January 11 2008 • 12:51 AM
InDesignSecrets Podcast 069
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InDesignSecrets-069.mp3 (15.7 MB, 34:23 minutes)
(or read the transcript)
- Response to our New Year’s show
- The Deke McClelland Interview!
- A fun, raucous conversation with a luminary in our field. Listen in as Deke tells us about his latest book and videos on InDesign CS3, and what it’s like laying out a complex book on InDesign in InDesign: the good, the bad, and the aggravating. (“Does this sound like a feature to you?” he asks at one point, laughing.)
- Quizzler -ler -ler!
- Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: View Box
Links mentioned in the Podcast:
Deke’s new book Adobe InDesign CS3 One-on-One
David’s post about modifying Basic Styles
Also, here’s a post that explains Deke’s object styles problem
Quizzler Instructions: Think you have the best answer? Write it up in an e-mail and send it to us at info@indesignsecrets.com with “Quizzler” in the Subject line. (Don’t post your answer as a comment!) Deadline for entries is midnight on Friday, Jan. 18. We’ll announce the winner — and the Quizzler answer, boy howdy we’ll never forget to do that again — in our next podcast.
I was testing Mr. McClellands line problem with the objects. And it doesn’t work for groups. I drew one line and made the object style with an outer glow. And then I drew a bunch of lines and grouped them and applied the style, and it wasn’t the exact same as the line that I made previously.
I ungrouped the group of lines and I got a warning said “A group in the selection has one or more effects…) and you can choose not to show this again.
Once you ungroup them they appear the same as the first line I drew. And then I simply had to regroup them.
Good show, gang — thanks!
The dreadful, maddeningly annoying fattening/darkening changes on pages with transparency/flattening only occurs, AFAIK, when the Document Blend Space is CMYK. So my solution when I’m working on any document with transparency is to always use RGB for the Document Blend Space. It’s only when I need to generate a proper, final CMYK PDF that I have to switch to the CMYK Document Blend Space. It’s absolutely crucial to make the CMYK switch then, or your separations will be messed up — but while you’re merrily working away in InDesign the RGB Blend Space is the only way I have found to avoid that fattening/darkening . . . feature.
Hmmm. It didn’t seem as if Deke and you two know that creating unsharp masking out of Gaussian blur is very old news indeed. For the whole “unsharp” phrase, which mystifies all newcomers to the art sharpening, comes from the ancient photographic darkroom technique of making a blurred contact negative, through a matted glass or film, and sandwiching that with your original film (and some more steps — the details now escape me, but I did this stuff thirty years ago when my youthful self was somewhat of a minor expert in film-based graphics art repro techniques). All digital unsharp masking filters are based on the principles of that ancient optical film technique — and it’s not really news nor rocket science that you can recreate this process with layers and Gaussian blurs.
Great podcast! Very entertaining…
For more information on exactly what “Overprint Preview” does (and why it’s the worst-named feature ever, see this post…
Finally, my friend Larry Happy likes to refer to the Gaussian Blur as a “G-Blur” only because he’s sick and tired of arguing with people how to pronounce Gaussian….
Oh, regarding unsharp mask and Gaussian blur, I right now recalled that Dan Margulis, in his Professional Photoshop 5th. Ed, gives exact step-by-step instructions for creating unsharp masking with the Gaussian blur filter alone. But it seems Deke is above reading Margulis, eh — even if he’s not above swiping from him?
Klaus I hope your smiley face indicates you’re kidding. Even if Margulis described the technique in a book, there’s no reason why Deke would need to “swipe” it … the idea is laughable. Have you never came up with a technique that you later found out other people knew about already?
Sheesh … let’s end this line of thought right here. (If you have more to say on it, feel free to e-mail us privately.)
Hi Anne-Marie, that reminds me of my first year using Quark, I thought I was total genius when I made a grayscale image and coloured it in Quark. I called over one of my colleagues, who was teaching me how to use the programs, and said “Look at this!!!” and he looked at me and didn’t know what I was talking about. I said I coloured the image in Quark. He said “So what?” Then he explained that that technique is well known.
For a moment back then I thought I was a genius. Still learning to this day. And I for one did not know that an Unsharp Mask works identically to a gaussian blur, I’d love to learn this trick too, as everything helps.
You wouldn’t believe how excited I got when I sat at my desk at 9 this morning and opened up InDesign Secrets to see a new Podcast. And once again, it wasn’t disppointing at all, great show.
Thank you guys so much.
Rgearding the different display of colors when using transparency on a page:
this is the display of the document blend space!
In other words: if you have an RGB objcet on a page and blendspace is CMYK and something on the page gets transparent, all RGB images on that page display in CMYK (like turning on proofcolors). If the blendspace was RGB you will NOT see a difference.
In fact it is one of the most asked questions from beginners I get in my classrooms.
I show this principle now in my class without going to deep into colormanagement but at least they’re not longer surprised!)
This is also mentioned by the way in my book (the Dutch book, mentioned here before
)
Well, I had never seen the steps for how to recreate USM with only G-blur. That’s wacky. I’ll have to go find Dan’s book (or watch Deke’s video). Of course, as we noted, it’s just academic. I do, however, very much want USM built into InDesign.
Wa, thanks for the reminder that the color shift is due to the Transparency Blend Space. For those who want more info, we discussed this in a little more detail back in Episode 9.
Thanks, Mordy, for the link! Great info, as always.
By the way, I just posted on the subject of Deke’s problem with object styles. I hope this explains the trouble and at least one potential solution.
I have to learn how to type without mistakes…
Hey David, thanks for writing up the object style issue (which results in a double-application of the FX when applied to a group) that I so poorly expressed in the podcast!!
And Klaus, regarding the replicating USM-with-Gaussian-Blur technique, I don’t have Dan’s 5th addition, so you’ll have to let me know if my approach is the same as his. Not ever having seen or heard of Dan’s technique, it is of course only logical that I swiped from him. Oh wait, I didn’t mean “logical,” I meant “unfathomably stupid.” Darn spell checker.
Hey Wa, I didn’t know that the Transparency Blend Space setting changed the color display, so thanks for that! But I don’t see how it defends InDesign’s inconsistent handling of imported RGB images. In other words, whether transparency is involved or not, CMYK proofing and the color management process used to convert RGB to CMYK should be identical, particularly given that–more often than not–the affected RGB image is not itself transparent but merely occurs on a page spread that includes transparency. (The image is therefore somehow guilty by association?) The problem also affects imported grayscale images, which by definition are output to the black plate only.
Just my two cents. Regardless of how you dice it, it strikes me as a bug.
Of course, Deke might well have re-invented the wheel all by himself — I have myself re-invented a plethora of wheels! My simple little point was simply that this unsharp/Gaussian issue, to folks who’s “been around” the graphics field for some decades and know old, manual, non-digital techniques, isn’t such big news as you three — somewhat to my surprise — seemed to think it is. Margulis was certainly not the first to think of this unsharp/Gaussian stuff either, nor does he make any such claim.
Well, of course most of us knew that USM had to do with gaus blur. That is, it’s based on two “unsharp” (blurred) images that are interacting. In Real World Scanning & Halftones and Real World Photoshop we describe this effect. But I’ve never seen an actual step by step on how to build-your-own USM using only gaussian blur. And the idea of reverse engineering Photoshop’s own system to achieve a pixel-perfect duplicate of USM is even more of a surprise! Inquiring minds want to know! (And then inquiring minds need to get back to InDesign topics.)
I wanna be Deke McClelland!!! (Does this sound like a movie?)
hehe
I’m wondering if Deke plans to make a one-on-one video series for InDesign on lynda.com? Although David’s videos are excellent, I’ve really enjoyed David’s one-on-one series for Photoshop and Illustrator and would love to see one for InDesign.
I don’t know if Deke will be doing that; I don’t think so. But there is a disc with something like 3 hours of CS3 movies in his book! Note that my CS3 Beyond the Basics movie will be out within the next month (I just finished recording many hours worth; now it needs to be edited).
Had to laugh, last fall I made a character style for None, and my keyboard shortcut is Command Zero. It works great, the style attributes are all blank and I use it to remove other applied character styles, such as when a phrase has an italic character style applied and I want to remove the italic for a couple of words in the middle.
Well this is an off the wall comment, and when I say that I mean to say off topic. When listening to your podcast, I noticed that at points, Deke’s sound levels were different than Anne-Marie and David’s. I had to up the volume a tad to hear properly – I think that I tuned down here and there when the levels went up and down. These podcasts are awesome, so I put them on my cell phone/mp3 player, but when the levels are off, and I’m travelling … it’s hard to hear. Love the shows by the way. You guys are doing a fabulous job.
Good point, John. Mixing sound isn’t our strong point, but we’ll keep trying to get it better.
Hey folks, I’d like to comment on Adobe Indesign CS3 One-On-One by Deke McClelland. It’s a tremendous resource for the new and experienced InDesign user. Written for the new user, it starts with the basics of the ID CS3 user interface and starting your first document. As you progress thru the project based material you are exposed to invaluable tips and tricks that will make you an ID pro in no time.
“Pearl of Wisdom” are insightful little bits of info found throughout the book, that are like pull out quotes, but are Deke’s thoughts about some unique experience that he thinks you should know about to make the project go smoother.
The book comes with nearly 3 hrs of video training that is unique to this book (not extracted from his nearly 150hrs of training on lynda.com). It’s advised that you watch each video before or after reading the accompanying chapter in the book. The process of Read, Watch, Do is one of the most effective ways of learning InDesign. As well, Deke’s humorous writing style makes you think he’s right next to you.
For experienced users, Deke successfully explains complex subjects such as XML tags. As well, even thru the basics chapters, experienced users can pick up productivity tips and hidden features that only Deke can find.
I recommend this book for all users.