| Graphic editor,Vector editor,desktop publishing and office suit software are becoming more and more powerful and sophisticated. These software are so powerful that you can’t do your work without them. These software have their own file format and the files created contain lots of information needed for the software to manipulate. Now that you have done your art work,and ready to send to your local printer for printing. You saved your file in your USB and bring it to your local printer,then you find that your local printer is using an older (or newer) version of the software and some of your design work did not turn out properly. (Yes,sometimes a newer version of the software can’t open the older version file properly). Your local printer will try very hard to keep their software updated,but sometimes it is just not feasible (especially the cost) to maintain all the versions. What should you do? The best file format and most welcome by your local printer are file format that are simple and without all the additional information stored by the sophisticated software. So what are these file formats? The most simple format will be graphic format such as JPEG,GIF,PNG,TIFF,etc. You will not have any problem printing when you bring these files for your local printer. You may also eliminate the fonts problem where your local printer do not have the font type that you are using. (you may refer to our previous post on fonts). Please note that graphic file such as .psd,.psp,.xcf,.ai,etc are programs with specific file format,additional information are saved. By now,you must be asking how can I save my word documents,or presentation slides, or my spreadsheet into graphic format? The answer is you don’t! For these type of documents you can convert it into PDF. PDF is one of the most portable document and one of the most welcome file format by your local printer. You can read more about PDF in our previous post here and how to convert here. Even if your local printer has the exact same version of your software,you are also advised to convert your art work into graphic or PDF format. This is because those sophisticated software may take longer time to open and it will slow down the printing process. I hope this will help you and do leave us comments if you have other solution as well. Very often when we browse the net,we will come across some information that we may want to save and print it out for reference. The easiest way of course will be to cut and paste it (CTRL+A then CTRL+V) to a word processor or a text editor. The problem with this method is sometimes it doesn’t format it the way it is from the browser. So you will need to find another way. Print Screen –Pressing the print screen button will capture whatever in your screen to a clipboard and you can paste it to other application. If you only required specific window,you can press ALT+print screen to only capture the active window. Then you paste it to a word processor or any graphic programs. The image captured will be exactly the same as you view it on screen. The problem with this method is,if your document is more than one page,you will need to capture it several times (page by page) and combine it later for printing. It can be time consuming,if the web page is long. Save as *.MHT –This is saving the webpage into a single archive file. it only save the necessary information for future viewing. You will still required to have internet access in order to view the content of the files in future. This is only recommended if you are always connected and uses only IE. Save as HTML (complete) –This option will allow you to save all the web pages and also the images required to view it locally. You do not need to have a internet access to view it in future. This option will use up additional storage space to store the text and images. A better solution will be using the print engine to generate a single file document such as below. Print to Microsoft XPS Document Writer –The XPS Document Writer allows you to create .xps files using any program that you run on Windows. You can view them on any computer where an XPS viewer is installed. How to use this writer,you may find it in here. Learn more about XPS viewer here. Print to PDF –Another popular way of saving your webpage into a document is by printing it to a PDF writer. There are several freeware and open source PDF writer that you can download for free,you may refer to our previous post here. Print to PDF is easy,once you have the software installed,you can simply print anything to PDF just like you print to printer. Print to PDF is highly recommended because it can be view on not only windows system,but Mac,Linux and any other that have a PDF viewer. If you have any other ideas,we welcome you to share with us here.. Too Many FontsWith the availability of a variety of typefaces/fonts,we are spoilt with choice. Finding the monotonous of using a single typeface in a document or an artwork we tend to throw in a wide variety of fonts. Here more does not means better. Infact it makes the document or artwork look amateurish. Stick to two or three is good enough. Type in ALL CAPSTYPING IN ALL CAPS is considered shouting and is frowned on in most cases. It is even worse when it is done with decorative or script typefaces. It’s ugly. It’s hard to read. Just don’t do it,PLEASE! Overuse of Frames and BoxesExcessive Use of Clip ArtCut the clip art clutter. Clip art is wonderful,abundant,and fun to use. It can spice up fliers,newsletters,and posters. However too many pictures on a page make it hard for the reader to concentrate on what the documents says. Use them with moderation and with purpose. Use them only if they supports your article or illustrates a point. Use Less Clip ArtPeople often use these two terms graphic design and desktop publishing interchangeably to mean the same thing. This is because they share so many similarities. Although it is not harmful,in reality it is helpful to know and understand the differences. Graphic design jobs involve the creative process of coming up with the concepts and ideas and arrangements for visually communicating a specific message. It is also the process and art of combining text and graphics to communicate or bring out an effective message in the form of design of logos,graphics,brochures,newsletters,posters,signs,and any other type of visual material. Desktop publishing on the other hand is the mechanical process that the designer and the non-designer use to turn their ideas for newsletters,brochures,advertisements,posters,greeting cards,and other projects into digital files for home/personal and commercial printing. It involves the process of using the computer and specific types of software to combine text and graphics to produce documents such as newsletters,posters,brochures,books,etc. Not everyone who does desktop publishing does graphic design,but most graphic designers are involved in desktop publishing –the production side of design. | |
