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*** DesignGeek ***
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Tips and techniques for the digital designer
In this issue:
-- Ensure PDF Text Box Comments are Printed
-- Illustrator Outline/Preview Tricks
-- VectorMagic.com Goes Live
-- My Upcoming Seminars
Issue 69, 2/22/08
Written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion
... for her clients, colleagues, random contacts and interested subscribers
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Ensure PDF Text Box Comments are Printed
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In the previous issue of DesignGeek, I wrote a story about using the Text Box comment tool to add formatted text to any PDF right in Acrobat. I love this tip and use it all the time myself:
Add Formatted Text to PDFs on the Fly
http://senecadesign.com/designgeek/dgarchives/designgeek68.php
A few days ago I was adding some language to a contract a vendor had sent me as a PDF. The Text Box tool worked wonderfully to add exactly what I wanted to include, in the right place and in the right font. I saved my changes, but before I closed the file and e-mailed the revised contract back to them, I printed out a copy for my records.
I grabbed the pages from the laser printer and took a look. Ack! Where did my edits go? The printout didn't include them. It was the original contract they had sent me.
I checked my settings in Acrobat 8's Print dialog box, and found the problem. I had set it to print "Document Only" from the dropdown menu. Acrobat didn't print the additional text I entered with the Text Box tool because it considered those to be comments. To get the printout I wanted, I needed to choose "Document and Markup" from the menu instead. I did so, and when I made a new printout, my Text Box additions were there.
Okay, so now *I* knew how to make sure my new contract language appeared in the printout, but how could I make sure my vendor knew? It's not something you can set and save in Acrobat, like you can with a PDF's initial view scale.
I was planning on returning it to them as a PDF attachment. (Yes, I could always put my good printout in an envelope and mail it to them, but -- puh-leeze!) When my vendor's admin opened the attachment in Reader or Acrobat to print it, would they always remember my accompanying instructions to specify Document and Markup in Acro's or Reader's Print dialog box?
I think not. And this was a contract ... it was vital my edits always appear.
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Solution: Burn Them In
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Here's what I discovered. To convert Text Box comments into actual type embedded in the PDF, print the PDF from within Acrobat to the virtual Adobe PDF printer (aka "refrying" a PDF). The virtual printer gets installed automatically when you install any recent version of Adobe Acrobat.
If you've never printed to it, it's easy. Open the File > Print dialog box and choose Adobe PDF 8.0 (or whatever version you have installed) from the Printer dropdown list. When you click OK, you'll get an Open/Save dialog box where you can name the PDF and choose where to save it. It should open automatically in Acrobat when it's done.
To test that your Text Box text has been "burned into" the new PDF, press Command-Shift-8 (Ctrl-Shift-8 on Windows), the shortcut for Hide Comments. Your text should remain visible, nothing should change. To show comments again, press Command/Ctrl-8.
Nothing else I tried worked, by the way -- OS X's Save as PDF, PDF Optimizer, exporting to PDF/X-1a, and so on. Either they weren't able to generate a PDF at all, or the comments remained as comments. It's likely that exporting to PostScript and then distilling would work (I think), but once I found that printing to PDF did the trick, I was happy.
BTW I would not recommend refrying press-ready PDFs you're going to send to a commercial printer. It's fine for "regular" PDFs, though, that you're using as final documents.
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Illustrator Outline/Preview Tricks
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You're familiar with Illustrator's View > Outline/Preview (Command/Ctrl-Y) toggle, yes? Normally you work in Preview mode, but when you need to edit "the bones" of an illustration, Outline mode is a keystroke away. It's like a wireframe view of your artwork, showing only paths (no fills, no strokes) and live type in pure black and none.
It's been around forever. We jaded veterans can remember when you could *only* work in Outline mode, and Preview was for sissies.
If you only use the menu or shortcut to switch modes, you might think Preview/Outline is an all-or-none choice. Either every bit of artwork is in Preview, or every bit is in Outline. Take your pick.
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Combined Modes
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Actually, that's not true. In either mode, you can Command/Ctrl-click a top-level layer's visibility icon (the eyeball) to switch the contents of just that layer and its sublayers to the "other" mode. So some layers can be in Preview while other are in Outline! It's fantastic when you're trying to align artwork to paths that are obscured by overlapping fills, picking up colors for a gradient mesh, double-checking that your artwork fits within die-cut tolerances and so on.
In "combined" mode it can sometimes be difficult to tell if a layer is in Preview or Outline mode. In that case, just look at its eyeball. When you're in Preview mode, and you've invoked Outline mode for a top-level layer, its eyeball icon loses its fill and turns into an outline of an eyeball! (So clever, those Adobe engineers.) It works vice versa, too -- in Outline mode, where the top-level layers automatically show the outlined eyeball (ever notice that?) -- the layers you've Command/Ctrl-clicked into Preview mode get filled eyeball icons.
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Permanent Preview
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I think most Illustrator users know the program has a New Window command (choose it from the Window menu), which provides another view of the active document. You can put one window into Outline mode and other other into Preview, and the edits you make in one view are immediately done in the other, like an invisible hand.
It's useful, but since Illustrator lacks any Arrange/Tile Windows commands, it takes some work to resize the windows and position them side by side. (A hint here is to resize the main window first, so it only takes up half the space on the monitor, before choosing New Window. Since the new window defaults to the same size as the existing one, you can just slide it over.) Even then, trying to work with two regular windows open side-by-side can be difficult on a smallish monitor.
There's an alternative. If you're in Outline mode (for the whole file or just certain layers) and want to see a concurrent, dynamic color preview of the wireframe art without opening another window, go to the Window menu and choose Navigator.
Normally, you use the Navigator panel to help you, um, navigate the artwork. It replaces having to use the scroll bars and zoom commands. The panel's red-colored View Box can be dragged around in the panel to change the focus in the document window, and it has a view scale slider to change the zoom level.
But who cares ... most people use keyboard shortcuts for that, I think. What's key here is that the Navigator panel always shows a *preview* of the entire file, no matter which view mode you're in. The previewed artwork starts out small, but only because the panel is small. To see a larger preview, just increase the size of the panel itself, to the size of your entire monitor, if you want. Though that would make it difficult to edit the artwork. ;-)
So while you're working in Outline, you can see a live preview of your actions right in the Navigator panel. Stash the Navigator in your panel dock, save it in a custom Workspace (Window > Workspace > Save Workspace), and you have another convenient tool to add your Illustrator arsenal.
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VectorMagic.com Goes Live
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On February 20th, the folks at VectorMagic broke off from Stanford University and went live with their own site.
VectorMagic
http://vectormagic.com
If you haven't checked this site out yet, you must! It does an incredible job -- many say way better than Illustrator's Live Trace -- out of converting raster images into vector artwork, ready for downloading. Feed it the worst 72 ppi web graphic or digital photograph you can find, and get a resolution-independent, path-type illustration in return in EPS, PNG, PDF or SVG format.
When the computer geniuses behind the site were sponsored by Stanford University, the service was free. Now that they're on their own and have to pay for their own servers, you'll need to pay a "token" for each image you submit. Your first two tokens are free upon registration. Use them to test it out, and if it's worth it, you can buy tokens for a buck or two a shot.
If you register by March 5, you'll get two additional free tokens, for a total of four.
http://vectormagic.com/main/signup
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My Upcoming Seminars
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I'm doing a lot of speaking at upcoming conferences. If you'll be there, please be sure and come up and introduce yourself -- I love meeting DesignGeek readers!
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InDesign Conference: Miami
Feb. 26 - March 1, 2008
Miami Beach, Florida
http://www.mogo-media.com/conference.php?sid=1&cid=40
I'm doing seminars on InCopy, Bridge, and one I came up with called "The Zen of InDesign Repair" (troubleshooting crashes, freezes, flaky files and other general nastiness). Also, David and I will once again be recording an InDesignSecrets podcast with a live audience at the conference, which is always a hoot.
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InDesign User Group
Wed. evening, March 19, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
http://indesignusergroup.com/chapters/chicago/
(Sorry, the page is woefully out of date, but at least the group leader's e-mail is there)
At the next meeting of Chicago's InDesign User Group, held at beautiful Columbia College (the GOOD Columbia, not that backwater one in Manhattan), I'll be talking about "Best Practices and Cool Tips for Using Styles." Ken Hollern of Ambrosi & Associates will be the other speaker, talking about how they actually use styles in their InDesign projects.
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Chicago Creative Coalition
Thurs. evening, April 10, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
http://www.chicagocreative.org/
I'll be the guest presenter -- the topic is tentatively "New Media Marketing for Creatives" -- at this event. We're still working out the details, but basically I'll be showing the creative professionals in the audience how to set up and use blogs, podcasts, videocasts, and social networking sites to market their creative services. The event's not listed on the site yet, but it will be soon. (My fault, they're waiting for me to send them a seminar description.) In the meantime you can email c3@chicagocreative.org for location and cost info and to reserve your spot.
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2008 IPA Technology Conference
April 22-24, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
http://www.ipa.org/tech
Though it's still called the IPA (for International Prepress Association); the group has changed the expansion of its name to The Association of Graphic Solutions Providers ... "IPA is a community of premedia professionals within the creative, corporate, print publishing, packaging and in-plant sectors within the graphic communication industry."
The nice folks at the IPA have asked me to speak at the conference for the past few years but my schedule never allowed it. Finally, this year the dates meshed with my calendar. I'll be a panel member in a Leadership Track session called "Training and Development for an Agile Team." I'll be talking about training strategies to keep publishing staff up to date, effective, and proud of the skills they have. Agile? I'll need to look up that buzzword before I go, I guess. ;-)
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Creative Suite Conference: Nashville
May 19-22, 2008
Nashville, Tennessee
http://www.mogo-media.com/conference.php?sid=2&cid=45
Other than the "Blogging and Podcasting Yourself" session (sort of like the one I'll be doing at the Chicago Creative Coalition) I'm not sure what else I'll be doing at the show, other than enjoying Nashville! I might take a day trip to Germantown, where my grandfather and his brother started a printing business (Brunner Printing Co.) in the 1940's and which is still being run by my relatives, I hear.
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DesignGeek is a free monthly 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/).
Anne-Marie also writes InCopyFlow (for InDesign/InCopy workflow users), free subscription at
http://senecadesign.com/designgeek/incopy.html
... and writes InDesign tips at the blog she co-hosts with David Blatner, InDesignSecrets, at
http://indesignsecrets.com
To subscribe to DesignGeek or read archived issues, go to its home on Seneca's site:
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Copyright 2008 by Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
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