Adobe Bridge

Bridge is an entirely different category of program than Illustrator, InDesign or Photoshop. Bridge is not made to produce images at all: it is simply a very high-end program for organizing image files and documents. As you’ve seen throughout the semester, working in Photoshop or Illustrator generally involves producing a lot of files, often of many different types: PSD, JPG, TIFF scans, .AI files, PDFs, etc. Bridge is designed to help you keep these files organized and labeled. Not to be corny, but it literally does provide a ‘bridge’ between the various Adobe CS programs. Knowing a few basic things about Bridge might be helpful as you’re working on organizing your semesters’ worth of work. Let’s take a look at the program.

File Organization

When you open up Bridge, it looks like a complex version of the standard Finder window you’re familiar with in Mac OSX. On the upper left, you see a list of locations on your computer’s hard drive, including your user home folder and the desktop, as well as icons for any external drives you may have connected to your computer.

1) Start by clicking on your thumb drive. This will bring up the folders on your drive in the main Bridge window. Navigate until you have reached a folder that contains multiple images.

2) Once you are at this point, you can go to File: New Folder and create a new folder. Just like in Mac OSX, you can rename the folder, and drag items into it manually. For example, you might want to have one folder for your Bending History assignment, and then individual subfolders named PSD, JPG, TIFF, etc. based in the different file types.

3) You can also go to File: New Window and drag items from one folder to another across the windows. So far, you could accomplish all of this with Mac OS, but let’s take a look at some of the other functions Bridge offers.

File Labeling

One of the best features of Bridge is its capacity to sort and label files. For example, if you’ve just shot a batch of digital photos, and you now need to import them and select the images to use, Bridge can make this process very easy.

Let’s say you need to capture images from a camera. Rather than using the Mac Image Capture software, you can do this directly in Bridge. Go to File: Get Pictures from Camera. This brings up a dialogue that allows you to choose the location and filenames of the images as they’re captured.

Once you have a set of images open in Bridge, go to the Label menu. This allows you to label some images as rejects, and assign star ratings to others. You can then use this information to sort the images later, saving time over manually sorting through the images again and again.

Metadata

One final note: Bridge has many, many functions, but the one I’d like to leave you with is creating and assigning metadata. Metadata literally means ‘data about data.’ In practice, metadata is a packet of information that you can assign to an image file to indicate its ownership and copyright status.

When you begin posting images of your own creative work online, it is vital that you assign a set of metadata to them. This indicates that you created the work, and either retain or surrender the rights to it. No matter how many generations a file goes through, it retains the metadata (for example if a file is saved as a PSD with metadata, and you then save a JPG of it, the JPG has the same set of metadata). For files with copyright information, Photoshop shows the circle-C copyright image next to the filename at the top of the image window.

The first thing you’ll need to do is create a metadata template. Go to Tools: New Metadata Template, and fill in the information you’d like to include. I generally include only my name, email, website and phone number, and type ‘all rights reserved’ in the Copyright Notice box. This is enough to indicate I created and own the file.

Once you have a metadata template, you can select any number of images in the Bridge browser, and then go to Tools: Append Metadata. The name of your template should appear in a pop-up menu. Select your template. Bridge will ask whether you want to append the metadata of all the files: hit Yes, and then Bridge will write your metadata to all of the files. I make this step part of my usual workflow in working with images: as soon as I have a new batch of images, I open them in Bridge, write my standard metadata to them, and proceed with editing the images.

While this may seem esoteric at the moment, if you do continue working with digital images, it will become very useful. I didn’t get this information until much later in my experience with digital imaging, and wish I’d had it sooner.

Introduction to Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign is the last program we will cover in the course of this semester. Unlike Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, InDesign is not primarily for creating and editing graphics (bitmap or vector). Instead, InDesign is used mostly for layout of existing text and images. It combines much of the layout functionality of Illustrator with advanced text-layout capabilities and the ability to work on a large number of pages at once. This makes InDesign an excellent program for creating both electronic and hard-copy publications, including brochures, PDF pamphlets, newsletters, and books.

We will be using InDesign to create a multi-page PDF portfolio of the work you have done in Digital Studio this semester. As you are preparing to make your portfolio, you should gather all of the images you have produced in class this semester, preferably in their high-resolution versions (for bitmap images), and make sure they are clean, flattened, and ready to insert into a PDF. Similarly, before starting to lay out your PDF, you should prepare your text for each project in Microsoft Word or another wordprocessing program, so the text will be ready to insert once you start assembling your PDF. I will outline below the basic steps to creating a professional PDF using InDesign.

Getting Started- Creating a New Document

Start up Adobe InDesign (you may want to move the application icon to the Dock for easy future reference). Go to File: New, and select Document. This will bring up the New Document dialogue.

1) First, select the number of pages in your PDF. You can always add more pages later, but start with an estimate of what you will need. The minimum for your portfolio is seven pages.

2) Uncheck the Facing Pages box. This function is for creating print documents which are laid out like books: we will simply be building a multi-page PDF for viewing on a computer.

3) Select Letter under Page Size: we will be using standard 8.5” x 11” pages for your PDF.

4) Hit OK.

This creates a multi-page blank document: InDesign shows you the first page initially: you can scroll down to work on subsequent pages.

Adding Text and Images

Initially, the InDesign interface looks quite a bit like Illustrator: in many respects, the tools in InDesign behave the same way as those in Illustrator. However, there are some important differences to bear in mind. Unlike Illustrator, InDesign functions by creating ‘frames’ for text and images. This means that rather than simply drawing or placing an image, you first create a space for that image in the InDesign document. You can then place the image, and adjust its size to fit the frame you have created for it. InDesign does this so that documents can be laid out before all of the content is finished: by laying out the fields in advance, you can simply plug in content as it is completed. Let’s give this a try with an image.

Inserting Images in InDesign

You can insert an image in several ways. First, let’s try the simplest way.

1) Go to File: Place. Like Illustrator, this brings up a dialogue which allows you to select an image from your hard drive.

2) Select an image, and click OK.

3) InDesign shows a pointer and a thumbnail of the image. Click where you would like the image to be in your document. InDesign then creates a frame and inserts the image at its finished dimensions into your document.

4) You can then use the Move tool to relocate the image.

Let’s try inserting an image in another way, this time by creating a frame first, and then inserting the image.

1) Click on the Rectangular Frame Tool in the Tools palette. This looks like the Rectangle tool in the palette, except with an X through the rectangle. Click and drag to draw out a rectangular frame of the size you’d like for your image.

2) Select the Move tool from the Tool palette, and click on the frame you just drew. Now, go to File: Place.

3) As before, select an image from your hard drive to place into the frame.

4) Hit OK. This will place your image in the frame.

You will probably notice that you’re seeing only part of your image. This is a key difference between InDesign and Illustrator. You have a few options at this point. First, using the Move tool, grab a corner of your frame and drag out until you see the entire image. This does not change the size of the image: instead, it just opens up the frame so you can see more of the image.

If you need to change the size of your image, as opposed to just changing the size of the frame, select the image with the Move tool. Then, select the Scale tool from the Tools palette. (this looks like a series of shrinking rectangles with an arrow). Click and drag a corner of the image to change the size of the image.

Hint: If you’d like to maintain the proportions of your image, hold down Shift as you’re dragging the image to scale. This will prevent it from becoming distorted.

If you’d like just to display part of an image in your InDesign document, you can also use the your frame to ‘crop’ your image, by leaving the frame smaller than the finished image. Similarly, the Circular and Polygonal Frame Tools allow you to show a circular section of your image.

Using the Fitting Tools

InDesign also has a set of tools which allow you to fit an image exactly to a frame, or vice versa. Once you have placed an image in a frame, go to the Object menu, and roll over the Fitting section. This will bring up some options for fitting your image to your frame.

Selecting Fit Content to Frame will stretch or shrink your image to fill the frame you have selected. Conversely, selecting Fit Frame to Content will stretch or shrink your frame to fit your image. You can also use the Center Content in Frame function to center an image in a frame.

Adding Text to Documents

Adding text to an InDesign document works a lot like adding an image. You must create a frame for your text prior to inserting or typing it. Once you’ve created a frame, the text you add will automatically wrap to fit your frame. So, you can easily create a small, paragraph-shaped body of text to fit above, below or beside your image. Again, there are several ways to do this.

First, let’s try creating a frame using the Type tool.

1) Click on the Type tool in the Tool palette. Unlike Illustrator, you cannot simply start typing with the tool: first you must click and drag to create a rectangular field for the text. Once you’ve created a field, you can simply click inside it and start typing, or copy and paste text from Microsoft Word or another wordprocessing program. That’s it. You can use the Move tool to scale your frame to fit more text if needed.

2) You can also create a text frame using the Frame tools, much like we used the Frame tools to create frames for images. So, you can create circular or polygonal text frames as well. In essence, any shape you draw, whether with the Pen, Pencil or Shape tools, can become a frame: just click in inside it with the Type tool and start typing, or paste in text from another program.

Creating a Background

You can use the Rectangle tool, as in Illustrator, to create a field of color for the background of your PDF. Once you’ve drawn it, go to Object: Arrange: Send to Back to place the rectangle behind all of the other frames in your document.

Adding a Page

If you need to add another page to your portfolio, go to the Layout menu, and select Add Page. This inserts a page above your current page. Similarly, you can use this menu to delete pages you do not need.

For Next Week:

Start gathering images and text for your portfolio PDF, and begin layout.

Online Postcard Ordering Made Easy

We will be using OvernightPrints.com to order postcards for this project. As mentioned previously, they offer a short run of 25 postcards for $8.95 plus shipping. We will order the postcards in enough time to avoid paying for rush shipping or fast turnaround- this is a good practice, as it saves money and leaves you the option of re-printing the postcards in case something goes wrong the first time around.

There are numerous considerations in ordering postcards, but the most important thing to keep in mind is the standard resolution of 300dpi for print. The finished image for the front of your postcard must be 300dpi at 4.25” x 6.25”. You will be ordering 4” x 6” postcards- the extra quarter inch will allow for ‘bleed’ in the postcard. More on that later. Here are the basic steps to start creating your postcard.

1)             Go to www.overnightprints.com

2)             On the main page, click on Design Guide on the header menu.

            This will bring you to a page with a list of possible design programs for your postcard. Click on Adobe Illustrator in the list of programs.

3)            Scroll down to 4” x 6” Postcard in the menu of templates. Click on “Download Start File.” This will download a copy of the Illustrator template file to your computer, which you can then modify to create your postcard.

4)            Open the 4”x 6” Postcard file in Adobe Illustrator. There are lots of useful instructions embedded in the file. Make sure to read them over. The file is built with multiple layers, each with a different set of information. Depending on the design of your postcard, you will use these templates to lay out your design, and then delete the layers with the template information once the design is complete.

5)             Initially, the template opens showing the Safe Zone (red), the Trim Mark

(blue), and the Artboard (black). Overall dimensions for your design on the front of the postcard should be 6.25” x 4.25.” This will allow your design to seamlessly cover the front of the postcard. Your entire design should fit within the red Safe Zone, but you should extend your background image or color all the way to the edge of the artboard to ensure the edges are uniform.

6)            If you are simply using a bitmap image for the front of the card you can produce a file in Photoshop that is 6.25” x 4.25” at 300dpi, and upload it without using a template.

7)             If you are using Illustrator to create the front of your card, turn off visibility for all layers except Design (the eye icon in the Layers menu) and lay out the front of your card in the Design layer. When you are finished, turn on the Safe Zone layer to check that your design fits in the Safe Zone, make any changes needed, and then delete all layers except the Design layer by dragging them into the trashcan at the bottom of the Layers menu.

8)             Go to File: Save As and save your file as “PostcardFront.ai” or something similar.

9)             Open the “4x6” Postcard” template file with Illustrator again. This will bring up the file so you can lay out the back of your postcard. This is slightly more complicated, as the back of the postcard must meet USPS regulations in order to go through the mail.

10)             Turn off visibility for the Safe Zone layer

11)            Turn on visibility for the Postal Regulations layer. This will show you the area you can use for text on the back of your postcard. You cannot place text or designs in the red area of the card. Yellow areas can be used for your design. All images and text on the back of your postcard must be black and white.

12)            Turn off visibility for the Postal Regulations layer, and lay out your design in the Design layer. Once you’ve completed your design, turn on the Postal Regulations layer again to check that your design fits in the yellow area. Make any changes necessary, check again, then delete all layers except the Design layer, by dragging them into the trashcan at the bottom of the Layers menu.

13)             Save your file as “PostcardBack.ai” or something similar. Now you’re ready to upload you files and order your card. We will cover this in class next week, and I will go over the process again on November 18th when we order our cards in class.