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August 23, 2016 at 8:33 am in reply to: Help! Print production wants me to use mostly Photoshop #87729
David BlatnerKeymasterA year from now, or however long it takes, come back and tell us how it’s going, Natalie! This is a great story and I think you’re on the right path.
David BlatnerKeymasterDavid BlatnerKeymasterYou need to apply both paragraph styles and character styles to all the text? That is crazy. What software makes you do that?
I suppose if you had to do it (normally, InDesign users do not need to do this, as I described in this article), you could perhaps use Break Link to Style, then create the character style, then reapply the paragraph style?
David BlatnerKeymasterYou’re either going to need to do a lot of work in Excel first (setting up all that data, maybe with lookup tables and such), or you’ll need to use a commercial database publishing system (data linker? easy catalog?). Either way, note that data merge cannot do tables by itself, though there is a script that can help:
https://creativepro.com/using-data-merge-to-create-a-table-for-a-directory.phpDavid BlatnerKeymasterYou can force text to outline using this trick: https://creativepro.com/converting-text-to-outlines-the-right-way-updated.php
But in general, if you change an AI file, then update it in InDesign, it should stay in the same location.
David BlatnerKeymasterDavid BlatnerKeymasterAs Chris wrote above, I don’t think there is any way to do this… unless the language uses non-roman characters: https://creativepro.com/search-for-foreign-language-characters-in-text.php
August 17, 2016 at 7:11 am in reply to: Placed PNG with transarency causes entire spread to look low quality? #87545David BlatnerKeymasterI doubt it would be better with GPU. The RAM may help.
I don’t think it is this problem, but this might help: https://creativepro.com/my-grayscale-images-and-colors-changed-suddenly.php
August 17, 2016 at 6:43 am in reply to: Separate .indd files do not export as spreads when exporting .indb file to pdf #87543David BlatnerKeymasterInstead of exporting as spreads, export as normal pages, but use this trick to make it look like a book: https://creativepro.com/make-it-look-like-a-book-in-the-acrobat-pdf.php
David BlatnerKeymasterI don’t think there is any good way to do that automatically with bullets.
You could kind of do it with rule above/below… does this look like what you want?
August 12, 2016 at 11:23 am in reply to: Help! Print production wants me to use mostly Photoshop #87422David BlatnerKeymasterIt’s great that you can breathe new ideas into their organization. There will be resistance. There always is. There are thousands of organizations like the one you’re at, and they want to become more productive but they don’t want to learn to change. Sigh. Be gentle with them.
You should learn about how your files are sent to the printer. PDF is best.
Ripping is what they do on their printer. If you print from MS Word, the printer “rips” it. (Technically it means “raster image processor,” which means turning everything into tiny tiny dots.)
If InDesign crashes when a PDF is exported, there is something very wrong. That’s not normal, no matter what you have in the document.
If you want a great education, read this post and, more importantly, the comments after it — especially those from Dov Isaacs, who is at Adobe and has long been one of the great gurus of PDF and printing technology: https://creativepro.com/pdf-print-engine-throw-us-your-transparency-effects.php
The comment about TrueType is almost certainly outdated. (There are protected fonts that cannot be embedded into PDFs, but they’re not just truetype and they’re relatively rare.)
And, in the meantime, you should tell them they should send you to The InDesign Conference in DC in November!
August 12, 2016 at 8:54 am in reply to: Help! Print production wants me to use mostly Photoshop #87412David BlatnerKeymasterWhat you’re describing is probably the results of “flattening.” Take a look at this post on the yucky discolored box syndrome and her link to Steve’s Dreaded White Box problem:
https://creativepro.com/eliminating-ydb-yucky-discolored-box-syndrome.phpThose are often problems when people use spot colors in InDesign instead of process colors (but don’t realize they’re using spots).
See this article about the thin white lines: https://creativepro.com/when-you-see-thin-white-lines-in-your-pdf-files.php
The best way to avoid all that is to work with a commercial printer who will accept PDF/X-4 files (instead of the dumb ol’ PDF/X-1a). I talk about how to make good quality PDFs to send to print in my title InDesign Insider Training: Print PDFs at lynda.com.
August 12, 2016 at 7:25 am in reply to: Help! Print production wants me to use mostly Photoshop #87401David BlatnerKeymasterNatalie, I love this list you provide because it perfectly describes the workflow of someone who learned how to do things in the late 1990s and early 2000s and now says, “look, it worked for me… it still works for me… I don’t want to risk problems, so I’m not going to change it.”
The problem is that these days we have to become more efficient, more productive. And the only way to do that is to change. And the only thing we can change is our workflow.
We have a number of articles about file formats, including: https://creativepro.com/tiff-vs-psd-vs-eps-vs-pdf-vs.php
We also tackle the old rule of “convert to cmyk” here: https://creativepro.com/import-rgb-images-indesign-convert-cmyk-export.php
More tech details here: https://creativepro.com/drop-20-pounds-indesign/
As for doing effects in Photoshop… you’re talking about things like drop shadows? No, I would definitely do those in InDesign.
David BlatnerKeymasterBrandon: WOW. That’s brilliant! Thank you for sharing your discovery.
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