Orlando InDesign User Group

Meeting Notes Archive

January 16, 2007

Our first meeting of 2007 was a tremendous success, with over 90 people filling the Orlando Sentinel Conference Center, including 10 first-timers! We feasted on pizza, salad, bread sticks, and beverages, hosted by Florida Imaging! Not a soul left the meeting hungry. Thanks for this surprise treat to Klaus Priess and the team from this generous local company!

Our first speaker was Luisa Winters, an Adobe Certified Instructor with Video Trainers of Odenton, Maryland. She led us through an entertaining demonstration of how to create Mega Cool Titles with After Effects. Luisa started by commenting that people may not realize that the way they create titles using other Adobe products are the basis for creating animated titles in After Effects. She explained that the number-one mistake new users of After Effects make is forgetting to “track their changes through time.” She then showed the group how to avoid making that mistake.

Luisa demonstrated application presets, added animated effects to a title, and changed how the animation appeared. Then, she created the same effects without using the presets, and showed the group how to affect the timing of a presentation by moving the keyframes. We all learned how to easily and proportionately expand or compress the display speed for multiple effects, and how keyframes are fundamental to tracking changes through time.

Here are some comments from the audience:

“Great After Effects demo – very clear, concise, and understandable.”

“Great Job – very informative. Speaker was very energetic.”

A special thank you to Karla Elgin of Future Media Concepts, provider of training for InDesign Creative Suite and other Adobe products, for providing our speaker this evening. Luisa delivered her promised handout on After Effects titles; you can download it by clicking this link.

Invisible Pen Effect – class notes [34K]
http://www.videotrainers.com/handouts.html

As our “intermission,” our Volunteer Coordinator, Kathy Shannon, described the steps taken to organize the volunteer group for 2007, and listed the areas still open for new volunteers. Edward Feldman, our Chapter Rep, then introduced some of our current dedicated volunteers, and acknowledged the time individuals spend organizing these meetings. Thank you, volunteers!

Then Mark Mattson, Harcourt School Publishers Training Manager and Adobe Certified Expert, presented Killer Tips and Tricks for InDesign CS2, and we learned some neat tips on using some of the Illustrator tools within InDesign, as well as what all those blending modes mean. Mark walked us through the function of the Transparency palette, and explained the differences between normal, multiply, and screen. He showed us a really neat way to create a black and white photo out of a color photo using the modes.

Mark also walked us step-by-step through the Illustrator tools in InDesign and how they work. He made compound paths with fills, used the punch and subtract functions in the pathfinder, and made those of us not familiar yet, feel a little bit less intimidated about using these tools. Mark finished his presentation with a great tip on putting an inner shadow on letters within InDesign.

Here is another attendee comment:

“Good tips – interesting to see comparison of InDesign with Illustrator.”

Edward Feldman
Chapter Representative - Orlando Adobe InDesign User Group

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