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Olympus proudly introduces the new EVOLT E-500, the most full-featured digital SLR camera in its class of sub-$1000.00 SLR cameras. Designed to be used by all photographers of any skill level, the E-500’s compact and durable body is packed with Olympus innovations like the exclusive Dust Reduction System for spot-free photos, 8 million pixels of detail for bright and colorful images, a TruePic TURBO Image Processor for fast response time, and an oversized, easy-to-view 2.5-inch HyperCrystal LCD. Compatible with a wide range of Olympus Zuiko Digital Specific Lenses™, the E-500 delivers the versatility and power that are the hallmarks of a performance SLR, but at an affordable price.
Exclusive Dust Free Technology for Spot-Free Photos
Dust is all around us, and when swapping out a lens on a digital single-lens reflex camera there’s a chance that a camera’s electro-statically charged image sensor will attract micro dust that can ruin photos. Since the main advantage of using an SLR camera is the ability to change lenses for better imaging effects, Olympus has developed a way for photographers to enjoy the freedom of using all the lenses of the Olympus E-System in the most challenging, dusty environments without compromising image quality.
Olympus’ Dust Reduction System produces spot-free photos with the exclusive Supersonic Wave Filter™, a patented ultrasonic technology that shakes at 35,000 vibrations a second to remove dust from in front of the camera sensor every time you turn the camera on. These spot-free photos liberate users from hours spent retouching photographs at the computer. The new EVOLT E-500, like all Olympus digital SLR cameras, is equipped with this exclusive user-friendly technology, and only Olympus has a solution to provide spot-free photography in a digital SLR.
Detailed, Bright and Colorful Photos with 8-Megapixel Image Sensor
The E-500 is loaded with an impressive 8 million pixels of detail, for bright colorful photos. The 8-megapixel sensor gives photographers the flexibility to blow up their prints to the large sizes supported by many of today’s printers, or crop into an image to print only part of the image that is important to them. Moreover, the image sensor in the EVOLT E-500 is a high-performance Full Frame Transfer KODAK KAF-8300CE CCD™ that delivers improved dynamic range, low noise to capture fine image details in the highlight and shadow areas, as well as excellent color fidelity for brilliant colors. Additionally the anti-blooming technology on each pixel and the exclusive Olympus TruePic TURBO Image Processor helps to eliminate undesirable “artifacts”, “stepping” or “jaggies”, “purple fringing” or “moiré” in an image.
TruePic TURBO™ for Clarity and Speed
Olympus’ TruePic TURBO Image Processor provides fast camera response, operation and processing speed for more responsive camera operation. This is done by closely integrating the image processor and hardware elements to eliminate unnecessary processing tasks, accelerating camera operations. For faster burst rates, the TruePic TURBO processor addresses the dedicated 64MB image buffer for up to 4 TIFF or RAW images at 2.5 frames-per-second, and unlimited burst mode with HQ JPEG images and extreme speed Compact Flash cards.
Along with the speed advantages, TruePic TURBO also produces crystal clear photos using all the pixel information for each image to provide you with the best digital images possible for every photo.
Large Easy-to-View 2.5-Inch HyperCyrstal™ LCD Monitor
Big and bright with 215,250 pixels, the E-500 has a 2.5-inch HyperCrystal LCD that offers many times the contrast of conventional LCD monitors, so captured images can be beautifully displayed in vivid color on the screen with exceptional clarity. Because photos are for sharing, the E-500 LCD features a wide, 160° viewing angle on the vertical and horizontal axis, ensuring excellent visibility and beautiful image quality even when everyone huddles around the camera to see what you’ve created. The larger LCD also means the icons and text on the camera’s menu display are enlarged for easier viewing.
The World’s Largest Selection of Digital Specific Lenses™
The versatility of the Olympus E-System comes from delivering the largest selection of “Designed-for-Digital” lenses –more than any other manufacturer to date. Olympus’ Zuiko Digital Specific Lenses™ come in a wide range of focal lengths for achieving the best image result, and impress with their spectacular clarity and edge-to-edge sharpness.
Most other digital SLR cameras still use many traditional 35mm film lenses on digital bodies. But since those lenses are based on designs for film and not for pixels, they deliver insufficient light at the edges of a digital camera’s image sensor. This can result in reduced sharpness and color definition, particularly when shooting with large apertures and wide-angle lenses . The E-500 does not have this problem, because it accommodates the full line of interchangeable Zuiko Digital Lenses. These digital specific lenses are designed for digital capture with smart technology that allows the lenses to communicate with the camera to ensure the best possible image quality.
Olympus dedicated digital optics coupled with the EVOLT E-500 render sharpness and contrast more consistently at any given f-stop. The lenses are matched to the Four Thirds System standard image sensor for the optimal balance between image quality, camera and lens size, and expandability. With a wide array of digital specific lenses to choose from, it’s easy to select the ideal lens to bring along when you don’t want to lug a lot of heavy, bulky gear.
The E-500 outfit includes a compact, Zuiko Digital 14 – 45mm f3.5 – f5.6 Lens (equivalent to 28mm – 90mm in 35mm photography) that perfectly matches the imager so light strikes the sensor directly to ensure rich, accurate colors and edge-to-edge sharpness. Its 3.2x zoom covers the range most frequently used in ordinary photography and weighs just 10 ounces (285 grams) offering users an extremely dynamic, portable everyday-use zoom. Close-ups as near as 15 inches (38cm) are possible throughout the zoom range.
Easy-to-Use, Easy-to-Handle Light and Ergonomic Design
Creating an affordable digital SLR that most anyone can pick up and start to use is about making it easier to operate. That means menus that make sense and buttons on the body that are easy to understand and operate; adding automatic settings for every imaginable situation; making the LCD big and bright enough so you can review a shot without squinting; and making it less of a chore to get images out of the camera and into your computer or printer. Moreover, at just 5.09 inches (W) x 3.72 inches (H) x 2.59 inches (D) and only 15.3 ounces, the EVOLT E-500 is light and compact enough to comfortably shoot with all day.
You don’t need a degree in photography to shoot like a pro with the E-500. Just take it home, charge the Li-ion battery with the included charger, and begin taking photos. Instead of working to find the right settings for the subject, select from one of the camera’s 25 Exposure Modes (Easy, Basic and Creative) that make it easy to get the results you want, whenever and wherever you want them.
To access the Easy Modes, simply turn the mode dial on the top of the camera to “Scene” and choose from a range of 15 pre-programmed Scene Select modes to achieve the optimal results for: Night Scenes, Fireworks, Sunsets, Beach and Snow, Children, Landscape, and more.
Every Scene Select mode on the EVOLT E-500 provides a sample image and a description of what is happening to achieve the desired result. For example, choosing the Landscape setting reveals a sample of a landscape photo, and a text description of what the mode is displayed on the large, easy-to-read 2.5-inch LCD
To access Basic shooting modes that allow some user over-rides, just select one of the 5 icons on the mode dial (Landscape; Portrait; Night Scene-Portrait; Macro; and Action/Sports Modes).
The Creative Modes on the mode dial allow users to take control of the E-500 for the ultimate in artistic expression. For example, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Manual Modes allow users to tweak all of the camera’s settings just the way they want for any situation at hand.
Direct Button operation enables EVOLT E-500 users to get to the settings they want without wading through endless menus or pushing arrow buttons excessively. Instead, most custom settings can be set by pressing one of the cameras 8 direct key buttons for White Balance, Exposure Compensation, ISO, Flash Mode, Metering Mode, Auto Focus Mode, Auto Focus Frame and Recording Mode, and then turning a dial by thumb to customize the setting as desired. All settings are viewable at once on the camera’s “Super Control Panel” displayed on the LCD.
Transferring images to the computer has never been easier with the Auto-Connect USB that does not require software drivers (for most computers/operating systems) for hassle-free image downloads. Images may also be viewed on a television using the video cable.
When it comes time to print images, the E-500 connects via the included USB cable for fast and easy PC-free printing, to any PictBridge-enabled printer via USB, like the new Olympus P-11 Digital Photo Printer. Simply select the images displayed on the camera’s LCD that you wish and print.
The Flexibility of the Most Feature Rich Camera in its Class
Once one feature is mastered, there are a seemingly endless number of other features just waiting to be explored. Because the E-500 is designed for the ultimate user-friendly experience, you can choose to let the camera make all the decisions, or take control for a new level of customization and performance.
5 Metering Modes: A new 49 Point Digital ESP Light Meter enables digital electro selective pattern metering for accurate exposures under the largest number of conditions. The Digital ESP can also be linked to the AF (auto focus) selection or independent of the AF selection for even more versatility. Olympus’ widely acclaimed proprietary Digital ESP metering calculates the best light values under complex lighting conditions. Center-weighted metering is biased to the center of the viewfinder (cross) area. Spot Meter (2%) enables the most accurate metering for tough lighting conditions like backlit or spot lit. Highlight Spot Meter (2%) adjusts for predominantly white subject for correct exposure with detail. Shadow Spot Meter (2%) adjusts for a black subject, providing the correct exposure with detail.
3 Color Modes: Vivid / Natural / Muted: Vivid mode produces photos with more highly saturated colors and higher contrast to optimize images when vivid shots are required. This is also the recommended setting when printing directly from the camera to an inkjet printer. The Natural mode produces realistic color similar to those seen by the human eye and is the perfect choice for the discerning photographer looking for the most realistic photos. The Muted mode is ideal for those users who plan to heavily manipulate or edit their images with the included OLYMPUS Master Software or with Adobe® Photoshop™.
A Choice of Two Color Space Settings: Users can choose from two color space settings according to their needs: sRGB, which is the standard for computer monitor viewing and inkjet printer output, and Adobe® RGB, which is widely used for commercial applications.
9 Black & White Modes: Red, Yellow, Orange, and Green filters can be selected to replicate the same traditional film filters, enhancing the drama of the image in the Black & White shooting mode. In addition to Sepia tone, the EVOLT E-500 also offers users three tone effects: Blue, Green and Purple for special results.
2 Red-Eye Reduction modes, on Flash and in Playback: Besides the ability to select Red-Eye reduction mode on the flash prior to taking a shot, the EVOLT E-500 also offers the ability to correct for Red-Eye in images that have already been taken while the camera is in playback mode.
Dual Card Slots: Users also benefit from two memory card slots – one for CompactFlash or Microdrive and another for xD-Picture Cards – which add to the camera’s practicality and provide extra data storage. Simply depress a button on the back of the camera to choose which card type to capture to and copy images back and forth from one card to the other in playback.
Support for High-Speed and High-Capacity Memory Media: The EVOLT E-500 supports 32-bit file formatting allowing the use of 2 gigabyte and larger CompactFlash, Microdrive, and xD media™ cards. The EVOLT E-500 also supports high-speed CF cards for faster operation in the burst mode.
AF: The E-500 dedicated auto focus system offers 3 selectable AF points for accurate auto focus operation. When automatic target zone selection is active, a superimposed display confirms the relevant target zone. Focus modes are set via a manual switch on the camera body for Single AF, Continuous AF, and Manual Focus operation. To ensure successful focusing in the darkest environments, the E-500 utilizes an AF illuminator built into the flash.
Simultaneous RAW and JPEG Image Recording: A choice of three image formats is offered: RAW, TIFF, and JPEG. If desired, image data can be simultaneously recorded in RAW and JPEG with the RAW+JPEG format.
Contrast, Sharpness and Tone Curve Controls: Contrast can be set to any of five levels, and sharpness can be set to any of seven levels. So whether users want pro-quality tonal fidelity or sharp vibrant colors, they can customize each image to suit their preference.
White Balance: White balance settings from 3000K to 7000K can be set in 12 steps using button and dial controls, with ±7-step fine-tuning available for all settings. A one-touch white balance function allows users to store and retrieve up to four frequently used white balance settings at the touch of a button. By initially reading the light separately for the CCD, the camera can see a dramatic increase in speed without loss of accuracy.
Noise Reduction: The noise reduction function uses a proprietary Olympus algorithm to detect and eliminate the fixed noise that can appear on long-exposure images.
High-Precision Flash Control: The flash can be turned ON and OFF manually or with the AUTO FLASH option selected the flash will pop up automatically when ever it is needed. A wide range of flash modes is provided, including Auto, Red-Eye Reduction, Slow Synchro (front and rear curtain), and Fill-In.
RGB Histogram Information Display: The EVOLT E-500 will display an individual histogram for each color channel (RGB) as well as the overall luminance of the exposure. This information is valuable to the more advanced user who may need to alter the exposure for specific output sources. A display that identifies overexposed highlights or underexposed shadow areas is also an option in image playback mode.
Self-timer and Remote Control: The built-in self-timer offers a choice of 12-second or 2-second delay. An optional RM-1 remote control unit is available and can be used with the 2-second delay setting or for immediate shutter release, as well as to control “bulb” shutter openings for longer exposures.
Availability
The Olympus EVOLT E-500 Digital SLR will be available in October 2005. It includes: EVOLT E-500 Body with 14-45mm f3.5/5.6 Zuiko Digital Zoom Lens, USB Cable, Video Cable, Li-Ion Battery Pack (BLM-1), Li-Ion Battery Charger (BCM-2), Shoulder Strap, OLYMPUS Master Software CD-ROM, Manuals, Warranty card.
US Pricing
EVOLT E-500 with 14-45mm f3.5/5.6 Zuiko Digital Zoom Lens Estimated Street Price: $799.99
EVOLT E-500 TWO Lens Outfit; 14-45mm f3.5/5.6 and 40-150mm f3.5/4.5 Zuiko Digital Zoom Lens Estimated Street Price $899.99
For more information, review units and high-resolution images of the Olympus EVOLT E-500 and accessories, contact Michael Bourne, Mullen Public Relations, 978-468-8953 or michael.bourne@mullen.com , or Chris Sluka, senior public relations manager, Olympus Imaging America Inc, Consumer Products Group, Two Corporate Center Dr., Melville, NY, P.O. Box 9058, 11747-9058, ph: (631) 844-5000 (800) 260-1625, Fax: (631) 844-5262 or the Olympus Web Site: https://www.olympusamerica.com/
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A look at eight designers who have helped shape the world of layout and typography.

If you don’t know a great deal about women in graphic design history, you are forgiven. As in most disciplines, their stories have been left in the margins or simply not included at all. But women have, of course, always held a place in design, and in some ways their stories are all the more impressive when you imagine what they were working against in what was long a male-dominated field.

It’s worth exploring women’s place in graphic design for a number of reasons. First and foremost, representation matters. It’s important for us, especially when we are learning and finding our voices, to see some representation of ourselves in our discipline, in order to feel a connection and sense of belonging. Secondly, it’s always good to simply expand your knowledge about who designed what, who innovated this approach or that technique. Understanding the roots of our discipline gives us a chance to make our own work more deliberately—with a better understanding of the context in which the typefaces we are using were designed, what the layout styles or color palettes we choose might indicate, and so on.

The following is a jump-start list of must-know women graphic designers. In order to narrow things down a bit, I’ve focused the list to women known for their publication and layout work—the kind of work that could have been done (or may have been done) using Adobe InDesign. Of course, keep in mind that many of these women started designing before the desktop computer existed, so, let’s give them extra honors for the level of thinking, planning, and hand skill that went into their ground-breaking work!

Note: For the sake of brevity, I’ve left many deserving women off this list, including Paula Scher, who is currently perhaps the most famous woman designer. Fortunately, Paula has already received quite a lot of coverage in the last couple of years—including a gorgeous monograph (Unit Editions) and an episode of the Netflix series, Abstract, not to mention being one of only two women interviewed in the film Helvetica (out of 26 interviewees).

Varvara Stepanova

1894–1958

Best known for: Theater costumes and revolutionary propaganda

As a part of the group of early modernists in Soviet Russia known as Constructivists, Varvara Stepanova’s work contributes to the foundation for graphic design as we know it today. The Constructivists drove to make work that that celebrated technology and that served a utilitarian purpose, rather than “art for art’s sake.” Constructivist designers developed modern typographic forms, innovated photomontage methods, pushed illustration from its highly detailed and figurative state, and challenged the static page layout in general, all within the commercial realm of advertising, package design, and other mainstream applications. The exchange of ideas and approaches with those of the De Stijl and Bauhuas designers was an explosion of design development in the 1920s.

Like many of her era, Stepanova began as a painter in the teens, but evolved to abstract work relatively early in her career. In fact, she and a group of five of her Constructivist peers (including her husband, Aleksandr Rodchenko) essentially “came out” as designers in an exhibition called “5×5=25” in 1921, in which each exhibitor displayed five pieces to announce their move away from painting and into design. Stepanova had already been working with letterforms in her paintings for some time, and even experimenting with the typewriter to set concrete poems. Looking at her body of work, it seems like a logical next step.

As a designer, Stepanova created books, posters, theater sets, and costumes and, perhaps most famously, textiles and athletic clothing. (Although it’s worth noting that she and many other avant-garde artists did return to painting in later years.) She believed deeply in the importance of a designer’s responsibility to engage with the materials and production process itself. On the more theoretical side, she also felt it was important to discuss her ideas about art and design, and shared her thoughts in lectures and in writing on everything from aesthetics in general to book design specifically.

It’s important to note that Stepanova was able to make her work in the early 20^th century, and share the stage with male contemporaries, in a way that didn’t happen in most other countries for decades. But she wasn’t an anomaly in the former USSR. There were a number of well-known women designers, such as Liubov Popova, Valentina Kulagina, and Nina Vatolina, who were creating critical works of the revolutionary decades and beyond as well.

Cipe Pineles

1908–1991

Best known for: Vogue, Seventeen, Charm

Austrian-American émigré Cipe Pineles (pronounced cee-pee) established herself as one of the great publication designers of the 20^th century with her contributions and art direction for numerous titles, including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Seventeen, and Charm. Pineles graduated from Pratt School of Art & Design, and after a year of portfolio reviews (1930), she was working in a design collaborative called Contempora on a wide range of projects. She likely would have been working sooner, if potential employers hadn’t repeatedly rejected her upon discovering she was a woman.

It was at her next job, working for Condé Nast, that Cipe Pineles really began to develop into the designer we know her as today. Here, under the art director of M. F. Agha (Vogue, Vanity Fair, and House and Garden), Pineles learned the finer points of editorial design, and later, art direction. By 1942, Pineles was named art director for Glamour.

At Glamour, Pineles did something unexpected for a middle-market fashion magazine: she chose to work with top image-makers in photography and illustration, consistently elevating the magazine as she did. This included people like Herbert Matter, Ladislav Sutnar, and relative unknowns (at the time) like Seymour Chwast. Additionally, she is credited with innovating the practice of hiring fine artists as illustrators.

In the late 1940s, Pineles worked with the founder and editor of Seventeen, Helen Valentine, on that magazine, making a point of writing and designing the magazine in a voice that didn’t talk down to the audience and that aimed at educating them. This approach was especially notable in a teen magazine, which would previously have been prone to commissioning juvenile illustrations instead of the more refined images she commissioned from fine artists. Of course, the advertisements still portrayed a limited view of girl-to-womanhood, but the contents of the articles themselves “showed something different: ways for American females to see themselves involved in the wider world and in possession and control of knowledge, money, and their destinies,” notes her biographer, Martha Scotford.

In her work for Charm magazine, subtitled “The magazine for women who work,” Pineles attempted to show the working world of women as inviting but not unrealistic. Pineles said, “We tried to make the prosaic attractive without using the tired clichés of false glamour. You might say we tried to convey the attractiveness of reality, as opposed to the glitter of a never-never land.”

Pineles was awarded frequently for her work, but for all this achievement it took far too long for her to be admitted into the well-known New York Art Director’s Club, despite the fact her former boss, M. F. Agha, had been proposing her for years. In fact, it wasn’t until her husband, William Golden—whom she had helped gain a foothold in the design world and had been tapped for membership—“pointed out that the ADC was hardly a professional club if it had ignored his fully qualified wife.” They were both admitted in 1948. She was the first woman admitted to the club. It wasn’t until 15 years later that another woman was admitted. In 1975, Pineles was inducted into the ADC Hall of Fame, and in 1996 was awarded the prestigious AIGA Medal.

As is not uncommon for designers like Pineles, she also dedicated some of her time to teaching (in her case, at Parsons School of Art & Design). She taught into her seventies, sharing her knowledge with the next generations, some of whom went on to art direct major publications themselves.

Muriel Cooper

1925–1994

Best known for: Co-founding the Visible Language Workshop, MIT Press logotype and publications, and 3D screen typography experimentation

In 1975, the computer wasn’t in many American homes, but Muriel Cooper was steps ahead. She said, “the shift from a mechanical to an information society demands new communication processes, new visual and verbal languages, and new relationships of education, practice, and production.” With this thinking, Cooper co-founded (with Ron MacNeil) the Visible Language Workshop (VLW) at MIT. At this point, she was already a well-known, award-winning designer having worked both at the MIT Publications office and for herself. (You may very well have her work on your bookshelf in the form of the exquisite MIT Press logotype.) But not one to rest on her laurels, hungry for the new, and knowing there was so much to discover, Muriel took on this new direction at the age of 49.

Cooper’s class “Messages and Means” was consistently over-enrolled with students wanting to learn design skills that they could apply to experiments in technological developments. Her work focused on type on the screen and how motion allowed for a new way of interaction and communication. Students in the VLW also explored typography on the screen as well as file organization, image editing, 3D rendering of type and image, animation, even artificial intelligence, and more—much of it at a time before the Macintosh computer even existed! Add on top of all of this that Cooper was the only tenured female professor at the Workshop at the time of her death, and she is nothing short of spectacular. Cooper led the Workshop for 20 years until her untimely death in 1994.

Deborah Sussman

1931–2014

Best known for: 1984 Olympics identity, Walt Disney World & Euro Disney wayfinding, the graphic visual language of the Eames Office

Starting out at the Eames Office, Deborah Sussman developed her dynamic sense of color under the tutelage of Ray Eames. There is a sense of joy and yet utility to the way the Sussman used color throughout her four decades as a designer. Her color and design systems are what really set her apart.

While at the Eames office, Sussman worked on the incredible “IBM Mathematica Exhibit” and Day of the Dead film, among other projects. In 1968, she went on to found her own studio, and in 1980, she was joined by her architect husband, Paul Presja. These two made a fantastic team, working primarily on environmental projects, both nationwide and internationally.

So successful was Sussman/Presja & Company, that they were awarded one of the most coveted design projects in the world: the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles! The identity, materials, and structures they created for the event reflected the playful West Coast energy of Los Angeles and remain one of the great examples of Olympic design.

The office continued to focus on graphics-driven spaces, which Sussman referred to as “graphitecture,” working with many esteemed architects, including Frank Gehry and Foster Partners. Over the decades, the studio has continued to make dynamic work for clients like Disney World, The Museum of African American Diaspora, and Hasbro. The studio continues on after Sussman’s passing in 2014.

April Greiman

b. 1948

Best known for: Design Quarterly #133: “Does it Make Sense?”, Sci-arc identity, and Wet magazine

When the Macintosh computer landed on the scene in the mid-1980s, it was seen as either a blessing or a curse, depending on which designer you spoke to. Many designers were wary of this potential job-stealer—or simply unimpressed with its output resolution. But some designers were drawn to it “like a moth to a flame,” as April Greiman quipped in the documentary, Graphic Means.

Despite her classic, Swiss design training, Greiman is best known for the way her work challenged traditional notions of fine typography, the grid, and image-making in the ’80s and ’90s. Some of this can be traced back to her study under great New Wave designer Wolfgang Weingart. However, she found a strong voice of her own, especially after her move from the East Coast to the West, and in the adoption of digital technology. Her work in the 1980s consisted of a beautiful mixture of classic sharp, photoset typography with the new, bitmapped aesthetic that the computer’s limitations imposed on digital typefaces and imagery. Greiman had clients in the cultural sphere, the culinary, and, not-surprisingly, the high-technology industries.

To the many detractors resistant to a new tool such as the Mac, and to the new visual language it was enabling, Greiman argued that “The computer is just another pencil” and that “What we are discovering is a new texture, a new design language, a new landscape in communications. As people become empowered with this tool we’ll see terrible things and wonderful things.” Rather than succumb to fear, Greiman was both pragmatic about the tool and optimistic about its potential. So perhaps, when a new technology debuts and you feel yourself disregarding it, or fearing its effects, think instead, “what would April Greiman think?” and I bet your approach will be much more positive, and productive, too!

Today, Greiman continues making work in the form of public art, photography (her series “Drive-by Shooting” has been ongoing over 30 years!), and 3D projects—often collaborations with architects.

Louise Fili

b. 1951

Best known for: The Lover (book cover), food packaging, various regional and historical typography source books

Louise Fili has used her love and deep research into historical Italian typography to inform a contemporary practice that combines the high standards of yesterday with a fresh voice for today. She started her career working in the office of Herb Lubalin, but was soon designing book covers at Pantheon (Random House). Over the span of her career, she has designed almost 2,000 book jackets!

It was at Pantheon that she developed a reputation for turning the typical concept of the book cover on its head. Instead of the usual loud, foil-stamped, brash graphics favored at the time, Fili used muted color palettes, fine typography, and ample white space to create emotive tones that ended up selling wildly and inspiring generations of book designers to come.

Upon starting her own studio in 1989, Fili transitioned into doing work for the restaurant and food packaging world out of sheer passion for the subject. The typography on her packaging projects is second to none in concept and execution, and has also been credited with increasing sales for her clients.

Simultaneously, she has designed a venerable collection of books on typography in collaboration with design historian (and husband) Steven Heller. Titles typically cover historical topics from Italian Art Déco to the recent stunning source book, Slab Serif Type.

Fili’s work can be found in fine groceries, of course, but also in the collections of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and the Biliothéque Nationale, among others.

Irma Boom

b. 1960

Best known for: Nederlandse Postzegels (book), SHV Think Book 1996–1896, and Weaving as Metaphor (book)

For a time, some were saying the internet had signaled “the end of print.” Massimo Vignelli himself exclaimed in a book design panel that “the book is dead!” Of course, now we know that the book has survived—almost better than we could have expected. People are putting their kindles down to read on paper again, Amazon is opening brick-and-mortar stores, and independent bookstores are making a comeback in some parts of the United States.

But the books of Irma Boom were never in danger, because she has always treated the book as a precious object,—one to research and explore anew with each new commission. Boom has made books with over 8,000 pages, books with 80 spot colors, used newly invented paper stocks, and built books as small as 1.5×2 inches.

Her clients have included the likes of Knoll, Chanel, Rem Koolhaus, and The Rijksmusuem, but Boom started her career at what might seem like a fairly humble place—the Staatsdrukkerij en Uitgeverij, the Dutch state-owned printing and publishing office. She’d been turned down for a job at the well-known Total Design studio and been advised by a teacher to try the state design department. It turned out that this couldn’t have been a better choice for her. Here she was able to experiment with great freedom on advertisements and other jobs that no one else was interested in. But it wasn’t long before the boss, as Eye magazine put it, “invited the designer of the ‘crazy-ads’ to do one of the most prestigious book jobs: the annual Dutch postage stamps books.” From that illuminating project on, Boom continued to take her briefs and create unique solutions from them, regardless of the subject.

For over three decades now, Irma has continued to reinvent the format of the book for each project, working with an auteur-like mindset that is prized by commissioners looking for something unique, or something that couldn’t exist as a PDF—a consideration of Boom’s, when she thinks about books translating to digital environments.

And when she’s not designing one of her sculptural books, she’s working on identities for the likes of The Rijksmuseum, a design for a 110-meter tunnel at Amsterdam’s Central Station, or curtains for the UN headquarters in New York City.

Ellen Lupton

b. 1963

Best known for: Thinking with Type (book), Graphic Design Now In Production (book and exhibition), and MICA Graphic Design MFA

Ellen Lupton could be called the grande dame of contemporary design writing. She has written innumerable essays and lectures and published over 20 books, including the seminal text, Thinking with Type (2004), which is publisher Princeton Architectural Press’ all-time bestselling title.

It’s not surprising, then, that Lupton’s was one of the strongest voices in the 1990s advocating for something many of us may now take for granted—“designer as author.” Throughout her career, she has carved out a space for herself as a writer and designer of equal talents, who creates her own content, exquisitely designed, for books, curriculum, and exhibitions. Her books have covered topics like graphic design fundamentals, DIY bookmaking, the senses, women and machines, and more.

As a typography student at Cooper Union, Lupton realized that design and writing were intimately related, and clearly never looked back. Upon graduation in 1985 she was asked to run the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography, which in turn led to her becoming a curator at the Smithsonian’s national design museum, the Cooper-Hewitt, in 1992—and all the time she continued to play a hand in designing for the content she was writing/curating.

She has been the director of Maryland Institute College of Art Graphic Design MFA program since 2003, while continuing as curator at the Cooper Hewitt National Design museum in New York City since 1992, speaking nationally and internationally and writing and designing books, often in collaboration with her graduate students.

Despite her intellectual status, Lupton is a strong proponent of DIY approaches to design and writing, often championing new formats like blogs or social media as a way to have a design discourse, rather than attempting to keep the dialog in the Ivory Tower, so-to-speak. She admits she loves the permanency of books, but then again, what book designer doesn’t?

With the release of its eagerly awaited new ultra zoom digital camera, the SP-500 UZ, Olympus pleases advanced and amateur-level camera aficionados alike. The powerful 10x optical zoom provides users with the focal range to capture stunning close-up shots. Designed with a large, easy-to-view 2.5-inch premium size LCD, both manual and automatic settings and optional add-on accessory lenses, the SP-500 UZ is a highly versatile camera, powerful enough to satisfy the creative needs of the advanced user, and expansive enough to grow as users develop their talent.
“The SP-series cameras are designed to offer an all-in-one camera solution for photographers of all skill levels,” said John McGuire, product manager, Olympus Imaging America Inc. “The beauty of the SP-500 UZ ultra zoom digital camera is that it packs a wealth of manual and automatic features and an incredible focal range into a compact, light-weight body design.”
Ultra Zoom
Thanks to years of experience crafting Ultra Zoom digital cameras, Olympus is able to deliver a superior designed-to-be-digital 10x optical zoom lens ( 38mm – 380mm equivalent in 35mm photography) to bring the action closer. The bright, high quality optical system is comprised of eleven elements arranged in seven groups and includes two aspherical lenses, plus an extra-dispersion (ED) glass element typically found exclusively in pro-level SLR cameras.
6.0-Megapixel Image Sensor for Large-Format Prints
The 6.0-megapixel CCD image sensor delivers super high-quality images that are consistently sharp and vivid even in large-format prints.
2.5-Inch Premium Size LCD
Composing and reviewing images is far easier when you don’t have to squint. The 115,000-pixel anti-glare LCD enables you to view images in large and vivid detail. What’s more, you don’t have to download and print images each time you want to share them – you can treat your friends and family to a slide show right on the back of your camera. With the large 2.5-inch LCD, the SP-500 UZ is a veritable walking photo album!
PictBridge Enabled – No Computer Necessary!
The power of PictBridge technology enables photos to be printed directly from the SP-500 UZ to any PictBridge-enabled printer without using a computer. And the new one-touch printing button makes printing a single-step process. Printing and sharing images has never been easier!
Manual Settings for Added Creative Control
The addition of manual Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority modes gives users versatility and control for optimal performance in any situation. Users can express their creative vision – adjusting the f-stop for detailed portraits with softened backgrounds, or slowing the exposure speed to create the blurred effect of motion.
27 Selectable Shooting Modes
The SP-500 UZ makes it easy to capture great images in a variety of lighting situations with 21 pre-programmed scene modes, such as Night Scene, Indoor Portrait or Cuisine Mode. And with its QuickTime ® Movie Mode, the SP-500 UZ can record movies of any length, limited only by the size of the internal memory or xD-Picture C ard in the camera.
Accessory Lenses for Expanded Capabilities
The SP-500 UZ features a threaded barrel, which enables easy attachment of add-on wide angle or telephoto conversion lenses for even more creative control. Compatible accessory lenses include the WCON-07 and WCON-08 wide angle lenses, which enable a wider field of view for shooting skylines, landscapes or group shots, and the TCON-17 telephoto conversion lens, which extends the camera’s magnification capability to a 17x optical zoom for bringing subjects dramatically closer, great for shooting sports events, concerts or wildlife.
TruePic TURBO™ for High-Speed Response
Olympus’ exclusive TruePic TURBO™ Image Processor enhances image quality and delivers faster overall processing speeds for rapid startup, shutter release and playback. TruePic TURBO TM enables the SP-500 UZ to capture information from all 6.0 million pixels with pixel “micro-smoothing” that delivers clearer and more color-accurate photos, even at lower resolutions. The fast startup of less than one second and nearly instant shutter release time ensures a high-speed response so you are always ready to take great pictures.
High Quality Olympus Lens Elements
Olympus photos are known worldwide for sharp, vibrant image quality. This is achieved through a number of key technologies, such as Olympus’ new high-refractive-index aspherical lens elements, designed specifically for digital cameras. The lens provides the equivalent of 38 to 114 mm focal length, f2.8 – f 4.9 in 35mm photography, with 15x combined total zoom (3x optical and 5x digital) to bring the action closer, and a Super Macro Mode that captures details as nuanced as the iridescent petals of a flower, from as close as 2 cm .
In-camera Editing
With in-camera editing features such as Red-Eye Fix, color brightness and saturation adjustments, users can edit photos on the fly – no longer do you have to tool around with computers and editing software for simple image touch-ups!
Style and Ergonomics
With the SP-500 UZ, Olympus returns to the traditional, compact appearance of its traditional range-finder cameras. At a compact size of just 4.2 ” W x 2.9″ H x 2.8″ L and only 10.1 ounces, the camera tucks away easily into a pocket or backpack. The addition of an ergonomic grip makes it easy to hold with one hand, for capturing those photo ops when you are, literally, on the run.
Easy USB Auto-Connect
Connecting the SP-500 UZ to a computer is easy with the USB Auto-Connect feature, which connects directly via USB 2.0 cable and requires no software.
OLYMPUS Master™ Software
OLYMPUS Master™ software provides the ultimate in digital imaging management. An intuitive user interface makes downloading to your computer quick and simple, and images are searchable by date or keyword in the Calendar View. And with one-click editing tools, such as red-eye reduction, images can be touched up before printing or emailing. Online support, templates, firmware upgrades and other user services are just a mouse-click away.
Availability
The SP-500 UZ will be available in October 2005. It includes: Wrist Strap, Camera WIN/Mac USB Cable, Video cable, 4 AA batteries, Quick Start Guide, Basic Instruction Manual, Warranty Card, CD-ROM with OLYMPUS Master Software, and Camera Advanced manual.
U.S. Pricing
SP-500 UZ Estimated Street Price: $ 379 .99 (U.S.)
For more information, review units, product specifications and high-resolution images of the SP-500 UZ, contact Heather Snow, Mullen Public Relations, 978-468-8934 or heather.snow@mullen.com, or Chris Sluka, Senior Public Relations Manager, Olympus Imaging America Inc., Two Corporate Center Dr., P.O Box 9058 Melville, NY 11747-9058, ph: (631) 844-5000 (800) 622-6372, Fax: (631) 844-5262 or the Olympus Web Site: https://www.olympusamerica.com .
(800) 622-6372, Fax: (631) 844-5262 or the Olympus Web Site: https://www.olympusamerica.com

The name Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) brings to mind one of our Founding Fathers who helped draft both the United States Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But not only was Franklin a politician, scientist, and inventor, he was also a writer, printer, and publisher. One of his literary accomplishments was the creation of a list of 13 Virtues, which he assembled in 1726 at the age of 20.

Franklin created this list to help develop his character, and he continued to use it in some form for his entire life. In his autobiography, he wrote, “I propos’d to myself, for the sake of clearness, to use rather more names, with fewer ideas annex’d to each, than a few names with more ideas; and I included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurr’d to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a short precept, which fully express’d the extent I gave to its meaning.”

When Richard Deon, publication designer and artist, serendipitously came upon this list, he couldn’t resist making something of it. Since his work often creates fictional “historic” events, this found treasure stimulated his creativity, and led to his own visual interpretation which he entitled “13 Impressions of Virtue”.

Richard’s replies to several questions gives a fascinating insight into the way he thinks, as well as his creative process. (Note: all captions are in the artist’s own words.)

What originally inspired you to create these?

In a sidewalk library in Cambridge, MA I found a misbound book from the Adams Family Papers collection. One chapter was a letter from Benjamin Franklin to his autobiography  publisher. I enjoyed reading this letter, specifically his description of the 13 Virtues he wrote as a twenty-year-old. I deducted Franklin’s sense of order may have come from his occupation as a commercial printer, which itself is a creative yet complex path involving language, typographic composition, ink and paper handling, meetings, labor, and press time management.

What was your goal, design-wise or otherwise?

The goal was to deliver a collectible print series. I see a lot of “motivational posters” in offices, but they are a visually uninteresting combo of stock photos and a slogan. Why can’t this genre be more creative? I like creating alternate narratives within a series.  

Regarding your process, which came first: the type or images?

Franklin’s text came first. I increased legibility with two basic body text sizes. Some headlines were integrated into the artwork (as I intended to do with wooden glyphs on the letterpress platen). The images were hide-and-seek and see-what-works game played over three winter months. After four versions I found an acceptable balance.

Is the artwork you used your own or vintage images? 

My work is a little like circus posters, a little exaggerated information can create interest, the artwork can be found in a mixed bag of stock art vintage (Dover books and online stock sites) and my own vision.

Any rhyme or reason for the chosen fonts? 

My recent interest in making woodblock prints brought me to seek 19th-century fonts to use with my woodblocks. For a grant submission, I intended to use an original period letterpress with period woodblock fonts. The proposal was rejected (did not “meet  guidelines”) so I completed the project on time with Adobe InDesign. Fonts used: Black Oak, Frontage Condensed, Tungsten Compressed, Bodoni Poster, Bauer Bodoni Bold BT (thickened outline), a few appearances of Franklin Gothic, Rosewood and Copperplate.

Anything else that might be of interest to the readers?

My exhibition of paintings and prints, “Paradox and Conformity: Paintings, Prints & Planes by Richard Deon”, has a similar logic as the Virtues series: all the pieces relate to each other, as you walk between the works you notice simplification or exaggeration in proportion. The pieces lose their aesthetic if they are not exhibited together.

*  *  *  *  *

The 13 Impressions of Virtue series is available on Richard Deon’s website as both a framed small collection, as well as unframed large prints. While you are visiting his site, take a look at the rest of his work, which consists of clever, thought-provoking interpretations of other provocative themes.

You’ve decided it’s time to elevate your photography and move up to Lightroom, but it’s a professional tool with an abundance of features and controls… and “Lightroom” isn’t even a single application. Where to start? Right here, of course! With a handle on the fundamentals, you can work with your photos like the pros do.

Before we get into specific features, we need to break down just what Lightroom is and what it’s designed to do. Many photo-editing apps take a Photoshop approach by opening individual files to edit, but Lightroom is a broader package designed to store, organize, edit, and share your photos in an ecosystem that spans platforms.

You’ve decided it’s time to elevate your photography and move up to Lightroom, but it’s a professional tool with an abundance of features and controls… and “Lightroom” isn’t even a single application. Where to start? Right here, of course! With a handle on the fundamentals, you can work with your photos like the pros do.

Before we get into specific features, we need to break down just what Lightroom is and what it’s designed to do. Many photo-editing apps take a Photoshop approach by opening individual files to edit, but Lightroom is a broader package designed to store, organize, edit, and share your photos in an ecosystem that spans platforms.

Welcome to the Lightroom Family

Three separate apps fall under the banner of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (the full, official name you’ll never hear unless you read Adobe press releases). While Photoshop is designed to manipulate any image file you throw at it, using layers and compositing and a host of other features, Lightroom is designed to edit photos from a photographer’s perspective. It’s focused on such core edits as adjusting tone and color, cropping for composition, healing spots or blemishes, and generally bringing out the best version of the photo you captured.

The three Lightroom apps all share the same basic capabilities and can work together. They’re all actively developed and updated, but each has its own strengths. Here’s a quick family snapshot:

• Lightroom Classic. The original incarnation of Lightroom (now at version 11.0), Lightroom Classic is the most full-featured one, with such capabilities as managing multiple separate libraries, extensive keyword and filtering options, advanced printing, and more. It can also sync photos from your computer to Adobe’s Creative Cloud for sharing with other devices, but with some noteworthy limitations (more on that shortly). The most common complaint about Lightroom Classic is performance. The app is built on legacy code that has accrued over time, and it can be slow on older machines running large photo libraries or performing complicated adjustments, such as merging high-resolution panoramic images. You can create multiple Lightroom Classic catalogs to keep separate projects, well, separate. Lightroom Classic runs on macOS and Windows.
• Lightroom desktop. The Lightroom desktop app for macOS or Windows is the “new” or “cloud-centric” edition (currently at version 5.0). It’s designed to automatically sync your entire photo library with Creative Cloud, which unlocks such features as easy photo synchronization among devices, sharing full-resolution images online, and Adobe Sensei-powered abilities like intelligent image search and people recognition. Lightroom desktop is built on a more modern code base, so it tends to be more responsive, but it doesn’t include all the features found in Lightroom Classic. Contrary to widespread belief, Lightroom desktop does not require you to solely sync your photos to the cloud; they exist on disk, too. In fact, it implements my favorite method of managing offline image files. That said, Lightroom desktop is designed for that symbiotic connection to the cloud, and works with just one catalog tied to your Adobe ID.
• Lightroom for mobile. The Lightroom apps for phones and tablets running iOS, iPadOS, and Android sync with Creative Cloud so you can organize and edit your library anywhere. The main editing features are there (tone, color, many effects, presets, and so forth) and more closely track to the feature set and interface of Lightroom desktop. But some desktop capabilities are yet to migrate from the mobile version, such as creating panoramas and HDR (High Dynamic Range) composites from multiple image files. However, the mobile editions feature something their desktop brethren don’t: photo capture. Because they run on devices that all feature built-in cameras, the Lightroom for mobile apps can shoot images directly, including automatic HDR-bracketed exposures that are blended remotely in the cloud, and add them to your library.

One could argue that there’s also a fourth version of the software, Lightroom for web, which runs in a web browser and resembles Lightroom desktop and Lightroom for mobile. It, too, has core editing tools, but isn’t as extensive as the other versions. Let’s call it the third-and-a-half version.

Speaking broadly, folks who’ve used Lightroom Classic for years are often more comfortable sticking with it. If you’re brand new to the Lightroom family, the cloud-based Lightroom desktop is the friendliest version to learn. Whether you’re using either desktop app, adding the mobile app for your devices just makes sense if you want to access your photos on them.

It is possible to use only Lightroom for mobile, but since we’re talking about the whole group, I’m treating the desktop versions as the primary ones. Adobe’s Photography Plan includes both Lightroom desktop and Lightroom Classic (and Photoshop, too!), along with the mobile editions, so you can try both desktop versions and see which one fits you best.

Pricing for the apps starts at $9.99 per month for either Lightroom desktop alone with 1 TB of cloud storage or a bundle that includes Lightroom desktop, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and 20 GB of cloud storage. That bundle is also available with 1 TB of cloud storage for $19.99 per month.

Visit the Lightroom Library

Each Lightroom app stores your photos in a central library, letting you browse your images without opening individual files on your disk. Having them all in one place also gives you the ability to rate, tag, and organize them (Figure 1).

Want to quickly view your better-quality photos that contain a specific family member in a particular location? A quick filter makes them visible. You could also group photos from a recent vacation in an album for easy reference.

This type of organization is known as digital asset management, and it makes a huge difference when you want to sort and locate photos. Each edition of Lightroom stores this information in a central database file, called the catalog, which keeps track of where image files are located on disk and which edits have been applied to them.

In Lightroom Classic, the image files themselves can be located anywhere on disk or on external volumes. Lightroom desktop prefers to store everything in a central repository, but you can change that location in the app’s preferences.

For example, the bulk of my Lightroom desktop library is stored on an external hard disk; in the app’s preferences, I specified that as the location to store originals. The feature I particularly like in Lightroom desktop is that if the disk is not connected to my laptop when I import new photos—such as when I’m away on a photo trip or workshop—the app temporarily stores the image files on the computer’s internal storage. When I return to my office, connect the drive, and launch Lightroom desktop, it automatically moves the imported files to my external drive. In Lightroom Classic, I need to manually move images using the app’s Folders panel to get them onto that external storage.

Import photos

Each of the Lightroom apps can import photos from a memory card, connected camera, or local folders and track them in the library. You can preview the shots before copying them, letting you discard obvious clunkers or just pick and choose the ones you want to work with.

Lightroom Classic, however, goes the extra mile—and then continues driving to the next county—with its import options (Figure 2). You can add keywords to the incoming images, automatically make backup copies to a second location, apply edits, add the images to a collection, convert raw files to DNG format, and rename files—all in one import pass. It’s great for folks who need to import and process hundreds or thousands of shots at once; they can also create presets to ensure that the next batches are imported the same way. Lightroom desktop’s only other import option is to add the incoming photos to an album.

Because we all capture photos using our phones as well as our other cameras, the Lightroom for mobile apps include an optional setting, Automatically Import Mobile Photos, to pull those shots from the device’s internal photo storage and add them to your Lightroom library. That way, even your mobile images reside in your library.

How syncing works

Lightroom desktop and Lightroom Classic take different approaches to syncing. In fact, many photographers never sync from Lightroom Classic, preferring to keep everything local. That said, syncing is possible in both, and they sync to the same source: your Creative Cloud account. Because Lightroom desktop leans heavily on working with photos in the cloud, it’s important to understand what’s going on.

After you import photos into Lightroom desktop, copies of the original image files (including raw files) automatically upload to the cloud. Edits you make sync as well; if you also use Lightroom for mobile on an iPad, for example, the edits are automatically reflected there. The same scheme applies if you import photos directly into Lightroom for mobile: Original images copy to the cloud.

The downside is that you need a pretty robust internet connection, or plenty of patience, to copy all that data to the cloud. If you have neither, you can pause syncing, though many cloud-based features will not be available.

In Lightroom Classic, syncing is not automatic and requires that you first create a collection (the app’s term for an album) and enable it to be synced. Then, any image in that collection copies to the cloud and is made available to Lightroom on other devices.

However, there is one limitation in Lightroom Classic: It syncs only lower-resolution Smart Previews to the cloud to save bandwidth. Edits you make on a mobile device still sync properly, but you wouldn’t want to export or print one of the photos until you’re back in Lightroom Classic (see sidebar).

By contrast, Lightroom desktop and Lightroom for mobile can access originals whenever they need to. They will use Smart Previews as needed to conserve disk space, but you can download originals from the cloud if the files are not available locally.

Ratings, flags, color labels, and keywords

The library provides a common area to access your photos, and the ability to tag them with additional metadata can help you sort and locate images. The Lightroom apps offer several ways to do this:

• Ratings. Mark the quality of an image using star ratings, from one to five stars (Figure 3). What the ratings mean is up to you. I mark any promising image two stars, then increase as I edit; a three-star photo is one I’ve edited, and I reserve four and five stars for shots that I think really stand out from the rest.

• Flags. You can mark a photo as Picked or Rejected (or leave it unflagged). Some folks prefer this binary approach over star ratings: A picked image is good, a rejected image is bad. I mix and match, marking high-rated images with a Picked flag when I’m working on a project, such as identifying my favorites from a portrait session. I use the Rejected flag to easily identify the bad shots, then filter those later and delete them from the library.
• Color Labels. In Lightroom Classic only, you can additionally apply one of five colors to further organize your shots. Photos labeled in green could be the ones you’ll use for social media posts, while shots in red are destined for printing, and so on.
• Keywords. Adding keywords is an opportunity to apply words that describe the image, making it easier to find, say, all photos that contain waterfalls tagged with a waterfall keyword. The keywording system in Lightroom Classic is extensive, with the ability to create categories and subcategories of terms; the Lightroom desktop and Lightroom for mobile apps are basic.

The curious thing about keywords is that few people seem to actually use them. On one hand, it’s extra work, and most of us want to get right to editing photos, right? On the other hand, that extra work is front-loaded so you don’t have to spend time scrolling through your library trying to find one of those photos. (This is where the ability to add keywords to an entire import batch in Lightroom Classic is helpful.)

Lightroom desktop and Lightroom for mobile help by analyzing the photos in the cloud to identify scenes and objects in your photos using machine learning. That way, even if the images contain no keyword or other text that says waterfall, Lightroom still identifies shots that it has identified as containing waterfalls (Figure 4). The catch? Those apps require an active internet connection to perform the search.

Time to Edit

The heart of Lightroom is the ability edit your photos to look their best. That can mean increasing exposure in too-dark shots, enhancing color so it pops, cropping to refine composition, converting color images to black and white, and many other sorts of adjustments.

The Lightroom apps contain many tools for making these changes—more than we can cover here. Instead of trying to hit everything, let’s walk through an edit that shows off the basics in a typical workflow. I’ll primarily use Lightroom desktop, but will point out notable differences in Lightroom Classic and Lightroom for mobile as needed.

The Lightroom editing approach

Because all your photos are in the library, editing one involves just selecting it and switching to the Edit panel (or pressing E); in Lightroom Classic, you switch to the Develop module (or press D) (Figure 5). Some of the interface items differ slightly among the apps, but the tools perform the same tasks.

Lightroom applies all edits nondestructively, which means the pixels in the original image are never touched. The app keeps track of which settings are altered and reflects those in the preview you see. You can always apply or remove individual edits or revert back to the original if you want to start over.

Edit exposure and color

I said that Lightroom contains a lot of tools, but the tone and color controls are the ones you’ll turn to most regularly. Often when you start editing a photo, you can determine what it needs by asking some basic questions. Is it too dark or too light? Do the colors reflect what you remember from the scene, or are they too warm or cool? Are the colors drab or do some appear overly saturated?

Regardless of what those initial answers are, my first step is to always click the Auto button (Figure 6). I know, it feels like cheating—why possess all these tools when one button will do the job?—but it’s really not. I see it as a first baseline step to determine what Lightroom thinks the photo needs. The Auto tool is backed by Sensei machine learning, so it’s not just taking a stab in the dark.

Tip: Press the Backslash () key to view the “before” version of the image when you want to compare your edits to the original. In Lightroom for mobile apps, touch and hold the image when the Edit panel is active.

Just as I always click Auto, I invariably also make further adjustments using individual tools. In the example here, Lightroom desktop has determined that the photo is under­exposed, but I think the tones are still too dark. This is where I turn to the Light controls (labeled as Tone in Lightroom Classic).

You might think a dark photo needs a boost of the Exposure control, but use caution: Exposure indiscriminately blasts light across the entire image. Cranking it up removes most of the texture in the clouds and washes out the hills, blanching what’s most interesting about the photo (Figure 7). Double-clicking a slider resets a tool to its default value.

A better approach is to increase the Shadows and Whites values to lighten the dark areas. As you do, keep an eye on two things: the brightest areas of the image, like the clouds, to make sure they don’t blow out to pure white; and the histogram at the top of the Edit panel. (Choose View > Edit Panels > Histogram if you don’t see it. In Lightroom Classic, click the Histogram disclosure triangle if the histogram itself isn’t visible.)

The histogram displays the strength of tones throughout the image, ranging from pure black at the left edge to pure white at the right edge. As you increase the Shadows value, the histogram levels rise in the middle. As you push the Whites value, the entire graph slides to the right. If you see spikes bunching against the right edge, it means the brightest pixels have clipped, or gone completely white. In general, you want the graph to stretch all the way from left to right without any bunching at either side (Figure 8).

The two triangles at the top corners of the histogram are clipping indicators that illuminate if tones have gone fully white or black. Click them to view indicators on the image itself: red for clipped highlights and bright blue for clipped shadows (Figure 9).

Tip: Hold Option/Alt as you drag one of the sliders to view only the areas that are clipping. When they appear, back off on the value.

Finding the right balance of light and dark requires experimentation. You might increase the Whites value and then find that you need to decrease the Highlights value to prevent clipping.

Edit color

With a handle on the tones, you can next turn your attention to color. Primarily, you want to establish a good white balance, which is the warmth or coolness of the overall image.

Expand the Color section of the Edit panel; in Lightroom Classic, the controls are at the top of the Basic panel. From the White Balance menu there choose Auto (Figure 10). If you’re editing a raw image, you may also see white balance presets that match what your camera produces.

Just as I don’t accept the Auto button for applying edits to the entire image, I sometimes disagree with the Auto white balance setting and will manipulate the Temp and Tint sliders to adjust the color. Another option is to click the White Balance Selector (the eyedropper icon) and then click a neutral gray area of the image to take a new reading (Figure 11). Click the icon again to release the tool when you find a value you like.

The Color controls also contain the Vibrance and Saturation sliders, which affect how vibrant the colors are in the image; in Lightroom Classic, you’ll find the controls in the Presence group.

Saturation, like Exposure, is best meted out in small doses. Vibrance affects the overall color boost with a lighter touch, with the added benefit of mostly preserving skin tones of people in the photo. (If you use only the Saturation slider, your in-laws will not be impressed that they look like orange Oompa Loompas in the picture, no matter how lovely the flowers are behind them.)

But what about when you want to adjust a specific color in an image? A great example is autumn color, where you want yellows and oranges to pop, but not the blues and greens of the surrounding area. In Lightroom desktop, the Color Mixer gives you control over the hue, saturation, and luminance of colors; Lightroom Classic puts these controls in a separate HSL/Color panel.

So, you can select the Yellow color and increase the Luminance value to make just the yellows brighter and increase the Saturation value to deepen the color (Figure 12). Conversely, you could use the Color Mixer to reduce the saturation of dominant blues or greens in the same shot, drawing more attention to the vibrant yellows and oranges.

I can’t talk about color without bringing up black-and-white photography. Our lake sunrise image might look pretty good in black and white, don’t you think? To convert it, click the B&W button at the top of the Edit panel (the Basic panel in Lightroom Classic) (Figure 13). The tool pulls the color from the image, leaving just the tonal values.

But is the color really gone? Notice that the Color Mixer is now called the B&W Mixer. Even though you don’t see the color in the image, the color information is still present in the file, which means you can adjust the tonal values associated with those colors.

For instance, reducing the Blue value darkens the sky and the water reflection, and increasing the Orange and Yellow values brings more illumination to the mountain peak, the trees around the shoreline, and the rocks at right (Figure 14).

Note: You will often need to adjust the Light/Tone settings after switching to black and white, because some colors translate as brighter or darker when their hues are no longer visible.

Crop and straighten

Sometimes I’ll nail a photo’s composition when I capture the shot, while other times I’ll think I’ve nailed it and then discover a branch or other object at the edge of the scene. It’s also not uncommon to discover entirely new compositions while editing. That’s when cropping an image is helpful.

Select the Crop tool in the right-hand toolbar in Lightroom desktop, or press C. In Lightroom Classic, click the Crop Overlay tool just above the Basic panel, or press R. Then, in the image window, drag one of the corner or edge handles to redefine the visible area of the photo (Figure 15). Drag within the box to reposition the image.

You can constrain the shape of the crop by choosing common dimensions from the Aspect Ratio menu—if you’re planning to output a 5 × 7 print, for instance. Or, either choose Custom from the menu or click the Constrain Aspect Ratio button (the lock) so it appears unlocked to define the crop area without restrictions.

A new Crop Overlay menu gives you several choices for the guides that appear in the crop area as you make an adjustment. Normally it’s a grid, but other options include diagonal lines, a golden spiral, and a helpful Aspect Ratios mode that lets you see where the borders of a 2 × 3, 5 × 7, or 4 × 5 crop land (Figure 16).

If the image isn’t level, you can drag outside the boundary edges, or use the Straighten slider, to turn the image on its central axis. If there’s an obvious horizon line (or vertical line), click the Auto button above the slider to let Lightroom figure the best angle.

Press Return/Enter to apply the new composition.

Apply presets

I’ve given you a quick tour of the essential editing tools, but we can’t move on until I mention presets, which apply adjustments to achieve specific looks.

I’ve traditionally ignored most presets because I prefer to edit a photo based on what the photo needs, not to try to force it to look like someone else’s shot.

However, the preset options have improved in the latest versions of Lightroom desktop and Lightroom for mobile. In addition to premium presets that are designed for some situations—portraits, food, landscape, travel, and the like—a new Recommended option broadens the possible number of options. When you click Recommended in the Presets panel, the app scans your image and then suggests presets from similar images (Figure 17).

Think of a preset as a starting point. When you apply one, you can go in and adjust the individual controls in the Edit panel. (Remember, you can always go back to the image’s original state if you don’t like the results.)

You can also use presets as an efficiency tool. If you do have a look or style you want your photos to share, you don’t have to reapply the same settings over and over (or even remember what they were). Simply create a custom preset to use on other images later.

Advanced Editing

Often, the basic tools are all you need to correct photos. But of course, the Lightroom apps have more editing capabilities than just those. This is where things get quite interesting as your creative opportunities unfold. You can use the Healing Brush tool to remove dust spots and some objects, for instance, or create masks to apply adjustments to areas of a photo instead of the entire image.

Heal and clone unwanted items

On your camera’s LCD screen, the image looked fine. In the Lightroom library it looked fine. But then, when you were editing, you spied it: a soft smudge caused by dust on the camera lens or sensor. And then it was impossible to see anything else.

When you need to do some retouching, from dust spots to skin blemishes to stray branches, select the Healing Brush in the toolbar (Lightroom desktop) or the Spot Removal tool above the Basic panel (Lightroom Classic). Adjust the size of the brush using the tool’s settings, and then click or drag to cover the offending item (Figure 18).

The tool copies pixels from a nearby similar area and applies them to the spot you marked. In the Heal mode, it blends the pixels to be seamless; you can also switch to Clone mode, which pastes the pixels outright.

To identify things like dust spots more easily, select the Visualize Spots checkbox. A high-contrast grayscale overlay appears that makes them more obvious (Figure 19).

Tip: Zoom in to 100% magnification when using the Healing Brush for more accurate retouching. And don’t forget to clean your screen, in case the spots you’re seeing are on the glass, not the image!

The Healing Brush is great for fixing spots, but sometimes the tool falls short. In that case, send the image to Photoshop for sophisticated healing attention (learn how just ahead).

Edit local areas using masks

One of the best new features in the latest versions of the Lightroom apps is a revamped and expanded masking system. I mentioned at the beginning that Lightroom doesn’t include a layers feature like Photoshop: The adjustments you apply affect the entire image.

But there are times when you need to be more specific. You may want to add definition or change the color cast of the sky, brighten a person’s face, selectively darken areas to deemphasize them, or bring up the shadows just in the foreground.

In our lake image example, I see a few specific corrections I’d like to make, such as adding more definition to the clouds, warming up the sun break on top of the peak and darkening the hills at the sides to bring more attention to the light show happening in the middle. We can do all of those with separate masks, which act like overlays on top of the photo that target their edits to specific areas.

Let’s start with the clouds. Select the Masking tool (or press M) and click the Select Sky button. Lightroom uses machine learning to detect the sky and automatically create a mask, indicated in red (Figure 20).

In the panel at right, you can use a collection of most of the adjustment tools to alter the appearance of just the sky. In this case, reducing the Highlights value and nudging the Texture and Clarity sliders adds drama to the clouds (Figure 21).

To warm the peak, first click the Create New Mask button in the Masks panel and select Radial Gradient, and then drag an oval to cover the mountain top (Figure 22). The adjustments you make will be most visible within the inner oval area, with the effect blending outward to the outer oval. Increasing the Temp value and the Saturation slider makes the peak stand out and yet still look natural.

Lastly, go back to the Create New Mask button, select Brush, and drag to cover the hillsides (Figure 23). You can adjust the brush size and paint settings (click the disclosure triangle to the right of the Size slider if the other options are not visible). If you accidentally paint an area you didn’t mean to, it’s easy to switch to the brush’s Eraser mode and refine the selection. With the mask in place, reducing the Shadows and Blacks values darkens the masked areas.

Each mask appears in the Masks panel; selecting one reveals its adjustments at right that can be modified at any point. And don’t forget that these edits, as with all the others, are nondestructive. You can return to the Edit panel and change the tone or white balance and know that the masks will interact with those changes.

Edit in Photoshop

If you do run into a situation where you need more help than what Lightroom can provide, such as more sophisticated retouching, you can send a version of your image directly to Photoshop.

Choose File > Edit in Photoshop (Lightroom desktop) or Photo > Edit In > Edit in Photoshop (Lightroom Classic). Lightroom creates a high­­resolution TIFF file and opens that in Photoshop. After you make edits there and save and close the file, the edited image is added to your Lightroom library and connected to the original as a pair of stacked photos.

In Lightroom for mobile on the iPad, you can tap the Share button and choose Edit in Photoshop, at which point the app creates a PSD file for handoff to the Photoshop app. After making edits, tap the Send to Lightroom button to add the adjusted photo to the library.

Get Those Photos Out There

With photos edited, it’s time to think about how to share them beyond Lightroom. That could be exporting files for posting on social media outlets, sharing albums of images to friends or clients, and making prints. The options vary among the Lightroom apps.

Export JPEGs

Despite advancements in file format technologies, the humble JPEG image remains the easiest, most compatible destination for your edited photos. In Lightroom desktop, the Share button includes presets for saving a small version (limited to 2048 pixels on the longer side and with 90% quality) or a large version (full size at 100% quality) (Figure 24). You can also choose Custom Settings and get more particular, picking the file type, custom dimensions and quality level, the color space, and whether to apply sharpening or include a custom watermark.

Those same options appear in Lightroom for mobile when you choose Export As. The mobile apps also include the standard sharing options for their operating systems, such as the ability to save the edited photo to the Camera Roll or to the Files app on iOS and iPadOS.

Lightroom Classic, being the overachiever that it is, expands the capabilities by letting you create export presets and adding the ability to save the exported files in the existing catalog (Figure 25).

Online shared albums

Earlier I mentioned that the syncing features of Lightroom desktop and Lightroom for mobile unlock additional features. With your library stored on Creative Cloud, it’s easy to share full-size edited versions of photos via the web.

You can share an existing album, create a new shared album, or share individual photos and get a link that your recipients can use to review and optionally download the photos.

Click the Share & Invite button that appears above the grid view when you’re viewing the contents of an album. In the dialog box that appears, you can invite people to grant them access to the page on the web (though they must have an Adobe ID to do so) or create a public link that anyone can use to view (Figure 26). There are also options for customizing the appearance of the page and whether to display information like metadata and location.

I’ve found this to be the best way to share photos with a group, such as at holiday get-togethers. By creating a web page that anyone can access, and enabling the option to let people download JPEG files, folks can view and grab the photos they want on their own schedule. They can also comment and favorite images, which is helpful if it’s a client reviewing the shots (Figure 27). As you make edits to the photos, or add and remove images from the album, those changes are reflected in the online album.

In Lightroom Classic, first you need to create a collection and enable the Sync with Lightroom option, which uploads the photos to Creative Cloud. Once that’s done, right-click the collection in the Collections sidebar and choose Lightroom Links > Make Collection Public (Figure 28). You can then right-click the collection again and choose Lightroom Links > Copy Public Link.

Printing

Let’s not forget the traditional way of sharing photos: paper! To make a print in Lightroom desktop… well, you can’t. Perhaps due to its zeal to work with Creative Cloud, Adobe has never included the ability to print photos in Lightroom desktop. There’s no File > Print command, and pressing Command/Ctrl+P does exactly nothing. You need to export an image to a file and then print that using other software.

Curiously, it is possible to print from the Lightroom for mobile app, but that’s because it hands off the print duties to the system-level print feature.

Lightroom Classic, by contrast, features an entire Print module that can output single prints, contact sheets, and picture packages (Figure 29). It also includes controls for setting the print resolution, sharpening, and more.

Regardless of whether you’re printing directly from an app, both Lightroom desktop and Lightroom Classic offer Super Resolution, which comes in very handy when you want to make a large print. This feature doubles the resolution of an image and uses machine learning to make the result look good. Choose Photo > Enhance in either app and, in the dialog box that appears, select Super Resolution (Figure 30). When you click Enhance, Lightroom creates a new DNG.

Next Steps

Not only is Lightroom three (and a half) separate apps, it also contains many more features than I’ve had room to cover here. Lightroom Classic, in particular, features dedicated modules for creating books and slideshows, supports several ways of viewing your photos on multiple monitors, lets you create Smart Collections that update their contents based on metadata, and enables tethered shooting, where a camera connected directly to the computer outputs its photos directly into the app for immediate feedback.

To learn more about Lightroom, here are a few suggested resources:

• Articles about Lightroom at CreativePro.com.
• Adobe’s webpages about What’s New in Lightroom and What’s New in Lightroom Classic.
• In Lightroom desktop and Lightroom for mobile, click/tap the Learn button (a lightbulb) to browse dozens of interactive tutorials that walk you through tasks in the apps themselves.
• In Lightroom Classic, choose Help > Lightroom Classic Tutorial for online video tutorials. In Lightroom desktop, choose Help > Online Tutorials.
• Click the Discover button (a globe) in Lightroom desktop or Lightroom for mobile to view edited photos from Lightroom users. You can step through the edits to see how they were accomplished.

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Animation makes your text and images come alive

We all think of InDesign as the go-to tool of choice when it comes to print layouts. But InDesign has another persona that, while less well known, is becoming just as important and, arguably, a lot more fun.

It turns out that InDesign has long had some pretty powerful tools for creating interactive documents, including the ability to create animations… yes, things that move. The problem has been that many of these interactive features, including animations, don’t currently work very well in PDFs. But with InDesign’s ability to export fixed-layout ePubs and especially to publish documents on the web using Publish Online, animations in InDesign make it your go-to tool for making engaging interactive online documents.

InDesign animations are easy to create, and they don’t require your learning any new programs. Your print documents are just a step away from coming alive online.

Getting Started

The primary controls you’ll use to create animations are found in the Animation panel. There’s also a Timing panel that lets you control the order in which animations will play. And, as you get into more advanced animations, you’ll quickly learn that the Layers panel plays an important part in organizing and selecting the components that make up complex animations.

You’ll find the Animation panel under the Window > Interactive submenu, or by setting the Digital Publishing workspace. The easiest way to get started is to experiment with the presets in the Animation panel.

Select an object on your page, such as a line, text, or graphic frame, and apply one of the animation presets. To remove an animation, select the object, and click the Trash icon at the bottom of the panel.

Note that animations can only be applied to an object, so you can’t, for example, highlight just part of the text within a frame and then animate it; you can apply an animation only to the entire text frame.

Animation presets

Once you select an object, choose a preset from the Animation panel (Figure 1).

A small butterfly displays at the top of the panel, previewing the motion or effect the animation will apply. The object will also be marked with a small animation adornment.

To preview the animation, use the EPUB Interactivity Preview panel, also found under the Window > Interactive submenu. Don’t hesitate to resize the panel and make it larger so you can really see what’s going on.

The presets are named in a way that describes their effect. For example, Fade In will cause an object to change from 0% opacity to 100% opacity. Grow will cause an object to scale up to 250% of its current size. Move Left will cause an object to move from its current position to the left.

As you choose a preset, you can see settings change in the lower part of the panel. Be sure the Properties section is open so you can see all of the available controls.

Many of the presets are simply shortcuts that you could set manually in the panel. Other presets, including all those in the bottom part of the menu, like Bounce and Dance, change properties that you cannot manually set in the panel.

The Animation Encyclopedia

Another useful tool to help you begin learning how animation controls work is a built-in script called the Animation Encyclopedia. The script builds a six-page document that demonstrates all the effects of the controls in the Animation panel, along with some custom animation techniques.

Choose Window > Utilities > Scripts, and under Application Samples look for either the AppleScript or Javascript version of “AnimationEncyclopedia” (Figure 2).

Double-click or choose Run from the panel menu, to create the sample document. Be sure to preview each page in the EPUB Interactivity panel and see how different settings produce different results.

The Animation Encyclopedia is a good learning tool, and the presets provide a nice shortcut for applying certain effects quickly. But don’t stick with the presets for too long or you’ll box yourself in. Understanding how to manually modify the controls in the panel is key to creating more advanced and sophisticated animations.

Basic Animation Panel Controls

The Animation panel is your dashboard for setting and modifying various animation controls. To get beyond the presets, it’s important to understand the five attributes you can modify to achieve a greater variety of animation effects:

• Moving (creating a motion path)
• Controlling speed
• Rotating an object
• Scaling an object
• Changing opacity

Each of these attributes can be applied individually to animate an object, or you can combine them to produce more sophisticated effects. We’re going to take a look at each of these settings in detail so you can learn how to master and control animations most effectively.

Moving an object: Working with motion paths

One of the most basic ways to animate an object is to make it move. Some of the presets do this for you, such as Move Left, Move Right, and Fly In from Top, Bottom, Left, or Right. When you choose any of these presets, you’ll notice a green path next to the animated object. This path is called a motion path. Motion paths set the direction of movement for animated objects.

Every motion path has a circle at one end, marking the starting point of the path, and an arrowhead, indicating direction, at the other end (Figure 3).

Motion paths are powerful and flexible, too, because they can be modified like any other InDesign path. This means you can select the endpoint and change the length of the motion path, affecting the distance an object moves (Figure 4).

You can also add or move selection points on the path, just as you can with any other InDesign path.

In fact, any InDesign path can be converted to a motion path. You can draw your own path and convert it to a motion path. Draw a path, and then select it, along with the object you want to move. Convert to a motion path by choosing Convert to Motion Path from the Animation panel menu or by clicking the Convert to Motion Path icon at the bottom of the panel (Figure 5).

The path start point will be in the center of the animated object, and its direction will be in the direction the path was drawn. You can reverse the direction of the motion by selecting the path and choosing Object > Paths > Reverse Paths. Don’t worry about the stroke settings for the path as you draw it; as the path is converted, its stroke will be set to None.

Controlling speed

It would be nice if we could set a moving object to move so many pixels per second, but we can’t. The primary control for setting the speed of any animation is adjusting its Duration. The shorter the duration, the faster the animation; the longer the duration, the slower the animation. The default for most animation presets is 1 second (Figure 6).

Another control for speed is the Speed setting in the Animation panel. This label is a little confusing because this setting controls easing. Easing is a traditional animation technique in which an object accelerates or slows down to look more realistic as it moves. Ease In starts the motion slowly and then gains speed. Ease Out slows an object down before coming to a stop. Ease In And Out starts the motion slowly, then speeds up, and then slows down again before coming to a stop (Figure 7).

While you can apply easing to different effects, it’s easiest to see on a motion path. A motion path, even a straight path, has a series of points along it. These points are part of the easing path, and are not editable. The closer together the points, the slower the motion; the further apart, the faster the motion. If you hold your mouse just right, you can see a tool tip for the easing path (Figure 8).

Object rotation

The Rotate Preset lets you rotate objects 90° or 180°, clockwise (CW) or counter-clockwise (CCW). But the Properties part of the panel allows you to rotate objects in any degree.

The rotation control is pretty straightforward. You can choose from a menu of preset degrees of rotation; positive values rotate clockwise and negative values rotate counter-clockwise (Figure 9).

You can also input any value, from 1° to 72,000°, CW or CCW.

You may wonder why you’d want to rotate something more than 360°. Well, it’s an easy way to get an object to spin quickly in a short amount of time. For example, set an object to rotate 3600° for 1 second and it will spin around 10 times very quickly.

Another important control for object rotation is the origin point proxy. This allows you to change the center point of an object’s rotation.

Scaling objects

You might not think of scaling as animation, but think about how an object looks when it grows or shrinks. It basically scales up or down. In fact, there are several animation presets that use scaling, including Grow, Shrink, and Move and Scale.

As with rotation, you’ll usually want to control scaling values in the Properties section of the panel (Figure 10).

Width (horizontal) and Height (vertical) scaling are linked by default to scale together, but you can unlink them by clicking the chain-link icon in order to scale them independently.

When used with the origin point proxy, which can be used to change the point from which an object will scale, you can use scaling animations to achieve all kinds of interesting effects. You can see examples in the section “Putting it All Together” below.

Changing opacity

Opacity change is another important element of successful animation. There are presets that change just the opacity of an object: Appear, Disappear, Fade In, and Fade Out. Appear and Disappear go from 0% to 100% opacity (and vice versa) almost immediately, whereas Fade In and Fade Out go from 0% to 100% opacity (and vice versa) gradually over the duration of time the animation is set to play.

Other presets incorporate opacity change with other motions. For example, the Fly in from Left, Right, Bottom, and Top all change opacity as an object moves on to the page.

Other Animation Panel Controls

Certain other important settings greatly affect the outcome of your animations. Let’s take a look at the following settings and how they affect your animations:

• Event(s)
• Animate To/From
• Hide Until/After Animating
• Animation Proxy
• Setting the event

The Event(s) submenu (Figure 11) lets you set what action will trigger an animation.

The default, and the setting you’ll likely use most often is On Page Load. With this setting, your animation will play as soon as a page is loaded or turned to onscreen.

On Page Click will trigger an animation as soon as a user clicks on the page. One way this can be useful is when creating presentations shown via fixed-layout ePub or Publish Online. You can build a list of bullet points that fade in, and then click on the page to bring in the next bullet.

On Click (Self) is applied to an object and will cause the object to animate when it’s clicked on. For this to be useful, it has to be clear to the user that the object needs to be clicked on, so it’s more for special-case use and is not used very often.

On Roll Over (Self) is similar to On Click (Self), but is triggered when a user’s mouse rolls over an object. Keep in mind that since a tablet does not have a mouse, there’s no such thing as a rollover event on a tablet. I personally never use this trigger event for that reason.

Animations can also be triggered by a button. There are a couple of ways to set this up. Strangely, you cannot simply select an object and choose On Button Event, even if you already have a button on the page.

Instead, to use the Animation panel, follow these steps:

1. Click on the object with an animation applied to it.

2. Click the button icon next to the Event(s) menu (Figure 12).

3. Click on the object you want to make into a button to trigger the animation. It doesn’t need to already be a button object, as this step converts it to a button. Whether it’s an existing button or a new one, the Buttons and Forms panel will open, so you can make further adjustments.

4. Select the animated object again, and deselect On Page Load on the Event(s) menu in the Animation panel, which does not deselect automatically. On Button Event will remain selected.

You can also set a button to trigger an animation using the Buttons and Forms menu:

1. Click on the object you want to use as the button trigger.

2. Open the Buttons and Forms panel, and convert the object to a button by clicking the icon at the bottom of the panel.

3. Under the Actions menu, choose Animation. The names of all available animations on the page will be listed underneath.

4. Choose the animation object you want to trigger with the button, and set it to Play, Pause, Reverse, or another action from the list (Figure 13).

5. Select the animated object, and deselect On Page Load on the Event(s) menu in the Animation panel. On Button Event will remain selected.

Using buttons to trigger animations is a great way to create a truly interactive experience. Remember, any object, whether it’s an image or type, can be a button. This is a great way to build instructional material or games and puzzles.

Animate To/From

Another important setting in the Animation panel is the Animate submenu, the first item under the Properties section of the panel. The settings here let you control whether the object you select to animate represents the beginning of the animation or the final result of the animation (Figure 14).

Most of the time, you’ll stick with the default setting, From Current Appearance. This says “start with this object as it is on the page now, and then animate it” (e.g., move left from this current position). This is the setting that most presets use. When you choose a preset, such as Move Left, you want the object to start from its current, static appearance and location on the page and move to the left when it animates.

For other types of animation, To Current Appearance works best. Use this setting when you want something to end up looking the way it does after animating—for example, if you want an object, particularly a type object, to scale up to a certain size. Select the object, set the horizontal and vertical scaling to 0% in the Animation panel, and then choose To Current Appearance from the Animate menu. The object will appear to “grow” and end up the same size as on the static page. This setting can help give you more control of the final result of the animation.

The To Current Location setting is most useful when working with motion paths, as it will determine the end location of an animation. The Fly in From Left, Right, Top, and Bottom presets use this setting. You’ll see that each of these presets creates a motion path and that the selected object ends up in the same location it appears on the static page.

Hide Until/After Animating

Sometimes you don’t want an object to be visible until it animates. In other cases, you may want an object to animate and then disappear. This is where the Visibility settings Hide Until Animated and Hide After Animating come in (Figure 15).

For example, think of an animation where raindrops fall from a cloud, or water-drops spray from a hose. You want the drops to appear and start moving. You don’t want to see them clustered in their start position. In that case, you’d set the drops to move, but you’d check Hide Until Animated (Figure 16).

You typically don’t need to hide an animation that involves a change in opacity. For example, if an object is set to Fade In, by definition (change from 0% to 100% opacity), the object will not be visible initially, since it will start at 0% opacity. The same is true of the Appear/Disappear presets.

Working with the animation proxy

When you are working with animation settings, especially those that use a motion path, it can be hard to predict exactly where an object might end up. Fortunately, there is an animation proxy that can give you a good preview of an object’s location when it animates.

To use the proxy, simply select the animated object, and click the icon at the bottom of the panel. The proxy is represented by a gray box the size of the animated object (Figure 17).

For animations set to To Current Appearance or To Current Location, the proxy shows the starting point of the animation. The proxy does not display for animations that don’t use a motion path, such as Fade In, Grow, or Shrink.

The Timing Panel

The Timing panel works hand in hand with the Animation panel to give you control over the sequencing of your animations. Use the Timing panel to set the order in which animations play, to play multiple animated objects at the same time, and to start one animation before another animation ends.

Objects are added to the Timing panel in the order you animate them on the page, regardless of their order in the Layers panel (Figure 18).

As you animate objects, they are added to the Timing panel. By default, the first object listed will animate; then, when that animation is complete, the next animation will begin.

Objects are named in the Timing panel by the label used in the Layers panel. Changing the name of an object in the Layers panel will change the name in the Timing panel. You can double-click on a name in the Timing panel to select the object on the page, but selecting an object on the page does not highlight it in the Timing panel.

The Timing panel is easy to use. To change the order in which animations play, move an object up or down the list. If you want a pause between objects animating, select the item in the list, and enter a value into the Delay field.

The Event menu at the top of the panel lets you list the sequence of animations based on the trigger set for each animation. For example, you may have some animations set to play On Page Load and others that are triggered by a button. Animations set with different Event(s) will not display in the panel at the same time. You’ll have to change the Event in the Timing panel to see a list of animated objects associated with each one.

Linking in the Timing panel

The Link icon in the Timing panel is used to make two or more animated objects play at the same time. To link objects, hold down the Shift or Command/Ctrl key and select the objects in the list, and then click the Link icon (Figure 19).

Once objects are linked, you can also set them to Play a specific number of times or set them to Loop continuously. These are similar to the Play and Loop controls in the Animation panel set for individual objects. Individual Play and Loop object settings will be honored, regardless of the settings in the Timing panel.

Controlling animation start times

Another important function of linking in the Timing panel is to start animating one object before another object stops. For example, let’s say you have an image fading in slowly, and as it’s fading in—but before it’s reached 100% opacity—you want some text to move onto the page. Or you have a series of bars in a bar chart where you want each bar to start to animate before the previous bar’s animation is complete.

Normally, one bar would not animate until the previous bar is complete. To change the start time of the objects, link them in the Timing panel, and then select the next object(s), and set a Delay time that is less than the Duration set for the animation (Figure 20).

Even though they are linked, the start of each subsequent object’s animation will be delayed, causing each to start before the previous object’s animation ends.

Putting It All Together

Now that we’ve covered some of the basics, it’s time to have some fun. Let’s take a look at how to create some common effects. Learning how these simple effects are put together can help you start visualizing techniques for the animations you might want to use in your next project.

Creating lines that draw

Creating an animation that makes a line appear to draw itself is pretty easy. And it’s here that we get into some of the “trickery” used to create animation magic.

To animate a straight line that appears like it’s being drawn, select the line, and then change these settings in the Animation panel (Figure 21):

1. To animate a horizontal line, change the Scale values to 0% W (width) and 100% H (height). Reverse the settings for a vertical line.

2. Click on the Animate menu and choose To Current Appearance.

3. Change the orientation point proxy. If you want a horizontal line to “draw” to the right, select the left center proxy; to make a vertical line “draw” down, select the top center proxy, etc.

4. Use the EPUB Interactivity panel to preview the animation. Adjust the speed by changing the Duration time.

This effect can be used to animate many shapes so they look like they are being drawn or growing. It makes it easy to animate bar charts and even line graphs.

Creating a slide show

Slide shows are a common effect, and they are easy to achieve using animation. Simply stack images and set them to fade in or fade out, depending on the order in which you select them. To create a slide show that plays on its own when a page is loaded, follow these steps:

1. Place the images on your page, and align them so they are stacked.

2. Select each image, starting with the one on the top, and apply the Fade Out preset. Do not select the bottommost image. Use the Layers panel to make it easier to select each image in order while holding down the Shift key. You can then apply the animation to them all at once; just be sure to select them in the right order (Figure 22).

The images will fade out one by one, revealing the image underneath. The last image is not selected because you’ll usually want it to stay on the page when the slide show ends.

3. Alternatively, select the images starting with the bottom image, and choose the Fade In preset. Do not select the topmost image, as it will be the last image in the slide show.

4. With default settings, the next image will come in immediately following the previous one. You’ll usually want the image to sit there for a moment so it can be enjoyed. Don’t adjust the Duration in the Animation panel; that will just increase the time the opacity change takes. Instead, select the images in the Timing panel, and set a 1- or 2-second Delay, depending on how long you want the image to be visible before the next image appears (Figure 23).

5. Use the EPUB Interactivity panel to preview the animation and adjust as needed.

If your images or other objects are not the same size, you’ll need to create a background for each so that it hides the images underneath. Set the frame fill color to paper, or match the background color used on your page.

The Typewriter effect

Typewriters may only be found in antique shops these days, but having type appear onscreen letter by letter, as though it’s being typed, is a common effect. Here’s how to do it:

1. Separate each letter in the text phrase that you wish to animate. Use Ajar Production’s Split Text extension (see sidebar).

2. Select all the letters, each of which is now in its own frame, and choose the Appear preset. Check the Timing panel to make sure the letters will appear in the correct order.

3. The letters will appear one by one, but they are really slow with the Appear preset default settings. With all the letters selected, decrease the Duration to the lowest setting possible, .125 seconds (Figure 24).

4. With the duration set at its lowest setting, the letters will come in so fast they will all appear at once. Make each letter wait its turn by selecting Hide Until Animated.

5. The preset has an opacity change, so use the Opacity menu to set it to None.

6. Use the EPUB Interactivity panel to preview the animation and adjust as needed.

This technique provides a good example of how a preset can be used as a starting point for an animation, and then easily modified to achieve the desired effect.

Limitless Possibilities

We’ve covered just a few of the things you can create with InDesign animations. Once you understand how to use the Animation and Timing panels, you can begin to create more complex animations.

As part of the learning process, challenge yourself to try to figure out how you might use InDesign to achieve various simple effects you see on video, TV, or movies. There will be many animations that can’t be done in InDesign, but you’ll soon be surprised how much can be accomplished by working with the tools skillfully and applying a touch of imagination!

Jeff Witchel shows how to unlock the power of custom stroke styles.

If your inner designer has ever wanted to spice up an otherwise fairly staid project—or if you hanker for the extravagant creative possibilities for line styling in Illustrator—you may sometimes wish you had a little more creative leeway with stroke styling in InDesign. But, wait—you do! Hidden deep in the Stroke panel menu is your key to unlocking a little-known feature: custom InDesign stroke styles. I think you’re going to like these. But before we jump into the details of creating cool stroke effects, let’s walk through the fundamentals of working with stroke styles.

Stroke Style Basics

To get started with stroke styles, choose Stroke Styles from the options menu of the Stroke panel (Figure 1), and then, in the dialog box that opens:

1. Click the New button (Figure 2).

2. You’ll see there are three kinds of custom stroke styles that you can create and apply—Dash, Dotted, and Stripe. Choose one of these three categories from the Type pop-up menu (Figure 3).

3. Name your stroke style.

4. For dashed and dotted strokes, you can specify a length of the repeating pattern.

5. To set up a stroke pattern, you can do any of the following:

• Click on the ruler to add a new dash, dot, or stripe.
• Adjust the width of a dash by clicking and dragging its ruler marker.
• Alter the thickness of a stripe by clicking and dragging its ruler markers. You can also click on a stripe to select it and specify a value for both its Start position and its Width. Both values represent a percentage of the total weight of the stroke.
• Delete a dash, dot, or stripe by clicking and dragging it out of the ruler area. Note, however, that a custom stroke style must have at least one dash, dot, or stripe. There’s also a maximum of five dashes or dots in a pattern.

6. To move a dash, dot, or stripe, click and drag it to a new position. For dots, you can also enter an exact value for the new position of its center in the field provided.

7. Use the Corner options to determine how dashes and dots will be adjusted to work as desired in corners.

8. Select a Cap style to determine the shape of dashes (butt, round, or projecting).

9. If you’d like to preview your stroke in different weights, use the Preview Weight section to specify a stroke weight.

10. To save your stroke style, click Add, which will save your style and allow you to continue creating additional styles; or click Done, to save the style and exit the dialog box.

To use your custom stroke style, select an object, specify a stroke Weight in the Stroke panel, and select your custom style from the Type pop-up menu.

Using Stroke Styles in Other Layouts

Stroke styles are available, at first, only in the document in which you create them. But don’t fret—it’s easy to port them to other layouts or computers. One way to copy a stroke style to another document is to simply apply the style to an object, and then copy and paste that object into the other document. Another option is to save the object in a Creative Cloud library. Then the custom stroke style will be added to any document where you place the object from the library.

A third method is to save the style as an independent stroke style file (.inst). To do that, follow these steps:

1. Choose Stroke Styles from the Stroke panel menu.

2. In the Stroke Styles dialog box (Figure 4), select the custom style(s) you wish to use. (You can choose more than one by Command/Ctrl- or Shift-clicking custom stroke styles in the list.)

3. Click the Save button.

4. Name the file, and then click Save.

Then, to load your custom stroke styles into another document, just head back to the Stroke Styles dialog box, click Load, and choose the .inst file you created.

Now that you’ve got an idea of the basic structure of these powerful design elements—and the assurance that you can take them with you—it’s time to turn up the fun and deliver the custom secrets I promised you. I’m dedicating a section to each of the basic stroke styles from which you can begin.

Dashes of Fun

Dashes, slashes, hyphens, lines… they’re everywhere! Which means many people may hardly notice them. Time to shake that up.

A hash of a dash

In the Type pop-up menu of the Stroke panel, you’ll find three varieties of hash styles—Straight Hash, Left Slant Hash, and Right Slant Hash. But what can you do if none of these defaults provide exactly what you need? Maybe the hashes are too thick or too thin, or too spaced out or spaced too tightly.

That’s where custom stroke styles come in. You can create your own hashes by setting custom narrow dashes.

To create custom hashes, do the following:

1. From the Stroke panel menu, choose Stroke Styles.

2. In the Stroke Styles dialog box, click New.

3. Name your stroke style, and choose Dash for the Type of stroke.

4. You can make the width of a dash much narrower by clicking and dragging its ruler marker to the left.

5. Enter a Pattern Length to adjust the spacing between your hashes.

6. Select an option for Corners to determine how hashes meet in corners.

7. See your hash in different heights by changing the Preview Weight.

8. Click Add or OK to save your custom hash, and OK again to close the dialog box.

You can now apply your custom hash by selecting the stroke style at the bottom of the Type pop-up menu in the Stroke panel. Increase the Weight of the stroke to make the hashes taller.

Tip: To make custom-slanted hashes, apply your hash style to a vertical or horizontal path, and use the Shear tool (O) to slant the hashes (Figure 5).

A quick dash for the corners

It’s also simple to add a corner-brackets stroke to a text frame containing a pull quote. Just use a dash with (really!) wide gaps (Figure 6).

Let’s say your text frame is 4 inches wide by 3 inches tall. To create a custom corner bracket, do the following after selecting Stroke Styles under the options menu of the panel and clicking New in the dialog box:

1. Name your stroke style, and choose Dash for the Type of stroke.

2. Make the Pattern Length as long or longer than the objects to which you plan on applying the stroke style. So for a text frame 4 inches wide by 3 inches tall, make the Pattern Length 4 inches or more.

3. Start with a dash length of 1.5 inches. The longer the length of the dash, the farther the brackets will extend from each corner.

4. If you’d like the bracket to be the same length coming out of the corners on all sides (you probably do), choose Adjust Gaps from the Corner pop-up menu.

5. You can preview a heavier bracket by increasing the Preview Weight. Then click Add or OK to save your custom corner bracket, and OK again to close the dialog box.

To apply your custom corner brackets to an object, choose your stroke style near the bottom of the Type pop-up menu in the Stroke panel.

Of course, if you want to change the length of the brackets, you can always edit the stroke style again.

Create a dotty dash

When is a dash not a dash? When you add round caps!

If you want to create rounded rectangle dashes or even dashes that look like dots, after selecting Stroke Styles under the options menu of the panel and clicking New in the dialog box that opens, try the following (Figure 7):

1. Name your stroke style, and choose Dash for the Type of stroke.

2. To create rounded rectangle dashes, add a Round Cap in the Cap section of the dialog box. To create dots, make the length of the dash 0 (zero), and do the following:

• Make the Pattern Length longer, to spread your dots farther apart.
• For Corners, choose either None or Gaps, so the dots won’t get stretched.

3. Click Add or OK to save your dotted dash, and OK again to close the dialog box.

Now you can apply your dotted dashes or rounded rectangle dashes under the Type pop-up menu of the Stroke panel.

Hot Dots

You may wonder why, in the previous section, I had you create dots out of dashes when there’s a perfectly good Dot style of dash as well. It’s because there are things you can do with dashed-dots that can’t be done with a Dot style.

Scallop your object with dots

Can you draw an object with scalloped edges in InDesign? Technically, no, but here’s a great workaround (Figure 8).

To create a scalloped edge, after selecting Stroke Styles under the options menu of the panel and clicking New in the dialog box that opens, try the following:

1. Name your stroke style, and choose Dotted for the Type of stroke.

2. Adjust the Pattern Length until the dots are touching and at a Preview Weight that’s close to the stroke weight you’d like to use.

3. Click Add or OK to save your scalloped edge, and OK again to close the dialog box.

Now you can apply your scalloped stroke under the Type pop-up menu of the Stroke panel.

Disappearing dots

Here’s a cool gradient effect that you can apply to your own custom dots or even the default dots found under the Type pop-up menu of the Stroke panel.

To create a disappearing dot effect (Figure 9):

1. Apply a dotted stroke to a path.

2. Create a gradient in the Swatches panel, and apply it to your stroke.

3. Back in the Gradient panel, reverse the gradient in the Dots.

4. Apply the same gradient to the Gap.

The gradient applied to the stroke is now applied in the opposite direction in the gap, making the dots fade into the gaps in the center of the path.

Strictly Stripes

Many people find stripes irresistible. How great, then, that you can give them what they want, but not necessarily in a way they’d ever imagined! The possibilities for custom stripe design are endless.

A single stripe with a big gap

Have you ever wished you could apply a fine line stroke outside of a much thicker white stroke on the frame of an image? Most folks will end up using two frames stacked on top of each other to accomplish this task. But a much better solution is to create a custom stroke style with a single thin stripe and a second very thick white stripe in the same stroke (Figure 10).

Try it for yourself. Select Stroke Styles under the options menu of the Stroke panel, click New in the dialog box that opens, and do the following:

1. Name your stroke style, and choose Stripe for the Type of stroke.

2. Click the bottom stripe in the window, and drag downward, away from the ruler area. This will delete that stripe, leaving just the top stripe.

3. Adjust the thickness of the remaining black stripe by clicking and dragging its ruler marker or entering a small Width of 10–15% (of the weight of the stroke).

4. Click Add or OK to save your single stripe style, and OK again to close the dialog box.

Now you can apply your “single stripe, big gap” stroke from the Type pop-up menu of the Stroke panel. If you’re using the stroke style over a colored background, go to the Stroke panel, and choose the Paper swatch (white) in the Gap Color pop-up menu.

Stripes unlimited

Just about every feature seems to have some limits. For instance, you can have up to five dashes or dots in a custom stroke style. But with stripes, I’m not sure what the maximum is. I’ve managed to squeeze up to 25 very thin stripes into the area under the ruler and never got an error message (Figure 11).

However, setting up a 25-stripe stroke style was not easy. I wanted each stripe to be 2% of the total thickness of the stroke with a gap of 2%.

I started by trying to work manually, clicking and dragging the ruler markers for each stripe to change its thickness. This quickly proved to be impossible, because I couldn’t achieve the accuracy I wanted. The solution was to use the Start and Width fields, where I could enter exact Start positions and Width percentages.

To recreate this 25-stripe stroke style, you can choose Stroke Styles from the options menu of the Stroke panel, click New in the dialog box that opens, and do the following (Figure 12):

1. Name your stroke style, and choose Stripe for the Type of stroke.

2. Click on the bottom stripe, and drag it out of the ruler window to delete it.

3. Click on the remaining stripe to select it, and enter 2% in the Width field.

4. Now, click and drag in the gap area beneath the top stripe to create the next stripe. (It doesn’t really matter how wide, since you’re going to control it numerically.)

5. With the stripe still selected, enter 4% in the Start field, and 2% for the Width.

6. Click and drag in the gap area beneath the second stripe to create your next stripe.

7. With that stripe still selected, enter 8% in the Start field, and 2% in the Width field.

8. Repeat steps 6 and 7, increasing the Start percentage 4% more than the previous stripe, until you have 25 stripes or as many as you wish.

9. When all of your stripes are in place, click Add or OK to save your 25-stripe stroke style, and OK again to close the dialog box.

You can apply your 25-stripe stroke style by selecting a path and increasing the Weight of its stroke to at least 50 points (any narrower and you might not see the detail of the thin stripes). Then just select the 25-stripe style near the bottom of the Type pop-up menu. You can also add a gap color, if you’d like, in the Gap Color pop-up menu.

Click here to download a snippet file that includes the 25-stripe stroke style.

Outline a stroke with gaps

If you’ve ever had callout lines in a diagram disappear into an image they are crossing, you’ll love this custom stroke style. This stroke is outlined in white to separate it from everything underneath it (Figure 13).

You can create this custom stroke by choosing Stroke Styles from the Stroke panel menu, clicking New in the dialog box that opens, and doing the following:

1. Name the stroke style, and choose Stripe for its Type.

2. Click the bottom stripe, and drag it out of the ruler window to delete it.

3. Click on the remaining top stripe to select it, and enter 15% in the Start field (to create a top gap) and 70% in the Width field.

4. Click Add or OK to save your stroke style, and OK again to close the dialog box.

You can apply your white outlined stroke by selecting a path and increasing the Weight of its stroke to about 5 points, and then choosing Paper (white) in the Gap Color pop-up menu.

Alternatively, you can create this kind of stroke by doing the reverse of what I just described—make two thin stripes top and bottom, with a big gap in between. Then, in the Swatches panel, apply Paper (white) to the stroke and Black in the Gap Color pop-up menu of the Stroke panel.

Stroke Styles to the Rescue

The next time you’re stuck trying to find the perfect stroke, take a look under the options menu of the Stroke panel, and look at Stroke Styles. Your stroke of genius may be waiting there.

One of my favorite things about working in Illustrator is how often I find new ways to use certain tools or discover settings within them that I never knew were there. In fact, I keep a notebook of tips and shortcuts I discover, including the “happy little accidents,” as Bob Ross would say. In this article, I’ll share five of these nifty techniques that you can incorporate into your own work and maybe use as a springboard to making your own discoveries.

Drag and Drop Appearances

The Appearance panel is one of the most powerful yet underused features in all of Illustrator. I’ve spoken to many designers at agencies who never open the panel; in some cases, they don’t even know what it’s for! That’s a shame because they’re really missing out. If you need a primer on why the Appearance panel is so awesome, check out this video by Von Glitschka at CreativePro Week.

This tip is quite useful when you have a single object that you want to format with the same appearance as another object (and creating a graphic style would be overkill). Most regular Illustrator users don’t know this technique, yet it’s hidden in plain sight! 

Look at the piece of art in Figure 1. I created a basic star, and with the Appearance panel, gave it a fill color, two strokes, and a drop shadow. Now, what if I wanted to apply this same treatment to other objects in my artwork?

All I have to do is go to the Appearance panel, click the small preview thumbnail in the top left of the panel, and drag the thumbnail on top of any other piece of artwork. The complete appearance will apply to that new shape (Figure 2). It even works with live type! You can then make adjustments if you like, but this is a really quick way of transferring fills, strokes, and effects to other pieces of art. 

Bonus Tip: The Eyedropper tool offers another handy way to reuse strokes, color, effects, and so on in other parts of your art. Just select the piece of art you want to apply the formatting to, and use the Eyedropper to click the object that has the formatting you want to copy. Even better, double-clicking the Eyedropper tool opens the Eyedropper Options dialog box where you can determine which attributes the tool will pick up and which ones it will apply to your other art (Figure 3). Use this method instead of the Appearance panel thumbnail when you want to copy only some attributes to other objects. 

Transform Text with the Touch Type Tool

The Touch Type tool is another underused tool in Illustrator. Perhaps to some type aficionados that’s just fine, because it allows you to quickly distort the character shapes type designers worked so hard to create. But there’s no denying that it’s great fun to use if you are trying to achieve a quirky look with your type while keeping it live and fully editable. 

Here’s how it works. Press Shift+T to access the Touch Type tool, or select it from the bottom of the toolbar’s stack of type tools (Figure 4), and click a character.

Illustrator will present you with a bounding box with small circles at the corners. One circle is a solid color, and the others are white (Figure 5).

Now you can:

• Drag the bottom-left control handle (the colored circle) to move a character up, down, left, and right. You can also just drag the character itself to move it. If you move the last letter in a word you can drag left to overlap the previous character, but you can’t go in the opposite direction (the gap between the letters will remain the same).
• Drag the top-left control handle up or down to scale a character vertically.
• Drag the bottom-right control handle to scale a character horizontally.
• Drag the top-right control handle to scale the character up or down proportionally.
• Click and drag the circle above the bounding box to rotate a character.

No matter what transformations you apply with the Touch Type tool, the text remains live. So you can change the font, apply different appearances, or edit the text without losing your creative touches (Figure 6). 

By the way, you can combine some of the techniques in this article. So, for example, you can use the Touch Type tool to distort some text and then use the Eyedropper to copy that distortion (with total precision) to other text. How cool is that?

Export Assets Like a Pro 

For many designers, creating logos is a fun part of the job, but exporting those logos so they can be delivered to the client as usable assets is just plain work. The old way of doing this was to create multiple versions of the artwork in different file formats, color modes, and sizes. Nowadays you can use plug-ins like Logo Package Express to take some of the tedium out of the process. But don’t overlook another little tool built into Illustrator called Asset Export. To use it, first complete your designs (ideally with all appearances expanded), and then choose Window > Asset Export. 

Once you have the panel open, you can just drag the elements you wish to export into it (Figure 7).

Then, choose their output size and format and select as many specific sizes as you require for each element (Figure 8). Or you can break the logo elements up into separate portions.

For example, you might want to deliver just a logo mark excluding the company name. You are also able to create groups of assets, which means you can create a single file incorporating all the elements for a job. It’s very versatile way to work and is a quicker option than the Export for Screens feature, which works for artboards as well as assets. You can also go into the Asset Export panel menu to open the Format Settings dialog box, where you can set the size and resolution for each export format.

Warp with Shape

When you want to get creative by warping text to fit a particular shape, this technique is simple to use, fun, and effective. For my example, I want to make a sticker design using the words LOVE and DESIGN and fit it into a shield shape that I have cut through the middle (Figure 9). 

To start, all you need is your text (which can remain live) and your shapes. Unless you want to radically reshape the text, try to use a shape that’s roughly similar in size to the bounding box of the text. Otherwise, you might get a very strange outcome. Also, make a copy of the shape in case you want to use it as a background fill, as the default result will show the type only. 

Make the shape the top object, and select it along with the first word you want to warp (you need to do this one word at a time). Choose Object > Envelope Distort > Make with Top Object, and the text molds to the shape. You can then choose Object > Envelope Distort > Envelope Options to fine-tune the result using the Fidelity option (Figure 10). 

Repeat with the second word, and shape and fine-tune again. Remember, the type is still live so by double-clicking it, you can make edits that will automatically adapt to the distortion. Once you’re happy with the results, you can drop the copy of the shapes behind the text to make your design, add a solid shape with a stroke, and presto—a cool sticker design (Figure 11). 

Swatches from Blends

I use this technique all the time to make my own swatches. It’s an unconventional use for the Blend tool, but it comes in very handy when you want to quickly create some new color swatches that create a bridge from one color to another. For example, let’s say I have two existing color swatches and want to create three new swatches that are a mix of the existing ones. What I would do is first create two shapes. I like to use circles, but it really doesn’t matter what shape you use (Figure 12).

I then select both circles, and double-click the Blend tool in the toolbar to open the Blend Options dialog box. Change the Spacing to Specified Steps, and enter 3 for the number of steps (Figure 13).

With the Blend tool, click the first circle and then the second to create the blend. Repeat this with as many pairs of objects as you like to create a bunch of new colors quickly (Figure 14). 

Next, expand the blend so it’s a set of regular filled objects (Object > Blend > Expand).

Then, with the expanded objects selected, go to the Swatches panel and click the New Color Group button. In the dialog box, name your color group and choose Create from Selected Artwork. I also usually select the options for Convert Process to Global and Include Swatches for Tints. Click OK, and you have a nice new set of custom swatches ready for use (Figure 15).

The Fab Five

That’s just five of my favorite techniques in Illustrator. Give them a try! You might enjoy using them on a daily basis as much as I do. 

Previously, I discussed how to assign custom designs to bar charts. Illustrator has some other chart types and you can also customize some of them using the same principles.

The other chart types that you can individually design are ones with markers: Line graphs, scatter graphs, and radar graphs. By default, their markers are ugly. Most of them are way too large and filled with an unattractive default gray color.

Fortunately, they can be turned off. To do that, open the Graph Options by choosing Object > Graph > Type, or from the contextual menu. Then deselect Mark Data Points.

Of course, there will be situations when you want markers on your graphs, and for those times you can design a custom style for them. So, let’s see how to do that starting with the simplest option where you can just draw a different shape to replace the data points. We’ll use the Radar graph as an example.

In order to better tell the lines apart, you should apply different shapes to each to replace the default gray squares. It’s as easy as drawing new shapes using Illustrator’s shape tools. Then apply different colors to them. In this first test we will deliberately disregard the size of the shapes just to see what happens.

To create a graph point design from a shape, select it and then choose Object > Graph > Design. This is the same dialog box you use to create the custom graph columns.

Tip: In a project where you’ve created a lot of custom graph design elements you might have a mixed list of custom column designs as well as points. So, to keep things organized use a consistent naming convention. For example, you can add a prefix to the name to mark the design as a point. This can save you time later on when you’re scrolling through all the designs you’ve created. Of course, you can also use the preview to tell what’s what.

For this first step, just create one design to test how Illustrator applies it to the marker.

When you have created the point design, the next step is to apply it to the graph. Like with columns, you first select the existing points. To do so, use the Group Selection tool and click on one of the points of a line, then click a second time to select all of the points on one data row. Then choose Object > Graph > Marker to open the dialog box. Select one of the designs you created from the list and click OK.

Illustrator will fit the design into the previously existing data point. This might not always be desirable, e.g. for ellipses or triangles which need to be slightly larger than squares in order to look the same size.

So, to get the look we want we must make Illustrator scale the design to a specific size. For that, we can use the same trick we saw in the article on custom column designs: an invisible square. The square acts as the proportional reference for scaling the point design. And like in a custom column design, it needs to be at the bottom of the object stack.

You can just draw a square in any size. But you can also design your custom point design on top of the existing chart. Then when you’re done, select the existing square with the Direct Selection tool, copy it and paste it behind the custom design. Apply a stroke and a fill of none. Also, it’s important to carefully position it proportionally to the visible design.

When you have placed the invisible square, select both the design and the square and then create the new graph design out of it.

Now that we know about the invisible square trick, we can boldly go ahead and operate freely with our designs, knowing that we can scale our makers to any size.

In our next line chart the points should be little thermometers with the numbers plotted beside them.

First build the design and then put a text object beside it using the same code as in the column chart designs: %00.

Since it’s possible that our design (and/or the text) will be positioned on top of the graph line, we need some separating element to keep things legible. Filling all “holes” with white or stroking design and/or text on the outside works well.

A stroke on the outside of a text can be set up in the Appearance panel. To do that, select the text object using the Selection tool. Then in the Appearance panel, apply a stroke to the text object. Move it into the Characters area in the panel and assign an appropriate stroke width. Although Illustrator’s chart feature dates from the Stone Age, this method still works!

Again, you need to add a square as a reference for size and placement.

If the square has a fill or is not in the back of the design, the marker design will be assigned in the wrong way. So, you might get a graph that looks like this.

With the no-stroke, no-fill square in place, create a graph design by selecting the marker artwork and then choose Object > Graph > Design.

To assign the marker designs to the graph, use the selection method you know already: click the marker once with the Group Selection tool. Then click again to select all the squares on one line of the graph. Then choose Object > Graph > Marker and select the design.

You can then choose Object > Graph > Type to add a suffix to the value axis to include the degree character. Unfortunately, you can’t insert a narrow space in there.

And there you have it. Adding attractive (and legible) custom markers to graphs in Illustrator isn’t hard once you know how to do it. So you never have to settle for ugly graphs again.