PBR Graphics, Inc. Blog » Adobe Software

Using Adobe Kuler with Creative Suite

Administrator — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:10:09 +0000

One of the best features of any software is the community that develops around it. From beginners seeking information on how to get started to experts sharing their knowledge. A neat product Adobe created called “Kuler” (pronounced “cooler”) is web based tool that allows you to create and save color palettes. These colors can be imported as swatches in your Creative Suite programs, saved and shared with others. It’s very easy to use and is worth trying for your next project – put in a color value and have Kuler show you other colors that will work with it. You can also search for color palettes created by other users based on a theme.

The Kuler website is http://kuler.adobe.com/ and a short video on using Kuler with Creative Suite is http://www.channels.com/episodes/show/3180460/Get-Kuler-with-Pantone

Using InDesign to number raffle or admission tickets

Administrator — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:01:54 +0000

Most software programs have little known features that can simplify your tasks or get you out of a jam. InDesign’s Data Merge is a tool that works like “Mail Merge” found in MS Word that you may already be familiar with.

Last week we were able to help a customer with a tight deadline complete 600 numbered raffle tickets done in full color in less than 24 hrs using Data Merge. The customer had designed the raffle tickets in Quark Xpress, we had them output a Press Quality PDF and place it as a picture in InDesign CS4. We created a list of numbers 001-600 in 2 columns for the numbering. One numbered position was on the tear off stub, the other was on the ticket. The sheets were printed on a digital color printer, perforated and cut apart.

To find the Data Merge tool in InDesign, click on the Window menu,

Here are two videos that show how to do the Data Merge process. The first one shows a simple data merge for a product catalog. The second one shows how to merge pictures along with text.

For this video, click the link and scroll down the page until you see “Click Here” below the MS Excel picture.
InDesign CS4 Beyond the Basics: Datamerge Putting your data into InDesign By David Blatner

Data merge with pictures from theInDesigner.com blog

Welcome!

Administrator — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:27:22 +0000

We’ll be using this format to publish news about our company, tips to help you work with popular programs such as Adobe Creative Suite (InDesign, Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator & Dreamweaver), Quark Xpress, Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Word. We’ll highlight tips for using direct mail, printed newsletters and email newsletters, to help you reach out to your customers and prospects.

Our first item is a great website from Adobe. Many people may not realize that Adobe has published a series of tutorial videos that shipped with their software products on DVD.

They now publish it at tv.adobe.com Check it out to refresh your skills and learn some new ones from very talented users of these applications.

If you have something you’d like us to cover, please send me an email at rob@pbrgraphics.com

Rob