• HD DVD: This format was developed by Toshiba and NEC and is supported by the DVD Forum. The DVD Forum defined the DVD specification we have today. Even though the DVD Forum has an extensive membership, the HD DVD specification is mainly being driven by Toshiba and NEC. Supporters of the HD DVD format include HP, Intel, Microsoft, Paramount, Toshiba, and Universal.

• Blu-ray Disc: This format was developed by Sony and the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). Members of the BDA include Apple Computer, LG, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and Thomson.

With either of the new high definition formats for DVD, content creators and DVD authors are free from the bonds of using just one compression method, like there is with standard definition DVDs (MPEG-2). Both competing formats offer the choice of three video codecs: MPEG-2, Microsoft’s VC-1, and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these new formats and try to answer some of your questions while also pointing out some key resources.

HD DVD format
There are two kinds of single-sided HD DVD discs for content playback: the 15-GB single-layer disc, and the dual-layer disc with double the capacity at a full 30 GB. Using the latest compression technologies, the 30-GB disc can store up to 8 hours (playback time depends on the data transfer rate) of 1080-line high definition images. Today’s standard definition DVD has a capacity of 8.5 GB and can contain roughly 4 hours of 525-line standard definition images. As for rewriteable formats, the DVD Forum has defined the standard for a single-sided, single-layer HD DVD-Rewritable disc with 20-GB capacity, which can accommodate about 5.5 hours of HD content. Why can you put 20 GB on a single-layer rewritable HD DVD disc, but only put 15 GB on a regular single-layer HD DVD disc? Your guess is as good as mine.

To learn more about authoring in the HD DVD format, check out the HD DVD Interactivity Authoring Forum on the Microsoft website located at http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/hddvd/threads/.

Blu-ray format
The Blu-ray format can store 25 GB on a single-layer disc, or 50 GB on a dual-layer, single-sided disc. This is about 5–10 times the capacity of standard definition DVDs. What makes Blu-ray so interesting to DVD creators is its two authoring modes.

HDMV mode offers all of the features of regular DVD-Video and streamlines the production of both Blu-ray Disc as well as DVD-Video titles since the production process incorporates many identical phases. It offers improvements in navigational and menu features, graphics and animation, subtitling support, and new features like browsable slide shows.

In regular DVD-Video, playback is interrupted each time a new menu screen is called. However, authoring in HDMV mode allows for multipage menus so that users can browse through the menu pages or select different menu paths while the audio and video remain playing in the background.

BD-J mode is based on the Java runtime environment and allows for extensive interactive applications including Internet connectivity. It’s based on Java 2 Micro Edition, so experienced programmers will quickly be familiar with the programming environment for BD-J. Every Blu-ray Disc player will be equipped with a Java interpreter, so that it’s capable of running discs authored in BD-J mode. This mode supports basic Internet protocols such as TCP/IP and HTTP, so it’s possible to connect to the disc publishers website to unlock content on the disc (after certain conditions, like payment, are met), or dynamically display information (e.g., local theater playing schedules for a movie) onscreen. It can even stream new audio/visual content.

For a complete list of all the new features available in both HDMV and BD-J modes, visit www.blu-raydisc.com/Section-13470/Section-13627/Index.html.

The rest of your questions
As of this writing, Adobe has not announced its support for either the HD DVD or Blu-ray format. We can probably expect that announcement around the time that they announce their next release of the Adobe Production Studio.

To get more advanced training, you’ll have to spend some money because it’s not available online. You’ll need to get the spec books for each format at a cost of $5,000+ each. You could also spend $100,000 to join the Sonic HDAA (High Definition Authoring Alliance). Here’s where the real players hang out to hone their craft!

A cheaper alternative is to buy a player and some discs and watch them repeatedly. With players running between $500–1,500 and discs running $40–60 each, you can drop a few thousand dollars relatively quickly. I expect that in 2007, we’ll see computer makers adding cheaper drives to their systems and companies like Adobe, Apple, and Ulead adding more authoring support to their existing programs. As with all new technology, the longer you can wait, the cheaper it will be…just don’t miss the boat and wait too long!

What Consumers Want To Know
Many people have been asking the following question: “Will high definition DVDs make my collection of regular DVDs useless?” While high definition discs won’t play on an existing DVD player, a high definition player is capable of playing your standard definition DVDs, so you won’t have to replace your entire collection. Also, if you’re not ready to invest in a high definition player, high definition DVDs can play on computer DVD drives with the right software upgrades.

There are some lucky people out there who have IT departments that can fix any problem that arises on their computer systems. Then there are even luckier people who have an IT help desk that actually knows how to fix issues with the Adobe Creative Suite. The rest of us are on our own, wearing the help desk hat along with the designer, photographer, Web designer, and retoucher hats. If you’re in that situation, read on for some strategies on solving problems in Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator (and how to avoid problems in the first place).

First, let’s start with Photoshop and narrow down the main types of problems into two categories: (1) weird and unexplainable; and (2) tools or functions not working. By weird and unexplainable we mean things such as this: You launch Photoshop and in the Toolbox there’s an empty square where the Clone Stamp tool is supposed to be. Or, you click on the Move tool and Photoshop just freezes. (We’ll get to the solutions in a moment.) The second category includes anything that isn’t working in Photoshop. For example, you go to a menu and some or all of the options are grayed out. Or, you try to use the Brush tool but nothing happens. Let’s examine these two main categories a little closer.

THE UNEXPLAINABLE
To a large degree, the behavior of Photoshop is determined by an important file known as preferences (more specifically, Adobe Photoshop CS2 Prefs). This file, typically around 150 KB in size, plays a major role in ensuring Photoshop runs properly, and it’s usually the culprit when weird things happen. So if you launch Photoshop and tools are missing, dialogs look strange, or you’re experiencing slowdowns or crashes, there may be something wrong with the preferences file. This is often described by saying, “Your preferences are corrupted,” which to me always conjures up images of tough-looking preferences from the wrong side of the tracks leading astray my poor, innocent preferences. I know that’s not at all what corrupted preferences means, but it does make for an interesting mental picture, doesn’t it?

There’s a simple solution for these kinds of weird behaviors or poor performance: reset the preferences. The easiest way to do this is to quit Photoshop and then restart it while holding down the Command-Option-Shift (PC: Control-Alt-Shift) keys. A dialog will appear asking if you want to “Delete the Adobe Photoshop Settings File?” Click Yes to delete the current preferences and replace them with the default preferences.

It’s important to note that any changes you have made in the Preferences dialog will be lost when the preferences are reset in this manner. So before you reset the preferences, you might want to press Command-K (PC: Control-K) to open Preferences and go through each dialog to make note of any customized settings. Then after you reset the preferences, you can manually change any settings to match your previous settings.

Some people suggest resetting the preferences on a regular basis as a form of “preventive medicine.” Although there’s nothing wrong with this idea, it’s worth remembering that any specific settings that you’ve changed will be lost when you reset the preferences. The only time you need to delete the preferences is when things just aren’t working right. On the other hand, if you work in a situation where a number of people share one workstation (a classroom, a scanning workstation, etc.), then you should consider resetting the preferences each time you start using Photoshop CS2. That way you can avoid any odd settings the previous person has used.

It’s less likely that you’ll ever need to reset your preferences in either Illustrator CS2 or InDesign CS2, but if you ever need to, the procedure is pretty much the same as it is for Photoshop CS2 with a couple of minor differences. When you use the keyboard shortcut Command-Option-Shift (PC: Control-Alt-Shift) when launching Illustrator, you will not get a warning dialog. In fact, you won’t see any change at all; Illustrator rebuilds the preferences in the background while it’s starting up. InDesign uses the same keyboard shortcut on the PC, but it’s slightly different on the Mac: Command-Option-Control-Shift.

When preferences are working
Here’s another option to resetting the preferences, and the only real trick is to remember to do this! When everything is working well for you and you have all your preferences set up the way you want, create a backup version of the preferences file. Then when Photoshop starts misbehaving, drag a copy of this backup file to replace the bad preferences.

To do this, locate your preferences file. On a Mac, go to Hard Drive:Users:[username]:Library:Preferences:Adobe Photoshop CS2 Settings:Adobe Photoshop CS2 Prefs.psp. On a PC, go to C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop\9.0\Adobe Photoshop CS2 Settings\Adobe Photoshop CS2 Prefs.psp.

Duplicate the Prefs file and move it to a location outside the Photoshop application folder. When you think you need to delete the preferences file, instead make a copy of your backup preferences and drag it into the Adobe Photoshop CS2 Settings folder, replacing the existing file.

THINGS THAT JUST DON’T WORK
The second category of problems we face is when tools, filters, commands, or other functions don’t work, or don’t work the way we were expecting. This is usually caused by one of two things: document-specific settings, such as the color mode or the layers in the document; or application-specific settings, such as tool settings in the Options Bar. (To help distinguish between these issues, document-specific settings will vary with each document you work with, while application-specific issues will be a problem even when you change documents.)

Here’s a simple way to very quickly narrow down the problem: create a new document. If the problem goes away, that suggests that the issue is with something specific to the other document. If the problem persists in a brand-new document, then it’s most likely that an application setting is causing the problem.

In the past when you ran into a tool or function that wouldn’t work you’d often get the Cancel symbol (circle with a slash though it) that didn’t tell you much of anything, but Photoshop CS2 has made major strides in clarifying the problem. For example, if you try to use the Brush tool and see the Cancel symbol, click once and a dialog will appear telling you exactly where the problem lies (in this example, the target layer is hidden).

In The Photoshop CS2 Help Desk Book we identified more than 60 error dialogs, and that doesn’t include repeats for common errors such as, “Could not use the _____ tool because the target layer is hidden.” Needless to say, if you get a warning dialog, take advantage of it to help you deal with the problem by correcting the error (showing the hidden layer, unlocking the layer, making a selection, or whatever else the error message is suggesting).

If you try to use a tool and it doesn’t work—and you don’t get an error message—here are a few things to check. First, take a look at the Layers palette. If you’re working on a multilayered document, there a number if potential problems, some of which might result in an error dialog, while others won’t. For example, the blend mode of a layer may be set to a choice that causes the color you’re painting with to not show at all. Or perhaps the Opacity is set too low, or the layers are in the wrong order. The bottom line is take a look at the layers and make sure that you’ve clicked on the correct layer, that it’s visible, and that all the settings are correct. If all the settings in the Layers palette seem correct, then take a look at the tool settings.

With few exceptions, the way a tool operates is determined by the settings in the Options Bar. Once you’ve changed a setting, that setting becomes the default for that particular tool until you change it again. If you last used the Clone Stamp tool a week ago and had it set to Lighten mode at 50% Opacity, that’s how it will continue to operate until you put the settings back to normal. That suggests that every time—and we mean every time—you start to use a different tool, take a look at the Options Bar and make sure that the settings are appropriate for what you want to do with the tool. (In other words, you shouldn’t necessarily put the settings back to the defaults: You may want to change the opacity, blend mode, or feather amount, depending on how you want to use that tool at that particular time. Just keep in mind that tool settings are “sticky,” so any changes you make will stay that way.)

Create Tool Presets
Some people suggest always resetting your tools so that the Options Bar is set to the default setting. Although that’s a good theory, in reality, some of the default settings are not the greatest. Instead, consider creating and using Tool Presets for each tool. That way you can actually create several custom settings for each tool. Here’s how:

First, change the tool settings the way you want. Next, click on the pop-up menu beside the tool thumbnail located on the far left of the Options Bar to open the Tool Preset Picker. Choose New Tool Preset from the flyout menu, name the preset, and click OK. That’s it. You can create as many presets for each tool as you want. So from now on, before using the tool, choose from your saved presets to decide which default you want to use.

Troubleshooting checklist
Here are some other questions that should be on your checklist when things aren’t working:

Selections:
Many operations in Photoshop begin with a selection or are affected by whether an area is selected or not, so ask yourself these questions: Did you forget that something was selected? Did you hide the selection by turning off the Extras (Command-H [PC: Control-H]) and forgot you did? Did you intend to select something first, but didn’t? Too much feather, not enough feathering, no feather?

Color:
Do you have the correct color set as your Foreground and Background? Is the document in the correct color mode? (Some colors will not print in CMYK, some filters don’t work in Grayscale, and some other functions work differently in Lab mode.)

Transforming:
If you’re transforming a selection or using Free Transform (Command-T [PC: Control-T]), you can’t do anything else until you’ve finished transforming. So if you see menus grayed out or other things aren’t working, press Enter to confirm the transformation or Esc to cancel.

AVOIDING PROBLEMS IN THE FIRST PLACE
Some people paint themselves into a corner by the way they work in Photoshop, which leaves them wondering how they can change their minds. Consider working in the most flexible way possible so that you give yourself plenty of opportunities to change your mind (and the document). For example, rather than applying Curves directly to an image, add a Curves adjustment layer. Instead of cloning on the Background layer, add a blank layer and use the Sample All Layers option in the Options Bar to have the results of the Clone Stamp tool appear on a separate layer. Don’t erase portions of a layer, add a layer mask and hide them.

Tip: Use the option to edit keyboard shortcuts (Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts) and change the shortcut Command-M (PC: Control-M) to add a Curves adjustment layer rather than applying Curves directly to the active layer. The same goes for any of the adjustment commands that are also available as an adjustment layer.

Flexible editing
In this example, I wanted to make some major changes to a photo, while still giving myself the opportunity to return to the original image. I added a Photo Filter adjustment layer to warm up the photo. Then I added a blank layer and used the Spot Healing Brush with the Sample All Layers option on to remove a few minor blemishes. To add some saturation to the subject of the photo, I used a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and painted with black on the layer mask to keep the background unchanged. On another blank layer I used the Sample All Layers option for the Clone Stamp tool to clone away some stray hairs. Then I pressed Command-Option-Shift-E (PC: Control-Alt-Shift-E) to make a flattened version of the image as a new layer, applied the Surface Blur filter (Filter>Blur>Surface Blur) to the new layer, lowered the Opacity for this layer in the Layers palette, and added a layer mask to keep some areas sharp.

By taking advantage of all these flexible methods, the original Background is untouched, and I have plenty of options for changing my mind—and avoiding some of the problems I may have encountered otherwise.

Here’s what I hope you take away from all of this: Before you do anything, get in the habit of checking things (such as the Layers palette and tool settings), and then work in the most flexible ways possible to try to avoid problems. If you do run into problems, use some of the suggestions here to track down the cause of your difficulties.

Top 5 Problems/Solutions with InDesign CS2

By Terry White
Although InDesign is a revolutionary application, there are things that can trip up new users, especially if those users are used to doing workarounds in their legacy/former page layout app. They tend to begin by trying to do the same workaround in InDesign when it’s not necessary and may also cause problems.

Scaled text
Avoid text scaling issues by not grouping your text frames with other objects before scaling. Text that was grouped with pictures coming from a QuarkXPress document may exhibit strange behavior when you go to change the point size of the grouped text in InDesign. You may see the point size with another point size in parentheses next to it. This is displaying your actual and scaled point sizes. To solve this problem after the fact, ungroup your text (Object>Ungroup) and then select your text frame with the Selection tool (V). Choose Scale Text Attributes from the Options Bar or Transform palette flyout menu. This will reset the point size to represent the actual size of the scaled text.

If you simply want to scale text that you’re creating in a new or existing InDesign document, don’t group it first. Just select all the objects you want to scale and use the Scale tool (S) to scale them all together.

Avoid rasterized type
Just because you can do something doesn’t always mean you should. I’m speaking of transparency. InDesign lets you make any object transparent; however, there are rules to follow to maximize your output. It’s all about stacking order. Let’s say you have some text in a frame and you have a blue box behind it that you set to 50% Opacity. Everything is fine in this case because the text is on top of the blue box. However, if you were to draw the blue box on top of the text and set the Opacity to 50% so that you could see through it, when your document prints your text will be rasterized instead of printing nice, clean vectors. This is because transparency is raster-based, not vector-based, and anything that a transparent object sits on top of will be rasterized.

Transparency and white boxes
I was asked this question a dozen times at a recent Photoshop World: “Why do I sometimes get a white box around text (on the printed page) that I’ve applied a drop shadow to?” The short answer is not all RIPs work the same way. Some may handle the flattened transparency differently than others. To fix this, send the text, drop shadow, and the object that it’s sitting on top of (which is the real problem) through the Transparency Flattener. To do this, select the object that your shadow is being cast upon and set its Opacity to 99% in the Transparency palette (Window>Transparency). There won’t be any visual difference, but that little change will also send it through the Transparency Flattener so that it doesn’t have the white box.

Create color swatches
InDesign allows you to create colors in your document that aren’t defined as Swatches. While there’s nothing technically wrong with this, it makes it more difficult if you want to change those colors all at once, and it will probably drive your service provider nuts. So to keep everyone happy, the next time you want to create a color, use the New Color Swatch option from the Swatches palette flyout menu. This will allow you to mix your color in the proper color space and it will add it to the Swatches palette at the same time. Then, if you ever need to change that color, it’s as simple as double-clicking the swatch and changing its definition. Also, if you delete the Swatch, InDesign will prompt you to replace all the instances of it with another one.

Use the correct PDF setting for the correct output
InDesign can generate PDFs for all uses. This means that it can make a small PDF for your brochure so that you can put it on your website, or it can make a press-ready PDF suitable for offset printing. The key is choosing the right Adobe PDF Preset from the File menu. There are choices between High Quality Print (great for a desktop printer), PDF/X-1a and -3 (great for standards-based offset printing), Press Quality (for service providers that have more modern equipment), and Smallest File Size (for the Web and emailing proofs).

Top 5 Problems/Solutions with Illustrator CS2

By Scott Weichert
Illustrator users often experience minor problems that can be easily overcome. Here are the some of the most common issues facing Illustrator users.

Accessing Artistic filters and Filter Gallery
For the Filter Gallery, Effect Gallery, and Artistic menu options to become available, the Illustrator document must be in RGB color mode. When editing raster objects, the object being edited must also be embedded in the document. Linked images and CMYK color modes will not allow many Filters and Effects to function.

Prevent the Brush and Pencil tools from editing paths as you draw
By default the Brush and Pencil tools are set to edit any selected path. To prevent this, simply double-click on the appropriate tool and uncheck the Edit Selected Paths option. You may also note the other options available in the dialog. Changing any of these options will retain those settings for the tool, not just the open document.

Expanding dashed strokes
When a dash is applied to a stroke in Illustrator, expanding the path (Object>Expand) results in a solid object. The dashes are lost. This is also true if using Object>Path>Outline Stroke. To overcome this, choose Object>Flatten Transparency from the menu bar. Set the Raster/Vector Balance slider to 100, check the Convert all Strokes to Outlines, then click OK.

Getting text to wrap or justify
In order to wrap or justify text, text must be Area Type. To create Area Type, click-and-drag with the Type tool to create a box. Add text, then choose the wrap or justify options desired. In addition, wrapped text must be behind any object around which it is wrapping and on the same layer.

Pasting Illustrator art into Photoshop
In order to gain access to all of Photoshop’s pasting options, preferences in Illustrator must be changed. In Illustrator, choose Preferences>File Handling & Clipboard from the Illustrator (PC: Edit) menu. In the Clipboard on Quit section, check both PDF and AICB and choose to Preserve Appearance and Overprints. Illustrator will then copy all the information needed to make every option available in Photoshop CS2.

InDesign is a remarkable achievement for Adobe. It’s a combination of Adobe Illustrator for vector drawing tools and palettes, QuarkXPress for layout, Adobe Photoshop connectivity for quick edits and alpha channel compositing, Acrobat for multimedia interactivity, and Acrobat Distiller for export option settings. You can even “place” QuickTime, Windows Media, and Flash files just like you place Photoshop files. Export the InDesign file as a PDF, click the Play Media button, and the video plays right there inside the PDF. This allows you to download the PDF, close your Web browser, and play the video because it’s embedded inside the PDF! You can also link the PDF to video on a Web server and have it stream into the document.

Case study: Yamaha’s eBrochure

Many people think Yamaha’s guitars are made by robots on an assembly line; however, for the L series guitar (www.yamaha.co.jp/english/product/guitar/aguitar/index.html), they’re handmade in Japan by 28 artisans. All steps such as choosing wood, attaching, shaping, and joining each part together are performed by experienced craftspeople using only manual labor.

The marketing reps thought a printed brochure was not an ideal medium to show this whole process that emphasized how different the quality of L series is from other assembly line models. To get the customers’ attention, they wanted more than the still pictures and text, and felt the solution would be a rich media PDF eBrochure that included video of the production process and virtual reality (VR) photography that could be downloaded from the Yamaha website.

[To experience the Yamaha rich media PDF, we have made it available on the Layers website. Just go to www.layersmagazine.com/downloads.html to download a copy for yourself.]

In this article, we’re going to take you through a step-by-step process to show you how we created the Yamaha L series interactive PDF eBrochure using Adobe InDesign, Adobe Acrobat 7, and a few other QuickTime multimedia tools such as Apple’s Final Cut Pro (www.apple.com), VR Toolbox’s VR Worx (www.vrtoolbox.com), and Discreet Cleaner (www.autodesk.com). We’ll show you how to make a cross-platform rich media PDF that works on both Macs and PCs that contains QuickTime VR and Windows Media video.

From print to PDF

The first part of the process is to create an InDesign template for the eBrochure using the original print brochure. In this case, the original brochure was supplied as a QuarkXPress document, so we’ll need to convert the file to InDesign and then use the converted document to help create the template.

STEP ONE: QuarkXPress to InDesign
A good rich media PDF is one that’s easy to read and navigate. We design the document in landscape display and program the document to fill the screen of the computer monitor from edge to edge. To accomplish this task, we opened the original two-page spread QuarkXPress file into InDesign. When our eBrochures launch full screen, you only see one page at a time, so we create a new document and set the size to 10×7.5″, which matches the aspect ratio of the computer monitor, and we design the pages as single pages, not two-page spreads. This will be our eBrochure template.

STEP TWO: Reformat for onscreen legibility
We modify our standard eBrochure template colors, fonts, and column layout to conform to the style of the client’s original artwork. Style sheets are set up to do likewise. Fonts are substituted and usually resized upward to make them easily readable onscreen. Sans serif fonts are generally easier to read in a PDF file. The small font sizes in the original file, though appropriate for print, are hard to read on a computer monitor. We usually change font sizes to be large enough for users to view the text comfortably on a 12″ laptop computer.

STEP THREE: Convert elements to Photoshop and RGB
We cut-and-paste elements from the converted QuarkXPress file to the newly customized eBrochure landscape template. All photo and graphics files are resaved in Photoshop RGB format. All CMYK swatches are also converted to RGB. Any logos that are in the EPS format should be converted to PSD files to ensure that they display correctly in Adobe Reader 4, because the preferences to smooth the line art are disabled. Adobe Reader 6 and later has its default preferences enabled to smooth any vector art.

STEP FOUR: Export test pages to PDF
A navigation bar, which resides on the master pages, appears on the bottom of every page in the eBrochure. Text and arrows in the bar will be used to designate hot areas of the brochure to navigate the document. We’ll add this interactivity later in Acrobat. Web links are authored in InDesign.
The entire eBrochure is then exported at 120 dpi in two formats: one for Reader 4 and one for Reader 6 and above. Note that Adobe Reader 4 does not support transparency. We always produce versions of our eBrochures that will work without embedded rich media, which requires Adobe Reader 6 or later.

Creating the rich media

The second part of the process involves preparing the media that we’ll later add to the final PDF. For the Yamaha eBrochure, we’ll be working with VR photography of the L series guitar and a video of how the guitars are made.

STEP ONE: Photograph the guitar for the VR movie
The guitar was photographed in front of a black velvet backdrop in varied angles of rotation using a high-resolution Nikon D70 camera. The pictures were color corrected in Photoshop and the blacks for the background were crushed to 100%. Instead of rotating the guitar 360°, we captured a series of images that allow the user to scrub through the views of the fine detail that’s engraved into the neck and body of the guitar. This allowed us to create a small file because only the important portions of the guitar were included in the final VR.

STEP TWO: Assemble the VR
The series of still pictures of the guitar were imported into VR Worx, which converts the photographs into a single QuickTime VR movie. The movie was exported using the JPEG compression codec and the setting was set to Low to allow for high-quality display. The movie was programmed to autorotate (Animation>Enabled) as soon as the image displays, and if you click on the movie you’ll override the autorotate setting, allowing you to interact with the movie to rotate the guitar and zoom in to view the fine detail.

STEP THREE: Edit the video
The original video of the process of making the guitars by hand was delivered to us on a DVD-Video disk and we digitized it using the component outputs from the DVD player to the DVCAM recorder, which feeds into our Power Mac G5 via FireWire. We used Final Cut Pro to digitize and edit the master 20-minute video down to five minutes in length, which featured the highlights of the handcrafting of the guitar. The final video was exported from Final Cut as a self-contained QuickTime master using the DV compression codec at 720×480 pixels.

STEP FOUR: Compress the video
To compress the video for playback inside the PDF we used Discreet Cleaner. Two versions of the video were produced for streaming the video that would be linked to the PDF. Windows Media version 7 video was chosen for the compression codec at a display size of 640×480 for the PC. QuickTime Sorenson 3 was used for the Macintosh because Windows Media video can’t play on a Mac inside a PDF. Finally, an additional high-res version was produced in the QuickTime format that would be embedded into the document.

Adding the content

Now it’s time to add the media files and the buttons to play them to the PDF. We’ll do this using Acrobat.

STEP ONE: Insert the VR into the PDF
In Acrobat, select the Movie tool and double-click on the page. This will open the Add Movie dialog and here you’ll select the Acrobat 6-compatible media (the QuickTime VR), check the Embed Content in Document option, and set the Poster Settings to Use No Poster. This will allow you to hide the video from initial view and you can then use a button to launch the QuickTime VR movie.

In the Rendition Settings dialog (double-click the movie box with the Movie tool and click the Edit Rendition button in the Multimedia Properties dialog), click the Playback Settings tab and select Forever Once Activated in the Keep Player Open drop-down menu.

STEP TWO: Link and embed the video to the PDF
Using a Windows computer, select the Movie tool in Acrobat and double-click on the page. This will open the Add Movie dialog, but this time you’ll provide a URL link in the Location field to either the QuickTime or Windows Media video that resides on a Web server. Set the Poster Settings to Use No Poster and click OK.

Double-click on the movie box on the page to launch the Multimedia Properties dialog. Click the Settings tab, click the Add Rendition button, and choose Using a URL from the drop-down menu. Enter the URL for the other video that you did not enter in the Add Movie dialog and click OK.

Back in the Settings tab of the Multimedia Properties dialog, choose one of the videos from the Renditions list and click the Edit Rendition button. This will allow you to program the PC to play the Windows Media version and the Mac to play the QuickTime movie. To specify a player, click the Playback Settings tab in the Rendition Settings dialog and click the Add button.

STEP THREE: Create the buttons for the VR and video
The buttons to launch the VR and video were created in InDesign and saved as PDF files. After you create your up, down, and rollover versions of your button in InDesign, select the Button tool in Acrobat and draw a button on the page. In the Button Properties dialog, select the Options tab, choose Icon Only in the Layout drop-down menu, and choose Push in the Behavior drop-down menu. Choose the Up state and click the Choose Icon button to import the PDF button that was created for the Up state into Acrobat. Repeat this process for the Down and Rollover states of the button until all of the buttons have been imported into the PDF.

STEP FOUR: Link the buttons to the video and VR
To launch the rich media using the button, select the Actions tab. Then, choose the Mouse Up function from the Select Trigger drop-down menu. Select Play Media (Acrobat 6 and Later Compatible) from the Select Action drop-down menu and then select the Add button. This will present a list of Acrobat 6-compatible media. Choose Play from the Operation to Perform drop-down menu and select the appropriate rich media file from the window below. In this case, the video button is linked to the video on page 4 of the PDF and the VR button is linked to the VR on page 3.

Making the document interactive

To use the navigation bar at the bottom of each page to turn the pages, launch the document in and out of full screen viewing mode, print, quit, and jump to a specific page using a menu, JavaScript code must be written or added to the document using the Execute a Menu Item command in the Button Properties dialog. First, select the Button tool, then draw a box over an item on the navigation bar text (Print, View, Exit, etc.). For instance, if we draw a box over the next page arrow, Acrobat will launch the Button Properties dialog. Make sure that the button has no Border Color or Fill Color in the Appearance tab, and then select the Actions tab. Choose Execute a Menu Item from the Select Action drop-down menu. Click Add. A prompt will direct us to the top menu bar, where we select View>Go To>Next Page. That’s one macro down, several more to go: the same procedure is then repeated for the remaining navigation icons and text, adding to the dialog’s Actions list in the process.

To create the pop-up menu for the index, you’ll need to learn to write JavaScript and that’s a separate article in itself. Adobe has written their own version of JavaScript (which is constantly being refined with each release of Acrobat), so there are many things to consider if you’re planning to write the code yourself. It’s best to hire a professional programmer who knows the Adobe JavaScript language and pay him or her by the hour.

Integrating the PDF into the website

PDF has a great reputation in the print business, but for easy onscreen viewing the complaints are numerous. The Web developer will often just provide a direct link to the PDF file, which will cause the PDF to load into the Web browser via the Adobe Reader plug-in. It’s important to allow the user to download the PDF so that it can be viewed outside the constraints of the Web browser.

The solution is to supply a few words of text on the webpage, such as “Right-click Here and Select Save Target As,” which will force the PDF file to download. For Mac users with a single-button mouse, you should supply the text “Control-click Here and Select Download Linked File.” This is not the sexiest method. The ideal way is to write a PHP script or an ASP script that will force the PDF file to download.

If you have a dedicated server, you can write an Apache script to create a Download Folder on your Web server. Then you can link to any file in that folder and Apache will force the file within that folder to download. In our case, it’s the PDF file.

Finally, don’t assume that everyone will have Adobe Reader 6 or later, which is required to play embedded rich media on their computers. We make three versions of our eBrochures: “Standard” has no rich media and works with Adobe Reader 4; “Enhanced” requires Adobe Reader 6 and has linked rich media that resides on a Web server—this version is under 5 MB and is small enough to email; and the “Full” version has all of the media embedded into the PDF. Once it has been downloaded, you can close your Web browser and everything is there—contained right inside the PDF. Unplug your computer and take it on the road.

BEFORE

CLIENT: Giovanni’s Pizza

“The key to Giovanni’s appeal…is that people can kick back and relax.”

Giovanni’s Pizza is still run by the same Greek family that opened it 17 years ago. It seats about 40 hungry patrons comfortably in a storefront on San Francisco’s busy Mission Street, in between a Mexican grocery store and an old-time bar. The fare is familiar old-school Italian (emphasis on pizza), with a few Greek dishes thrown in.

The key to Giovanni’s appeal, according to the manager, is that people can kick back and relax. Besides individual diners, the restaurant welcomes birthday parties, after-game softball teams, and after-practice soccer players. Groups like that can even bring their own music to play on the house stereo. (At other times, the entertainment runs to Greek music on the stereo or sports on the TV.)

The couple that opened the restaurant is getting ready to retire, and their youngest son and his fiancée are preparing to take over the business. They’re planning some cosmetic upgrades to the place—some new carpet, new barstools—but aren’t planning to change the basic nature of the restaurant. So far, at least, the plastic grapevines behind the bar and the American and Greek flags are still on the wall. The existing menu is equally homey—the manager’s brother put it together on his computer, and the pages are printed on an inkjet printer and slipped into menu covers. But “homey” and “relaxed” don’t have to mean plain and boring, so we asked three designers to spruce up the menu to make it as inviting as the restaurant itself. Because color printing on an inkjet isn’t significantly more expensive than black and white, we gave the designers the green light to bring in color as they wanted.

AFTER

DESIGNER: Kristal Young www.kristalcleargraphics.webhop.net

“I highlighted a couple of food items with stock photos, but I let them break through their conscribed ovals at the top.”

My main objective for Giovanni’s menu was to portray how the restaurant offers delicious authentic Italian cuisine in a casual, everyday atmosphere. The original menu used grapes on the front page to connect it to the plastic grapes behind the bar. I decided to keep this idea plus the original’s red, green, and white colors. However, I used different shades of the colors to make it stand out from the countless other Italian-flag-themed pizza menus. (Believe me, I’ve seen them all.)

Normally, I like to use a lot of photos in my designs, but this time I decided to limit them to just a few inside food pictures. The illustrations I developed in Illustrator and Photoshop—the dark watermark of grapes with light green accents—serve a twofold purpose. They direct the viewer’s eye to the realism of the large grapes, which suggest the high-quality Italian food they can expect, but the green accents lighten the effect and remind them to get comfortable. For fonts, I chose Poplar, Klunder, and Futura to further add to the relaxed feeling.

On the inside menu pages that list the food and prices, I carried over the fonts and variations from the front for background art. I highlighted a couple of food items with stock photos, but I let them break through their conscribed ovals at the top. This was just one of the different ways I used elements that pushed away from traditional Italian menus. Each one reinforced the overall feeling of a relaxing place to eat.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER: KRISTAL CLEAR GRAPHICS
After receiving her bachelor’s degree from Wisconsin Lutheran College, a private liberal arts school in Milwaukee, Kristal Young jumped into the corporate design workforce, creating direct mail advertising pieces for clients nationwide. A large portion of these were restaurant menus for both big and small companies all over the country. At the same time, she was starting her freelance business, Kristal Clear Graphics. One specialty is a self-developed product aimed at wedding photographers called Designer’s Touch Wedding Albums. This innovative concept can be explored further at Kristal’s website.

Like any good graphic designer does, Kristal often juggles multiple life and work projects. Kristal thanks God for her supportive husband, family, and friends, who help her through the harder times of managing a full-time job, freelance business, and all of life’s happenings.

APPLICATIONS USED: Adobe Illustrator CS, Adobe Photoshop CS, and Adobe InDesign CS

AFTER

DESIGNER Damien Pendrotti

“Clean shots of food were the most inviting things I could think of short of pasting actual dishes onto the menu…”

Since most of my day revolves around the next meal (ask my co-workers), the challenge of designing a new menu for a pizza restaurant was most enticing. Since Giovanni’s Pizza is known for its after-game, family atmosphere, I wanted to keep the design open, colorful, and inviting. Clean shots of food were the most inviting things I could think of short of pasting actual dishes onto the menu—that just isn’t cost effective. Ideally, the menu would use photos of actual Giovanni’s meals.

I also wanted to make some reference to the longevity of the establishment and the Giovanni family ownership. So I treated a few photos to make them more painterly and give them a nostalgic feel and used those as a backdrop on the front and back cover. I kept the inside pages open and airy with silhouetted photos and small splashes of color. I thought it was important to do some suggestive selling, so I put the specials on display as soon as possible—top left of page 2—and made their prices red.

I maintained the red and green theme from the original menu throughout. If the price of going full-color is a concern, the inside pages translate well to black and white, and the photos on the covers can quickly be scaled back. But with color output getting less expensive, the stretch shouldn’t be painful. I used the Baskerville font family on the whole menu, except for the cover, where “Giovanni’s” is in Zapfino while “Pizza” is in Charlemagne.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER: DAMIEN PENDROTTI
Returning to her home state, Maryland, after 10 years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Damien Pendrotti hung her creative hat at Asher Bartos Advertising (www.AsherBartos.com). She started as a freelance graphic designer more than two years ago with Asher Bartos and now is an account executive who occasionally wears an illustrator/designer/photographer party hat. With more than 12 years of creative and management experience, Damien offers clients the most for their money by drawing from a varied background and being a good listener. She has worked in higher education, media, entertainment, and advertising, what she believes are the most influential media of our time. She attributes the bulk of her success to a beautiful, supportive mom who encouraged her and sacrificed much to afford the luxuries of a good education.

Damien thrives on surrounding herself with other talented, fun, and inspiring friends and co-workers. She hopes to retire young as a philanthropist traveling the world and doing design jobs for free…don’t we all!

APPLICATIONS USED: Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Adobe InDesign CS2

AFTER

DESIGNER Adam Simpson www.walkthebeach.com

“The listed food courses should be itemized into a step-by-step game plan for a wonderful dining experience.”

As a moonlighting bartender, I’ve found that customers, particularly first-time arrivals, prefer to read from clearly defined menus. They’ve come to dine out, not decrypt a booklet on an empty stomach. The listed food courses should be itemized into a step-by-step game plan for a wonderful dining experience. When I first reviewed Giovanni’s original menu, I thought it was well organized and decided to commit to their layout for the most part.

Another detail about menu design is the menu’s consistency with the establishment’s atmosphere. I visited 10 different restaurants and compared each one’s menu to the interior ambience. Giovanni’s has a Greek family influence fused with a classic Italian style, serving Greco-Italian cuisine to everyday Americans in an environment characterized by Greek flags and grapevines. Drawing on all these elements, I colored the menu with national flair and layered the background with bitmap parchment and bricks to lend an old-world feel. Printing the menus on inkjet parchment paper would go even further to carry out that aspect of the design.

To carry this direction through typographically, I combined three working serif fonts: Augusta, Trajan Pro, and Gabrielle, all of which exhibit both an organic flow and a historical aura. Finally, I felt the grapevine icon was a crucial element better displayed as a rustic centerpiece rather than as a means to frame the text. I actually visited a local vineyard and snatched a few vine leaves that I scanned for the cover.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER: ADAM SIMPSON
With a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Oregon, Adam Simpson resides in Portland, Oregon, where he works as a freelance graphic designer. He ventures across the Pacific Northwest engaging people with potential projects of all kinds: logo and image conception, photography, whatever. With each project, he meets new people and welcomes the opportunity to exchange ideas, aspirations, and fears.

But Adam really is a “history junkie” with a hungry eye for vintage photographs and antiquated typefaces. His favorite part of a design project is the research involved in procuring a visual concept for the client, which involves looking back on past design approaches, sometimes centuries old. Adam asks, “How can I manifest a look that has proven to work yet extends beyond or even breaks the mold?” It’s always a tough jig to dance between originality and the unflinching laws of time-tested design.

APPLICATIONS USED: Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Adobe InDesign CS2

Anchored objects

You can now place and edit anchored objects in InDesign. This is a good feature to have when you want to make sure a specific graphic or other design element stays with a certain section of copy, no matter how much copy or page layout editing is applied. Just keep track of which tool you’re using, and placing and editing anchored objects is a snap.

STEP ONE:
Insert the text cursor in the line of type where you would like to have the anchored object. In this case we’ll anchor an image of Augustine Volcano in Alaska between paragraphs, but you can add any element, including a text frame.

CREDIT: TAZ TALLY

Tip: To make placing and adjusting an object anchored between two words much easier, create two character spaces between the two words where you intend to place your anchored object. Then, place the text cursor between the two spaces so that a space will separate the placed anchored object from the text characters on each side. You can then kern the copy surrounding the object to fine-tune the spacing before and after the anchored object.

STEP TWO:
There are several ways to insert an anchored object. You could just simply type Command-D to activate the Place command, find the object you want to anchor, and click Open. The graphic will be anchored inline and will appear above the line. This works fine for small objects placed between two characters.

But if you’re placing a larger object, such as an image between paragraphs as we are here, you’ll want to have more control over the placement, so Control-click (PC: Right-click) near the cursor insertion point and then select Anchored Object>Insert from the contextual menu. This will activate the Insert Anchored Object dialog, which will allow you to control the content, apply an object style (or paragraph style if the anchored object is text), and control the placement of the object. In the example, we set the dimensions of the object to match the dimensions of the image we’re importing, and we centered the anchored object relative to the Column Edge. We also assigned a drop shadow object style.

It’s important not to place too large of an object, as large objects may not fit into small columns. Large objects are also difficult to manage inline and may not print well when scaled down too much. I typically scale any graphic to a reasonable dimension prior to placing it as an anchored object.

STEP THREE:
When you click the OK button in the Insert Anchored Object dialog, InDesign will create a container for the anchored object. You’ll then need to place the content (text, graphic, or unassigned properties) inside the container.

To resize your anchored object, choose the Selection tool (V) and click on the graphic. The frame for the placed graphic will be active. Hold Shift-Command (PC: Shift-Control) and click-and-drag the upper-right corner of your graphic in order to proportionally scale down both the frame and its contents to the dimensions of your choice.

STEP FOUR:
Now with the anchored object’s frame still active, you can manually reposition the object (unless you checked the Prevent Manual Positioning box in the Insert Anchored Object dialog). You can also edit the anchored object options. Just Control-click (PC: Right-click) on the anchored graphic and select Anchored Object>Options from the contextual menu.

Check the Preview box in the Anchored Object Options dialog to preview any changes you make. The options you have will depend upon where you’ve placed your anchored object. For instance, you can position an object anchored in a line of type Above Line if you want. You can also manually reposition the graphic within the frame using your Direct Selection tool and Arrow keys as well.

Note: An Anchored object can be released by Control-clicking (PC: Right-clicking) on the object and selecting Anchored Object>Release. Also, any anchored object can be deleted by simply inserting the text cursor immediately following the graphic and backspacing through the object.

Text wrapping

Whether an object is anchored or free, you can control how text reacts to that object by using the Text Wrap palette.

STEP ONE:
Select Window>Text Wrap (or press Command-Option-W [PC: Control-Alt-W]) to activate the Text Wrap palette. There are five choices for wrapping text in the palette: No Text Wrap, Wrap around Bounding Box, Wrap around Object Shape, Jump Object, and Jump to Next Column. Select the mode appropriate for your needs. Here we assigned a Jump Object wrap to the Augustine Volcano anchored graphic we placed earlier.

It’s important to note that on an anchored object, text wrap will only affect the line that contains the anchor marker and any lines that follow. It will not wrap any lines above the marker. Place hard or soft Returns at the end of the last line of text above the line containing the marker to move the graphic below the text. For even more control of the vertical spacing of your anchored object, adjust its baseline shift. Click on the anchored object with your Selection tool and adjust its baseline shift by holding the Option key (PC: Alt key) and pressing the Up or Down Arrow keys.

STEP TWO:
Assign a push away distance. To view the text wrap boundary of any object, simply click on that object with the Selection tool. The text wrap push away boundary will be shown by a blue outline. Here we’ve assigned a .25″ Top Offset and Bottom Offset for the text. (Note: Even though the Top Offset will have no affect on the anchored object in this example, we still set a value for it so we can use the push away boundary to help us align the object.) Assigning Left and Right Offsets is not necessary here because a Jump Object wrap does not allow text to either side of the graphic. [For more on controlling the spacing in your text wraps,see “The Art of Type”]

STEP THREE:
For complex pages, you’ll want to use layers to help you control your text wraps. Type Command-K (PC: Control-K) to activate Preferences, and click on the Composition category on the left. In the Text Wrap section, check the Text Wrap Only Affects Text Beneath option. Now, text will wrap around any objects on a layer above it, but won’t wrap around any objects on a layer below it.

Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw offer many adjustment features—including Exposure, Levels, Curves, Channel Mixer, and Shadow/Highlight—for fixing a poorly exposed image. But who wants to spend time rescuing photos while sitting at a computer when we can spend that time outdoors taking properly exposed pictures? I’d rather be outside, even though I thoroughly enjoy working and playing in Photoshop every day.

Learn to see the light
A good exposure begins with an important aspect of photography: learning how to see the light. If we learn how to see the light—the highlights and shadows in the scene, the contrast and color of a scene, the subject’s and the background’s brightness, and even the movement of light—we’ll become better photographers. After we see the light, we can make better exposure decisions. We’ll also know when we need to control the light by using a reflector, a diffuser, or a flash, or by moving the subject or changing our composition.

To digress slightly for a moment…have you ever heard the term “tone-deaf” to describe a person who can’t tell the difference between musical tones? In photography, we use the term “value-blind” to describe an image that has very little range between light and dark. Ansel Adams used this term. Just as a tone-deaf person cannot tell the difference between tones or musical notes, a value-blind viewer doesn’t see the difference in light values (brightness levels) in a scene. Fortunately, there’s hope for the value-blind photographer, because we can all learn how to see the light.

Eyes vs. camera
In a discussion about seeing the light, we need to begin with what we see with our eyes versus what our digital camera sees and records. Our eyes are amazing light-seeing devices. We can see a dynamic range of about 11 f-stops, which is why we can see shadow and highlight areas of a scene without the shadows being blocked up and the highlights being washed out.

A digital image sensor sees/records only about three to five f-stops, about the same as slide film. So, when shooting with a digital camera, we should expose the scene as though we’re using slide film—paying very careful attention to the highlights in a scene, and being very careful not to overexpose them. (We can go way beyond that range if we know what we’re doing in Photoshop and Camera Raw.)

Exposure compensation
Here you see two subjects: a leopard seal that I photographed in Antarctica, and a polar bear that I photographed in the sub-Arctic. If you were to simply set your camera to an automatic exposure mode, the seal would be pictured lighter and the polar bear would be pictured darker. That’s because very dark and very light subjects can fool a camera’s exposure meter (which measures reflected light) into thinking the scene is darker or lighter than it really is, resulting in an incorrectly exposed picture.

The remedy in these situations is to use your camera’s +/– exposure compensation feature. With dark subjects, a –1 exposure compensation setting is recommended. With light subjects, a +1 setting is recommended. I know that sounds backward, but it’s true. Note: Exposure compensation is usually necessary when most of the frame is filled with a dark or light subject.

This photograph of a Tariano woman in Amazonas has no strong highlights or shadows, unlike the opening picture for this column of a Native American, which has strong and dramatic shadows. The light is soft, making for a relatively easy automatic exposure; that is, one using no exposure compensation. My Native American shot required a –1 exposure compensation so as not to wash out the white feathers in the scene.

The source of light
Now let’s take a look at the different types of lighting and how they affect a photograph.

Front lighting is nice for portraits when you want the subject’s face evenly illuminated, as was the case when I photographed my guide in Viet Nam. This is another example of an easy automatic exposure.

Overcast lighting is perfect for portraits of animals and people—because clouds eliminate harsh shadows. The soft light makes for somewhat soft images, like this portrait of a lion in Botswana. Yup! Auto exposure with no exposure compensation once again.

Backlighting creates dramatic silhouettes, as illustrated by this cowboy’s picture that I took on a ranch in Oregon. How cool is that! And speaking of backlighting, here’s a photography joke: Someone asks a pro, “What’s your day rate?” He replies, “$5,000, but it’s $7,500 if I have to shoot into the sun.” The point of the joke is that it’s harder to shoot into the sun than away from it (or most other lighting conditions). In situations such as this, you may want to underexpose an automatic exposure by one stop, as I did.

Soft side lighting makes for a more dramatic picture than those taken on overcast days. Pictures also appear sharper, due to the increased contrast range. In this leopard photograph, you can see every whisker on the animal’s face. I used a –1 exposure compensation for this automatic exposure.

Strong side lighting can be nice, but you need to be careful that the subject’s face is not hidden in a shadow. This type of harsh light can make any picture an “outtake,” and no amount of exposure compensation could save a shot like that.

Strong top lighting is the worst, and I mean the worst, for portraits. Avoid it at all costs—unless you can control the natural light. I photographed this man in Papua New Guinea to illustrate that point. This image is also an outtake that cannot be saved. However, a diffuser or a flash, which help us control the light, would have reduced the contrast range in the scene and saved the shot.

The color of light
In addition to seeing the brightness level of a subject and the direction of light, we need to see the color of light. Seeing the color of light can help us make exposure decisions. For example, pictures taken in the late afternoon and early morning have warm tones: deep shades of red, orange, and yellow. Pictures taken around midday look cool, having a blue tint. Seeing the color of light can also help us make white balance decisions, either in camera or in Photoshop or Camera Raw. Changing the white balance lets us change the color of light.

Look in the shadows
Shadows add a sense of drama, depth, and dimension to a photograph. Without them, pictures look flat. In this picture that I took on the Ponderosa Ranch in Oregon, the strong shadow area adds to the interest of the image.

To record strong shadows without the highlights being washed out, you need to set your exposure for the highlights in the scene (the brightest area), which you can do with your camera’s exposure lock.

We’ll, that a quick look at seeing the light. See you—and the light—later!

Wrapping text around graphics or other text has become commonplace. But as with most typographic automations, results often fall into the category “Close, but No Cigar.” While how to create text wraps is well documented in Adobe’s Help Center program, how to perfect them remains mysterious.

First, a couple of fundamentals: For rectangular wraps, a ragged margin generally looks good if the rag isn’t too wild; that is, there isn’t much variation among line lengths, giving it a clean shape. This is easier to achieve when lines are long. Text that wraps around curved shapes is usually more effective when set justified, or flush, so the margin is smooth, tightly following the shapes’ contours.

The conquest of space
Justified type, though, can create the most common problem with text wraps: inconsistent spacing. Ideally, as measure (“typographese” for line length) varies, so should the hyphenation and justification (h&j) settings that control the text’s composition. In narrow measures, for example, letter spaces should be allowed to expand more to avoid the overstretching of word spaces, and in InDesign, glyph scaling ranges can be liberalized (see Fig. 1). But in Adobe products, h&j specs are a paragraph attribute, so what applies to the longest line of a triangular paragraph also applies to the shortest.

Fig. 1. For text set in very narrow measures, h&j settings have to be made much more flexible, as shown here. Ranges for Word and Letter Spacing border on the extreme, and hyphenation controls have also been liberalized.

As a general rule, when the value of your measure (as expressed in picas) is less than the value of your point size (as expressed in points), you’ll run into spacing problems. When using 11-point type, then, consider an 11-pica measure as the practical minimum. With shorter measures than this, there aren’t enough word and letter spaces on a line to allow your program the leeway to create consistent spacing from line to line. In text that wraps, this threshold is breached all too often, resulting in cascades of lines that are too tightly or (more typically) too loosely spaced. Even if you stay within this rule-of-thumb limit, for short lines your program will resort more often to the minimum and maximum allowable values you’ve specified in your h&j settings, resulting in undue spacing variations.

In InDesign and Illustrator, h&j controls are found by choosing either Justification or Hyphenation from the Paragraph palette’s flyout menu. Or in InDesign, use the keyboard shortcut Shift-Option-Command-J (PC: Shift-Alt-Control-J) to open the Justification dialog. Also in InDesign, head for the Composition Preferences dialog (InDesign [PC: Edit]>Preferences>Composition) and put a check next to H&J Violations in the Highlight section to flag lines that break your spacing rules. Prepare to be shocked at how often it happens.

For paragraphs containing lines of widely varying lengths, set your h&j settings to work for the longest lines and fix any spacing problems in the shorter ones by hand. These manual fixes are best done when your layout is otherwise complete, because if text reflows and your interventions appear outside the text-wrap area, they’re going to cause problems.

Tidying up
When InDesign or Illustrator can’t compose a line well, it almost invariably sets it too loose, so normally your adjustments will aim to tighten spacing. This is best done one line at a time, so select Adobe Single-Line Composer from the Paragraph palette’s flyout menu. This assures that any changes you make will affect only the current and following lines. With Adobe Paragraph Composer (or Every-Line Composer in Illustrator) turned on, changes you make can ripple in both directions, changing previous lines that you’ve already fixed.

When coaxing good spacing from short lines, a light touch is the right touch. For a tight line, perhaps the lightest touch you can apply is to add a discretionary hyphen (Shift-Command-– [PC: Shift-Control-–]) to the last word. This can force a fragment of that word onto the following line, even when the program is loath to do so. Never use a hard hyphen (simply typing a hyphen) unless you’re absolutely, positively sure the text will never reflow, causing that hyphen to appear in mid-line. Discretionary hyphens disappear when not needed. You can also sometimes use a discretionary hyphen in the first word of a line to force it up and tighten a previous, loose line.

In short measures, you can also increase the number of consecutive hyphens your program allows, because the more it can hyphenate, the better it can maintain consistent spacing. (Lots of hyphens are better than irregular spacing, although neither is desirable.) You can also change the minimum number of characters that must appear before or after a hyphen (the minimum being two) and allow more hyphenation in general using InDesign’s hyphenation slider control. These things are done in the Hyphenation dialog.

Your next—and more universally applicable—task is to alter the tracking of badly spaced lines. The easiest place to do this is in the Control palette, having first clicked the Character Formatting Controls button (A) at the far left. Select the troubled line by triple-clicking it, and then adjust its tracking in 5/1000 em increments (don’t exceed 15/1000) until you get the results you’re after. What you want is spacing that more or less matches that of the preceding line. By the time you’ve labored to the end of the paragraph, its overall color—the balance between the black of the type and the white space around the characters—should be consistent throughout.

In general, loose lines are more glaring than tight lines, so if you can’t get perfect results (and you often won’t), opt for a little tight rather than too loose. And don’t trust the screen when judging your work—printed proofs are far more revealing.

Wraps that create narrow measures create havoc with text spacing (left). In the “after” version (right), several lines have had their tracking tightened slightly. The most dramatic adjustment was –15/1000 em, but most lines we fixed with a tweak of a mere 5/1000. Slack spacing is particularly apparent in reversed type.