Photoshop CS3 for Screen Printers- P5 pptx

. Note: In this figure, there is a local drive C, a DVD drive D, an external backup drive E, My Web Sites on MSN, and My Sharing Folders. Because this is Win - dows Vista, there is also access to the Desktop, Recent Places, Network, and more. 4. Double-click on the drive that contains the image or file that you want to open. 5. Double-click again if necessary, or expand the folders in the browser to locate the files. You will see thumbnails or a list of the files available. Once you’ve located the file, you can open it in several ways. For most folks, double-clicking on the file is the most comfortable. How - ever, there are other ways. With the file selected: n Press Enter or Return. n Right-click and choose Open. 96 Part I / The Photoshop Interface Figure 6-2: Browsing for a file ] Tip: Multiple files can be selected by holding down the Ctrl key while selecting files (Cmd key on a Mac). Using File>Open As You’ll use File>Open As when you need to open a file that was saved in a format other than .psd or with an extension that does not match its true format. You may also be able to open files with no extension. Choose File>Open As, select the file to open, and select the format from the Open As pop-up choices. Figure 6-3 shows the choices. As noted earlier in this chapter, the look of the Open As dialog can be personalized and the views of the thumbnails can be changed dramati - cally. Clicking on the additional options in the Open As dialog in Windows Vista brings up the choices shown in Figure 6-3. You’ll see similar options in other operating system versions. Chapter 6 / Opening and Managing Files 97 Figure 6-3: Open As options Using File>Browse File>Browse opens Adobe Bridge CS3, which is shown in Figure 6-4. You use this menu structure to locate files on your hard drive or net - worked devices. You browse for files in the same manner as with any Open dialog box. Click Computer, Desktop, Documents, Pictures, or any other folder, and browse to the file you want to open. In Figure 6-5, I’ve browsed to the C:\Programs\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\Samples folder. Note that under the View menu I’ve selected As Thumbnails so I can see a preview of each file. 98 Part I / The Photoshop Interface Figure 6-4: Adobe Bridge CS3 Organizing Files If you own a small screen printing shop or are just getting started, keep - ing track of client files and images probably isn’t that difficult. After all, you might only have a hundred or so files that you store in one or two folders. However, as your shop grows, you could have thousands of files, and if you’re not careful, those files could end up scattered everywhere! In my own screen printing business, I have lots of folders and you should too. In the following sections, you’ll learn how to delete files, organize your existing files by renaming, ranking, and moving them, and create a folder structure for new and existing files. Chapter 6 / Opening and Managing Files 99 Figure 6-5: Browsing with thumbnails ] Tip: Although Adobe Bridge CS3 (which you’ll learn more about later) offers a new way to manage files and folders, it can’t work miracles. If your com - puter is overrun with files you don’t need, has an unorganized file structure, or has no file organization at all, Bridge can’t help you much. It’s best to organizethefilesyouhavefirst,and then use Adobe Bridge to manage them. Deleting The first step in organizing files is to delete any that you don’t need. This not only frees up space on your hard drive, but it also makes browsing for filesmoreefficient.First,therearen’tasmanyfilestocreateathumbnail of, which helps the computer work faster, and second, you don’t have to look through unnecessary files that you’ll never use. You can delete files from your hard drive simply by right-clicking on them and choosing Delete from the menu choices. You can perform this task from inside any folder on your hard drive, or from Adobe Bridge CS3. ] Tip: Only delete files that you know you’ll never use again. Just because you cre- ated a logo that a particular client rejected doesn’t mean that another client won’t accept a similar logo at another time. Consider moving files that you might need again to an external drive or folder created specifically for such artwork. Renaming Go through existing files and rename them with names that are intuitive. You probably won’t remember what Cm.jpg stands for a year from now, so renaming the file to Crime_Stoppers now makes recognizing the file a year later much more likely. You might also consider a name plan, such as an intuitive name followed by the company name (like baseball_alcatel or anniversary_foodbank). Operating systems these days can handle long file names, so try to create names that will mean something to you later. To rename a file, right-click on the name of the file, choose Rename, and then type in a new name. Notice the Delete and Rename options, among others, in Figure 6-6. Although you can perform this task from 100 Part I / The Photoshop Interface inside any folder on your hard drive, in this example, I’m using Adobe Bridge CS3. ] Tip: Look carefully at Figure 6-6 and you’ll see that many of the files here are JPEGs. In our shop, after creating a file we save it as a Photoshop file and a JPEG, and send the JPEG to the client via e-mail for approval. (Take a look at all of the Beast logos.) Not on ly does saving as a JPEG make the file smaller and easier to send, it also prevents the client from opening the file in their own version of Photoshop or sending it to another printer for easy color separation. At least as a JPEG, it would have to be recreated for c larity! Chapter 6 / Opening and Managing Files 101 Figure 6-6: Right-click options Using the Batch Rename Command There is another way to rename files, and it is located in the additional options (shown in Figure 6-7) in Adobe Bridge. The Batch Rename com - mand allows you to rename multiple files simultaneously. In order to rename multiple files at once, you’ll need to select multi - ple files. You can do this by highlighting a folder in the browse area or selecting multiple files using the Ctrl (Cmd on a Mac) key in the Adobe Bridge main window. When highlighting a folder, all files inside the folder will be renamed; when highlighting specific files in a folder, only those files will be renamed. To use the Batch Rename command: 1. Select the files to be renamed as detailed above. 2. Click the arrow in the browse area to see the additional options and choose Batch Rename, as shown in Figure 6-7. 3. In the Batch Rename dialog box, choose to rename the files in the same folder or to move them to a new folder by checking the appro - priate option. Click the Browse button to locate the new folder if desired. 102 Part I / The Photoshop Interface Figure 6-7: Using Batch Rename 4. From the drop-down lists, choose a specific rule that should be used when renaming the files. Choices include the document name, date, serial number, and extension. Choose up to six, but make sure you put the extension as your last choice in the string. You can see what the names of the files will look like while you are choosing them. 5. If desired, choose to make the files compatible with other operating systems—Mac, UNIX, Windows. Click OK. Figure 6-8 shows the dialog box. Creating Folders The most important part of the organization process is creating new fold - ers. You can create a new folder just about anywhere on your computer by right-clicking in an empty area of the Desktop or existing folder and choosing New Folder from the menu. You can then rename the folder as desired and drag or save files in it as needed. Although file structure and organization preferences differ wildly from one company to the next, consider using the following folders for organizing the files at your shop (files can be moved from one folder to the next quite easily, as detailed in the next section). Chapter 6 / Opening and Managing Files 103 Figure 6-8: Batch Rename dialog box n Logo Ideas: With subfolders named 1-color, 2-color, 3-color, 4-color, process color, indexed color, teams, companies, churches, schools, reunions, graduations, parties, birthdays, fund-raisers, etc. n Completed Project Files: With subfolders created for each client, subfolders separating files by month or year, subfolders by city or state, or subfolders by type of client (school, church, business) n Work in Progress: With or without subfolders, this folder could contain files that you are currently working on or those that are in the print queue. n Images to Redesign: With or without subfolders, place images a cli - ent gives you that need redesigning here. This could be a subfolder of the Work in Progress folder. n Templates for Team Logos: Most team and sports logos can be reused simply by changing the name of the team or sport. Place all team and sports logos here and create subfolders for types of teams (baseball, hockey, basketball, tennis, etc.). These can be accessed often, especially when a new logo needs to be created. n Clip Art: If you have a large enough hard drive, copy clip art disks to the drive into subfolders created here. In doing so, you have quick and easy access to the clip art without having to put the physical clip art disk in the drive. The hard drive works much more quickly than a CD, and you can keep the original disks in pristine condition if you don’t have to access them often. n Archives: Create subfolders named for the month and/or year and place client artwork files in the folders once the month or year is up. Doing so makes for easy backup and offers a place to store the files until they’re needed again. There are certainly thousands of other folders that can be created, and each shop will have its own needs. These are just ideas to get you started. The point is, don’t just lump all of your files in a single folder (or worse, save them in various folders haphazardly). Creating folders makes backing up files easier and moving archived files to external drives more efficient. 104 Part I / The Photoshop Interface . Note: You d on’t have to create new folders using your existing folder structure and operating system if you don’t want to; you can create new folders inside AdobeBridgealso.CreatinganewfolderisthesameinsideAdobeBridgeas it is on your own hard drive. Right-click and select New Folder. Moving Once the files are created, you can move files from one folder to the next by dragging the file from its original position to a new one. This can be done on your hard drive or inside Adobe Bridge. In Figure 6-9 Adobe Bridge is open and a file named logo.bmp is being moved to the folder New Folder. I’ll rename the folder shortly. Chapter 6 / Opening and Managing Files 105 Figure 6-9: Moving a file to a new folder [...]... where information is stored about the thumbnails, metadata, and rating information in your images (among other things) By storing this information in memory, Photoshop is able to quickly load previously viewed pages, such as folders and files, in Adobe Bridge You can purge the cache and delete this information if desired by using the Purge Cache option This will free disk space, making room for other... attributes You’ll need to outline your charges for the work before starting 6 Caution! Although you can require that all artwork come to your business as camera-ready artwork (ready for press), you’ll lose a lot of business from folks who don’t have any idea what that means For future reference, inform the client what type of artwork you do like If they have Photoshop or other compatible software, ask... here and attach any information they might have with them Note: Table 7-1 is available in the Chapter 7 folder of the companion CD as a text file and can be printed out for reference It is also included as an Excel file where you can add in your own fees and calculations and save the file to your computer for reference and printing Table 7-1: Questions to ask before creating artwork for a client Question... good investment.) Sometimes too, the price for recreation (an hour of artwork) is actually cheaper than working with a client file Many companies charge for scanning and working from a client disk, and all charge for color separation When you create it yourself, these tasks either aren’t required or can be performed much more quickly As you gain confidence with Photoshop, you might find that you’d much... brushes are covered, as is the Pencil tool and tips and ideas for creating designs wisely (which comes in handy if you’re new to the screen printing business) Coming Up with Ideas It’s hard to say where ideas come from, but generally my ideas for artwork come first from listening to clients describe what they think they want and then combining that information with what they’ve said they want to spend Most... wants, not only regarding the design but also regarding the price It does no good to create a four-color design when the client only wants to pay for one screen fee or one setup charge or only wants to spend a specific amount for the shirt or hat This information is just as important as whether they want a photorealistic image or a spot color one Table 7-1 lists several questions you should ask your... Although I wouldn’t screen print this picture (I might use it for a heat transfer), the image selected in Figure 6-10 shows some of the information you can obtain from the Metadata tab Chapter 6 / Opening and Managing Files 107 Figure 6-10: Reviewing metadata Notice also in Figure 6-10 the position of the slider at the bottom Moving the slider to the right causes the thumbnails for each image to be... defragging process at night though, because it could take a few hours to finish Getting Information about a File or an Image The right pane in Adobe Bridge contains information about the selected file There’s probably more information there than you’ll ever need, but it’s there just in case you do From here, you can see information such as the date that the file was created, the date last modified, and the... file in the format we want, at the resolution we want, and using vector clip art and text that we keep in our art libraries We have templates for teams of all kinds, clip art that can be edited directly to personalize it, artwork that can be changed quickly to incorporate a new client, and different types of numbers that are ready to go This makes for a better print, better film, better screens, and... other more important information After the purge, thumbnails will be regenerated, but other metadata will be lost Chapter 6 / Opening and Managing Files ] 109 You should use this command at least occasionally The problem is that after a few days of working with Photoshop, the cache part of the hard drive can become filled with thousands of bits of information While this makes for faster browsing, it . C:ProgramsAdobeAdobe Photoshop CS3 Samples folder. Note that under the View menu I’ve selected As Thumbnails so I can see a preview of each file. 98 Part I / The Photoshop Interface Figure 6-4: Adobe Bridge CS3 Organizing. wouldn’t screen print this picture (I might use it for a heat transfer), the image selected in Figure 6-10 shows some of the information you can obtain from the Metadata tab. 106 Part I / The Photoshop. the hard drive where information is stored about the thumbnails, metadata, and rating information in your images (among other things). By storing this information in memory, Photoshop is able to