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*** DesignGeek ***
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Tips and techniques for the digital designer
In this issue:
-- Global Gradients and Patterns in Illustrator
-- Speed up Photoshop CS2 with Bigger Tiles
-- Design-y Podcasts for DesignGeeks
-- Ole Kvern at the AppleScript Pro Sessions
Issue 46, 10/19/05
Written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion
... for her clients, colleagues, random contacts and interested subscribers
(c) 2005 Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
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Global Gradients and Patterns in Illustrator
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One of the most common questions I hear from designers when I'm teaching Adobe Illustrator is, "What's the "Global" checkbox for in Swatch Options?" (Swatch Options is the dialog box that opens when you double-click a color in the Swatches palette so you can modify the color mix, or when you choose New Swatch from the Swatches palette menu.)
When you tick the Global checkbox in Swatch Options, you turn that swatch into a "linked" or "smart" swatch. From then on, filling or stroking an object with that swatch links the object's color to the swatch's definition, equivalent to applying a paragraph or character style to text. Modify the swatch's color mix via Swatch Options and you'll see all the swatch-colored objects in your illustration update their color to reflect that change.
In other words, global swatches act just like ones in InDesign's Swatches palette or QuarkXPress's Colors palette.
Non-global swatches, on the other hand, are like InDesign's "unnamed" colors (the ones you can mix from ID's Color palette), except that in Illustrator, they exist side-by-side with global colors in the same Swatches palette. Adding them to Swatches doesn't automatically make them global, as it does in InDesign.
As with ID's unnamed swatches, you can color objects using the non-global swatches, but they're not linked to the swatch. Modifying the swatch's color mix doesn't do anything to existing objects using that swatch, they remain at the "old" color.
You can tell at a glance in Illustrator's Swatches palette which ones are global and which are not. In the palette's default Small Thumbnails view, global swatches carry a little white triangle flag at the lower-right corner of the swatch thumbnail, non-global ones do not. When viewed as a List, global swatches have a little gray square to the left of the icon denoting color mode (CMYK, RGB etc.), non-global ones only have the color mode icon.
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Global Gradients
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So now that you understand how to make solid color swatches global, and why you'd want to, what about gradients? If you double-click a gradient swatch to turn on the Global checkbox, you'll see that it's impossible -- except for the swatch name, all the fields are grayed out. The Global checkbox is unchecked.
But don't let that throw you -- gradient swatches *are* global in Illustrator by default. Since the color stops used in a gradient could be a mix of global and non-global colors, it's probably just too hairy for Adobe interface designers to figure out a way to convey exactly what's going on via little icons.
To prove to yourself that gradients are global, and to make global changes to a gradient swatch so gradient-filled elements in your illustration automatically update to match a tweaked gradient, use the Replace Swatch feature.
1. Fill a few objects with the same gradient swatch from the Swatches palette (either one of the default gradients or one you've created and added yourself). Leave an object selected to see a live update of the edits you're about to do, or deselect everything, it makes no difference.
2. In the Swatches palette, make sure the gradient swatch you used above is selected.
3. Open the Gradient palette to edit the swatch. If you don't see a large square thumbnail of the gradient at the upper left of the palette, choose Show Options from the Gradient palette menu so that you see it.
4. Below the thumbnail and other settings, the Gradient palette shows a horizontal preview bar and the color stops used by the gradient. Edit the gradient here in the usual way, by modifying the colors for one or more stops, or by adding or removing stops, etc.
Notice that the Gradient palette thumbnail (the large square) is constantly updating to reflect your edits, but the one in the Swatches palette is not, nor are any unselected objects to which you had applied the gradient earlier.
5. When you're done editing, replace the old gradient swatch with the modified one. To do this, hold down the Option/Alt key and drag the large, square gradient thumbnail out of the Gradient palette, all the way to the Swatches palette until it's hovering over the original gradient swatch (from Step 1). When you see the original swatch highlight under the outline of the one you're dragging, release the mouse button, then the Option/Alt key.
The gradient swatch in the Swatches palette is replaced by the one you dragged and dropped on top of it, and all the elements in your illustration that used that gradient reflect the new gradient's settings.
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Global Patterns
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The Replace Swatch method also works for global pattern modifications:
1. Fill a few objects with a pattern from the Swatches palette, one of the default ones or one you've created and added yourself.
2. Drag and drop the pattern swatch from the Swatches palette out onto the artboard, where it magically transforms into a single, editable pattern tile.
3. Edit the tile's fills and strokes with the Direct Selection tool.
4. To replace the old pattern swatch with the edited one (and update all objects in the illustration using it), hold down the Option/Alt key and use the Selection tool to drag and drop the tile on top of the old pattern swatch in the Swatches palette. Voila!
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Making Non-Global Elements Global
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Unfortunately, the Replace Swatch method doesn't work with objects that are already filled with a non-global process color (spot colors are global by default). Replacing a non-global color with a global one doesn't link previously-filled objects to the new color, nor does simply turning on the Global checkbox for the non-global swatch (the first thing everyone tries).
To link these non-global-colored objects to a global version of the same color, you'll have to do it manually. First, turn that color global by turning on the Global checkbox in Swatch Options. Then select your objects and click on the global color to fill or stroke them with it.
If you have a lot of objects you want to "turn global," select one example object and use the Select > Same menu to have Illustrator root out and select every object in the illustration with the same fill, stroke, etc. as the selection. Then, click on a global color swatch for each found set.
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Speed Up Photoshop CS2 with Bigger Tiles
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When you open an image in Photoshop (or transform or resize or basically do anything that causes Photoshop to process the image), the program processes it in small, rectangular sections -- called tiles -- one-by-one. The less RAM you have, the smaller the tiles it can work with (filesize-wise), meaning more tiles have to run through the processor to complete processing the entire image.
By default, Photoshop bites off tiles in chunks of 132K worth of image data at a time, at the most, regardless of how much RAM you have. If you have lots of RAM, you can get Photoshop to increase its tile size so that images are processed faster -- processing four tiles would be faster than processing sixteen.
Start by opening Photoshop's Preferences dialog box and going to the Memory & Image Cache panel. Assign more RAM to the program by specifying a percentage of installed RAM it can use for image processing. If you can end up with 1GB or more of RAM devoted to Photoshop, all the better.
Then, quit Photoshop and activate the Bigger Tiles plug-in, which is installed in CS2 but disabled by default. The plug-in is here:
Adobe Photoshop CS2 > Plug-Ins > Adobe Photoshop Only > Extensions > ~Bigger Tiles
The tilde in front of the plug-in's name is to turn it off (that's how you disable plug-ins). So to turn the plug-in on, delete the tilde character. The filename of the plug-in should now be just "Bigger Tiles." If you're viewing extensions, the plug-in will actually be named Bigger Tiles.plugin.
Now start Photoshop again and try doing some processor-intensive things to an image. Since the tiles it's processing are now larger (up to 1MB or more each), the overall time to completely process an image should be noticeably faster.
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But I Have Weenie RAM
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If you just have 512K or so of RAM, Bigger Tiles is not going to help you. But there's one way to speed up your work that's been around a while in Photoshop: Pixel Doubling.
You can turn on the Pixel Doubling option in Photoshop's Preferences, in the Displays & Cursors panel. Now whenever you make a selection and move it around, Photoshop uses a low-res preview as you're moving it, then snaps it back into "real" res as soon as you release the mouse button. It's easier on the program and your computer processor.
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Design-y Podcasts for DesignGeeks
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It's funny how in some circles I inhabit, "podcasts" and their offshoots are talked about incessantly, and in other circles, people are like, "What is this 'podcast' you speak of incessantly."
If you're in the latter group, don't be embarrassed, you're in the majority. I'll preface this story with a quick orientation to the whole thing. (If you're in the former group of podcast freaks, you can skip down to "Podcasts to Check Out.")
A podcast (iPod + broadcast) is a self-published audio file, like a mini-radio show. It's saved as an MP3 file, put on a web server and wrapped in simple web code so that people can "subscribe" to it with free software that automatically downloads new editions to their computer and their MP3 player, such as an iPod.
Most often podcasts are created by average Joes, not radio personalities or anything. The author publishes his thoughts by speaking into a microphone attached to their computer and recording it as a digital file, instead of typing it and posting it to their blog or regular web site (or <ahem> sending it in a newsletter).
What's made podcasting so hot is the distribution model. While there are numerous podcast directory web sites (such as http://www.podcast.net), the driving force here is Apple's iTunes. You can submit your podcast to Apple at no cost for inclusion in the Podcasts section of iTunes, their free MP3 player/organizer/iPod gateway software.
iTunes v6 for Macintosh or Windows (free download)
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
Anyone with iTunes can browse, search, and listen to all the podcasts iTunes knows about. Just click the Music Store category on the left panel, then click on the Podcasts link in the "Inside the Music Store" section at the upper left. Once the Podcasts page loads you'll see links for browsing, searching for, and subscribing to podcasts.
Note that you don't need an iPod to listen to podcasts, you can play them right in iTunes if you want. Also note that there is other software you can use to download, organize and listen to your podcasts, as mentioned above. Just enter "podcast" in a search engine and you'll be flooded with information.
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Podcasts to Check Out
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Anything out there in podcastland for designers? Why yes, Virginia. Here's a starter set of ones I've found worthwhile along with their web sites. To add one of these to your subscription list, look for the relevant "Subscribe" button on the web page, or just search for their names in iTunes' Podcast section.
CreativeCOW (Communities Of the World)
http://www.creativecow.net/
also (more details)
http://www.fmstudio.com/blog/2005/09/franklin-mcmahon-hosts-new.html
(Wide-ranging discussions, tips, interviews with developers of design software)
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Media Artist Secrets
http://www.mediaartist.com
also (more details)
http://www.fmstudio.com/blog/2005/08/how-to-listen-to-podcast.html
(Marketing, dealing with clients, budgets ... the business of design)
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Digerati U
http://homepage.mac.com/memap/blogwavestudio/
(This amazing podcast of audio tutorials for design software includes Quicktime tutorials that show up in iTunes "Album Art" corner and synch to the audio.)
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Photoshop Radio
(Presented by Scott Kelby's NAPP crew. No dedicated web page, but just search for Photoshop Radio in iTunes' Podcasts section or in podcasts.net. They have a companion blog with the links they mention during the show, as well as stand-alone MP3 files of each podcast:)
http://photoshopradio.blogspot.com/
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Typeradio
http://www.typeradio.org
(Great typography-related content, live feeds from type conferences.)
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AIGA Design Conference 2005
http://designconference.aiga.org/content.cfm?Alias=dc_resources
(Tons of podcasts from the presenters at the conference. Not available in iTunes for some reason.)
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Inspired? To get started making your own podcasts, here's the book I'm looking at:
Secrets of Podcasting, by Bart Farkas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321369297/
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Ole Kvern at the AppleScript Pro Sessions
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A couple issues ago I mentioned that Shane Stanley and Ray Robertson's "unique training event," the AppleScript Pro Sessions, are coming to Chicago for the first time on Oct. 31 to Nov. 4. Any designer, publisher or pre-press professional who uses Macs would do well to attend for at least a few days; since a big focus of the ASPro training is automating tedious publishing, design and pre-press tasks with AppleScript.
Ray and Shane e-mailed out an update last week announcing that Olav Martin ("Ole") Kvern is joining them to teach two sessions on scripting Adobe InDesign and XML. (This is in addition to the full day plus that Ray and Shane devote to scripting InDesign.)
Ole is the co-author (with David Blatner) of Real World InDesign (and other books), as well as the author of the massive "InDesign CS2 Scripting Guide.pdf" that's found on the InDesign installation CD.
Earlier this year I had the pleasure of meeting Ole in person at an Adobe event, and I was surprised by two things. First, he doesn't speak with a Swedish accent; second, his brain is not the size of a washing machine with throbbing veins all around it, he actually has a normal-size head and a sunny personality to go with it.
If you haven't registered yet for the AppleScript Pro sessions, get a move on! It's a small-size seminar and there's limited seating.
AppleScript Pro Sessions
http://www.scriptingmatters.com/aspro.php
My DesignGeek subscriber discount expired Sept. 30, but if you're a member of local design and publishing organizations like the Chicago Book Clinic or the Association for Multimedia Communications, you qualify for a $200 discount off your total registration. Their recent online newsletters had the discount code, contact them if you missed it.
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DesignGeek is a free bimonthly publication written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion, a cross-media designer and authorized Adobe and Quark training provider. She owns Seneca Design & Training, Inc. in Chicago, Illinois (http://www.senecadesign.com/).
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Copyright 2005 by Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
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