Seattle InDesign User Group

Meeting Notes Archive

Wednesday, October 30, 2002
A little history and some changes.

Thanks to Sheila, we’ve been meeting for almost two years now. Sheila Hoffman pioneered the group, and has done a great job of keeping us going. Because Sheila’s getting pretty busy, she asked Colin Fleming to step in as figurehead for the group. Sheila will still organize prizes and donations from sources like Element K Journals, Peachpit Press, and Adobe.

The group grows. More people than ever before showed up on Wednesday night. More than 65 people made the room crowded — in a polite, networky sort of way. Our newfound participation level is partly Adobe's doing. We've gone “official,” along with groups in New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, and San Francisco. Adobe is helping with a little marketing savvy to pull in new members and get the word out that we’re here. Register at the user group website and you'll be notified of upcoming meetings and topics. RSVP for the meeting so we can have refreshments (pizza this time).

Presentations

Microsoft Game Studios
Ernst Janson and Liz Corcoran

Liz and Ernst discussed the process that Microsoft Game Studios has gone through to convert from a PageMaker workflow to an InDesign® workflow over the last couple of years. They've converted from distributing film for printing worldwide to a PDF workflow with spot colors and it works!

Microsoft Game Studios had to hold on and make sure that all its production software was compatible, letting InDesign mature with version 2.0 and having Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat all come to the same level in their most recent versions. Now Liz and Ernst can distribute untrapped PDF files and have the work printed consistently by any of their certified printers. Microsoft Game Studios has distributed more than 500 InDesign-generated files to date, and they’re printing correctly worldwide!

A couple of tips they passed on from their experience:

Using layers is great!
Now they distribute a single file with separate layers for different languages. Some production pieces may be printed in more than 32 languages. They used to distribute a file for each language, but now they need to manage many fewer files.

Flattener styles and resolution
When a spread has transparency, the gradient resolution doesn’t need to be greater than 300 dpi. (At one point they cranked the gradient resolution up and generated a 4 Gb PDF file... yikes!)

Using spot colors from Photoshop
Saving the Photoshop document as a Photoshop PDF carries the spot plate data into InDesign.

Reduce RIP time
If your design has transparency, create a separate layer for your major text content and put this layer at the top of the layer palette. Liz and Ernst have seen much faster RIP times with this simple trick. Your service provider will appreciate it too.

Rainier Color
Mark Ketter, Mark Evans, and Gary Scott

Rainier Color now sees InDesign files daily — and is pretty happy with the output. They prefer to receive native ID files so they can fix the occasional problem a client might not be aware of.

Mark and Mark, dressed similarly and sporting nearly identical beard/mustache combinations, talked about what they've seen people try to do with InDesign. Some of these attempts needed to be tweaked a bit, while some just should have been done somewhere else for better results. They shared their experience and made a few recommendations.

The tips they shared with us:

Blending modes and conversion to CMYK
Some transparency blending modes will convert spot colors to process colors. Be aware of this; they're listed in the manual, so don't be surprised if this happens!

Copying from Illustrator
If you copy and paste from Illustrator to InDesign, you create artwork that is not linked to a file. If there are any problems that prepress must fix, they have no linked file to fix. Prepress may have to re-create the vector artwork — and we don't always want to know how...

Solution: Do this the right way: Create your artwork in your vector application, save the file, and then place the file into your InDesign document. Linking is good.

Transparency and vector art
Rainier frequently sees vector art (logos) that includes transparency and a trademark or copyright symbol. InDesign will rasterize the artwork because of the transparency — and the client rarely likes to see rasterized text.

Solution: Create a second copy of the artwork, apply the transparency to one but not the other, and change the shape of the image frame so that the copy with the transparency crops out the important text/vector element and the second copy reveals the text/vector element.

Type and gradient backgrounds
Great, a text frame can hold text and have a background. One of us is probably going to decide to put a gradient in the background of the frame. This may rasterize the type and will increase printing times significantly!

Solution: Create this effect with two frames: One frame uses the gradient fill, and the second holds the text. To make print times shorter still, put the text frame on a separate layer, above the layer with the gradient fill.

InDesign will not solve all clipping path problems!
There is no substitute for good clipping paths created in Photoshop. Fringing may be more apparent with certain backgrounds.

Use the right tool for the job
As much as we want to do everything with InDesign, sometimes it's not the best choice for certain operations. Use Photoshop, Illustrator, or FreeHand when your design requires it. Photoshop will blend colors better and rotate objects more cleanly. Illustrator and FreeHand have path operations, while InDesign doesn’t.

Prizes!
We awarded four books from Peachpit Press to members, along with an upgrade for Photoshop 7.0, and a copy of InDesign 2.0. Thanks to Peachpit and Adobe for the donations!

Photos From This Meeting!
Photos are available from this user group meeting.
See the photos.

Meeting Notes Archive
View notes from past meetings of the Seattle InDesign user group.
• Read notes from other meetings!

Meeting Topics Archive
With user group chapters across the United States, Europe, and Australia, we have gathered quite a bit of information from presenters, Adobe representatives, attendees, and industry experts during the past four years.
• Read all of the notes