I have created this manual to assist future journalism classes in using computers. I have organized this manual in order of menu commands, with special sections on tool pallets, and layout functions, and of course, some trouble shooting tips.
Remember that the one of the best ways to keep out of trouble is to save often. Jesus saves; so should you.
I hope this helps, but, as most of my alt.mac messages end,
"...I doubt it"
Karl Haase
Table Of Contents
Netware
Netware is the software that allows the computers to log into the server, protects the contents of the server (via password protection), and allows different users different access privileges to printers and other services.
Netware's functions will be mostly transparent to the user. Presenting a dialogue box at startup where a user name and password are entered, after which it will initiate some scripted events to update the anti-virus software.
To muck around with Netware after startup, you need to right click on the Network Neighborhood Icon on the desktop. This will present a menu, with four items with a "N" icon beside them:
IntranetWare Login: This presents the dialogue box presented at startup that has the name and password entry. This is useful for logging in as someone else (like if one of those yearbook slackers wants to use a computer you have already logged in on) without re-booting the computer.
IntranetWare Connections: This will display a list of active network connections. Don't mess with this unless you know what you are doing.
Capture Printer: I'm not 100% sure what this does, but I think it lets you log on to a enabled printer that you normally wouldn't have access to. You will never need this.
End Capture: This ends a session created by Capture Printer. You won't need this either.
Trouble Shooting Netware
Netware should be almost completely trouble free. However, as network traffic increases, so will the probability of Netware error.
Note: You can qualitatively gauge network activity by looking at the Hub (the little box that has a cable that runs to each computer, than another that goes to the wall). Generally, if any of the green lights are blinking, that means that a computer is talking on the network. If the yellow (collision) light is blinking, that means that 2 computer are trying to talk at the same time (they aren't allowed to do that). So, if the hub is blinking like a Christmas tree, the network is very busy.
Occasionally, and for no apparent reason at all, the computer will create an ugly box that says something like:
"NETWARE 32 ERROR:
Netware has lost its connection to the network, please wait while tries to reconnect, or hit 'OK' to try to reconnect in the background."
Usually this happens right after a Open/Save/Copy/Paste type of function that move data between files on the server.
DO NOT HIT 'OK'. Netware will take forever if you do this, and you have a much higher probability of losing data (and/or cause a dreaded "Cannot open publication because it is in use" error). When this dialogue box pops up: wait. You are probably on deadline, so think about it as a 30 second break. Breath, let your stress go. In a little while(5 sec- 5 minutes usually), the box will disappear, and the computer will be ready to go again.
You can hit "OK" if you don't have anything open that you wanted to save or if the computer is not reconnecting even after a long period of time, although it might cause an error later on.
Other than that, Netware should leave you alone.
Adobe Photoshop 4.0 LE
Photoshop is a really cool tool (toy) that allows you to manipulate images in all sorts of neat ways. In skilled hands, it will turn the worst photo into a piece of joy.
In the File menu you will find the following commands:
New...: This makes a new, empty image. It will present you with a dialogue, where you can set the documents width, height, resolution, and color depth. It also has a selection that allows you to choose what you want the new document to be filled with. White will fill the new document with white, Background Color will make a document with the background color selected on the tool pallet. Transparent will make a document with nothing in it. This is useful when combining images together (see the January 2001 issue for examples of this).
Open...: Opens existing document for editing
Open as Copy..: Allows you to open a new copy of a document that you saved previously. Useful for special alterations or if you don't want to alter the original. Ultimately this is a preemptive Save As... function.
Close: Makes the document you are working on disappear form the workspace (it won't erase it from disk if it saved though). It will probably ask you if you want to save. If you hit "Yes", it will, "No", it won't, if you hit "Cancel", you will not close the document and return to the workspace. Close is the same as hitting the Close box in the upper left side of the window.
Save...: Saves everything you have done so far to disk. If you haven't saved before, it will ask you where you want to put the file and what you want to name it and its format. See the Appendix I for format information.
Save as....: Creates a new file to save the current document into. This allows you to save in different formats, a change to the picture that you aren't sure of, or a progression of changes.
Import...: This allows you to get images off the scanner or select which scanner to use if you happen to have two. To scan, select the "TWAIN 32" option, then a dialogue box will come up. Place your picture, face, hand or whatever on the scanner. Hit the "Prescan" Button. The scanner will take a pass, and then the window on the left will produce mini image of whatever was on the scanner. Set you Color setting (Color, Greyscale, Halftone, which tries to use combinations of black and white pixels to make pictures look greyscale, and Line Art, which averages the colors it scans: Those close to white become white and those close to black become black.) and set your resolution (larger the number, the larger the file, the slower the scan, the more data you have to work with. Generally 300 DPI is a good resolution, except for very small photos, where 600 or 1200 might be better). If you are adventurous, play with the other buttons in the dialogue box. They will let you zoom the prescan image, adjust the gamma, and que scans.
Export...: This allows you to save files in formats that are not native to Photoshop through modules that one must pay a software company for. You won't need this option.
Page Setup: This lets you choose your printer, paper size, orientation, resolution and other parameters. In the "Name" field, you can choose the printer which you would like to print from. Usually this will be the Lexmark, but you can choose the LaserJet in the office or (god willing) the photocopier which would allow to print on 11x17 paper. Click the properties button will bring up a dialogue that allows you to choose printer specific options. The "Screens" Button will allow you to set up how the printer places dots to form greyscale images. Don't mess with this unless you know what you are doing. "Border" allows for a box to be drawn around each page. "Background" allows for a background shade to be applied to each page. "Orientation" chooses which side of the paper the to image will be facing. Generally, you should use "Landscape" if the image is wide, "Portrait" if it is tall. The other options are cute pre-press options that the yearbook staff could use, but newspaper probably couldn't.
Print: Puts what is on screen on paper. "Print range" allows you to tell the printer which pages to print. "Print Quality" selects the resolution that will be sent to the printer (If you send 1200 DPI to a 600 DPI printer, it will take forever to print and be only 600 DPI. In short: don't exceed the printer's maximum resolution. The Lexmark's is 600 DPI.) "Print to File" saves the document to a Postscript file. "Copies" determines how many pages come off the printer. "Collate Copies" prints the entire document once, then returns to the beginning to start the next copy, instead of printing a group of the first page, then a group of the second page, and so on. "Print as:" lets you choose if greyscale or color data are sent to the printer. In most cases, choose greyscale, if a color image prints poorly, then try RGB. Encoding deals with how the data is sent to the printer. When available, Binary will be faster than ASCII or JPEG. Functionally, ASCII is the same as binary, but slower, JPEG should be left alone. "Setup" will cough up the Page Setup discussed before.
Send: allows you to send images to Microsoft service. This is a useless function as far as I know.
Preferences: Lets you set up how Photoshop Behaves.
General: Lets you pick how the color palettes are displayed, and how scaling is performed. Generally, Photoshop Color Picker and Bicubic Interpolation are the best. "Export clipboard" should be checked as it allows you to paste into other applications. The other options are aesthetic and can be used with impunity.
Saving Files: Lets you select 2 options not available to you in open and save dialogues. Image Previews slightly increase the size of files, but allow you to see what the file looks like before you open it. 2.5 compatibility concerns Photoshop (.pps) files, it allows them to be read by older versions of. This can be unchecked.
Display & Cursors: Use system palette tells to use only whatever colors the system specifies may be used. Leave this off. Diffusion dither should be left of (although I really don' t know what it does exactly) Video LUT Animation should be on, it deals with how the screen display images (I think). Painting Cursors and Other Cursors are aesthetic.
Transparency: This lets you how tells you that there is a transparent part of an image. Use Video alpha is something I don't know about at all.
Units and Rulers: This lets you tell how it measures things. Point/Pica Size should be set to "Postscript (72 points/inch)"
Plug-ins & Scratch Disk: Tells where to look for plug-ins and where it can use some disk space for internal functions. This panel should be left alone unless you know what you are doing.
Memory & Image Cache: This panel controls how much physical memory uses. In general you should leave this alone.
Exit: If you can't figure out what this does, you better go ask your mommy. (grin)
The Edit menu:
Undo/Redo: In the computer universe, this command is your own personal Jesus Christ. Whenever you do something you didn't want to, you can usually use this to make things better. If you select it again, it will do your mistake again for you (in case it wasn't a mistake).
Cut: Removes the selected area from the work area and puts it into the clipboard, where it can be pasted into other applications or other documents.
Note: The clipboard is a space that you can't see where something you cut/copy is placed so it can be placed in other places or applications
Copy: Puts a duplicate of what you select into the clipboard.
Paste: Puts whatever is in the clipboard into the workspace. Often it will create a new layer (see layers section), in which case you will have to merge the image in order to save it in a meaningful format.
Clear: Deletes whatever is selected. Hitting the delete key does the same thing.
Fill...: Fills whatever you have selected with the foreground color you have selected. It supplies options such as patterns and opacity which can be used to produce some really cool effects. Play with this.
Stroke...: Places a box around the selected area in the foreground color. You can control the width, and any special affects that happen within the border. Play with this too.
Purge...: This removes the previous command from the Undo, and destroys whatever is in the clipboard. You probably should leave this alone.
The Image menu:
Mode: This selects the amount of colors used in the image. Bitmap is Black and White. You can only convert a document into a Bitmap after you have converted it to Greyscale. When you convert to Bitmap, the input and output resolutions(In the "Resolution" area) should be set the same. Usually you will want the "Method" set to "50% Threshold", which converts those pixels that are close to black to black and those that are close to white to white. "Pattern Dither", and "Diffusion Dither" both attempt to use patterns of black and white pixels to simulate greyscale. "Halftone Screen" Uses a set pattern that the user specifies to make the image into black and white. Changing from bitmap to color also requires one to set to greyscale first.
Greyscale allows you to convert images that are color into Greyscale. It will ask you if you want to "Discard Color information". If you want a greyscale picture, click "OK".
Indexed Color is a tool that lets you work with specific sets of colors. Most people have no use for this.
RGB lets you work with a document in full color.
8 Bits/Channel and 16 Bits/Channel: changes the total number of colors available for the computer to use. ( i don't know much about this command) It seems to run just fine with 8 bits per channel.
Color Table: Identifies the colors you can work with in Indexed Color.
Adjust:
Levels: This provides a tables and some sliders that you might be able to use to make a picture look better, but there are better ways.
Auto Levels: Tells the computer try to make the image look good. This is hit and miss though, you may have to do it manually.
Color Balance: This is a tool that allows you to amplify or dull the colors( red yellow and blue) used compose images, much the way the hue and saturation work on a TV set. This tool can be used to bring life to pictures that have "flat" colors by increasing the hue and saturation, or make people dark skin have a reasonable appearance in greyscale images. You can operate on the shadows, midtones, and highlights of an image by selecting the appropriate button at the bottom of the dialogue box.
Note: To make people with dark skin look right in greyscale, try and bring out the reds and blues in their skin by moving the Cyan-Red and Yellow-Blue sliders to the right. You should also do it to shadows and highlights. After you finish with the color adjustments, the image will look WEIRD, ignore it, change it to greyscale and see if the person is easier to make out.
Brightness and Contrast: This produces a Box with two sliders and number boxes that let you change the brightness and contrast of an image. Very useful for getting images ready for press. You will use this tool.
Note: Due to the nature of the printer used to produce the paper, you will need to excessively lighten images and increase the contrast. Generally, you will need to add 10 to 25 brightness. Images should be as bright as you can make them, usually if you can't make out noses and facial details you are too bright. The best way to learn is to practice.
Hue and Saturation: This tool is similar to the Color balance tool, with the exception that you deal with each color directly. you can also use this tool to deal with dark skin color as described above.
Invert: Makes all the colors in the image the opposite, like a photo negative. This tool is, oddly enough, useful for making scanned negatives look right.
Equalize: This tool attempts to deal with photos that are overexposed in one area and under in another. (I've never seen it work right)
Threshold: This tool converts all colors with a brightness below a user defined threshold (set by the slider or the number box) to black and all those above it to white.
Posterize: Has a solarizing effect. It uses thresholds evenly distributed across the spectrum to average all the colors between each threshold. The less levels in the box, the more solar. This is good for making low resolution pictures into neat watermarks.
Variations: Lets you fine-tune the image to make it look right without messing with sliders. You can adjust midtones, highlights, shadows and saturation. The Fine <-> Course slider selects the magnitude of the change.
Duplicate: Makes an exact copy of
the current image somewhere else, much like Save Copy as...
Image Size: Lets you tailor the image size and resolution. The "Constrain Proportions" box tells the computer to keep the work area (canvas) shape in proportion. you will normally want this on. When it is off, it will clip and warp the image. "Resample Image" If you add pixels to the image (i.e. convert to 300 dpi from 72 dpi) tells the computer how to color all those extra pixels you added. Bicubic is better than any other choice. Bicubic uses an averaging algorithm where Nearest Neighbor just colors the extra pixels the same color as the ones around it. (Bilinear is a cousin of bicubic, but older and worse)
Canvas Size: Lets you add height and width to the work area. Useful for creating panoramas.
Crop: Removes everything outside the selected area from the image.
Rotate Canvas: These commands are pretty self-explanatory. CW means clockwise (turn right), CCW means counter-clockwise (turn left). Arbitrary will only work in RGB or Greyscale.
The works in Layers. Layers are like pieces of glass stacked on one another, and you are looking down on them. Images can be created by composites of other images placed on the different layers of glass. The nice thing about layers is that you can change things on one layer without affecting the other layers. While inside of a layer, nearly all menu commands will only affect that layer (with the exception of the Image menu commands). 4.0 LE only supports 5 Layers, but this is usually enough, considering that most of the time in only one layer. When you are working with layers, you'll need to have the Layers Palette visible (available under the Window menu) (covered under palettes).
Note: You can save only as documents if there is more than layer in the document.
The Layer menu: (many of these functions can be carried out in the Layer Palette)
New Layer: This creates a new layer. Layer produces a dialogue box, where you can name your new layer, and set it's opacity.
Duplicate Layer: This will create a new document with the contents of the current layer.
Delete layer: Makes everything on the current layer disappear.
Rename Layer: In case you miss-spelled "stupid yearbook-weenie layer" the first time you can go back and fix it with this command.
Transform: This is the same as "Transform" under the Image menu, except it only applies to the current layer. The "Scale" command will give the layer drag handles that you can use to stretch and scale it to your hearts content. When you are done stretching hit the return key to make the drag handles go away.
Arrange: This moves the current layer up or down relative to the other layers.
Merge Down: This will combine the contents of the current layer with the one below it. The new layer will take on the name of the bottom layer.
Merge Visible: This will merge all the layers marked as visible in the Layers Palette into a single layer. (see palettes section)
Flatten Image: Merges all of the layers in a document. Do this if you can't save in any format other than.
The Select menu deals with an area that has been selected with the box, lasso, or wand tools.
All: Selects the entire layer.
None: un-selects everything that is currently selected. A single click in an un-selected area with a selection tool (i.e. wand), does the same thing.
Inverse: Selects everything outside the selected area.
Feather: This rounds the edges of the selection area with a circle who radius you define. If the radius is larger than the box, will draw a circle.
Modify
Border: Selects a border around the object of user specified width.
Smooth: Shrinks and smoothes the selection area within an a tolerance the user sets
Expand: Expands the area selected by a number of pixels set by the user.
Contract: Shrinks the selected area like Smooth, but it doesn't soften the selection edges.
Grow: Attempts to expand the selection until all the similar pixels are selected.
Similar: Selects all the similar pixels in the layer.
The Filter menu: (most of these filters do cool looking stuff, but it really isn't important at all to journalism) I'll just cover the Blur command.
(Whatever is at the top): repeats the last command.
Blur: This averages all the pixels in the layer (or selection) with all the pixels around it for a small radius. The result is that the image is softened.
Blur More: This blurs to a greater extent than blur.
Gaussian Blur: This gives the appearance of the selection or layer being behind fogged glasses. The greater the radius, the greater the fogging.
Motion Blur: This gives pictures or selections the appearance of moving at speed. In the dialogue box, angle is the direction of the blur. The greater the blur length, the longer the blur.
The Views menu deals with how the document appears on screen.
New View: Produces a new window of the same document, so you can look at the same image at 2 different parts of the screen. This will be mentioned in my next book: Stupid Tricks.
Zoom In: Closer to the document on screen. Good for detail work.
Zoom Out: Gets further from the document on screen. Good for large scale work.
Fit on Screen: Zooms the document so you can see the whole thing.
Print Size: This zooms to the size that the document will print at.
Hide/Show Edges: Makes the edges of disappear and come back.
Show Rulers: Rulers are useful
for making sure that two things are parallel. You can set units in the Preferences.
The Window menu:
Cascade: Arranges all the windows on screen so that all the menu bars are just barely visible.
Tile: Arranges the windows so that you can see every document. This will work until you get about 9 windows on screen, than will figure you' re a loony and give up. This is useful if you want to compare images.
Arrange Icons: I have no clue what this does.
Close All: Closes all windows on screen.
Hide/Show (Insert Name here): Hides or shows that palette.
Palettes
Explained in order of appearance.
Tools Palette: This Palette is the most used tool in. All tools have an Options palette that you can open from the Windows menu, where you have some freedom in modifying the tools behavior.
Marquee (box select tool): If you click and hold on the tool, it will reveal the Circle Marquee, the Columnar Marquee Tools, and the Crop tool. The Marquee selects all the pixels within the area. Circle Marquee selects in a circle. the Columnar Marquee allows you to select pixels one row at a time. The Crop tool allows you to select an area, then hit return to crop it. In the Options pallet, you can set the Marquee/ crop tool to Normal, Constrained Aspect (which means it will only select in squares and circles, no rectangles or ovals), and fixed size, which is a square or circle of fixed radius defined in the Options palette. Holding down Shift lets you select multiple things at once.
Move Tool: This tool lets you move a selected area around the document. Very useful for special effects.
Lasso Tool: Lets you freehand a selection. Clicking and holding on the Lasso tool will give you the polygon lasso, which allows you to select things that are very intricate by clicking around it's perimeter. Hit return when you are done with the polygon lasso to use the selection. Hold shift with the regular lasso to make multiple selections.
Magic Wand Tool: Clicking will select all similar, connecting pixels. The "Tolerance" field in the Options palette will define how similar the pixels must be. The greater the number, the more pixels will be considered similar.
Air Brush: This tool applies the foreground color in a semi-transparent layer that gradually approaches opaque. The pressure slider in the Options palette controls the speed at which it approaches opaque. The air brushes shape can be controlled from the Brushes Palette. You can mess with it's behavior in the Options palette. If you hold shift and click around with the air brush it will put a line between the previous point and the point you clicked on.
Paint Brush: This tool draws lines of the foreground color in the workspace. It's shape is controlled in the Brushes palette. You can muck with it's behavior in the Options Palette. Wet Edges provides a interesting effect.
Eraser Tool: This tool erases piece of the workspace that you click on. You can make it behave like the Paint Brush or the Air Brush in the Options palette. When it is like the paint brush or air brush, it is much more precise than the Block mode.
Pencil Tool: This tool draws lines, and switches pixels between the foreground color and white or (if the "Auto Erase" box is checked in the Options palette, it will switch between the foreground and background colors.)
Rubber Stamp: Alt. click somewhere in the work area, then use the rubber stamp tool to clone pixels around the screen. Another useless toy, IMHO.
Smudge Tool: This tool blurs lines the pixels under it in the direction of motion. Sort of a point and shoot Motion Blur. Good for making license plate un-identifiable. Pressure controls the severity of the blur.
Blur Tool: This tool will blur the pixels under it. Similar to Smudge. You can also set Blur to Sharpen in the Options palette. Pressure controls the severity of the blur.
Dodge Tool: This tool lightens images, it's cousins, Burn and Sponge darken and de-saturate the workspace.
Type Mask tool: Brings up a dialogue box that allows the user to create areas of selection shaped like text.
Type Tool: This tool produces a dialogue box that allows the user to place text in the foreground color.
Arrow Tool: This tool allows you to create straight lines in the workspace. A particularly neat option available in the Options palette is the ability to add arrows to lines.
Gradient Tool: This tool creates a gradient between 2 foreground and background colors or foreground to transparent. A preview and behavior adjustments can be made in the Options palette.
Paint Bucket: This tool allows you to change groups of pixels that are touching and alike into a different colors. The definition of "alike" is defined by the tolerance in the Options palette, where the higher the tolerance, the broader the group of pixels is.
Eye Dropper Tool: This tool will change the foreground color to that of a sample that the user clicks on.
Hand Tool: This tool drags your view around the workspace; an alternative to using the scroll bars.
Zoom Tool: This tool lets you zoom in and out of the document. Hold the Alt. Key to zoom out.
Foreground/Background Color: These are set by the 2 overlapping boxes at the bottom of the tool pallet. The box on top is the foreground color, the one in back is the background color. When a new document is created, it will be filled with the selected background color. The foreground color is predominately used for tools. To change these, click on their perspective boxes, this will present a dialog. Move the circle at the left to set the brightness and saturation, and move the slider on the right to set the hue. You can click on the <-> symbol just above the foreground/background boxes to switch them, and select white or black from the box below.
Navigator Palette: This palette allows you to see a overview of the document and zoom in and out with the slider at the bottom of the palette. You can drag the red box around to change your viewing area.
Info Palette: This palette shows information about color (top left and right), tool coordinates (bottom left), and selection area size (bottom right). Units are whatever the default has be set in the Preferences panels.
Color Palette: This palette is an alternative way to select colors. You have 2 boxes that are similar to those on the Tool Palette for foreground and background colors. Click a box, then drag the sliders around or click inside the rainbow colored box to select you color.
Swatches Palette: This palette contains a table of commonly used colors. Click on the one you want, and it will become the foreground color. It is possible to edit the swatch color, but I don't know how.
Brushes palette: This palette allows you to change the shape of the paintbrush and other tools. Double clicking on a brush shape allows you to edit it's shape.
Layers Palette: This palette allows you to manipulate layer order, visibility, and opacity. The slider at the top of the window controls the opacity of the selected layer. The each layer has 2 boxes to it's left. The left most box displays a layers visibility: if there is an eye icon, than the layer is visible, if there isn't one, than you can't see it. To make a layer (in)visible, click on the left most box. The next box displays a paint brush on the layer you are currently working on. Clicking in these boxes makes a neat chain icon whose function is beyond me. Clicking on a layer makes it active so you can alter it. You can drag layers around to affect which order the pieces are displayed. Clicking the note pad at the bottom of the palette will create a new layer, clicking the trash can will erase the current layer.
Status Bar: This tool displays information about the memory used by a document, it's size, zoom %, and tool help.
Common
Functions
Converting and image to Greyscale
To convert an image to greyscale for press, open it, adjust it's color balance with Levels, Color Balance, Hue/Saturation, Auto Levels, or Variations (your pick) if it is needed, then select Greyscale under Images:Mode. Then go to adjust it's brightness and contrast to make it as bright as possible with out making it look bad.
Making a little picture big
1 (wallet photo): Scan it at a high resolution, and then use the Sharpen filter or (better) set the contrast up a little to remove the fuzziness.
2 (small digital photo): in Image:Image Size, set the resolution to something higher, then use the Blur filter (possibly more than once) to nuke the jaggies. The adjust the brightness and contrast to make it look better. (note: small digital photos enlarged this way will ALWAYS be fuzzy)
Cropping
Select the part of the picture you want with the Marquee tool and choose Crop from the Image menu.
Straightening pictures
Make sure the image is in RGB or Greyscale mode, then use the appropriate Images:Rotate canvas command to move the image back and forth. Don't forget that you can rotate in decimals (i.e. 0.015°)
Trouble Shooting
is extremely stable, much less likely to crash than Pagemaker. But it does have some bugs...
has an "Illegal
Error" when I try to open a document
Sometimes will hang when it tries to look into folders that are more than 5 or more levels deep. To get it out of this loop, click the Up One Level button instead of using the Look In... menu.
Also, the document might be damaged or in some type that can't read. Try opening it on a different computer. If that computer can open it, then is sick, if the other computer can't, it's the file.
Crashed after I scanned (more than 1) extremely high
resolution photos.
doesn't deal with large amounts of high resolution photos open at once. If you have to scan a whole bunch of big pictures, try save and close them after you have done 3 or 4, don't let them stack up.
Crashes when I have a lot of files open.
doesn't seem to like to deal with massive numbers of files open. I would try to keep the number under 40. (which is actually quite a lot)
Displays an error that says that the "scratch disk is
full".
Your system hard drive probably has a whole bunch of junk on it. uses drive space to manipulate images. If you only have 10 megabytes free, it will quickly fill them. Erase some stuff to get 50 megs or more free and restart, that should fix it.
Pagemaker
I really haven't had the time to work on a Pagemaker manual. If I somehow find another, say, 12 hours in my life, I'll see what I can do. Anyhow, here is some helpful information about Pagemaker
Making PDF files:
Creating a PDF formatted document from Pagemaker documents is easy, but requires a little patience.
1) Consolidate all the pages of the document into a single publication. Do this by setting the value in the Number of Pages field (in a copy of the first page) to the number of pages that are in the entire publication. Then copy and paste the other onto corresponding pages in the consolidated publication.
2) Choose the Print command. Set the Page size (in the Paper button) to Letter (so that those who download it can print it) and set the Scale to "Reduce to Fit" .
3) Under the Options tab, check the Write Postscript to file button. Use the Browse... button to select where the file will land.
4) Hit Save (it's where the Print button used to be).
5) Open Adobe Acrobat Distiller 3.0
6) Open the File you saved earlier.
7) Distiller will crank for a moment, then you should end up with a PDF file.
Common
Problems:
I Don't have a "Write Postscript to file" box
This is because your computer doesn't have a Postscript printer driver installed. For some weird reason, not everyone likes postscript (in fact, almost no ink jet speaks postscript). You can install a postscript printer driver, or go create the file on a computer that has one, then bring the file back over to the computer with the Distiller.
Distiller
Crashes without making a PDF
For some reason distiller does not want to run correctly on any of the computers in the journalism room. Maybe Steve will help us on this. I have no clue as to what is wrong.
The
stupid "This File is open by another user" problem
This problem will inevitably rear it's ugly head form time to time. You will want to open your page, but the computer will pause for 30 seconds, then tell you that someone has it open. You check all the computers, but no one has it open. You start to realize that the computer is lying. How do you solve this problem?
1) Make ABSOLUTELY sure no one has it open.
2) Try opening it on the computer that last had it open. This problem is crash related, sometimes the original computer will time out.
3) If you have time, leave it till tomorrow it might open then. (explained below)
4) If you need it NOW, then find the file on the server while you are in Windows, select it, hit Control C (Copy), then Control V (Paste). This will make a duplicate of the file, which you might want to rename to something like "Sports 2 OPEN ME!!!". Open the duplicate in Pagemaker, where you will get a "This file was not closed correctly" Dialogue. Hit yes or no, which ever will work.
This error is caused by a computer crashing while a Pagemaker file is open. When a file is open across the network, the server makes a note of it and prevents others from opening the file. When the computer crashes, it doesn't tell the server that it is done with the file, so the server still thinks that someone is using it, even though the computer that was using it has since re-booted and gone on to something else. If the computer retains the network address (which the server uses to catalogue who is doing what, among other things), it can open the file again without any trouble. When the address changes (which often occurs) the server won't recognize the computer, so it can't open the file. The server keeps an activity timer on open files, so after some long amount of time, it will realize that the file's user has gone to the better life and relinquishes control of the file.
Appendix I: Formats
There are many formats that pictures can be saved as. They all have good and bad points.
: These files are insanely large, and can't be opened by any program other than, but they contain printer settings, layers, and all workspace settings. If you have to quit in the middle of a special effects work, this format is for you.
Amiga IFF. This is the format used by Amigas to exchange pictures. Since I doubt anyone even knows what one is anymore, It's safe to say that you won't need it.
BMP: This is a format that saves each individual pixel to it files, so the larger the picture is, and the greater the color depth it has, the more space it takes. The advantage to this format is that it can save black and white images (which you can't do with JPEGs), and they are very small. The disadvantage is that color pictures tend to be really large (megabytes for even images as small as 640x480). Use BMPs to store black and white images.
EPS: This is a picture saved in Postscript format. They are large, and can't be opened by many other programs. Their only good side is that it will print large images very fast on Postscript Printers. But since Pagemaker doesn't know how to use them, you won't need them.
JPEG: JPEG is the de facto imaging standard for the internet, and most uses that need good pictures that don't take much space. A JPEG file will take a small portion of the space that a BMP would. The bad part about JPEGs is they can't save black and white images and they use compression, which trades quality for size. The smaller the file, the worse the image. The compression sometimes will produce cross-hatched patterns, pixelation, and other weird image relics (especially in small, low resolution photos, like those from the Mavica digital camera) that you can usually get rid of in. In larger images (300 dpi scans of photos) these relics tend to be much less evident, do to the way the compression algorithm works.
You can change the compression setting when you save a file in JPEG format. You can set the quality on a scale from one to ten with a slider or a menu. Usually a setting between 6 and 8 will be fine. You can also change the way the file is formatted, "Base Line ('Standard')" make a file that just about any imaging program can open. "Base Line Optimized " is a newer format that is now very universal, and will save you a few kilobytes of drive space. This is the format that is best for every day activities. "Progressive" is a format that is common on the internet, where a user can view a progressively more detailed view image as it downloads. The scans menu lets you choose how many revisions occur before the image is finished downloading. As the size of this format isn't different from the others, you probably won't need this format.
PCX: This file type is close to JPEGs, but uncommon.
PDF: This is the file type used by Acrobat Reader. It's really just JPEG encapsulated into the reader's file scheme. Since only Acrobat Reader can read it, I don't think you'll need this.
PICT: This is the format that used to be very common with the Macintosh, they are a set of descriptions of vectors as opposed to a collect of pixels like BMP. They tend to be very large, and since they are archaic on every computing platform, you probably won't need them.
Pixar: This is a file format created by the Pixar corporation. This type is insanely large, similar to a BMP. Unless you have to exchange files with a Pixar program, you probably don't need this file type.
PNG: This file uses compression that in some cases is better than JPEG, but it is a rare format.
Targa: This file type allows you to pick the bit depth of the file you are saving, but it produces large files. It is rare.
TIFF is like BMP on steroids. It doesn't compress files, but unlike BMPs contains printer and exposure information that makes it the best format for high quality photos. If you ever get a digital camera that will do upwards of 3 megapixel, this format will produce more crisp pictures.
NOTE: Moving from a compressed format to a uncompressed format (i.e. saving a JPEG as a BMP) will not improve the picture quality. Moving from a uncompressed medium to compressed will lower the quality to that of the compression. The good news is for journalism work, no one notices the flaws caused by compression.
In general, Save Color and Greyscale as .JPEG, and black and white images as BMP.