Podcast 76 Transcript
To hear the audio episode from which this transcript was made, or to comment on this episode, go to the InDesignSecrets Podcast 76 page.
[music]
Anne-Marie Concepcion: Welcome to “InDesign Secrets” Episode 76. “76 trombones led the parade.” I can’t say 76 without doing that.
David Blatner: It’s true. It’s true.
Anne-Marie: My minor in theater in college.
David: My major in theater in college!
Anne-Marie: You were a major in theater?
David: Yeah. Yeah.
Anne-Marie: Oh yeah, that’s right.
David: We have a major and a minor here. How about that?
Anne-Marie: I am Ann-Marie Concepcion and I am here along with my
extraordinarily brilliant and 6′ 3″, two meters tall, blonde, blue-
eyed co-host. David wrote this intro, by the way.
David: Hi there.
Anne-Marie: Blue-eyed co-host, David Blatner.
David: Hi. How are yeah’ [in high voice]?
Anne-Marie: You are supposed to say: How are you [in low voice].
David: Hi. Hey. How are you? How’re doing [in rough voice]?
Anne-Marie: Our podcast and blog at indesignsecrets.com are the independent
resource for all things InDesign. [echo sounds]
David: OK. Wow. We have all kinds of fun stuff today. We are going to do a
little bit of fun news, some new stuff and then we’re going to talk
about a couple of the posts that were on the site recently. I’ll
talk about binary EPS, Pre-flighting, the good, the bad and the
ugly.
Then we’ll jump into the Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week.
Altitude. Where on earth is altitude in InDesign? It’s very
obscure. It’s wonderfully obscure. It’s a good one. All right.
Anne-Marie: All right. But first, the news.
David: And then the Quizzler. We’re going to do a Quizzler at the very
end. How could I forget?
Anne-Marie: That’s right. Right. Right. Right. We are going to do a Quizzler,
with a new price that we’ve never offered before, so you have to
listen so you hear the whole thing.
I wanted to mention one other thing. You know, in our last podcast,
when we were talking about the PDF print engine I mentioned Steve
Warner’s post, where I said he interviewed James Wamser, the
printer from Sells Printing, about how they are using it.
Actually, I want to issue a slight correction to that. Steve was
quoting from our friend and long time admirer, Tim Coles’ blog, the
InDesign Channel. Tim Cole is the one who interviewed James, and we
will put a link to Tim’s blog entry, where he interviews James in
our show notes. Apologies to Tim for not giving you credit.
David: Right.
Anne-Marie: Now, the news.
David: Now, the news.
Anne-Marie: The first one, I actually wrote it up on the blog, but as we know
not everybody who listens to the podcast reads the blog and vice
versa. I saw InDesign on the television. It was a very huge geek
thrill to see it. You know how you always see Photoshop and you
hear people mention Photoshop…
Did you Photoshop that picture? Which Adobe hates, by the way. But,
you see Photoshop a lot in those detective shows, where they are
trying to zoom in on a grainy photograph, but you never hear them
talk about Bridge. I have never seen Dreamweaver on the screen or
Illustrator.
David: They never do Version Q.
[laughter]
Anne-Marie: Or the mobile device thingy or InDesign. But, I actually saw it
being used during a regular television show. I wrote about it, and
I went to the website for the show and got a screen capture of it.
It’s on MTV.
It’s a teen reality show, which is a guilty pleasure of mine. I
love watching these high schoolers and what they are dealing with
these days. It makes me feel so glad I’m not in high school, and
it’s called “The Paper.”
You are behind the scenes at a high school newspaper, a very large,
the largest one in Florida, high school newspaper, award-winning
newspaper. Let me grab the name really quick. It is the Cypress Bay
High School, which, I think, is in Dade County by Miami. It is
called “The Circuit,” which is the name of the paper. It has a
staff of 70.
The reality show, “The Paper,” is all about people jockeying for
editor-in-chief and all the personalities. Of course, it is MTV so
most of the time they aren’t actually working on the paper.
They are at parties or at the beach or shopping. They might be
talking about the paper, or whining why they didn’t get editor-in-
chief or something like that.
There was a scene where they actually showed somebody laying out
the paper during a journalism class, and the camera showed the
computer screen. They are all iMacs, right?
I saw somebody changing the size of a text frame, and I was
thinking: I wonder what software that is. Could it be InDesign?
Well, the camera moved away right away, so I have TiVo. Yeah, TiVo.
So, I rewound and then stepped through frame-by-frame and then I
saw the little red overset box, the text frame. There it is. That’s
the hallmark of it. I’m like, there it is, and I wrote it up for
the blog and said it was so fantastic. I started fantasizing toward
the end.
What happens that during the show…. I know this is going on long,
but let me finish, because there is something that happened today
that is of interest. One of the things they were trying to figure
out was, how come everybody’s gray scale behind their sidebars were
different shades.
They are trying to figure out how to make everybody’s gray scales
the same shade. I was thinking, why don’t they just use object
styles, you know? I should go down there and teach them. That would
be a great episode.
The paper got this famous InDesign trainer down to show us some
tips and tricks. Then, cute as a button, Trevor, one of the
characters, gets a crush on her, on the trainer, the nameless
trainer and leaves his girlfriend for her and begs to be her intern
and follows her around like a puppy dog. Then, I said in the post,
I digress.
David: Yes, you did.
Anne-Marie: People added comments. That’s so great. That’s so funny. Today, did
you see this, David? We got a new comment. It’s from Debbie who
says, “Hey there. Cute as a button, Trevor’s mom here.” I’m like,
oh, oh. She’s going to report me.
[laughter]
David: Trevor’s mom.
Anne-Marie: “Love your article and thought I would let you know that Trevor is
an InDesign guru.”
David: There you go.
Anne-Marie: Yes. He is. He is actually the graphic editor. He is the layout
editor, the person in charge of doing layout. She says he just won
first place at the FSPA for his doubletruck.
David: There you go.
So, I read that nine times, FSPA for his doubletruck. What can she
possibly mean? I knew doubletruck was a spread in a newspaper. I
looked up FSPA in Google, and it turns out, according to Google,
FSPA is something about the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Agony.
So, I don’t think that that was the competition.
David: I don’t think so. No.
Anne-Marie: Further down the page it says the Florida Scholastic Paper
Association. I thought that was pretty funny.
David: I would like to point out that this proves, if you didn’t already
know, this proves just how InDesign geeky we are, that we would get
so excited about seeing InDesign on TV and then we would go on and
on about it. Trevor, if you’re out there, InDesign on, dude.
Anne-Marie: Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Come over to our website and add your
comments. Tell us about everything that we’re saying that’s wrong
and stuff like that. Congratulations on your win and thanks
everybody. And, thank you very much, Trevor’s mom.
David: Thank you very much, Ann-Marie, for your in-depth coverage of MTV’s
“The Paper.” What other news do we have?
Anne-Marie: Well, we have something that actually pertains to InDesign, which
was your post, David, about binary EPS.
David: Wait. Before that, we have to talk about the posters. We have
posters for sale.
Anne-Marie: Oh yeah. The posters. How could I forget about that?
The posters, well, they haven’t been moving. It’s because, I think,
we forgot to update the discount code, which, we saw, expired last
year. So, we decided to put them on a fire sale. We’re going to
have 50% off for the posters, but only for the first 10 customers.
And so, you guys are the first to hear about this. We will wait
until this podcast has been published, before we actually mention
it in the blog, if we decide to do that.
But the first 10 customers to go to indesignsecrets.com, click on
“Store” and order however many posters you want, you’ll get 50% off
the entire order.
And then, after 10, that’s it. It only lasts for 10 customers. You
have to use this coupon code: 5010. 50% off for 10 people.
David: 5010, OK.
Anne-Marie: 5010. Now, if you are there and it says, “Sorry, that coupon is no
longer valid. You’re too late,” don’t worry, because we have
another coupon code. You use “swatches,” easy to remember, and
you’ll get 25% off, which is a sizable discount anyway.
By the way, Sherry, the person who helps us with shipping, tells me
that we don’t have many of the CS2 posters left. There are under
50. So, we still have a bunch of CS3 posters, but we down to half
of our final box of CS2 posters. Those are flat ones. If you want
them folded, we have some of those.
David: We’re not going to be printing any more of those, of course. If you
want those, if you think you might ever want those…
Anne-Marie: They’re going to be collector’s items.
David: Yes. OK, now the really big news. I think even more interesting
than all of that put together, is the new website, a brand-new
website.
Anne-Marie: Yes, we have finally spawned a sister website.
David: Very pleasant, yes.
Anne-Marie: At incopysecrets.com, yay. It went through, I like to call it, a
soft launch a couple of weeks ago because it’s got a nice design,
but it’s not the final design. It’s got a good amount of content,
but it’s not nearly where InDesign Secrets is now. But it’s on its
way.
We have some comments already, so people are discovering it. I’m
running the site, incopysecrets.com. As most people know, I’m
obsessive about this program. I just think that Adobe needs some
help in getting the word out about how this $250 program can
transform your work life. So, that’s what InCopy Secrets is all
about.
Really, there’s no third-party resource other than the InCopy forms
on Adobe’s website for InCopy users to learn tips, and to comment
and to ask questions. So, we invite you all to come down to
incopysecrets.com. Kick the tires, knock around a bit, add some
comments or email us.
My new address is amarie@incopysecrets.com, my alternate address.
If you want to email me something specifically about that, I’d like
to hear from you. So, check it out.
David: Yeah, check it out. Now we’d better go on the blog posts that came
up, one about binary EPS, and one about pre-flighting. I wrote this
little pieces, and there was a lot of comments them.
And whenever there’s a lot of comments on them from readers, we
know we’d better mention this on the podcast, just in case you
didn’t get a chance to see them.
The first one had to do with an alert some people get when you
print out of InDesign. You get a little alert that pops up that
says “This document may contain binary EPS files, which can cause
the print job to fail.”
It’s just very frightening for people. They see that, and they’re
like, what the heck is going on? Oftentimes they’ll cancel, and
they’ll pull their hair out and try to find these files.
Most of the time, and this is the point I was trying to make in the
post, it’s OK. Don’t worry about it. Go ahead and say OK, just
print anyway, and it will work. If it doesn’t work, then it’s
probably your printer or your network, typically your printer.
That’s just something you’re going to need to know about your
printer.
There are some HP printers, which clearly don’t work. There are
some cloned PostScript rips, which don’t work. It’s rare, but it
does happen. Some large format printers and so on.
So, if you find that your printer can’t deal with binary EPS, there
are some workarounds. One of the things I mentioned in there is,
you could select an EPS on your InDesign page and in the Effects
panel, or in the Transparency panel in CS2, change its opacity to
like 99.9%. That forces InDesign to rewrite the whole thing in a
format, which should print.
So, that’s one workaround you might try. Or, you could just go and
try to find that image and distill it, turn it into a PDF, or open
it in its original program and get it out of its EPS format. That
should be OK.
Anne-Marie: How does an EPS end up as binary-encoded anyway? How are you
supposed to tell?
David: Well, that part of the problem. You can’t always tell. In fact,
InDesign can’t actually tell in many cases, too. First of all,
binary encoding has to do with image encoding. It usually means
there’s an image in there, like a bitmap image from Photoshop.
Sometimes InDesign can’t even tell.
That’s sort of the whole idea of Encapsulated PostScript, EPS. It’s
this little bubble that InDesign can’t really go in and see what’s
going on in there. Especially really old EPS files that are just
vector, there’s no image in there at all, it’s just vector data.
You bring it in and you drop it in InDesign, and InDesign says
“Whoa,” and that’s why it says “It may contain binary EPS files and
it can cause…”. But in many cases, it doesn’t contain binary
information, and it won’t cause the print job to fail.
So, it’s just a huge alert, but usually no big deal. Something to
keep in mind.
Anne-Marie: Couldn’t you just open up the EPS in Illustrator and then re-save
it as a different EPS, or as an AI file bring it in?
David: You could conceivably open it in Illustrator. I don’t trust opening
something in Illustrator and saving it always as being exactly the
same, in my mind. Things can change when you do that. It’s sort of
a last-ditch effort.
I would rather try and avoid EPSs altogether, but if you do have
them, it can cause those issues. But usually it won’t, and if it
prints once to a printer properly, if it prints OK, then it’ll
continue working. It’s whether or not that printer can deal with
binary EPS or not.
That’s just one random thing that we threw out there that I think
it’s important to let people know about. The other one had to do
with pre-flighting. That was the other blog post.
Anne-Marie: Yeah, a lot of people see that InDesign has a preflight command,
and they’re like, “But it doesn’t check this, it doesn’t get this,
how come?” How useful is it?
David: Or, “It does check this, and why is it checking this when I don’t
want it to check that?”
Anne-Marie: That’s right.
David: It’s really limited, and this is the point I was trying to make in
that post. The preflight feature in InDesign is just paltry, I
guess it’s one way to put it. It’s not up to Adobe’s snuff; let’s
put it that way.
I’m kind of surprised that they haven’t done more with pre-
flighting, because it is something that so many of us really need.
You shouldn’t trust what the preflight does, and I generally these
days completely ignore it.
Anne-Marie: I trust what it does. It’s just that the information is not that
useful. I mean, it tells you if fonts are missing or can’t be
embedded. That’s useful.
David: Yeah, I suppose it could be.
Anne-Marie: Or if fonts can’t be embedded in a PDF. But you can see the missing
font thing in “Font usage” anyway, oh my gosh, a cork roof in my
brain has reappeared. Of course, I mean “Find font.”
David: Font usage, for those of you who don’t know, is from that other
program.
Anne-Marie: Right. But the thing about RGB files, why does it warn you that you
have RGB images if it’s going to convert them to CMYK or when it
makes a PDF?
David: You know, preflight is trying to be helpful, but it’s just not
robust enough to really be worth a lot. So, like you said, I would
rather do my pre-flighting independently, like look at the find
font dialog box, look at the links panel, go through it manually
and check out the document itself.
Anne-Marie: Or given the actual program that does preflight, that can make
reports and you can specify, “Tell me if any images that are below
300 PPI” or something like that.
David: That’s exactly it.
Anne-Marie: Or if they’re different size, like FlightCheck Pro from Markzware.
David: Markzware has a new version of Flight Check out. I think I just got
a press release on that. So, FlightCheck is very, very good.
There’s also Zevrix’s InPreflight. It’s a less expensive option,
doesn’t do quite as much as FlightCheck.
FlightCheck is great if you’re an output provider and you’re
getting a lot of files. You need to push them through. InPreflight
is just within InDesign, and so it’s not going to be as robust.
It’s not going to be as flexible for all of your needs. But it is
really nice, it’s a really good system.
Definitely, people should be checking out third-party solutions for
that.
Man 2: Those are two great posts you wrote.
Anne-Marie: Thank you.
David: Of course, I’m writing about MTV and cute as a button Trevor. Hey,
it’s springtime. What can I say?
Anne-Marie: Alright, let’s go on to our obscure InDesign feature of the week.
All: Geek, geek, geek.
Anne-Marie: And what is that?
David: Altitude! This was suggested by Sandy Cohen, the inexorable Sandy
Cohen, who is doing a game show at Toronto InDesign conference next
week. She is so good at putting in these questions to stump people,
trivia questions about InDesign.
And so, she sent me a sample of the questions that we’re going to
be asking game show contestants at the InDesign conference next
week. One of them had Altitude in there. I stared at it and stared
at it and stared at it, and I was like, “No way, there’s no
Altitude in InDesign.”
I went searching and searching and searching, and finally found it.
Wow, it’s obscure. It’s so evil as a question.
Anne-Marie: That’s right. We found it in the effects panel.
David: Yes, it’s in the effects panel.
Anne-Marie: When you told me about, I couldn’t find it. I’m like, “Altitude?
No, no. It sounds like something from Illustrator, something with
3D.” But it is kind of related to 3D. It is a setting, when you
bevel and emboss something.
David: Yes. So, inside bevel and emboss. Inside the effects dialog box,
not the panel, but the dialog box, there is the altitude setting.
It has to do with the altitude of the light.
Bevel and emboss is faking a 3D effect. It’s faking lighting coming
from some source, so if altitude is way up, like at 90 degrees, it
means you’re at like high noon. The sun is directly above. And so,
bevel and emboss doesn’t actually do anything.
But if you move it down to, let’s say, zero degrees which means the
light would be coming right down from the horizon, or 30 degrees
which is up in the sky, you’re faking the effect of having that
light coming from that source. So, very, very nice discovery there.
It’s one of those things that I had seen. Obviously I had seen it
multiple times. I’ve played with bevel and emboss, I’ve written it
up in real-world InDesign. But for some reason it just did not
stick in my head that altitude was in there. So, altitude, that’s
what it does.
Anne-Marie: That’s a good one. I love it. And so, that brings us to the
Quizzler.
David: Ah, yes, the Quizzler.
Anne-Marie: All right, so it took us forever to find altitude buried in that
dialog box. However, there is one other place in InDesign where
altitude shows up.
David: That’s right.
Anne-Marie: Part of the user interface, all right? You need to find out where
that is and tell us to win the Quizzler. Find out where it is, and
email us at info@indesignsecrets.com and put “Quizzler” in the
subject line.
They have until, when? Friday, May 3?
David: Yeah, let’s say next Friday, May 2.
Anne-Marie: OK, Friday, May 2nd at midnight to send us your answer. I’m
assuming we’re going to get more than one correct answer, and then
we’ll just choose them by a random drawing.
David: Or whoever donates the most to our PayPal account.
Anne-Marie: Yeah.
David: No, no.
Anne-Marie: So, Friday, May 2, where else other than in that bevel and emboss
dialog box, can you find altitude in InDesign?
David: That’s right. And whoever wins that will win a copy of “The Flying
Book.” “The Flying Book” has nothing to do with InDesign, other
than it was actually laid out in InDesign. But “The Flying Book” is
a book that I wrote a few years ago all about flying on airlines.
I have a couple of copies extra sitting here in the office, so I
thought: well, I’ll give one of these away. I’ll sign it and mail
it off to you, wherever you are on the planet.
Anne-Marie: You’re a man of many interests there, David.
David: I do have a lot of interests.
Anne-Marie: I remember you telling me about that you had written that book.
Didn’t you ride in the jump seat one time?
David: I did. I rode up in the cockpit in several flights on Alaska
Airlines. This was just before 9/11, actually. Obviously, there was
no way the FAA would allow anyone to do that today, but I was lucky
enough to do that.
But book has a lot of information about “What is turbulence?” and
“Why do airplanes fly to begin with?” and “What happens to your
luggage when you hand it off to them. All kinds of weird stuff
about flying on airlines that most people don’t know.
It was fun to research and fun to write, and it will be fun to send
it to you if you are the winner of this week’s Quizzler. That’s
right.
Anne-Marie: That’s it for episode 76. Thank you everybody for joining us.
David: 76 trombones in the big parade. Oh, sorry.
Anne-Marie: 110 cornets close at hand, right behind. One of those.
David: Something like that.
Anne-Marie: Be sure to check out the show notes on our blog at
indesignsecrets.com, where we’ll have links to the places that we
mentioned.
We’d love to hear what you thought of the show. Leave a comment in
the show notes, or email us at info@indesignsecrets.com.
If you’re answering the Quizzler, though, don’t answer in the
comments. Email us with “Quizzler” in the subject line.
And until we meet again, this is Anne-Marie and…
David: David Blatner for InDesign Secrets.