Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [262]
The PDF Output panels
We'll start here with the Output panel (Figure 11.65) where you can choose the PDF Output option, which switches the Output panel into PDF output mode. Here, you will see the Template option, where you'll find a choice of eight output templates, which incidentally, are similar to the ones found in the old Contact Sheet II feature. The Refresh Preview works the same as the Web Gallery. It generates a preview of how the template design will look based on the selected photos, using as many photos as are required to fill a full page template. So for example, if you selected the 4 _ 5 Contact Sheet template, Bridge uses the first 20 images only to generate a contact sheet preview.
Figure 11.65 The Output panel.
The Document panel (Figure 11.66) can be used to set the document size based on International, U.S. Paper, Photo or Web page presets. Depending on the option selected here, this will affect the Size options below. Alternatively, you can enter in a custom page size, in a choice of units. The Quality menu allows you to set the desired output pixel resolution and below that the compression quality to use. The Background color can be black or white, or you can click on the color swatch next to this to pick a custom color. If you want, you can use the ‘Open Password’ and ‘Permissions Password’ options to make the PDF document password protected (including the ability to prevent people from printing the document).
Figure 11.66 The Document panel
The Layout panel (Figure 11.67) let's you customize the layout, by editing the number of columns and rows, and set the maximum allowed size for each image plus the margin height and width. The margin spacing should be at least as wide as that allowed by your printer. In most instances, the leading page edge (the right or bottom margin) will require a wider margin gap than the other margin edges. Bridge doesn't provide any clues here, so unless you know what this margin gap should be, your best bet is to use trial and error to work out the safe margin width. One option is to select the ‘Auto-Spacing’ option, where Bridge uses its knowledge of the maximum printable page area to auto adjust the placement of the images. If the ‘Rotate for Best Fit’ option is selected, Bridge will auto-rotate landscape and portrait images so that each prints as big as possible within the horizontal and vertical size limits. Lastly, the ‘Repeat One Photo per Page’ option can be used to create PDF layouts where each image is repeated multiple times on each page document.
Figure 11.67 The Layout panel
The Overlays panel (Figure 11.68) lets you add the filename below each image. The other options let you decide which font, font size and color can be used, plus whether to include page numbers on each page.
Figure 11.68 The Overlays panel.
The Header and Footer panels are new to Bridge CS5. You can use these panels to create custom headers and footer designs to go on each printed page output. Figure 11.69 shows an example of the new Footer panel layout (these options are identical to the new Header panel).
Figure 11.69 The Footer panel.
The Playback panel options (Figure 11.70) apply specifically to the creation of PDF presentations, where you can use these settings to determine whether a PDF is opened automatically in Full Screen mode, how long each image will appear on the screen for and whether to loop the slideshow presentation from the beginning again. The Transition menu provides lots of image transition options from a simple ‘Fade’ dissolve to more fancy