Nick Hodge's Blog

The longer source for this document can be found here: InDesign 2.0: Printing Output Choices and Flattener Tricks (including force Greyscale export!)

The Transparency Flattener is your colourspace conversion friend. If you take a placed EPS or PDF element that you are not sure is in a CMYK or RGB colourspace, by setting this placed element’s transparency to 99.9% [Normal], a colourspace conversion is undertaken at print time

Now when printing, this element is routed through the magic of the Transparency Flattener prior to output. It sees that your are printing “Composite CMYK” or “Composite RGB” and converts the output to that colourspace. The next question is “what happens, doesn’t this make it see through? Won’t it blend with the colours underneath?” Well, no. 0.1% is a VERY small percentage, and it rounds back to a full number (evidently, some stuff is represented as integers, so 0.1% of 255 is a 254.75, which rounds back up to 255)

You can also use this to force a document into Grayscale. Setting placed EPS/PDF elements with 99.9% transparency and printing Composite Gray results in a 100% Grayscale PDF [watch for spots!]. Good for Newsprint applications. Be warned; the grayscale colours chosen might not always be what you want at print time.

What about exporting EPS or PDF?

Yes, this same process applies.

EPS: you have a choice of CMYK, Gray or RGB. The flattener trick with 99.9% transparency works here too, as elements have to be flattened in the Postscript stream.

PDF: you have a choice of CMYK, RGB or Leave Unchanged. Again, the flattener is invoked where required.

What is the Difference Between InRIP Separations and Composite CMYK?

When printing InRIP separations you are printing Composite CMYK (as above), but InDesign adds some extra Postscript commands to the output device. This instructs the RIP to generate a page per colourant in the file. So, if there is spot colour in the document, it will be separated onto its own plate.

By the way, Acrobat Distiller 4 and 5 ignores this “separate” command, and you get a PDF from the Postscript that is the same as a Composite CMYK PDF. Except that InDesign gets a chance to apply “Application Built-in” trapping prior to creating the Postscript. (ref: InDesign Prepress: Generating Composite, Trapped PDFs)

Different RIPs have different settings for line screen ruling/angles — and in some cases override what the application outputs. Usually because “the application gets it wrong” according to prepress operators I speak to.

What is the Difference Between the two Transparency Blend Spaces?

When Flattening two objects at print time, you’ve got to do some mathematical stuff to determine how colours will mix together. The colourspace this is executed in may change the effective colour of the resulting flattened object. This is similar to the difference you see in Photoshop with some blend modes in RGB vs. CMYK. The recommendation is to set this to CMYK for printed output, and RGB when doing on-screen Acrobat 4.0 style PDFs. Acrobat 5.0 PDFs are not flattened at export time. You can also see a subtle change on screen in InDesign 2.0/CS.

InDesign 2.0 and CS have extensive support for spot/special colours, including InDesign CS’s support for recomposing preseparated DCS format.

DCS was invented to permit applications such as Photoshop to create a pre-separated file and place into QuarkXpress. Quark then didn’t need much intelligence to output the separated file: it just passed each of the plates as an EPS in the page stream when generating film/plates.

In a world where composite PDF is the norm, this DCS workflow no longer fits. With simple CMYK work from Photoshop, placing elements and generating separations is simple. The graphic is still held as separate plates, but presents to the user as a composite image.

The problem arises, however, when attempting to take a CMYK+spot(s) file from Photoshop and attempt place into any application – including InDesign 2.0/CS. Ultimately, it would be great to be able to place a single file that contains bitmap and vector information, as well as holding transparency and spot colours. Presently, the only file format that supports this fully is DCS. Whilst you can create Illustrator 10 .ai or .pdf files containing CMYK bitmap and spot colour vector objects, Photoshop is still largely the tool of choice for creation of special effects.

Photoshop allows spot colour channels to be created, but the only supported output formats are EPS, DCS and Photoshop PDF. In all of these formats, any transparency is not retained.

Therefore, this technique (which has been used many times in production) may assist you in combining the power of Photoshop and extending its spot channel support, and the power of transparency in InDesign to assist us in creating a printable job.

The process:

The overview is: create two Photoshop PDF files, place them on top of each other in InDesign 2.0. The bottom-most file is a CMYK only Photoshop PDF, and the topper-most file is a Spot-only Photoshop PDF. This technique relies on the Transparency Flattener in InDesign 2.0 to weave its magic to generate a composite output.

Step 1: create the source graphic element in Photoshop. In this example, we have a masthead that contains a Bevel & Emboss Photoshop layer style. Our goal is to make the colour of the masthead a special colour. (in the realworld example, this was printed as a metallic silver colour). Don’t create the spot channel yet. Save it as a Photoshop PDF (retaining transparency, vector information and resulting in a compact file).

In this file, the text has a white (or knockout) colour. Its goal in life is to act like a “cookie cutter” and remove the ink from underlying elements at print time. The Bevel & Emboss effect is created using a Black ink, so it will still appear on the black plate at print time.

Step 2: Take the same Photoshop PDF file:

• Turn off any effects.
• Change the white/knockout colour to Black. Choose a % of black that equals the % of spot colour ink you would like. In this example, as the element is a vector text element, it is just filled with 100% Black.
• double check and ensure where you have black, you want the spot ink to appear
• Mode>Convert>Grayscale. The will convert the black elements to 100% Black.
• Mode>Convert>Duotone. This will then permit you to change the Black to a named spot channel. Thankfully in Photoshop 6 or 7, this will be clipped inside the vector text element.
• For Advanced Users: you can also use other Layer Styles in Photoshop to ‘feather off’ the spot ink to create a highlight effect.

Do not make any position changes to the file. Set the channel in the Duotone to the same spot ink you are going to use in InDesign. This can be “Ink Aliased” at output time.

Step 3: As you will notice, saving as an EPS or PDF – transparency is not retained in this process. Don’t panic, we’re going to fix this in InDesign.

So we have two files: one being the Composite CMYK object saved as a Photoshop PDF, and another saved as a Photoshop PDF containing a Spot colour. In both files, there is vector data ensuring high quality output. In this example, I am using the .PDP file extension: the data inside the Photoshop PDF file is exactly the same; all I have done is adjust the extension. This will enable InDesign to Edit Original into Photoshop automatically.

Step 4: Go to InDesign 2.0. Place the file saved in step 1.

Step 5: Place the file saved in step 3, positioning it exactly over the top of the file placed in step 4. Use the transform palette to get 100% placement accuracy. Don’t worry about the “white” (knockout) colour from the placed file.

Step 6: set the top object to 100% Multiply using Window>Transparency. Almost magically, the white colour is removed, yet the spot colour remains. Leaving this at 100% Multiply, at output time the spot colour is retained (not converted to process)

To make the printing process a little more difficult, here the layer which the two elements are placed onto have been moved behind the image.

Step 7: Export as PDF, or Print to the Acrobat Distiller. In this example, I printed using Composite CMYK. Its a little difficult to fathom; but spot colours are held in this process (unless you use InDesign 2.0/CS’s Ink Manager to convert them back to process at print time)

In the above screen dump, I am using Quite Revealing to show the background colour from the Composite PDF. As you can see, the first placed CMYK PDF ‘cuts out’ the colour in the background: in this instance, the PANTONE 264C Spot Colour.

This above screen dump shows the PANTONE 340 C as created in the second Photoshop file

Here is the black plate. The Bevel&Emboss added in the first Photoshop PDF is retained, and overprints the spot colour correctly.

How does this work?

The first file you place (CMYK) element acts like a ‘knockout’ element, removing any items underneath. The second file placed (EPS Spot) then overprints the underlying CMYK object. As InDesign’s flattener is smart, it does not knockout underlying elements. It also does not change their colour in the flattening as the top object is a spot colour. Other blend modes such as Lighten or Darken do attempt to change the colours – so the final document may be forced into CMYK.

What’s the Benefit?

What does this provide that DCS does not? The ability to generate a composite PDF. As soon as you place a DCS file into QuarkXpress, InDesign or PageMaker – you are forcing the output to be separations. In modern Postscript 3 or Extreme workflows, recombining preseparated output is difficult, and not the default workflow.

If you are in Australia, you may have seen the June 2002 issue of the Foxtel magazine. It used this technique. Supplied as a composite PDF with Spot colour, it correctly separated, was trapped and printed as a metallic. The Bevel & Emboss in the K plate overprinted the silver-metallic special colour. This plate is still a vector element.

Thanks to: Matt Phillips, Ben Hewitt (who tested this out on a live job!) and Alan Rosenfeld (for listening to my ranting about this in Brisbane). A big thankyou to Aaron Cliff from Foxtel magazine for sending a better quality image – and more importantly, being brave enough to pioneer this technique.

InDesign: Use the Distiller or Export PDFs?

The original of this was posted to the InDesign-Blueworld mailing list on 14-October-2002

Firstly, there is nothing technically wrong with Exported PDFs from InDesign. At all. I (personally) have had great success with exported PDFs from InDesign RIPping to Prinergy and various other imagesetters/platesetters in production in the field.

When you send, or you have received an Acrobat 5.0/PDF 1.4 or Acrobat 6.0/PDF 1.5 – directly exported from InDesign 2.0/CS, the workflow choices are a little different: Printing Acrobat 5.0/PDF1.4 Generated by Adobe InDesign 2.0

In either workflow, you will get a high quality PDF that will generate great output.

However, I do recommend using a Print to Postscript-Distill workflow in the following situations:

1. When you are sending a PDF “blind”.

   In other words, where you are not sure of the provenance/age/version/vendor of your printer’s RIP — they will more than likely have determined an internal workflow for Distiller-made PDFs. They will have .joboptions available for your use, and have tested Distiller made PDFs from QuarkXpress, InDesign and other sources. If they use tools like Pitstop, they probably have created preflight checks based on Distiller-made PDFs.

   This is especially the case if you are sending advertisements, sending files to remote countries or doing work for a client where your client nominates a printer and it is not your choice. In these style workflows, there is a blind handoff.

   Therefore, Creating Postscript and Distilling is the safest path.

2. Your Printer’s RIPs are Harlequin < 5.3

   This is the CID font encoding issue. As you probably know by now, InDesign to accurately represent glyphs like ligatures, InDesign encodes the text in its PDFs in a form known as “CID”.

   THERE IS NOTHING WRONG, TRICKY, HIDDEN OR EVIL about CID font encoding. It’s a valid part of the PDF specification that certain vendors had not implemented in their software. By Print to Postscript-Distill, there is no CID font encoding, whereas exported PDFs do. Well build (that is: to
   specification) RIPs/Imagesetters work successfully with CID font encoding.

   A large InDesign customer here in Australia have a *very* old Harlequin RIP which is integral in their workflow. This forces the Distiller-route PDF generation: which works flawlessly, day in and day out.

   Again, if you do not worry, understand or even care what your printer is
   using: the Distiller is a common standard method.

3. Your printer/publisher is conservative, and provides a Distiller-workflow option.

   OK, so your printer accepts PDFs and provides a series of steps and a Distiller 4/5 .joboptions file. In this case, I sometimes recommend people export a PDF from InDesign to see if it works successfully (prepare to be surprised!) — however, to make life easier and have less Prepress technical people getting hot under the collar, use the Print to Postscript-Distill route.

All of this said, Exporting PDFs is a better option. Why?

1. Its quicker. Much quicker.
2. There are less translations (InDesign->Postscript->PDF, vs.
   InDesign->PDF)
3. Once there are more RIPs with InRIP flattening (next revision of Prinergy, Fujifilm etc) are out there, we get even faster output to Acrobat 5 (PDF 1.4). A sight to behold, people!

Therefore, if you have the chance to test Exported PDFs with your
workflow, please do.

Please note that Australia is far, far along the High Quality PDF path. PDF is the industry standard here in Australia (independent study) with a majority of printers getting a majority of their work in as PDF. This involves a plethora of RIPs, workflow software, imposition tools etc. Therefore in Australia, Distiller is a consistent known entity, and why we pragmatically recommend Print to Distiller PDF generation for our InDesign customers here.

There are a variety of methods for taking a Photoshop file and placing to into InDesign. After many years of InDesign 2.0 and CS in production use, I thought it opportune to expose another workflow choice taken by these customers. It directly relates to the placement of files from Photoshop into InDesign 2.0/CS layouts.

Apart from supporting the traditional TIFF (.tif) file format, InDesign also permits the placement of JPEG (.jpeg, .jpe, .jpg), Macintosh PICT, GIF, Portable Network Graphics (PNG) and other bitmap-style formats.

The most commonly touted method is to save an Adobe Photoshop .psd file, and place this into InDesign 2.0/CS. Transparency, otherwise known as alpha channel support, is fully supported in InDesign 2.0/CS. What does not work, however, are vector layers. When placed into InDesign 2.0/CS, vector layers including text layers are rasterised at the resolution of the Photoshop file (or transparency flattener, depending on the mechanics of the file).

Example 1: Photoshop image, containing Transparency as shown by the checkerboard pattern.

Example 2: The same Photoshop image, containing Transparency, placed into InDesign. The transparency is respected.

With Photoshop 6.0, and included in Photoshop 7.0 and CS, Adobe added the ability to save a Photoshop PDF file. Photoshop PDF has many benefits, and also shares many of the features of the Photoshop PSD format.

This format, like the Photoshop PSD format, has the following features

• Transparency support.
• Photoshop layers. including text layers, adjustment layers, layer masks etc are saved in the same file

Additionally, Photoshop PDF has the following features that Photoshop PSD does not have:

• Its PDF. can be displayed in the free Adobe Acrobat Reader
• Vector layers. keeping text/vector shapes kept as vector shapes for crisp printing and screen viewing)
• Security. using the security features of Adobe PDF, your images can be locked from viewing/editing by other people.
• Compression. images can be compressed using ZIP(lossless: no pixels are hurt) or JPEG (lossy: image data is changed)

With InDesign, Adobe has added support for the placement of PDF files without having to resort to “making and EPS” to ensure quality output. InDesign CS also permits the placement of PDF files that contain transparency information – and holds the transparency information.

To save a Photoshop PDF for placement into InDesign, the go to File>Save As.

Example 4: File>Save As. Choosing Photoshop PDF, here I am saving the layers (permitting late stage editing of the text layer if I wish)

Example 5: File>Save As. Choosing Photoshop PDF: a subsequent dialog box permits the saving of Transparency, applying security and in this particular file: retain the vector data as vector.

This Photoshop PDF can be placed into InDesign – the the same as any PDF. When placed into InDesign 2.0/CS, the file looks similar to the following. Notice I am only seeing the Proxy View of the image:

In the above example, I have turned on “High Quality Display”. The vector quality of the text, and any vector shape layers (including vector clipping groups) are respected; just as they are respected when printing or exporting as PDF or EPS.

Additionally, it is worth noting that the file extensions supported by Photoshop PDF are .pdf and .pdp

What is the difference? Nothing, apart from the file extension. The contents are exactly the same. The reason why there are two options is for the Windows platform. On Windows, the extension is used to associate a file with an application. .pdf is associated with Adobe Acrobat. When you double click on a file, this dot extension is used to assist Windows in determining which application to launch to view the file. With InDesign 2.0, when using the contextual menu “Graphics>Edit Original“, this association is also used. As this is a Photoshop PDF, and normally when editing/viewing the file – you would like to show it in Photoshop, an additional extension is permitted: .pdp, or Photoshop PDF.

I would recommend using the .pdp extension when saving a file from Photoshop as a Photoshop PDF. There were changes in InDesign 2.0 and 2.0.1 to support .pdp as equivilent to .pdf.

For MacOS users, the extension for InDesign 2.0 files is .indd

In fact, I would always use Photoshop PDF as the primary format when taking files from Adobe Photoshop to InDesign. There are no downsides: the file size is smaller, vector text and layers are supported and kept as vector.

Generating Composite, Trapped PDF from InDesign

Well created, Composite PDFs are the most commonly requested format for printers in this part of the world. So, how exactly do you generate a composite, trapped PDF?

InDesign 1.5.x, 2.0.x and CS have support for Application Built-in trapping. The trapping engine inside InDesign matches many of the features of Adobe’s InRIP trapping engine; usually found in higher end RIPs from Creo, Heidelberg, Agfa etc.

Trapping is the process of changing the shapes of certain objects in a printed output to reflect the way the ink will run when printed. Each of the inks are laid down on the paper by different cylinders of the press. As the paper (substrate) are impressed by these cylinders, there might be a misregistration – where the inks don’t quite line up. In this instance, the plates contain extra overprinted areas of dots to cover up any unsightly gaps that may be left in the final output.

Highend PDF workflows today are bedevilled by the “Who is trapping this?” question. In controlled workflows, this is easy to coordinate. Prepress know which press a job is running on, and apply some visual checks on the job and may make trapping changes to the source file prior to output. However, when there is a hand-off to an unknown press and printing environment, the creator will not know the press conditions. Today’s digital workflows largely assume that the final RIP (imagesetter/platesetter) will trap the document.

In some workflows, this trust may not be enough. We need to make composite PDFs for onscreen viewing, simplicity and size; yet trap them so there are no ugly white patches at print time.

With InDesign 1.5, 2.0 and CS, the Adobe trapping engine takes InDesign created object (text and vector objects) and traps them to placed images, text and vector shapes. InDesign does not trap placed PDF or EPS objects. These are assumed to be trapped. InRIP trapping solutions will trap the entire page stream. To use Adobe In-RIP Trapping, you must use In-RIP separations. Built-in trapping limits trap widths to 4 points, regardless of the value you enter for the trap widths. For larger trap widths, you will need to use Adobe In-RIP Trapping.

From QuarkXpress, the trapping information as setup by the Trap palette only comes into play when printing separations. With QuarkXpress 4.0 and above, overprinting and knockouts as set by the palette are retained in composite Postscript output. Saving Pages as EPS from QuarkXpress 3.32 and higher does result in overprints/knockouts being retained. (see QuarkXpress, PDF, Trapping and Overprint)

InDesign 1.5.x, 2.0 and CS preserve knockout/overprint attributes in Composite Postscript output. As you would expect, Adobe’s Applicaton Built-In trapping works when printing separations.

Back to the topic at hand: A significant workflow difference with InDesign is that it can also apply Application Built-In traps when printing InRIP separations.

What are InRIP separations? Essentially, programs like InDesign send composite Postscript to the RIP with some extra commands telling the RIP to take a completed page and produce n-plates based on the colourants on the page. For simple process jobs, this would result in a page each for C, M, Y and K.

The implementation of the Postscript showpage and copypage operators have the capability of producing pages for each colourant. If the output device doesn’t have this colourant, then the alternativeSpace colourant is used; failing this, DeviceCMYK is used. There is a Postscript engine inside the Distiller, and it yields DeviceCMYK colourant output.

Acrobat Distiller has a Postscript engine inside: what does it do with InRIP separation-marked Postscript? Distiller 4.0x and 5.0.x ignore the operators for producing pages for each colourant, and produce a composite PDF. The colours stay as CMYK (or spot colours if used) if the Distiller options are left to “Leave Colour Unchanged”

Now InDesign 1.5.x and 2.0.x allow you to apply Application Built-in trapping to the composite Postscript when printing as InRIP separations. Yes, I know its a little mind bending! If you then send the resulting Postscript to Acrobat Distiller, the Distiller discards the commands to separate, but it does retain the extra “trapping” Postscript commands. The final PDF holds these trap commands, and they can be viewed in Acrobat 5.0 by turning on Overprint Preview.

The final outcome is a Composite, Trapped PDF.

Steps

1. Ensure that your Trapping settings are correct. Please consult the InDesign CS Printing Guide, the manual and your Prepress/Printer before assuming the defaults are correct.

2. Assign a Trap Style to the page. In this instance, I am using InDesign’s [Default] Trap style as viewed above.

3. Here is the File>Print dialog box. In Output, Color is set to In-RIP Separations, and Trapping is set to Application Built-In

4. To make it easier to use the same settings on the next document, you can save a Printer Style for later use.

5. This is the source document in InDesign 2.0/CS

6. The final PDF inside of Acrobat 5.0 or 6.0, (available here: Example CompositeTrapped PDF)with Overprint Preview turned on. The darker areas around the type etc. display where overprinted strokes have been applied based on the inking requirements.

7. Using Quite Revealing from Quite Software, I can also reveal the overprinted strokes separately.

For more information about Trapping, and specifically the Adobe trapping engine:

Adobe Trapping Technology (white paper)

Adobe In-RIP Trapping Workflow

How to Trap Using Adobe Trapping Technologies

Thanks to Steve Amerige, Matt Phillips for their assistance with some of the finer details.

Duotones: Photoshop to InDesign CS

What are duotones? From the Photoshop’s Online help file:

Duotones are used to increase the tonal range of a grayscale image. Although a grayscale reproduction can display up to 256 levels of gray, a printing press can reproduce only about 50 levels of gray per ink. This means that a grayscale image printed with only black ink can look significantly coarser than the same image printed with two, three, or four inks, each individual ink reproducing up to 50 levels of gray.

Sometimes duotones are printed using a black ink and a gray ink–the black for shadows and the gray for midtones and highlights. More frequently, duotones are printed using a colored ink for the highlight color. This technique produces an image with a slight tint to it and significantly increases the image’s dynamic range. Duotones are ideal for two-color print jobs with a spot color (such as a PANTONE Color) used for accent.

Duotones is a generic name given to monotone, duotone, tritone etc images. The mono- prefix here denotes the number of colourants (plates) in the final file generated by Photoshop.

Generating Duotones from Photoshop

The greatest control over true Duotones as defined above is going to be in Photoshop. However, there is a concept known as fake or poor man’s Duotones, which InDesign CS supports directly.

The process of converting a coloured image into a Duotone in Photoshop starts with converting the image to grayscale. The quickest, and rawest method of converting is to go Image>Mode>Grayscale

After converting to greyscale, the next step is to Image>Mode>Duotone change the grayscale into a Duotone image. The dialog box that appears allows you to change the spot colour that makes up the second colour. If you would prefer a monotone, change the first “Black” ink in the list to the spot colour. The curve box permits tweaking of the ink density where the second colour is applied.

How do you get Photoshop Duotones into InDesign CS?

To place this file in InDesign, the format that we need to save the file is Photoshop PSD or Photoshop PDF. InDesign Prepress: Photoshop to InDesign workflow

In InDesign, File>Place the Photoshop file saved above. Once the image is placed, you will notice that InDesign adds a new Swatch to the Window>Swatches palette.

From this point, the new Swatch is considered a Spot colour. To preview the output of this InDesign file, use Window>Output Preview>Separation Preview. Managing this spot colour at print time the same as managing Spot colours in InDesign: through the Ink Manager.

Poor Man’s Duotones in InDesign CS

Grayscale images can be directly made into Monotones in InDesign 2.0/CS. Here, we are assigning the Black (K) plate to an alternate colour, including potentially a Spot Color. The user-interface needs to be carefully described as there is a little twist: something the help file doesn’t quite explain. The order of steps below are critical!

1. Place the Grayscale TIFF or Photoshop image into InDesign 2.0/CS
   
2. Open Windows>Swatches
3. Ensure that the Swatch, Spot or otherwise is in the Swatches list
   
4. Select the Direct Selection Tool
   
5. In the Swatches palette, ensure that the Fill is selected at the top:
   
6. Click inside the Greyscale image with the Direct Selection Tool
7. Click on the Swatch you would like to apply to the image:
   

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Happily Marooned

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Saturday, 19th March, 2005

Leaving today.

Along with signs exhorting “Be a good host to distinguished guests”; a phrase that should have preceeded Prince Charles on his recent trip to New Zealand; drive past the No. 1 Tire factory and No 2. Industrial Bank on the way to the vast airport that is Pudong.

Quick shopping for a fridge magnet and belated birthday present for my Mum. Grab something that has a cat on it for our cats to knock off and destroy.

In the mist, the large buildings disappear and off to Sydney returning via the airport disguised as a shopping mall in Hong Kong.

On the Dragonair flight, there are some very weird cooking shows. One is a pair from Hong Kong looking at cows in Kobe. Evidently, each cow gets its own birth certificate to prove it is a Kobe cow. The farmers feed the cows beer to keep them happy an oblivious to their ultimate fate: to be eaten raw.

Three tips for modern-day jetsetters and air-travellers:

1. Don’t smoke
2. Wear shoes and belts that don’t trigger x-rays
3. Get ready to drink bad coffee

Thursday, 17th March, 2005

After another day of meetings/training/discussion, we are off into Shanghai proper for some food. Near the river, near the very large tower, in the Seagull Palace; overlooking the Bund.

Travelling the 30 minutes from the hotel to the city centre, massive multistory towers emerge like trees in the mist. However, the mist here is smog and the lights emerge in an erie fashion. There are so many large buildings in Shanghai, the world has run out of international brand-names to erect on them in neon. Freaky.

Great local food, especially a chili-pork-soup combo that was out of this world. Stayed clear of the shellfish, just in case.

Much laughter and a good night is had by all. I hadn’t realised that an Australian secret (true, honest) that I told a Japanese collegue has single-handedly caused a drop in Japanese tourism to Australia: Drop-Bears. These are dangerous cousins of Koalas that drop out of trees, hurting unsuspecting tourists below whilst they are sightseeing in the bush. Australians, knowning that all our native animals are deadly to humans in some fashion, have attempted to keep silent about the drop-bears to our international friends. Unfortunately, my information has leaked in Japan, including Tokyo schools – and as far away Nagasaki. The secret is out. Sorry, Australian Tourism Board.

After wandering the streets at 10pm, the Indians, the trainer and I find a cab and head back to what we hope is the hotel. It feels and tastes like the right direction – and we are home.

Wednesday, 16th March, 2005

Outside, its raining and overcast – so not much is visible. A permanent head-cold has set in (or at least from a week ago in Auckland), so I am just glad the Hong Kong and Chinese thermal scanners have not rejected me for re-importing SARS (stupid australian respiritory syndrome) into China.

Good to see our old Australian friend, now in London, Alan Rosenfeld here to give us the low down on products.

Elect to stay in at night and try to rid myself of the lurgy. Watching BBCWorld, a not-so-positive piece of China news is “censored”. That’s right, black screen. All the other stations are working OK, but BBCWorld is censored. This is not a world I am familiar with. Big Brother-ish. Freaky.

Tuesday, 15th March, 2005

Second international flight in two weeks, if you can class New Zealand as overseas. Five iPod Shuffle billboards (also known as Supersites in Australian Outdoor Advertising Lingo) in green and while ask all international travellers to not think and just randomly purchase on their exit. Unfortunately, all stores are out of stock and the current wait-time is 6 weeks. Good advertising dollars down the drain.

Catch up with a phone-friend in the Qantas Club at Sydney: Charlie from Screen. He’s off to New Zealand and we trade war stories of NZ weather experiences.

The Catholic Church is going after Dan Brown’s 15 million published novels, but that hasn’t stopped my fellow travellers: I counted at least 3 people reading a Dan Brown book. Maybe it’s time to outright ban books again? My Dan Brown for this flight was meant to be Digital Fortress, but after a few lines of reading I soon realised why Avril looked at me strangely when I asked for it last night. I’ve read the book already. Into a military history of Arnhem 1944 (Operation Market-Garden) Another good study of political rather than operational military decision making. A bridge too far.

Now I am out of books. This is not an experience I enjoy.

Off in Hong Kong, and jump on the little train that takes you to Gates 33 to 80. They obviously ran out of space to put stores in the normal International terminal, so the planners created more gate lounges to host more stores.

Dragonair to Shanghai Pudong. Flying at night the lights are endless. Filling in the China Immigration card, it asks if you suffer from a “mental psychosis”. Not quite yet…

No need to collect baggage from carousel 13, because it doesn’t exist. Jane and I (Jane is from our Hong Kong office) wait for her bags, and we are out in the limosine service to the hotel.

The ettiquite is for drivers to drive fast in the left hand lane, flashing their lights at slower cars. Speeding fines don’t seem to be an issue at 10pm, as we motor along at 140km/h to Hongqaio.

You can just taste the industry in the worker’s paradise. Factory after factory, apartment block after apartment block. Billboards promote distinctly green, countryfied dreams as you drink pepsi/coke/or whatever is being advertised.

Showing off Scarlett to all comers

Line of MINIs; old an new

John Cooper Works badge. External view of AU$8K

Avril buffs up Scarlett