Bay Area InDesign User GroupMeeting Notes Archive
Tuesday, January 7, 2003
The title of this month’s meeting was “Show PDF Who’s Boss.” We were lucky enough to nab experts Mark Atchley of Atchley.biz and Jim Birkenseer and Peter Truskier of Premedia Systems to present on the topic.
Mark Atchley
Mark helps his clients take advantage of new technology options available to the print and publishing industry. His current focus is on Adobe PDF, page-layout applications and their respective plug-ins. Mark is a consultant to Adobe Systems, working as a liaison to print service providers and Enfocus Software.
Premedia Systems, Inc.
Jim Birkenseer and Peter Truskier are the co-founders of Premedia Systems, Inc., a publishing technology integration and consulting firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Both have extensive hands-on experience in and technical knowledge of the graphic arts industry. They guided us through the differences between using InDesign® and using Acrobat® Distiller® to generate PDFs.
Social Time
We started off the evening as usual with social time. Thanks to Monika and Jennifer of W+W Design Associates for arranging the pizza and soda. They have also been on the steering committee and have really contributed to getting the group going. The raffle tickets and sales have also been their domain.
People
This meeting corresponded with Macworld San Francisco, so we had a few special guests from the East Coast. I was particularly pleased that Sandee Cohen could drop by. Sandee is the author of several books, including InDesign 2 Visual QuickStart Guide. I could write several paragraphs sketching out her bio, but suffice it to say she’s a leading speaker and writer in the graphics community. She’s also present and always helpful at the user forums.
Steve Werner was present and had in hand a hot-off-the-press copy of Real World InDesign 2. Steve is co-author (with David Blatner) of the upcoming book InDesign for QuarkXpress Users.
A huge boon for us in the Bay Area is our proximity to San Jose. We regularly have Adobe representatives and engineers participate in our meetings. This meeting was no exception. Among those present were Alan Felgate, Tricia Gellman, Susan Altman Prescott, Mike Wallen, Russell Brady, Ron Di Torro, and Mike Richman. It’s pretty incredible to have your questions answered straight from the source.
Alan Felgate has been instrumental in starting BayIDUG — he formed and guided the initial steering committee. He’s moving to London for a new Adobe gig, but we managed to coax him into doing the introductions one last time.
Sandy Bozek of Apple was present and generously offered to contribute to and participate in the next meeting, which will focus on fonts. There was even talk of having one of the future meetings at Apple in Cupertino.
We also had Michael Margolies handling introductions and announcements. Michael has also been a valued member of the steering committee. He is the Advertising Technology Director for Macy’s West.
Yours truly brought along a digital camera and captured a few moments. (See the photos.)
Presentations
Mark Atchley began the presentations with a thorough and informative demonstration of preflighting InDesign files for PDF. I thought I knew preflighting, but I definitely learned quite a few things.
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Show PDF Who’s Boss
Slides from Mark Atchley’s presentation
Download PDF file
114 Kb download |
Jim Birkenseer and Peter Truskier of Premedia Systems gave a presentation entitled “To Distill or Not to Distill,” which addressed the differences between exporting to PDF directly from InDesign and exporting to a PostScript® file and then using Acrobat Distiller. I think Jim and Peter should have their own TV show. I don’t know of many people who take a technical subject and make it not only informative but also highly entertaining.
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To Distill or Not to Distill: That Is the Question
Slides from Jim Birkenseer’s and Peter Truskier’s presentation
Download PDF file
3.1 Mb download |
Prizes
We had a number of prizes for the night. The coveted top prize was a copy of InDesign 2.0. Not bad for a $2.00 raffle!
Leslie Nicole
Chapter Representative
Bay Area InDesign User Group (BayIDUG)
Photos From This Meeting!
Photos are available from this user group meeting.
See the photos.
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