Adobe Tips
Adobe Tips
If you want imported graphics to separate with trapping intact from Pagemaker you will need to draw your graphics in Freehand as CorelDraw! graphics will not honour trapping options when separated.
Yes you can type style names in Pagemaker from your word processing package
or database report generator, just put the style names in
Some people are still suffering their EPS graphics printing upside down and diagonally opposite on the page when printing to a postscript printer from Windows 3 or 3.1 The fix is to alter some lines in the WIN.INI file.
Look through and find the line [Linotronic200/300, LPT1] or similar and add the following line directly after it (no spaces in this line!)
LansdscapeOrient=270
You will need to do this for every Postscript printer you have in your WIN.INI file, but not after the lines that say [Postscript, LPT1]
Also if you ever re-install a Postscript printer you will need to do this again (Yes we got caught a second time)
A quick way to change a style definition is to click the text cursor on a paragraph so that the style name is highlighted in the styles palette. If you then hold down the control key and click on that style name in the styles pallette the edit style menu will appear.
Also, to quickly create a new style from existing formatted text, select it with your text cursor, then select Define Styles and press New. The new style will take on the attributes of the selected text. Great if a customer makes a change of typeface or something and you have done a quick and rough job and not used styles to start with, as at least once you have fixed the job using styles and they decide to put it back how it was it will be easy the next time!
If you have been having frustrations with the Pagemaker (4&5) table editor creating tables that don't print properly on your Postscript printer, try exporting the table as a WMF then importing into Pagemaker.
Also make sure you create the table at the final size you will use it. If you re-size the graphic in Pagemaker it is more likely to create problems when printed.
To speed things up a bit you can set Pagemaker to replace all images with grey boxes for display purposes (this does not effect printed output). Go to the Preferences menu under the File menu and change Graphics to Grey Out.
While on the subject of Pagemaker, if you are a Corel user and miss the magnifying glass, it is in Pagemaker, but hidden. Just hold down both control and the space bar. The glass magically appears. Thanks to Colin Norris for this one!
The default settings for all NEW publications can be set by starting Pagemaker from scratch, not opening any files and changing the settings in any of the menus that are not greyed out. For example set default typeface size, define a default set of styles, default line weights, ruler and guide settings and which palette windows to display when you start a new publication. These settings are saved when you exit Pagemaker.
Black text will automatically overprint any other colour when printing seps from PM5, but this is not true of black graphics (including paragraph rules).
To make black graphics overprint, define a new colour called say "Black-OP" as a tint colour, having a base colour of black and the overprint box checked. Then change all your black graphics to the new colour (or change your default line and fill colours to be this colour)
If you want to reverse headings, rather than using boxes that stay in the same place when the rest of the text moves, you can define a style with the "box" as part of it.
When creating the style, set your text settings to whatever font you want, and set it to reverse out.
Then go to the Paragraph Settings, click on the Rules button and select Rule Above Paragraph. Change your line style to a Custom line with a width equal to the depth of the "Box" you want to create and the line width to "Width of Column". Click on Options and set Top to a few mm above the baseline. Also set your Before and After paragraph spacings to space out the heading. The measurements will change depending on the point sizes you are using and the look you want, but here is an example:
Font Arial: 12pt Bold Reverse Spacing Before Paragraph: 6mm Spacing After Paragraph: 4mm Line Weight: 24 Points Line Position: 6mm Above baseline
When using Pagemaker 5 to design posters etc you may find that the default kerning (designed for body copy) looks terrible. You can use the Aldus Addition "Expert Kerning" to set up a design class for the automatic kerning to use.
In Pagemaker 5 and below the only grouping available is PS Group and PS Ungroup, which makes a postscript file of the grouped selections. Avoid using this if possible as it can make printing inaccurate and cause problems if the file needs to be opened on another computer. The Group commands in Pagemaker 6 and in Corel, Freehand etc do not have this problem.
The Library palette is a powerful, often unnoticed feature of Pagemaker. It allows you to build up libraries of commonly used graphical elements, display and catalogue them by keywords and place them into your publication by dragging from the palette onto the page.
Using the catalogue features you could build up a library of logos and have classifications for recycled, corporate, government and tourism and display only those of the type you are interested in at the time. The library can hold text block as well as graphics so commonly used blocks of type such as terms and conditions can be quickly accessed. You can display by name, image or both and edit this information at any time.
Adding items to the library is simple, just select the object(s) you wish to store in the library and press the "+" button at the top of the library pallette to put them into the library. It is well worth taking a few minutes to set it up!
Have you ever made a really big mistake in Pagemaker, that you can't undo? Under the File menu there is an option called Revert, that will revert to the last time you saved your document.
If you save regularly, it can be pretty useful for really big muckups.
If you have a standard design that you use a lot the template feature might be useful to you.
Simply set up a basic layout and save it as a PT5 or PT6 file (depending on the version of Pagemaker you are using), rather than a .PM5 or .PM6 file. Next time you open the template file, you will have the base layout, but Pagemaker will treat it as a new document, and will ask you for a filename when you save it.
If you come across an item in Pagemaker, and you have no idea what it does, you can easily find out - just press SHIFT-F1, and the mouse pointer will turn into a question mark. Click on the item that you were interested in, and up pops a window to help you out.
If you want to see what your Pagemaker document will look like when you print it out, try pressing CTRL-J. This will hide the guides on the screen, to give you be better view of how your document will look. To switch the guides back on, just press CTRL-J again.
If you want to have something appear on all the pages in your Pagemaker document, simply put it on the base page.
The base page is a special page in your Pagemaker document that will be shown and printed on every page of your PageMaker document. To get to the base page, simply select either the 'L' or 'R' pages. These are base pages for the left and right hand sides of your document for double sided documents. Single sided documents have an 'R' page only. Also, if you want to put repeating page numbers in your document, just type CTRL-SHIFT-3 in a text block, on your base page. The LM or RMs will be replaced with the appropriate page numbers on every page in your document.
Did you know... .. that using the Place function in Pagemaker can use much less memory and can be considerably faster than simply cutting and pasting?
A spot colour separation from an imported graphic may not print out unless you have at least one native Pagemaker object in that colour defined on each page the graphic appears. If you have a job that is like this we suggest placing a full stop in the spot colour somewhere on the page and whiting it out from the bromide or opaqueing from the neg to remove it.
