1. Photoshop for TechComm*
*how Photoshop saved my life and gave
me time with my wife and kids
Matt Sullivan | matt@mattrsullivan.com | @mattrsullivan | mattrsullivan.com
3. FrameMaker
Place PSD when possible
Double-click or right-click on a PSD
to launch Photoshop
Screen captures
Multiple versions for use with
Conditional Text
9. Matt Sullivan
Helping with publishing workflows
matt@mattrsullivan.com
www.mattrsullivan.com
@mattrsullivan
Contac
t info
Training | Consulting | Development | Mentoring
Editor's Notes
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,Photoshop is a great tool, and one that I was lucky enough to use even before it was released. Along with being one of my main tools throughout careers in commercial printing, tech comm and teaching, Photoshop is also fun to use, and creates amazing results.
Know how your images will be used. Web and other electronic formats will benefit from the larger color range and smaller file size of RGB images, while print output will look best when created from CMYK images. Compression (jpg, et al.) often dramatically reduces file size, without a visible reduction of quality, but again, be aware of usage requirements. Compressed (and downsampled) images are smaller for a reason: They contain less data. If you wish to print quality output, compressed images are not your friend.Two good rules of thumb:Size your electronic outputs to 75 ppi at final size (a 2” square image should be about 150 pixels across). Some say more, some say less, but 75 is easy to remember and not likely to cause issues.Size your print images to 300 ppi at final size (that 2” image should be at least 600 pixels across). For those that insist on *exactly* the proper resolution, look up the linescreen of your output, and multiply it by 1.7 for the minimum required PPI. Don’t know what linescreen is or what your printer’s linescreen is? Then use 300 ppi. ‘Nuff said!Learn to use layers, selections, masks and adjustment layers.JPEG is bad! I should know, because I used to own jpegisbad.com, and that makes it official. OK, bad is a strong word, but overused certainly is not too strong. Large files are not inherently bad, they’re just large. If you need quality, deal with it.
Placing native files (PSD, AI) is a fantasiticly useful feature. If not an option, PDF runs a close second.For screen captures, PNG and BMP are great choices.I use either Windows screen capture (PrtScrn and Alt-PrtScrn), Windows Snipping Tool, Mac OS keys, or RoboScreenCapture. I don’t use SnagIt, because I have other “free to me” options.Use conditional text to maintain both print and online versions of the file within the same Fm document.
