InDesignSecrets LIVE!

Hello Cleveland!

And Austin! And Detroit, Minneapolis, and Secaucus, NJ!

These cities are the first announced stops on the InDesignSecretsLIVE! 2010 tour.

Click the image to go to InDesignSecretsLIVE for details.

Also on InDesignSecretsLIVE, you’ll find information about the single biggest, coolest, most awesome InDesign event of the year: The InDesign Print and ePublishing Conference. This is going to be absolutely sick. And by sick I mean ridiculously fun. Here are some of the details:

Print and ePublishing Conference

Seattle, Washington USA
May 12–14, 2010
Join the world’s top InDesign experts and the Adobe InDesign team, May 12-14 in Seattle for the InDesign event of the year! Find answers and valuable insight on the topics publishing for eBooks, print, interactive documents, and more! Be inspired by fresh ideas and new products. Includes 1-day pre-conference tutorials, then 2-day multi-track conference.

Not your typical InDesign Conference

Founded by world-renowned InDesign experts David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepción, and dedicated to the proposition that InDesign professionals deserve a great learning experience, the Print and ePublishing Conference brings together over a dozen of the leading InDesign experts minds for three days of non-stop inspiration and education!

Topics include:

• InDesign CS5: What to Expect
• Boosting efficiency with InDesign’s automation features
• Best practices for a cross-media workflow
• Creating and managing ePub and Kindle documents
• Working with Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Flash
• XML, XSL, and You

Speakers include:

• David Blatner
• Anne-Marie Concepción
• Russell Viers
• Rufus Deuchler
• Mordy Golding
• Michael Ninness, Group Product Manager, Creative Suite
• Chris Kitchener, Senior Product Manager, InDesign
• Olav Martin Kvern
• Diane Burns
• Keith Gilbert
• Claudia McCue
• Mike Rankin
• David Creamer
• Gabriel Powell
• Colin Fleming
• Pariah S. Burke
• James Fritz
• Adobe Engineering Team
• Steve Jobs
• James Cameron
• Lady Ga-Ga
• Chewbacca
• President of the United States, Barack Obama
• Marcel Marceau
• The Rockettes
• The ghost of Jimi Hendrix
• and a special keynote address by Samuel L. Jackson

OK, I may have gotten a little carried away there somewhere after the Adobe Engineering Team, but you get the point. It’s going to be awesome. And yes, no joke, I am going to be speaking there too. And who knows, maybe we can channel the ghost of Jimi to give us some GREP tips on his guitar. See you in Seattle!

Why Would You Want Be Adobe Certified?

I’m baaaack. After an extended cyber-hibernation, I’m back on the Publicious beat, and hoping to make this blog better than ever in 2010.

Recently, I received a comment on my last post about the ACE ebook asking, “why would I want to be an ACE?”

Excellent question! And one worthy of a detailed answer.

To become Adobe Certified, you have to devote a significant number of hours of preparation and study when there are probably many other things you’d rather be doing. Then when you’re done studying, you have pay $150 for the privilege of subjecting yourself to a rigorous test. Why would any sane individual do this?

Before you even look at the testing objectives, you should have some good answers to this question. That’s why I devoted a chunk of the first chapter of the book to answering the “why” question. Here’s an excerpt:

Professional Rewards

1. Shared Branding When you become an ACE, you can put the Adobe brand to work for you. Adobe has worked hard over the years to build a brand that is synonymous with excellence in technology, graphic design, and cross-media production. PDF, PostScript, and the Creative Suite are respected worldwide. So much branding goodness is tied together in that red A. One of the benefits of being an Adobe Certified Expert is that you are given permission to use the Adobe logo. If you’re in business for yourself, you can put the ACE logo on your business card, website, and other promotional materials. People recognize Adobe, and the use of the Adobe logo lends instant credibility to you.

2. An Asset in the Job Hunt In a competitive job market, you want every tool at your disposal to get and keep the attention of prospective employers. In a stack of resumes, certification might be the difference between “keep” and “toss.” It also gives you something to smile about and highlight in an interview. Obviously, certification
is no substitute for years of industry experience and an impressive portfolio, but it complements those assets and adds another detail to your story of why they should hire you.

3. Attention From Your Current Employer If you’re seeking a promotion, or even just trying to stay employed in a tough economy, you must continuously develop your professional knowledge and skills, and demonstrate them. Getting certified is a very “show-me-don’t-tell-me” kind of thing. You can’t fake it. You can’t get by on reputation or luck. You have to earn it. Being thought of as someone with the initiative to take on a challenge and the chops to pull it off can only enhance your value in your boss’ eyes. You can proudly post that certificate in your workspace as a bit of personal advertising. You may find that your opinions carry a little more weight and you become the “go to” person when it comes to all things InDesign.

Personal Rewards

1. Confidence and satisfaction There is nothing like the confidence that comes with knowing what you know. Work approaches something more like play when you know all the tools in your toolbox. You can build new projects that are fundamentally solid right from the start. When changes are needed, you know how to make them happen smoothly and efficiently. If big problems occur later on, you’ll know the best way to fix them.

2. It’s fun! I know some of you are thinking, “Fun? Are you nuts? You have issues.” Be that as it may, hear me out. I think it’s fun to devote yourself to a large and difficult
task, meet it head on, and succeed. I am assuming you want to get certified, and no one’s put a gun to your head. I’m also assuming you don’t find InDesign impossibly tedious or difficult, and that you actually like sitting in front of a computer and making stuff. In other words, you’re a geek like me. If that’s the case, then yes, there is an element of fun in this.

3. Revenge Revenge? Yeah, sure, why not? Ever been made to feel a fool by some nasty über-geek because you didn’t know an obscure bit of digital trivia? If you study for and pass this exam, you will be able to throw a bucket of cold knowledge on the Wicked Geek of the West, who will disappear into the floor shrieking, “I’m melting! Oh, what a world! Who would have thought a good little geek like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?” Or you might just get a grudging nod of respect.

But you can always hope for the melting.

The InDesign ACE eBook is Published!

Woo-hoo!

My first ebook is published and now on sale!

Click here to visit the InDesign Secrets store.

Here’s the official description:

The InDesign Secrets Guide to the InDesign CS4 ACE Exam eBook (PDF, 150 pp) is the most thorough resource available for anyone interested in becoming an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) in InDesign. More than a simple study guide, it offers you a comprehensive plan for preparing for and passing the exam.

The Guide breaks down every one of the 58 InDesign CS4 testing objectives (as published by Adobe) and shows exactly what you need to practice and study. Objectives are illustrated with screenshots from InDesign and are hyperlinked to the relevant information in InDesign’s online help, so you can get immediate answers to your questions. Each chapter ends with sample test questions (and their answers) to help you gauge your progress as you go.

Additional chapters detail the testing process, self-assessment, personalized study plans, study tips, and test-taking strategies, and re-certification. With The InDesign Secrets Guide to the InDesign CS4 ACE Exam you can accelerate and focus your preparation so you walk into the testing center with confidence, and walk out an ACE.

• Download a Sample Chapter (11 pp, a 2.2 MB PDF) to see how Mike breaks down the test objectives (in this case, tables) into clear, concise, and generously illustrated explanations.
• Only $9.95 for each copy of the full e-book (150 pp); download it immediately after purchase.
• 25% Introductory Discount off your order if you enter the discount couponRANKINRULES in the shopping cart before Nov 30, 2009.

No doubt, I’ll have a lot more to share on this topic, but for now it’s just…woo-hoo!

Blatner Tools Public Beta

aka InDesign on Steroids

 

DTP tools has just posted the public beta for a suite of InDesign plug-ins that are the brainchild of my partner in blogging crime, David Blatner. I got a look at these a while ago and they are very cool. My favorite restores an ability I’d lost when I consigned Quark XPress to the dustbin of DTP history: the ability to assign any keyboard shortcut to any style. That was my #1 pet peeve when I switched to InDesign and remains a (healed over) thorn in my side to this day. In fact, Blatner Tools goes even further, allowing you to assign keyboard shortcuts to swatches and layers too. Other features include the ability to find and replace colors, automatically generate styles from unstyled content,  automatic fraction building, side-by-side comparison, and so on. If any of ths sounds cool (and I’m betting it will to 99.9% of Publicious readers), check out the public beta.

Now if only someone would make a DTP army knife for real!

Oh, and memo to the FCC and anyone else who cares: I have not received any compensation for this post, though I think David once offered to buy me a cookie after we had dinner. Nuff said.

Publicious Links: The Better Edition

I feel better. Thanks to the CVS-brand version of Zyrtec, I can breathe, sleep and surf the Web for the usual graphic goodies. With all the money I’m saving on tissues, I might even buy a new laptop. 

Kungfugrippe has a hilarious take on SnowLeopard and the cult of Mac.

Speaking of SnowLeopard, wikidot has a SnowLeopard compatibility list, so you can see if anyone else has got SoundJam to work in OS X 10.6 😉

If you’ve ever wanted to try out Adobe apps, but not actually go through the trouble of installing them, you can use Runaware to check out demos from within your browser. Not all apps are available, but Photoshop, Framemaker, and a few others are.

Discovered a cool RIA today, Fractal 4D. With it, you can draw some really cool vector shapes and export them to Illustrator.

Speaking of Illustrator, didja know that the Illustrator team at Adobe has their own blog, with the cool moniker Infinite Resolution? You do now.

Jostens.com sponsored a contest where kids could design their own high school yearbooks using InDesign. Judging from the looks of the winners (and even the honorable mentions) there are some scary-talented young InDesigners out there. 

ContentServ offers some interesting-looking Web to print solutions for InDesign.

ZenTextures has hundreds of cool, free textures for Photoshop 

Know those hip “painting with light” effects used the Sprint ads and elsewhere? Well, if you ever wanted to try your hand at it, check out Designmag’s post on Light Effect Brushes. 

On the other hand, if you’re designing a logo, Tripwire magazine has a huge set of logo design tips and tutorials.

Adobe wasn’t satisfied with just buying Omniture. They also scooped up online business solution Goodbarry. and rebranded it Business Catalyst. It’s not too hard to imagine a web designer clicking an Export to Business Catalyst button in Flash, Flex, or Dreamweaver soon. TechCrunch has more details.

Working on PSD files without Photoshop? Blasphemy! Yet, there is more than one way to skin a pixel.

I love restoring old photos with Photoshop. TipSquirrel has some good info on bringing back ancient faded photos.

If you ever need to illustrate a professional quality map, definitely check out Ortelius.

Lastly, Halloween season is here, and with it the Nightmare Before Christmas Soundtrack will once again be playing in our house nonstop. If you know any kids (of any age) who are fans of Jack Skellington (and you don’t mind a bit of über commercialism) check out Create Disney, where they have Flash drawing apps where you can make all kinds of creations with the Pumpkin King, and many other minions of the Mouse.

Publicious Links: The Insomnia Edition

The thing about insomnia is…

Uh, sorry, spaced out there. The thing about insomnia is, I can never complete a thought after undersleeping for any extended period of time. Reminds me of the time my daughter was born. Little tyke didn’t sleep through till she was 4. That was about 1500 days of lousy sleep, give or take. So from 2002-2006, I had one long, unfinished thought. The upside was wakeful dreaming, so my PB&J could easily transmogrify into rattlesnake aspic, and the row of tulips in the Public Garden became soup ladles, gently chiming in the breeze. At least I think it was the Public Garden, maybe I just wandered into the kitchen scene from Goodfellas. Hi Hendry, how’s your mother? Still, I never saw anything so disturbing as the Bearsharktopus.

All this to say, I came up with a perfectly good theme for this week’s links, and then immediately forgot it. Or did I dream it? Oh well, on to the linkage.

First up, me. My latest post at InDesignSecrets, Find-Change Scripting Goodness. Wherein I point out some great scripts for formatting and cleaning text in InDesign.

The Light’s Right is offering a free Photoshop CS4 panel that is to the standard Unsharp Mask panel as a Swiss Army knife is to a butter knife. This looks seriously cool and I can’t wait to try it.

CarDomain Blog has an interesting post on how automotive designers use Photoshop. In it, the author uses the term “vexel” which I’d never heard before. Cute.

Kung Fu Grippe has a post taking Adobe to task for increasingly bloated, buggy software, and some advice for how to improve it. This article is part of what seems like a rising tide of anti-Adobe sentiment on the Web. Adobegripes is a blog devoted to crashes, bugs, and wtf dialog boxes. Maybe it’s just that Adobe’s grown so big and powerful that there’s no one else left to blame for your computer problems. Maybe trying to be all things to all users inevitably leads to application degradation. Maybe the Creative Suite should be smashed into a multitude of suitelets, targeting user needs with laser precision and speed. I use the Creative Suite apps every day, at home and work. I do my share of crashing, stalling, grumbling at bugs, stupid default settings, wonky tools, and missing features. I do the exact same thing with my Apple apps. Firefox is the crashiest app on my machine, by far, and I still like it. I totally agree that the Creative Suite apps are far from perfect. When I find bugs, I spread the word. Repeatedly. But context is everything. You may come across those wtf dialog boxes in the midst of hours of productive work. In the realm of training and support, I have dealt with lots of cases over the years where someone was pissed at the application, when really it was a case of RTFM. So if we’re serving up some blame pie, user error gets the biggest slice.

Tripwire Magazine has a Massive Collection of Stunning Photoshop Actions.

Ever heard of seam carving? If you use Photoshop, you will. CS5 is reportedly going to bring seam carving technology to Photoshop, and the world of retouching will never be the same. The fact that it’s going to apply to video too, is mind-blowing. Speaking of retouching, the movement in the UK and France to require labeling on retouched images continues to gain momentum. Although, I think they’ll just have to put a warning on the cover of some magazines stating that EVERY image inside has been retouched. Would save a lot of effort.

Finally, I did find the cure for my insomnia. Just swallow 2 Benadryl, and watch Microsoft’s so-bad-it-has-to-be-on-purpose-to-try-and-start-a-meme video “How to throw a Windows 7 release party at your house” Mission accomplished, Redmond.

Nighty-night.

The Return of InDesign on Vacation

I’ve had a few requests to resurrect last year’s video monument to geekery, InDesign on Vacation. It lost its home on YouTube a while back, so what better place to put it than right here? I didn’t purchase the WordPress.com video upgrade, so I can’t directly embed the movie in a post or page. But thanks to the magic of InDesign, I can embed the movie in a PDF. It’s not the best solution, for sure (slow as heck to load) but once it’s loaded it plays fine, and it’s the best way I can think of right now. So without further ado, I give you last year’s smash hit, InDesign on Vacation.

And as a bonus, here’s the Extended Director’s Cut, which includes a special deleted scene.

Still can’t believe I got snubbed at the Oscars!

Publicious Links: The Sick Edition

Man, I am sick of being sick. Like half of Boston, I’ve been coughing for two weeks straight, day and night. I’ve been more concerned with breathing than blogging. I think I have a touch of the ol’ H1N1. Or perhaps the 0C0M0Y100K Plague. I keep thinking it’s got to go away soon. Though I have insurance, my “health” plan is sucktacularly rigged by some evil geniuses to discourage folks from seeking treatment, lest we risk getting slammed with massive medical bills should anything serious happen. It’s like a reverse lottery, where you buy a ticket each time you see a doctor. This is exactly what happened last year when I cracked my head. Thus, we have a strict “severed limb” policy in our household. Anything less is referred to as a “boo-boo” or “the sniffles.” On the upside, I have perfected the recipe for a Delsymtini.

Enjoy the links, and remember to wash your hands after each click. 😉

Smashing Magazine has a Back to Scchool list of 40 Illustrator tutorials, some of which are mind bogglingly photo realistic.

SitePoint has a nice little tutorial on filling shapes with text in Photoshop.

Colorburned has a downloadable set of “57 tape” brushes.

Photoshopstar has a tutorial on making wooden applique effects in Photoshop.

CSSCreme has a bevy of cool Photoshop tutorials worth checking out.

Adobe made waves recently by purchasing the Web analytics firm Omniture for $1.8 billion. Either this was a savvy, bold move to the social media future, or a colossal overpaying blunder. Depends on who you ask.

Want a sneak peek into Flash CS5? Check out Flashmagazine’s report from Flash on the Beach 09.

Back in the glorious 90s, the vector world was divided between the Illustrator Hatfields and the FreeHand McCoys. Then one day, Adobe arranged itself a shotgun marriage to Macromedia and sent Cousin FreeHand off to live in the hills.  But it turns out reports of FreeHand’s death have been somewhat exaggerated. FreeFreeHand.org is a community site devoted to what some folks still believe is the best vector illustration app ever. And yes, they’ve found it works in Snow Leopard.

Vector-Art has a fun little collection of free recording studio design elements, like cassette tapes, microphones, etc.

I’ve been neglecting my InDesignSecrets duties lately, but here are a couple of little posts that may be “new to you.” Pasteboard Notes and Type OFF a Path.

Speaking of InDesign Secrets, Steve Werner has posted info on Creating eBooks in InDesign, a topic that will only grow more important now that Print est mort. I have my own Publicious take on creating eBooks in InDesign, though Steve’s may have a wee bit more useful info. 😉

Brushes, brushes, who’s got the brushes? Designrfix has what they claim to be the Ultimate Resource list for Photoshop Brushes. From the looks, they may be right.

GraphicsArtsOnline has a piece about a product called PageZephyr, which can extract content from Quark and InDesign files for re-purposing in ebooks etc.

Last, because you can never, ever get too much InDesign, here are links to every update ever, from 1.0 to 6.0.4 in Mac and Windows flavors.. Collect ’em all kids.

Till next time, have a nice …cough…gasp…wheeze…gurgle…thud.

Publicious Links: The Squirrel Bombing Edition

OK, let’s just get it over with.

Ever since he was first spotted, that damn rodent’s been following us around all summer. Now on to the links.

First up, my latest post at InDesign Secrets, Document Differencing.

Layers Magazine has an article on using Conditional Text in InDesign. Aside: ten years later, I still hate the phrase, “in InDesign.” AwKward.

What do you get when you cross Mad Men with Illustrator? Sketchpad, a 1963 computer illustration program created by Ivan Sutherland at MIT.

Thanks to mehallo.com for the heads up.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow (leopard, that is). Here’s a PDF on Adobe’s Creative Suite compatibility with Apple’s new version of OS X.

Elpical has a product called Claro Layout (which I haven’t tried yet) which gives you the ability to optimize and enhance your photos from within InDesign.

Vectorsonfire.com has a vintage Ford Thunderbird drawn in Illustrator that is so awesome it’s either going to inspire me to refresh my vector skills or make me never touch the Pen tool again. Too soon to tell which.

Examiner.com has a story about some members of the UK Parliament considering a ban on Photoshopped images for ads targeting kids. They’re upset about the widespread Photoshopping of already attractive people into poreless, wrinkleless monuments to Barbie-doll perfection. Here’s an interactive example of the typical process. Of course, this has been going on for a long time, witness the these pics of 18th century First Lady Dolly Madison:

Before

After

Prompting Ben Franklin to say, “M’lady, thou art a hottie.”

Designussion (i.e. Design Discussion) has 13 Amazing Vector Cartoon Tutorials.

If that wasn’t enough for you, Designreviver has 50 Illustrator Cartoon Tutorials.

Ever heard of Flash cookies? AKA cloud cookies? Apparently some sites now keep cookies on your surfing habits on their machines. Thus removing the last shred of a hint of the illusion of privacy. Might as well just post your browser history on your Facebook wall.

Wish you knew more about CSS? Existingvisual.com has 250+ Resources to Help You Become a CSS Expert. Hmmm, wonder if those resources include six months off from real life and a fresh brain.

Stumbleupon has the definitive list of Adobeans on Twitter.

Finally, if you just didn’t get enough rodent, here’s more squirrel bombing and an automatic squirrelizer app.

Publicious Links: The Dude, Where’s My Blog? Edition

And we’re back.

Sometime Monday the domain mapping that transforms mild-mannered “pubtech.wordpress.com” to it’s super hero identity “publicious.net” expired. Silly me, forgot to pay the bill. For about 48 hours, I was thinking I had offended some very important bots in Internetland. All the incoming links to Publicious disappeared and traffic was down more than 90%. It felt like Publicious had been put in solitary confinement.

After the inital shock, I said, “Oh well, whatever. Home alone at last. Now that everyone’s gone, I have all the time in the world and the whole internet to myself. Maybe I’ll just put on some Carpenters, kick back with bag of Cheetos, and check out SpongeBob On Demand.”

Every sha-la-la, Every whoa-o-oh, still shines.

But then I got lonely. I finally figured out I should check one of the sites that links here and see what happens. Bingo. A hop, skip, and credit card payment later, I am once again master of my domain. Now, help yourself to some Cheetos. On with the show.

Might as well start with my latest post at InDesignSecrets.com, Snippet Style InJectors. I stumbled on this idea when I was preparing for a presentation last fall, and noticed that all the document resources used by a snippet get placed before the snippet itself. I said to myself, “Self, this could be useful someday.”

Drawn! the cartoon and illustration blog has an interesting video of an artist laying out a comic book in InDesign. You’ll never look at the Pencil tool the same way again.

Miverity has a tutorial on how to build a Flash XML slideshow app for a website.

Smashing Magazine has an article on Ten Simple Steps to Better Photoshop Performance. Life is short, no time for beachball cursrors.

The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog has an good article on ebook format wars. Which one will end up the Betamax of the 21st century?

Speaking of which…

InformationWeek weighs in on the same ebook format issue, with a Sony v. Amazon angle.

Gigaom is ready to declare a winner: Adobe, because of Sony’s embrace of EPUB.

Relatedly (is that a word? if not, I just made it one) Digital Media Buzz has the scoop on Adobe’s Open Source efforts.

Thinking of using an online word processor? Read Linux.com’s comparison of GoogleDocs, Zoho, and Buzzword.

Quick, how do you make a dotted line in Photoshop? Sitepoint has some nice quick tips about using Photoshop brush options for dotted lines and such.

One NYTimes.com writer thinks the bloom is off the Rich Internet App rose already, with the arrival of Google’s Chrome. Please, don’t be evil, Google. Please.

Graphics.com has some ‘tony tutorials (as in duotone, tritone, etc).

Finally, if you’ve ever wished to see Photoshop and Illustrator battle to the death as giant transformer robots with foul language (and who hasn’t?) I recommend checking out GoMediaZine’s ongoing Photoshop vs. Illustrator series.