Our sale catalog has been a work in progress for several years. We started with the basic AIMS pedigree reports and built the catalog from there. In the beginning I created a custom Crystal Report that generated the catalog pages. This is a satisfactory way of doing a small catalog with or without pictures.

For professional results you need to print your catalog pages using a laser printer. An inkjet does not print crisp enough text for a print shop to scan and reproduce.

If you want to add pictures to the catalog the print shop will cut and paste the old fashioned way using your laser pages and pictures.

A couple of years ago I wanted a more flexibility in the catalog pedigree and picture layout so I switched to Microsoft Publisher. Publisher is about the cheapest page layout program available. It is also the most hated by design professionals. It is fine for creating home and small business projects that you print yourself, but it is not suited for creating professional projects for a print shop. Ideally, a print shop will take your files and go straight to print with as few steps in between. This gives you creative control over the layout, design and font choices. Most print shops as well as the Angus Journal use software from Adobe.

A compromise of sorts exists between budget software for the home and the Adobe software professionals use; the Acrobat file. Many programs export in Acrobat format and if they don't you can create Acrobat files for almost nothing on Adobe's website. The Acrobat file is a mix between graphic elements and PostScript computer code. If the print shop can't use your Acrobat file directly, it will give them much of what they need to produce a great looking flier or catalog.

I have to confess that while I used to preach the praises of this compromise and used Publisher and Microsoft Word extensively, I was often disappointed with the final results. There were complex design ideas that I wanted to put on the page that only the more robust Adobe software would allow me to do. So, I bit the bullet and invested the $1000 or so in the Adobe Creative Suite. Invested? Yes, it was an investment as much as a herd sire is an investment. A pretty hefty up-front cost that is spread across several years, catalogs and advertisements.

This year was the first year that our catalog was fully digital. The photographs I took myself with a digital camera. I laid out the catalog with Adobe InDesign, created the cover with Adobe Illustrator and did the photo work in Adobe Photoshop. Everything, including the pictures was laid out in software and saved as a file. The print shop took my files and went straight to film that their printer uses to crank out the catalog pages and cover. Nobody touched a conventional film picture in the entire process, except when I scanned a few 30, 40 and 50 year old photos.

This spring I started to rewrite this website using Adobe GoLive. GoLive is a website creation program that is a little daunting to learn at first. I know only about 25% of what the program can do, but I still was able to redo the website. It is similar to Microsoft FrontPage in that you can either create your website in html code or place pictures, text and graphics on the page and build the site like you would build an advertisement. GoLive is considerably more powerful, however in that you can literally place pictures and text on the page anyway you want with pixel level control.

In 2006 our sale catalog will be on the website in the form of web pages that display very fast. In year's past, I had to export the catalog pages in Acrobat format. While Acrobat preserves all the formatting and good looks of the original catalog, their can be large files that take a long time to download. GoLive will change all of that.

Sale Catalog Design & Printing

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