Give a Little Air to the Editors
Here’s an interesting tip I thought some of you could use. A few clients of mine have their designers routinely extend text frame depth into white space below (below the point where they actually prefer the text to end), sometimes into the pasteboard. Then they use ruler guides to show the editors where the text [...]
How Many Letters in a Word?
A production manager at a book publisher e-mailed me this question a couple weeks ago: How long of a word did Adobe use to determine the number of words in selected text frames? Here’s a straightforward answer for you: They didn’t. Each word, regardless of length, is counted as one word. (You can change this [...]
Working With Layout Templates
Is there some sort of efficiency virus going around? Over the past few weeks I’ve received a slew of phone calls and e-mails from IC/ID users of every stripe asking for help with the same thing: setting up template-based InCopy/InDesign workflows. Here’s an example, from an art director who e-mailed me last month: “I want [...]
My InCopy CS3 Workflow White Paper
Last fall, one of my favorite clients — Adobe Systems themselves, woo-hoo! — hired me to write up their official InCopy CS3 Workflow white paper. You’re probably familiar with an earlier version (like CS or CS2) of this white paper. It’s the PDF document prospective users download from the main InCopy product page on the [...]
Styles That Apply Themselves
Ideally, we could have the computer figure out which styles go where and have InCopy apply them on its own. We could just say “Computer, format text” (maybe speaking into the mouse as though it were a microphone, like Scotty did in that Star Trek movie) and go on to the next task. Wouldn’t that [...]
Versioning Stories and Layouts
Designers, editors and writers have itchy trigger fingers, born out of bitter experience working with computers. We like to periodically do a “Save As” to files we’re working on so we can safely revert to previous versions in case something gets messed up. But when a designer does that to a layout file with linked [...]
InCopy and Images Refresher
I wonder how many seasoned IC/ID users are even aware images can be exported to the workflow, just like text. And what exactly an InCopy user can do to them. In case this feature (introduced in CS2) escaped your notice, here’s a quick rundown of how it works. First, designers export image frames — filled [...]
My Lynda.com IC/ID Video Training is Live
My first Lynda.com video training title went live a couple weeks ago. Right now the lessons are only available online, but a DVD will be available for sale shortly: InCopy CS3 + InDesign CS3 Integration http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=323 If you’re not a lynda.com member, you can only view the first few introductory Quicktime movies for free. Once [...]
Huge Yellow Tool Tips Bugging You?
When you’re in InCopy’s Layout view, or anywhere in InDesign’s main view, the programs insist on displaying huge yellow boxes with tiny text whenever you hover your cursor over a managed workflow story or image. The text says, “You are currently editing “feature story-Once there.incx”” or “X Story is available for anyone to edit” or [...]
Dueling Styles: InCopy vs. InDesign
Recently I’ve received a number of e-mails from InCopy users with questions about creating paragraph and character styles (such as, “Why can’t I” and “How do I”). It was a surprise to me, since I thought editors didn’t want to have to bother with formatting text, only writing it and correcting it. At least that’s [...]