Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Color Inspiration

At PePcon today, Erica Gamet showed me a cool blog: 

Check out Movies in Color, "A blog featuring stills from films and their corresponding color palettes."

Now, if only the blog would let me export the wonderful color palettes as ASE files. That would be cool! 

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

How to make things move in Adobe DPS

When you want to make objects move in an Adobe Digital Publishing Suite project, you have four options:

1. Video

2. Slideshow (multi-state objects)

3. Image sequence

4. HTML5 animation

It can be difficult to determine which method is best for the type of movement you want and the kinds of objects that you are moving.

I've put together a 3-page PDF "cheat sheet" that shows the pros and cons of each method. You can download the PDF here.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

2 tips to make DPS Scrollable Frames easy

Many people overlook InDesign's Story Editor. I've blogged about this handy feature twice: here and again here.

 

But I've found another good use for Story Editor. When you create Scrollable Frame Overlays using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite in InDesign, usually much of the text that scrolls is not visible on the screen in InDesign, so you cannot easily edit the text. This forces you to cut the scrolling content out of the scrolling container, edit the text, and then reassemble the Scrollable Frame Overlay.

 

But, if you can select the text frame that holds the scrolling content that you wish to edit, you can then select Edit > Edit in Story Editor. In the Story Editor window, you will be able to view, edit, and format all the text in that frame, even the text that isn't visible.

 

I use this all the time to avoid having to “take apart” a scrollable frame object just to edit or format the text.

 

Bonus tip: if you have a simple scrollable frame that consists of a single text frame, make the text frame an Auto-Size text frame (new in InDesign CS6) so that the length of the frame will grow or shrink as you add, remove, and edit the text in the frame.

 

ScreenSnapz001

Friday, April 12, 2013

New Adobe DPS Getting Started Guide

Adobe has released a new Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Getting Started Guide, written specifically for DPS Professional and Enterprise customers. The downloadable PDF guide contains a good overview of basic DPS concepts, account setup and configuration, how to create folios and articles, how to add interactivity and media, app distribution, and more. The guide provides an introduction and overview, and then links out to the rich ecosystem of other help and training resources to help you learn more about each topic. You can download the Getting Started Guide here.

ScreenSnapz001

Tuesday, April 09, 2013

New in the Apple Developer Member Center

If you are an Apple Developer, you should know about a change Apple made to the iOS Dev Center yesterday.

The previous "iOS Provisioning Portal" has been replaced with a new "Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles" page. The changes appear to be primarily to the user interface, but they are extensive. This means that the Adobe Step-by-Step Guide to Publishing iPad Apps with DPS, Single Edition and the Adobe iOS Publishing Companion Guide, Professional & Enterprise, are now out of date.

Adobe has indicated that they are working to update these guides. Until then, if you need to create or edit certificates, UDIDs, or provisioning profiles for use with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, you will need to work to reconcile the new interface with the existing instructions.

 

ScreenSnapz001

Tuesday, April 02, 2013

How to determine folio size in Adobe Viewer

When you are creating a folio file for an Adobe Digital Publishing Suite app, you may want to know what the file size of the folio file is when delivered to your tablet. There is a way to determine the size of the folio file, but it is not obvious. Here's how:

1. Preview the folio in Adobe Content Viewer on your tablet

2. Return to the Library screen by tapping the Library button in the upper-left corner of the screen

Step 1

3. At the Library screen, tap the "gear" icon in the upper-right corner of the screen

Step 2

4. Tap Remove Issues from iPad

Step 3

5. The size of each folio will be displayed on the screen. Tap the Cancel button in the upper left corner to return to the Library screen.

Step 4