Indesign Secrets

I usually stick to things that can be done automatically within InDesign, but every now and then, you can’t avoid the fact that some things just haven’t made it into the product yet. In this episode, I demonstrate two methods for getting a solid-to-transparent gradient into your layout. It should be a lot more simple […]

Currently there are over twenty official InDesign User Groups having regular meetings across the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe. The newest ones are in Toronto, Canada, and Dallas, Texas. Lucky for you if you’re near a meeting — but if you’re not, lucky for you that Chris Converse brings the meetings to you!

Independent designer/author Chris […]

Lisa wrote:Can you apply styles to tables? Such things as stroke colour & weight, fill colour, column width, space before and after etc… pretty much everything available in the Table Options and Cell Options in the Table palette.

Anyone who knows me or the books I’ve co-authored, such as Real World Photoshop CS2 or Real World InDesign CS2, knows that I’ve been a pretty staunch opponent to using sRGB in the Color Settings dialog box for any of the Creative Suite applications. I’ve also advocated making sure that you use the same setup in the Color Settings dialog boxes of all the Suite applications (so they’d be Synchronized). But that changed recently during a discussion with Real World Color Management co-author Chris Murphy.

Listen in your browser:
InDesignSecrets-023.mp3 (10.2 MB, 19:07 minutes)
or read the transcript of this episode

• The answer to — and winner of — our first InDesign Quiz Contest
• Free InDesign Secrets plug-in, “Tip of the Day” for Mac or Windows, InDesign CS or CS2
• That Ink Manager option: What do Lab color values have to do with spot colors?
• Peter Kahrel’s incredibly useful script, “Add A Page”
• Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Position tool

InDesign expert Peter Kahrel wrote a free script for InDesign users that solves a common annoyance, and is graciously sharing it with other InDesign fans here at InDesignSecrets.com.

Normally, when you’re writing your Great American Novel and come to the end of the last page’s text frame, InDesign just oversets that frame, it doesn’t add a page for you. You have to do that yourself, and then thread the overset frame to a new one on the new page. Only then can you switch back to the Type tool and continue typing.

Peter’s cross-platform Javascript is called Add-a-Page…

Ian from Switzerland writes:

I cannot print through InDesign nor Illustrator, the little color spinning wheels spins forever, basically I have to do a force-quit everytime.

I tried resetting the OS (X.4.6) printing system and have this idea that it has to do with Flashpaper being installed. When I read the default print prest in the InDesign box it says Flash paper… which makes no sense as my main printer is an Epson and is the one configured as main in the system preferences.

Preference files for applications can become corrupt without warning: They hire their relatives for high-paying jobs they’re not the least qualified for, they bribe judges, plant evidence, hide ill-gotten gains in unnumbered offshore accounts, steal candy from babies and make your mama cry.
Or they just make your program act strangely.
The fix is to replace the […]

Adobe released InDesign 4.0.3 and InCopy 4.0.3 for both Macintosh and Windows today. The latest patch fixes a number of bugs and glitches with graphics, text, converting documents, and “performance” (slow downs and unexpected quits).
InCopy CS2 users will be especially interested in this update since according to the ReadMe that accompanies the update, 4.03 squashes […]

Within hours of posting the long-overdue Episode 23, I finally started catching up on other things — including the second half of the latest episode of David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepcion’s InDesign Secrets podcast, which I had only heard the beginning of.
To my extreme embarrassment, I discovered that for the first time since both podcasts […]