Creative Tip: Avoiding the "White Box" in Acrobat PDFs.

A tips reader wrote us this week: "I have an issue with drop shadows and spot colors in Adobe InDesign. When I use a drop shadow in front of a spot color background it looks fine in InDesign, and prints properly as color separations. But a white box shows up around the image in Acrobat when I make a PDF to show the client. Is there a way around this problem?"

An excellent question, and one that comes up a lot for designers working with spot color. There are several ways to make sure your spot color jobs preview properly in Acrobat. We cover three solutions in the full version of this tip:

Full Tip: Avoiding the "White Box" around shadows in Acrobat PDFs.

Source: This tip is inspired by an email question from reader Sean Bolger at EarthColor. The timing is impeccable, because Jason Hoppe is leading a workshop this Wednesday in Seattle where he'll be digging into this and related topics much more deeply. January 16 — Acrobat: Preflighting PDFs for Printing.

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Tech Tip: Play almost any video file on your Mac.

There are two essential (and free) utilities that will solve a host of video incompatibility problems with Apple's QuickTime utility. They are free to download, and easy to install. We recommend installing these on most Mac creative workstations.

Perian — Billed as the Swiss-Army knife for QuickTime. This open source plug-in for QuickTime includes a wide number of video codec files that enables your Mac to play most cross-platform video formats.

Filp4Mac WMV — Provides support for Microsoft's Windows Media files (WMV) — one of the few video formats Perian doesn't support. The free version allows you to play most WMV files. You can pay to unlock additional options for exporting and converting WMV files into other formats.

Source: This tip inspired by support calls over the years from a variety of clients, including long-time client Sarah Watson Design in Seattle's Phinney Ridge neighborhood. These utilities were profiled in the July 2007 and January 2008 issues of Design Tools Monthly.

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Seattle Events: Gratuitous Self-Promotion.

There is a lot of cool stuff coming up at CreativeTechs this month. With your forgiveness, we'd like to take a moment to plug a few upcoming workshops. Sign up for a short morning workshop:

Wed, Jan 16 — Acrobat: Preflighting PDFs for Printing. this week!
Thur, Jan 17 — Photoshop: Mastering Layers. this week!
Wed, Jan 23 — Adobe Bridge: Keywording Strategies.
Thur, Jan 24 — Photoshop: Mastering Selections.

Plus a special hands-on workshop showing how to provide shared calendars for today's Mac-based creative teams:

Wed, Jan 23: 2-5pm — Leopard Server: Shared Calendaring with iCal.

Finally, we've put together a small PDF catalog collecting all the training workshops we've developed over the last several months. Download the PDF and see if any topics catch your eye. All topics are available for personalized training in the Seattle area.

CreativeTechs Training Jan08.pdf

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Your referrals wanted! Referrals from our clients and readers are what keeps CreativeTechs healthy and in business. As a small thank-you, every week we send iTunes gift cards to new Seattle-area subscribers, plus the friend or colleague who referred them:

Creative director Ben Graham of Turnstyle in Ballard.
Referred by Matt Diefenbach also of Turnstyle.

Senior e-pro artist Matt Mooseles at PBDH in Seattle’s Capitol Hill.
By long association with CreativeTechs Adobe Trainer Jason Hoppe.

Creative director Sean Wolcott at Venture Arts.

Business coach Isabella McPeak at ActionCoach in Greenwood.

CreativeTechs QuickTips is a free weekly newsletter for creative professionals who use Macs. Each week we publish a fresh mix of left-brain and right-brain tips based on our real world experience supporting hundreds of creative teams in the greater Seattle area. For a complete archive of previous tips, visit www.creativetechs.com/tips

For IT Professionals supporting Mac users, visit Make Mac Work. This weekly technical blog focuses on IT issues facing Macs in Enterprise environments. It is written by CreativeTechs' lead enterprise engineer, Jordan Bojar. For an archive of previous topics, visit www.makemacwork.com

Your referrals wanted! CreativeTechs relies on word-of-mouth introductions. If you know a Seattle-area creative team who might benefit from our unique expertise providing computer support for creative professionals, please introduce us. We are never too busy for your referrals. Email help@creativetechs.com, or call us at 206-682-4315.

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