Once upon a time.....Apple + Adobe....a love story?

Once upon a time in a land not so far away, there was a handsome king named Sir Apple, but many in the kingdom referred to him as "Mac Daddy." Mac Daddy was married to a creative, suite woman named Lady Adobe. The two experienced a long, happy marriage, while they may have had issues, through it all, they shared a love many had long admired. While Lady Adobe may have spent time gazing out the Windows, we all knew that that Mac Daddy was her one true love. The two reigned over a vast empire called A-topia, known for great creatives, designers, exceptional video and web producers.

The loyal subjects in the kindgom were happy, Mac Daddy was supportive and allowed them to work and play always knowing just what they needed.  Mama Adobe was the nurturer for their talents, giving them the tools to express themselves and aiding them in making a living for themselves while doing what they loved. She was the dream weaver, illustrator and quite talented in design as well.

One day, Mac Daddy, decided to build a new castle. It was smaller than the castle that he shared with Adobe, but was still quite lovely. Once the new castle was done, Mac Daddy started referring to it as his "pad" and how much simpler it would make his life. It wasn't long before the loyal subjects of A-topia realized that Mac Daddy had forbidden Adobe from living there, at least for now.

What had happened, had Mama Adobe done more than just gazed out the Windows? Had Mac Daddy fallen for someone less Flashy?  Someone with more Silver,  light-er or more attractive? What could it be?

While none of the subjects could see what was happening in the castle, many speculated that Mac Daddy had banished Mama Adobe to the couch. But neither was talking, and left the children of A-topia to wonder...are Mama Adobe and Mac Daddy getting a divorce? No one wanted to choose sides? Had it only been a little spat? Will Mama Adobe be invited to the "pad" soon? Mac Daddy had mentioned something about Mama Adobe feeling a little buggy, but was there more to it than that?

If there is, will the subjects of A-topia ever be the same?

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As an early adopter of the iPad, and member of the design community, there was one thing that was remarkable to me, the overwhelming absence of Adobe Apps on the iPad. Adobe Ideas and a PDF reader available as add on apps, but, it was the lack of support for Flash that left many within the community scratching their heads wondering what was really happening.

Had Apple fired a warning shot, threatened divorce in some tactical plan to get their way, or is the marriage truly on the rocks? Or had Adobe strayed and this was Apple's way exerting some type of independence? Had the relationship been strained for years or is it all just a big misunderstanding?

In order to try to gain some insight on the matter, I turned to three colleagues in the industry to get their feedback. People who have over time shown to have their finger on the pulse of the industry and great insight into the direction of things to come.

"I've been dwelling on this for some time as well," says Chad Chelius, author and certified trainer. "I can only think that Apple has something in mind... with HTML 5 on the horizon I've seen some pretty cool stuff with the latest version of CSS with HTML 5. Is it as good/powerful as Flash? I don't know, but it's a compelling argument for open standards."

Having done work in Flash over the years, it is a bit disconcerting that the lack of a nod from Apple could spark its demise. While change is inevitable, I don't know that many had really forecasted that to be a distinct possibility. An exception to that may be Kevin Tobosa, owner of the Tobosa Creative Group, who stated, "Adobe has become complacent in their position and as such, Flash is losing ground to Silverlight. Silverlight drives Netflix and if streaming HD video in a matter of seconds isn't amazing technology then I don't know what is."

Adobe has seen this movie before, it was Quark's lack of responsiveness to users that led to willingness for so many to make the jump to InDesign. The complacency and posturing that lead to its current state, and the fall from favor in the eyes of so many die-hard supporters, me included. The very day that I made the move to InDesign for the department I was charged with running was the day Quark called. And the only feedback I could give was, "too little, too late." Will Adobe suffer the same fate, or will this be the wake-up call that rights the ship?

So, can we expect that chasm between the two to widen, or is this just symptomatic of the type of device that the iPad is intended to be. Jeff Knight, graphic designer,  comments that, "Not having Flash on an iPhone or iPad isn't the worst of it. The world doesn't create as much work on those machines—they're media displays not media creators. But take it away from the next generation of iMacs and MacBooks...that might start a brawl!"

Is the relationship stronger than ever, on the rocks, or in the need of a good mediator? With neither side saying much, in only leaves the citizens of A-topia to speculate.

Thumbnail Place in InDesign

InDesign CS4 had added a number of new features that I’ve grown accustomed to using each and every day. One of those features is the Thumbnail Place feature. The ability select multiple graphics after choosing File > Place is a great new feature in and of itself, however often I find that all I want to do is see all of the images in InDesign so I can analyze them or begin placing them and sizing them in my document. Let’s take a look at how the Thumbnail Place works in InDesign CS4.

1. Choose File > Place and select several images in the place dialog, then click the open button. The place gun appears with the number of selected photos in parentheses.
2. Hold down Shift + Command (Mac) or Shift + Control (Windows) to get the Grid Place icon and click and drag with your mouse to draw a grid using your placed images. Don’t let go of that mouse yet!
3. As your dragging with your mouse, you can release the modifier keys but continue to drag to establish the size of the images in the grid. While dragging, press the right or left arrow keys on your keyboard to add or remove columns from the grid or press the up and down arrow keys to add or remove rows from the grid.



4. Once you’re satisfied with the number of thumbnails, release the mouse button and voila! Instant thumbnail placement.

After releasing your mouse button, the images are placed in a thumbnail grid.

Once you know this trick, you’ll be surprised at how often you’ll use it and wonder how you lived without it.

Chad Chelius
Adobe Certified Instructor, Adobe Certified Expert, Chelius Graphic Services
Blog: http://cheliusgraphicservices.com/wordpress/

Get a GREP! (part 3)

Alright! Time for the final post in this series of GREP techniques! What I've done is created a graphic inside of InDesign using various tools. The end result is a vector-based element and I've highlighted it using the Direct Selection tool so you can see the points on the path that make up the shape.



Although I created this within InDesign, it could just as easily be a placed vector graphic from Illustrator or even an image from Photoshop. This method will work regardless of what type of graphic you are using.

Next you'll need to click on the graphic with your Selection Tool (black arrow) and choose Edit>Copy. Now switch to your Type Tool and click in an area of text where you'd like the graphic to appear and choose Edit>Paste. You've just created an in-line graphic which is a graphic that acts like a piece of text within InDesign. What we're doing here is setting up one instance of the graphic the way we'd like it to appear in all of our frames and then we'll automate it using GREP.



The main advantage of an in-line graphic is that it will behave like a character of text and therefore will flow with the text whenever an edit is made anywhere within the text that could affect the in-line graphic. (whew!).

At this point you could simply run the GREP search as you did in the previous post because it is actually pasting the contents of the clipboard in the change to: field. That being said, I can never leave well enough alone so I'm going to take it one step further. I'm going to precisely adjust the position of that graphic by making it an anchored object.

Click on the in-line graphic with the Selection tool and choose Object>Anchored Object>Options from the menu at the top of your screen. In the Anchored Object Options dialog box, set the Position to Custom, set the X relative to anchor marker and the Y relative to baseline, and turn the Preview checkbox on and click OK.



Now, if you haven't worked with Anchored Objects before, this dialog box can seem a bit daunting (leave comments if you'd like this to be a future blog topic) but we're going to simplify it. After you clicked OK, your graphic probably jumped away from where you originally pasted it which is fine. Using your Selection tool simply drag the graphic back to where it was and position it the way you would like it to appear with your text. Now go back to Object>Anchored Object>Options and check the "Prevent Manual Positioning" checkbox and click OK. This prevents anyone from being able to drag the graphic manually once you've positioned it.

We're almost done here so stay with me! We want all of the end-it graphics to appear in the same position relative to the end of the text so with that graphic still selected with your Selection tool, go to your Object Styles panel and Alt/Option+click on the Create new style button at the bottom of the Object Styles panel. Call the style end-it, Click the "Apply Style to selection" checkbox and click OK. An object style will apply the positioning that was applied to the end-it graphic to any other graphic that you apply it to. VERY IMPORTANT! Click on the end-it graphic and you're end-it Object Style should be highlighted in the Object Styles panel. CHOOSE EDIT>COPY. This will copy the graphic with the Object style applied to the clipboard.



Now, let's jump back into the Find/Change dialog box and click on the GREP tab. We're literally going to run the exact same GREP search that we did in part 2! Because the graphic with the Object Style has been copied to the clipboard, the Change to: portion of the GREP search should also apply the formatting to the replaced character. Run the GREP search on the Document (not just the story) and your end-it character should appear at the end of every story! Now, if you don't want the end-it character to appear after every single story in your document, the trick is to apply Paragraph styles to your text. In the example document that I've been using, I created several Paragraph Styles for the captions, body, and headings. What this allows me to do is indicate which stories of text to apply the end-it character to. Click on the More Options button within the Find/Change dialog box and in the Find Format: Section, click on the "Specify Attributes to Find" button and then choose the Paragraph style that you want to restrict your search to. Click OK. Then click change all. You should now have an end-it character at the end of only the stories for which the appropriate Paragraph Style is applied!

Chad Chelius
Adobe Certified Instructor, Adobe Certified Expert, AGI Training
Blog: The Chad and Rob Show