By: Anne-Marie
October 26 2007 • 4:09 PM
InDesignSecrets Podcast 063
Listen in your browser:
InDesignSecrets-063.mp3 (12 MB, 26:15 minutes)
or read the transcript.
- News: Recap of the Creative Suite Conference in Chicago
- David’s favorite new tech toy
- Creating calendar layouts in InDesign
- Hot Button Post of the Week: Adobe CS3 Support for Leopard
- Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Reset to Base
Sponsor Link and Offer:
This episode was sponsored by Audible.com, which lists over 40,000 audio books you can download and listen to just like a podcast. Go to audiblepodcast.com/indesign to download your free audio book (time-limited offer).
Links mentioned in the Podcast:
Upcoming InDesign Conference (Miami, Feb 2008)
Fujistu ScanSnap for Mac or Windows
Guided Tour of Apple’s new OS, Leopard (10.5)
Parallels Desktop software
Anne-Marie’s Calendar Layout post
CalendarMaker script (Mac only) on the Adobe Exchange
Listener Comment Line: +1-206-202-6483
Talk to us, baby: Leave a message!
Where are the podcast transcripts posted? I went through the archive of podcasts and can’t find any. I love your insights but it’s not always practical to listen to a podcast when I’m trying to understand a technique.
J, it usually takes 4-6 weeks before we can get the podcasts transcribed and posted. Sorry for the delay.
The transcripts can be found by clicking the text link under each podcast’s mp3 link. So far podcasts #15-60 have transcripts available.
AM
Nice job, as usual.
I hope you don’t mind me throwing out my $0.02 worth on the vertical spreads.
As I mentioned in the earlier calendar thread, I don’t really see why you’d go to the trouble of creating single pages and then cropping them.
Why not rotated pages on a two page spread? Seems like less work to set up (no cropping except for the first and last pages) and you can use ID’s imposition tools to print a dummy if need be.
On the topic of Leopard, Adobe has posted an FAQ here:
http://www.adobe.com/support/products/pdfs/leopardsupport.pdf
I enjoyed the podcast.
On the subject of running Leopard in a virtual machine on top of Tiger… Nice idea. No technical reason you can’t do it.
But Apple will not let you.
They make money selling hardware - and OSX is the honey they use to attract customers. If OSX could be run in a virtual environment then there is nothing to stop people using some cut price Dell or no-name beige box.
At which point Apple would see Mac sales plummet (as they did with the Mac-clones).
I’ve been playing around with Leopard (got a MacBook to expiriment with upgrades from Tiger so my production machine is safe for now), and so far things have been more or less OK. Had to reinstall Parallels, but the CS3 Creative Suit fires up. Of course the devil is in the detail - so there could be some surprises once I dig into InDesign a bit more.
DM
And awaaaaaay they go again — talking-ing-ing-ing!
Still, despite the absence of pretty moving pictures, it was a fine ‘cast. As usual. Although, being a Windows user, the Leopard stuff wasn’t my kind of catnip. Please try to keep platform-specific stuff to a minimum.
I still don’t understand what the fuss is about creating vertical spreads for calendars.
It has been my experience that 99% of all the requests for vertical spreads for calendars are hardly worth the workarounds to assemble them.
Honestly, go to a book store and check out the way calendars are bound. There is almost NEVER a bleed from the top of the spread to the bottom page.
Check out: http://www.calendars.com/Format_definition.asp?Format=Standard+Wall
The binding is where the top image stops and the bottom image begins.
Any sort of bleed across the binding would make it very difficult to assemble the calendar.
The only sane response to people who want some sort of vertical spread option is to tell them to go to single pages.
But all the fuss to create a vertical spread is time totally wasted if there is no bleed.
And there is almost always no bleed.
Checks!!!
David, I’m about to get your favorite new toy, the ScanSnap, and just realized there’s another use for it.
Checks! You know how you’re supposed to keep checks for at least 5 years. ScanSnap will turn a year’s worth of checks into a file in a moment. (I do most of my banking online, but there are a few bills I still pay by handwritten check.)
Klaus, your comments about platform-specific content are on target. FWIW the last time I checked, about 60% of our blog visitors are on Macs and 40% are on Windows; and I’d guess the same is true for podcast listeners (there’s no way to track platform for podcast downloads though, as far as I know). So most of the time our tips/topics are platform-neutral, even our keyboard shortcuts poster. ;-)
But when major new OS versions come out we do need to speak specifically to them; since they affect a good portion of our audience. Thanks for sticking with us in the meantime! (Trying to remember if we talked about Vista when it was released …)
>(Trying to remember if we talked about Vista when it was released …).
No you didn’t, and it’s a good thing. No one on the Windows side is crazy enough to jump out and buy a new OS the day it’s released. We wait until at least the second service pack… (the risky ones will jump in at the first).
It takes Microsoft a little while to get it right…
Keep talking, AM. Although I’m primarily a Windows guy (still XP), many of my clients work on Macs and they still depend on me for info. Keep it coming.
…and YES: there is the ‘reset to base’ button on Id CS2.
=D
Sandee, the “deal” about calendars doesn’t have anything to do with bleeds. It has to do with people who want to see what the final “spread” will look like while laying out a folded wall calendar. The workaround just has to do with working on the spread in “final” layout mode, but still being able to print it.
As for scanning checks with the scansnap: GREAT idea!
(I thought about starting a new business with this thing thing: Just go around to all my neighbors and scan their stuff. It’s so portable and fast that it’s not like each person needs their own scanner all the time. But of course, the software is only supposed to be used by one person.)
Re David’s favorite toy … it’s the centerpiece of Joe Kissel’s Oct 07 Macworld article, “The Real Paperless Office.”
Yes, Anne-Marie, you are unusually good about being platform-neutral, so you get points for that! Which is why I also slapped your dainty little hand a little — you’ve spoiled me. Vista? Can’t recall if you discussed that, and if you didn’t that’s quite OK, as we Windows power users are hanging onto XP for dear life. I would even happily have stayed with W2K SP4, which I regard as the best Win version ever — fast, stable and low on memory requirements — but Adobe’s rejection of W2K for XP/Vista made me go along with XP.
> But of course, the software is only supposed to be used by one person
David,
Is that one person or one computer?
If you bring your laptop and machine to each person’s house and they scan their stuff (or you scan it for them), then I don’t you’re breaking the EULA.
Right; I was just pointing out that you can’t give the software to everyone on the block (as far as I know).
As for Vista vs. Mac, I think it’s safe to say that while both of us use both of them, we both know far more about Mac than Windows. Of course, we’re not alone: At the recent Creative Suite Conference in Chicago, I think every speaker except Dov Isaacs (who works for Adobe) and Jim Maivald (who was teaching about XML) brought their Mac to demo with.
At the Web Design Conference (which followed immediately after the CS conference), it changed dramatically — I think it was about 75% Windows (both speakers and audience).
That said, in our next podcast we’re going to have a blistering exposé on how InDesign 2 runs in Windows 7. ;)
You know I bring my Mac to conferences because my Compaq laptop can’t run OS X. Seriously! ;-) I love being able to run both OS’s at once. And at the conference I definitely spent more time in Windows during my sessions than OS X, fwiw, esp. the ID/IC workshop (running ID in Mac and IC in Windows on the same doc worked great) and in the Bridge one (to show CS2 on the Mac and CS3 in Windows at the same time). I didn’t know about the flip in platform preference in the Web Design conference, that’s interesting!