CreativeTechs QuickTips #187 Week of February 18, 2008

Creative Tip: Add an Acrobat Stamp to Your PDF Proofs.

PDF_Stamp-Example.jpg

Back in January 2007, we published a tip showing how to use PDF watermarks to add studio-branded "proof" stickers to the PDFs you send clients (Add proofing messages with PDF watermarks). That's been a popular tip over the last year.

This week we'd like to provide an updated tutorial showing how you can do the same thing using custom Acrobat stamps. In hindsight, using Acrobat stamps does a better job, and is a lot more fun.

Full Tip: Add an Acrobat Stamp to Your PDF Proofs.

Source: This tip was inspired by How to Stamp Proofs with Your Own Brand, an article at creativepro.com written by Pariah S. Burke. We owe a mention of thanks to Seattle designer Darlin Gray who sent us the heads-up for this great tip. Thanks Darlin!

Xtra Tip: Design Police "Visual Enforcement" Stickers.

DesignPoliceStickers.gif

Presidents' Day (today) is a national holiday in the United States. In honor of the extended weekend, here is a fun project. Design-Police.org has created a great "visual enforcement kit" that includes a wide number of stickers. Download the PDF, print them out, and help bring bad design to justice:

Design-Police.org

For more fun, combine these stickers with our Acrobat PDF Stamp tip above, and start critiquing your colleagues digital proofs from around the office.

Source: Discovered on the always wonderful Swissmiss blog.

Seattle Training: Upcoming Morning Workshops.

Wed, Feb 20 - Mastering Adobe's Pen Tool.
Thu, Feb 21 - Photoshop CS3: Retouching Skin.
Wed, Feb 27 - Using Adobe Bridge.
Thu, Feb 28 - Photoshop CS3: Automating Photoshop.
Wed, Mar 5 - Acrobat: Interactive PDFs.
Thu, Mar 6 - Photoshop CS3: Retouching Digital Anomalies.

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:

Vacation Alert!
Your friendly tips-writing staff left for vacation early this morning. We've queued up some fun tips while we're gone, but we won't be around to thank new Seattle subscribers until we get back. Thanks for your continued referrals, and we look forward to a massive list of names when we return.

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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

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