Does anyone still use TIFF files?

9/10/14 • 2 min read

This post was originally posted on September 11, 2014 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

Does anyone still use TIFF (TIF/.tif) files? And if so, why? Back when I was a young designer, a TIFF file was the only real choice for exporting a high quality image. But I can’t really imagine why anyone would use one in today’s Adobe/Creative Cloud workflow.

InDesign’s support for directly placing native files – Photoshop, Illustrator, PDF and even other InDesign files – largely eliminates the need to export to another file before placing. (Although I still save logos as EPS files when they are final.) Many people don’t know that InDesign has the capability to place native files or assume that it will cause significant problems in production.

For high quality, high resolution im****ages, you can place a Photoshop file (PSD) directly into InDesign. This way you place the original image and you aren’t exporting a new TIF with each revision. One major benefit is that the PSD maintains all transparency when placed into InDesign. The only drawback I see here is that file size might get unwieldy if it’s a large image with a bunch of layers.

If you are sharing a high resolution image, a JPG will work fine. Many designers turn their nose up at JPGs because they associate them with low resolution, highly compressed web images. But a high quality JPG doesn’t have noticeable artifacts from compression and is much smaller than a TIFF.

Greyscale and bitmap files might be the only remaining use for a TIFF. When placed into InDesign, a greyscale or bitmap TIFF can be colored. So if you are wanted to colorize a grayscale image with a spot color, a TIFF is still your best option. But as 2-color print jobs become less common, I rarely use this technique for anything except screen printing.

Highlighting bad lines

8/26/14 • 1 min read

This post was originally posted on August 27, 2014 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

NOTE: While this page may have useful insights, be aware that it was published more than 10 years ago and may not be relevant for current software versions.

InDesign can highlight lines of text that are spaced badly. By default, the highlighting is turned off for justification issues. To turn it on, go to InDesign > Preferences > Composition… The highlighting options are at the top of the window:

Turning on “H&J Violations” will highlight in yellow any place where InDesign can’t meet your hyphenation and justification settings. Here’s an example of a block of justified text with hyphenation turned off:

The worse the violation, the darker the yellow highlight is. Here is the same passage with hyphenation turned on:

Obviously, allowing InDesign to hyphenate and handle the bad breaks results in much better spacing.

I try to avoid full justification because of the issues that almost always come up with the spacing. But sometimes, you have to justify. And when you do, it’s easier to spot and fix badly spaced lines with the highlighting turned on.

Teleport Photoshop Layers

7/29/14 • 1 min read

This post was originally posted on July 30, 2014 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

NOTE: While this page may have useful insights, be aware that it was published more than 10 years ago and may not be relevant for current software versions.

The Wednesday Quick Tip is back with a simple Photoshop tip. I use a lot of layers in Photoshop. And so I frequently duplicate layers by selecting one or more layers and selecting “Duplicate Layer…” from the flyout menu on the Layers palette.

But Photoshop also lets you duplicate layers to other destinations. By default, the destination for your duplicate layer is set to the current file that you are in:

But you can change the destination to any other open file or even create a new document with the layer:

You’re not just duplicating the layer… you’re kind of teleporting it to a different file. It’s especially helpful when you want to copy an adjustment layer to a similar photo or combine a few images into a new document.

It’s a simple feature that many people don’t even notice.