Working Ahead for the Holidays

 

This is the time of year when many bulletin editors try to work ahead in order to stay on top of the holiday rush. It might therefore be helpful for you to know when to expect your favorite items to appear on the Subscriber Resource Center (SRC).

All of the features have been posted for the month of December. The January dated covers, thematic materials, and formatted articles will be posted to the SRC no later than November 12. All the other January items have already been posted.

Also, for your convenience, here are the dates for the upcoming early deadlines for the rest of 2021:

Deadline                                          Issue Date

Friday, November 19                      November 28 issue is due
Friday, December 10                      December 19 issue is due
Thursday, December 16                 December 26 issue is due
Thursday, December 23                 January 2, 2022 issue is due

We wish you all the best for the coming Advent and Christmas seasons!

Our Parish Life in Pictures

Including images of parish activities and events is a wonderful way to showcase your vibrant parish life. Pictures of sacramental life including baptisms, weddings, First Communions and Confirmations allow the parish to celebrate as a whole. Photos of gatherings like parish picnics, youth activities, and campus clean-up days display fellowship at work. Being sure these images will work in your document is an important step in sharing these moments. 

Also consider resolution. Digital pictures are made up of tiny squares called pixels. One million pixels is equal to one megapixel (MP). If you zoom in close enough to any photo you can see the individual pixels that create that image. Up close, photos look more like a Rubik’s cube than your original photo. It is these tiny squares, however that retain the clarity and detail of your image.

The more pixels, the greater the resolution of the image. The higher the resolution, the clearer and more detailed your photo. Keep in mind that most digital cameras have settings that allow you to change the resolution, so you can control the quality of the photos as you take them.  Photos intended to be used for your weekly bulletin are sufficient if set at a 4X6 size or 540x360 pixels.

If you are working with high quality digital images that are very large, the best option is to resize and save the photos into a TIF format and then re-insert into your bulletin. Here’s how:

1. Insert the photo into your bulletin

2. Resize to appropriate size and shape

3. Right-click the photo, click “Save As Picture”

4. Verify that you are saving in the “My Pictures” folder (default directory for pictures)

5. Name your picture in the File Name dialog box

6. Click the down arrow on the Save As Type dialog box and change to Tag Image Format (*.tif)

7. Save and then Right-click on the photo again and click Change Picture > From File.

8. Double-click on the new TIF file to replace the original photo.

 

These few steps will help decrease the picture size and decrease your bulletin file size. Once you are ready to transmit for printing, you’ll definitely notice the difference.

Our best advice is to consult your camera’s owner’s manual to determine the best settings for your use.

Ultimately, how many megapixels and what resolution settings are best, depend upon how you intend to use the photos. Consult your camera’s owner’s manual for what settings best met your needs.

 

 

 

 

Extend Your Bulletin's Reach

 

You work hard every week on your parish bulletin, but these days it’s hard to know whether it reaches all the people who should be reading it. As the pandemic drags on, many parishioners are still staying away from Sunday Mass. How can you get a bulletin in their hands? You could mail them, but that takes time and costs money. It’s far simpler (and free!) to send your Sunday bulletins to their email address. If you haven’t already done so, here are the easy steps you can follow to take advantage of J.S. Paluch’s free eBulletin service.

1. Create an electronic list of the email addresses of your parishioners. You may already have such a list, so you can import it into an Excel file or CSV or Text file with the information on each line separated by tabs. Your file might look something like this (Excel file):

 

Or this (Text file):

(Note that there is a tab after each entry on a line, even if the entries don’t appear to line up.)

The only necessary information is the email address; the names are optional.

2. Contact Igor Ratajczyk at ratajczyki@jspaluch.com or 847-558-2726 to get set up. You will be sending the email list to him.

That’s all you have to do!

If you don’t have an email list, you can direct your parishioners to sign up at either of these two links: https://ebulletin.jspaluch.com or https://www.jspaluch.com/Subscribe

Of course, you can also publish your bulletin to your parish’s own web page or social media platform. But when you do, please be sure to show your appreciation for the support of your advertisers by using the PDF for your bulletin that includes the ads.

Bonus!

When you submit your email list to J. S. Paluch, if it has more than 100 names on it, your parish will receive a $50.00 Visa gift card.

Why does that image look so fuzzy?

One of the continuing frustrations of creating printed bulletins is finding the perfect image online, only to see it come out fuzzy when you hold your bulletin in your hand on Sunday. Why does this happen?

The short answer is that computer displays and printed pages have different requirements for images to look sharp. A typical computer screen has a resolution of only 72 pixels per inch, or PPI. That means that any image with a resolution of 72 DPI (dots per inch) or greater will look nice and sharp on your screen. By contrast, if you want a sharp image on the printed page, the minimum resolution should be 300 DPI. Anything much less will look fuzzy or pixellated. So an image that looks great on your screen may or may not look good in your bulletin, depending on its DPI.

So how can you tell if an image that you are working with has a high enough DPI? There are programs available to identify the resolution of an image; Preview comes with every Mac. Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t have a similar program built in. However, you can use the Graphics Manager feature in Publisher to find out an image’s resolution: just select the image after you’ve placed it in your document, click on the View tab in the Ribbon, and check the box labeled Graphics Manager. The Graphics Manager will open in a sidebar on the right side of your screen, where you can move your cursor over the name of the selected image and click on the little triangle that appears. In the box that then opens, select Details, and one of the items reported will be the Effective Resolution. As long as it’s anywhere near 300 DPI or higher, your image should look fine on the printed page. If not, you should seek a different image or find a version of that image with higher resolution.

Another quick check is to place the image, then print the page on your printer. If it looks sharp there, chances are that it will look right in your printed bulletin.

Fortunately for you, we work hard at J. S. Paluch to make sure that every image that we post to the Subscriber Resource Center (SRC) has the appropriate resolution for printing. As long as you download the image properly, you can be sure that our images will look good in your printed bulletin. When you use images from other sources, you just have to be a little more careful.

Thank You! ¡Gracias! Grazie!

The wonderful businesses that show their support by advertising in your weekly bulletin deserve special recognition and thanks. Advertisers know that their ad is a good investment for them when they know that your parishioners are patronizing their business because of it. Please consider including a notice like this one in your bulletin on a regular basis, perhaps monthly.

Dear Friends,

Today I would like to take a moment to recognize some important partners of (name of parish). Sometimes we take our Sunday bulletin for granted, but on the back page are ads from the companies that support us year-round. Please take some time today to look over our bulletin ads and when you patronize those businesses or services, say thank you from (name of parish). No one ever tires of hearing thank you. Our bulletin advertisers will appreciate it. They are part of our success at (name of parish).

(Name of Pastor)

Including graphics or headings such as “Advertiser of the Week” or “Special thanks to our advertisers for making this bulletin possible” are also great ways to remind parishioners of the contribution that advertisers make. A little thankfulness really does go a long way!

Advertiser artwork can be located on the Subscriber Resource Center at www.jspaluch.com. Use Keyword search: thank you.

Three Common Questions

 

When there are as many people who use our bulletin resources on the J. S. Paluch Subscriber Resource Center (SRC) as we have, there are bound to be questions that come up fairly regularly. Here are three of the most common questions we receive, along with our answers. Remember, if you have a question about the resources on the SRC, you can always feel free to ask us, and we’ll be sure to answer you quickly and thoroughly.

Q: Can we use the images and other resources that I find on the SRC in our parish newsletter (or other publication, or parish web site)?

A: Yes, you can use anything that your find on the SRC for any parish publication, including your web site, as long as you don’t charge anything for it, and as long as you include the copyright/credit line with the image or article in your publication.

Q: I’m working ahead, and I don’t see any photo covers for X date. Can you help me?

A: This kind of question often arises around the holidays when bulletin editors are trying to get ahead by more than a month. In some cases, it comes up because bulletin editors are accustomed to finding the covers they need under the Photo Covers tab. While this is a quick and handy way to get to the covers you want, by design it is limited to covers for only the next four weeks, so that it doesn’t get too unwieldy. If you need a cover for more than four weeks away, chances are that you can find it if you go to the All Resources tab select a date under the Choose a Sunday drop-down. You might also bear in mind that most of our resources are available for the whole year, but some, like the dated photo covers, are posted only six to eight weeks in advance.

Q: Do you have an image or article for this occasion, or saint, or topic?

A: Sometimes you can do a very thorough search and just not come up with the thing you are looking for. Maybe it’s buried under an obscure key word or maybe we just don’t have it. When that happens, please contact your trainer and we will either help you find it (then update our key words to make the item easier to find) or work to get that item posted to the SRC as fast as possible. Much as we pride ourselves on our vast collection of resources, sometimes we just don’t have the thing that you are looking for, so we will do our best to provide it for you as soon as you ask. And then it will be there for others to use as well.

Never hesitate to ask us a question. If we don't have the answer right away, we will find it for you. Your questions help us to grow and improve. Some of the best resources and features that we have are there because somebody asked for them.

creative creations in black and white

 

Click the link below to watch a step-by-step tutorial on creating these design elements

https://www.jspaluch.com/content/creative_creations_blog.pdf

https://www.jspaluch.com/content/creative_creations_2021-06-09.mp4

Happy Anniversary (to us)!

 

Paluch Connections just passed our one-year anniversary this week! Especially during this pandemic year, we have tried to be a bright spot for all of you bulletin editors. Looking back over the past year, I can see articles on a wide variety of topics for bulletin editors in many different situations. Many of you receive the blog updates from Paluch Connections in your email box, and so may not be regular visitors to the blog itself. May I suggest that you take the time in the coming weeks to visit paluchblog.jspaluch.com and discover what you may have missed over the past year? Here is a small sampling of the titles of our posts from the past twelve months:

Treasures from Our Tradition

The Mighty Template

Common Bulletin Layout Mistakes

Not All PDFs Are Created Equal

Shortcuts for Busy Bulletin Editors

When Copy/Paste is a No-No

It Was Here a Minute Ago!

There are many more informative and useful articles that you won’t want to miss. 

When you visit the blog page, look over to the column on the right, where it says “Blog Archive.” Click on the little triangle arrow next to 2020 or 2021, and then again on the arrow next to any of the months to see what treasures are here for you. Perhaps you will find (or rediscover) just the tip you didn’t know you needed!

We promise to keep posting more informative and helpful ideas for you in the coming year. Happy Anniversary to us and to you!

Wordsmith

 

It can be a challenge to design a page that consists mostly of text. It can also be a challenge for your reader. The eye is more comfortable navigating in shorter column-width spaces rather than across a full page of copy. Luckily, there are many techniques to break up lengthy articles and make the page more visually appealing to the reader’s eye and your overall design.

An easy way to start off a page with lots of text is a drop cap. Drop caps add visual appeal and if your bulletin allows for it, color. 

Another great way to break up a long section of text is with columns. Smaller sections of type make reading easier on the eye and the division of such a large amount of text is more visually appealing in column format.

Another simple element is infusing color (or font attributes such as bold and italic if color is not part of your bulletin design) to draw the eye. People typically read by skimming the page for topics of interest. Adding visual breaks through color or bold typefaces make it easier for the reader to recognize topic changes or important elements of a large story.

 

Finally, use a pull-quote (or two!). A pull-quote is a small section of the text pulled out of the article and placed in a larger typeface to draw attention. Pull-quotes are typically outlined with rule lines or placed in shaded text box as seen in this example. This typographical technique grabs attention and is typically used to place emphasis on a section of text. An interesting and well-placed pull-quote invites the reader to return to the story.

 

In the end, the main objective is to make the layout appealing so that your reader is invited into the article and actually does that—read it! After all, the message is the most important part.

 

New! Monthly Text Pages

You asked. We listened.

There is a “text page” posted to the J. S. Paluch Subscriber Resource Center (SRC) for every Sunday of the year. These “text pages” are made up of items such as Today’s Readings, Readings for the Week, Saints and Special Observances, scripture reflections, weekly features, and pithy quotations. They come in both English and Spanish versions.

Some of our bulletin customers who like to work on multiple bulletins at once have asked if it is possible to combine these text pages into a monthly version. This would contain the text items for all the weeks of a month. In response, we have created both monthly and annual versions. You can find the monthly files on the SRC weekly page on the first week of each month. The file will always have a title like “e04AprTextPage” (English) or "s04AprTextPage" (Spanish).

You will also see the files if you go to the Text Pages tab, as long as the first week of the month is showing on that page. And finally, all the monthly and the annual text pages can be found using the key word search “text page 2021.” So now you can easily download the content of the text pages for a whole month, several months, or even a whole year!

Do the [Copy]Right Thing

    One question that we get often enough concerns how the resources that we provide can be used. Our answer is that you can use anything that you find in the J. S. Paluch Subscriber Resource Center (SRC) for any parish bulletin, publication, or web page as long as you don’t sell it. So, for example, you can put it in your parish newsletter, but not in a parish cookbook that you are selling to raise money. The only other condition is that you retain the copyright notice that appears with the resource, whether it’s an image or a text file. Don’t delete it or crop it out. These notices let readers know who owns the rights to that item. You’d be surprised how many reprint requests we get for our material because someone has seen something of ours and identified us as the holder of the rights to it. These notices also give credit to other authors and rights-holders when the material is something that we have obtained permission from someone else for you to use in your parish publications. It is only fair to them that you include the copyright that identifies their work or property.

    On a related note, we know that our bulletin editors like to use art and resources from many other sources, especially things that you find online. And we will print whatever you put in your bulletins. But you must take responsibility for finding out who owns the rights to that material and under what conditions they permit you to use it. Sometimes they will grant you permission for free, perhaps only for one-time use. Sometimes you will be asked to pay to use something from another source in your bulletin. You should do so gladly; someone has put effort into creating an image or an article, and they should be compensated for their work. This also means that if you see something that has a copyright notice on it and you can’t track down the owner for permission, it is better not to use it in your bulletin. Even works that you see online without a copyright notice should be treated carefully and the owner sought—someone else may have deleted the notice! You can’t assume that you have blanket permission to use any art or words that you want just because you’re putting them in a church publication. If you have any doubt at all about your ability to use an item in your parish publications, err on the side of caution and leave it out. Yes, it takes more time and trouble to track down copyright holders and request reprint permission, but in the end it is always best to be honest and do the [copy]right thing.

Hyperlinks

 

More readers are viewing the weekly bulletin online than ever before. Helping those readers link to websites or email addresses cited in your bulletin can make it easier for them to navigate directly to those pages. Here are a few, simple steps for Microsoft Publisher users: 

• Type the website or email address
• Highlight the address and right click
• Click HYPERLINK
• At the bottom of the window in the ADDRESS box, retype the address or email
• Click OK

 Create a PDF and test the hyperlink – if it did not carry over, follow these steps:

• Click Edit Text tool, then highlight the text that you want linked
• Right click > Create Link.
• Under Link Action, select Open a web page and click Next.
• Then paste in the URL and hit OK and the text then has a hyperlink to the URL page.

Classic Images

Every now and then you might want a “traditional” image of a Bible scene or saint like you might see on a holy card. While images such as these appear regularly on the weekly covers, sometimes you may want something without text on it, or just a little different from the cover art. If that is the case, then one place you can turn to for such classic images is the Subscriber Resource Center’s Classic Images page.

Clicking on Classic Image tab will take you to a page with these images listed in alphabetical order by title. They include images of the saints, of Mary, and of Jesus. The images show scenes from the Bible as well as depictions of Mary and Jesus by their titles. They are by well-known artists and lesser-known artists and are suitable for use on feast days, saints’ days, and whenever they match the readings of the week.

Take a browse through the Classic Images and see what beauty you can add to your bulletin.

Picture This!: How to Use the Different Images in the Subscriber Resource Center

 

J.S. Paluch’s Subscriber Resource Center provides numerous images for you to use weekly throughout your bulletin. However, you may be wondering: “Where is the best place for this image in my bulletin?”

 

Here are some ideas of how to better utilize our images within your bulletin:

1- Full Page Cover Photos

Cover photos are best used for your front page. They are large scaled images that include Sunday’s date, the type of Sunday, and a quote from one of the Sunday readings. We provide several different images in English and Spanish and in color and black and white. You can use these images to fill the entire front page or if you have a large space to fill in between your church information.

 

Tip:

If you are a bilingual bulletin and need the cover in both languages on the same image, we also provide the same cover photos without text so that you can add any text you’d like to the image.

 

You can manually type out the information in both languages as shown here.

2- Half Page Cover Photos

Half page cover photos are smaller versions of the full page cover photos. Just like full page cover photos, these also have the Sunday, date, and a quote from the Sunday readings. As shown here, you can use the photo as a way to break up text on your page. You can also use these images for smaller areas that you may need to fill on your cover page.

 

3- Sunday Reflections

It’s one of the first images you’ll find when you search for images in our Subscriber Resource. This image contains a border with the Sunday and date, and text with reflections on the Sunday homily and readings. You’ll also notice that the Sunday readings are also listed on the bottom right corner of the image. These images are typically used as a full page filler for one of the inside pages. We have these images available in English and Spanish and in black and white.

4- Borders

Borders you’ll see mimic the cover photos in that they will have the same images, the Sunday, date, and the same quote from the Sunday readings. Just like cover photos, we have English and Spanish and black and white versions available. These can be used in various way throughout the bulletin.

Here are a couple of ways that you can incorporate the borders into your bulletin design:

5- Additional Images

While we have lots of images with the dates and Sundays, we also have additional images that  complement the Sunday readings or they may just be general images with no text. These images can be used throughout your entire bulletin to break up some of your text. It’s helpful to add some other elements other than just all text. Images can draw eyes in and make the design more exciting to look at. These images are available in English and Spanish and in color and black & white.

 

6- Saints and Special Observances

Additionally, we also have images depicting the saints we celebrate for the week and any additional observances that correlate with the week you are working on. We also have Saint Snippets which is a weekly cartoon we feature with a saint of the week we recognize, along with a quotation. We have English and Spanish and color and black & white versions of all images.

Tip:

In our text files for each week, we also include a weekly calendar of saints and special observances celebrated. To add an extra element to the text file, you could add one of the images to  accompany the text.

7- Children’s cartoons & activities

For the kids, we have several different activity pages that you can add into your bulletin. These can be a full page or fill larger space of the bulletin. We also have the Pastor Al and The Little Ones comic strips that can be used to fill smaller areas of your bulletin. The Letters from Heaven activity is available in color and black and white. All other activity pages and comic strips are available in black & white only.