[John Mensinger]

What you’re seeing could be the result of transparency interaction. That image of the two bowls appears to be the only thing in the layout where there is a drop shadow employed.

Check to make sure your page background color, the image, and your transparency blend space, (under the Edit menu), all match with respect to color space.

Also, you say it looks okay on-screen in ID, and in PDF, but prints wrong. Do you get the same bad result printing from both ID and from PDF?

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

…and in your case those keywords, (and the right Illustrator tool for what you’re doing), would be Gradient Mesh.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

Edit > Preferences > Interface > Deselect:

• Open Documents As Tabs
• Enable Floating Document Window Docking

This will get you closest to pre-CS4 behavior.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

Photoshop doesn’t have any such functionality. You’ll have to bring your ticket into a page layout app or word processor and overlay the auto-numbering there.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

I think you’ll find that when an image prints poorly, it’s most often because it was not a good image to begin with. Garbage in = garbage out.

Unless compression is in play, file format shouldn’t affect output quality. If you’re building your layouts in InDesign, there’s no reason not to use PSD’s. Uncomressed TIFF’s should give the same result.

Resolution is subject to the simple rule-of-thumb: linescreen frequency, (lpi), x 1.5. For newsprint linescreen frequency is almost always 85 lpi, which means the minimum apparent resolution for your images at output size should be 128 ppi. I know that sounds low, but the ubiquitous 300 ppi “rule” is most often a case of safety-margin overkill, and spread for/by those with limited understanding of image resolution as it relates to printed output.

Something that may help your grayscale images look their best is proper sharpening. Just Google Unsharp Mask and find volumes on the subject. Newsprint grayscale sometimes benefits from a judicious amount of over-sharpening.

Getting good looking CMYK in newsprint is often a matter of getting to know the specific press equipment you’re dealing with. Over/under-saturation comes easily, but a little trial and error up front can give you a feel for how much is just right.

Best of luck to you!

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

This has always been kind of a weird thing in Photoshop. The Save settings try to be “sticky,” based on previous saves, and/or characteristics of the file when opened. But, there are a lot of little factors that can come into play, like the presence of layers, transparency, color modes, bit depth, etc.

Not every format supports every image attribute. So for instance, if you open a GIF, make a selection, change a color, and hit Ctrl+S, Photoshop will “save over” the original in the same .gif format. But, open that same GIF and change its color space from Indexed to RGB, then add a layer. Now hit Ctrl+S, and Photoshop’s Save As dialog will come up offering a format that supports layers and RGB…GIF doesn’t…most likely TIFF or PSD.

I don’t think there’s a way to force a given format as default for saves, but once you understand the behavior I touched on above, it starts to make sense, and you’ll learn when and why to expect it.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

Very tough to make recommendations without seeing the two images, but if you’ve got them on separate layers in the same file, you’re set to experiment. The answer probably lies in finding a layer blend mode that does what you want. Use the blend mode drop menu at the top of the layers panel to sample the modes. I suspect Hard Mix might get you close to the desired effect, but you’ll likely still have to play with opacity to fine-tune it. Make sure the top layer is active when changing modes. (Changing the mode of the underlying layer won’t do anything.) You might also want to try flipping the layer order. With the Xray on top, Screen, Overlay, or Dodge modes might work.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

Well, there has to have been pixel data there in the first place. There is no tool that can arbitrarily “manufacture” opacity where there was none to begin with.

So for instance, applying the eraser tool to an area where the pixels started out as 100% opaque is a destructive operation. Aside from direct Undo/History backtracking, the edit results in lost data that can’t be recovered via a brush function…EXCEPT via the History Brush. You can paint opacity back in based on a History state from before the erasure. Read up on History Brush.

More elegantly though, the true answer lies in Layer Masks. The whole idea behind layer masking is opacity that’s 100% editable in either direction using a wide array of tools, settings, and techniques.

So the boiled down answer is yes, Photoshop can re-add opacity via the History Brush and Layer Masks.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

That’s pretty tough to visualize realistically…I mean…is there anyone who actually has first-hand experience with branded bone?

I figured some sort of effect must be possible, so I took a quick and dirty shot at it using these steps:

Set type in black.
Warp to contour of skull.
Make 2 additional layer-copies below, rasterize, then hide them.
Change the text color of the top copy to a reddish shade, (I used R:166 G:7 B:7).
Apply Layer Styles:
Inner Glow
Outer Glow
Bevel & Emboss
Color Overlay
Satin
Stroke
As contained in the attached style.
Turn on the underlying black copies and apply Gaussian Blur to each. (Setting will vary depending on size/resolution of your image.)
With one of the blurred, black copy layers selected, run the Liquify filter and smudge it upward using the Forward Warp brush, (the top tool in the Liquify toolbox).

Here’s where I stopped:

Here’s the layer style preset: 361_brandedskull.asl.zip

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

It’s not something I would have tried in a practical sense, but if I remember correctly, in CS3, you could slice up the image and assign properties/attributes to the slices. However I don’t think I ever found any direct avenue of output to HTML…

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.