Is there a way to...?

[netwrk219]

So my co-workers and I have been working in Flare for a couple of months and what we've noticed is that we spend a lot of time "formatting" images. We always use a 1px black border on images and our images are always sized to 4" wide by 2" high.

The problem is, we constantly have to set our length to the inches, as it defaults to px. We are only ever going to use inches in print output, so having it default to px is a hassle. Is there anywhere in Flare where we can set the properties to always use inches over pixels, millimeters, centimeters, etc?

Also, is there a way to set the standard for the images to be our standard size? Even when I edit the image to be the correct size (4"x2") in photoshop, it sometimes imports into Flare much larger (I'm assuming it's a bug since the sizing is correct in every other application), requiring me to force the image to display at the size I want in the image properties/Print Size screen.

Would this be a function of styles, or is there a place within flare that I can change these settings for a whole project (or for all projects)?

[cdschroeder]

I don't know of a way to set the default units of measure, but if your images are always 4"x2" and have a 1 px border, you can certainly create an image style to those specifications. Have you used the stylesheet editor before? You'll want to add a new img style with your dimensions and border, then apply that style to each image as it's added.

This will save you a lot of time, and gives the added benefit of easy changes in the future. For example, maybe someday you want to change the black border to a gray one. Using a stylesheet, you can make the change in one place rather than applying it to each image individually. And the next tech writer will thank you (speaking as someone who has just spent weeks cleaning out old inline formatting).

Let me know if you need additional help with the stylesheet editor. Here's the Flare reference page: http://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare201 ... Editor.htm

[SteveS]

I'd create an image style that automatically creates the border you are looking for. Then it will be a one-click process, just apply the style.

Image size might be a bit more complex, I'd be looking at image resolution in the photoshop part of the process. It sounds as if different resolutions might be applied. A 4x2 image at 72dpi is going to display differently compared to a 4x2 image at 96dpi in a media (ie computer screen) that is pixel dependent.

HTH

[netwrk219]

Image size might be a bit more complex, I'd be looking at image resolution in the photoshop part of the process. It sounds as if different resolutions might be applied. A 4x2 image at 72dpi is going to display differently compared to a 4x2 image at 96dpi in a media (ie computer screen) that is pixel dependent.

HTH

I actually spoke with Technical support regarding the image size. We did a remote session and I demonstrated that all of my images were the same 1200x600 dimensions and it was concluded that there is a possible bug in the software that causes images to be "read" incorrectly when Flare ingests them, which will make the images seem huge on screen. For the time being we will have to manually resize the images that ingest incorrectly.

I spoke with a team member of mine and remember that the reason we didn't go with setting up a style initially was because there are safety symbols we use that are not supposed to have the border applied. My resolution for this was to create two image selectors, one with a border and one without.

Thank you for your input.

And thanks to cdschroeder as well. I am familiar with the style editor. I'm actually more comfortable working with the internal text editor when working with styles. My main issues were with the units of measurement (I still would like to see some sort of preference panel option for that in the future) and the way Flare imports the image so that you can get two different sizes. I did some research with a member of our prepress team and he confirmed, using Pitstop, that flare makes conversions to images imported into the documents. The resolutions and dimensions showing up in Pitstop were not what I created in Photoshop.

Odd issues, but by no means a deal breaker.

Thanks again everyone!