Tutorial: design tips

Photoshop and Illustrator > >

Design Tips

Always check all similar images that you use with the Eyedropper Tool in Photoshop—it will prevent those images from being different after being printed, the difference between them might be invisible on the screen, but it will show off after your project has been printed. So take your time and check all of your similar images for the equal ammount of Black, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow (keeping your eyes on the info pannel, while moving your Eyedropper Tool across your images).

It is necessary to check for pixellation on the 'doubtful' photos of your document through the channels: on Mac press Command1, Command2 Command3, Command4 (for CMYK) and Command1, Command2, Command3 (for RGB) and this will give you the opportunity to see shortcomings of the image more clear and get rid of them, blurring the image on those channels which are too 'sharpened'. After finishing go back to CMYK or RGB pressing Command~. On PC use Ctrl instead of Command.

If the image you are working with is extremely (or rather) pixellated, you could improve its quality in the following way:
Copy the same image to the upper level.
Apply Blur —> Gaussian Blur to the upper image, apx. radius 1.5 points
Then go to the same image below and apply Sharpen—> Unsharp Mask, ammount up to 60%
Now go to the blurred image on top, and adjust its transparency—it's amazing how the whole image becomes more clear and of better quality with this method!

To copy a layer or a group of layers from one Photoshop document into another, hold 'Shift' key—the layers will be placed to the exactly same position in this other document (this works also in Illustrator and Flash!).

Slice Tool (K) is very useful in Photoshop for web building if you'll have to cut your document more then once (which you usually have to). Preview slices through View —> Show —> Slices panel on top, and while saving for web select particular ones and apply different settings of saving for them (as gif, as jpg, etc.)—then after saving your document for web (this will create all cuts that you need instantly) don't forget to save your document, and next time you are working on slicing, it will take you only one second to overwrite the existing pieces.

For painting in Photoshop these shortcuts are useful:
To fill selection with background color—use Ctrl(or Command)-Backspace
To fill selection with foreground color—use Alt-Backspace
To fill selection with foreground color using Lock Transparent Pixels—use Shift-Alt-Backspace
(you could find more shortcuts by clicking here)

Sometimes web designers are trying to use only 'web' colors for their pages, but there is no need to use only these ones. All monitors are displaying the whole gamma of colors nowadays, so the possibility of the color displayed incorrectly due to it not-web-color-belonging is extremely slim.

All TIFFs used in Quark or InDesign document should be saved in Photoshop preferrably without LZW compression.
It is especially necessary to be attentive while creating EPS in Illustrator. I would recommend to save your eps graphics in Illustrator 8.0 or (in case of transparency) parse them in Photoshop (open them), and save them as TIFFs or EPS from Photoshop.

Quark and InDesign > >

Design Tips

For fine prints such as brochures, calendars, magazine ads, etc. all images must be saved at 300 pix per inch (or about 120 pixels per centimeter) to be used in QuarkXPress or InDesign. Then it might be possible to enlarge them but not more than 170%. For an ad placed in a newspaper or 'junk mail' advertisement (like an ad submitted to Valassis publication), resolution of the image of 150 pix will work alright due to the usual not-too-perfect qulity of newspaper printing.

If there are Pantones or if you are using Silver or Gold in your document for print, it is necessary to check them in Colors panel (Edit—>Colors) as Spot color (in QuarkXPress).
To make a final check for the colors in your document, you should print it in separation mode. (choose "print separations" in Quark in Page set-up).
For example, after printing separations of your document which has two Pantones (plus all CMYK colors), if you have more then 6 pages going out of your printer for any page, it means that you have used more then 2 Spot colors in your document.

All TIFFs used in Quark or InDesign document should be saved in Photoshop preferrably without LZW compression.
It is especially necessary to be attentive while creating EPS in Illustrator. I would recommend to save your eps graphics in Illustrator 8.0 or (in case of transparency) parse them in Photoshop (open them), and save them as TIFFs or EPS from Photoshop.

© — Copyright in Quark (though depends on a font) usually can be done via Option G.
® — Registered symbol in Quark (though depends on a font) usually is Option R.
™ — Trademark in Quark can be done through Option 2.

Getting the image to the image box in Quark:

1. Select the box with the image
2. Use shift + option + F to make the image fit the box
3. Use shift + alt + option + F to make the image proportionally fit the box
4. Try to get an image proportionally to just created box, getting the dialogue box open with option + E command, and then pressing 'open' while holding simultaneously shift + alt + option + F with your left hand (though it might be tricky!)

Resizing all items on a page in QuarkXPress:

1. Group everything
2. Use shift + alt + command and drag

QuarkXPress has a wonderful Alien Easter Egg:
(Requires: Quark XPress 4 or 6)

1. Have one box on the page selected
2. Leave plenty of room on both sides for action
3. Press Shift-Option-Command-K to get original alien
4. Repeat the above sequence at least five times
5. The new alien appears randomly, usually after 5-12 tries

Or another way to do the same thing:

1. Have at least five elements on page
2. Have the Item tool selected in Tools palette
3. Select one item
4. Hold down the Shift, Option and Command keys
5. Hit Delete key
6. Watch out for alien!!!
7. Repeat steps 3 and 4
8. When you get to the 5th item, something different will happen!!

International > >

Design Tips

Or, how to do it in English or in Russian

FPO — For Placement Only
Stet — Term used by copyeditors and proofreaders meaning "Let the original stand."
Margin — White space on all four sides of a printed page
w/k/o type — with knock-out type.
When you are asked to use 'greeking' in your project, this reffers to filling latin text that goes as following:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil imperdiet doming id quod mazim placerat facer possim assum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis.

For expats-designers working in Russia, I would remind that before bringing your files to the printers' office (or, much better, before starting working on your files—if you know already where you are going to print your work), make sure to contact your printers and ask them specifically, what format they preffer. There are some printers working only on PCs in Russia. Some are persistently using only old versions of Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. Some might ask for your files to be prepared in PageMaker (a program for PCs only, working a little bit similar to QuarkXPress)—and in this case you will have to look for another printer if you work on Mac.