quality.

1. Scan the logo in as grayscale at 1200 dpi. Ok so now why would I scan it in grayscale if its just black and white? Well, you want to capture as much detail as possible from the scanner. I could set the scanner software to "black & white" but all its going to do is scan in and then convert it to black and white...if somethings getting converted anyway, I want to be the one who decides how its going to be converted.

2. Open my 1200 dpi grayscale scan in Photoshop, then use the Levels command to adjust what is white and what is black. Once I get it where I like it I then convert it to 1 Bit Black and White.

* If the logo is particularly crusty and nasty, I'll blur it or use the median filter to smooth out the edges before I run levels and do the
final conversion to black & white.

Where the vector logos hide

2005-11-18T17:47:00.000-05:00

When brandsoftheworld.com fails you try www.logotypes.ru for your logo needs.

Speaking of logos here's an old chestnut:
Client comes in,
wants business card,
doesn't have the company's logo,
points you to company website,
icky low res garbage on website,
you notice company has downloadable brochure in pdf format,
you download said brochure,
notice that the company logo is present in brochure,
hey that logo looks pretty damn good,
open pdf in Illustrator,
wipe tears of joy from eyes when you see company logo sitting there in all its vector splendor,
dump vector logo into business card layout,
present to client,
receive accolades, promotion, keys to the washroom...

Some Useful Websites

2005-11-18T12:54:00.000-05:00

My clients are cheapskates, they never want to pay for stock art or logos. Thankfully I found out about the following sites:

http://www.morguefile.com
Free stock photography... pretty good quality too!

http://www,brandsoftheworld.com
High quality vector logos of thousands of companies and brands

http://www.sxc.hu/
More free stock photography. You have to create a user account but
its free

Ever have a client give you a layout to reproduce that has some wacky
font you don't recognize? The following site might help:
http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

Stay tuned for more!

Layer Styles in Photoshop

2005-11-18T11:59:00.000-05:00

Two Tips for working with Layer Styles in Photoshop

1. Copying Layer Styles
Say you have a text layer with a drop shadow, bevel, outer glow etc
etc and you want to apply that style to another layer. You can simply
go to the layer that has that layer style applied to it, control
click (mac) or right click (pc) on the layer style icon in that layer
and choose "Copy Layer Style" from the pop-up menu that appears. You
can then choose a layer that you want to apply that layer style to
and control or right click on that, and choose "Paste Layer Style"
from the pop-up menu to apply that layer style.

2. Breaking Apart Layer Styles
Perhaps you have a layer style applied but its not quite the way you
want it to appear. Perhaps you want to apply a filter to the drop
shadow...well did you know you can break that layer style into
separate layers by control or right clicking on the layer style icon
in that layer and choosing "Create Layers" from the pop-up menu. You
can then target individual layers and apply filters, delete rearrange
etc to your heart's content!

Life is too much fun!

InDesign Text formating key commands

2005-11-18T11:22:00.000-05:00

Here's couple handy text formating keyboard shortcuts for InDesign

1. Increasing/Decreasing Font size: Shift + Command + < (smaller) or (larger) You can adjust the point size the text increases or decreases in PREFERENCES>UNIT & INCREMENTS>KEYBOARD INCREMENTS>SIZE/LEADING

2. Increasing/Decreasing Leading: Option + Command + Up Arrow (less leading) or Down Arrow (more leading)

3.Increasing/Decreasing Tracking: Option + Command + Left Arrow (less tracking) or Right Arrow (more tracking)

Clean up color artifacts in LAB color mode

2005-11-18T11:09:00.000-05:00

I get a lot of crusty photos from clients. Here's a tip on how to get
rid of a lot of the color noise in JPEG compressed images.

1. Open the bugger in Photoshop
2. Change the color mode to LAB (IMAGE>MODE>LAB)
3. Open the channels pallet, you'll see three channels LIGHTNESS, A
and B the A and B channels are the color channels
4. Select channel A and apply the Median filter (FILTER>NOISE>MEDIAN)
5. In the Median filter dialog box choose a setting that gets rid of
the blocky artifacts
6. Do the same for the B color channel
7. Viola! no more color noise you can then convert the image to RGB
or CMYK

A bit of explanation

2005-11-18T10:37:00.000-05:00

This is a catch all for tips and tricks I run across for prepress and graphic design. So when ever I stumble across something I think is interesting I'll post it here.

So here's a couple for InDesgin
1. You not only use the eyedropper tool to sample and apply attributes in the same document, you can do it across multiple open documents.

2. We use a numbering system here at the print shop. So for example if we are doing a layout with a photo the photo would be called scan-34587-truck, then the layout would be called something like flyer-34587-truck. Well a nice thing in InDesign is in the save dialog box you can click on the prexisitng scanned photo and it will pull that file name into the file name text field and all you would have to do is change the "scan" to "layout"

Thats it for now.
Cheers