Thanks to an email from Ola, and some research; I’ve taken the liberty to change the URL format on www.nickhodge.com. Using a posting on Modrewrite Forums: Complicated .htaccess, it was a simple matter and 15 lines of Modrewrite for Apache, we’re off!

Imageready Rollovers

Creating Rollovers in ImageReady 3.0

Weighted Optimisation
Nick Hodge
How to use Weighted Optimisation of JPEGs and GIFs in Photoshop 6.0

Adam Pratt: GoLive 6.0 Tips & Tricks

Bigbang MenuMachine

Creating a Virtual Directory for the Apache Web Server on Mac OS X

Creating HTML emails with GoLive

Deleting a Bad Installation of the the GoLive Preconfigured Servers package on Mac OS X and starting over

GoLive 6.0.1 Update (Mac, 8.2Mb)

GoLive 6.0.1 Update (Win, 5.7Mb)

Initializing the Sample Databases and Using the Sample Sites on Mac OS X

Installing the GoLive Preconfigured Servers on Mac OS X

Stranger Than Fiction

After leaving school in 1986, Michael Hill, Michael Luscombe and I started a small band called Stranger Than Fiction. As fans of what is now known as 1980s New Wave; bands such as Split Enz Talking Heads and the like – we created and recorded our music for a very, very small audience. (a picture of me at about this time Nick’s Old, Original MINI)

Using a four-track recorder, we knocked out a quick album called A Carriage Off the Track. After I purchased an eight-track recorder, and as many effects units as possible, we quickly re-recorded two tracks from the first album and two new songs in an interim release.

The major, and to be final album, was called Happily Marooned. The two tracks below are my instrumentals from this album. There are other songs, but as I didn’t exclusively write them (I co-wrote lyrics and music) I am not going to publish them to the world without permission. One day I will be brave enough to publish the lyrics I wrote. This was a lifetime ago, and it’s been difficult enough to gather courage to publish these tracks!

To complete the story, we drifted apart. My eight-track is in storage in Adelaide. I got married. Life goes on. In 1997, Phil Mills remastered my only cassette master onto audio CD. In 2003, using Adobe Audition, I cleaned up the audio and created the versions below.

As was not a vocalist, I largely stuck to instrumentals. The keyboardist in Split Enz and the originator of ENZSO, Eddie Rayner, was my personal guide to the acceptability of this from an acceptability point of view. Songs such as Albert of India and Pioneer (lead in song to Six Months in a Leaky Boat) acted as thematic pieces for the band’s album releases.

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On a Pilgrimage started life titled Isolation, but was renamed as it sounds like a movement song.

download MP3:

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Isolation is my attempt at a 100% orchestral piece.

download MP3:

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The music on this page is ©1987 Nick Hodge, and can only be used for personal listening pleasure.

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

Welcome to Adobe InDesign CS: Prepress Features

InDesign, since version 1.5, has been on an steep development path. InDesign 2.0 added the revolutionary features related to Transparency. The impact of simply placing a Photoshop file with transparency provides the catalyst to dramatically change Print design to pre-press workflows.

InDesign CS (version 3.0, InDesign CS: Prepress Overview) added Separation Preview and Transparency preview: both elements critical to smoothing the Prepress workflow related to InDesign.

What more features can InDesign CS2 (version 4.0) add?

Custom Points-per-inch.

(Edit>Preferences, Units and Increments) This is the measurement of pica point. A seemingly trivial difference between 72dpi and 72.27dpi has split the graphic arts community since the invention of Postscript, and the use of desktop computers for typesetting. Photoshop for many versions has a preference to change the Points per Inch style. (for a complete rundown, visit: Font measurements and What is Font Size?)

Appearance of Black

(Edit>Preferences, Appearance of Black) When is Black the new Black? 100K, or Black, commonly used in type is generally set to overprint rather than knockout the elements below. This has been the default, but customisable setting in InDesign since version 1.0. (see Overprinting of [Black] in the Preference above). Please note: New Zealand readers, All Blacks has nothing to do with Rugby; a gentleman’s game played by thugs.

Note: this setting is also available in Illustrator CS2.

The On Screen options:

Display All Blacks Accurately: this will produce a visual difference between 100K Black and Rich Blacks; where Blacks are 100K + other colours.

Display All Blacks as Rich Black: this will visually darken all the Blacks in the document to the same intensity. This will therefore make the document appear different to how it will print.

The underlying breakdowns of the 100K [Black] swatch, and other rich blacks will remain unaltered in the document. This settings is just changing the visual appearance.

Printing/Exporting options (on non-Postscript output devices):

Output All Blacks Accurately: this will ensure that the underlying settings of swatches, Overprint settings are honored. This setting will result in the printed output having a difference between pure black and rich black.

Output All Blacks as Rich Black: this setting will alter the colours as output on RGB and Greyscale devices to match the 100K [Black] swatch. Or another way to think of this, 100K CMYK black is output as 000 in RGB.

Changes to Drop Shadow Generation

Drop Shadows, added in InDesign 2.0, whilst adding an element of depth and third dimension to designs – their composition has been simple and two dimensional.

To match the styles of shadows that can be created in Photoshop since version 5.0, Shadows in InDesign CS2 can have Spread and Noise added.

Spread increases the size of the shadow into the blurred area and reduces the radius of the blur. The larger the value for spread, the less diffused the shadow edge will appear and print.

Noise introduces some randomness to the pixels in the shadow, and provides a grainier (sic) result in output.

The addition of spread, as explained by Michael Stoddart, permits “real” outer glows to be created in InDesign CS2. (note: to create an outer glow: use [Paper], change the x and y offsets to 0 (zero), and the Blend mode to Normal.

Saving Back as InDesign CS

The InDesign Interchange (.inx) format when using File>Export, permits saving back in a format that can be read by InDesign CS (version 3.0).

To read this interchange format, users of InDesign CS will need to update to 3.0.1 April 2005 (CS2 Compatibility Update).

As the InDesign CS2 Readme and Help states: “Be aware that content created using functionality that is specific to InDesign CS2 might be modified or omitted when you open the file in InDesign CS. For example, footnotes and object styles (new features in InDesign CS2) drop out. However, object style attributes applied to page objects are preserved when possible.”

Therefore, from a Pre-press file handover perspective, PDF is still the recommended format. The PDF will hold all elements in the correct position as per the InDesign CS2 document.

The interchange format is to permit editing by someone who has not yet upgraded from InDesign CS to InDesign CS2 edit documents.

Placing layered Photoshop and PDF into InDesign CS2

Layers, a mechanism for separating objects in Photoshop have been a fundamental part of its makeup for over 10 years. Added in Acrobat 6.0/PDF 1.5, layer support is actually a mechanism for grouping objects. Calling them layers makes it a simple leap of understanding.

In InDesign CS, along with support for Acrobat 6.0/PDF 1.5 layer output matching the layers in the InDesign document.

InDesign CS2 has the ability to dynamically turn on/off layers from Photoshop and PDF files on placing:

In this simple Photoshop file example, there are two layers added to the top of the original image from the following Photoshop file:

There is a one-to-one mapping of layers (and Layer Sets) from the Photoshop file to the placed file in InDesign CS2. In this example, the layer named “correct colour” is a Levels Adjustment layer. The “correct sign” layer is a layer-masked colour correction of the sign.

At placement time, any of these layers can be toggled on/off.

In a Prepress environment, there could be multiple Adjustment layers correcting an image that can be turned on/off at a later stage. Rather than bouncing back-and-forth between Photoshop and InDesign to fix/correct colour – the multiple versions and corrections can be created once in multiple layers. When working in InDesign CS2, the layers can be turned on/off dynamically:

Multiple Page PDF Place

Related to layered file placement, InDesign CS2 also has the ability to place multiple page PDFs.

In the above dialog, the selected PDF has two pages. Only the previewed page on the left can be placed, or all/page range can be placed into the InDesign CS2 document.

After selecting “All” Pages, the “placement gun” is loaded with the first page. After placing this page, the gun remains loaded with the second page … and so forth.

Taking a multple page PDF and placing it back into InDesign for placement/work is easier with InDesign CS2.

CID font encoding

As discussed in InDesign Prepress: Export or Distill PDFs?, there has been a undercurrent of “exported PDFs are bad” form InDesign since version 1.0. The base reason of this has been the method of encoding fonts in the PDF files generated.

CID (Identity-H) encoding is a long supported mechanism of encoding Roman and non-Roman fonts in Postscript, and subsequently PDF. Adobe PostScript Level 2 RIPs and later fully support CID font encoding. Older and some non-Adobe RIPs have difficulty with CID font encoding.

In the above example, the OpenType Pro font Bickham Script Pro with OpenType contextual alternates turned on. The Preflight profile to the right is from Acrobat Professional 7.0 that errors on CID font encoding. This PDF does not have CID fonts. Another file created with some of the included Chinese and Japanese fonts did, expectantly, produce a PDF where the fonts are CID encoded.

This change will promote the use of Direct PDF export from InDesign CS2, especially in workflows where there is a “blind handover”, and the sender does not know the levels of RIPs used at the output end.

Shared PDF styles with Acrobat Distiller 7.0

Acrobat Distiller takes Postscript output from any application and converts this to PDF. It is the oldest and most ingenious part of the Acrobat family.

A constant request from the beginning of InDesign has been to “synchronise” the settings files between the Distiller and InDesign. Whilst each application has a different approach to making PDFs, the settings required to get to the PDF (DPI of images, font embedding requests, etc) can be standardised.

With InDesign CS2, you can open a .joboptions file from within the application; and this setting is “added” to the PDF export settings available. Also, this setting is loaded into other applications of the Creative Suite 2; including the Distiller.

Distiller 7.0 also adds the ability to force conversion of non-CMYK images into a nominated CMYK colour space. This is a major advance in the Distiller (and a long requested feature!). InDesign since version 1.0 has converted RGB elements into the output colours space (usually CMYK) — a handy catch-all for problems with placed elements.

Why use the Distiller with InDesign CS2? There are some additional controls that are highly useful in Distiller 7.0:

Under the Image settings, there is a button “Policy”. This permits a greater degree of control over the policy when the bitmaps do not meet the target resolution. It is similar to the Font embedding policies when fonts cannot be embedded into the resulting PDF.

Booklet Imposition

ALAP InBooklet SE, originally included in the PageMaker Plugin Pack for InDesign CS, is included with InDesign CS2.

Permitting 2-up Saddle Stitch, 2-up Perfect Bound, 2-up; 3-up; 4-up Consecutive.

Summary

Distiller 7.0 and InDesign CS2 add the finishing touches to trouble-free PDF, for print, workflows.

Combined into the Creative Suite 2, the collective features are heading toward Prepress perfection.

The base design of www.nickhodge.com has changed. More work with the changed URLs from last week, plus a new image courtesy Mark Szulc taken at Kare Kare, NZ. Worked on the CSS; using a three column liquid layout. Any errors, or misrenderings. Just email.

Update, 16th June 2006: fixed issues with CSS when being browsed by Internet Explorer 6.0: it needs the z-index: set implicitly.

3DAP (PDF Guidelines for Magazine Advertising Delivery)

Acrobat 5.0 Javascript Training Modules
Adobe Systems
Learn how to write Javascript for Adobe Acrobat 5.0

Acrobat Reader 5.1 (Windows and Mac)

Latest version of the Reader for all platforms.

Adobe Acrobat Reader and Forms Data without Custom CGI
Nick Hodge
How to use the common CGI, Formmail, and Acrobat Forms

Configuring Byte Serving on Web Servers
Adobe Systems
an oft-requested piece of technical info. Here is the obscure file on the Adobe web site!

GASAA: Graphics Arts PDF Usage Survey, 2002

Learning Centre: Introduction to Acrobat JavaScript

PlanetPDF Description on ADBC in Adobe PDF Forms

MacOS Acrobat 5.0.5 Updater

Updater from Acrobat 5.0 MacOS to 5.0.5 MacOS. Size 14.7Mb. Posted 20-Dec-2001

Making Compact PDFs Using Acrobat Distiller
Nick Hodge
How to create small Adobe PDFs for web delivery

MediaBox, BleedBox and TrimBox info in Adobe Acrobat 6
Cari Jansen
When creating PDFs that are PDF/X compliant it is a requirement that the MediaBox, TrimBox and BleedBox are properly defined in the PDF. Acrobat 6’s Crop command is a handy tool to reference the various box sizes.

PANPASpecs (PDF Guidelines for Newspaper Advertising Delivery)

PDF Forms and Javascript
Nick Hodge
How to create forms in Acrobat, and save the data to a web server or database.

PDFExperts on Microsoft Publisher/PDF Workflows

PDFExperts detail how to get CMYK from an RGB Publishing application via PDF

PDFs for Onscreen Presentations
Nick Hodge
Short synopsis of creating PDFs for on screen presentations

PlanetPDF on ADBC in Adobe PDF Forms

PlanetPDF Description on ADBC in Adobe PDF Forms

QuarkXpress, PDF, Trapping and Overprint
Nick Hodge
Quark doesn’t produce good composite Postscript for the Distiller – and this can impact overprint preview in Acrobat 5.0

Using Adobe PDF for Prepress

Links and Tools for Acrobat in a Prepress environment

Windows Acrobat 5.0.5 Updater

Updater from Acrobat 5.0 MacOS to 5.0.5 MacOS. Size 8.9Mb. Posted 5-Dec-2001

The first idea with this section is to place more wordy blog entries into a semblance of normalcy. This will require a little bit of editing of the tense, syntax etc of the pages. But they needed a better place and the Archived mungenet entries… section.

A paradigm shift in software
Nick Hodge
I get philosphical for a moment and wish Adobe’s future

Faux transparency

First experiments with DIV Positioning

Netscape, MSIE, Opera and DIV positioning

Travelling with a Laptop
Nick Hodge

Looking out the Door of the Lord Nelson

Lord Nelson in the reflection of Marks MINI

MINIs in the Sun, Lord Nelson

Nicks MINI Cooper S at the Lord Nelson

Smurfin in the Rain, Audley Weir

Gathered at Audley Weir

Gathered at Stanwell Tops, again.

Gathered at Stanwell Tops, too quick for a Hotdog.

MINI and the BHP Steelworks… at the gong

Nicks MINI Cooper S at the Woolongong Lighthouse

Blowing at the Kiama Blowhole

Nicks MINI Cooper S at the Kiama Lighthouse

MINIs at Woodbyne Restaurant, south of Berry