Subtitles of the Movie

Using Collect for Output. Before beginning any output or export process its best to begin with a collect for output routine. This will ensure that you have gathered the project and all associated assets so that your project will export or print without error. In this movie I will show you how to use a collect for output feature. You can perform a collect for output at anytime in the document creation process and it can be quite useful if you need to share the project, archive it or simply move it to another workstation. At the end of the creative process, here again, you might want to collect all of the assets and then for archiving. Let's get started. It's best to start any collect for output process with a trip through the Usage Dialog Box. Doing this will provide you information about any missing or modified assets and provide you the opportunity to fix any missing or modified links. If you do not do this you may be presented with Alert Dialogs through out the collection process. For more information on how to interact with the Usage Dialog Box review the movie in this video tutorial of that title. Assuming that you have ensured links to assets are intact start by saving your project, if you do not you will be prompted to save the project before the collect for output process can proceed. Choose collect for output from the File Menu, choose a destination and create a folder for the assets. Click Create and click Save. Depending upon the size of your project this process might take a couple minutes. When we open the folder inside is a copy of the project, the fonts, the pictures and the profiles. You may have other folders, there's also a report here that provides additional information about the project. In QuarkXPress 8 there is full support for drag and drop that means that you can drag and drop an image onto another application or you can drag and drop to the finder. If you need to gather just the assets of a single page, drag and drop might be the way to go. To do this, first open the Usage Dialog Box and make sure that the status of all is reported as OK. I then create a folder on my Desktop so that I have a single defined location to hold the assets. Navigate to the page that you need to collect and multiple select the items that you wish to collect and drag them to the folder and release. Now when we open this folder it contains only those images that we dropped. I can also save a copy of this project in the folder if that's needed as well. Collect for output is an easy tool for collecting projects and assets for archival, sharing or remote output but it can also be used for another purpose to. See this tab titled Vista? In QuarkXPress 8 we have Picture Effects, there is a palette dedicated to all of the special effects that you can add to images without ever launching an Image Editing Application. Another common scenario is that you are working with a file that has lots of images, you've scaled some, added color and here again use Picture Effects to apply adjustments or filters. All of these are called Transformations and they can sometimes make for larger file sizes that create problems during print or output. Using the collect for output feature and Vista Tab you can render these transformations and trim down your file size. In the Vista Tab tick the render picture alterations check box, then click Save. In the Display Pane at the top of the Dialog Box all picture transformations are listed. In my example here I have a number of transformations used through out the project. Below this pane we can see the preference for how transformations are handled. If you have scaled an image use these Radio Buttons to output at the effective resolution or click this Radio Button to down sample and then provide a DPI Value for down sampling. For pictures that are larger then their PictureBox, QuarkXPress will discard the excess image, use this field to add a bleed amount to the trim size. In addition to applying transformations QuarkXPress 8 can make a few of its own. Using the internal graphics engine you can change the color mode and format of the image by choosing these drop-down menus. If you're saving your file to the same location QuarkXPress let's you choose whether or not you replace the original image with this new format. Picture Effects are considered non-destructive because of this; you have the option of creating an entirely new image and if you do the new picture will automatically be placed in the exact position within the PictureBox as the original image. Click OK to apply the transformations, generate new images and collect the file. Collect for output isn't just for print, it can be for archiving or transporting files complete with all if their assets. Throw in Vista and you end up with more then just a file, you end up with an optimized file.