Iodinated seafood party together ignoring the scale

It’s half past three in the morning and I write this post while the book about use of iodized salt in bakery is printed. Infographics and tables I wrote about couple of weeks ago (Infographics Howto: Iodide! Iodate!) were used on the pages of this book. Some of them changed a bit, others changed a lot after discussions and specifications of charts targeting. Furthermore there happened to be two books not one as it was expected at the beginning. The second one is thinner about use of iodized salt in Denmark. I’ll write about changed charts at first and then I’ll describe the books makeup process.

Infographics

Some graphs wished to stay on certain places on the pages of the book so it would be easier to read them. Other graphs were disturbed with the fact they can visualize more information they visualized in the prior editions. More graphs just wanted to be even more handsome.

Culinary treatment impact on iodine contents in seafood (Fig. 1, page 8)

Usage of iodinated additives to impact iodine concentration in bakery (Fig. 2, page 23)

Captions on this graph were moved below so they won’t mess with the figure caption.

Impact of iodized salts on dough smearing (Fig. 3, page 30)

The long way I made selecting and composing the appearance of bars ended with simple solution. Though it looks obvious all prior steps were needed not just for this graph but also for other charts with bars in this books, including the first one described above.

Impact of iodized salts on gasification ability of the flour (Fig. 4, page 31)

As long as numbers are too close that would be to impossible with just scaling them to feet the page width. That’s why the bars have the parallel similar parts withdrawn so the difference is shown zoomed in. The skipped parts are properly marked.

Growth of the diameter with the lapse of time (Fig. 6, page 33; Fig. 7, page. 34; Fig. 9, page 36)

All three charts visualizing the growth of the diameters of colonies and mycelium with the lapse of time changed too. They now look less avant-garde while colour coding and captions are now more readable and obvious. I would send the prior edition to biennale while letting the second to find its mission in book.

Layout

Finished book in Russian is available for download in PDF (1,5 Mb). It is also available in miniature:

I start with the statement I was in a horrible rush and even though I tried my best to work on every line I’ve must have skipped something. I understand it’s not ok but I’ll try to live with that. I was in a lack of about a week and about a box of Portuguese vino verde ;)

I have a thing and a pony who helped me. Pony is bo, who edited the whole text way more readable than it was in source. The book is ‘Manual for Publisher and Author’ by Milchin and Chelcova.

Everything started with the grid which was then implemented in second book too.

Grid is flexible enough to work for one and two column layout (mouse over spreads to see the grid for them)

Grid works for one column layout with wide external margin and two column layout with equal margins. Two column layout is used particularly for appendix which is the separate document to show it is not part of the book text while it is part of the whole book.

Graphs and tables in both layouts are wider than text part. That makes reading more dynamic and pleasant. They are also placed after the text they illustrate to make reading more straightforward and one-directional.

Some tables were rotated 90° to make them more readable. The contents of table cells was aligned the way it would be easier to compare the data.

(Table 3, page 27)

I removed some obvious column headings to minimize redundant information.

There seemed to be a problem when I started working with appendix. As appendix is a separate document it has the separate page numbering. I spent and hour and a half to force Indesign to make it automatically but hand to place page numbers by hand ;) Appendix page numbering is placed on top of every page aligned to external edge.

Hint for Mac OS X users: you can use default application called Grapher (Applications › Utilities) to format mathematical formulas. After the formula is edited in Grapher copy it to the clipboard and paste as PDF to any application that supports that.

After I was to tired to even look at the book I made I started the creation of table of contents. As I worked with Indesign styles it was easy to compose TOC in couple of clicks but I wanted to use the whole spread and make something more creative.

I finished with way more traditional TOC so readers won’t be distracted starting from the third page.

The same decoration was used for appendix table of contents.

‘Dutch’ Book

This book in Ukrainian is also available for download (PDF, 706 Kb) and can be the fist for the eyes in miniature

The main problem with this book was insufficient number of pages that’s why one column is stretched on two column width. The tables don’t hang wasn’t so expressive but still dynamic.

Though the tables were more readable then in first book I still had to edit them.

(Table 3, page 10)

I united age groups with colour, made the left column more readable and changed the header so the table was easier to use.

It was a pity I had no source of the chart so I had to work with what I’ve got. To place make it more appealing and fit it into the layout.

(Chart 1, page 11)

I retrieved chart from PDF, made bars width equal and added marks on the left so the reader could estimate data concentration.

(Table 4, page 11)

One more long table was separated in two columns and it’s subheading was contrasted. Changes made table more readable and thus easy to use.

***

I saved all the fils, sent them to publisher and didn’t look at them for a couple of days. And now, when I am not sick looking at them, at three thirty in the morning I finalized the story of book creation. Pretty, usable and readable book made out of not so clear for the reader sources.

Yesterday Steve Jobs shared his “Thoughts on Flash” with the whole internet audience. Some think it’s disaster and mutation of Apple into Big Brother. I, the one who’s personal site is 100% Flash and the who wrote a lot about Flash, disagree. The explanation of situation by Jobs is clear and perfect. He says that iPad and iPhone are too “weak” to run Flash — batteries will drain out, processors should be as hot as the son and everything on the screen will be stuck anyway. The explanation why H.264 video is less resource intensive then Flash video is just masterpiece of easy to perceive information. H.264 is decoded by special chip and Flash video is decoded by soft that needs a lot of resources (different chips ;)

When it was first time that I found out that my genn.org won’t be available on iPhone because it’s flash I became a little bit sad. But then, after thinking on that, I realized that there is not tools for “mouse over” events in touch interfaces. Furthermore, there are no such events while stylish menu on my site is based right on that feature. Steve Jobs told about that too but he forgot to put link to my site ;)

Adobe replies

I expected Adobe to not arguing but cooperating with Apple. Adobe made a bunch of cool tools that help generate interactive content using CS5 applications. I understand why Apple restrictions made them sad but I don’t get why they consider it’s a war declaration. As to me, they should discuss things with Apple and come up with one easy to use, produce and decode format for interactive medias. I intend it to be PDF! That would be perfect for Adobe which will certainly become the number one for publishers, perfect for Apple which’ll get more and more content for it’s iPad users and will be able to make new subscription services. They will film the process of creating interactive media together with Wired and everyone will be happy, but no…

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen decided to argue on every statement of Jobs “thoughts” in a way “we’re always right and Apple’s always wrong”.

I think it’s redundant to explain how Apple CEO differs from any other CEO. Steve jobs knows how to convince, explain and sell. Other companies has evangelists and public relations managers for that. I hope that they will start doing their work for Adobe-Apple conflict soon. I communicated with some of them and find Adobe experts and evangelists professionals. Based on that and based on the fact that Adobe is large corporation with cool products they just must start communicating with Apple to come up with elegant and wonderful idea about interactive media.

By the way, every Adobe expert and/or evangelist on Adobe CS5 presentation used Apple computers or notebooks. Markus Bledowski started explaining post production application on desktop PC with Windows 7 but then had to switch to his white two years old macbook as the interface of Windows looked unfamiliar to him. After that he replied all the time: Look! Adobe optimized everything so perfect even my little one works wonderful without dropping frames!

Adobe presented it’s new Creative Suite 5 in Kiev. I visited Adobe’s master classes for InDesign earlier, so I was eager to visit this one too. The presented material is fully covered by Creative Suites 5 descriptions on Adobe’s site so I’ll just say thanks to Markus Bledowski (Adobe evangelist) and Russell Viers and list youtube videos describing features I like most and post brief comments. Jokes and quotes are there at the bottom of the post!

Photoshop

Illustrator

InDesign

Post Production applications

I am not post production professional but thanks to Markus I was quite interested. First it was demonstrated to us how Adobe soft helped with Avatar. Then Markus has shown us how Adobe Premier Pro associates monologues from script with video using voice recognition (first useful use of technology, isn’t it?). After that he transcoded that video to DVD and Flash using Encore.

The final part was recreating a bit of famous Samsung 3D TV commercial using After Effects.

Markus made something rough but similar to the effects shown

All post production applications use the same cache on HDD so the data is updated automatically with every change if you work with the same file.

Interactive

Adobe goes on separating developers and coders in Flash more and more. Now there is Flash Catalyst so designers could design their interfaces without writing a line of code. And there is InDesign with new features for interactive medias that help to create interactive version of print magazine made in InDesign in just, dunno, and hour or two!

Now I see why Adobe was so angry with Apple’s deny to support flash and flash-generated applications on iPad. By the way, the generated swf is very intelligent — it stores all linked files in separate folder not in the swf file.

Wired uses Adobe Creative Suite to become more interactive. Though no way to use it on iPad

Dreamweaver was nothing interesting to me.

Interesting Facts

You can import 3d file to Photoshop, save it as psd and use it in other Adobe Applications as 3d model. It’s called Live Photoshop 3D.

Mini Bridge in all CS5 applications looks like enhanced open dialog. I think I’ll use it.

Adobe goes online more and more offering paid services. In InDesign CS5 you can publish your project right to acrobat.com and send link to it to everyone involved. They can leave comments viewing your work right there and you’ll get them right into InDesign GUI. Sounds like… fun?

Now you can name and change positions of art boards in Illustrator.

CS5 applications’ GUI and UX is more uniform now but there are flex-like GUI elements here or there especially in the “online” parts of interface.

Icons and splash screens have changed a lot and became more crazy (it’s not so hard to be more crazy then rectangle with a gradient, right?). Shawn Cheris told about the changes in two parts: one and two.

Jokes and Quotes

Russell Viers

— What’s your name?
— Volodymyr.
— Wha… Lah… Can I call you Bill?

I prompted adobe to place ad in dialogs with progress bars. That way they could earn money to make soft free for us.

Markus Bledowski

We don’t have problems — we have challenges!

Don’t ask if it’s possible. Ask how it’s possible.

Client comes and says he wants to recolor car in the video. Which color? He doesn’t know. Surprise me! Okay, that means pink. Then he asks the same color but different tone. That means green.

Roman Menyakin

While doing some complex task.
Roman: Adobe-kadabra!
Russel: Pow!

***

I’m quite sure my post doesn’t cover everything told on the master classes and presentation but Adobe doesn’t film or record in anyway its events and there no wifi so I could spam twitter with my emotions. Anyway, everything was quite interesting! And pen with notebook with Adobe’s logos are now living in my bag and magnet with I ♥ Adobe on it is laying sad — I don’t actually like them. So if anyone wants to have such stylish magnet on his or her fridge — just tell me.

I couldn’t make my IXUS picture it right, sorry. Here it is — the blurred magnet ;)

At last and not connected to the post topic I want to greet my friend Yura (akella). He’s 14 or 35 or something like that today!

The behavior and color of this car reminds me of friends’ cat named Chacha

I was drawing lotsa kawaii pictures yesterday (I hope to reveal the reason in a couple of days). I drew everything needed but the heat wasn’t gone so I continued this morning drawing a cat who was in my dreams. He asked me why I decided not to draw him? A little bit later after the cat was drawn I was asked to teach to draw suck cats. It’s easy and fast that’s why I write this post and ran away to get ready for the New Year’s Eve. As far as cat is a tiger too, I insist you consider this post a holiday greeting ;)

Face

Create oval and convert it to the drop, pull the top part of the drop up, add one more anchor point and form it to look like a head with stick up ear.

Puffy boots

It’s even easier than face. Create rounded rectangle, bend it in the center to make it look dynamically and flying-like, tilt it, copy-paste it and paint the place where the belly is expected.

Tail

Draw the tail with the pen, outline strokes and fill it with white stroking with black again. It’s even easier than puffy boots!

Launch

Combine all the body parts together, fill with white, stroke with same weight black (not the belly it’s pure white with no strokes). After that add light effects and individuality ;) That’s all. The kawaii cat is ready in less then 10 minutes. To make him look like the cat on top of the post we’ll need to spend 2 more minutes. Do it without me, please — I really need to run!

Vasco da Gamma station in Lisbon

It’s easy to imagine lifelike situation when two photos with pale pictures on them talk to each other:
— Hey, you’ve been on vacation. Haven’t you tanned?
— I did but I was saved using Safe for Web after that!

I think that everyone met this problem when using Safe for Web — pics become lighter and kinda pale. Looks like someone mysterious used levels to adjust it.

Sometimes images look pale compared to original when using Save for Web

I am happy to announce that this problem is solvable but not in a very obvious way. In Safe for Web dialog click on the arrow under the buttons on right panel and uncheck Convert to sRGB menu item.

That would do the trick!

Related links

Check this if the above method didn’t work (which I highly doubt ;)

• Photoshop CS3 and Save for Web issues
• С ножом против паровоза

Links provided by Sergey. Thanx!