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June 14, 2008 NVMUG Meeting Midge Lubot talked about how she uses Pages to create the Kiwanis newsletter. Harold Turner bought several raffle tickets because he really wanted to win the Robin Williams Cool Mac Apps book from Peachpit Press, and he won. Ron Lay-Sleeper told us what he thought about Photoshop Elements 6: The Missing Manual from O’Reilly. Response to "Exploring Pages '08 with Pages '08" and resultsl of experiments in prepairing images for email. Midge Lubot on Creating the Kiwanis Newsletter Midge showed the "Kiwanis Kinks" newsletters on the screen as she described how she produced them. She wrote her first Kiwanis Kinks report in October, 2000 using AppleWorks. It was very plain in text with no pictures. Later she learned how to use colored text to add some interest. It was all on one sheet which she folded, labelled and mailed. In the newsletter she asked any people who were receiving it in the mail who had email to let her know so they could save money. She learned how to put text into colors to add some interest, but they still had now pictures.
She emails 2 or 3 page reports to about 65 people. She sends text only copies to three people because they only have dial up and do not want pictures. Midge takes pictures at every Kiwanis meeting. She puts them into iPhoto, and then brings them into Pages using the smallest iPhoto size and uses the Pages Metrics Inspector to add them in a uniform size to her documents. Her May 26 Kiwanis Kinks had pictures of the Kiwanis working on the pool including four rows of with three pictures in each row. She tries to keep its file size under 600 KB. She said that using the Media tool to bring the pictures in from iPhoto makes them humongous. She uses iPhoto to make them for smaller for email, then drags them into Pages.
Someone asked Midge why she uses Pages. MIdge said it is easy to use. Geof Gonter said it is integrated with other Mac features such as the iPhoto Library. Stephen Farber said Pages gives greater layout and typographic control. Jane Fuller asked where she could change the leading. Stephen directed Midge to the Text Inspector where the line height control under Spacing can make this adjustment. Harold Turner Won "Robin William's Cool Mac Apps" Harold Turner won about "Robin Williams Cool Mac Apps". He bought five tickets in the raffle and he won. The book was described in our meeting announcement. Read about it in Reviews - Cool Mac Apps. Peachpit Press lets us request these books each month without requiring a review.Read about Peachpit user group support and offers in Reviews.. After discussion at the meeting, we have requested Mac OS X Leopard Killer Tips from Peachpit Press for next month’s raffle book. Ron Lay-Sleeper Talked About "Photoshop Elements 6: The Missing Manual" Ron Lay-Sleeper said he wanted to review Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac because Adobe has finally released a new version of Photoshop Elements. When he received the book he learned that Photoshop Elements 6 requires at least Mac OS X 10.4. Ron has only Mac OS X 10.3 and his Mac cannot be upgraded to the current Mac Leopard. He said "Photoshop 6: The Missing Manual" was a great book, but he did not think he could write a review without the program. Read about it in Reviewx - Photoshop Elements 6: The Missing Manual. O'Reilly publishing has long supported NVMUG with Review copies of books and is a leader in the Macintosh world. Read about their support and user group offers in Reviews. Geof Gonter said that Ron could by the Mac OS X 10.4 upgrade from MegaMac or LA Computing for about $40. When I checked LA Compputing at www.AT.LA.com they had several upgrades available including one for the Mac Mini for $40 and an original boxed version for $89. Experimenting and Exploring Looking up resizing images in "Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual " started me on some experiments in resizing images for email and for publications and in PDF documents intended for viewing on monitors. I reduced an image of a flower from 3000 x 2250 pixels to 300 x 225 pixels. Use pixels to measure document sizes for viewing on a monitor because a pixel is a pixel on a monitor but an inch contains different numbers of pixels depending upon the monitor size and settings. I measured the file size of a Pages document containing the image. Then I reduced the image size by adjusting it within Pages and measured it again. The two documents were the same file size. Making an image smaller once it is in Pages does not reduce the file size or the download time. In Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard you can resize and condense JPEG images using Preview. I used Tools > Adjust Size in Preview to adjust the number of pixels, then use Save As to adjust the image quality. The 300 x 225 pixel JPEG image was an 80 KB file as measured by Get Info. I used Preview’s 9th quality mark to reduce the image to 40 KB, 4 to reduce it to 16 KB, and 2 to reduce it to 12 KB - all as measured by Get Info. Reply to this email to ask me if you want me to email the resulting image comparison. You can see the difference, but they are all usable. I imported the 80 KB image and the 12 KB image, both 300 x 225 pixels, into Pages and then “printed” them into separate pdf documents. The pdf with the 80 KB image was just a 48 KB file size. The pdf with the same pixel dimensions compressed to 12 KB produced a 24 KB pdf document file size. You have to experiment with compressions because a the scales used in different programs do not produce the same degree of compression. I tried Preview 9 with a 40 KB result, 4 with a 16 KB result, and 2 with a 12 KB result. The differences in the appearance of this flower were there, but I think the 12 KB image still looked pretty. You have to experiment with different images because how much they appear to degrade with the same settings is not the same. Send me a reply asking for it, and I will email a pdf of the resulting comparisons.
Experimenting like this is fun. I did a lot of it in writing Exploring Pages ’08. At the meeting I reported receiving thank you letters from the several states, the UK, Australia, and Belgium for Exploring Pages ’08 with Pages ’08 since Chuck Joiner posted the book for downloading on The MUG Center Here is an extract from The MUG Center: Hartley Jim Jackson of the Northern Vermont Macintosh User Group has authored an impressive 125-page eBook, "Exploring Pages ‘08 with Pages ‘08", and is offering it to Mac User Group leaders and members for free. The book covers all aspects of Pages, from word processing to page layout and beyond, including working with images drawing, tables, charts and graphs and much more. The complete book, and 8+ meg download, can be downloaded here on The MUG Center. Mac User Groups are encouraged to relay this information to their members, and to use it as a basis for future meetings. If I had tried to sell the book it probably would have been a lot of work for very little profit and certainly complaints. Giving it away had brought me more happines and no complaints. |
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Midge relaxing at the end of her presentation with her dog on her screen saver.
Here is the image reduced to 160 x 120 and saved from Photoshop with an image quality of 10 for a Photoshop 4 KB file size and estimated download time of 2 seconds at 56 KBs modem speed. Get Info says it is an 8 KB file size. The “least” image with the same pixel dimensions is rated as 6.1 KB in Preview, but is the same 8 KB file in Get Info. There is some difference in the appearance which may be due to different color adjustments.