United States of AmericaFantastic information! Was reminded of a few things I haven’t used in a while and learned a few more tricks! Thanx!!
Laura Sarnoski
Anthem Institute
Event DetailsA warm fall evening, cool pizza, and great presenters made the night at the NJ InDesign User Group Meeting last Tuesday. Michael Murphy, the renowned InDesigner, started off the night with a jam-packed presentation.
Showing us beautifully designed but complicated looking spreads, he proceeded to take it apart, showing us the magic behind the curtain. Using tables, anchored images, merged data and of course, Michael’s specialty--styles, he demonstrated the thought behind the process, the setup, and the execution. He wowed us with his expertise and put a spin on the conventional, time-consuming tasks, making it look, if not simple, possible and perhaps even fun.
Peter McClard, the president of Gluon Plug-ins came next, demonstrating some pretty impressive timesavers. ProScale, which resizes selections or entire documents non-proportionally without distorting text or pictures. Cropster ID, adding much more than the typical crops and slugs that InDesign provides, including arrows, folds, and more. Slugger ID automatically updates crucial job info on each page every time you print (yes, much more than comes natively in InDesign) and my favorite, TaskCapture. Perfect for individuals who want to automatically track all their time spent on documents and also phone calls, meetings, etc. & assign the work to clients for billing.
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Cool Stuff!
iPhone web app. Heads up, all you iPhone users! Now your iPhone can tell you when your next meeting is. Our new iPhone Web App will show you live listings of IDUG meetings around the world, including links to directions (if they've been included in the event details). Check this out in the "What's New" section of the main IDUG page (www.indesignusergroup.com).
Many thanks to Michael Murphy, not just for his informative presentation, but for his new book, Adobe InDesign CS4 Styles, which he donated for the raffle. Also much appreciation to Peter and Gluon for the demos of time-saving applications, but also for Gluon's contribution of two winner-choice raffle items. PeachPit, Pearson, and O’Reilly books for the books donated to our meetings. Anthem Institute for providing us with our venue.
“Mike was superb – lucid concise, with just enough dry wit. Gluon Plug-ins could make sense for me, but still undecided on investment.” —Charley
“The “InDesign” rocks! A “real world” example that I will incorporate into my workflow immediately. Cool plug-ins from GLUON” –Kenneth
“GREP was a bit over my head, but datamerge was helpful.” —Noreen
“Wonderful – friendly – if only I could transfer all of the info straight into my brain. I’ll be back!” —Tracy
“InDesign datamerge is fascinating. Never knew it was part of InDesign. Great job!”
“The GLUON looks very handy. Presenter did good job showing add-ins.” –Charlie
“Great! Very interesting to see a real world problem & solution from Michael. Peter from GLUON was very enlightening. Tonite was one of the best meetings!” —Rich
December 3rd is tentatively scheduled for our next meeting. Keep tuned!
