Quick Complex Masking in Adobe Illustrator

If you work a lot with consumer packaging like I do, it means that you deal with complex colorful graphics printed frequently on foil substrates. In sending out your production design files it is useful to setup your files in a way that indicates colors overprinting the foil substrate. To do so you'll want to mask out certain items so that you can indicate overprints of other items.

Say you have a foil substrate carton that has a face panel that has a logo, an icon and copy that overprint the foil. But you also have some background colors covering the whole panel behind those other items.

First make a rectangular shape covering the whole panel. Then duplicate the shapes of the logo, icon and copy. The copy will need to be vector. With the rectangle as the back most path select it and the other items all at once, then press Command-8 on your keyboard. This will make all selected paths one compound path. This now becomes the path with which you will mask out the areas overprinting the foil. Select your new compound path and all other items that are behind your graphics which will be overprinting the foil.

With all of these items selected press Command-7 on your keyboard. You now have a new masked group.

Now to indicate the overprints, create a layer below the the graphics that has a gray or a foil simulation. This will help in indicating a foil substrate. Make sure to indicate this layer as a 'for position only' layer so that the print vendor does not print it. To visualize the graphics overprinting the foil, select each graphic that will be overprinting and select 'Multiply' in the Transparency panel.

On occassion your compound path may reverse your paths making your positives negative and your negatives positive. In this case select your path and try reversing the direction of your path in the Attributes panel.

Quickly Find the Location of an Open File on a Mac

This Mac tip has been around for ages, but I'm not sure how many people take advantage of it.

This is primarily useful if you've opened a file linked to another file. But it can be used for any file that you have opened, but aren't sure where that file is located.

With the file open, click on the title of the file in the title bar while holding the Command key. This generates a popup menu. The list displayed in this popup menu is the path to the file. Simply choose any item in the list to be taken to a finder window of that location.

Unlocking Multiple Photoshop CS5 Layers in One Shot

It can be a real pain when working with a PSD file in Photoshop CS5 that contains a multitude of layers with a smattering of lock layers throughout. You can hunt down each locked layer, select it, then click the lock icon in the Layers panel to unlock it. Who wants to deal with that? Not me.

Although Photoshop CS5 does not offer an official ‘Unlock All Layers’ command, you can achieve unlocking all layers by taking no action with the ‘Lock All Layers in Group’ command in the Layers menu.

First you will need to group all effected layers. The easiest thing to do is to group ALL layers. Group all layers by selecting them all, then select ‘New Group from Layers’ in either the Layers menu or the Layers panel option menu. Then click on the group folder in the Layers panel and select ‘Lock All Layers in Group…’ from the Layers menu. The dialog box illustrated below will appear. Then, without checking any of the checkboxes, click ‘OK’. This tells Photoshop “Hey, I don't want any lock actions taken in any of the layers in this group.”

This trick will work in Photoshop CS6 as well.

To unlock all layers in group, check nothing and click ‘OK’.

Clicking the Meatball in Adobe Illustrator

What is the ‘Meatball’ in Adobe Illustrator? It is what Adobe developers have christened the little circle to the right of the layer name in the Layers panel (see below). What purpose does this meatball serve? A few very handy ways of selecting and editing objects.

First of all, I highly recommend working with Sub-Layers in the Layers panel. Frequently, it is a much better way of accessing objects or a group of objects in your Illustrator file than clicking directly on the object or group on the artboard. Especially if you have many complex vector objects, groups, masks and linked files.

See the illustration below to see the best way to access your layers and sub-layers in Illustrator. The Layer Panel Options can be accessed under the options menu in the Layers panel by selecting ‘Panel Options...’.

With these options selected you will be able to reveal all layer and sub-layer contents in the Layers panel by un-collapsing the layers by clicking on the arrow to the left of the layer name. I highly recommend naming your layers and sublayers to help keep track of the primary objects or groups in your file. If you have complex graphics comprised of many smaller vector objects, you don't want to name all sub-layers. That would just be insane.

So what can you do with these meatballs? Just a few simply, but handy things.

Clicking on a meatball will select everything on that layer or sub-layer.

With the layer objects or groups selected you can then move, edit, delete, etc., the objects or groups on the layer. If you need to move the selected objects or groups to a different layer, move them by dragging the small colored square to the right of the meatball. Dragging the meatball will do something else. Read on...

What does a solid meatball mean?

A solid meatball means that there is an Appearance applied to the object or group on the layer. If you need to edit the appearance, you can click on the solid meatball, then open the Appearance panel to make edits to the appearance. This is especially handy if you work with a design file you receive from another designer. Sometime you will find that you click directly on an object on the artboard to make an edit, but you can’t access part of the object. This is because there is an appearance applied to the object that is only accessible through the Appearance panel. Click the solid meatball, then open the Appearance panel to make the edits.

How can you put that solid meatball to work?

If you see that solid meatball and like the appearance applied to the object or group on that layer or sub-layer you can quickly put that solid meatball to work to apply its appearance to an object or group on another layer. Click on the solid meatball, then hold down the Option (Mac) or Alt (PC) key and drag the meatball to another layer. This will apply the appearance to the new layer object while keeping the appearance on the source layer. If you want to remove the appearance from the source layer and apply it to the new layer, you just drag the meatball without holding the Option or Alt key.

Saving that Appearance as a Graphic Style.

If you like an appearance applied to an object or group on a particular layer, click on the solid meatball on that layer or sub-layer, open the Graphic Styles window (Window > Graphic Styles), select ‘New Graphic Style...’ from the options drop down menu. Give the style a name and click OK.

The Acrobat Alternative for Bundling File Releases

For most people, Adobe Acrobat is just an app for distributing, viewing and reading standard documents. Acrobat is actually packed with a lot more features than people realize. Among the other features are optical character recognition, presentation features similar to PowerPoint, sharing options, word processing, inclusion of 3D, video, sound & forms, accessibility for the visually impaired...the list literally goes on.

But one handy feature for those producing artwork for release for high-end printing are the options to save with layers and attached files in one PDF. This is a great alternative to compressing a bundle of folders into a ZIP or other compression archive option.

Here’s how it works. Assuming you are using Adobe Illustrator or InDesign, you would Save As or Save a Copy (in Illustrator) or Export (in InDesign). Choose a format for your PDF. You will want to preserve high quality for this PDF, so you will want to choose Illustrator Default, High Quality or one of the PDF/X presets. Check with your print vendor to see what format they require.

To save your layers as they appear in Illustrator or InDesign, just make sure the Create Layers option is selected in the PDF save dialog. It will already be selected with the high end save presets.

If your Illustrator or InDesign file includes linked files you can include them in your PDF by attaching them in the Attachments panel. To access the Attachments panel, open your PDF and click on the paper clip icon at the lower left of the Acrobat workspace. Then click on the little cogwheel icon to open the Attachments menu (see below). You can select Add Attachment... from this menu to navigate to and select your attachments. Alternatively, you can just drag any file directly to the Attachment panel to include it in the PDF.

Attachment menu in Acrobat.

Aside from including files that link to the primary artwork file, you can include any other reference document, such as copy sheet, dieline, legal docs, etc.

This option may be somewhat more versatile than sending a bundle of folders as a compressed archive. Most people will be able to view this PDF, whereas some people may not be able to work with an archived set of files. Also, the PDF may offer better compression that a compression utility.