Anita Dennis

Acrobat Tips: Commenting on PDF Comments

If your response to the question "How do you use Acrobat comments?" is a mumbled "No comment," then listen up. Comments and annotations are some of the most powerful ways in which Acrobat can streamline your creative workflow. Here are some tips.

For Position Only: On Quartz PDFs, OS X Fonts, and Light Bulb Jokes

In her end-of-year wrap-up column, Anita Dennis corrects a PDF mistake, tries a new font scheme, and sheds some light on color-scientist humor. Now you'll finally know how many color gurus it takes to change a light bulb.

For Position Only: Look Who's Using Digital Cameras

Does anyone use film any more? Yes, but not who you'd think. A new report reveals some surprising twists on how creative professionals have embraced digital photography.

For Position Only: Creating "Real" PDF Files in OS X 10.2

Because it's built around the same imaging model found in PDF , Mac OS X lets you to create PDF files at the click of a button. But do you get the same high-quality results as when creating PDF files in Acrobat? Or Mac OS 9, for that matter? Yes -- and no. Anita Dennis has the skinny.

For Position Only: OS X Font Foibles

In this second of two parts about migrating to Mac OS X, we learn that finding fonts is only half the battle to managing them. Anita Dennis shares her hard-won tips for working with fonts in Jaguar.

For Position Only: Stumbling Toward Mac OS X

In this first of two parts, we learn just how disruptive it is to business when upgrading an operating system and hardware platform simultaneously, especially when you don't have your own IT department.

For Position Only: Is Cross-Media Publishing Fact or Fiction?

Cross-media publishing doesn't mean producing content serially for one medium and then for the next. It means strategizing and preparing content for output to multiple media in simultaneous and parallel paths, leveraging technologies to make the process efficient and streamlined.

For Position Only: The PDF/X Files

By now everybody and their sister is familiar with PDF, but we've also been inundated with a slew of derivatives, such as PDF/X, which is targeted for prepress and print-publishing workflows. What can PDF/X do for you? PDF maven Anita Dennis explains.

For Position Only: HP and The Publisher

"The new HP" knows that printing technologies are key to its success, and creative professionals should be glad.

For Position Only: The Potential of Personalized Printing

"Personalized Print Markup Language", or PPML, is becoming an accepted standard that allows variable-data digital short-run printing. But it's worth taking a deep breath, staying put, and considering what PPML brings to the print production table. You might be surprised by what it can do for you.

For Position Only: Where Do We Go From Here?

We're in a muddle. Creative professionals today are in the middle of a big fat muddle, unsure about everything from the economy to their future. The proof is in abundant research data.

For Position Only: Digital Printing's Unfulfilled Promise

Help me out here: Something doesn't add up. According to recent research by WhatTheyThink.com and Ventures, digital color printing is going to eat away at the offset print market in the next few years...

For Position Only: Getting Hip to PDF Forms

A few weeks ago in a column about Adobe's business direction, I mentioned that Acrobat can do amazing things with forms. Allow me to elaborate. Electronic forms may not be the most glamorous use for PDF files, but they're incredibly useful.

For Position Only: Seeing the Light of Digital Photography

If you've read my column, even once, you know that I'm a curmudgeon. True, I love technology and all that it can do to make our jobs more efficient and our tasks easier to complete. But I'm also a skeptic, and I'm loathe to change an opinion once I've formed it, even if facts and circumstances evolve and my perspective grows dated.

For Position Only: Publishing's New Starship Enterprise

For Position Only: Preserving Transparency in PDF Workflows

Increasingly designers are using PDF as a surefire way to print files at service bureaus. But while PDF 1.4 supports the transparency you created in Photoshop, the output device may not. Here's what to do.

For Position Only: Ciao, Internet!

Ah, Rome, the eternal city. The Forum. St. Peter's Basilica. The Spanish Steps. The EasyInternetCafe.

For Position Only: Designing PDF E-Books, Part 2

One week ago in this space I discussed how to design readable e-books in PageMaker and InDesign, and export them to PDF as the books' final format. As I explained then, these two applications allow the text in your resulting PDF files to reflow, so that readers can comfortably view your e-book pages no matter which the device they view it on.

For Position Only: Designing PDF E-Books, Part 1

Ah, e-books. The term buzzes in my ears louder than a horsefly. The technology has been riding tumultuous waves lately, with continuing news of e-book-centric dot-coms folding (such as MightyWords and iPublish) yet reports of exponentially growing numbers of e-books being downloaded from the Web.

For Position Only: Digital Wallscapes = Visual Pollution

Being a proponent of digital publishing technology and a resident of San Francisco sometimes puts me in an awkward position. Like a few years ago during the dot-com boom...