Indesign Secrets

David wrote up a great post the other day about how to use Nested Styles with a non-OpenType font so that any numbers in the text use a different typeface automatically — an expert set of Small Caps that’s part of the same typeface family. Toward the end of the post he said, “Now, I would be remiss in my duty if I didn’t also add that it may just be time to upgrade your fonts to OpenType versions, which may have expert or SC fonts built in. That’s so much easier to deal with!”

So true; but it reminded me that for some unlucky people, OpenType Small Caps can turn nasty, at the most inopportune times.

As I mentioned (but didn’t go into great detail about) in my May 2008 column for CreativePro.com, one of my favorite InDesign techniques is to lift interesting silhouettes from photographs to use as InDesign text, image or unassigned frames that I fill with a color or something.

For example, you can convert these three images (all from the Photoshop Samples folder, inside the Photoshop application folder):

Adobe informed its trainers today that people who are InDesign CS2 Adobe Certified Experts (ACEs) have until May 31, 2008 to take and pass the InDesign CS3 re-certification exam and thus remain current with their ACE status. (Otherwise they lose their certification and have to “start over” with the the full exam, which is more expensive, longer, and can only be taken at a proctored location.) The new date is a full month past the original deadline of April 30, 2008.

Listen in your browser:
InDesignSecrets-076.mp3 (10.8 MB, 23.4 minutes)
(the transcript of this podcast will be posted soon)

• Fun News: MTV (post), Poster discounts, InCopySecrets debuts
• Binary EPS files (post), Weak Preflighting (post)
• Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Altitude
• Quizzler! With a neat new prize for the lucky winner

Photoshop is the program you see all the time on television, especially detective shows. “Can you zoom in on the license plate?” they ask the electronics geek, who obligingly drags the Zoom tool around around a cloudy blob and runs the CSI Filter, snapping the numbers into crisp focus.

But when do you ever see Illustrator (”Can you live trace that license plate?”) or Acrobat (”Can you OCR that license plate?”) or InDesign (”Can you wrap some text around that license plate?”) — never! is what I would have said, until last week, when I spied a tell-tale overset text frame right there on channel 245.

Tom e-mailed this question:

In Quark one had access to the control bar with a keyboard shortcut (command-option-M). Is there a shortcut in InDesign to get into the first field of the control palette?

Yes, the one you’re looking for is Command-6 (Control-6 on Windows). That highlights the first field in the Control panel regardless of which mode it’s in. Use the Tab key to move the focus to the next field(s), Shift-Tab to move back.

Other ones I find useful for the Control panel:

Have you ever needed to break the news to a kid that there is no Santa Claus? Seen the tears well up in their big brown eyes? You can relive that unique experience with new InDesign users. Just ask them to select some text, and then go to the Language menu (in the Control or Character panel) and click.

Listen in your browser:
InDesignSecrets-075.mp3 (11.6 MB, 25.2 minutes)
(the transcript of this podcast will be posted soon)

• News: Discount codes for InDesign Magazine and conference fees, Adobe TV
• An end to transparency issues! (Steve Werner’s post)
• Using and customizing contextual (right-click) menus
• Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Ignore Optical Margin
  

Adobe TV debuted today with a wealth of ready-to-view video content, much of it aimed at InDesign-using graphic designers. What’s nice is that you don’t need to run out and buy an HDTV — just go to http://tv.adobe.com and watch the shows in your browser. (You may be prompted to install the Flash Player v9 plug-in, because the Adobe TV “network” is also a proof-of-concept showcase for its just-released product, the Adobe Media Player.)

I just finished watching three of the 47 programs currently available, each belonging to one of their four Adobe TV “channels:” Designer, Photographer, Video Professional, and Developer. I only meant to watch just one show, because I have work to do, but it was like potato chips. Just one more. Okay one more. Finally I tore myself away to write this up!

While some of the content appears to be repurposed video from existing podcasts and training companies (lynda.com, Total Training, the Creative Suite podcast), what I loved were the “made-for-Adobe TV” shows like Caffe Fibonacci, Tim Cole and Rufus Deuchler’s “digital kitchen:”

Compared to adjusting tab stops in paragraph styles, adjusting them in tabbed text is a cakewalk: just open the Tabs panel (Type > Tabs) and start dragging tab stops around. The panel snaps to the top of the text frame (assuming there’s room for it) and adjusts its tab ruler width to match the text […]