Here's a really funny comic strip for all you freelancers . . .

http://ncwinters.com/comics/?album=5&gallery=5

Here's one to get you started . . .

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Someone sent us a business card that is a .pvs file. What the heck is a .pvs file? Does anyone know of a way that I can convert it to something I can use?

I have a feeling that it is only a couple of lines of text, I don't know why they didn't just type the text into the email.

One of our photographers who used a PC brought in some photos today on a thumbnail drive. I copied the folders that the photos were in over to my Mac. When I was done with the folders I dragged them to the trash. When I try to empty the trash I get the attached error message and can't delete the folders.

the thumbs.db file the message is referring to must be one of those invisible Windows files because the folders appear to be empty.

Anyone have any idea how to unlock these invisible files so I can trash the folders?

(oops, forgot the attachment) :embarrassed:

We received an ad PDF today that was created using Publisher. When I open it I get this message at the top of the window: "You are viewing this document in PDF/A mode."

A lot of the features in Acrobat are grayed out in this mode. Is there a way to get out of this mode? I was able to work with it once I output it as Post Script and re-distilled, I was just wondering if there is an easier way.

Boy this file is a turd. :angry:

Anyone ever heard of this?

Amyuni PDF Converter 4.0

Someone sent us an ad that was done using it today. It basically just rasterized it to 600 dpi RGB.

Not sure where to post this . . .

Andrew Cuomo Suing Intel Over Anti-Trust Violations

Here's an excerpt:

QuoteAndrew Cuomo's "major" announcement was not a suit against a bank, but rather against chip giant Intel.

Andrew Cuomo is following the EU's lead, suing Intel (INTC) for anti-trust violations.

NYT: The lawsuit charges that Intel violated state and federal laws by abusing its dominant position in the chip market to keep its main rival, Advanced Micro Devices, at bay. Intel has faced similar lawsuits in Asia and Europe, and in May the European Commission fined the company a record $1.45 billion for antitrust violations.

These cases have largely revolved around deals Intel has struck with computer makers and retailers that, regulators say, pressured them into picking the company's microprocessors — which serve as the central chip inside personal computers and servers — instead of competing products from A.M.D.

I was talking to my boss last week and he mentioned that last time he had been looking on ebay (more than a year ago) he noticed that people that were selling G4s that could boot to OS9 were selling them for more than the G4s that were not OS9 bootable. From this, he surmised that there are more people out there still using OS9 than we might imagine.

What do you folks think of that idea? Far fetched? Not far fetched? (I'm leaning toward far fetched)

I'm looking into buying RAM for my iMac and noticed that they have a 6gb kit.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/6400DDR2S6GP/

I thought 4gb was the max. Does anyone have experience with the 6gb kit?

I guess they're auctioning off a Mac that Gene Roddenberry owned.

Attention Trekkies: Roddenberry's Mac on auction block



Should I bid on it so I can upgrade one of the computers at work? :cheesy:

Have you guys heard about this?

Dell pays $4m to settle NY 'deceptive practices' claim

What do you guys think of this?

AdSEND Introduces Integrated Preflighting Solution in U.S.

Here's an excerpt:

QuoteThe solution, which has already been implemented at a number of newspapers in the UK, will help publishers by scanning advertisers' PDF files for hundreds of problems that may prevent them from printing properly. This includes missing fonts, RGB, LAB color space, transparencies, spot color in CMYK files and image resolution. In order to achieve this integration, AdSEND has licensed premedia system DALiM TWiST's technology, as well as working with Web-based delivery system Websend.

Designers are gonna love this. :evil:

Unfortunately, an advertiser had us sign up for AdSEND and sent one or two ads and stopped advertising so none of the people who send us ads use the AdSEND system.

I need to find a free place to have someone download Freestyle Script from. I found this very similar font for free:

http://eknp.com/php/fd.php?f=carefree

Is this a reliable place to download from?

Has anyone heard anything about this?

http://blumunkee.com/

At work today we got an email that had an article about a newspaper study that RIT did. Several of the newspapers they surveyed said they were using automation for their photo retouching so I thought I would see what was out there.

Here are a few links both positive and negative about BluMunkee (very dignified name ). The links are a little on the old side so I'm not sure if the software fizzled out or not.

http://www.sportsshooter.com/message_display.html?tid=16881

http://www.newsandtech.com/issues/2006/11-06/pt/11-06_blumunkee.htm

http://www.publish.com/c/a/Photo/Newspaper-Group-Touts-Image-Correcting-Software/

Anyone heard of similar software? I know that Matt Beals had mentioned one.

A big part of my job is image editing, I guess I need to focus more on diversification. :shocked:

Since I'm stuck using outdated software at work I'm kind of behind on what the preferred file formats are for different kinds of artwork. At work we use EPS for vector art and TIFF for raster-based images. From what I've gathered on the forum, these are no longer the preferred formats. Are .AI files and PSDs pretty much the standard now?

I'm asking because I'm doing freelance design work for one of our salespeople and I want to give her the appropriate file formats on CD. For now I've just been saving them in a bunch of formats so most anyone she handed the CD off to should be able to use at least one of the formats.


(I guess the salesperson knows the chair of the art department of a large university in the area. She showed him some of the stuff I've designed for her and he was really impressed. I'm not sure it that's a good thing or a bad thing. :laugh: )

One of our salespeople must have been looking at the ads in other local papers that are using more up to date layout software than we are. Lately she has been asking for a lot of transparency effects in her ads like feathered edges and such. When I showed her that some of the effects that she was asking for would be awkward for us to do using PageMaker she wondered why we aren't up to date with our software and wants me to talk to our boss about the possibility of upgrading to something that has some better flexibility (InDesign).

I'm getting together my ammunition so I can show the boss the many advantages of using InDesign rather than PageMaker.

Here are some of the things I've come up with so far from a design standpoint:

• Ability to add soft drop shadows to text, etc.

• Ability to use PSDs with transparency.

• Text can be stroked and or filled with gradients.

• You can make text conform to a path.

• The edges of photos and boxes or ovals that are drawn can be feathered.

Are there any other major things I'm missing? I haven't even begun to get into all the advantages from a prepress standpoint which I'm sure are more compelling than the design advantages.

(Just so you know, I don't really think any of this is going to carry much weight with my boss. I said I would do it so I'm going to give it my best shot anyway.)

One of our salespeople wants me to do some graphic design for a side business that she has. How do you charge for freelance work that you do? Do you charge an hourly fee or what?

I always have a hard time figuring out what to charge and tend to lean toward charging too little I think. :undecided:

We have a computer that has been spontaneously freezing and is occasionally having trouble finding the startup disk. I decided I would run Applejack and see if it would help.

When Applejack was repairing permissions I got this message:

Quote. . . . . disk0s10: I/O timeout

Any ideas what that means?

This is the first time I've ever used Applejack so I'm not familiar with how it works and such.

Here's some new software that I'm sure you all are going to want too include in your bag of tricks. :cheesy:

http://www.morpheussoftware.net/morpheus/

Here are some of the incredible things you can do with it:

• Morph your baby photo into your own picture today.
• Transform your wife into her mother or your husband into one of the Beatles.
• See what happens when you mix any two celebrity heads together.
• Surprise a wedding couple by mixing the faces of the bride and groom.
• Show your husband what he would look like if he lost some weight or gained more muscle.
• Transform the image of your favorite movie star or musical artist!

Some of the examples they have on the website of animations created with the software are pretty "impressive." :laugh:

Recently I've had some PDFs that were giving me problems and the only way I could get them to work correctly was to convert the text to outlines.

Aside from the text not being editable anymore, are there any other disadvantages to doing this?

We rarely if ever make any typo corrections to the PDFs that advertisers send to us, I always save the original PDF that was sent to us anyway. We never have the company that prints our paper make any typo fixes either, if anything needs to be changed, we make the corrections ourselves.

I just don't want to be inadvertently causing our printer's prepress department any problems that I hadn't anticipated.

Does anyone know what a .wmz file is? I did a quick search online and came up with two conflicting answers.

We had someone email us pics for an ad and amongst the images was the .wmz file, there also was a oledata.mso file. I've tried everything I can think of to open it including changing the file extension to JPG.

I'm having our sales person ask them to resend it, I was just wondering if anyone knew how to deal with this type of file for future reference.

The person who sent it to us sends their ad layouts as 72 ppi Jpegs so I imagine this thing is a real work of art.