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Desktop Doc Winter 2000Answers to your Printing Questions
In Photoshop, how do you make art with two or more spot colors (but not a duotone)? For instance, what if you have a grayscale photo of a woman and you want to make her eyes a PMS spot blue? So, instead of making my brown eyes blue, you want to make them Pantone 2738 CVC? How can a grayscale photograph have color in it? Impossible you say? Actually, itÕs simple. Just be sure you are using version 5 or later of Photoshop. Here is how it works. With your grayscale photo open select New Spot Channel from the popout menu in the Channels palette. The dialog box has three controls: name, color and solidity. Double-click and select the color first because it will automatically insert the name of the spot color in the name field. It is important to make sure the name of this color has the exact same name as the spot color in your page-layout program. Otherwise, your spot color will come out on a separate (and extra) plate. Not good. The solidity and color settings can be misleading. These settings only simulate the on-screen appearance of the spot color. To create a spot-color tint, paint with less than 100 percent opacity. If you will be importing the image into a page-layout program, save the file in the Photoshop DCS 2.0 format. This technique is a neat way to add a dash of color to a grayscale image, but be careful. There are trapping considerations, moirˇ issues, separation and printing concerns, and that dreaded extra-plate problem to watch out for. I own a PowerPC Mac with a modem, inkjet printer and Palm Pilot. I am short one serial port. What can I do besides hand swapping them? You donÕt like rebooting every time you want to HotSync your Palm Pilot and then turning the HotSync software back on? Boy are you lazy! All because Apple does not supply enough serial ports for your needs. Like youÕre the only customer they should care about. Actually, you are the only customer they should care about. Luckily, several companies have jumped into the breach left by Apple and created their own multi-port serial switches. The catalog MacWarehouse (www.warehouse.com) lists a three-port serial switch, a six-port serial switch, and a three-port ADB switch, while the ClubMac catalog (www.clubmac.com) contains a three-port serial switch made by Macally. The only problem with the MacallyÕs Port Xpander is that it uses an ADB pass-through cable for power, adding to your cabling issues. I hate doing Web searches. Is there an easier way? Maybe. It depends. How hard is searching now? If you use Altavista, Hotbot, or any one of the dozens of search engines, you will only receive results as specific as the questions you ask. But, to be honest, even if you understand advanced searches that use Boolean logic, you will often still get way too many results to browse easily. Yahoo is a different kind of site for searching because it is already indexed for you by human editors. In other words, Yahoo editors have already pulled out the junk for you, leaving you with relatively useful links to check out. Another useful search tool is built-in to Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. In the address (location) field, type a question mark, a space, and the term you are searching for. Your browser will forward that request to a Netscape or Microsoft search engine and provide you with the results. Pretty easy, huh? We have been having many types of problems with our Epson Stylus 3000 printer. Sometimes images disappear and other times it won't recognize that we have selected that printer on the chooser. What can we do? Keep trying? Throw it away? Call Epson tech support? Upgrade to the Epson Stylus Pro 5000, which uses a hardware EFI Fiery RIP, instead of your machineÕs software RIP? Or you could go to EpsonÕs Web site at www.epson.com, find the support area, search for the Stylus 3000, and read the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about the Epson StylusRIP, which lists solutions to several different problems with networking the RIP and the printer. Most manufacturers have good support via the Web, which is free and easy to access, making the Web a good source for troubleshooting information. My co-worker and I were looking around in his Photoshop CMYK setup and we wondered what are GCR and UCR in the Separation Type and what do they do? Not that it will change the world in some profound way, but UCR (Undercolor removal) and GCR (Gray-component replacement) settings can help your CMYK photos look better. HereÕs why: In theory, equal parts of cyan, magenta, and yellow are combined to create black. In reality, they combine to make a muddy brown. Remember finger painting class in nursery school? So, to make up for this problem, instead of adding equal parts of cyan, magenta and yellow, Photoshop adds black and removes equal amounts of the other inks. The difference between the two methods is manifested in the black plate. The UCR method holds shadow detail better because it generates black mainly in the 3/4-tones (the darker parts of an image). GCR generates black throughout the image, including the highlights. GCR reproduces darker, more saturated colors than UCR. I use style sheets in QuarkXPress on my Mac all the time but I am frustrated by the small window allotted to the ŅparagraphÓ styles. It appears you can expand the character style area but not the paragraph area. Hope you can help. This one is an easy one but it had me swearing, too. In Quark 4.0, you can view your style sheets palette from the view menu. It can be expanded from the bottom right by clicking and dragging, but that only enlarges the character style section. I too had consigned myself to living with a restrictive paragraph style section until your question made me tinker with the problem. The fix is easy. Click and hold down on the horizontal bar separating the paragraph styles and the character styles. Your cursor will change into a bar with two arrows sticking out of it pointing up and down. Now you can enlarge the size of the paragraph style sheet area. Capabilities
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