Category: adobe

Adobe Tips

As promised, I am starting to document the techniques shown at the recent Adobe roadshows

Illustrator 10: Illustrator 10: Making Good Text Go Bad. Photoshop 7: Photoshop 7 File Browser Automatic Numbering Technique

Apart from writing the above articles, I decided to noodle around with the GD library that is a part of PHP4. GD permits the dynamic changing of images programmatically, rather than having to do it by hand in an image editing tool. In my example, the code is grabbing a random Neil Finn lyric from the Random Neil Finn Lyric Server. The end result looks like this:

http://www.nickhodge.com/nhodge/finnwords/finnwordsimageengine.php

The text is gathered from a SOAP stream, and composited on top of another dynamically served image.

OK, I have another confession. I absolutely cannot miss an episode of Meet the Osbournes. Its partly the fact that this dysfunctional family seems to work, a Simpsons in real life. Ozzy, obviously suffering from too many non-natural substances in too great quantity, is really a pussy cat. This persona belies his 30-plus years of a proto-high priest of the dark side. The irony of seeing Ozzy go bananas over his noisy neighbours is delicious. What a riot.

InDesign and InRIP Separation of PDFs

I stand corrected. At the recent InDesign for Prepress event with GASAA and Heidelberg, I said there were no RIPs in the marketplace that supported native transparency in PDFs. I was wrong.

I’ve just spent some time with Kim from the CPI Group – the sell the Fujifilm Celebrant Extreme RIP in Australia. From InDesign 2.0 I was able to export Acrobat 5.0 PDFs – where transparency isn’t flattened and have the RIP generate the correct separations/plates. This included spot colours, layer-masked Photoshop files, drop shadows and feathering. To say the least, I was impressed with the output.

The benefit of this style of native export as Acrobat 5.0 PDF is that exporting from InDesign 2.0 is extremely quick. Normally when making an Acrobat 4.0 PDF, printing or exporting EPS – InDesign invokes the transparency flattener to correctly create the transparent effects. As Acrobat 5.0 can hold these transparency settings in the PDF natively, there is no need to flatten. The Fujifilm RIP just ate these PDFs, and generate separations that looked just as good as the print Postscript (with flattening) into the RIP. This RIP implements the CPSI 3015.102 engine from Adobe. wow

From Kim stated, there are some customers in Australia with this level of RIP in production.

Over the next couple of months, I will try the same tests with other vendor’s RIPs and workflow to see where they are up to in comparison.

Trilogy in Many Parts

I’ve just completed the final part of my trilogy on InDesign 2.0, Spot Colours and output.

Part 1: InDesign 2.0: Generating Composite, Trapped PDFs

Part 2: InDesign 2.0: Spot Colors, Transparency

Part 3: InDesign 2.0: Photoshop with Spots, InDesign and Composite PDF
If you look at , you will see google searches that have arrived here. Every now and then someone searching for “Moonshine Distilling” hits my site. Sadly for them, it has absolutely nothing to do with illegal alcohol production in stills.

Travel

Now in Sydney, watching the sun rise over the CBD. Thanks to Qantas, got a late-stage upgrade to business class. Watched A Beautiful Mind, and slept for about 10 hours on the flight. In Sydney for all of three hours, then off to Auckland, New Zealand.

Now in cool, wintery Auckland, New Zealand. Some 30 hours after leaving San Jose, California

As my hosting provider is adding some level of Java support soon, and its a language that is becoming increasingly “hip” at Adobe, I’ve installed Tomcat 4.0 ready to rock and roll. The last time I seriously touched Java was back in my Apple days with WebObjects 4.0. It feels like getting back into a pair of comfortable shoes.