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*** DesignGeek ***
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Tips and techniques for the digital designer
In this issue:
-- QuarkXPress 6.5 Output Guide
-- Overprinting Black in Photoshop
-- Find and View Illustrator Freebies
Issue 48, 12/21/05
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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QuarkXPress 6.5 Output Guide
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All my articles, books, and podcast about Adobe InDesign aside, I still occasionally do jobs in QuarkXPress (when my client needs a QuarkXPress file back) and once in a while find myself teaching version 6.5 to 4.0 veterans. So I try to keep up with the program ... my radar's always up for new information and resources to help myself and my students out.
That's why I was glad to read in Quark's newsletter, "Particles" (get it?), that there's actually a *white paper* floating around that explores printing and exporting to PDF issues with version 6.5:
QuarkXpress 6.5 Output Guide
http://euro.quark.com/en/service/desktop/downloads/details.jsp?idx=591
The 30-page PDF reveals useful information for people new to 6.5, especially in regards to printing Vista-enhanced images (that's the free plug-in that lets you apply some filters and color adjustments to imported Photoshop images) and fine-tuning the Export to PDF options.
I'm not sure why the PDF is on Quark's "Euro" site and not in the U.S. site... don't they share? I nosed around euro.quark.com for a while looking for more buried treasure, but alas, couldn't come up with anything.
Other than the 6.5-specific stuff, though, there's nothing in the Output Guide that isn't already covered in more detail in my favorite Quark v6 resource, David Blatner's Real World QuarkXPress 6.0 (strange world, I know):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321199596/
(by the way, those crabby reviews are mostly due to an indexing glitch that was quickly corrected)
I went back to the main www.quark.com site to see if they'd come up with any white papers on their own since the last time I looked and came up with bupkus. But I did find a convenient page listing all the free XTensions from Quark that you can download and use in your version 6.X product, like QuarkVista, Full-Resolution Preview, etc.:
http://www.quark.com/products/xpress/xtensions/quark_xt.html
I've updated my QuarkXPress Resources page with both of these resources:
http://www.senecadesign.com/designgeek/quark.html
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Overprinting Black in Photoshop
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I know what you're thinking, "Why would you ever want to overprint black in Photoshop? Isn't that an issue for page layout or illustration software?" Well, yes, but lots of designers -- even the developers themselves -- are blurring the lines between what you're supposed to do in which program.
So, just accept that people are doing single-page layouts in Photoshop. They create a big blank canvas, plonk a picture upper left, type out a text block lower right, put some interesting background behind the whole thing, it's easy to do with layers. Or they're creating smaller works, mini-layouts -- layered combinations of vector shapes, live text and raster images -- that they'll place into an area of a larger page in InDesign, Illustrator, or QuarkXPress 6.5.
When designers use Photoshop in this way, they usually 1) Keep the final file layered -- they don't flatten it; 2) Change the default rich black that Photoshop uses for black text to 100% K black, just like a layout program; and 3) Save the final file as a Photoshop PSD. If they're going to place the layered image into another program, they often save it as a Photoshop PDF instead, to prevent the type from rasterizing when output. (I wrote about this last bit way back in DesignGeek 24: http://www.senecadesign.com/designgeek/dgarchives/designgeek24.php#pdfsrule.)
Okay, so the issue is, most layout and illustration programs automatically overprint pure black text. If they didn't, the type would knock out of the background (think colored sidebars), creating a nightmare for press registration at smallish type sizes. If the text overprints then it's not a worry -- there will always be ink behind the text, no matter how the paper slips on the press when it gets hit with the black plate.
But Photoshop always knocks out "only K" black text (or vectors, or raster pixels) from artwork in underlying layers when you print separations for 4/C presses. There's no Overprint Black setting in Preferences, because it's not supposed to be that type of program.
All that preamble for a very short solution: In Photoshop, change the blending mode of any pure black layer in the file to Multiply from the pop-up menu in the Layers palette. It has the same effect as setting that layer to Overprint, and since it's 100% black, it doesn't look much different. Try it -- use the Channels palette in Photoshop, or the Separations Preview function in InDesign or Acrobat, to see for yourself.
One caveat: Page layout and illustration programs ignore Photoshop layer blending modes (that is, the modes don't affect other page elements behind the image) when you place or import them. So while "multiplied" black layers will overprint other layers within the image file, any black areas that don't encounter layer pixels underneath will knock out of any non-Photoshop artwork behind the image itself. If that's an issue, it's probabably better to stick with Photoshop's default rich black.
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Find and View Illustrator Freebies
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Many illustration programs ship with gobs and gobs of free clip art, templates, and other goodies, and Illustrator CS2 is no exception. When you install the program it copies over 150 MB of templates and sample files to your hard drive, virtually all of it very high quality artwork that you can use as is or as a starting point for your creative muse. And there's another 170 MB of excellent clip art and stock photos sitting on the installation CD.
Two questions: Where are these files located, and how can we see them without having to open each one in Illustrator?
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Locating them
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I'm assuming you've long since clicked the "Don't Show Me Again" checkbox in the Illustrator splash screen ... you know, the modal dialog box that had buttons leading to things new users might like to do, including a "Browse Templates" button. Clicking the button would open the Illustrator templates folder in Adobe Bridge.
No worry ... just look in the File menu in Illustrator. Right under the New command is New from Template (Command/Ctrl-Shift-N). When you choose New from Template, the Open/Save dialog box opens up and the folder holding all the free artwork is pre-selected.
Alternatively, you can investigate the contents of this folder in the Finder or Windows Explorer. Go to your Applications folder on your hard drive (Programs folder, in Windows) and go here:
Adobe Illustrator CS2/Cool Extras/Templates/
Inside the Templates folder you'll find folders like "Band," "Party," and "Restaurant," each one containing six to ten or more separate files using that theme as a basis for fully-fleshed out postcards, posters, stickers, CD inserts, even web sites. The individual files have cool color schemes (grab those swatches), embedded raster art, custom graphic styles, folder die cuts, and more. I often pluck out the cool illustrations of band instruments (Party > Party Hat) and paste them into new files when I'm teaching Illustrator or Photoshop Smart Objects.
The Templates folder also contains a robust folder of Blank templates (Templates > Blank Templates) for brochures, envelopes, table tents, web sites -- 24 in all.
The folder of clip art and stock photography I referred to above is on the Illustrator CS2 installation CD. If you bought it as part of the entire Creative Suite, you'll find these assets in the Resources and Extras CD that came with the product. Look in the CD's Goodies folder for the Illustrator CS2 folder, and copy and paste its two subfolders (Clip Art and Stock Photos) anywhere on your hard drive.
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Previewing them
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The problem with either of the two methods above is neither the Open/Save dialog box nor the Finder/Explorer can show you previews of Illustrator templates. You have to open the file in Illustrator to see what it looks like. Clip art and stock photos don't have this problem, but even then, you can only see one thumbnail at a time in the dialog box or OS window.
We old farts remember when companies used to include a printed image catalog with their clip art (shocking!) making it much easier to scan through artwork and locate the one you want. How 'bout it, Adobe? Make a PDF of all the clip art, stock photos, templates and sample files; and sell it for $5.95 on your web site, Bam, you've got yourself a new revenue stream.
All right, all right, I know why they're not doing that. They want us to use Bridge to view these. Fine. Grumble.
Here's how to make your own Illustrator Freebies online image catalog:
1. Open Adobe Bridge, switching to the Default Workspace in the Window menu if necessary.
2. In the Folders panel, locate and select the Cool Extras folder in the Adobe Illustrator CS2 program folder. This reveals the folder's contents -- the two subfolders called Sample Files and Templates -- in the large thumbnails area on the right.
3. Right-click or Control-click on each subfolder and choose Add to Favorites. You could also choose Add to Favorites from the File menu.
4. Back in the Folders panel, locate the goodies you copied over from the installation CD, if you did that. Add both folders -- Clip Art and Stock Photos -- to your Bridge Favorites too.
From now on, whenever you want to browse through the riches of the free artwork Adobe included with Illustrator CS2, just click on that folder in your Favorites panel in Bridge. Thumbnails of the contents appear instantly in the large area on the right (after the first time Bridge builds the image cache). Double-click on the one you want to open in Illustrator, or select one or more of them and choose File > Place to immediately import the selection into Photoshop or InDesign.
Why not take this one step further? You can use one of the pre-built Photoshop or InDesign scripts in the Tools menu to create a PDF contact sheet of all the artwork you're looking at -- but that's a topic for a different article.
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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/).
To subscribe to DesignGeek or read archived issues, go to its home on Seneca's site:
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Copyright 2005 by Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
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