The Adobe Illustrator tip (July 1992, Page 227) from Jeanne Stevenson is NOT advisable.
China markers and grease pencils are OIL/solvent based, and not refined. They will damage CRT screens - sometimes becoming unremovable! Since they are inexpensively manufactured, the media is not refined and may contain grit that can scratch the screen.
For years, I’ve used Schwan-Stabilo pencils. These are soft, very refined and water soluble. I prefer white, but other colors are available. The marks remove easily with moistened fingertip. Care should be taken. Use of Kodak “KemWipe” for camera lenses is advised.
A better method is to mark items on a clear acetate sheet (trimmed to the size of the screen) that can be labeled and referred to later.
As I published in 1987, these pencils have many other uses for Mac users. Marking positions on the monitor in the scroll bars is handy when working in zoom mode, moving quickly and precisely to other portions of the screen. Roughing-in outlines of mechanical graphic devices for run-arounds (rather than going the scanning/tracing routine). Marking screen coordinates for “clicks” when programming CE Software QuicKeys. They're also wonderful for marking on disks as they show up well on Blue or Black disks yet wipe off easily.
Regards,
Fred Showker
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The following are two articles previously published on a MNS (Mac User Group News Service) Editor’s disk.
They give more detailed tips on various uses of Schwan Stabilo pencils.
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Labeling your DISKS the easy way!
Regardless of how you label your disks once you decide upon their final contents, here’s a trick I’ve found to work the best when using disks for temporary storage or intermediary holding files.
Schwan makes a pencil called a “Stabilo” pencil. They write on paper, glass, plastic, metal and most other surfaces. They’re perfect for writing directly on the disk. Another “grease” pencil you say? Not quite. They’re water soluble. A moistened fingertip and a quick wipe with a tissue (actually, I have a roll of toilet paper handy) produces a tidy “new” disk. This can be done over and over again without having to mess with labels, markers, fingernail polish, spray fix etc.
Then when you decide what’s going on the disk for long term - go ahead do whatever labeling you plan to do. These pencils are available in most art supply stores and come in colors. Once you use them I think you’ll find many other uses for them too!
Fred Showker
[If you can’t locate Stabilo pencils in your area, contact me and I’ll send you some of mine!]
When I told my editor the title of this one he got kind of a sour look on his face. “You can’t knock scanners” he said. So, I won’t knock scanners. Why should I. I love scanners. But I’ve seen many, many cases where Mac users become “scanner crazed.” I know lots of offices that routinely spend several hours with the scanner, scanner software and graphics software to get an image ready where they could have spent three minutes. This computer should save time — not waste it.
The scanner has also caused a lot of misconception in the non-Mac world. It seems that the general public has come to believe that the scanner is the do-all, fix-all machine for the computer world. Who knows why. We routinely get calls where the client says “Oh, you can just scan this in, can’t you?” Then there’s a publisher I know who wants to fix everything with a scanner. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just scan these in and clean them up?” One banker couldn’t understand why we had to ‘re-draw’ his ornate logo to get it into the system. He had been told by someone that with a Mac, you just scan it in and vióla! Worse yet, they never seem to understand or they flatly refuse to believe. There are times when the image should be scanned, and there are times when it definitely should not!
I was recently called in to consult a government office who spent several thousand dollars on all the latest Mac stuff so they could scan several graphics for a monthly newsletter. The director was lamenting because it now takes the department four times as long to produce the same newsletter. “Everyone is busy playing with the scanner,” he said, “we need the outlines to position our graphics.” So the girls were drawing outlines, scanning them, scaling them, and cleaning them up for accurate positioning of graphics which the printer would later drop in. “Hold on,” I said, and I demonstrated my “easy-trace” system.
There’s a product we use in our screen-printing operation called “Static-cling.” It’s a live vinyl product that clings to any smooth surface. We take a Schwan All-Stabilo pencil, and trace our graphic onto the Static-cling. Then it’s a simple matter to smooth our tracing onto the Mac screen and trace our graphic into the program. This is not only the quickest, easiest way of creating position-images for DTP, but a real boon to Illustrator users for full scale illustrations, as well.
Many times you don’t even need a graphics program. If you’re using ReadySetGo, PageMaker, XPress or any of the DTP programs which can configure run-arounds from their own graphic items, you’ve got it made! Just build a facsimile of the outline using the available boxes, circles and lines within your program, select them all and set the run-around parameters. Simple. You’re ready to go in seconds, and you didn’t even touch a scanner or software other than your DTP program! If you do build your outline in a paint program, you have the capability of scaling the object within the DTP program. This is an important consideration.
When you’re finished, the Stabilo pencil can be wiped off with a damp cloth and the Static Cling is ready to go again. This is a handy system, and once you’ve played with it, you’ll find all sorts of other areas where it is a real time-saver. In fact, if you discover some new uses for this, let me know and I’ll pass them along to our other readers.
Happy tracing!
Fred Showker
[I gave this talk at the “Great Graphics Tips” session at Boston MacWorld in August, 1989. It was so well received, I decided to include it here. If you don’t want to bother trying to locate Static-Cling or the Stabilo pencils in your area, contact me and I’ll send you some of mine!]
