*** From the Archives ***
This article is from April 7, 2007, and is no longer current.
Changing colors in Kauai
So here I am in beautiful Kauai where I just finished two days teaching the Hindu monks at Kauai’s Hindu monastery (https://www.himalayanacademy.com/).
The ten or so monks who work in the publications department are all very techno-savvy with state of the art Macintosh equipment. They’re also right on the cutting edge having already ordered their copies of Creative Suite 3. Many of the new effects and transparency controls are good, but became very excited about the idea of being able to place one InDesign into another document.
However, despite years of experience with Quark, InDesign, and other page layout programs, there were a few workflow issues that I came out to help them with.
While there were many issues that were specific to their own workflow, there was one technique that we came up with that was a lot of fun to develop.
The workflow starts with a set of 26 Illustrator files that contain the capital letters of the alphabet. Each letter was specially designed in Illustrator and saved as paths with different colors.
When one of the monks starts a new article in their magazine, they import the Illustrator artwork into InDesign.
However, they have a problem in that each issue of the magazine changes the color for these placed Illustrator files.
The problem was how to batch process each of the Illustrator files to change the color to match the new issue’s swatches. Illustrator’s actions were close, but couldn’t handle the tints of the swatch color.
That’s when I realized that we were doing it all wrong. Instead of trying to change the color in Illustrator, we needed to use InDesign’s more powerful options for working with colors.
What we needed was to first drag all the Illustrator paths into InDesign. Then apply a color we called Drop Caps. This color would be the one that changed for each issue.
We were then going to use a Library to hold all the letters, but realized that Snippets would be better. This is because two people can’t open the same Library at the same time. But two people can drag the same Snippet into their own InDesign file.
Then as soon as the Snippet comes into the ID file, the Drop Cap swatch from the Snippet changes its color to whatever the definition of the swatch is for that issue.
It’s a change in their workflow, but ends up a lot easier for the monks.
I had a wonderful time working with the monks. If you would like to see more of my trip as well as the work they do read their blog entry.
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The pictures in the blog entry are great! Sandee must have this opportunity because of her good karma from previous lifetimes!
Steve
Nice going, Sandee. Looks like you really helped AND had a good time. Quite a combo.
Very cool!
One question of clarification, though, on the workflow. You mentioned that you chose snippets over libraries, in part because you can’t have two people in the library at the same time. If you set it to read-only, however, can’t two people open it at the same time (they can’t both add items to it at this point, of course, until the read-only is removed)?
Brian,
Yes, the locked library would work.
But I was afraid that someone might try to add something to the library, or do something that would cause the library to prompt for a save when closed.
That prompt could cause confusion for someone when the library would have to be renamed.
Snippets just worked easier. They would sit in a folder waiting to be dragged in.
They come in pretty much in the correct position.
They are much smaller than libraries.
And the word “snippet” is so much more fun to say than “library.”
Thank you so much for coming out to train us, Sandee. It was a pleasure having you here. We got a lot out of it, and it was awesome to see how much you got out of it as well. Your good karma and ours as well. Aloha.
Hi, I use this method alot, but remember a lot of fun can be had using ‘Ink Alias’ in the ‘Ink Manager’ pallet to achieve the same effect.
What a great experience, Sandee! Awesome tip, too!
Hey Sandee — I live here on the North Shore of Kauai. Email me if you’re gong to be over here again — I’d love to get together with you and show you around.
Hi CJ,
I don’t know if I’ll be going to Kauai in the fall, but I will be going to Oahu in the fall to teach a basic two-day ID class and an Advanced one-day class.
The class will be over at the Pacific New Media department of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
We haven’t set the dates yet, but will announce them here later in the spring.
Of course if the monks want me back then, I’ll be heading over there.
I took a drive around the North Shore. Liked it a lot!