It’s easier than you think
One of the great strengths of InDesign is its tight integration with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, two of the most widely used graphics applications available today. Some designers may feel understandably nervous the first time they sit down with InDesign, but they’ll often find themselves settling in really quickly. Why? Because InDesign feels so familiar thanks to the tools, commands, palettes, and keyboard shortcuts it shares with Photoshop and Illustrator. Whether you invest in InDesign on its own or through Adobe Creative Suite 2, you’ll experience the kind of smoothly integrated design environment that makes a difference in your day-to-day productivity and comfort.

InDesign offers virtually unlimited undos and redos: just press Command-Z (PC: Control-Z). Almost any action you take in InDesign can be undone, and you can undo any number of steps. In addition, if the power suddenly goes out, the crash recovery feature in InDesign—which works automatically—preserves your work, so you can open the document precisely where you were.

Let your fingers lead you
Sandee Cohen—author, teacher, InDesign expert, and raconteur—likes to point out to her new InDesign students that their fingers often know a program better than their brains do. Through a daily repetition of tasks, your fingers just expect to work in a certain way to get work done.
That’s why InDesign includes the Keyboard Shortcuts editor to enable you to switch the default shortcuts to match the ones you’re accustomed to using in QuarkXPress 4.0 or in Adobe PageMaker 7.0. The Keyboard Shortcuts editor also lets you edit any keyboard shortcut you like to suit your preferences.

To open the Keyboard Shortcuts editor, choose Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts. Then choose the set of shortcuts for QuarkXPress or PageMaker from the Set menu, or skim through different application areas and edit the shortcuts you want. You can even export your new custom shortcut set to share with colleagues.

Taking your files with you
Many designers have years of work invested in their current page layout software, and with that comes bulging archives of files. The good news is that InDesign opens files saved in QuarkXPress 3.x–4.x or Adobe PageMaker 6.x–7.x formats directly using the File>Open command. It then maps functionality in those files, such as styles, colors, master pages, and items, to ones in InDesign. You can expect text to recompose because of the different text composition engines, but, by and large, the conversion process works pretty well.

What’s surprising is the number of customers who report not really using this feature as much as they thought they would. Instead, they keep a copy of QuarkXPress or PageMaker installed for those occasional times when an older job comes back in and needs an update. They then build new templates and files in InDesign to take advantage of the way InDesign works and the unique features it offers.

One question we sometimes hear is, “Why don’t you open QuarkXPress 5.x and 6.x files?” The answer is simple: We’ve been told that the file format is encrypted, and that means that we’re not allowed to open those files. Quark has recently announced that it’s embracing open standards in future releases of QuarkXPress. This announcement sounds like great news for customers because it implies that it will become easier for customers to get at their own content, and to more easily move that content anywhere they want, whether it’s to a database or to an InDesign layout.

Customizing your design environment
InDesign is highly customizable, so you can set it up to work the way you want. Many features are presented in handy palettes, which dock along the right edge of your window by default. Clicking a palette tab displays the options in a group of palettes, and clicking it again hides those palettes. You can also open or close palettes by choosing them from the Window menu.

You can arrange palettes just the way you want for certain tasks, and then save those arrangements as named workspaces, which you can switch to instantly. For example, let’s say you like to have text-oriented palettes immediately available when you’re focused on formatting text. You can close certain palettes, open others, arrange them onscreen, and then choose Window>Workspace>Save Workspace to name the arrangement for later use. When you select that named workspace in the future, InDesign will immediately switch to the arrangement you’ve made.

We also recommend getting to know the context-sensitive Control palette. By default, this palette appears just under the menus at the top of the InDesign window. However, you can drag it out and let it hover over your page or dock it to the bottom of your window. The options in this palette change depending on whether you have objects, tables, or text selected. Practically any formatting option available in InDesign is available through the Control palette.

Building your skills
InDesign experts will tell you that you can get comfortable and start producing good work in InDesign within a day or two of playing with it. However, developing deeper expertise takes a bit longer and requires a little more focus. We recommend setting aside time here and there to explore the product on your own, skim the online Help or printed documentation, or take advantage of these excellent sources of information:

• Try a training video. Visit KW Computer Training (www.photoshopvideos.com), Total Training (www.totaltraining.com), or Lynda.com (www.lynda.com) to find in-depth guided training on InDesign.
• Check out self-paced online training. Drop by Element K (www.elementk.com) to try out self-paced online InDesign training.
• Subscribe to a magazine for ongoing tips and tricks. Layers is The How-To Magazine for Everything Adobe (www.layersmagazine.com). InDesign Magazine (www.indesignmag.com) is a bi-monthly PDF magazine edited by page-layout guru David Blatner and creativepro.com editor-in-chief Terri Stone, and is devoted entirely to InDesign.
• Visit the Adobe Resource Center. Formerly called Adobe Studio, the Adobe Resource Center (www.studio.adobe.com) offers abundant tips and tutorials to help you make optimal use of InDesign.
• Get the Adobe InDesign CS2 Classroom in a Book. Developed by Adobe Press, this book offers step-by-step lessons in InDesign CS2 fundamentals, plus advanced tips and techniques to hone your skills.
• Indulge in a great book. InDesign is a popular topic for technology authors today, so you can find a book to fit practically any need by browsing the computer section of your local bookstore or searching for InDesign in an online bookstore. We also recommend searching by the names of authors such as David Blatner, Sandee Cohen, Anne-Marie Concepción, Galen Gruman, Scott Kelby, Olav Martin Kvern, Deke McClelland, Terry White, and others.

A community of your own
Many designers prefer to pick up tips and tricks from other power users. If that’s your style, you might want to check out an InDesign User Group meeting in major cities across the United States. You can register for a meeting at www.indesignusergroup.com. You’ll then receive notifications of upcoming meetings in your area. [Insert IDUG website.psd]
The InDesign Conference offers in-depth training with InDesign experts and a chance to rub shoulders with a wide range of InDesign enthusiasts. You’ll find information about these regularly scheduled conferences at www.theindesignconference.com.

Finally, to locate service providers, plug-in developers, and trainers who support InDesign, visit http://partners.adobe.com, where you can search through an online listing.

Strategies for switching
Designers employ a wide variety of techniques for switching to InDesign, from easing into it slowly one project at a time, to switching “cold turkey” and never looking back. Only you can judge the strategy that suits you best. No matter your technique, you’ll find an enthusiastic community and a wide range of resources to speed you on your way.

Apply today
The Quick Apply palette is a space-efficient and speedy way to apply styles to text or objects (see “More style points,” below). The palette remains hidden until summoned with a keystroke or by choosing Edit>Quick Apply. To use Quick Apply, select some text or an object and press Command-Return (PC: Control-Enter). Use the arrow keys to move up and down in the style list, or type a portion of a style name in the search field to narrow the list of styles. Press Return or Enter to apply the selected style to the text or object. To force the text or object to discard any local formatting, press Option-Return (PC: Alt-Enter) instead.

When you’re building documents that have extensive style lists, use Quick Apply to format text and objects instead of opening the palettes for Object Styles, Paragraph Styles, and Character Styles, as this will save screen space for your document page and other palettes. You can also use the Quick Apply palette to edit styles on the fly. When the Quick Apply palette is visible, select a style name and press Command-Return (PC: Control-Enter) to display the dialog for editing character, paragraph, or object styles. This is a very fast way to refine styles across the entire document.

More style points
Object styles let you consistently apply the same fill and stroke colors, feathering, transparency, drop shadows, etc. to many objects with one click. In previous versions of InDesign, if you wanted several objects to share the same appearance, it was necessary to manually copy all the attributes between them. With InDesign CS2’s object styles, you can reuse an object’s unique attributes, including its text formatting.

To create a new object style, select a single object whose style attributes will serve as the template and click the Create New Style icon at the bottom of the Object Styles palette (Window>Object Styles). Apply an object style onto other shapes and frames by selecting an object then choosing the object style’s name from the Object Styles or Quick Apply palette. By default, new object styles will not include the paragraph style of the text within a text frame unless you edit the object style to include it. To edit the object style, double-click on the style name in the Object Styles palette. Select the checkbox for Paragraph Styles in the Object Style Options dialog to include a specific paragraph style with the object style.

Anchors away
For several versions, InDesign has supported inline or anchored objects (which can be any single object or a group of objects). To anchor an object within a text flow, copy the object or group to the clipboard, double-click to place your text cursor within a text box, and paste the copied item. When you reflow or edit the text, the anchored object or group will flow within the text frame. InDesign CS2 takes the anchored object idea further by making it possible to float the object outside the bounds of the text flow’s frame(s).

Select an anchored object and choose Object>Anchored Object>Options and choose Custom from the Position pop-up menu to view all the possibilities for placement on the page. Flow the diagrams, callouts, pull-quotes, or notes in the margin of a page, while maintaining control over the anchored object’s placement, relative to the text frame, page, or spread.

Shape shifter
To transform the shape of an existing frame, select the frame and choose Object>Convert Shape and select from several variations of rectangle, ellipse, triangle, polygon, or line. You can convert a series of rectangles into triangles (or any other shape) in one step.

Fonts list
To view type samples in the font menus, choose InDesign>Preferences>Type (PC: Edit>Preferences>Type), check the box for Font Preview Size, and choose the size of the previewed type from the adjacent pop-up menu. This will display a sample of each font in the font pop-up menus in the Control and Character palettes. If you have many fonts loaded and you find InDesign CS2’s font menus a bit sluggish, try turning off this feature.

Alternative type styles
Certain OpenType fonts, such as Poetica Std, allow you to apply complete families of typographic alternatives, called Stylistic Sets, to your text with a click. Highlight the text on the page, click on the Control or Character palette’s flyout menu, select OpenType>Stylistic Sets, and choose a stylistic set.

Placing PDF pages
You can place some or all of the pages from a multipage PDF file in your layout. Choose File>Place, and in the Place dialog, select the PDF to import, select the Show Import Options checkbox, uncheck the Replace Selected Item checkbox, and click Open. Choose the previewed page, all, or a specific range of pages in the General pane. Click OK and the multipage PDF cursor appears to place the pages of the PDF.

Click once on your document to place the next page of the PDF. To place all of the PDF pages at once, hold Option (PC: Alt) and click once on your document. There’s no means to place a sequence of PDF pages automatically across document pages, so you must click once each time to place the next page.

Layer cake
InDesign CS2’s multilayer support allows you to choose which layers of a multilayer Photoshop or PDF file should appear in the placed image. Choose File>Place and select the Show Import Options checkbox in the Place dialog. In the Layers pane of the Image Import Options dialog, click the Eye icon next to the name of an image layer to turn it on or off.

To edit the layer visibility of a multilayer image after it’s placed, select the image with the Direct Selection tool or the new Position tool, and choose Object>Object Layer Options. In the Object Layer Options dialog, click the Eye icon next to the name of an image layer to turn it on or off.

New listings
Lists of paragraphs in InDesign CS2 can be automatically numbered or bulleted. To view the numbered and bulleted list settings, choose Bullets and Numbering from the flyout menu from either the Paragraph palette or the Control palette when it’s in Paragraph mode. From the List Type pop-up menu, choose Bullets, Numbers, or choose None to remove any list formatting. Set the font, color, position, or bullet character for the list. Numbered and bulleted lists are essentially smart paragraph styles that add a user-defined bullet character or number and indent each paragraph for you.

Snippets
You may save an object or a group of objects for later reuse by dragging it onto your desktop, or you may select an object or group, choose File>Export, and choose InDesign Snippet from the Format pop-up menu. A snippet file is an XML file that remembers a group or an object’s contents, color, formatting, position on the page, etc. Use Place (File>Place) to add a saved snippet file to a layout using its original coordinates.

Checking Czechs
As you type, InDesign CS2’s dynamic spell checking (Edit> Spelling>Dynamic Spelling) flags misspellings with red wiggly lines under suspect words. To enable InDesign to fix misspelled words for you as you type, choose Text Autocorrect under InDesign>Preferences>Autocorrect (PC: Edit>Preferences>Autocorrect). You can add your own frequently misspelled words to the list in the Auto-correct preferences.

Solid footing
The footnotes feature creates automatically formatted and numbered footnotes at the bottom of each page within a text flow. Each footnote travels with its reference text as it moves from page to page. Choose Type>Insert Footnote to create a new footnote. For in-depth footnote numbering and formatting choices, choose Type>Document Footnote Options.

Going backward
While InDesign CS can open InDesign CS2 files, it requires an extra step or two and the process isn’t trouble-free. To export your InDesign CS2 files to a format that InDesign CS can open, choose File>Export, and choose InDesign Interchange from the Format pop-up menu. Files saved in the Interchange (INX) format can be opened with InDesign CS with some exceptions for third-party plug-ins and CS2-only features. Since this process is a conversion, some parts of a CS2 file may not be converted in the expected manner. Also, you may have to disable all third-party InDesign plug-ins and restart InDesign CS2 before exporting a CS2 file to ensure that the resulting Interchange file will open without causing InDesign CS to crash.

Force pasteboard guides
If, when dragging out a guide, you release the mouse button when the guide is on the page, you get a page guide; if you let go over the pasteboard, you get a pasteboard guide. You can also force it to be a pasteboard guide by holding down the Command (PC: Control) key before releasing the mouse button.

Deleting guides
I know a guy who puts so many guides on his pages that it’s hard to see the content. Here are two ways to get rid of all the guides on a spread. You could choose Layout>Create Guides, turn on the Remove Existing Ruler Guides checkbox, and then press OK. Alternately, you could press Command-Option-G (PC: Control-Alt-G) to select all the guides on your spread. Then just press Delete to make ’em go away.

Shear versus Skew
InDesign’s Transform palette (Window>Object & Layout>Transform) and Control palette both sport a Shear X Angle field. Type a positive number and any selected object shears to the right; a negative number shears to the left. But how do you shear up or down? (Some people call this “skewing” an object.) It’s surprisingly easy: Just enter the same number in both the Shear X Angle field and the Rotation Angle field. Bonus tip: You can shear in any direction with the Free Transform tool (E). First click on any side handle (not corner handle) of the object with the Free Transform tool and then hold down the Command (PC: Control) key before you start dragging.

Center an object on the page
Why, oh why, won’t the Align palette (Window>Object & Layout>Align) let you center an object (or group) to the page or spread? It’s so frustrating. Fortunately, there’s a pretty quick workaround. In fact, there are two of them. First, you can draw any object the same size as the page, select this object plus the one you want to align, and then use the Align palette (or the Align buttons in the Control palette). Now you can delete that original “dummy” object. Here’s an even easier way: Select the object you want to center and cut it to the clipboard (Edit>Cut). Now press Command-zero (PC: Control-zero) to fit the page in the window (and center it). Now paste (Edit>Paste). Boom, you’re done. (Note that this second method isn’t quite as precise, but it’s still accurate enough for most work.)

Find your picture on disk
You’ve got a picture in an InDesign document, but you’re not sure where the original high-resolution file is on disk—or was it on the server? InDesign offers a quick and painless way to find your images: Double-click on the image’s name in the Links palette and the Link Info dialog shows you the file path. Even better, in CS2 you can select the image on your page or in the Links palette, then choose Reveal in Finder (PC: Reveal in Explorer) from the Links palette flyout menu. That switches to the Finder (PC: Windows Explorer) and selects the file on disk for you.

Move Registration color
The Registration color should be very rarely used for anything other than small registration marks. After all, 100% Registration will print 100% of every color (cyan, yellow, magenta, black, and spot colors). Unfortunately, Adobe placed the Registration swatch right next to the Black swatch in the Swatches palette, and too often people click on it instead of Black. Disaster! You can save yourself some trouble by dragging the color swatch down in the palette to the end of the list. Didn’t know you could drag swatches, did you? Do this when no documents are open and the re-ordering is good for every new document you create.

Alphabetize your menus
You’ve looked at the File menu a dozen times today but suddenly you can’t find the feature you’re looking for. You can call it a “senior moment,” but this “temporary feature blindness” happens to the best (and youngest) of us all. “Why on earth didn’t Adobe alphabetize these menus?” you wonder out loud (another sign of approaching senility). Fortunately, you can alphabetize your menus in InDesign: Just hold down Command-Option-Shift (PC: Control-Alt-Shift) before clicking on the menu title! This even works for submenus, such as the Font menu.

See your document history
When did you first create the file you’re working on? Was it originally made in QuarkXPress and then opened in InDesign? How many times has this document been saved under a different name? All these questions (and more!) are answered in a hidden dialog inside InDesign. Hold down the Command (PC: Control) key when you choose About InDesign from the InDesign menu (PC: Help menu) to see the Component Information dialog. Most of the information in this dialog is relevant only to Adobe’s software engineers and tech support department. However, the Document Info section can give you some valuable details, especially when you’re trying to troubleshoot your own problems.

Styles
If you’re using paragraph or character styles, you’re already automating some work. A style is a collection of settings, such as font, font size, space above paragraph, and so on. When you apply a style, you apply all of the settings in the style to the selected text or paragraph in a single step. Using styles is much more efficient than formatting your text line by line.

InDesign provides expected paragraph and character styles, which you find in most modern word processor and desktop publishing packages. In addition to these, InDesign CS2 adds object styles, which let you set up properties for graphics and text frames. For example, with object styles, you can set up a style for a sidebar. When you create a text frame for your sidebar, you apply the sidebar object style. InDesign automatically sets up the new frame in the margin of your document with a standard width and height. You can also save stroke, fill, color, and several other attributes of the text frame as part of the object style. (For more information, refer to the preceding tutorial on styles.)

Scripting
InDesign supports three scripting languages—AppleScript (Mac), VisualBasic (Windows), and Java­Script (Mac and Windows)—with which you can automate almost any InDesign task. For example, you can use a script to strip out double spaces and extra paragraph returns from a story, or to produce a creative effect, such as randomly changing the font and color of characters in a text selection. You can also write scripts for more complex tasks. The Adobe Studio Exchange (www.adobestudioexchange.com) contains numerous scripts, including a character and word count utility, graphing tools, and a page impositioning utility.

For details about scripting, refer to www.adobe.com/products/indesign/scripting.html. Check your Creative Suite installation CDs for script resources, as well.

Automating layout with XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) provides an application-neutral foundation for many different types of automated workflows. You can combine InDesign with XML files to automate layout tasks. InDesign gives you several different options for working with XML. For a one-time project, you can import XML, lay out the XML content in your InDesign pages, and then format the content as necessary.

For more repetitive publishing tasks, you can set up an InDesign file that automatically associates XML tags with InDesign styles. When you import an XML file, InDesign automatically assigns the relevant formatting to each bit of content. If your content resides in a database, use an XML file as an intermediate format between the database and the InDesign layout file.

InDesign Server
For extreme automation requirements, you can implement InDesign Server CS2. This technology allows you to run InDesign without any user input. If you need the ability to publish large amounts of variable data without any user intervention, look into InDesign Server. It’s available only through third-party system integrators. For details, refer to www.adobe.com/products/indesign/indservermain.html.

The Anchored Object feature allows frames to follow specific points in text automatically. The Anchor icon tells you which objects are anchored. You can anchor any frame to a text location, but in practice you’ll stick with smaller elements. Large elements usually need to be placed in one text location and left there. If they move with the text, they can easily bump into other large elements on the same page, creating layout problems.

While there are several ways to create anchored objects, the most straightforward way is to first create or place an object in its own frame. Choose the Selection tool (V) and cut (Edit>Cut) the frame. Then switch to the Type tool (T), click in the text where you want to link the object, and paste (Edit>Paste) the frame.

Now you’re ready to do the anchoring. Select the object to be anchored with the Selection tool, then choose Object>Anchored Object>Options to open the Anchored Object Options dialog. Choose Custom from the Position pop-up menu for additional options that will let you place the object. (After experimenting a few times, the options here will make more sense, so be patient.)
The first section of the dialog, Anchored Object, is where you choose the anchor spot in the text relative to the object (here, the settings for the text sidebar). If the text will be to the right of the object, as in our graphic icon example, make sure the right square is selected (black). Typically, you’ll have a margin gutter in your layout along the outside of the page to hold the anchored objects, while the text would be inside. (Tip: Turn on the Relative to Spine checkbox to automatically flip the anchor location in facing-pages documents.)

The second section, Anchored Position, is where you choose to position the anchored object (here, the settings for the graphic icon). It’s typically on the opposite side of the text anchor location, but that will depend on your layout. Again, select the square for the desired location (in our graphic icon example, the left-hand one).

The X Relative To pop-up menu lets you choose horizontally where the anchored object is relative to the text anchor, while the Y Relative To pop-up menu lets you choose its vertical location. In both cases, you can enter offset values to precisely control the position. Most often, you’ll choose Text Frame and Line (Baseline), respectively, so the object follows the text as it moves. But you may have layouts where you want, say, all figures to be at the top or bottom of a page, so you would choose Page Margin for the Y Relative To option in that case. Try different settings to see what they do.

As you can see, you’ll need to experiment to get the hang of this feature but once you do, you’ll be able to automate a lot of detail work in your layouts.

The technology making this possible is VJ software that allows for video clips to be triggered at the touch of a button and sent to multiple screens for public viewing. The clips are sometimes prerecorded and other times live feeds of the audience or what’s happening on stage. What separates this from the job of a regular video technician is that the content of the video clips is often created by the VJs themselves and that there’s no predefined order to when those clips will be played. The VJ is directly interacting with the musicians and “jamming” alongside with them, playing his visual keyboard as just another part of the band or as just another DJ rocking the crowd.

For those who use content creation software like Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, and Premiere, being a VJ provides a whole new outlet in which to show off their work and express themselves creatively. Helping to make that possible are three top-selling software packages that are built from the ground up to be used for live performance, whether onstage or from the back of a club. One of these apps just might be your next career.

ArKaos VJ 3.5 MIDI
The simplest of the VJ software family for a newbie to learn is probably ArKaos VJ 3.5 MIDI ($335 download; $359 CD; Mac and Windows). Like all VJ software, it can build a full performance using a few simple video loops, but ArKaos (www.arkaos.net) also allows you to alter them using more than 100 real-time effects. Its claim to fame is that it has one of the simplest interfaces and can be learned in only a few minutes with its drag-and-drop and key-punch functionality at all levels. It’s also the only software out of the three reviewed here that came with a printed user manual (215 pages).

ArKaos VJ supports resolutions up to 1920×1080 pixels, and version 3.5 now supports direct rendering to DV through FireWire. This is a great way to record your live performances. It also supports full midi suites, both onscreen and off, as well as music authoring applications such as Cubase, E-Magic, and ReWire. For those with a lighting background, there’s also a version of ArKaos available with full compatibility with the DMX protocol.

The Flash Text system can display onscreen messages using customizable Flash animations with editable text. Advanced transfer modes allow you to combine your visuals with masks (like Luma mattes and Chroma keying) to produce a number of different display effects. Besides the 60+ original ArKaos effects, the new version has added 42 FreeFrame effects. FreeFrame is an open-source, cross-platform, real-time video effects plug-in system designed for use in VJ applications. You can download even more effects from the FreeFrame website at http://freeframe.sourceforge.net.

Looking at the interface, you can tell that the company expects most of their users to perform using a midi keyboard. I’ve found that users either really love this or absolutely hate it. You may want to look at a couple of alternatives to the musical keyboard, like the M-Audio UC-33e midi controller or the Evolution X-Session midi control surface with crossfader.

Modul8 2.01
Swiss company garageCUBE makes one of the most powerful VJ software apps, called Modul8 (299 Euro [about $365]; Mac only). Unlike most of the other video mixers, Modul8 distinguishes itself by allowing for more creation and composition of your video sets, both before and during your live performances. Modul8 is not an A-to-B mixing type of video program: it’s much more like a live compositing video editor. It supports almost all QuickTime codecs, Flash animation, and image formats, and it works in full resolution with no scale-down happening behind the scenes. The output resolution can be in PAL, NTSC, SVGA, XGA, or higher. The same is true for your movies: not a single pixel is lost. Modul8 renders your media exactly as you’ve compressed it, with the maximum available quality and at highest possible resolution.

To reach this kind of performance, Modul8 pushes your hardware and the Mac OS to the limit. The full rendering is done through the GPU of your computer’s graphic card. The better your graphics card, the better your results will be. That’s why I recommend a dual-processor G5 desktop Mac instead of a PowerBook for use with Modul8. However, if you have to run it from a PowerBook, the company has added a number of features to lower the latency as much as possible at every level of the application. One of my favorites is that the movie swapping and looping of video clips are pre-buffered to avoid latency.

Modul8 is able to handle up to 10 different layers of media, with each one having its own settings. Layers can be re-ordered at any time with a simple drag-and-drop, and can also be grouped into two compositions, allowing you to work on one animation while you’re projecting another. Version 2.01 (the current version) includes an advanced transformer mechanism that allows the creation of 3D objects from your 2D media. There’s also a matrix mechanism for tiling your video source that supports 3D extrusion, a 3D particle engine designed for real-time manipulation, and a real-time patch system that lets you create complex dynamic 3D shapes by combining primitives, displacement mapping, and sound waves.

Version 2 integrates several new technologies to record a composition and to render it to a QuickTime movie. Specifically, it allows you to record hours of performance in an internal vectored format that takes no disk space or CPU time. Once the performance is finished, you can render your work several times using different codecs, frame rates, and resolutions without having to change anything in your original composition.

So what’s the downside of Modul8, you may ask? It’s by far the most complicated user interface of the three software packages we’re looking at. I would desperately like to have a DVD training video shipped with the product. Unfortunately, you don’t even get a manual—just a Help menu built into the program and a forum on the garageCUBE website (www.garagecube.com/modul8). The power of this program is also its biggest problem. It even has an integrated programming environment that allows you write Python scripts straight from inside of the application! For the majority of us who got into design so we wouldn’t have to learn programming, Modul8 will require a major commitment of learning time before we will be comfortable enough to use for a live performance.

Union 1.5
Livid Instruments makes my personal favorite of the three software applications; a product called Union ($299; Mac only [a Windows version is due sometime in 2005]). And just like its name, I think it’s the best union of both a technically powerful program and an easy-to-use interface for live performance. Union does the best job of differentiating between an artist and a technician. Union wants to set free the artist in you by providing an interface geared less toward preproduction and more toward live on-stage performance.

To musicians, phrases like “four effects layers per channel,” “large clip bank,” “integrated MIDI templates,” “effects triggers,” “clip sequencer,” and “easy-to-use LFOs” make them wonder if this is a new sampler or synthesizer. And in a way it is—only it’s for images. Livid’s video engine allows for instant manipulation and control of multimedia content while utilizing hundreds of effects. You can also do live feed manipulation, movie triggering, compositing, and countless other performance enhancing treatments to help you create an immersive multimedia performance. [Insert union_screen_big.jpg]
The developers of Union compare their software to that of a guitar. “Just as a guitar can be used for three-chord punk rock or a complex jazz improvisation, so can Union,” says Jay Smith, President of Livid Instruments. “You can make video with it very easily, but with a little practice and vision you can create some amazingly complex performances. We want the artist to be able to create their own voice with the software and make the software transparent in their performance.”

My favorite thing about the Union package is that it has a video tour on its website (http://lividinstruments.com). I would have liked a printed manual as well, but the video tour (that I could pause and rewind) was incredibly helpful at getting me up to speed on the interface in the shortest amount of time. The tour clearly shows how Union is meant for more real-time creation and improvisation, but that it has the advanced features and effects for almost any production use.

Coda
You can’t go wrong with any these VJ packages. Each of them has something special that will appeal to one person over another. So my advice is to download the demos from each of the websites and take them out for a spin. At the very least you’ll find a new avenue of creative expression and freedom. At the most, you’ll find a new career. Go be creative!

However, there’s no environment more suited to take advantage of AGM than the Creative Suite itself. With each new revision of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and GoLive, the integration gets tighter and tighter. In addition, the number of open standards supported stays current as well.

Let’s start by taking a look at Adobe Bridge. This is the “glue” for all of the applications in the Creative Suite. Bridge allows you to view, organize, preview, add metadata, set and check color management settings across the suite, view Version Cue projects and assets, and run batch processing scripts for Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. One of Bridge’s most important management functions is its ability to update file information, even across multiple documents at once.

Many of you may already use Photoshop’s File>File Info option to add a host of information to your file, including author, keywords, and usage rights, but this can get tedious if much of the information is the same for a particular set of photos. To save time, view a folder containing all of the images in Bridge and marquee select (click-and-drag) a series of photos you’d like to modify. In this case, we want to add Creator information to each image. With the photos still selected, toggle open the IPTC Core region in the Metadata tab of Bridge, click on the Creator field, click the Yes button in the warning dialog informing you that you’ve selected multiple files, and then simply type a name in the Creator field. The information you enter is now added to each file.

Bridge also lets you preview many file formats without opening the fi les in special readers or browsers; you can even preview animations and listen to sound files. Among the many file formats supported are SWF (Shockwave-Flash), QuickTime, Animated GIF, AIFF and WAV fi les, multipage PDF files, SVG, and of course, native Photoshop and Illustrator files.

In addition to managing and previewing your assets, Bridge also enables you to perform batch processes to your assets. With multiple items selected, the Tools menu allows you to Batch Rename and change metadata; create a Version Cue project; run Photoshop services (such as greeting cards and ordering prints); and access batch functions in Photoshop (such as Picture Package), Illustrator (Live Trace a series of images), and InDesign (create a contact sheet)—all without leaving Bridge.

Synchronizing PDF settings across applications just got a whole lot easier; in fact, you don’t have to do anything except make some settings in the first place. If you’re working in InDesign and you create and save custom settings in the PDF Preset dialog, you’re actually making a preset across all of the Creative Suite 2 applications. Start from any CS2 application (we’ll start from InDesign), choose File>Adobe PDF Presets>Define (in Photoshop, Illustrator, and GoLive, go to Edit>Adobe PDF Presets), click the New button, and choose your custom settings. Name your preset and click OK, and then click Done in the Adobe PDF Presets dialog. Now from Photoshop or Illustrator, simply choose File>Save As, specify the file type as PDF, and you’ll see your custom preset in the Adobe PDF Preset pop-up menu. From Acrobat Distiller you’ll see the preset in the Default Settings pop-up menu in the main dialog.

Your PDF settings are also available in GoLive! With a webpage open in GoLive, select the PDF Preview tab at the top of the document’s window. With the tab selected, open the Inspector palette (Window>Inspector) and in the Preset pop-up menu you’ll see all of the possible settings for rendering an HTML file to PDF, with more reliable results than using Acrobat’s Web Capture or printing to PDF from a Web browser. Can you guess which presets are available?

When designing in the Creative Suite, there are many options available for nondestructive editing of your work. Styles and effects are available in all of the applications, and they allow you to separate your content from design. You may be familiar with these concepts in InDesign as style sheets, or in Photoshop as layer effects. But in actuality, you can apply these nondestructive principles throughout your workflow.

Illustrator CS2—The latest version of Illustrator brings us Live Trace and Live Paint. With Live Trace, you can actually “swap out” the bitmap image you’re tracing by simply selecting the image in the Links palette (Window>Links), clicking on the Relink icon at the bottom of the palette, and selecting another image file. Illustrator will automatically update the vector trace information. This is great for testing different bitmap files against your trace settings. And when you have just the right image, you can fine-tune it in Photoshop by clicking the Edit Original icon in the Links palette.

As for Live Paint, you may have seen demos of painting a Live Trace object (which does break the “link” of the Live Trace effect, by the way), but did you know you could use this feature as a live Pathfi nder tool? In this example, you don’t need to split these two shapes apart in order to color the intersecting area a different color. Simply select both shapes with the Selection tool (V), select the Live Paint Bucket tool (K), choose a color, and click in an area where the two shapes intersect. The “live” part of the tool’s name refers to the fact that you can still move the shapes around using the Direct Selection tool (A), and the live painted intersection area will continuously update without destroying the original shapes as with the Pathfinder palette.

The Illustrator effects under the Effects menu let you apply styling to objects and text without changing the base artwork. These effects include arrowheads on rules (that will always point in the right direction if you rotate them), 3D effects, and rounded corners, to name a few. To make changes to effects, open the Appearance palette from the Window menu, select your object, and double-click the appearance list item.

InDesign CS2—InDesign wins the most stylin’ points in the Suite with object styles. Now you can create styles such as drop shadows, strokes, and corner effects and save them into a single object style. First, select an object and apply some attributes and effects to it. In this case, we’ll color the background of the selected frame black. With the object selected, click the Create New Style icon in the Object Styles palette (Window>Object Styles). Now select the remaining objects you’d like to style, and then simply click the object style name. To rename an object style and to see a full list of the attributes that can be stored in an object style, double-click a style item in the Object Styles palette.

GoLive CS2—GoLive has added even more support for visual CSS (cascading style sheets) development, allowing you to take full advantage of separating content from design on your sites: CSS defi nitions can contain background images, borders, padding, indents, and position. After applying the CSS item (class or id) to an object in your page, you’ll see the object take on those characteristics. You can then make further modifications to your CSS objects and see a live update in the open page.

You can begin to experiment by opening your document’s CSS editor and selecting an HTML element or class. In this example, we’re going to select the <a> element, which is the HTML tag for a link. Changing this element’s appearance affects the way links look on the page. We select red here, and GoLive gives a live preview of what red will look like as the link color in our page—without even saving the document first!

Adobe has made it easier than ever to version your projects with Version Cue. Starting a new project is as easy as clicking on the New Version Cue Project button in the lower-left of the Bridge Center in Adobe Bridge (click on the Favorites tab and then click on Bridge Center). Next, in the New Project dialog, name your project and decide if you want to share with others on your network.

Once your project shows up in the Version Cue channel of Bridge (you’ll find it in the Folders tab under Version Cue), grab any existing files you want to add to your project and simply drag them into the open project folder in Bridge. Now you can access these files from any of the Creative Suite applications. For example, let’s choose File>Open from Illustrator. In the Open dialog, choose Use Adobe Dialog in the lower-left corner, select Version Cue, then twirl down your project, and select a file you want to work on.

Once you’ve made changes to the file, you’ll see a new option under the File menu called Save a Version. Because you opened this file from a Version Cue project, Illustrator will be instructed to save a completely new version of this file. Versioning allows you to select this file in Version Cue and “roll back” to a previous version of the file. You can view all versions of a particular file in Bridge! Say goodbye to filenames like “logo_final.ai,” “FINAL_logo_final.ai,” etc.

GoLive takes the Version Cue integration one step further. Version Cue is incorporated into GoLive’s Site Window and gives you even more information about your project, such as who’s in your project and what they’ve checked out, in addition to an Alternates status for each file. This integration isn’t surprising since Version Cue was first introduced by Adobe as GoLive Workgroup Server, back at version 6.

Version Cue has an Advanced Administration option available through your Web browser. You can access the Advanced Administration a few ways. First, Control-click (PC: Right-click) a project folder in the Bridge view of Version Cue, and select Edit Properties. In the Edit Properties dialog, click the lower-left button labeled Advanced Administration. This launches the Advanced Administration Web application in your browser, giving you the ability to create users, perform project backups, run reports, remove old versions, and even start a PDF review with your colleagues!

Making their debut in GoLive a few versions back, Smart Objects have made their way into all of the Creative Suite applications in one way or another. You can begin using Smart Objects without dramatically changing the way you prepare art and photos. What will change is the way you use these fi les once they’re in your layouts. No more saving layered TIFF fi les or exporting artwork to EPS or JPEG fi les. Once you begin using the native fi les, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without Smart Objects.

InDesign CS2—After importing a PSD file into InDesign, select the image, then Control-click (PC: Right-click) on the image and select Object Layer Options. You’ll see a dialog that gives you access to all of the layers and layer comps available in your Photoshop file. Selecting the Preview option gives you a live representation of the changes in your document. You may also notice an area called Update Link Options, with the ability to choose an option called Keep Layer Visibility Overrides (the other option is Use Photoshop’s Layer Visibility). If you choose to have overrides, InDesign will automatically reactivate the layers you select in InDesign regardless of changes you may make to the file later in Photoshop (assuming, of course, you don’t delete a needed layer).

Illustrator CS2—Illustrator also supports accessing layers and layer comps set up in Photoshop. When choosing the Place option in the File menu and selecting your Photoshop file that has layer comps, you’ll see a dialog similar to InDesign’s. In this example below, we’re using the same Photoshop file, except we’re accessing the layer comp named “design 1″ on the left and “design 2″ on the right.

Photoshop CS2—Photoshop offers its own form of Smart Objects, allowing you to embed Illustrator and other Photoshop documents in your original Photoshop document. What’s different about Smart Objects in Photoshop is that they travel inside the Photoshop file. This means that any application that supports native Photoshop fi les will also be able to see the artwork from a Smart Object, even applications like After Effects and Premiere!

To create an Illustrator Smart Object, select some artwork in Illustrator with the Selection tool (V) and choose Copy from the Edit menu. Next, switch to an open document in Photoshop and select Edit>Paste. Notice that Photoshop has a new Paste dialog item called Smart Object. Select this new option, click OK, and then press Enter: You’ll see a small document icon in the Layers palette signifying the embedded document. You can scale this object up, then down, then back up again, and Photoshop will continue to re-rasterize the image to the document’s full resolution. Double-click the Smart Object icon in the Layers palette and Photoshop will extract the document and pass it over to Illustrator for editing. Once you finish editing in Illustrator, simply save and close the document, and Illustrator will give the revised artwork back to Photoshop.

The second type of Smart Object you can make in Photoshop is a Photoshop Smart Object. Here’s how: In our layout, we want to create a Smart Object out of a series of layers. To do this, we’ll select the layers that make up the statistic callout by selecting the first layer, then Shift-selecting the last. With all of our desired layers selected, Control-click (PC: Right-click) on the selected layers and choose Group Into New Smart Object. Now when you double-click the Smart Object’s layer thumbnail, Photoshop will open these layers in a separate Photoshop document for editing. Once you finish editing, simply save and close the document and the edited Smart Objects will be passed back to the original document.

GoLive CS2—The July/August 2005 issue of Layers magazine (page 62) featured an in-depth look at using Smart Objects in GoLive. However, there’s another Smart Object feature—automatic rollover creation from ImageReady. Using ImageReady’s Web Content palette, you can create states of your artwork to use as buttons. These rollover states work exactly the same way as layer comps, except that they tell GoLive to create multiple images along with custom text.

When you place the ImageReady file (same as a Photoshop file), you’ll see the Variable Settings dialog. Set your button text and click OK. The only difference here is GoLive asks for a folder name instead of a filename. The files for this particular button will be stored in that directory. Once created, you can use these button states in your website. In the example shown, the same images we used for the HTML pages in the site were also imported into Flash for use on portions of the site published in SWF format. Now GoLive becomes your graphics creator and manager, as well as your site development tool.

One of the most amazing integration features occurs between InDesign and GoLive. Start with a document in InDesign and then choose File>Package for GoLive. Save the package into the
Web-data:InDesign Packages directory of your GoLive site. In the Package for GoLive dialog, you’ll see a new option in CS2 allowing you to specify a range (instead of the entire document). Click the Package button and InDesign will begin to package all assets, graphics, and stories, and create XML fi les to explain to GoLive how to treat all of the assets. This is just like packaging InDesign fi les for your service bureau.

Now, switch to GoLive, toggle the InDesign Packages folder open in the right portion of the site window under the Extras tab, and double-click the package icon. This launches GoLive’s package viewer. There are three views to this viewer: InDesign Layout, Assets (with Bridge-like image resizing), and HTML Preview (to export the whole page as a CSS-based HTML page). In the InDesign Layout, you can rollover individual assets and drag them from the viewer directly into your page. This creates a Smart Object and writes a Web graphic to the destination of your choice. What’s more, you can drag stories into your webpage and create Smart Objects out of InDesign stories! To update the source files of these package Smart Objects, simply modify your original InDesign document, choose Package for GoLive, and overwrite the exist ing package with the new one. GoLive automatically updates all the Web art and stories linked to those assets.

With the integration level of these applications, there’s no limit to the workflows you can develop around the Creative Suite. As you begin to leverage your design across mediums, remember that you can use the same files for multiple purposes. Import native files whenever possible, use Smart Objects and Object Layers whenever possible, and always design in the most nondestructive way possible. Let the tools do the work for you.

Chris Converse is a graphic designer and multimedia developer specializing in websites, interactive media, print, and CD-ROMs. Visit his website at www.chrisconverse.com.

Character Widths

Pick a typeface with similar character widths
For the smoothest appearance, an alphabet’s characters should have similar widths. Reading has a natural rhythm; an alphabet such as Futura with widely varying character widths disrupts it.

Height-to-Width Ratio

Medium height-to-width ratio
We identify letters by their physical characteristics–stems, bars, loops, curves, and so on; the clearer they are the more legible the letter. As letters are compressed (or expanded), these features get distorted–diagonal strokes, for example, become quite vertical–and so are harder to identify.

X-height

Medium x-height
The x-height of a typestyle is the height of its lowercase characters. The larger the x-height, the denser the type will appear. You want medium; unusually tall or short x-heights are better suited for specialty projects.

Stroke Weight

Look for small variations in stroke weight
The best text faces have stroke weights that vary somewhat, which make converging lines that help the eye flow smoothly. But avoid extremes. Modern styles (left) vary too much; at high resolution their beautiful, superthin strokes disappear in a dazzle. Sleek geometric styles (far right) vary little or not at all, so are too uniform.

Mirrors

Watch out for mirrors
Geometric typestyles are so uniform that their letters are often mirror images. For text, this isn’t ideal–the more distinct each letter is, the more legible whole words will be. Look for typestyles that don’t mirror.

Counters

Avoid overlarge counters
Counters are the enclosed spaces inside letters. Avoid typestyles whose counters are very large in relation to the stroke weight. In the case of Avant Garde (right), note how much greater the space inside the letters is than the space outside. This will slow the reader. Set in text (far right), Avant Garde looks like Swiss cheese!

Type Quirks

Avoid quirkiness
Typographic sprites are fun to look at and great for heads, but in text they wear out their welcome fast. Why? The extra swashiness gives the eye too much to follow and is very tiring.

Favorite Text Faces

While many typefaces meet the requirements of legibility, readability, and beauty, the following four are the ones we turn to most often:

Adobe Caslon (11/12.75 pt)
First choice for books, Caslon may be the Roman alphabet’s most readable typeface. Its letters aren’t beau tiful, but strung into sentences and paragraphs they have fit, texture, bite, and can be read comfortably for hours. Caslon will withstand even the tightest leading.

Adobe Garamond (11.5/12.75 pt)
If we could have only one typeface, this would be it; Garamond is easy to read and elegant, too. A little on the dressy side, Garamond is a fine display face– rare in this class–and as a result can carry a document all by itself. Gara mond sets small; set text in 10-point minimum with about 10% extra leading.

ITC Stone Serif (9.5/12.75 pt)
Stone is boring to look at bit buttery to read. Characterized by its stub by, lower case r that tucks snugly to its neighbors, Stone is designed for outstanding fit. It sets large; 9-point is as big as you should go. Use at least 35% extra leading.

Janson Text 55 Roman (10.5/12.75 pt)
Janson holds the middle ground between the earthy, work manlike nature of Caslon and the high classiness of Garamond. Rounder and denser, it has a chiseled, resoslute appearance. Janson sets about average size; give it about 20% extra leading.

John McWade is a designer, teacher, and author who has been at the forefront of the graphic design and desktop publishing worlds for two decades. He is founder, publisher, and primary voice of Before & After magazine (www.bamagazine.com; email: layers@bamagazine.com).