Latest Posts in Creative Notes
Add, remove, and replace PDF pages
The other day, we looked at ways to extract content from finished PDF files using Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro. But extracting content is not the only reason to revisit a finished PDF.
For example, one of the many uses I have for Adobe Acrobat's PDFs is to produce quarterly reports for my design clients. If you’ve ever done this sort of work, you know that parts of such reports—such as spreadsheets and charts—can change right up until the very last minute. That could mean multiple exports of an entire report to PDF format. The process can be time-consuming and tedious or it could be a matter of simply adding, removing, or replacing one or just a few pages in a long document. Here’s how to perform such PDF maneuvers easily.
Removing pages
Deleting one or more pages from a PDF file with Acrobat Pro is a snap. Simply choose Document -> Delete Pages, and then choose the page or pages to remove. You can choose the selected page, available when one or more pages are highlighted in the Pages navigation panel, or specify one or more pages by range with the From radio button in the Delete Pages dialog. Click OK to delete the page(s) and then save.
Deleting pages dialog.
Adding pages
Adding pages to a PDF file is almost as easy as deleting them. In the Document menu you’ll find the Insert Pages command, offering you the opportunity to insert an external PDF file. Select the file and, once you hit the Select button, you’ll see the Insert Pages dialog box. At this point you must decide where you’d like to insert the new file—before or after the first or last page in the current PDF, or before or after a specific page number. Make your choices, click OK, and save your newly combined PDF.
Insert pages dialog.
Replacing pages
Sometimes you need to both remove and insert pages, replacing an old version of a page or page sequence with a new version. That can be accomplished in one step instead of two—as long as you’re replacing the same number of pages as you want to insert. Choose Document -> Replace Pages, and find and select the PDF containing the new material you want to use. Next, in the Replace Pages dialog, which appears automatically, select the page or pages to remove and then the pages to insert. Note that the [Replacement] With Pages window allows you to specify only the starting page number. If you’re replacing five pages, Acrobat has you insert five pages, beginning with the page number you specify, and continuing in sequential order. Click OK and then save.
Replacing pages in an existing document with new versions from an external document.
This technique is much easier than re-generating an entire PDF document. Just don’t tell the boss how easy it was; keep them thinking it’s a major chore, otherwise they may send changes even more often!
[Pariah S. Burke is the author of Mastering InDesign CS3 for Print Design and Production (Sybex, 2007), and other books; a freelance graphic designer; and the publisher of the Web sites GurusUnleashed.com, WorkflowFreelance.com, and CreativesAre.com. Pariah lives in Portland, Ore.]
Fonts in the wild
One of the greatest thrills of a font designer is to see their font being used in a prominent place: a TV show, a commercial, billboard, or—even more exciting—on the packaging of a popular product.
Font designer Paul Veres tells me he was excited recently to see his Aperto font used in the logo of Aveeno, a natural cosmetics company.
But you don't have to be a font designer to enjoy identifying fonts in public places—in the wild, so to speak. If you can take a photo of a type sample, you can upload it to the free WhatTheFont feature at MyFonts for identification. It really works!
Photoshop tip: Global Light
Think of Global Light as a shop light—one of those caged light bulbs with the hook at the top.
While working on your car’s engine, you’ll typically hang the shop light somewhere under the hood to illuminate your work space. As you move around the engine compartment, you'll often relocate the hanging light. What happens then?
The Global Light dialog.
The light illuminates a different area of the engine, causing different parts to glint while the shadows cast by those parts relocate, shrinking where they were once long, stretching where they were once short.
Integrate your iWeb site with Facebook
Your iWeb site and Facebook profile represent you and your interests to the world. Wouldn’t it be great if they worked together? Fortunately, it’s easy to go beyond the basic Facebook integration in the latest version of iWeb (
) to boost your site’s visibility to friends, family, and associates. Here’s how.
Create Facebook badges for iWeb
Badges are widgets that automatically refresh to add Facebook information to your Web site. To get started, open your Facebook Profile and click the “Create a Profile Badge” link beneath the left-hand column (you may have to scroll down to the bottom to see this).
Click the edit screen’s checkboxes to customize the badge’s layout and content (which can include your picture, status, contact information, and more). After you save the badge, you can create and save additional Profile badge designs, as well as Photo badges that display pictures you’ve uploaded to Facebook. To export your badge to iWeb, select Other as its destination and copy the resulting code.
Next, open your site in iWeb and select the Media Browser’s Widgets button. Drag the HTML Snippet widget into the page you want it to appear on, paste in the code, click Apply, and close the box. Then upload the revised page.
Creating a favicon for your Web site
Go to any major Web site, and you’ll almost certainly see an icon to the left of the address in your browser. This tiny image is called a favicon (or Favorites Icon), and with a little effort, you can create one of your own.
Design your icon
At just 16-by-16 pixels in size, favicons can be a challenge to design. Pictures and intricate company logos become unrecognizable when scaled to such a small size, so you’ll need to come up with something simple and, yes, iconic—like the first letter of your name or perhaps a single graphic element from your company logo. You can create a favicon with just about any image editor, but for this example, we’ll use Adobe Photoshop CS4 (). We'll also be generating a favicon in the newer .png format, which allows for full color icons with anti-aliased edges. Note that favicons can be larger than a 16-pixel square to take into account their use in bookmark lists and RSS feeds, but for this article, we'll focus on how to create one to appear in your browser's address window.
Don’t try to design at 16-by-16 pixels; instead, start with a file that’s at least 512-by-512 pixels.
As you design your favicon, keep it streamlined and stick to the gridlines. Horizontal and vertical edges that do not adhere to the grid will end up looking muddy and indistinct. Avoid using too much detail; after all, each square of the grid will be reduced to a single pixel when scaled down.
Self-promotional sites with iWeb
Businesses are increasingly researching prospective employees on the Internet. So why not direct them to a Web site designed to promote your best work? That was my thought when I embarked on creating a site to showcase my freelance writing.
But, building a self-promotional site is surprisingly difficult. You know yourself and your professional history, but how can you best convey that information to others who don't? Creating a site in iWeb is easy and fun and the following are some simple steps that I took.
1. Plan your site. Prepare your assets, such as screenshots of your work or PDF files of your resume and work samples. Gather a list of bookmarks related to work you've done online, sites that feature you or your work, and even sites that you visit for news about your field. This almost goes without saying, except that I too had to remind myself to plan first before launching into page creation.
2. Start building. Create a new site that's separate from any personal sites you may already have. Select File -> New Site, and choose a professional-looking theme that gives you maximum flexibility (Elegant, Black, White, Modern, or Gazette can be good choices for professional sites). Try using iWeb's About Me template as your home page. Revise or delete inappropriate placeholder text and images, and even placeholders themselves, if they don't suit your purpose.
Maximize your iMovie editing space
Editing video is a task ideally suited to large monitors and lots of screen real estate. You want to see your video large, but still have plenty of room to view the project’s clips. Unfortunately, most of us don’t own a 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Display.
The designers of iMovie were sympathetic, however, and included several options for maximizing the editing environment for any screen size. Whether you want to focus on your project instead of your video library, or just want to recover some elbow room while editing, the following techniques will help.
1. Preset layouts. The standard iMovie ’09 layout balances the main elements of the interface: the Project Editor, the Viewer, and the Event Library. But when you’re looking for clips, you may want to use more of the window to view your Event Library. Choose Window -> Viewer -> Small (or press Command-8) to make the Viewer (and the Project Editor) smaller and increase the size of the Event Library and Event Browser.
iMovie’s preset Viewer sizes make the Project Editor or the Events Browser easier to work within. This is a large viewer (Command-0).
Pro Applications Update tackles Final Cut Studio
Apple rolled out minor updates for the components of the latest version of its Final Cut Studio video-production suite on Thursday, with all five updates included in a single bundle.
Pro Applications Update 2009-01 includes Final Cut Pro 7.0.1, Motion 4.0.1, Soundtrack Pro 3.0.1, Color 1.5.1, and Compressor 3.5.1. The 243MB download is available from Apple’s Support Website as well as through Software Update.
There’s little detail to be had about what’s contained in Pro Applications Update 2009-01. Release notes say that the update addresses general compatibility issues, while improving overall stability, and addressing a number of other minor issues.
Release notes for the individual updates contain more detail. Final Cut Pro 7.0.1 fixes an issue where the video-editing app could quit when using the AJA Io HD and playing mixed format sequences. The update also fixes an issue where a clip would run backward for a short time when using the new Change Speed dialog to add both Curve from Start and Curve to End speed ramps on the same clip with the setting for Ripple Sequence unchecked. Other Final Cut Pro fixes include one where a Desktop Cinema Display Preview would tear the bottom of an image when using a Cinema Display with a MacBook Pro, another involving the Close Gap command, and color shifts for video material at 2048x1080 and 2048x1556 frame sizes. The update adds an .aif extension to audio files created using the Voice Over Tool
The Motion 4.0.1 update increases quality and precision when rendering a scene with an animated focal point, improves rending performance for certain flattened text objects, and improves third-party FXPlug support. The update also fixes an issue which caused Compressor jobs to not complete when they were tasked with processing older Motion projects.
Speaking of Compressor, the release notes for the 3.5.1 update note that the release fixes the ability to inspect surround sound jobs and addresses a transcoding issue with automatic resizing for videos recorded on the iPhone 3GS and iPod nano. Compressor 3.5.1 also fixes issues involving transcodes between Apple ProRes codecs and the redrawing of file names in the Inspector when replacing audio files.
The release notes for Soundtrack Pro 3.0.1 are pretty thin—all the update appears to correct is an issue with the Get Info window for Soundtrack Pro. Color 1.5.1, meanwhile, fixes issues involving live footage showing a luminance mismatch, the difference in aspect ratio between a clip aspect ration and a frame being display as gray instead of black, and Color FX nodes created in the Color FX Room not lading when a project was saved and re-opened.
The updates affect the 2009 version of Final Cut Studio. Apple released the updated video editing and production suite in July
Updated at 5:45 p.m. PT to include more detailed release notes.
Scary fonts
Halloween (October 31) is sometimes accompanied by feelings of fear and dread, but it also can inspire celebration and remembrance.
You can witness these attitudes in the world of fonts, from spooky and threatening to wistful and organic. In modern times, Halloween is generally considered to be a children's holiday, and because of that, some fonts feature childlike drawings of smiling jack o'lanterns and black cats. Others expand on the title fonts used in spooky books and horror films.
Although Halloween is a relatively short season (if a single day can represent a season, which judging by the commercial market, it definitely can), there are a remarkably large number of fonts dedicated to it. Perhaps that's because so many people celebrate it or because the graphic theme is so compelling and well-defined. Or maybe it's simply that designing Halloween fonts is great fun. Whatever the reason, you'll find great Halloween fonts from almost every vendor, and a huge number of free fonts on the Internet. (A lot of those free Internet fonts are truly awful, so you'll need to pick and choose.) The following can be used to decorate posters, cards, invitations, Web sites, or any message you want to send.
Halloween font packs
Halloween font packs are available from several vendors. I suggest visiting their Web sites and searching for keywords like "Halloween" or "spooky." For example, Ascender has a Halloween Font Pack for $10:
Sharing home movies with iWeb
With cameras in the iPod nano and new export options in Snow Leopard’s QuickTime Player, creating and sharing movies with your Mac has never been easier. But the more movies you make, the harder it can be to show them all to friends and family.
The My Albums templates in iWeb aren’t just for pictures––they can hold videos, too. Here’s how to use them to make life easier for you and your audience by organizing your movies in one convenient place online.
1. Share the movies on your Mac. Select File -> New Page to choose a My Albums template for your site from any iWeb theme. Next, select View -> Show Media, and click the Movies button in the Media Browser to see your iMovie projects, iTunes videos, and more.
Drag the files you want to share onto your album’s main page. Notice that iWeb automatically creates a page for each movie, and you can drag the previews to arrange in any order you like. iWeb imports the movie with a cryptic naming convention, but you can change that name in the sidebar at the left of iWeb’s window. However, you must manually change the name on the individual page as well.
New Business Center Reviews
Best Prices on Software Suites
Office 2007 Home and StudentPrice: $75.82
Office 2007 Professional (Academic)Price: $110.00
Office 2007 ProfessionalPrice: $140.00
Office 2007 Small BusinessPrice: $193.37
Office 2003 ProfessionalPrice: $70.00
Office 2007 StandardPrice: $131.86
Latest on Business Center
