Chapters 11 & 12 Summary

Chapter 11 is called InDesign CS4 Production Tips. The first section is about Graphics. InDesign offers several ways to place graphics into your layout. You can use a rectangle tool and rectangular frame tool to place images inside an object or you can just place a file onto a layout and it will create a frame for you. The good drag and drop methods are to open your finder window and dragging the files directly from the folder to the layout or use Adobe Bridge to navigate through your files and drag them onto your layout. Bridge uses thumbnails that are easier to find the correct files. The bad forms of drag and drop would be dragging an open Photoshop or Illustrator file directly into InDesign. There are lots of problems with that, so you're better off not doing it. Embedding is pointless with InDesign because it makes the file size so much bigger and you can't edit the graphic once its embedded in the file. You are better off linking to an external file. if you do need to update a graphic or if you do update, the links panel will show you if it needs to be updated or if a link is missing. To find missing graphics, click the re-link button and search through your files to find the right one and update it. You can also use the re-link button to replace current graphics in your document. InDesign also lets you edit a graphic in its own Native program and updates it automatically when you save. You can transform graphics and their containers in InDesign but its a good idea to do that in its native file and update the link so it will be right in your file.

The next section is using Native file. First up, we have Photoshop Native files. It's not necessary to flatter your layers before placing them in InDesign. However, be careful with your custom shadows you create in Photoshop. It will most likely need special handling when placed in an InDesign file or won't work right with the other page elements. You can get around this by using object layers options in InDesign. You place graphic copy to clipboard, then turn on the layers you want, then place the image back on top the other one. Next up we have Illustrator Native files. Using AI files is a lot better than using traditional EPS files. The transparency/blending modes in Illustrator are honored by InDesign. The file size is smaller and all around works better with InDesign. You can also use InDesign files as artwork to be placed into another InDesign file. It works just like placing any other type of file. You can also place PDFs into InDesign as artwork. It places the artwork without rasterizing it.

Swatches is the next section of tips for InDesign. The swatches panel is confusing. You have spot or process colors, and CMYK and RGB color modes and unnamed swatches. Occasionally you will have stubborn swatches that will not go away. Also you will have swatch names that refer to the same color and you will have to delete the extras because a RIP will output them separately. Use the Separations Preview Panel to display the percentage of value of each ink color on a printing plate. Or you can use the visibility controls on the left hand side of the separation preview panel to toggle the different ink instances on/off. Then you have the Ink Manager whose primary purpose is to fix spot-color errors by remapping extraneous colors to correct inks. You can colorize an Image in InDesign but it is preferred to do most colorizing in Photoshop, where you have complete control of the mixing of inks.

The next section is all about converting Legacy QuarkXPress and Pagemaker files to InDesign. I'm not going to spend much time on this because we don't have to do this. It talks about preparing for conversion, what to expect from the conversion and with QuarkXPress conversion issues, cleaning up your files, and when not to convert legacy files.

The next part is miscellaneous document tips that you should know about. IDLK files are InDesign Lock files. Its purpose is to prevent multiple users from simultaneously opening an InDesign file. If your computer crashes for any reason, InDesign has an Automatic Recovery that saves your most recent work on a file. To save for an older version of InDesign you must export an InDesign Interchange file. But be careful there are some things in the newer versions that are not in the old versions. You can reduce your InDesign file size by using Save As instead of Save, because it rewrites the file and does some housecleaning on the file. Make sure you establish a bleed setting on your document, so it will be available for output when you go to print. If you're creating the wrong document size, you can change them by going to Layout > Layout Adjustment and change your settings. Use a library to keep track of all your images, graphics, and fonts to make it easier to manage if you will be using them more than once. Sometimes if your inherit a CS3 file, it will show your text being 2 sizes. To fix this, select text frame, and choose Redefine Scaling as 100% from Transform Panel menu.

Smart Guides display width and height values, as well as dimension hints when you have objects the same dimensions as something else. Smart Spacing indicators let you know when you've positioned an object so that it has equal spacing between nearby objects. You can turn on/off Smart Guides depending on whether you like using them or not. You can also use Smart Text Reflow to add new pages when a threaded story is threatened with overset text.

InDesign has the ability to create transparent effects which designers like. It now converts these effects to form that PostScript devices can handle by flattening the transparency. To flatten transparent objects you need to take some precautions. Put text on top so they will be safe from rasterization. Choose the appropriate transparency blend space and flattener preset. Make sure you invoke your transparency flattener presets during print or export. By default, opaque shapes know out everything underneath them. Over printing allows a shape to intermix with everything underneath.

The next section is about Finding and Fixing problems in InDesign. The different Forensic tools InDesign have to help you find and fix your problems are: Preview mode, which simplifies your views of the document, overprint preview, which can be used to confirm that you've set objects to overprint, flattener preview uses red highlighting for text and vector content that may be rasterized during the output process, the component information dialog provides a peek under the hood of your copy of InDesign. InDesign also has the Information panel which provides valuable information about image and text content. Live Preflight feature was revamped for CS4 and constantly monitors the state of the document, checking it against a set of user specified preflight rules. You can create a custom preflight profile and import and share a preflight profile. InDesign's Package function copies all necessary fonts and art files into a folder for job submission. Lastly, this chapter goes through the different PDF creation methods, and the PDF creation setting available for an InDesign file. The different creation methods are: Export to PDF, Print to Adobe PDF, Acrobat Distiller, and Save As PDF(mac only). The best settings for PDF creations are as follows: smallest file size, high quality print, press quality, PDF/X-1a:2001, PDF/X-3:2002, and PDF/X-4:2008.

Chapter 12 is Acrobat Production Tips. PDF's came from a co founder of Adobe systems named Dr. John Warnock, who proposed to create portable documents that could be displayed and printed on any computer. Acrobat is intended for modifying PDF's. It doesn't create PDF's, you always have to start from another file.

To create PDF files you have to determine which type of PDF you should create. There could be PDF's for print, email, online, or for CD/DVD. There are several different PDF settings and standards. The PDF/X and PDF/A settings are based on standards intended to ensure a PDF behaves as expected. The most common format for print is PDF/X-1a/ A PDF must meet these standards for this format:

• Images must be CMYK or spot color.
• Fonts must be embedded and subset.
• The trim edges of pages must be explicitly defined.
• The bleed limits must be explicitly defined.

You can either export PDFs directly from your applications or you can use Distiller. Exporting is easier and better because you can retian layers, live transparency, or interactivity. A Distiller changes a PostScript to a PDF, that's it. You have to make sure everything is correct and drag your files into the Distiller to change it to a PDF. If your PDF is mostly images, you are going to have a big file size, and have to decide whether to compress those images or not. If your file is mostly text, then you don't have to worry about your images so much because text doesn't make it a big file size. If you want to drastically reduce your file size you can set the base resolution and down sampling threshold to the same value. You also have compression settings to make your file size smaller. Last you have font embedding. The purpose of this is to ensure that the PDF file looks and prints like the original document. Sometimes embedding can go wrong. One solution is to subset font information. Subsetting embeds only the characters used in the document, which reduces file size.

Next, they talk about editing PDF files. Acrobat offers 3 editing tools in the Advanced Editing toolbar. The Touch Up Text tool is for selecting and editing text. The Touch Up Object tool is to select images and vector objects for editing in imaging applications. And the Touch Up Reading Order tool allows you to modify object attributes to create more accessible files for visually impaired users. To edit text, you have to have the font used in the PDF, and you can only edit one line at a time. Editing your graphics is much easier then text. It will open your imaging software so you can edit it in the application it needs to be edited with.

Acrobat has a toolbar for comments and review for your PDF. The tools they have available are:

• Sticky notes
• text edits
• stamps
• highlight text tool
• callout tools
• text box tool
• cloud tool
• arrow and line tools
• rectangle and oval tools
• pencil tool

To collaborate your comments people have made, you can have email-based reviews or used shared reviews that you store in a central location or use collaborate live. To collect everyone's comments you can export or import comments into one PDF, then use the summarize command to sum up all your comments.

Acrobat has a print production toolbar to find problems and fix them. You can use the output preview tool, to take a visual approach to check for problems. You could use the preflight tool to also check the PDF. A preflight profile includes one or more checks or fixups, or sometimes both. Then you have the Repair tools. Those tools are:

• Ink manager
• Convert colors
• Add Print Marks
• Crop Pages
• Fix hairline
• Transparency Flattener Preview 
• PDF optimizer
• Trap presets
• JDF

These are all the things and tools you need to know for Acrobat and PDFs.

Sources:
All information came from our text book: Print Production by Claudia McCue