InDesign Secrets shared this excellent InDesign script that converts your layered InDesign file to a layered Photoshop file. Mike Rankin takes you through the simple steps in the article, but I’ll tell you from experience that this is the sort of thing that is best left to designers who are obsessive about details like naming and organizing their layers, regardless of what program they’re working in. And as Mike points out, this is something that is best left as the “final” step—as you won’t know (or have a whole lot of control over) what remains editable after the conversion.

I came across this article the other day and paused for a few moments to think about the Adobe empire. The discussion in the article is all-too-familiar, and becoming a real trend. Even I have a difficult time defending Adobe.

I’ve spent years defending Adobe’s business model and applications. I still feel they’re the best tools on the market for content creators. And I don’t feel like $50 per month is the outrageous amount people make it out to be.

But I’m done defending Adobe. Because I can’t anymore.

Without going into a whole lot of detail, the logos and images for the last three freelance jobs I’ve worked on, and the graphics for this site’s last several posts were edited with an app not named Photoshop or Illustrator.

I guess what I’m saying is, the little things I mentioned a few days ago are piling up. And there are finally real options out there. By the end of this year, they’ll be a competitive alternative to Adobe’s print-related suite of apps. All of them. And I’m going to give them a serious consideration.

Hey Adobe, see that button down there in the lower right corner of your highly-annoying Welcome screen that pops up every time I launch InDesign CC 2015—the one that says “Don’t Show Welcome Screen Again?” How about you fix whatever bug that tells the app to ignore the fact that I clicked that button the last time I launched the app, EVERY TIME I LAUNCH THE APP!!!

When you do manage to fix the bug, please share your findings with the Illustrator team, because it happens every time I launch that app as well.

To be fair, this only happens on two out of the three Macs I use on a regular basis. But all three Macs have exactly the same software installed, and are running the same OS versions.

Adobe Creative Cloud’s Libraries feature allows you to access, organize and share assets between your desktop and mobile apps, as well as other Creative Cloud users.

Libraries allows you to collect Character Styles, Color Swatches, Brushes, Graphics, Text, and other objects in one or multiple libraries (see the Illustrator Libraries panel in the image above). The Panel is accessed under the Window menu in Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. The assets you collect are synced via the cloud, and made available not only to your other apps, but you can share them with other members of your creative team, or make them publicly available via a link.

That alone would be really handy, but Adobe went a step further by offering the option of placing graphics in your Library as a linked file. That means when you update the original graphic, it gets updated in your Library, as well as any document you’ve placed the graphic in via the Libraries panel.

For the most part, you simply drag items into and out of the Libraries panel. Some icons across the bottom of the panel also allow you to add items.

Using the Libraries feature can save you a lot of time, especially if you use the same graphics, text styles and colors in most of your design work. In particular, publication designers will find Libraries to be a real game changer, especially if you share the design duties with other graphic artists on the staff.

• I see that you’ve created a business card in the middle of a letter-sized page. That’s not what “use white space” means.

• You’ve created your 24-page brochure as 12 separate reader-spread Illustrator files. Bonus points for taking the extra time to convert all your text to outlines. Double points for doing that before spell-checking. We will enjoy billing you for the extra time it will take to correct the copy and break up the files for proper imposition.

• Thanks for creating your brochure in Microsoft Publisher. In prep, we call it something else: Digital Yard Sausage.

• How imaginative of you to create a white reverse heading and two body paragraphs on a black background with a black rectangle and three separate text frames. Is this a new thing—billing by the frame?

• Your template (clearly built by someone else) is full of well-built paragraph and character styles. However, every single paragraph is formatted “Normal+.” You are such a rebel.

• How very efficient of you to crop all of your images to the trim size. How very sad that we will have to bill you for cloning background so the job will have bleed.

• Building your business card as a 52Mb Photoshop file with Smart Objects for the logos demonstrates, well, that you have Photoshop (or, as you always type it in emails, “PhotoShop”). Fun fact #1: Smart Objects render as pixels, regardless of how you save a Photoshop file. Fun fact #2: we could have built that in InDesign in 5 minutes, as opposed to the 6 hours it took you. Fun fact #3: we figured that if you were smart enough to built a business card in Photoshop, you’d be smart enough to build it the wrong size. We were right.

• You will be surprised to know that there is a much easier way to create tables than creating 20 separate text frames and drawing rules with the Pen tool. Maybe next time you’ll at least align the text frames. Probably not.

• Look down at your keyboard. On the left side, there’s a key labeled “tab.” Press it. Now, isn’t that easier than thumbing the spacebar 47 times? By the way, if pressing the tab key doesn’t move text to the desired position, don’t press it again. For the love of civilization, create a tab stop.

• Perhaps you’re creating your artwork on an old IBM Selectric typewriter. That would explain why there are two spaces after every sentence. Just so you know, all the hip kids know to use a single space. But maybe you like that retro look.

More than anything, thanks for all the overtime we’re going to be making this weekend, fixing your files!

The post Dear Designer… appeared first on Claudia McCue.

A new version of DPS is available. It’s called Digital Publishing Solution, or “DPS 2015.” If you have an existing Digital Publishing Suite license, you’ll be able to use either the current version of DPS or the new DPS 2015 to build apps. You can decide on an app by app basis which workflow best suits your needs.

To check out DPS 2015, you can sign up for a trial at www.adobe.com/products/digital-publishing-solution.html and clicking the “Free Trial” option in the upper right corner. There is a Quick Start Guide and sample assets, and an excellent set of how-to videos by Colin Fleming. See Getting started with DPS 2015. If you have questions, go to the DPS 2015 user forum.

Creative Cloud 2015 Update

Now let’s talk about the Creative Cloud 2015 update. InDesign CC 2015 supports only DPS 2015—not DPS, so there’s no Folio Builder panel in InDesign CC 2015. If you want to create DPS folios, you need to use InDesign CS6, InDesign CC, or InDesign CC 2014. You can run multiple versions of InDesign on your computer. InDesign CC 2015 supports only the new version of DPS—DPS 2015.

In addition, the “Folio Overlays” panel is now called the “Overlays” panel in all versions of InDesign.

By default, if you choose to update InDesign, InDesign CC 2015 will replace the previous version of InDesign unless you do something. Specifically, you should go into Advanced Settings and deselect the “Remove old versions” option.

Installing Previous InDesign versions

What do you do if you already installed InDesign CC 2015 and removed the previous versions? You can reinstall them without too much difficulty. Look for “Find Additional Apps,” select “All Apps,” and then click “View Previous Versions.” You can then install your InDesign version of choice to build DPS folios.

For more information, see this Creative Cloud help article: Download and install Adobe Creative Cloud apps.

However, I still have trouble accepting the colorful Hello Kitty® tool grid. “Comment” and “Send for Comments” are both yellow—makes perfect sense. But why are “Export PDF,” “Certificates,” and “Rich Media” the same color? “Measure” and “Prepare Form”?

Beyond that, I wish we could rearrange the tools in the Tools array to our liking, and maybe even put in little dividers like you can with the Custom Tools feature.

But try to drag one, and you can’t—they’re stuck.

However, during a recent demo, I discovered that you *can* rearrange the tools—but it’s kind of painful.

I added the shortcut for the Print Production tool to the righthand pane, and then moved it up to the second position in the pane. Voilà (French for “I moved a tool”)—now the Print Production tool is second in the Tools array!

Moving a tool in the right hand pane causes the tool to be repositioned in the Tools array.

However, if I delete the Print Production shortcut from the righthand pane, the tool returns to its default location in the Tools array.

Removing the tool shortcut from the right hand pane causes it to return to its default position in the Tools array.

So, I’m afraid the only way to rearrange tools in the main array is to add them all to the righthand pane (which will make you crazy), and then drag them up and down in the pane. This just isn’t workable, but I’m throwing it out there in case someone finds it beneficial.

The post How to Move Acrobat DC Tools Around. Sort of. appeared first on Claudia McCue.

I offer you two great articles over at CreativePro that cover the use of InDesign’s Alternate/Liquid Layouts.

Part 1 here.
Part 2 here.

Alternate Layouts lets you have multiple layouts—of different sizes and orientations—all contained in one single document. What’s that you say…you don’t create digital publications? Not to fear! Alternate Layouts are a great way to create multiple layouts—destined for print or digital or a little of each—that share the same text and images. Maybe you have a campaign that includes posters, postcards, table tents, and door hangers that all share common elements. Or maybe you have a print version and a digital version of your client’s novel and you want to avoid having to maintain two documents when the editorial changes start rolling in. This is a job for Alternate Layouts!

We all get MS Word files from a client for placement in a brochure, booklet, newsletter, or magazine. We end up having to reformat the text by hand more often than not. But there is a better way, which Jamie goes into.

*That being said, I find Jamie’s solution to be more trouble than it’s worth by an order of magnitude. The problems with his methods are:
A) you have to go through the trouble of setting up the style sheets in word, being careful to name them the same as the ones you’re using in InDesign.
B) you have to do that for every Word file, because…
C) your client isn’t going to bother using your stupid Word file anyway

Now don’t get me wrong, his solution will work if you have a technically savvy client, or you work in an in-house design shop such as a magazine, etc. But the real-world realities are that it’s rare that you’ll find a client that will not make a mess out of this otherwise simple process.

But take a look at the article, because it’s quite informative. Even if your client refuses to use your perfectly stylized Word file, it’ll show you how to at least take some of the work out of the manual stylizing process.

The Adobe Creative Cloud apps have a (fairly) new panel called Adobe Color Themes, which allows you to browse, create, save and use color themes in all your Adobe apps. Formerly known as Kuler, Color Themes allows you to browse a wide selection of pre-made color themes, or create your own using the Panel’s color mixer. Once you’re happy with your color theme, you can save it to your Creative Cloud account so the theme is available in InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop.

You can find the Adobe Color Themes Panel under the Window menu. It’s fairly easy to figure out how to use just by playing around with it, so I won’t bother going into details here. It’s much more fun to just play around with it, but if you feel the need you can view a video tutorial here.

I don’t know how I missed this feature when it was introduced, but I’ve been using it for a while now and it’s a real time saver, and a great color inspiration tool.

Your design is done and you’re printing your file. Then you see it. Some white object or text simply refuses to print. You’ve tried printing directly from Adobe Illustrator, you’ve placed the object into InDesign and printing from there, and you’ve even tried saving it as a PDF. But no luck, that object still won’t print. I’ve seen this happen a ton of times. In almost every case, it’s an object created in Adobe Illustrator—usually a logo.

More often than not, the problem is simply that the object is set to overprint in Illustrator. To fix the problem, select the object in Illustrator, open the Attributes Panel, and make sure the Overprint Fill (and/or Overprint Stroke) checkbox is NOT ticked.

It happens for a variety of reasons, and it’s easily missed. If you’re working in Adobe Illustrator or InDesign, you can check to see if you’ll have the problem by turning on the Preview Overprint feature found under the View menu in both apps.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – APRIL 1, 2015
The uMerge Add-on to Adobe InDesign helps designers to create document templates for generating personalized or customized printed pieces such as those used in catalogs, postcards and invitations.

Join Deb Haines, Senior Trainer/Solution Specialist at XMPie and learn how you can automate the flow of data into your template and leverage the full creative capabilities of InDesign for creating dynamic, data-driven elements, such as text, text on a path, images, transparency effects, character styles, layer visibility, and many more.

And uMerge is not simply about placing data on the page – Find out about the unique XMPie approach to enabling your data to influence the style and the design of the document.

Learn how to use uMerge to:
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- Extend the power of InDesign
- Simplify database publishing

Get familiar with uMerge so you can spend your time doing what you love – Design!

Introducing uMerge for Adobe InDesign
Tuesday April 20, 2015
11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. EDT (GMT-04:00)

REGISTER TODAY
What time does the Webinar begin in my time zone?
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Media Contacts
Josie Stein
XMPie, A Xerox Company
josie.stein@xmpie.com

Megan Manzari,
Text100 for XMPie
megan.manzari@text100.com

XMPie®, A Xerox Company XMPie provides powerful, variable data publishing software that unites customer databases and creative content to help print service providers, marketing service firms, and small-to-medium sized businesses and enterprises, leverage customer data and create personalized, multiphase campaigns that use today’s communication vehicles including print, web, e-mail, and mobile.

XMPie is headquartered in New York with an R&D center in Israel, and sales, support and professional service operations in the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information, visit www.xmpie.com.

Note: For open commentary, industry perspectives and views from events, visit:
www.facebook.com/xmpie
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www.twitter.com/myumerge
www.blog.xmpie.com
www.youtube.com/xmpie
© 2015 XMPie®, A Xerox Company. All rights reserved. XMPie, the XMPIE logo, ADOR, PersonalEffect, uImage, XLIM, XMPie e-Mail Service, and the slogan “one to one in one” are trademarks or registered trademarks of XMPie, and may not be used without permission. All other names are property of their respective owners.
www.xmpie.com

The post Edit Sensitive Info in Screen Captures appeared first on Claudia McCue.

Tired of carrying heavy stuff around, I just bought a svelte little MacBook Air. The joy of that New Computer Smell is tempered by the fact that it came from the factory with OS X 10.10, Yosemite (at least they don’t name operating systems after cats any more).

I understand some of the objection to skeuomorphism; do we really need shiny chrome interfaces, or detailed stitching on realistic leather calendar backgrounds? Probably not. That sort of stuff had inspired a cottage industry of how-to videos featuring 127-step tutorials on how to make blobby blue glass buttons.

But THIS?

I understand the concept of “flat design.” Well, the “flat” part, anyway. I can’t bring myself to think of it as “design.”

Look at the poor Finder icon:

On the left: The old Mac “Janus” finder face.
On the right: Wimpy blue happy face Finder.

The Emperor’s New Flat Design. Sheesh. A 4th-grader could do this with ducky scissors.

Prediction: There will be a backlash against this boring elementary school approach. But it will be taken too far, adding haptic feedback and sound effects. Soon, scrolling through a directory will be accompanied by a jittery feeling and screeching brrrrrrrrippppp! sound. Buttons will click with a pronounced snick. Close a window, and you’ll hear something like the old Star Trek sssffffp door close effect. Select a range of text in InDesign, and it will feel like you’re dragging your mouse across corduroy.

I can hardly wait.

The post Yosemite: Flat Design appeared first on Claudia McCue.

To the constant talkers: That constant high-pitched background soundtrack that the two of you provided with your persistent personal conversations really added to the ambience. I thought at first that you were helping each other over rough spots, and I’d ask, “are you ladies OK?” Invariably, you’d indicate that you were just fine; this occurs in every class that you two attend. More than once, I would just stop explaining whatever I was explaining, and just stare right at one of you until you stopped. Sometimes there were long moments before it seeped into your consciousness that the background noise (my instruction, other students asking questions) had ceased. Once, I just said to the class at large, “we’ll just wait until they’re finished.” Did that shame you into paying attention? Oh, hell no.

To the phone addict: At one point, I came back to the row ahead of you to help someone out of a jam, turned around, and you were just texting away. I stood there, looking right at you, finishing the answer  to the other student’s problem, and you just kept on exercising your thumbs. Irked, I raised my voice, but you didn’t even look up. Finally, I reached over the top of your iMac and drummed my nails on the screen, announcing loudly “…and all you have to do is CLICK RIGHT HERE.” At last, you raised your head, your eyes slowly drifting upward as your cow-like brain registered that this might have something to do with you. I give up.

To the slacker bullshit artist: You take the cake. The day classes at [redacted] are 2 days in length. The evening versions are the same total hours, but spread over 4 evenings. You showed up Monday night, spending a fair percentage of the time with the customary texting and web surfing. Tuesday night, you were initially a no-show. But when we took our mid-evening break Tuesday night, there you were, in the hall outside the classroom, eating a pastry. I said “howdy,” and you mumbled something with your mouth full. But when we reconvened after break, you were nowhere to be seen. I delayed our restart, thinking that surely you’d materialize, but gave up when it became apparent that you weren’t coming in.

Wednesday night, you were absent again. I figured you’d drag in Thursday night, to snag your undeserved certificate. Sure enough, you settled into your chair to get caught up on your web surfing, along with occasionally clicking your way through the exercises. When I passed out the certificates at the end of the evening, you didn’t get one. I told you that you had to attend 80% of a class to get a certificate, and that you could consult the [redacted] website to see when the class would be offered again.

But you had such a great excuse— “The course listing says Dec. 8-11. I thought that meant it was on Dec. 8 and 11, not 8 through 11.” Involved with paperwork and student questions as the class broke up, I didn’t get a chance to nail you on your appearance on Tuesday that proved you knew better—trust me, son, I’ve heard plenty of bullshit in my time, but I gotta give you points for sheer audacity, looking me right in the face and telling a bald-faced lie. You’ll go far. I’m thinking politics—or at least sales. And you might want to lay off the chronic*, after falling asleep in another class, head back, snoring loudly.

Today, as you attended a day class, I waited until everyone cleared out for lunch, and put some tape on the end of your network cable, then plugged it back in. It was fun watching you trying to get connected as class continued.

It wasn’t always this way. When I first became a trainer at a training company in 1999, I saw none of this behavior—people came to class, paid attention, asked questions, and it was a lively 2-way exchange. When I struck out on my own in 2002, I taught only custom classes for corporate clients who had defined goals (and a boss expecting results). That kind of training is still very gratifying, because I’m filling in blanks for interested people, making their jobs easier and less frustrating.

In about 2009, I started teaching occasional public classes for [redacted] to make some extra money. At first, it was OK, but soon I began seeing the side effects of the constant barrage of texting, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. There was little of the dedication to tasks I see in corporate clients—most of these Gen Y students have some blue-sky notion of being “a designer,” with no sense of what’s truly involved. I impart real-world best practices in class, but I really don’t think there’s anything for it to land on.

I’d show a step, then check to make sure everyone was keeping up — “Does that work for you? Anyone need some help? Hello? Yes? No?”) Crickets. Any vocal feedback has to be forced out of some of them. All the “social media” BS has apparently rendered them incapable of actual human interaction.

By contrast, I also taught a corporate group this week, and the difference was like night and day—they were lively, asking lots of questions, providing instant feedback (“wow! So that’s why I couldn’t make that work!” “I wish I’d known this last week!” “Hey, I know how we can use this—it will save us so much time!”)

Don’t misunderstand—there were some great folks in the public classes this week, too:

• One with a wonderful imagination and attention to detail.
• One who worked very hard, through breaks, even before and after class, to practice what she was learning. And she has a great eye for good design.
• One who absorbs knowledge like a sponge, and who is constantly working to correlate class lessons to her real-life job.
• One who wasn’t shy—she piped up if things weren’t going right, and experimented beyond what we were doing.

Those students are the ones that keep me teaching when I want to give up and just go back to fixing bad files in a printing plant. But the others — well, I’m glad I’m not burdened with hiring any of them and depending on them to actually get anything done in between their obsessive texting and Facebooking.

________________

*CHRONIC: Urban slang for marijuana.

The post Things I Wanted To Say To Students This Week (but didn’t) appeared first on Claudia McCue.

This explains why new clients don’t have Minion Pro Bold, or Myriad Pro Semibold. Now, many of the old standard fonts, which had been installed by Creative Suite and Creative Cloud applications in the past, are only available via TypeKit (or direct purchase) for those starting fresh with CC 2014. I’d been wondering what was going on—now I know. At least the installation of newer versions of CC apps doesn’t wipe out fonts you already have.

This limits what I can do when creating templates for some clients who are using CC2014—I’d always been able to count on clients having a base set of fonts, and now I can’t, because some are working in environments that don’t allow Web access or downloads, and thus will have no access to TypeKit.

Trebuchet, here I come.

The post Reduced Number of Fonts Installed With Creative Cloud 2014 appeared first on Claudia McCue.

This is an embedded Microsoft Office presentation, powered by Office Online.

Orientation — Vertical, Horizontal, or Both?

You can create portrait-only, landscape-only, or dual-orientation folios. Within a folio, you cannot mix and match orientation types, such as a horizontal-only and dual-orientation articles. For single-orientation folios, the layouts do not change when the customer rotates the iPad or iPhone.

Avoid creating dual-orientation folios unless you have a compelling reason to do so.

Martha Stewart Living creates portrait-only folios. National Geographic creates landscape-only folios.

One major advantage to portrait-only or landscape-only folios is that you have to create only one design. If you have a printed magazine, converting the layout to a 768×1024 page size isn’t nearly as difficult as converting it to both a 768×1024 and 1024×768 page size. Also, some users find the changing layout to be distracting when the device is tilted slightly.

Note: With portrait-only folios, iOS users can rotate the device to play a full-screen video in landscape.

What are reasons for dual-orientation apps?

Some publishers think the extra design effort for dual-orientation folios is worthwhile. Examples:

• The landscape orientation could provide a detailed visual overview with a slideshow or video, while the portrait orientation could include a text-intensive article.
• For a how-to manual, the landscape layout could display the desired effect, such as a before/after photo for a Photoshop app, while the portrait layout could provide the instructions for creating that effect.

Some pubishers provide different images in the two layouts.

Which folio size should I use?

For tablets, create 1024×768 folios. If you create 1024×768 folios in PDF format, your content is relatively small and can look great on all iPads—including 2048×1536 retina iPads. Plus, 1024×768 folios work well on Android and Windows devices; the content is scaled and letterboxed as needed.

If you ignore my advice and create only a 2048×1536 folio, it will appear only on retina iPads, not on the standard definition iPads.

Note that 1024×768 folios don’t appear on iPhones. You’ll need to create separate folios to target the iPhone. For more information, see Creating DPS content for iPhones.

Should article format be PDF or PNG?

Use PDF.

In articles that use the PDF format, vector text maintains its crispness when scaled, and images are resampled to strike a balance between the standard definition (SD) and high definition (HD) devices. In iOS and Android devices, you can also pinch and zoom on PDF-based pages. For details, see multi-rendition articles.

Some publishers don’t like the brief load time that can sometimes occur with PDF folios, or they might want higher-resolution images for HD devices. They can create PNG articles and set up renditions for SD and HD devices. For more information, read Creating DPS content for multiple devices.

Which viewer version?

The rule of thumb is to leave the Viewer Version at v26 unless you have a compelling reason to change it.

When you specify the Viewer Version, you’re actually setting the folio format for the viewer app. As a rule, the viewer app needs to be the same as or higher than the folio format. For example, if you publish a v32 folio format but you still have a v31 app in the store, users can’t download the folio—they’ll be prompted to update the app.

So why leave it at v26? While lots of new features have been added to viewers with each recent release, the folio format hasn’t changed for 99% of the features you’ll need to use. There are a couple of rare exceptions, such as creating folios for a secure workflow, which requires v30 or later. In those rare cases, you’ll also need a v30 or later app. Again, stick to the default setting—v26.

Should images be compressed?

Only for some types of overlays. All non-interactive images are automatically compressed. So are images in slideshows, scrollable frames, and buttons.

Non-interactive images are compressed as part of the page background image into whichever format (PDF, PNG, or JPG) is specified for the article. That means you can place a huge PSD file if it’s non-interactive or if it’s in a slideshow, scrollable frame, or button. It will be compressed automatically.

Don’t waste your time compressing or resampling these images. Crop and scale images as much as you want—just keep the effective ppi above 108.

What doesn’t get compressed? Videos, audio clips and skins, pan and zoom images, image sequences, web overlays, and panoramas are all uploaded without being compressed. These are called “pass-through” overlays. Compress those types of files.

How do I provide free preview content?

If you’re charging money for your multi-issue viewer, provide free content that meets Apple’s current requirements and (hopefully) convinces your customers to download the retail version or subscribe. Here are four options for multi-folio apps:

Publish one of your issues as Free and Public so that users can download this issue even if they don’t have a subscription.

Give away the most recent retail folio to users who download the folio for the first time.

Enable Free Article Preview so that users can download several articles in a retail folio and then hit a paywall.

Free trial subscription through Apple. (Avoid combining a free trial with Free Article Preview.)

For details, see Promoting free content to gain new readership.

Swipe only horizontally?

By default, swiping up and down displays different pages of an article, and swiping left and right displays different articles. Some designers believe that allowing both horizontal and vertical swiping can be disorienting for some kinds of content. To simplify, they turn on the “Horizontal Swipe Only” option for articles, thereby allowing only horizontal swiping.

Turning on “Horizontal Swipe Only” requires customers to swipe through every page of every article, sacrificing flexibility for simplicity. (By the way, a two-finger swipe jumps directly to the next/previous article.)

The “Horizontal Swipe Only” option is an article setting. You can turn it on or off for different articles in a folio.

Tip: For single-page articles, turn on “Horizontal Swipe Only” to prevent the pages from moving vertically.

Smooth Scrolling or Page-by-Page Flipping?

Should you allow your customers to view the entire article by swiping smoothly, like a web page, or by swiping to turn the pages, like a flip book? Fortunately, you don’t have to decide on one approach for the entire folio. You can make this decision for each article.

Some designers turn on Smooth Scrolling for content such as a table of contents or a credits page.

How can HTML be used?

Here are several ways to take advantage of HTML in your app content:

Links to websites se hyperlinks or buttons to display a website. You can display websites either in the external mobile browser or in an in-app browser in which users click a Close button to return to the folio.

Web Content overlays reate a Web Content overlay that displays a website or local HTML files within a view area on a page.

HTML articles nstead of creating articles with InDesign documents, you can create an HTML folder and import it as an article.

Library/Store/Banner/Slots heck out the library of this app to see a few ways to use HTML in the app.

I’ve described a few of the strategies for creating content in DPS apps. To learn about strategies for building apps, see Strategies for Building DPS Apps.

Which platforms are supported?

You can submit DPS apps to the following stores:

iOS App Store – You can create multi-folio apps for the iPad+iPhone or for the iPad only. You cannot create iPhone-only apps. If you create a single-folio app, it can only appear on the iPad.

You can sell folios either through individual in-app purchases or through subscriptions in iTunes. If you sell folios through direct entitlement, you must also make them available for purchase through iTunes.

Google Play Store – You can create multi-folio apps that appear in the Google Play Store.

DPS supports selling folios through in-app purchases but not through Google Play subscriptions at this time. You can offer folios through direct entitlement as well.

It’s possible to submit multi-folio apps to the Amazon Appstore, but no in-app purchases are available, and the DPS team does not fix bugs on Amazon devices.

Windows Store – You can create multi-folio apps that appear in the Windows Store.

DPS supports selling folios through in-app purchases. In Windows, you specify one price for all folios. You can offer folios through direct entitlement as well.

Single-folio or multi-folio app?

When you submit your app to the Apple App Store, each app requires its own branded viewer.

For most projects, the decision of whether to create a single-folio or multi-folio viewer is straight-forward. If you intend to create a one-off promotional piece or self-contained content, create a single-folio viewer. Customers purchase and download the single-folio viewer app from the App Store. Single-folio apps are available only on the iPad.

Rolling Stone provides a good example of the difference between a single-folio app and a multi-folio app. The Beatles Anthology is a single-folio app available for purchase as a special Rolling Stone edition. The folio is the app; the app is the folio. Rolling Stone Magazine is a multi-folio app in which monthly issues are available in the library for purchase and download.

You can also create an app that includes multiple folios that are available for download in the app library. DPS was originally designed for commercial periodical magazines such as The New Yorker, WIRED, and National Geographic, but it works well for other app types such as corporate brocures, media guides, sales tools, and annual reports.

For multi-folio apps, your customers download the app from the App Store, and then they download folios from the Adobe Distribution Service as you publish them.

For more information, see Types of DPS apps.

Include subscription or direct entitlement?

When you create a DPS app for iOS, you can enable iTunes subscriptions to allow your customers access to all retail folios published between the start date and end date of the subscription duration. Subscriptions are not yet available for other platforms.

Commercial publishers frequently use direct entitlement to tie a print subscription to a digital subscription. For iOS apps, customers can subscribe either through iTunes or directly through the publisher.

With direct entitlement, users can sign in and receive access to folios based on their sign-in creditials. For example, the PADI scuba diving app offers a free folio to all users, but if you register for a class, you can sign in to receive additional content. And if you’re an instructor, you can sign in to receive instructor materials.

The DPS Tips app  includes an example of direct entitlement. Go to the library and tap Sign In. Use the “tips” username with the “dps” password to get access to additional folios. This is called “restricted distribution.”

For more details, see the “Features” folio in DPS Tips or the Entitlement page.

Add app to Newsstand?

For iOS devices, you can add subscription apps to Newsstand. One advantage of Newsstand apps is that newly published folios can be downloaded in the background so that the folio is ready to view as soon as the app is opened.

Before you submit an app to Newsstand, note the following:

• Newsstand is not required for background downloading. Background downloading is supported in non-Newsstand apps (v32.1 or later) for devices running iOS 8 or later.
• Once you submit an app to Newsstand, you cannot remove it from Newsstand. Instead, you would need to submit a new app. (Some people call Newsstand the “Hotel California” of platforms—you can check out, but you can never leave.)
• For Newsstand apps, Apple requires that you publish at least four times a year.
• Apple allows you to create free subscription apps in order to take advantage of Newsstand. Download Adobe Inspire on an iPad for an example. But don’t try to go back and add retail folios to free subscription apps. That doesn’t work.

Private or public app?

Enterprise subscribers can create iPad apps for internal distribution only. An enterprise-signed iOS app is distributed within the company rather than downloaded from the store.

An Enterprise app can be a single-folio app or a multi-folio app. With a multi-folio app, customers still download folios from the Adobe Distribution Service, not from an internal server; only the app is hosted on the server. See Creating viewer apps for private distribution.

How much customization?

When you use DPS App Builder to build an app, you select options to customize your app as you go through the steps. With minimal effort and no additional coding, you can create a standard app with a library that includes the folios you publish. For example, the Benjamin Moore paint app is a standard “turnkey” app that includes beautifully designed folios.

With extra effort, you can customize the library’s appearance, and you can create a custom store, display additional custom slots, and add a library banner. Martha Stewart Living includes a separate custom store, additional custom slots, a library banner, and a number of other extras.

For details about advanced customization options, such as custom libraries and stores, custom slots, and library banners, see the “Features” folio in the DPS Tips app, or see the DPS Developer Center.

You can also customize your app in a number of different ways when creating the app in DPS App Builder. For example, you can edit the interface language and require folios to be updated when changed. For details, hover over each info icon when building the app.

Enable social sharing?

If you enable social sharing in your multi-folio iOS app, your users can share available articles through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Email, or website links. Users can then view shared articles on computers or devices.

To see an example of DPS Tips on a computer, see DPS Tips on a Computer.

On a device, tapping the share link opens an article viewer preview. On a computer, clicking the link displays the web viewer, which looks something like this:

For more information, see Using social sharing.

I’ve described a few of the strategies for building apps. To learn about strategies for creating content within the app, see Strategies for Creating DPS Content.

Step 1: Go to the DPS Individual Opt-in Form.

Step 2: Sign in using the DPS email account that you want to use to receive announcements.

Step 3: Indicate which announcements you’d like to receive.

If at any point you’d like to change your announcement settings or discontinue them, simply click a link at the bottom of one of the email messages you receive and go from there.

Link to opt-in form: DPS Individual Opt-in Form

A gentleman brought his Microsoft Surface Pro 3, complaining that the Photoshop interface components are so small on the hi-DPI Surface screen that it’s almost unusable. He was right—icons, tools, and panel text were hard to read, and controls were challenging to select, even with the fine-point Surface stylus.

Lowering the display resolution worked, of course, but then all other applications were huge, with components falling off the screen.

Several other booth folks tag-teamed on the problem, but it was Adobe’s Russell Williams (a 2014 inductee into the Photoshop Hall of Fame, by the way) who offered the solution. In Photoshop CC 2014, you have the option to activate experimental components—features that haven’t been officially incorporated into Photoshop—with the caveat that these features might not be fully production-ready yet. One of the experimental features lets you scale Photoshop’s interface @200% to accommodate a high-density display (Note: it’s available—and necessary—only on Windows; hiDPI display has been possible on Mac Retina displays since CS6).

To access experimental features, just choose Edit > Preferences > Experimental Features.

On the HiDPI Microsoft Surface display, this experimental feature enables you to scale up the Photoshop interface, so you don’t need an electron microscope to select a tool.

So it was a good day—the Surface owner is back in business, and we all learned something new.

Here’s more information on experimental features in Photoshop CC2014: http://adobe.ly/1lIUwIk

The post Fixing the (tiny) Photoshop CC Interface on Hi-DPI Windows Displays appeared first on Claudia McCue.

Rebuild and resubmit your multi-folio apps before the iOS 8 release. Multi-folio apps do not function properly in iOS 8.

Longer version

The DPS team has been testing DPS apps in the beta version of the upcoming iOS8 release. While single-folio apps work fine, multi-folio apps fail to work properly:

On iOS 8 beta cover icons do not appear, downloaded folios are lost and cannot be viewed, and folios cannot be downloaded after the user launches the app for the first time, quits the app, and restarts it.

It doesn’t look like Apple will resolve these issues on their end. Fortunately, the most recent Adobe DPS release (v31.3) includes an update to the v30 and v31 multi-issue viewers that addresses these problems.

Unfortunately, I was about to demo that very feature in front  of about 200 people. I force-quit, rebooted, then quit and relaunched the desktop app, and Photoshop still wouldn’t show the missing fonts alert (even though the affected type layers sported yellow triangles). I was running out of time.

I sidestepped the issue by showing how to get fonts from Typekit through a browser, and by some miracle, a font actually synced and showed up in my fonts list. I applied it, and I think nobody knew. But I was a bit flustered, and afraid that something else would go awry.

After the session, I futzed around more, with no success; it still wouldn’t trigger the Missing Fonts alert. Finally, more out of aggravation than hope, I wiped out the Photoshop preferences — and that fixed it. Not just in Photoshop, but in all the other apps, too (beats me).

When I got home, I ran the ACC update on the desktop Mac, with the same results; somehow, it warped Photoshop’s connection with Typekit. And when I wiped out the prefs, everything was fixed.

This is under Mac OS 10.9 (Mavericks); anybody else have this experience?

The post Creative Cloud Desktop Upgrade 7/24: Typekit Issues (or is it just me?) appeared first on Claudia McCue.

In this tutorial, I will discussing how to create and use Color Groups to help organize your Swatches in InDesign. Best of all is the ability to Load your Color Groups from Illustrator directly into InDesign.

Account 1: All bonus issues

Username: tips
Password: dps

Account 2: Only the “Colin” issue

Username: fleming
Password: colin

Account 3: Only the “Bob” issue

Username: bringhurst
Password: bob

For more information about direct entitlement and restricted distribution, see Entitlement DPS Developer Center.

My first move, of course, was to resave the Illustrator file as a native AI file. Hmmmm…no luck.

Both the InDesign file and the Illustrator file are large—72 x 48 inches. The Illustrator file is not complex—no effects, no symbols, no patterns. At Fit Page in Window, InDesign is displaying the page at 14% magnification. Even when High Quality Display is invoked, the Illustrator file looks ratty. However, once I zoom in to 50%, all is well.

At first, I thought this was just InDesign thinking, “why bother to render detail when you’re zoomed out so far?” But I made another discovery.

A smaller Illustrator file (smaller in terms of dimensions) displays fine at any magnification. Here’s a comparison:

InDesign rendering of vector art at High Quality: Large-dimension Illustrator files pose a challenge.

The top file is 18 inches wide, 1.2MB, placed at 100% in a 20×20 InDesign file. The bottom file is 2.5 inches wide, 1.1MB, placed at 800%. So it’s not a matter of file size; it’s a matter of dimensions, apparently.

Output is fine—only the display in InDesign is questionable, and only when you’re zoomed out (the particular zoom level varies according to the dimensions of the InDesign file). Zoom in sufficiently, and you’ll see the real story. And if you’re still in doubt, make a PDF. If the PDF looks good, that’s all that counts.

The post Limitations of InDesign’s High Quality Display appeared first on Claudia McCue.

In this tutorial, I will explore the basics of Table editing along with a new time-saving feature which allows you to drag and drop Columns and Rows making edits fast and simple.

In this tutorial, I will review the Packaging process and discuss two great additions to the process. If you choose, you can now include creation of an Acrobat and an IDML file (back saving) to the Packaging process.

• Older (pre-v24) apps don’t work on iOS 7. Any DPS app created with v24 and earlier fails to work properly in devices that run iOS 7. For one thing, landscape folios just don’t appear. If you have a v24 or earlier DPS app in the App Store, you should update it.
• Known issues with v25/v26 apps on iOS 7. DPS apps built with either v27 or v28 work well on iOS 7 devices. DPS apps built with v25 or v26 have a few known issues, but nothing as serious as v24 and earlier apps.
• Drop of support for iOS 5. DPS apps built with v28 and later do not work on iOS 5 devices. Apple does not allow the iPad 1 to update to iOS 6 or later, so DPS apps built with v28 or later cannot be installed on iPad 1 devices. Note that if you have a v27 or earlier app in the store and update it to v28 or later, Apple allows iPad 1 users to download the older version of the app.

Let’s go over these details . . .

Updating v24 Apps

If you have an app in the store that’s v24 or earlier, it’s not going to look right on iOS 7 devices. You should update your app.

If you used a Single Edition license to build your app, the easiest solution is to subscribe to the full version of the Creative Cloud (if you haven’t done so already), update your apps, and then decide whether you want to continue your subscription. If that approach doesn’t work for you, contact an Adobe representative (or leave a message in the DPS forum) to help you with update options.

Issues with v25/v26 Apps on iOS 7

The following issues affect v26 and earlier DPS apps displayed in iOS 7. These issues have been resolved in v27 and later.

• The offline entitlement banner may not display properly after switching off network connection on device running iOS 7.
• Tthe sign in dialog box close control appears as an “X” in iOS 7.
• On iOS 7, a pinch and zoom gesture over a vector slideshow or scrollable frame may cause the application to crash.
• On iOS 7, tapping on an article from browse view may cause a partial view of the adjacent article to appear.
• On iOS 7, vector slideshow and scrollable frame overlays may disappear after rotating the device.

For best results, build a v27 or later app to address these issues.

Building Apps That Support iOS 7

Apps you build with v28 or later are designed to work with the new iOS 7 interface. Consider the following iOS 7 requirements when designing and building your apps:

• iOS 7 requires the system bar to be displayed in apps. When you build a v28 app, the 20- or 40-pixel system status bar now appears above the top navigation bar in all views, including folio view. When users tap to display the navigation bars, more of your design area is covered. Make necessary adjustments to your article layouts.
• For iOS 7, additional app icon sizes are required: 152×152 (iPad HD), 76×76 (iPad SD), and 120×120 (iPhone). These new icon files are required when you build either a v27 or v28 app in DPS App Builder.
• DPS viewers include several UI changes for iOS 7. For example, the library background is much lighter than in previous versions, so check your cover images for appropriate contrast. If your app includes an article that describes how to use the app, you’ll likely want to update this help content.
• (Enterprise only) With iOS 7, the custom icons in the bottom Navigation toolbar (Enterprise only) work differently. When you build a v28 app with custom toolbar icons, you no longer provide three separate icons for Up, Down, and Disabled states. Instead, you provide a single PNG file with a transparent background, and iOS 7 changes the color of the display state automatically. (These files are 30×30 and 60×60 pixels.) You no longer need to embed the text label in the navigation icon. Instead, specify text in the Icon Label field in DPS App Builder, which appears below the custom icons. If your app supports multiple languages, you can localize this text. These new icons appear in the Navigation bar only if the icon is actionable. For example, the “Viewer” button does not appear until a folio is downloaded. If enabled, the Navigation toolbar is a few pixels taller than the Navigation toolbar in previous apps (12 pixels on SD iPads, 24 pixels on HD iPads). Again, make the necessary adjustments to your layouts. For more information about these icons, see Creating DPS apps for the iPad and iPhone.

For more information about creating apps that take advantage of iOS 7 features, see the iOS 7 Support in v28 DPS Viewer article or watch this video about DPS and iOS 7.

Providing Support for iPad 1 (iOS 5) Users

For Single Edition apps, any app you build from now on works only on devices with iOS 6 or later. You cannot create an app that works on iPad 1 devices. If you have a v27 or earlier version of your app in the store, iPad 1 users who have previously downloaded your app are prompted to install your older version. If they have not previously downloaded your app, they are prompted to upgrade to iOS 6 (which isn’t possible on iPad 1 devices). For details, see Adobe DPS Apps: Impact of iOS5 End of Life.

For Professional and Enterprise publishers, how you approach the lack of support for iOS 5 devices depends on several factors, including your level of commitment to iPad 1 users and the type of content you create.

With the v29 release (December 6, 2013), you can create only v28 or later apps. It is no longer possible to build v27 apps.

At some point, when new features are added that require an updated folio format, you’ll need to decide whether you want to update the folio format. When you do so, your iPad 1 customers will not be able to download the newer folio; they’ll need to obtain a device that Apple continues to support. Or, if you’re really concerned, you can create a special v27 version of the folio, but I haven’t heard of anyone planning to do that.

Again, keep in mind that there is a difference between the app version and the folio version. For example, a v28 app is required to use the Camera API feature, but only a v25 folio version is required. (That’s when the “Allow Access” option was added.) Here’s a table that shows which app version and folio version is required for these features added within the last year or so.

Let me know if you have any questions.

A panorama overlay can give you the impression that you’re inside a building or cockpit, allowing you to spin around and zoom in and out. Creating the source files for panoramas is not easy, but if you use the right tools and equipment, the process can be painless—and even fun.

A panorama overlay requires six images that represent the inside of a cube. Here are the six images used for the courtyard panorama that appears in the DPS Tips app (Overlay Basics > Panoramas).

You can use Photoshop to stitch together the source image to be used as the basis for the six cubic images. However, converting a 3D panorama image into the six images requires a third-party tool such as PTgui or Pano2VR. PTgui and Pano2VR cost about the same amount, but PTgui is more versatile. With PTgui, you can stitch together the images to create the source file and then generate the six images from that source file.

Here’s how to create the images required to build a panorama overlay in DPS.

1. If necessary, do a photo shoot.

The method you use for taking photographs depends on a number of factors, including the type of camera equipment you have, the amount of detail you want the panorama to include, and the type of panorama effect you want.

With a fisheye lens, you can create a full 360-degree panorama using as few as three photographs. With a wide-angle lens, you can create a 360-degre panorama using as few as eight photographs, but you probably want to use more. With a camera that doesn’t have a special lens, you’ll need to take a lot of photographs, and you’ll probably need to take sets from multiple angles: high, medium and low plus top and bottom. When shooting your images, the key is to provide enough overlap to allow a software program to stitch together the images.

For some panoramas, such as a cockpit or a cavern, you’ll want a full 360-degree experience in all directions, left and right, up and down. For other panoramas, such as a room of paintings in a museum, you might want to limit both the tilt and rotation.

For detailed information about how to take panorama photos with different types of cameras, see http://www.vrwave.com.

2. Create or obtain the base panorama image.

One method is to drop the images in Photoshop and use a technique such as Photomerge. It’s a lot of work. You need to have a good set of pictures and advanced Photoshop knowledge to come up with a clean “equirectangular” source image such as this:

If you use a third-party tool such as PTgui that is specifically designed to create panoramas, you can generate the base panorama image more easily. And if things go wrong, you can clean up the image set, like this:

3. Use a third-party tool to output the six cubic images.

Once you get your source image, use PTgui or another tool to export the six cubic images. Use JPG or PNG files.

You might need to touch up the images in Photoshop or Lightroom.

4. Create a Panorama overlay.

Copy the six source images into their own folder, and create a panorama overlay that targets the folder. Then test the panorama to make sure it works properly.

But what if you know the content isn’t final and you’re going to edit the scrollable frame content later? And what if your scrollable frame content includes a bunch of buttons and overlays that are hidden from view?

Scrollable Frame Tips

Here are a few tips to make sure that your scrollable frames can be edited easily.

Tip #1 – Increase the size of the vertical pasteboard

If you’re creating a long vertical scrollable frame, you’re going to need enough room to work with. The 72-pixel default vertical setting for the pasteboard is frequently too small to fit the content frame. And even if there is enough room to fit the tall content frame into the pasteboard, pasting the content frame into the container frame can change the position of the content frame and make the text overset.

In InDesign, go into Preferences > Guides & Pasteboard, and then specify a larger Vertical setting under Pasteboard Options.

Tip #2 – Use Auto Fit

When you add or remove content in the content frame, you want the text frame to be resized automatically. To do this, select the content frame and open the Text Frame Options dialog box. For a vertical frame, choose Height Only and anchor the top of the frame so that the bottom of the frame can increase or decrease with edits.

Tip #3 – Avoid unwanted text cropping

In some instances, ascenders or descenders can get cut off at the top or bottom of the frame, especially when Auto Fit is selected. To avoid this, use Text Frame Options to add inset spacing on all sides of the text frame.

Tip #4 – Selecting nested buttons

Does your content frame include buttons with MSO actions? If so, the buttons will likely lose their actions when you paste the content frame into the container frame (it’s an InDesign bug). If the buttons are hidden, how do you select them?

One approach is to use the selection icons in the Control panel to drill up/down and next/previous through the nested objects. If you’re used to these selection icons, you can locate nested objects pretty quickly.

An easier approach is to drill down through objects displayed in the Layers panel. When you find your button, click the little box to the right of the object to select it. Then apply the button action.

Methods for Editing Content Frames

Let’s assume you have your scrollable frame set up and tested, and now you need to edit it. Editing the content frame can be difficult for two reasons. First, most of the content is invisible because it’s pasted into the container frame. Second, when you copy/paste content frame, some button actions are lost. So what are your options?

Method 1: Cut & Paste, Edit, Cut & Paste Into

This method works great for scrollable frames that don’t include nested interactive objects. Hold the mouse pointer over the frame, click the donut (er, content indicator), and cut the content frame. Paste the content frame onto the pasteboard and make your edits. When you’re done, cut the frame, select the container frame, and choose Paste Into. The container frame maintains its settings, so you’re done—unless your content frame includes buttons with MSO links. In that case, you’ll need to select each button and re-apply the button actions. In other words, you might want to take a different approach.

Method 2: Story Editor and Layers panel

Instead of cutting and pasting the content frame, select the content frame (or the text frame in the content frame) and choose Edit > Edit in Story Editor. Use the Story Editor to edit the text, and close the window when you’re done. Again, you should use Auto Fit to allow the text frame to grow or shrink as you edit.

If you need to edit objects such as buttons or images within the content frame, use the Layers panel to select the object as discussed in the fourth tip above, and make your edits.

Method 3: Group Trick

The first two methods are likely all you’ll need, but I think this technique is pretty cool, so I’m including it. With this approach you add your content frame to a group along with two dummy objects. When you want to edit the content frame, you use the Layers panel to drag the scrollable frame out of the group to make it visible. When you finish your edits, you drag it back into the group in the Layers panel. Easy. (Note that you need two dummy objects because a group must have at least two objects to remain a group.)

Additional Methods

If you’re using InDesign CS6 or later, you can set up a scrollable frame that includes a link between the parent content frame on the pasteboard and the child content frame pasted into the container frame. When you need to make edits, you edit the parent frame on the pasteboard and then update the child frame. It sounds easy enough, but I think it’s too much effort, and it can be a little too confusing if you need to troubleshoot problems.