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Creating a Cross-Reference in Microsoft Word

Apr 21, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

The process of setting up a cross-reference in Word, frankly, can take a little time to get comfortable with. So don’t worry if you need a couple run-throughs.

The recipe goes like this:

First, create a bookmark (there are a couple other things you can use, but a bookmark is simplest) wherever it is you want the reference to point. (Insert tab—>Links—>Bookmark) THIS IS ACTUALLY THE KEY STEP. Give the bookmark a name that makes sense for what it’s marking—what you’re pointing to. This helps with the other part.

Next, go to the part of the text you want the cross-reference from (that is, where it starts). Type the appropriate text (e.g., “See the reference to so-and-so on page”, plus a space, and any other punctuation as needed). If you visualize the way such a thing normally looks, you can see all it’s missing is the page number.

With the insertion point at the spot right after the space, go to References—>Captions—>Cross-reference. Although there are other items you can use in this situation, the thing most people insert is the reference to the page number which the bookmark is on.

And that’s it. Again, it is possible to use this feature for a few other things, but the idea of a cross-reference in most cases is to refer a point or item in the text to another item somewhere else.

The benefit is, if you reformat the text, add or remove some, or otherwise make changes, you don’t have to go through your document retyping up the wazoo as far as redoing cross-referenced items. Instead (ALERT—BONUS FEATURE AHEAD!), simply press Control-A (to select all the text), then the F9 key, which will refresh everything selected in the way of tables, references, etc. (Hint, hint.) You may have to specify the whole document in a dialog box. Oh well. And if you inserted any of those other things, you just made sure they’re updated, too.

Creating Cost Resources in Microsoft Project

Apr 9, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

There’s a quirky thing about Microsoft Project, having to do with resources—more specifically, Cost resources. The other two types, Work and Material, are pretty easy to understand and use, but Cost takes a little bit of extra work to make do its thing.

A Work resource is a person or a piece of equipment, someone or something that stays around. A Material resource is a consumable, such as reams of paper or toner cartridges—something that gets used up. Even gasoline might be looked at this way. But Cost resources, at first, seem a little more indescribable. And where to put the actual cost?…

The basic definition, though, is not too hard once you understand it. A Cost resource is an intangible, like an airfare, a hotel rental, or a software download. It’s something you use, but can’t exactly hold in your hand.

So how do we use it? First, we have to create the resource, say, Advertising Money. We can’t insert any numbers in the Resource Sheet, because—and here’s the key thing—a Cost resource has to be attached to a task in order to enter a number. In other words, you have to specify where the money is going.

Then, in the Task Information dialog box, we set up the assignment of the resource, and there we can enter the amount. Since the program tracks all the costs, it’s not really too big a deal where we enter the numbers, as long as we enter them.

Later, when we need to know what all the Cost resource numbers add up to, the information is pretty easy to get. One simple way to check it is to add the Cost field to the Gantt chart. The Project Summary Task gives us the overall amount in that column.

Once you understand it, dealing with it is routine. It’s a good thing, because it gives the project manager a means of keeping better track of the money. Never hurts….

Creating Calculated Fields in Microsoft Access

Mar 30, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

When setting up reports in Access, it is sometimes necessary to learn something which wasn’t in the original data, whether calculated, derived, or otherwise figured out from the existing information. It’s fairly easy to do, though there are a few steps involved.

After determining the requirement—a sales tax or a shipping fee, and what calculation is needed to find it—we create the field for the calculation.

With the report open in Design view, clicking the Design tab under Report Design Tools gives us the Controls group. There, we click the Text Box tool and click or drag where we want the text box (which shows field data). This normally creates a label too, which one can use or delete as desired.

Once the text box is in place, we leave it selected, open the Property Sheet, and click the Data tab. One of the Data properties is Control Source, where we can tell the text box how to get its data. On the right of this property, we bring up the Expression Builder with the Build button […].

In the Expression Builder itself, we can either double-click the fields we need for data or type in what we want manually. We also add the other items (operators, additional figures, and so on) to perform the calculations—essentially, we build a formula much like those in Excel. (Don’t need the equals sign at the front, though.) This makes it a calculated field.

Once we OK out of the box, we can fine-tune the position and size of the text box, and either move the label or create one of our own so the users of the report will know what it’s showing. (This is more important than some people think—in a business report it’s very important not to make assumptions about who’s going to see it, and no guesswork should be involved in understanding it.)

The term “calculated field” seems kind of unofficial—one usually sees it called an “unbound field”, as it isn’t directly connected to any of the actual database data. But since we often create such fields to derive info from other info, and it’s often mathematical, saying calculated is at least logical.

How to Use Color Libraries in Photoshop

Mar 26, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

For some reason, a few people I’ve talked to seem a little uneasy about the Color Libraries. Either they don’t know what these are, or they don’t know how to use them. But they’re easy to bring into play, they’re very useful, and sometimes even necessary. They’re standardized sets of colors anyone can use to make sure the viewer sees precisely the color which was intended.

Many companies have what are called “product branding” standards: Official fonts, official colors, logos, and so on. If I mention Coca-Cola, or John Deere, you can probably see the right shade of red or green in your mind’s eye. But if you were creating an ad for these (or other) companies, you’d have to match the color EXACTLY, for reasons of copyright (the color plus the logo).

This is where the Libraries come in. Once you’ve created your basic art (and found out what the specifics are for the product branding colors), you can call up the correct library from the Swatches panel menu. (Usually, we append the choice of “book” to the existing palette.)

Another approach is to go through a color picker—say, for example, by clicking the foreground color swatch in the Tools panel. From the picker, you can click the Color Libraries button on the right, and call up the appropriate book at the top, then the specific color, which we add to the swatches simply by clicking “OK”. It normally shows up at the top of the Swatches panel, properly named so you won’t mistake it if you hover on it.

The key to the technique is knowing in advance which of the libraries (or standards) the company, coworker, or whoever is using. Many companies will stick with a particular library or set of libraries to make things as simple as possible, and then all one has to do is check the type of paper or printing surface to be used.

The color libraries are also the idea behind the concept of “spot color”. The plain-language definition of spot color is a color NOT mixed from the C-M-Y-K inks, but brought in separately, in another cartridge, ready to go; it must match perfectly the desired color for (as I mentioned earlier) copyright purposes. It is normally not used everywhere in the document, only in certain spots, hence the name.

Tableau Training Classes from SkillForge

Mar 20, 2018Mar 20, 2018 admin Leave a comment

Announcing Our New Tableau Training Classes

Companies around the world are collecting more data than ever – about their customers, their sales and many other aspects of their business. With all of this data, though, the problem becomes how to analyze, make sense of it – and more importantly – make sound business decisions based on it. Business Intelligence tools have increased in popularity in the last few years to help companies do just that. One of the tools that is particularly popular currently is Tableau. Tableau offers five products currently: Tableau Desktop (both Personal and Professional Editions), Tableau Server, Tableau Online, Tableau Reader and Tableau Public. The last two of these products are free for use.

Tableau allows users to connect to many different data sources including relational databases (like SQL Server and Oracle), OLAP cubes, cloud databases (like Azure), and spreadsheets (like Excel.) Once connected data can be linked and analyzed using a variety of different data visualizations including line, bar and pie charts and more advanced visualizations like geographical maps.

Although it’s a very powerful tool, Tableau does have a bit of a learning curve. To assist students in learning Tableau, we offer three different Tableau Training Classes:

Tableau Training: This course introduces students to Tableau, familiarizes them with the Tableau interface, shows students how to connect to a variety of different data sources and introduces students to the main types of data visualizations in Tableau.

Advanced Tableau Training: This course is designed for students who can already build basic Tableau dashboards and now want to create more advanced visualizations using advanced data joins, geographical maps, table calculations and functions. This course also introduces students to the use of R programming language – the industry standard for data mining and statistics – in Tableau.

Advanced Analytics with Tableau and R Training: In this course, students take a deep dive into using R with Tableau. They will also learn how to use advanced analytical techniques such as forecasting, predictions, association rules, clustering, classification, and other advanced Tableau/R calculated field functions.

Wherever you are on your journey to learning Tableau, our Tableau Training classes can help you take your data visualizations to the next level. Visit our Tableau Training course list to learn more about each of these courses. Or contact us if you are interested in having one of these courses delivered at your location for your team.

How to Use Duotone Mode in Photoshop

Mar 18, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

One of the least-known color modes in Photoshop, or certainly lesser-known today, is Duotone. This may be partly because it requires converting a file to grayscale first, which means that for color images the very name is grayed-out on the menu. But it has a couple of interesting properties.

The first thing, as I mentioned, is to take an image and convert to grayscale; from there, one can go to Duotone mode. And then, as the one chap said in the movies, the fun begins. Duotone mode allows the user to “tint” the image with between one and four ink colors, rather like “dunking” the image in a dye bath. So what? you might ask.

Although one might want to do brightness and contrast adjustment beforehand, Duotone mode allows some artistic things to happen to an image. For one, it’s possible to print a grayscale-like picture in the four-color process (since the max number of colors one can use is four, they can be cyan, magenta, yellow, and black—CMYK) and make the grayscale-like image a little warmer or cooler by tweaking the balance of the colors in the dialog box.

For another, it’s capable of closely simulating a couple of older photographic printing processes which were considered very beautiful and elegant back in the day. Some illustrated novels, even graphic novels, occasionally still use these kinds of repro art styles.

One, called cyanotype, was used till fairly recently not only to do photo printing but also to create traditional-style blueprints for building and manufacturing. (Since the chemicals involved, ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide, are both rather nasty, being able to create the appearance without the potential to poison oneself is certainly a plus!) Even the sub-mode called Monotone can handle this one.

Another, perhaps one of the most beautiful, is sepia toning. A print was washed in a bath that included sepia ink (from the marine animal called the cuttlefish), which both stabilized the image chemically and gave it the lovely golden-brown cast we often associate with antique photographs. Sepia toning helped prevent fading, and gave the image a warmth which a normal silver print would sometimes lack due to its regular color. Duotone mode with all four inks (Quadtone) makes this version easy.

Some newer users of Photoshop love playing with the ability to bend reality—which is cool. But there are a lot more capabilities built into the program. Using it to reproduce some of the beauty of yesteryear doesn’t hurt.

How to Create Subprojects in Microsoft Project

Mar 14, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

Microsoft Project was designed with the idea that one might need to set up subprojects, or projects within projects. If you think of a set of manuals, or a company-wide reworking of hardware and software, or a movie (such as Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy) where many departments have to coordinate their efforts to all be ready for filming at about the same time, you have an idea of why this might be. But Microsoft set the feature up with a couple of hidden little bonuses, which I’ll talk about in a moment.

To start with, one simply sets up regular projects. Whatever they might be about, whatever one does normally. Add tasks, resources, assignments, calendars, and so on. Save them, polish them, etc. They can sit on individual drives or shared, but if you know you’re going to be creating a set of subprojects to be parts of another project, best to put them on a shared drive so all concerned can work with them, as individuals and together.

The next step is to open a blank project, to use as a container. This is referred to as a “master project” in the program’s terminology. Make sure you’re in the first task row; then, in the Project tab, over at the left, click the Subproject button in the Insert group. Navigate to the project you want as part of the master, and double-click it.

For additional subprojects, click the next task row down on the left side of the Gantt chart (where one usually sets these things up) before inserting the next one. Turning on the Project Summary Task from the Gantt Chart Tools Format tab is usually a good idea too (Show/Hide group on right). Save the master as needed, just like any other project.

But the bonuses are interesting. First, you can link tasks from different subprojects within the master. To use the movie analogy, if the wig-makers, clothing-makers, and sword-makers all have to finish for wardrobe within a day or so of each other, linking the end milestones for all those projects is done the same way as within a single project—select the tasks and click the Link button.

Second, and even cooler in my opinion, if you modify a subproject and save, the individual project will reflect the change if you open it separately—master and sub are linked. And the same goes for the other end—open a project at the individual end, change and save, and the master/subprojects will update accordingly! As in its brother program, Access, changes and updates in Project are a two-way street when working with native-format files. So all concerned can see everything going on, whether single project manager or multi-project supervisor.

Using the Appearance Panel in Illustrator CC 2018

Mar 3, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

If I didn’t know better, I’d think someone who worked on Adobe Illustrator had a crush on the idea of layers, because they appear not only in the Layers panel, but in the Appearance panel. There are no less than three places where the idea of layering, stacking, or something similar appears in this program—the Layers panel itself, the idea of Sub-layers, and Appearance.

The latter uses the concept a little differently. This panel shows data only for the object (or group) selected, and it’s things like fills, strokes, effects (such as drop shadows), and so on.

If you have an object selected, you can show the Appearance panel (Window–>Appearance) to see how its attributes are set up. A key point is that the attributes are “stacked” from top to bottom the way you see them, so having a fill above another fill can block the lower one from being seen.

If this happens, you can adjust, say, the transparency/opacity of the upper to partly show the lower, or change the stacking order by dragging the item up or down as you would any layer, sublayer, or other component, or remove the upper one entirely.

Then, editing the attributes is quite straightforward; clicking or double-clicking on most items will bring up the appropriate dialog box, and from there it’s pure vanilla.

When a group is selected, any attribute you change, add, or remove in the panel will affect the group as a whole. In order to do something with one member of the group, you either have to ungroup and select the item in question or otherwise narrow the selection down. This is an example of the kind of step-by-step mindset one often has to develop working with these kinds of programs, but it’s not hard to do.

The normal issue one runs into in doing all this is keeping track of where to go to do what. Changing layers and stacking order of objects and groups is done in the Layers panel; changing the attributes of objects or groups in the Appearance panel. Jotting this sort of thing down initially can help.

Creating Custom Tools Panels in Illustrator CC 2018

Mar 1, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

I’ve gotten so used to the Tools panel (or Toolbox, as we old-timers call it) in Illustrator as it has been for years that although we can go from single- to double-column for convenience on smaller screens, I hardly ever think about it otherwise. But one feature in Illustrator CC 2018 which is both novel and very much a help is the ability to create one’s own Tools panels—that is, to create custom collections of tools as one needs.

We could do something like this with the panels themselves for quite some time, separating and recombining them as we like. This made possible the idea of the workspace, and Illustrator comes with a bunch of those preinstalled. But not too long ago, someone at Adobe realized it would be helpful to be able to do the same with tools—after all, we occasionally find we need what might seem arbitrary but logical (to a particular user) collections of tools for drawing, selecting, etc.

Luckily, it’s dead easy.

There doesn’t even need to be a document open, but it helps to know what you’ll usually need. Simply go to the Window menu, Tools, and on the submenu, click New Tools Panel.

The dialog box will ask what you want to call it, and you can type any name you like—though if you need to create more than one (and you can put together as many as you need), it’s a good idea to use names that more or less describe what each will be for.

Once it has a name, the main bit is old as the hills. Drag and drop tools from the main Tools panel into the new one, in any order (a little planning for convenience might be helpful), and there you are. And since this is a program-level feature, not a document-level one, the new collection(s) will be there on that copy of Illustrator from that point on, whenever needed.

Dealing with Dust Using History in Photoshop

Feb 20, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

There’s another trick for dealing with dust in Photoshop (to sort of continue from the last blog post), which takes a little setup but is even more subtle. It involves the History Brush tool, and the History panel. The advantage is that the corrections are very unobtrusive, especially if one takes the time to do them carefully. The disadvantage, such as it is, is that the recipe has to be followed rather carefully, which is why I’m taking the liberty of condensing it at the end of the post.

After opening the file, it’s advisable to save it as a PSD, and make a copy of the layer containing the artwork; work on the copy for safety.

The first real step is to go to Filter—Blur—Gaussian Blur, and set it for 6-12 pixels (all numbers approximate; your mileage may vary).

Then, in the History panel, take a snapshot of this state (call it Blurred, or whatever you’ll recognize). After which, click one step up in the History (which will un-blur the art but leave the snapshot blurred). THIS IS A KEY STEP.

Click the selector for the blurred snapshot (left side of panel) to indicate what the History Brush should work from. Then select the History Brush itself in the Tools panel.

THE OTHER KEY STEP is this: When painting a dark spot with the History Brush, switch the blending mode in the Control panel up top to Lighten, and vice versa. So you’re lightening and blurring the dark spots, and darkening and blurring the light spots. Lightening or darkening makes them less conspicuous; blurring blends the repair in.

Before

After

Don’t panic if you need to practice this one a bit. The recipe is a bit more complex, and has to be followed. But I can tell you it works, as I’ve used it myself many times.

Short version:

Open file, save as PSD if necessary, make copy of layer

Blur image (Filter/Blur/Gaussian, 6-12 pixels)

In History panel, take snapshot and name accordingly

Go back one step

Select blurred snapshot

Use History Brush tool to paint blur back in (Lighten mode on dark spots, and vice versa)

How to Deal with Dust in Photoshop Images

Feb 12, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

In the age of digital photography, dust would seem to be a thing of the past. Perhaps. But who knows how many pre-digital pictures still exist, un-digitized, and in need of cleaning? With this in mind, I’d like to show you how.

Before we had digital cameras, Photoshop, and so on, one would have to clean the film very carefully, print the picture, and use a kind of watercolor called spotting dye to touch up the (hopefully few) white spots caused by dust on the negative. (Yes, I did it.) It’s not too hard, but it is tedious, and requires patience and a steady hand. Photoshop, of course, removes the need to do the spotting by hand, but how to actually deal with the dust spots?

With an image open, you could just borrow nearby color with the Eyedropper tool, then use the Brush to tap color into the white bits. This does work. But there’s a slightly more subtle technique which works better, is a little faster, and doesn’t need any eyedropper-ing.

First, select a few spots (to start with, do one or two at a time). You want to make your selections only about half again as large as the white spots. Any selection tool is fine; with roundish spots, the Ellipse Marquee tool works well.

Then, go to the Select menu, Modify, and Feather command. We want to feather the selection by at least a few pixels, though we normally don’t need much more unless the spot is big. About three or four pixels’ worth will do.

Next, we go to Filter–>Blur–>Gaussian Blur. What we want is to “smear” the “paint” immediately around the spot onto it, but soften the edges of the smear to make it very gradual, and therefore hard to see. This is where there might be a little experimentation; the nice thing about the Gaussian Blur is, one can control how much blur there is. Sometimes it works with just a few pixels’ worth; sometimes it can take as much as eight or nine. The tricks are to keep the initial selection just a little larger than the dust spot, and feather the edge (either before selecting, in the Control panel, or right after with Select–>Modify–>Feather) prior to blurring. We do NOT want sharp edges here at all.

And don’t worry if it takes some practice to get right. Maybe make a copy of the layer containing the picture, for insurance. Then go for it.

The Layers Panel in Illustrator–Tips and Tricks

Feb 4, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

In my last post, I mentioned that the Layers panel serves a more vital function in Photoshop than it does in Illustrator. No offense to Illustrator, of course! But there is a reason I said this.

In Illustrator, unless the user makes it happen, objects cannot “smear” together as if they were oil paint that doesn’t dry. So the need to separate things by layer for Photoshop-ish reasons does not exist. But the Layers panel in Illustrator does serve another, equally useful, function—that of organizer.

In fact, there are two levels of organization we can see in a typical Illustrator document:

First, the layers themselves, which can be used to keep things together in the same fashion as having two or three storeys in a house. A real-life example might be a document intended for publication in Canada, which requires many documents, especially legal ones, to be bilingual. If one places all the graphics in one layer, all the French text in a second, and all the English in a third, one can easily show or hide the appropriate text for printing two versions of the document, and avoid having to create two separate documents, which would take rather more space.

Second, within each layer, there can be objects whose “stacking order” (in which one object is above or below another) determines what we see or don’t see of each object. The layers’ stacking order can be changed by simply dragging any layer up or down within the Layers panel. Ditto the objects within each layer. So one might describe the Layers panel as a stack of stacks.

The only downside to this story is that it can get a little complicated, especially when one has grouped objects within the layers. Groups, however, show themselves by indenting the objects within the group, and having twist/folding arrows to open or close the group, allowing objects within the group to be moved up and down within them.

But one point remains the same between Illustrator and Photoshop: Don’t create more layers than you need, for whatever reason. Each layer is almost a separate document within the file, and takes up a significant amount of room, so be sparing.

Using the Layers Panel in Photoshop–Tips and Tricks

Jan 31, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

The Layers panel is one of the most important members of the team; a lot of what goes on in Photoshop is related at least partly to which layer(s) you’ve selected, or want to select to do stuff in. So paying attention to this, and knowing a few things, will save you some work, and a little stress.

Unlike in its brother programs, Illustrator and InDesign, layers serve a vital function here—anything in a Photoshop layer is basically oil paint that never dries. So keeping things on separate layers till you’re SURE you don’t need to is good procedure.

Before painting, clone stamping, erasing, or anything else, especially if you’re in the middle of an important project, glance over to see which layer you’re about to affect. You can easily select the right layer by clicking its name once.

If you want to merge two or more layers, you can easily select them, even if they’re not adjacent, by clicking the one’s name and control/command-clicking the other(s). Remember, merging layers normally sort of “collapse” such that whatever’s on top, in the middle, etc. will stay looking that way when done.

Turning off a layer’s visibility is an easy way to avoid editing it when you don’t want to. Click the eyeball on the left of the layer name. But don’t forget to turn visibility back on when you *do* want to edit.

Locking a layer is a better way to avoid editing, especially if you want to see how the layer interacts with its buddies while working in the others. You can lock the image pixels, the transparent pixels, the position of the layer, or all of the above (usually the most common) with the buttons at the top of the panel. Just remember, you need to unlock before editing. Duh. 😉

Linking layers together provides a useful capability—if two or more layers need to be positioned just so, relative to each other, do the positioning, select them, and link the layers with the button at the bottom of the panel; if you then move one, you’ll move all. Unlinking them is easy too. Same button.

Renaming them is easy—double-click the current name, type what you like, and hit Enter.

Finally, remember Photoshop creates new layers whenever you copy and paste, or cut and paste, or pretty much anything and paste. It’s conservative about this, so you don’t smear the “paint” from different elements together. Which means you can accumulate a LOT of layers. In fact, as far as I know, there’s no limit to the number you can have. (I got bored and stopped counting at two hundred and twenty.) So don’t be afraid to merge them when you’re done with separate elements—they add to the file size. And don’t create them just for the heck of it—again, the file gets bigger when you do this.

Using Paths to Make a Selection in Photoshop

Jan 25, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

An unexpected ally in making selections in Photoshop is the Paths panel.

Selecting a precise piece of an image can be tedious, even for a veteran user; understanding the selection tools does not provide instant expertise, and some images have such irregular content that it’s a touchy matter to set the right numbers for almost any of the tools. But the Paths panel lets the user at least partly bypass the problem.

Using the Pen tool, we can create a path (essentially a vector shape) within Photoshop. This also takes practice, but the nice thing about a path drawn with the Pen tool is that it can be modified almost indefinitely. (By analogy, I’ll date myself badly and mention Silly Putty.)

First, we bring up our image, select the Pen tool, and start creating anchor points etc. for the path. This can take some time—in fact, it’s a good idea to go fairly slowly—but since we can clean up later, a rough shape will do. Naming the path is usually a good idea for reference, especially if you’ll have more than a couple.

The next step is to use the other vector tools to refine the path as needed: The Add and Delete Anchor Point tools to give the shape more or fewer anchor points, the Direct Selection tool to fine-tune the locations of the points and tweak the control handles, and occasionally the Convert Anchor Point tool for changing curve to corner, or vice versa.

Finally, we can select the path in the panel, go to the panel menu, and click Make Selection. We then have to specify the various options in the dialog box, and click OK.

This is one of those not-technically-complex-but-kinda-tedious features which requires a little practice. Working with Photoshop’s brother program Illustrator would give some additional footing on this too. Couldn’t say whether it’s the *best* technique, but it seems to work well with practice, and it’s not too hard to fine-tune paths.

Using the Baseline Grid with InDesign

Jan 18, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

One of the more subtle things that can be done with an InDesign document to make it look more professional—i.e. polished, consistent, easier to read—is to use the Baseline Grid. This relates to how the text is laid out and vertically lined up on the pages of the document.

The main requirement is that the text be reasonably consistent in terms of size and font from page to page; this is normal in most professional documents, so not hard to achieve.

Once the text has been placed and the text boxes fine-tuned for size, position, and so on, the feature can be set up in the Preferences (in different places for Windows and Mac, but the same dialog once there). The default color is light blue, probably because lined three-hole-binder paper uses the same color for various reasons. The Relative To option usually works better when set to go from the top margin, as most conventional business documents don’t have text outside the margins. And importantly, the Increment Every measurement should be the same as the leading (or line-spacing) of the body text (which, hopefully, is mostly the same font and size throughout the document). The whole idea, you see, is to have the text march down the page in nice, evenly-spaced lines, on both sides of a two-page spread.

Once you show the feature (via the View–>Grids and Guides submenu), View Threshold also matters, as one would not want this feature showing (and crowding the screen) if the text is too small to read. 100% is a good number, so the grid won’t show unless the page is life-size or larger on screen.

The other part which needs doing is that the text object has to be told to use the grid. Click in the text box with the Type tool, as we’re working with the text in there, NOT the container, select (usually) all the text in the story, and (the simplest method) bring up the Paragraph panel. Bottom right corner, the very last button will Align to Baseline Grid. That’s it.

Can this be automated? Can some of this be set in advance or by style? Certainly. Regardless, the Baseline Grid is fairly easy to use, and gives an almost inconspicuous, yet powerful, boost to the readability of the document—a real under-the-hood feature that still kicks like a turbocharger. 😊

How to Use Layer Styles in Photoshop

Jan 7, 2018Jan 7, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

The use of Layer Styles (also known as Layer Effects) in Photoshop is fairly easy, but can add some pretty snazzy results. One of the most visually catchy is the Drop Shadow, which can make it look as if an object is in front of the rest of the artwork. Any of the styles can be applied in about the same way, but the Drop Shadow gives a good general example.

Usually the first thing is to assemble the artwork layers, since the effect is normally applied to the whole layer. As far as possible, get things positioned (though moving layers and items around does not mess up the layer effect).

Double-click the layer thumbnail to bring up the Styles/Effects box, or select the layer and go to the Layer menu/Layer Style submenu and select the effect you want to apply.

At this point, the controls will vary widely according to which style you select, but here’s one point you don’t always hear about: If you want to open the box by double-clicking the layer thumbnail, remember to then click not the check mark next to the effect name, but the name itself. Why? Because if you click the check mark only, it will activate the effect but NOT bring the controls up. You’re saying you want to accept whatever defaults are already there. And usually, the user is looking for a particular fine-tune of whichever effect.

For our example, I want to make it look as if the gull is flying in front of the picture, almost as if he had somehow gotten free of the poster. So I can set the angle (from which the light comes) as 125 degrees (upper left), the distance (of shadow from object) at 150 pixels (so I can see it clearly as a shadow), the spread big enough to keep the edges soft, and the size (which is actually the blur) fairly large, since most shadows in this situation are not sharp-edged.

Click OK, and it’s done. The Layers panel shows the Fx symbol, to let us know there’s effects in them there hills, and we can double-click the thumbnail or the Fx anytime to get back in and play around with it some more, or delete it completely and start over. Fully editable. Way cool.

Kerning and Tracking Adjustments in InDesign

Jan 1, 2018 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

A while back, I posted an item about text layout in InDesign. There’s another aspect of it I wanted to mention which might be of some further interest, namely kerning. This is usually defined as the fitting-closer-together of pairs of letters whose shapes make it aesthetically possible to do so. In some fonts, lowercase “f” and lowercase “i” make a kerning pair called “fi”, where the arch of the “f” can hang over the “i”. Capital “A” and capital “V” in many fonts work this way too.

Many fonts created today have what are called “kerning pairs” built into them. All you have to do these days is install the font in the appropriate folder, and any software which knows the signs, as it were, can kern the letters automatically. One of the typography-savvy questions you can ask a font designer or company is “How many kerning pairs are in the so-and-so font?”

Not all programs have the ability to see and use, let alone adjust, the spaces between letters, but InDesign does. The two variations are called “kerning” and “tracking”. The difference between them, basically, is whether you’re working with a pair of letters, or more than two. (The unit called an “em” is whatever the point size of the text, traditionally the width of the capital “M” in that typeface.)

Working with InDesign, the kerning and tracking controls have been made about as simple as possible. Once you’ve got some text written, select the letters/words you want to adjust, and click the Kerning or Tracking controls in the Control palette at top. Two letters can be kerned, more than two can be tracked. Remember that the adjustments are in very small increments, so if you’re experimenting with this for the first time, you may want to zoom in to see the effect a little quicker. As you may gather, negative numbers adjust letters closer together, and positive numbers further apart. If the number is zero for a selected pair or group, the adjustment is whatever the default says it should be.

Okay, cool. So why would we want to adjust kerning or tracking? Occasionally, we may need to squeeze a piece of text a tiny bit closer together to fit it in a given space, or stretch it a little to fill up a couple of lines’ worth of blank space on a page. This is not a cardinal sin in DTP, but it should be treated with the respect due, say, superhot tabasco sauce, or ghost peppers: A little goes a long way. And one also has to remember that the human eye is a lot sharper than some people think, and if you go fiddling with the kerning and tracking throughout a document, it can be spotted pretty quick—the density of the text can be noticed at a subliminal level. No, I’m not kidding. And people will say “Look! They’re messing with the tracking!” Okay, maybe not, but it can be seen that something isn’t quite consistent across however many pages. So treat with caution.

How to Use the Selection Tools in Illustrator

Dec 25, 2017 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

Occasionally, new users of Illustrator have trouble understanding the selection tools; there are three, and each does something different. So knowing which to use for what is important. It’s not that hard to get the hang, with a little practice.

The main Selection tool, usually referred to as just that, allows the user to select the entire object. For doing anything to the object as a whole, like changing fill color, edge color, etc., this is good. Furthermore, if one wants to change the object’s dimensions or position, it has to be selected as a whole object. So the Selection tool works for this.

The Direct Selection tool serves another purpose. If one wants to work on a part of the object, one anchor point, or one segment of the path which makes up the border, this would be the right tool. With the Direct Selection tool, one has to be a little more precise in where to click. Doing so on the anchor point works with that anchor point and the line segments to either side. Clicking on a line segment also selects the adjacent anchor points. This tool is more specific, and gives tighter control over selection. One can also drag to create what’s called a selection box around multiple anchor points, or any part of the object, to work with that part or parts.

The Group Selection tool is a bit more complex, but it too has a method to the madness. When several objects need to stay in the same place relative to each other, they can be selected and grouped. Once they are, the Group Selection tool can select one object within the group (with the first click), a group within several groups (second click), or a set of groups together (third click). Again, the main problem some new users have is to click carefully, as the program simply interprets the clicks regardless. (We all sometimes double-click almost by reflex these days. After working with this program since the late Eighties, that bit still trips me up sometimes, so it’s not the user’s fault.)

Data Types, Properties, and Relationships in Access

Dec 18, 2017 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

A fundamental aspect of Access databases is the setup of relationships between tables. It’s usually the nature of business databases to have them, so the actual creation of the relationship isn’t hard to do. But there are a couple of not-so-obvious things the user needs to know.

Once the database is open, and the tables have been created, the first thing is to open the Relationships window from the Database Tools tab–>Relationships group. If there are no relationships already in place, the Show Table dialog box will open automatically. The user can then double-click the tables needed, or select them and click Add, which places them in the main window.

Then, dragging from a field in one table to its counterpart in the other will establish the relationship. (We usually check Enforce Referential Integrity, as we normally want something in one table to have a counterpart in the other.) Click Create, and the basic hookup is done.

The background behind this is a little more subtle, but not that hard to understand. Some newer users think the field names have to match for the relationship to work, but this is not true. The program doesn’t require it, but it’s highly recommended that field names be consistent across tables, so anyone who needs to look at or use the database won’t get confused.

The main thing, or rather things, that need to match up, are two of the properties of the fields—specifically, the Data Type and Field Length. These can be easily checked, or modified, by going into Design View once a table is open and selecting the field in question.

The reason is, the program can’t assume what will be stored in a given type of field—say, some numbers—will work with something in another field type. If the types match, they should. And if the lengths are the same, fifty characters for example, then what’s in one field can fit in the other.

One analogy which I’ve heard, which seems to help explain this, is the idea of two railroad cars. In different countries, one sometimes finds the rails are different distances apart—in the US, it’s four feet, eight and one-half inches. If you want to couple two cars together, they have to ride on the same gauge (distance apart) of rails, and they have to have the same couplers. If these two things are correct, all is well. One might also think about a car—if it’s supposed to run on diesel, you shouldn’t put gasoline in the tank, and vice versa.

So, field names should match, but data type and length have to. Simple enough, once you know it.

Creating Alpha Channels in Photoshop

Dec 10, 2017 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

Making selections in Photoshop is fairly easy, but a large, complicated selection can take some time. And if it’s an area that needs repeated tweaks, such as for color balancing or lightness, it’s helpful if one doesn’t have to keep going back and reselecting thirty or forty bits and pieces. There’s a feature in Photoshop which can help, but seems almost hidden, in the Channels palette/panel.

Normally, we see the composite channel there (showing the full color image) and the individual color channels (RGB or CMYK, or other) giving a view of the components, which can themselves be manipulated if desired. But we can also store selections in there, in a form called an alpha channel.

The use of the feature is quite straightforward. First, make whatever selection you need to. Remember you can switch from selection tool to selection tool, changing modes as needed, till you get the entire area you need.

Then, at the bottom of the palette, click the Save Selection as Channel button.

You can easily rename the channel by double-clicking its name—a good idea, since it’s possible to have something like fifty channels in the palette, and even if none of the selections closely resemble each other, it’s less confusing, and very little additional work.

But what’s even more interesting is, you can fine-tune the selection in the channel by using a painting tool. If you activate the selection (alpha) channel by clicking its name, then select, say, the Brush tool, you can use the color white to add to or solidify the selection if you missed a couple of spots, or black to unselect areas you might have selected by accident.

And zooming in to do this carefully is a good trick too. Some people find this is easier for making selections, or at least cleaning them up. It does take a little more time, but since precise selection is often important to professional imagery, any technique you can use to improve the precision is a good thing.

Using Multiple Sections in Crystal Reports

Dec 3, 2017 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

When “laying out” data in Crystal Reports, we usually think of written information. Graphics such as charts do enter into reports, but we don’t always use photographs or other non-data images, especially in the Details section where the data will go.

If, for example, we wanted a graphic (division logo, photograph, etc.) at the beginning of each batch of data, and the data to follow, it’s easy—put the graphic in a group header. But what if we want the graphic next to the data in the Details section? We can still use group headers, but how do we “force” the data and the graphic to sit next to each other? There doesn’t seem to be any text-wrapping feature like the ones in word processors or desktop-publishing programs.

It turns out there’s a loophole. We can create additional sections—for instance, a second header section—right under the original, and end up with group headers A, B, and so on. Normally we don’t need more than a few, but even two can suffice. Then, we can literally slide the next section(s) under the first (or second), to simulate text wrap.

Start with the normal layout. We’ve got a report partly built; the group header section gets the usual setup of labels.

We can put the graphic there, in the group header.

Then, the trick. Right-click the name of the section you want to use, and click “Insert Section Below”. This creates (in our example) a second group header.

Now we can move the graphic down into it and resize the first one. Then, bring up the Section Expert for that second header, and in the Common tab, check the Underlay Following Sections checkbox, and OK it.

There you have it.

Text wrap, as such, doesn’t exist within Crystal Reports. Though fields, text boxes, graphics, etc. are all objects and do follow some of the rules we run into in DTP programs (where everything is in a box and “object-oriented layout” is the overarching principle), Crystal simply isn’t a DTP program, nor a word processor. So we have to have workarounds for some things those other kinds of programs can do much more straightforwardly. Luckily, the CR design team accounted for this. It’s just a matter of knowing the recipe.

Creating the Speedometer Gauge in QlikView

Nov 26, 2017 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

QlikView, one of the big BI (business intelligence) programs you can get today, has a number of graphical ways to display data, which it calls charts. Among these, one of the coolest (sorry, but it is) would have to be the Gauge chart. And of the subtypes in that group, the speedometer style is probably one of the easiest to understand. For quantities, percentages, and a couple of other kinds of numbers, it’s very straightforward. Setting it up takes a little work, but it’s worth it for readability.

Once you’ve got your data ready (the scenario we use is an analysis of airline operations), the setup of the gauge starts with adding the chart object, specifying the type, and giving it a title, on the General tab.

You also have to tell it where to get the data—that’s pretty easy. In this case, the Expressions tab includes the data source for the gauge as a variable ($(eLoadFactor)), but it’s just the number of passengers divided by the number of seats: Sum ([# Transported Passengers]) / Sum ([# Available Seats]).

On the Style tab, you can select the exact kind of gauge you want. There are several, but I want to show you a few specific bits on the Speedometer.

The actual setup of the gauge is the part which takes the most work, but it’s essentially two or three questions to answer: [1] How do you want the colors to change, and how many should there be? [2] How many tick marks do you want on the gauge? (Think car speedometer or tachometer.) We do this on the Presentation tab; it’s usually where we have most of the work.

The Gauge Settings area on the left tells the program what the lowest and highest numbers will be on the gauge. The Show Scale, below that, lets you specify how many tick marks are on the gauge, and how they should be marked off. The number of segments (Segments Setup) allows you to set how gradual the shading will be in the color area, and what colors you want.

We usually set the colors with RGB numbers, since this allows smooth transitions with little work.

Finally, the Text in Chart area lets the Load Factor percentage show up numerically at the bottom of the gauge. The speedometer needle is fairly sharp, but having the actual number (to maybe one decimal place) in there is not too cluttered-looking and makes for a more accurate read with just a glance.

It takes a little practice to get the whole setup to work properly, but you can treat it like a recipe when you learn it, and just go step by step. A couple of run-throughs, and one can get the idea.

The Resource Usage View in Project

Nov 19, 2017 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

When planning a project, one of the problems we run into fairly commonly is overallocation of resources. It’s not impossible to fix, but it sometimes helps to know exactly where the overallocation is. The Resource Usage view is one place we can see it fairly easily.

With the project open, go to the View tab and click Resource Usage. The view switches immediately. Then, find the overallocated resource(s), usually a person, on the left, click a task, and select Scroll to Task in the Task tab, Editing group (Ctrl-Shift-F5 works too, if you prefer).

One other trick is to use the Zoom feature (also in the View tab) to zoom out to the entire project’s schedule, then in to the specific trouble area. This can save some time. If the overallocation is there, it’ll show up in red on the right side, as a number of hours (usually) greater than 8 (per day) or 40 (per week).

Knowing what the overallocation is about can sometimes suggest how to tackle the re-allocation more efficiently.

But there’s another thing the Resource Usage view can provide, and it relates to a feature which was dropped after Project 2010. One of the reports in that version was called Who Does What When. It allowed the project manager to view the project almost like a script for a play or musical, and see (as the name implied) which resources were assigned which tasks, and on what day(s). If everyone on the project received a copy, they’d all know the essentials of the project and would be better informed about the entirety of what was going on. Printing the Resource Usage view, zoomed out, gives something close to the Who Does What When report, and allows all the project staff to have a better idea of what’s afoot.

One of the best things about the Resource Usage view is that it’s so easy to get to, and easy to understand. I kinda wish the Who Does What When report could be reintroduced into Project, but the Resource Usage view doesn’t look as if it’s going anywhere, so it’ll provide a workable alternative.

How to Use Bitmap Mode in Photoshop

Nov 10, 2017 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

Of all the image modes in Photoshop, perhaps the least used today is Bitmap mode. It’s the “true” black-and-white mode, unlike Grayscale, which is what a “black-and-white” photograph really is. And Bitmap actually has a couple of advantages, though making proper use of the mode does take a little understanding.

A color picture first has to be changed to Grayscale mode to drop color out, and then one can convert to Bitmap. (If the user knows the image is going to be put in Bitmap, it’s advisable to keep it fairly high-resolution; since Bitmap only has two colors—black and white—compensating with more pixels helps keep the image from looking too grainy.) There are a couple of other things one can do to make a grayscale image better, but that’s another story.

When Bitmap mode is called up, another dialog box asks a couple of questions. One is about resolution—usually this should not be changed. If the image already has adequate detail, it should be left alone. Increasing the resolution should be done beforehand, if at all.

The other is “Method”—how should the pixels be handled? This is the real question, as it affects the final appearance the most.

The first choice, 50% Threshold, looks at all the pixels in the image and applies a straightforward rule: If the brightness of the pixel is 128 or less, it turns black. If 129 or more (the possible range is from 0 to 255), it turns white. But this makes the picture look very harsh and blotchy, as it doesn’t take shading or grays into account.

The next choice, Pattern Dither, sort of does this. It tries to distribute black and white pixels a little more evenly (in a pattern, hence the name), and can create a fairly “readable” image provided the resolution is not too low. Some people consider this to look artistic, and in some cases the image turns out pretty well.

Diffusion Dither, though, is a better choice for a result which looks more realistic. “Diffusion” means the pixels are scattered semi-randomly, the same way perfume gradually drifts through the air. “Dither” is defined as “The use of dot patterns to approximate colors not available in the palette.” (Wiktionary)

Halftone Screen is another matter, and produces something else again. Half-toning was used for a long time in producing newspaper photographs such that they looked like “true” grayscale images. What half-toning really does is to remake the image as a regularly-spaced pattern of dots of varying size to simulate grayscale, rather than bunching them together to make darker (or lighter, by spreading them apart) grays. How often this comes up today depends on what the print medium is going to be, but it’s not as useful for onscreen or conventional computer printing these days since half-tone techniques were developed partly to allow for rapid mass printing (newspapers, magazines) with relatively low-res, high-speed (therefore less expensive) processes.

The advantages to Bitmap mode are, first, it brings the file size WAY down, sometimes only a couple percent as big as the color version, or even less. (Only two colors, after all.) Ditto the grayscale version. Second, though it won’t have color, the detail and simulated gray shades can look almost as good as a true grayscale image, and take a lot less time to print. And finally, it’ll look decent on any printer, color or no. Picking the method is the only thing one usually has to worry about, and often the choice simply depends on the desired final use.

The Anchor Point Tool in Illustrator

Nov 5, 2017 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

When working in Illustrator, drawing with the Pen tool (producing Bezier curves) is a mainstay of many documents. (And in a couple other graphics programs, too.) But sometimes the tools that go with the Pen take a little time to get comfortable with. And the one I’ve been told is frankly a little confusing is the Anchor Point tool (which used to be known as the Convert Anchor Point tool, describing what it does).

You may know there are three main kinds of anchor points: Curve points, that have a smooth curve going in and coming out; Corner points, which have a sharp angle between two straight line segments; “Hybrid” points, curved on one side, straight on the other. Converting between them is easy, but using the tool may take a little practice.

Let’s say you want to convert from Corner to Curve.

Switch to the Anchor Point tool, find the anchor point, put the sharp end of the V on it, hold down the mouse button, and drag. As you drag, you “draw out” control handles, which tell the curve what to do.

Some people think they need to do this and get them pointing in the right direction at the same time. Not necessary, though you can if you want.

The opposite is even simpler. To go from Curve to Corner, use the Anchor Point tool to simply click on the curve anchor point, and the control handles disappear. Done.

It’s creating a hybrid point that sometimes causes a little trouble, but it’s not really hard. Usually it’s easiest to create a Curve point first. Then switch to the Anchor Point tool, put the point of the V on the end of the control handle you want to get rid of, and click. (Don’t drag, though.)

That side now becomes the Corner side, as it were. Dragging from the anchor point brings both handles back.

You can even “break” the connection between the two handles and simply grab one with the A.P.T., give a short drag clockwise or counterclockwise, and the two handles are now independent of each other.

Or hold down the Alt key, and click a “broken” handle to restore the connection so the two now stay in a straight line again.

Practicing a little with the tool usually makes all this pretty easy. Just take your time.

Feathering a Selection in Photoshop

Oct 25, 2017 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

One of the must-have skills in Photoshop is the ability to make precise selections, since we indicate which parts of the picture we want to work with this way, and there are a number of techniques to do it. But equally important is the ability to feather, or “fuzz” the edge of the selection. Very few normal photographs are going to be so supremely razor-sharp in focus that a selection needs to be also, and even those that are will often not be super-high-resolution (that is, naturally a tiny bit fuzzy) anyway. Aside from any specific effects you want to achieve….

Once you open your file, you can start by making a rough selection with any tool—say, the Magic Wand or the Lasso. Then, either hold down the Shift key or select the Add to Selection button in the tool’s Options at top, and click or drag as needed to add the bits you want. (I admit I like the Magic Wand for a good many items, as it lets me make color-based selections quickly.)

Then, having made and fine-tuned the selection, we go to the Select menu, slide down to Modify, and click Feather in the submenu.

The number of pixels of feather you want to use will depend on a few things: The resolution of the image (the higher the res, the lower the feather number), the area you selected (larger selection=lower feather, generally), and what you want to do with the selected area (you tell me 🙂 ). For things like tinting, a lower number is usually better as you don’t want it to look like smeared paint. For blending effects like softening filters or other non-color-related ideas, a higher number would be good to soften the edge (romantic-portrait-type photos, for example).

It’s a simple effect, but a powerful one. And it doesn’t take too much practice to get a nice result. Besides, you can make a copy of the layer in question and play around with it till you get a good combination, then apply to the final draft.

Clone Stamping in Photoshop

Oct 20, 2017 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

The use of the Clone Stamp tool, in itself, is not hard to understand. It allows the user to “borrow” or copy a piece of picture from one spot to “clone” or paste elsewhere. But some people use it like a paintbrush, and clone big swaths of picture from one place to another—which looks obviously like cloning, or stereotypical “Photoshopping”.

So is there a trick to using the tool and not making things look visibly cloned? Actually, there is. It’s a little bit more work, but it’s not really difficult. It does depend somewhat on the picture and your goals.

Once you open the picture, examine it to see where you want to borrow from and copy to. (Here I use the example of making an elephant disappear—it’d be a cool stage illusion….)

Luckily, the surroundings lend themselves to the effect I’m going for. I start by setting the size of the tool, not too big, and the hardness (how sharp the edge is) to zero, so it blends nicely.

I do an Alt-click where I want to borrow from, then use a few clicks to “paste” from that area over the image of the elephant. Alt-click again, from a slightly different area, a few more regular clicks on the elephant, and continue on, each time starting with a different patch, till the modification is done.

The real trick—the main point of this kind of exercise—is to borrow a little from here, a little from there. Create the cloned area as a sort of patchwork, to get a somewhat random choice of bits from the “copy” area so the “paste” area actually consists of many small ones, chosen from no one particular part.

There is also some technique to clone stamping like this—some study of the image to determine which parts to borrow from and clone to, exactly how big the tool area should be based on the image and its resolution, and so on. But the main thing is to do a little at a time, and not too much from any one area. Nature is usually pretty random when she paints, so following her precept can give you a natural-looking result.

Slicers in Excel PivotTables

Oct 15, 2017 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

When Excel 2007 was introduced, the PivotTable Field List included a “Filter” area, where one could drop a field to use as a filter (for example, year, brand name, size, etc. from a block of sales data). If the user filtered for one year, or one brand, the name of the item was visible in the space above the body of the table. But if more than one item was filtered for, all it would say was “multiple items”…and not which ones. The feature worked, but couldn’t take this into account. So in Excel 2010, and all versions following, the Slicer feature was added. (No, I don’t know where they got the name. Sounded a little odd to me, too….)

Creating one or more slicers is dead simple. Make sure you’ve clicked somewhere in your PivotTable or –Chart, go to the PivotTable/Chart Tools Options tab, look in the Sort and Filter group, and click Insert Slicer.

You’ll need to choose which fields you want to filter with. Usually it’ll be at least a couple, one of which will often but not always contain values. And when you’ve selected, click OK.

Done. Using the slicers is also easy. Click on the thing(s) you want to filter for (i.e. see), and they stay visible. Everything else hides.

But there is one neat extra tucked in there. Aside from the fact that the slicers print (they’re a WYSIWYG item), and you can resize them, you can change the number of columns of buttons per slicer, which means you can show more of them at once, and save some screen (and print) space.

And that means you can use them to the fullest, because most of the time, any user who looks at your printout can see what you filtered for! No muss, no fuss.

Slicers are one of my more favorite features in Excel. They’re a good answer to a reasonable question (filters you can see and know what they’re filtering for), and they’re easy to use. They help content be more user-friendly, and even in a static situation (printout or PDF), they retain their usefulness.

Auto vs Manual Scheduling in Project

Oct 8, 2017 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

One small but important feature in MS Project is the Auto versus Manual Scheduling popup, in the Status Bar at bottom.

Here’s how it works:

Manual Scheduling allows the user to control start date, finish date, and therefore, duration. And the program will not change the dates of a manually scheduled task. Period. It might let you know if there are potential conflicts or problems with other tasks, but that’s up to you, as far as the program’s concerned. (If you can look at the project plan, especially in Gantt Chart view, most of those kinds of problems are fairly easy to spot, especially on adjacent or nearly adjacent tasks.)

Some people wonder, if this can become an issue so easily, why one might want to use it. The answer is, most project managers will start building the structure of a plan in Manual mode because it’s simpler, initially, not to have to worry about scheduling when the first goal is to get things written down and the basic sequence arranged. From what my students have told me, it’s often quite helpful to simply write the whole kit and caboodle down immediately, THEN worry about organizing and sequencing. (As one of my favorite literary characters said, “If you don’t write it down, it never happened.”)

Once that’s done, though, and the high-level tasks (or phases/stages) are in, switching to Auto mode is usually better. Because once you start linking tasks, and the plan starts really taking shape, you may still have some adjusting to do on dates and durations, but if the program can handle the basics, you the project manager can focus on the real trouble spots. “Which is, of course, the entire point.” (As Agent Smith said in THE MATRIX.) Auto mode, as you may gather, will allow more flex to a task and be more aware of adjustments that need making based on what’s going on around it—calendar specifics, constraints, and so on.

And since any task can be switched from Auto to Manual or vice versa at any time, you can fiddle with them whenever. You may not need to, but the program will not lock you in on this.

Adobe InDesign Text Layout Tips

Sep 29, 2017 Seth Bonder Leave a comment

Having done desktop publishing since 1985, albeit on an amateur basis, I’ve learned a few tricks which seem to help with things like layout. And the ability to control layout has come a long way since I started.

One is to understand that the appearance of the type can have an influence on the readability. Using sans-serif fonts, such as Helvetica or Arial, is better for online or screen documents, whereas serif fonts like Times New Roman or New Century Schoolbook works better for print; the serifs act as guidelines, much like those on a ruled piece of paper, to speed the eye along the text.

Another is the use of leading (pronounced like the name of the element or the rock group, not the idea of “lead versus follow”); for some reason, some people seem to think that minimizing the leading, or vertical distance between lines of type, to pack more text onto a page, is a good idea. As Wolverine says in the film LOGAN, “Not okay!” It becomes almost unreadable, as the eye can’t find the beginning of the next line. Many fonts now have auto-leading ratios built in. These work reasonably well in the absence of any more specialized software or criteria.

There’s one thing we can adjust fairly easily in many DTP programs (I use InDesign here as an example): The gutter space between columns of text. It’s another of those pack-as-much-text-as-possible-on-the-page things which, again, is wrong. I’ve heard various guidelines promulgated as far as exact amounts or ratios of gutter to font size, but one broad rule of thumb I’ve found pretty viable is that regardless of font, font size, or proportion of height to width of letters, one should be able to fit a minimum of five to seven words per line in a column if possible—otherwise the writing looks rather like the visual equivalent of a song played from a scratched CD or a staticky radio broadcast…a few words, pause, words, pause, and so on. That kind of stop-and-start visual almost reminds me of trying to speak with hiccups, and can actually be irritating to someone trying to read it. (If it sounds to you like I’ve run into this sort of thing as an occasional proofreader and writer, you’re correct.) But at least InDesign makes these adjustments fairly easy.

Are there actual rules or formulas for all this? Several. The specifics are easy to locate, but these bits here should provide a good start.