This is the initial beta release of Riot Control v1.0, and initail draft of the accompanying documentation.
Riot Control is a highly specialized utility which greatly enhances productivity when using Adobe Illustrator for high-end color production work. It provides a number of key features which are otherwise not available.
It has been, and continues to be, developed with the cooperation of Valasek/Quicktype. A high-end color service bureau providing high-resolution scans and film output to their clients. They also provide design, production and contract match prints. It also happens to be my “real job”.
Valasek will also assist in the marketing and distribution of Riot Control as I am generally too involved with the coding aspects. Since they are extremely familiar with the Adobe product line and with my products they can answer most question involving one and/or the other.
Valasek/Quicktype
2001 Miraloma Ave.
Placentia, CA 92670
(714) 579-8800
For additional information or technical assistance, and distribution opportunities contact:
Jim Lewis / Golden State Graphics
2137 Candis Ave.
Santa Ana, CA 92706
(714) 542-5518
I can also be reached at the Valasek number between 8:30-5:30pm PST.
II. Using Riot Control
The greatest benefits of Riot Control are realized by those using multi-color and/or high-resolution scans in Illustrator. Service Bureau operators will also appreciate the many specialized features.
Some typical applications of Riot Control can be demonstrated by the following senarios.
A. Senario 1
A client is producing tabloid size (11 x 17) display ads for weekly inserts into the newspaper. The ads typically contain 20 to 30 color images and almost entirely display type. Ideally we provide only the image scanning, color correction, and film output services.
Transparencies provided by the client scanned in at high-resolution and color corrected on our enhanced Mac systems. The scan files usually require a significant amount of disk space. This presents problems in transferring the image files to the client, and his ability to work with them once he has them. To overcome this, we save the scanned image as a Photoshop Desktop Color Separation (DCS) file. This creates 5 files. One for each plate and one known as the “placing file” which is used for importing into another application. The placing file is very small when saved with “No Composite Postscript” which we supply to the client.
When the client has completed the page composition(s) the project is returned to us for QMS proofing output. And, if approved, to final film. Before either of these operation can be performed there are some necessary preliminary things to be done.
To keep film output times within reason it is necessary to ensure that all placed images do not undergo any additional transformations during output. Best output performance occurs when the necessary transformations are done in Photoshop. This means measuring each image in the Illustrator document to determine the scaling, rotation, and skewing values and then applying the same transformations to the image using Photoshop.
Any transformations applied in Photoshop will usually cause the bounding box (rectangular size) of the image to change. The recorded position and transformations applied by Illustrator will no longer be valid. Therefore an operator must go through and manually replace and position each image one-by-one to correspond to the original placement.
Additionally, because of moving the page composition files around from system to system and/or disk to disk many of the placed image files (if not all) will have lost there link. That is the Illustrator document will no longer know where the placed image files are. It is therefore necessary to relink the Illustrator document to the placed image files before it will output properly.
This whole process is extremely operator intensive, drives the project costs up, and burdens the work flow. Riot Control can be used to put things in order in a timely manner.
Instead of measuring each of the placed images and recording the scaling and rotation an operator can open the Illustrator document with Riot Control and print a placed image report - in less than two minutes! The “Riot Control Report” contains information about the transformations made to each of the placed images.
After the transformations have been applied directly to the image files they must be replaced and positioned in the Illustrator page composition. Riot Control’s special feature called “Auto100” will perform this operation in a matter of seconds. Auto100 assumes that all transformations originally in the Illustrator document have been incorporated into a new version of the image file. It then recomputes the position based on the original data and removes the Illustrator transformation instructions. See “Replacing files” later in this document for more info about Auto100.
To correct linking failure the Illustrator document would normally have to be opened using Illustrator and the placed image files located one-by-one. Riot Controls unique relinking feature can perform this operation in just seconds, and in most cases, one fell swoop!
B. Senario 2
Riot Control can help managing color in your Illustrator project. Using the same type of page composition described in the previous senario, much of the time, process colors are used on many of the Illustrator objects. Display type, boxes, and background blends are used freely sometimes totaling up to 100 objects. Generally this client has standardized on a set of colors and these are usually set up as custom colors in Illustrator.
Depending on the artist that produced the page composition color may be assigned to objects in one of two ways. Either as a custom color or as a process color. When process colors are used problems can arise when the client deems that a color change is necessary, perhaps to produce a second version of the page.
When custom colors have been used color changes are a snap with Illustrator. Simply edit the custom color definition and the change is applied to all objects that use that color automatically. On the other hand, if custom colors were not used then the work to change colors is significant. Each item would have to be selected and the color reassigned one-by-one. If the new color is created as a custom color the savings in time is minimal.
Riot Control may be used to open the Illustrator document and create custom color equivalents for all process color specifications used on each element. Riot Control gathers up all all process color specifications and compares each one to all the others. The method of comparison takes into account the possibility of one color being a “tint” of another color. The result is a minimum number custom color definitions assigned to each of the Illustrator objects with an appropriate tint value.
This whole procedure including editing the new custom color definitions now takes only minutes instead of hours.
C. Senario 3
Transportability of Illustrator page compositions is a tricky subject in that it is extremely dependent on how the document is created. When a project is moved from one disk to another quite often the links to the placed images are lost and must be re-established and described in senario 1.
For service bureau operators this is a daily occurance and the links must be re-established before the job can be properly output. Especially if Separator will be used to produce film output. Riot Control will fix lost links in just seconds!
Additionally, the variables involved in producing page compositions with Illustrator are many. Some if not all of these variations can affect the processing time it takes to rasterize the output.
Riot Control’s extensive verification and reporting can help identify potential problem areas. Complete information about fonts used, patterns, colors, and placed images is provided. Items which are missing or not used are automatically identified. Information about each of the placed images includes resolution, internal format (binary/ascii), transfer functions, 2nd linkages, and more. An experienced operator can use this information to get an idea on how easily the job might be imaged.
III. The File Menu
A. Open
Selecting Open from the file menu brings up the standard file dialog. Only Illustrator files (and folders) will be displayed. Riot Control will open both Illustrator artwork and EPS files.
If a file is already open, this selection will be disabled.
B. Close
Selecting Close closes the currently open Illustrator file. The command key combination - Command-W - may be used to close the file as well.
C. Save
Save is disabled until changes have been made to the open document. Selecting Save will replace the original disk file with the version currently in memory.
D. Save As
Save As, is always enabled whenever an Illustrator document is open. This provides a convenient way to make a second copy of the file. It is also useful to save a revised version of a file under a different file name.
When selected Save As brings up the standard file dialog. The default file name is the original file name preceded by “r.”. It is automatically selected for replacement if so desired.
E. Save Report
Save Report creates a plain text file containing all of the information available in the Riot Control windows. Information in the text file is collated just as it is in the windows. This provides for easy selection when interested in only a portion of the information provided.
F. Page Setup
Bring up the standard Page Setup dialog used by most macintosh applications. It is described fully in the Apple Macintosh User’s Guide.
G. Print
Print produces a printed report based on the current mode of the Riot Control window. Either a files report or colors report may be printed.
H. Quit
Quits the Riot Control application and close any open document. If the document has been changed you will be asked if you wish to save the file before Riot Control quits.
IV. Edit Menu
Almost all of the command in the edit menu do not apply to Riot Control activities with one exception.
A. Select All
Depending on current viewing mode either all placed images or all custom colors will be selected when the “Select All” command is issued.
V. RiotControl Menu
The Riot Control menu provides special purpose utilities.
A. Options
There are only two basic options or preferences for Riot Control. The first is the display format of the position values for each of the placed images. The options correspond to those of Illustrator; Picas/Points, Inches, and Centimeters.
The second option is for control over a default file extension which is optionally used during replacement. A file extension may be thought of as a suffix that is appended to the end of a file name to produce a second file name. This feature provides easy batch replacement of sets of images.
B. Set Separator #Copies
Set number pages is for use with Adobe Separator only. It edits the postscript code of an Illustrator EPS file so that each plate is “recorded” any number of times. That means rasterized once and printed many. Depending on the length of time it normally takes to print one copy, this feature can save hours in output time.
There are many occassions when multiple copies of original file is desirable. Such as when multiple sources will be producing the printed matter, or when an archive (or “safe”) copy is required.
C. Extract Embedded Files
Removes images that are embedded in the Illustrator file as a result of saving the Illustrator file with placed images “included”. There are two potential hazards when this is done.
The first problem is the Illustrator file may now be too big to ever open again. The Illustrator file and all placed files are combined into one larger file, possibly too large! This has been alleviated somewhat by version 2.01 of Adobe Photoshop™ which generates a smaller “placing” file (main file of 5 file DCS). Prior version added the equivalent of the black plate as well which often exceed one megabyte a piece. Wooh... 30 MB Illustrator file...
The Second problem pertains to output (printing) using Adobe Separator and the use of DCS images from Photoshop in the Illustrator document. Adobe Illustrator understands the embedded placed image and interprets the data to locate each of the individual plate files. Separator does not! Better yet, since the file isn’t really missing Separator does produce an error. As a result you get 4 pieces of 72dpi film - very useful...
If you have sufficient RAM and patience, Illustrator can be used to rectify this situation by re-saving the file using “Save As...” and turning off “Include Placed Images”.
Extract Embedded Images creates an entirely new Illustrator file exactly like the original except that all embedded file data is removed and replaced with the appropriate include file data. Include file specification are appropriate for both Illustrator and Separator. The embedded files data is placed in separate individual files under thier original file names. If a file already exists a new file will not be created for that image.
You will need the extracted placing files only if the originals are not available. These extracted files are sufficient for Photoshop to reconstruct a complete single file from the 4 individual plates but lack the customary Photoshop resource fork. The extracted files are also sufficent for output using Separator. If you resave the image the missing resources are recreated by Photoshop. Note that Photoshop also provides the ability to reconstruct a placing file by open each of the individual plate files as a separate channel file and then performing a merge channels function. As you can see Riot Control takes the simplest approach.
The extracted Illustrator file sets the location of each of the extracted images to the same location as the original Illustrator document. That is when you open the extracted Illustrator file it expects to find the placed image files in the same folder as the original file.
Select “Extract Embedded Files” from the Riot Control menu. A dialog box will appear for the selection of the Illustrator file to extract. Open an Illustrator EPS file or Cancel.
Select a destination for the new “extracted” files. Enter a filename other than the original, Riot Control automatically inserts an “r.” in front of the orignal name as the default name. Click Save and the process will begin.
VI. Document Information
The Window title of the Riot Control window reflects the name of the currently opened Illustrator file. The top portion of the Riot Control window display general information about the Illustrator file.
This information changes slightly depending upon the current viewing mode. There are two basic viewing modes. In Files mode information about all of the placed images in the Illustrator document is displayed. In Colors mode information about colors used in the Illustrator document is displayed.
Depending upon the construction of the Illustrator document the Riot Control window will open in one of these two modes. Normally, the Riot Control window will open in Files mode. If there are no placed images and custom colors are in use then it will open in Colors mode. If there are neither placed images or custom colors then it will open in Files mode and display the word “None” in the placed image section.
A. File Type
Indicates the standard Macintosh file type the Illustrator document was saved as. The default or normal type is “TEXT”. Optionally the file type may be “EPSF” (Encapsulated Postscript File).
B. File Creator
This is also known as the application signature as it is unique to each different application. For Adobe Illustrator there are three different signatures resulting from program updates. “ARTY” is from the original version of Adobe Illustrator, “ARTZ” is from the Illustrator ‘88 version, and “ART3” is from Illustrator 3.x.
C. Modified
This is simply the date the document was last saved. It is the same date as found from the finder information.
D. Custom Colors
This is just a quick indicator that custom colors are present in the Illustrator document. It appears in the Riot Control window only when in the Files display mode.
E. Bounding Box
This is the minimum print area required to encompass all of the elements contained in the Illustrator document.
F. Fonts Used
Displays the postscript names of each font used in the document and any fonts used inside any of the placed images.
Font names used in placed images will be preceded by an asterik.
Double clicking a font name displays all of the placed images the use that font. If it is used by the main Illustrator document then ‘<main document>’ will be displayed also.
G. Document Plates
Displays the names of the process color plates required to print the document. Usually these are the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black plates.
All custom colors are listed seperately. In some cases the may be printed as a seperate plate as a spot color. Most of the time custom colors are converted to process when generating film on an imagesetter.
VII. Placed Image Info
The placed image information for each is display in three parts. The part that is currently being displayed is controlled by the three radio buttons in the lower left of the Riot Control window.
A. File Status
The list displays the file name, type, creator, date modified and status for each place image.
The status indicates “linking” status for an image. This involves the verification of a number of parameters as follows:
1. Missing
The placed image file could not be located either in its declared location (where it was when originally placed), in the default location (same as the Illustrator document), or embedded in the Illustrator document.
2. Improperly Renamed
Applies only to DCS files since all others are single-file documents. The placing file of the DCS was located but none of the individual plates were found. When this happens the name of one of the required plate files is compared to the finder name of the placing file. This is typical the result of renaming the files at the finder info level without editing the postscript declarations contain in the placing file of a DCS.
3. [C, Y, M, K] Plates missing
Applies only to DCS files since all others are single-file documents. The placing file of the DCS was located but one or more of the individual plate files could not be located. Only those plates which could not be located will be indicated.
4. Size modified
The bounding box information contained in the placed image file is different than that recorded in the Illustrator document when the image was originally placed. Basically this indicates that the placement information contained in the Illustrator document is invalid and the results of output would not be predictable.
5. Contains file links
The placed image file contains placed images of its own. Usually this 3-way linking does not output properly from Adobe Separator.
6. Circular PS ref
The placed image is an Illustrator eps file. That is Illustrator imported in Illustrator as a image. This can present a variety of problems on some output devices such as purging application dictionaries prematurly or exhausting available output device memory in one swoop.
7. Other Location
The placed image was found in the expected location, but that location is other than that of the main Illustrator document. That is, it is located in a different folder. Though this usually outputs properly, it is a high-risk since the file may be easily overlooked when submitting the project for output.
8. Found by default
The placed image was not found in the expected location which is other than the main Illustrator document. It was found in the same folder as the main document. Illustrator will automatically relink this when the file is opened (you will be prompted to save changes when you didn’t make any). Separator will not locate the file however and if it doesn’t fail entirely it will print a bitmapped respresentation.
9. Embedded file
The placed image in embedded in the Illustrator file as a result of “include placed images” when the Illustrator eps was saved. For DCS files only this causes a problem when output through Separator. The main placing file is found since it is a physical part of the Illustrator documents but the individual plate files are not. This is due to the path to the image files not being properly established either because Separator doesn’t do it, or because of a possible bug in the %%BeginDocument postscript statement generated by Illustrator 3.1. A space is inserted at the beginning of the pathname parameter which does not appear in the %%IncludeFile statement.
10. Not a placing file
Base on the information previously descibed and by examining the ImageData statement the subject file has been determined to be “probably not” a placing file. Mostly this occurs when one of the plates files was placed into Illustrator in place of the proper placing file.
11. Contains file links
The placed image file has placed images of its own. That is the Illustrator file is linked to this file which in turn is linked to another. This usually only occurs when an object oriented eps is placed into Illustrator. Such as Illustrator eps.
12. 2nd Linkage
The file appears in the list as a result of usage by another of the placed images and not the main Illustrator document. Since only the beginning portion of the placed image files is examined the position, scale, and rotation information is not available and will display as all zero values. The file status and file information are complete however.
B. File Placement
Displays information about the placement of each image in the Illustrator document.
The Horizontal and Vertical postions are shown relative to the origin of the rulers, or to to the lower left corner of the page when rulers have not be used.
The Horizontal and Vertical scaling factors applied to the image by Illustrator.
The rotation is displayed in a range of +/- 180°
Skewing is displayed in the range +/- 90°. The skew value will be followed by either an “h” or “v” for horizontal and vertical respectivel
C. File Information
Displays the file information for each placed image.
Original height and width
This is the original height and width of the placed image before and transformations in the Illustrator document.
XFunc
Indicate if the image was save as an EPS file and includes its own transfer function. Either Yes or No. Double dashes indicate the information is not applicable.
Format
Indicates whether the file was save in ASCII encoding or Binary encoding.
Resolution
For images produced (or last saved) by Adobe Photoshop this indicates the resolution the image was resampled to.
Plates used
Plates Used indicates the CMYK color plates required to produce the image. If the file is a Duotone, Tritone, or Quadtone that will be displayed instead. The custom colors required to produce these types of images are added to the custom colors list.
VIII. Additional Information
Additional information may be obtained for each placed image by using the “Info” button.
The Info button has two states. In its normal state it is called “Info”. If the option-key is being pressed the button changes to “Preview”.
A. Viewing Info
To view the path to a particular file double-click on the file name in the Placed Image List or select one and click the “Info” button.
A dialog will appear listing the complete path to that file, all fonts used in that file, any links to any other images, and whether the image is called for directly by the Illustrator document or by one of the other placed images.
Click the OK button when finished viewing the information.
B. Viewing the Image Preview
Sometimes seeing a placed image can help in evaluating a given situation. To see the preview of a placed image hold down the option while double-clicking on the image name, or select a placed image then hold down the option key and click the Preview button.
Before the preview image is displayed, Riot Control compares the phyical size of the image to the screen size of the monitor being used. If the image is smaller than the screen then the preview image is displayed at its actual size. If the preview image is larger than the screen, it will be proportionately scaled down to fit. This means the entire image will always be visible even on a 9” inch screen.
IX. Relink
The Relink button is used to re-establish the connection between the Illustrator document and one or more placed images. It does not change any aspect of the image file placement except for the disk location of the file.
To Relink (or relocate) an image file there are two specific requirements.
1. The filenames must match exactly
2. The size of the image must match exactly
(Verify size is the only enabled option)
Select one or more placed files in the File List and click the Relink button. You will presented with a dialog similar to the standard file dialog used by almost all Mac applications.
There are 3 added radio button controls in the lower right corner of the dialog. Only Verify Size is enabled, Scale to Match and Auto 100 pertain to Replace and are disabled when Relinking.
The name of the current file to be relinked appears at the top of the dialog. Locate the corresponding file on the disk and double-click it, or click the Relink button, or press return or enter. Relinking will be performed immediately.
If more than one placed image was selected in the main window file list the dialog will reappear for each one remaining.
If all the selected image files are in the same folder hold down the option key when the contents of that folder are visible in the standard file dialog. The Relink and Cancel buttons are replaced with Relink All and Cancel All respectively. Each selected file will be searched for in that folder only and relinked if located.
Relink All and Cancel All apply to the “remaining” selections only. Selections which have already been processed individually will not be affected.
X. Replace
Replace is very much like Relink described above with a few exceptions.
During Replace, the filenames or image size do not have to match the original placement. Any placed image can be replaced by any other EPS file.
In Replace mode all of the added options available in the standard file dialog are enabled. Additionally, the extension name in the File Extension field of the Options dialog will be used if turned on.
A. Verify Size
Before replacing a file, the image size of the new file is compare to the image size of original file. If they are the same the new file will replace the old one in the Illustrator document.
B. Scale to match
During replacement any difference between the original image size and the image size of the replacement file will be compensated for via scaling. Horizontal and Vertical scaling occur independent of each other. The replacement image covers “exactly” the same area as the original in the Illustrator document.
C. Auto 100%
During replacement the Auto 100 option assumes that any rotation, scaling, and skewing have been applied to the replacement file. Therefore these original Illustrator attributes would not apply.
Auto 100 automatically resets the Illustrator placement to 100%, 0 rotation, and 0 skewing. The position of the replaced image is adjusted to compensate for changes in the image file geometry.
XI. Color Info
When the Colors button is clicked the contents of the Riot Control window change from file/font information to color information. The Fonts Used section is replaced by the Document Plates. The Placed File section is replaced by the list of existing custom colors.
The control buttons also change, Colors switches to Files, Relink switches to Convert, and Replace switches to Compile.
The Custom Colors list displays the names of each of the defined custom colors. For each, the process percentages than make up the color are display. The Status column indicates whether or not that color is actually used in the Illustrator document. A custom color which is defined and not used displays the message “Not Used”.
A. Convert
Converts the selected Custom Colors to Process equivalents.
B. Compile
Compiles all process color specifications into a collection of custom colors with an appropriate tint value applied to objects as needed.
C. Additional Information
To find out which file uses a color, double-click on a Custom Color. A dialog will appear displaying the names of all the place image files in which it is used. Usage in the main document is indicated appropriately.
