Indesign Secrets

Jesi wrote: …When I copy and paste the entire ad into a different template and resize, the type size that is shown in the Character window stays the same, but the “actual” type size shows up behind it in parentheses. This is very frustrating as I’d like to see at a glance what my actual type size is.

Jesi, this is a huge problem for many people. The problem typically appears when you scale one or more text frames in a group. […]

We know that InDesign CS3 (due out in the Spring of 2007) will offer some special effects such as inner shadow. But what if you need that effect today? Here’s a quick step-by-step that gives you a credible inner shadow on any path.

Here we have a yellow frame. I chose Object > Content > Unassigned, […]

Branislav Milic reminded us that today is InDesign’s seventh birthday! Claudia McCue agreed, writing, “Adobe demo’d K2 at Seybold Boston in March 1999, and then announced shipping at Seybold San Francisco on August 30 or 31st 1999.”
After a short infancy (version 1.0) and a couple of years as a toddler (1.5), InDesign finally grew into […]

Many of us love the feature that allows us to copy Illustrator vectors and paste them into InDesign. The paths become InDesign vectors so they can be edited with InDesign’s Pen and other path-editing tools. But we’ve also run into a limitation: If our art is too complex, the copied objects print at high resolution, […]

In our latest podcast, David and I talked about setting fractions in InDesign. Part of that discussion was how to correctly use an OpenType font’s “Automatic Fractions” feature, which is enabled by choosing Fractions from the OpenType fly-out menu in the the Character palette menu (or Control palette menu in Character mode):

Afterwards I remembered an OpenType Fractions cheat sheet I had been working on last year for my training clients but never finished. I updated it with new information and am posting here as a free download: OTFractionsGuide.pdf (400K, 5 pages).

O’Reilly Digital Media’s Colleen Wheeler named InDesignSecrets as one of her top five audio podcasts on visual topics. She notes that on her long commute she enjoys listening to podcasts that discuss her interests, but that it’s rare to find good audio podcasts on topics that are usually visual in nature (such as InDesign and […]

Listen in your browser:
InDesignSecrets-029.mp3 (16.4 MB, 30:34 minutes)
(a transcript of this podcast will be posted in a few days)

• Preview of the upcoming InDesign Conference: Master Class
• Critical update to Markzware’s Q2ID plug-in (opens QuarkXPress v3-6 files in InDesign)
• Fraction Fixes: How to make good-looking fractions with and without an OpenType Pro font
• Quizzler Number 3! Instructions appear below
• Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Update Library Item

Adobe PDF files have become the closest thing we have to a universal format—platform-independent, and not requiring the original application or fonts that created the file. However, to be truly universal, PDF needs to be accessible. Accessible means that the PDF documents must be usable by people with disabilities, as well as people who read […]

A lot of new InDesign users (or experienced InDesign users new to working with tables) think that the only way to customize table fills and strokes is via those monstrous Table Options and Cell Options dialog boxes that you access via the Table menu or the Table palette menu.

After all, they have entire panels dedicated to Fill and Strokes of table elements. But unless you need a table-centric sort of feature (like Alternating Fill Color), you can just use the palettes you’re familiar with, like Swatches, Stroke and the Control palette.

Shelley wrote:

How can I save a separated PDF from InDesign? I know about the separations preview pallete - which is great, but I need to save each color (either C-M-Y-K, or a few PMS colors, depending on the job) on its own page.

HELP! I’m going mental.

We wouldn’t want that to happen …