Q: We inherited a collection of EPS clip art to use in PageMaker for Windows, but all we have is a non-PostScript LaserJet. What can we do? A: EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) files contain PostScript-language drawing instructions, so to properly print them out, you need to add PostScript to your LaserJet (either via a board or software), or convert the EPS files into a non-PostScript format, such as WMF (Windows Metafile Format). If you print out an EPS file on your unadorned LaserJet, what you'll get is the craggy, low-resolution "preview" image that's attached to the EPS, not the PostScript portion that constitutes the real drawing (see the sidebar "Inside EPS" for details). Converting EPS graphics files into other formats requires some heavy-duty programming. Even Hijaak Pro, the omnibus graphics file conversion utility, can only import the preview image attached to EPS files. One program that can truly convert EPS files is Transverter Pro 2.0, available in Mac and Windows formats. It's not cheap, but it can convert EPS or regular PostScript files to non-PostScript bitmapped file formats (TIF, GIF, PCX, WPG, BMP, or TGA), and object/vector formats (CGM, WMF, or PICT). It can also generate the preview image for EPS files that lack one. Another solution: import your EPS clip art into CorelDraw, FreeHand, or Illustrator, and then either copy and paste it into your PageMaker document, or export the graphic as a bitmap file. If the EPS file was created by Adobe Illustrator (look for the .AI file extension), you may be able to actually edit the image. However, Transverter Pro EPS conversions will look much better on-screen and at print time. Graphic Revelations About MS Word Plus on-again-off-again ATM and beware of fonts bearing Greek A STORY WITH A PICTURE BEHIND IT Q: Is there any way to insert a free-floating graphic in Word for Windows? And can I use a graphic as a background and have type run over it? A: This is pretty fancy stuff for Word, but it can be done. To place an image on the page independent of the text, display Word's drawing toolbar, click the Text Box tool, and draw a box. A blinking cursor will appear, assuming that you want to start typing in text. Instead, select Insert*Picture to import the image of your choice. This free-floating text, er, picture box can be set in front of your page text or behind it. Just click on the box and click either the Send Behind Text or Bring in Front of Text buttons on the drawing toolbar. To resize the box, just click it and grab a handle. Placing text over an image can create a snappy-looking page, but make sure the type is large and bold enough to be legible. If your regular type will be set at typical body text size (10 point to 13 point), you may want to lighten the picture with an image-editing program before importing it into Word. This process will ensure sufficient contrast between the foreground type and the background image. SHADOW BOXING Q: Is there any way to create shadowed type in Word for Windows? I'd like to spice up my pages a little. A: Type with a drop shadow can indeed liven up a page (especially headlines), and you can do it in Word. The trick is to set your type twice and layer one piece behind the other. First, enter type as you normally would. To add the shadow, enter the same text again, this time in a box created using Word's Text Box tool. Make sure you use the exact same typeface, point size, line spacing, and line breaks (if any). Set the box with a fill color of None (using the Fill Color tool). Select no border rule by clicking the Line Style tool and the More item. Then check None in the dialog box. Give the text a color or tint that contrasts with the type you want to shadow and drag the boxed text into position. If you hold down the alt key as you drag, you can control the box position more precisely. Finally, click the Send Behind Text button to place the shadow type behind your regular type. To create shadow type in Word for Windows, create a duplicate version of your type in a text box, give it a contrasting color or tone, and position it behind your regular type using the Send Behind command. The Publisher's Image Tips for capturing screen shots plus the scoop on fractal image compression PAGES FOR PAGES Q: Using PageMaker 6.5 for Windows, we're designing an in-house corporate manual on document production with Word 97, and I need to place small images of Word pages in the layout. We've taken screen shots of Word's Print Preview and then used Photoshop 4.0 to crop them, but the resulting image is too coarse. Is there a better way? A: You could, of course, print a page and then scan it to create a higher-resolution file for PageMaker. But a simpler solution is to "print" a Word page to disk as a PostScript file, and then load that file into Photoshop. Photoshop 4.0 can easily read and render such PostScript print files. You can then edit the image and save it as a TIFF or some other PageMaker-compatible graphic format. You can even bypass Photoshop, since PageMaker can import PostScript print files also, and generate an onscreen preview instead of the usual gray box. But the Photoshop route gives you more control and more predicable results. Note: Under Windows 95, PostScript print files are sometimes scaled way out of proportion when placed in PageMaker 6.5 and may not print. Here's the necessary Photoshop footwork. Create a PostScript print file of the Word page. Install a PostScript printer driver in Windows 95. I suggest the Apple LaserWriter II NT, but others will do. Select Start*Settings*Printers, right-click the printer's icon, click the Print to the Following Port drop down list, pick FILE:, and click OK. In Word, select File*Print and select the PostScript printer you just set up. Click OK. In the Print to File dialog box, type in a filename, click OK, and voilˆ-the print file is generated (with the PRN file extension). In Photoshop, click File*Open As, select the PostScript print file, and choose Generic EPS from the Open As drop down list. Click OK, and the Rasterize Generic EPS Format dialog box pops up offering several options. Stick with the default 72dpi resolution if you plan to radically scale down the page image. (At a quarter size, the resolution is roughly 300dpi anyway.) If you're a layout pro, you can specify the number of pixels for the image based on its printed size and your printer's resolution. I usually de-select the Anti-aliased option, since the page text is often unreadable when scaled down in PageMaker. To save time and disk space (and still get a sharp image), save the image as a grayscale TIFF file. If you save it as a bitmap, PageMaker 6.5 shaves off any blank top and bottom margins when you import the file, for which you'll have to compensate. POSTSCRIPT FILES: BINARY OR ASCII? Q: When I print PostScript files to disk, the print dialog box always gives me the option of saving the file in ASCII or binary format. What's the difference? A: For all-text jobs, there's little difference because PostScript is normally written in ASCII characters anyway. The binary option mainly affects how graphic images--photos and illustrations--are written to disk. The quality of both types is the same. However, graphics-laden PostScript jobs saved in binary format are much smaller than their ASCII counterparts, because using ASCII characters is a verbose way of describing images. An ASCII version with a couple of images can be easily twice the size of its binary equivalent. When you save PostScript jobs to disk to be sent to a service bureau for output, binary is the way to go. But saving in ASCII format can have its advantages, too, primarily when you want to telecommunicate that file to someone across the Internet, where binary files can sometimes become garbled. Because ASCII is the standard format for Internet communications, it may be safer to send your PostScript files in pure ASCII format. The drawback, of course, is your larger ASCII files will take much longer to send. Before resorting to pure ASCII PostScript files, the best bet is to send a test file in binary PostScript format. If it works, you'll save yourself a lot of online time. Applied Publisher Make a PostScript print file from a Publisher 98 document and extend Publisher's options E-mail a Thumbnail Q: I created a postcard in Publisher 98 that I want to save as a JPEG file and attach to an e-mail message. Can I do it? A. The only effective technique I've come up with-and I certainly welcome reader suggestions on this-involves saving the document as a PostScript file and opening it in Photoshop 4.x. This way, Photoshop will rasterize the document, fonts and all, into an image file you can then save in many different file formats, including JPEG. I covered a similar technique a while back using Word and PageMaker (see www.currents.net/magazine/national/1516/puba1516.html). But the approach you use with Publisher differs substantially, so the details are worth covering. Also, the instruction will familiarize you with Publisher 98's Prepare File for Printing Service feature. After creating the document, you must save it as a PostScript file. Select File*Prepare File for Printing Service and click Set Up Publication. In the dialog box, click either Black, White and Shades of Gray or Full Color, depending on your publication. Click the Next button. In the Set Up Publication/Step 2 dialog box, check the Use Publisher's Commercial Printer Driver box. Other PostScript drivers may work, but I've had good luck with this one when using Photoshop. Then click the Done button. Select File*Prepare File for Printing Service*Create File in PostScript. In the Create PostScript File dialog box, make sure the Print to File box is checked and the Show All Print Marks box is unchecked. Then click OK. In the Print to File dialog box that pops up, give the file an EPS file extension. Then click OK. Now you have a generic PostScript file of your Publisher 98 document. To generate something from this PostScript file that will travel well via e-mail, take the following steps. In Photoshop 4.x, click File*Open and select the print file you created. Then click the Open button. If the file doesn't show up in the Open dialog box, you may have forgotten to give it an EPS extension. The Rasterize Generic EPS Format dialog box should pop up at this point. If the Resolution text box doesn't already read 72 (the default), enter it. Also, select either Grayscale or RGB Color from the Mode drop-down list, depending on whether your document uses color. Then click OK. It may a take a few seconds to a minute for the EPS file to rasterize. When it appears on-screen, select File*Save a Copy to save the file in another format. I recommend JPEG or CompuServe GIF because they're most likely to produce the smallest file sizes. But first save the image in standard Photoshop format (PSD) so you can experiment with other formats without copying over the original. In general, use JPEG for scanned, full-color images. They'll be smaller than GIFs and look better, too. GIF retains only a 256-color palette, but JPEGs' 24-bit color depth can store 16 million colors. On the other hand, if your document has only a few colors, GIF will probably produce a smaller file than JPEG. My advice is to save the document in each format and then compare the file sizes using Windows Explorer or Get Info (on the Mac). You'll need to change the rasterized EPS file's mode to indexed color before Photoshop lets you save it as a GIF. To change the mode, simply click Image*Mode*Indexed Color. If you're asked to "Flatten layers?", click OK. In the Indexed Color dialog box, you'll see a variety of choices in the Palette drop-down list. If your document has only a few colors (10 to 60, for example), most options will yield similar visual results. But my tests show that the Web option produces file sizes 20 percent to 30 percent smaller than the other options. Make your choice and click OK. To save the indexed color image as a GIF, click File*Save a Copy, select CompuServe GIF in the Save As drop-down list, and click OK. If the GIF89a Options dialog box pops up, check the Normal option and click OK. An alert box will appear, warning you that you'll lose some image data, printer settings, etc. Just click OK. Saving the file as a JPEG is a similar process. Still in Photoshop, open the original PSD file, choose JPEG from the Save As menu, and click OK. In the JPEG Options dialog box, select a compression level in the Image Options/Quality box. Try level four (Medium) compression. If the resulting file is too large, try higher compression levels (one, two, or three) and view those images to see if the image degradation is too great. Whichever you choose, you'll end up with fairly compact files that you can e-mail to anyone. When you want to transmit text-heavy or multipage documents to someone who doesn't have Publisher 98, you might want to consider other methods. One possibility is a portable document format like Adobe Acrobat. I'll tackle this more complicated problem in an upcoming issue. Four on the Floor? Q: A print shop representative told me that the scanned photos in my brochure won't print correctly unless I give the shop four-color separations. What is he talking about? And can Publisher 98 handle these separations? A: Presses layer four ink colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) to reproduce scanned, full-color photos. So your page-layout software must separate the colors into layers before the press can do its job. You can't perform these four-color separations (also called process color) in Publisher the way you can in Adobe PageMaker, QuarkXPress, Corel Ventura, and other higher-end products. However, Publisher can perform spot-color separations, where you add one or two discrete colors to your layout, say, for a single-color logo. But you can still send out your full-color Publisher document for process-color printing. You simply create one PostScript print file of the entire Publisher document and send it to a print shop or prepress bureau whose sophisticated systems can color-separate the files. To create the necessary PostScript print file, you can go through the Publisher 98 steps outlined in the previous question. But first contact your print house or service bureau and ask in exactly what format you should provide your job. Some bureaus have Publisher and may not need you to create the PostScript file. Others may want to give you the PostScript drivers they use on their systems before you create a PostScript print file. If they act like they don't know what to do, find another shop. © 1998 Bob Weibel. All rights reserved. Portable Publisher Pages Convert Publisher 98 documents to PDF Q: Unlike Adobe PageMaker 6.5, Microsoft Publisher 98 doesn't seem to have a command for exporting a document in Adobe portable document format (PDF). Can I create PDFs from Publisher 98 files? A: Yes you can, and just about as conveniently as with PageMaker, although you'll pay for the privilege. To create a PDF, you must install Adobe Acrobat Distiller, which is a utility that converts PostScript document files into the portable document format known as PDF. Unlike HTML Web documents, PDFs retain the precise layout and typography of paper documents, regardless of whether the viewer has the same operating system, layout software, or typefaces you used to create the document. You can view PDFs on-screen and print them. You can also use PDFs in prepress for sending proofs and submitting final documents for production. Acrobat Not Included PageMaker 6.5 ships with Acrobat Distiller, which installs almost seamlessly into the PageMaker interface. Publisher 98 doesn't come with Distiller, so you'll have to buy it. If you have older versions of Distiller, the current release, 3.01, is still worth a look. In some previous versions, you had to go through the separate motions of creating a PostScript print file in Publisher 98 and running that file through Distiller. That process is now largely hidden by the Distiller Assistant, a part of Distiller you access inside Publisher 98 and other applications to send the PostScript directly to Distiller, which will automatically convert it to a PDF. The big rub is the cost. Distiller 3.01 and its Assistant are available only as part of Acrobat 3.01, which costs around $200. That's almost double the $115 street price of Publisher 98, although the combined $315 is still less than PageMaker 6.5's $550 street price. But $200 nets you a big bundle of stuff Adobe used to sell separately for more than $1,000. In addition to Distiller, there's the Acrobat PDFWriter, a printer driver designed to produce PDF versions of simple business documents from an application's print command. The bundle also includes Acrobat Exchange, which lets you annotate and make minor edits in PDF files. Exchange also lets you create PDF forms; password-protect PDF files; add links, bookmarks, and page thumbnails; and embed movies and sound. Acrobat Catalog provides full-text indexing and searching of PDF files. Acrobat Scan operates your scanner to create an image-only PDF. To perform OCR on any text in the scan and make it a standard PDF, turn to the included Capture plug-in. Access it by selecting Document*Capture Pages in Exchange. Adobe also bundles the 3.01 Acrobat Reader for viewing PDF files, which you can distribute freely. The Reader installation includes Netscape Plug-in and ActiveX controls so you can view PDF files inside Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer browser windows. Using the 'Still For 120-proof PDF files from Publisher 98, you'll want to use Distiller, not PDFWriter. Acrobat 3.01's Distiller Assistant makes it easy. In Publisher 98, simply select File*Print Proof and choose Distiller Assistant version 3.01 from the Name drop-down list. The Distiller Assistant then automatically generates a PostScript file from within Publisher 98 and runs it through Distiller in the background to create a PDF, using whichever Distiller option settings you've applied previously. There are numerous options in Distiller, more than I can cover in this column. Here are the most important. Font embedding. If you're using fonts other than the base 14 (Courier, Times, and Helvetica in four styles each plus Symbol and Zapf Dingbats), you can choose to include a font within the PDF file so the font displays properly on any recipent's system. Distiller 3.01 compresses the font data, so a 30K font file might occupy only 15K. If you use just a few characters in a font, say for a title or within a graphical element, Distiller 3.01 can embed only the actual font characters you use, called a subset. This method further cuts down on file size. You must specify font embedding before you load your PostScript file into Distiller. Just go to Distiller*Job Options*Font Embedding and turn on the Embed All Fonts option. The Subset Fonts Below option lets you specify a percentage of character usage. If you use more than that percentage, Distiller embeds the entire font. Distiller's Font Embedding dialog box lets you maintain lists of fonts to embed or never to embed, but you needn't fuss with these. The PostScript file you generate from Publisher 98 includes the PostScript font data that would be used in printing your document. (TrueType fonts can also be used, since they're automatically converted to PostScript Type 1 font data and included in the PostScript file.) Resolution. To fix resolution levels for images, select Distiller*Job Options*Compression. Note that because PDF is PostScript-based, object-oriented items like text or draw-graphics will print or display at the full resolution of the printer, imagesetter, or monitor you're using. Scanned pictures and other bitmapped images are device dependent, which means their resolutions are fixed in the image files. There's no point including a 300dpi color graphic file in a PDF document intended solely for on-screen viewing unless you want to zoom in on detail. Distiller 3.01 lets you control the resolution and compression levels of color, grayscale, and monochrome bitmap image files. If you're using Acrobat 1, it's just a few extra steps to a PDF: Create a PostScript file of your Publisher 98 document and run it through Distiller. I covered the Publisher-to-PostScript process extensively in a recent Publishing Advisor column, so check www.currents.net/magazine/national/1609/puba1609.html for a blow-by-blow description. Distilling a PostScript file is simple even without the Assistant. Go into Distiller and select File*Open to load the PostScript file you created with Publisher 98. When the Specify PDF File Name dialog pops up, give your PDF file a name and click the Save button. You can also drag and drop PostScript files onto Distiller and even set up a folder for Distiller to check periodically and process files placed there automatically. Check Distiller's online help for the salient details. © 1998 Bob Weibel. All rights reserved.