Resource for scientific stock photos

There are myriad vendors of stock photography. But if you need images about scientific topics such as Medicine, Genetics, Pollution, Physics or Microscopy, browse the large image collection at the Science Photo Library. They sell both Royalty Free and Rights Managed images, and have a team of in-house researchers to help you locate the right image for your needs. They bill themselves as "the world's leading provider of science photos covering all aspects of science, health & medicine, space exploration & astronomy, technology & industry, earth science, satellite imagery, and nature & wildlife."

A few seminar spots remain!

The response to the "Back to School Fall Seminar Series" has exceeded my expectations. There are over 50 people registered in each of the four half-day sessions! I have room for 60, so a few spots remain. Register today!

The seminar series will be held in the Twin Cities next week. They are open to everyone who wants to do more with less, to be more productive, more efficient and more effective in Adobe Creative Suite. The seminars are:

Session 1: Power through your work with InDesign Styles
Wednesday, September 9, 8:30 a.m. - 12:00 noon

Session 2: InDesign typography
Wednesday, September 9, 1:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Session 3: Photoshop masking techniques
Friday, September 11, 8:30 a.m. - 12:00 noon

Session 4: Introduction to Flash for print designers
Friday, September 11, 1:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

The seminars are very inexpensive, thanks to the generous support of my friends at Adobe, Central Coast Solutions and Data Print Distribution (DPD).

Please consider coming to one or more of the seminars. I'd love to see you there!

How to force a PDF to open at a particular view

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how to set your Acrobat preferences so that all PDFs open at the magnification you want them to. Today's post is about how you as the creator of a PDF can specify the opening view of that particular PDF. I always like my PDFs to open in Fit Page view, so that the recipient gets a bird's eye view of the whole page. If I've included bookmarks in the file, I want the bookmarks pane to appear on the left side of the screen so that the recipient sees and uses the bookmarks.

1. After you've created your PDF file in InDesign, Word, QuarkXPress, or whatever, open it in Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional (you can't use the free Adobe Reader to do the steps below).

2. Choose File > Properties

3. In the Document Properties dialog box, click on the Initial View tab at the top. Then set the options for Layout and Magnification as desired. Note that you can specify which Navigation Panels open at the left side of the screen, the page layout, the magnification, which page the PDF opens to, whether or not you want the Acrobat window to resize to the size of the page, whether the window should be centered on the screen, and whether or not you want the document to open in Full Screen mode (useful for presentations).

4. Click the OK button. Nothing magnification and layout of the document will not change at this point.

5. Save the PDF, close it, and reopen it. It should reopen with the options you specified in step three. These options will override any settings specified by the user in Preferences as described in my previous post.

Sorting the Glyphs panel display

InDesign's Glyphs panel (Window > Type & Tables > Glyphs) is indespensible for locating and inserting foreign-language characters, alternate characters, symbols and dingbats. Yesterday I noticed a strange thing about the display order of the Glyphs in the panel. The default sort order is to sort the Glyphs by their Unicode value. Here's what the Glyphs panel looks like for Adobe Caslon Pro Regular, sorted by Unicode value. (Click the graphic to enlarge.)

Note that the various ornaments in the typeface are scattered throughout the panel, making them difficult to locate. But if you choose Sort Glyphs > By CID / GID from the Glyphs panel menu in the upper right corner of the panel, the panel changes to look like this:

This view may be more useful for some fonts. Depending on the typeface you are using, and what you are trying to do, one sort order may be better than the other. Give it a try!

By the way, Illustrator also has a Glyphs panel (Window > Type > Glyphs). But the Glyphs panel in Illustrator is always sorted by CID/GID and cannot be sorted any other way. Also, both InDesign and Illustrator allow you to choose a subset of glyphs using the "Show" drop down menu in the upper-left corner to display just the currency or symbols for example.

LiveSurface Image Templates

Here's a cool resource that I've been evaluating: The LiveSurface Image Template Library. These are not just stock photos. They're pre-masked, multi-layered high-res photos of billboards, stationary, packaging, vehicles, etc. that contain built-in 3D surfaces. What this means is that you can use the photos to quickly visualize what your designs will look like in context, create high-quality client presentations, or create final high-res images for use in print or Web marketing materials.

The images take advantage of the vanishing point feature of Photoshop CS2-CS4.

The layers and masks are well-labeled and well-organized, and instructions are included.

It took me just a matter of minutes to create the images below.