Atlanta InDesign User Group Home Meeting Summary Archive

Meeting Summary

Illustrate your way to InDesign
Thu, Aug 14th, 2008 at 6:30 PM
The Creative Circus
Event Details

If you missed our meeting, last night, you missed an outstanding presentation. Haziel Oliveria, Adobe Certified expert, trainer with the Orlando office of Aquent Graphics Institute, and speaker at our November 07 meeting, returned to show us the Power of Scripting in InDesign CS3. We are especially thankful that Haziel was able to step in with 24-hours notice to cover for Kacey Crouch who had a last-minute family emergency. Thank You! Haziel. We hope to re-schedule Kacey for a future meeting.

Haziel’s goal was acquainting us with the power of scripts in CS3. He began by giving us a tour through the scripts that ship with CS3. You’ll find Scripts panel on the Windows menu under Automation. In response to an audience query, Haziel noted that the scripts also shipped with but did not automatically install in CS2; load up your install CD and copy them into your installation to use in CS2.

Haziel demonstrated the power of scripts to do simple, repetitive actions, many not native to CS3, such as adding guidelines, separating columns of a story’s text into blocks, placing a multi-page PDF into a document, creating grids, resizing photos throughout a whole document, and packaging finalized documents for press. There were all kinds of oohs and aahs throughout the presentation. Needless to say, we all want to learn more.

One script Haziel demonstrated added points around the perimeter of an object (a rectangle); after running this twice, he grabbed every other point on a side and pulled the points toward the inside of the object. Suddenly, the rectangle was a very pointy, prickly thing. Another script added a neon border to a photo; someone asked if that worked with a curve, so Haziel gave the photo a twist and re-ran the script. It worked. Lots of applause!

This last script gave Haziel an opportunity to point out that creating the border generates many layers. When you do this around a picture, the file bloats up badly because each layer gets a copy of the photo. Better, he said, to build the frame (border) and then add the photo one time to the top layer.

Haziel emphasized throughout the evening that each of us can use scripting to reduce drudgery and improve uniformity and consistency in our documents — and that we can create these scripts. Scripting can be done using either Apple Script (Mac only) or Javascript (Mac or PC); the standard scripts come in both versions so we have plenty of examples to use in learning scripting. Haziel pointed out that this is very much a learn-by-doing topic; there are very few printed resources on using Apple script with CS3. (Ed: note you can get help from the Ask an Expert section the IDUG website, so, things aren’t as bleak as they may seem.)

To show the power of scripting, Haziel demoed two scripts that he and colleagues created at Staples for building the Printer Toner catalog. The first one found and formatted the printer family and model names at the head of each table in the entire catalog; the second found and superscripted all of the ©, ™, daggers, asterisks, and notes.

Haziel demonstrated attaching a script as a folder action, creating a watched folder that processes each file as its dropped into the folder. He showed us how to attach a folder action to desktop icon, creating a mini-application. And he showed us where (which folder) to load our scripts into so they will appear in the script menu.

Naturally, Haziel ran out of time before he ran out of scripts, despite maintaining a good pace all evening. We all wanted to hear more. We hope Haziel will come back another time, we are sure he has much more to share!

Haziel kindly shared several of the amazing scripts that he customized. You can download those scripts at the link below. He also brought along 4 books for our raffle, all written by himself and colleagues at AGI, to guide us in using Photoshop CS3 and Flash CS3. Thanks, Haziel!

Thank you

We were thrilled to have two "food for thought" sponsors this meeting. Our returning printer sponsor is Abbott Printing, and our newest sponsor is ProForma promotional products who also donated a fabulous leather laptop bag. We are grateful for both of our sponsors' support and hope that our members will wholeheartedly support them!

We also want to extend a big thank you to The Orlando Sentinel and John Cobble for providing and preparing the meeting room, Ron McKenzie for securing so many fantastic raffle items, Fabian Quintero for taking photographs, Edward Feldman for purchasing and picking up the food, and of course to Aquent for providing Haziel as our presenter.

Thank you to each of our raffle sponsors:
* Aquent (AGI) – Books www.agitraining.com
* PROforma – Leather laptop bag www.proforma.com
* O’Reilly – Books oreilly.com
* PeachPit – Books www.peachpit.com
* John Wiley – Books www.wiley.com
* StockLayouts – Design kit www.stocklayouts.com
* Kelby Training – Online training www.kelbytraining.com
* Markzware – Coversion software www.markzware.com
* Orlando Sentinel – location www.orlandosentinel.com
* David Blatner – InDesign Poster www.63p.com www.indesignsecrets.com

Need a technical book? Check with our sponsors, particularly O'Reilly and Peachpit, who offer a very significant discoount (35% off) to IDUG members; visit the Member Benefits section to get your special discount code.

We look forward to seeing you at our next meeting!

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