Indesign Secrets

Q: Why isn’t the InDesign pasteboard like the old PageMaker “perma-pasteboard,” available in every page?
—signed, Recovering PageMaker User
A: Dear RPMU,
It could be argued that the old PM pasteboard was more like a “real world” drawing board, with a plethora of persistent pieces perched in the periphery of your project. InDesign’s pasteboard is attached to one […]

Q: I have a CMYK swatch in InDesign. But now we want to use a spot color instead. Can InDesign tell me the closest Pantone color?
A: InDesign can’t do it alone, but with a little help from Photoshop, it’s possible:
1: Either note the CMYK (or RGB or Lab) values in InDesign, or take the easy […]

Q: I have created a silhouette for a model’s head in Photoshop by using a layer mask, but when I bring it into InDesign, the supposedly silhouetted head is floating on an opaque white background. My frame has a background of None, the image has the “checkerboard” background in Photoshop. Why isn’t it behaving correctly […]

Within Photoshop, a shadow set to Multiply blend mode will darken what’s underneath it. The Multiply blend mode is sort of like what happens when you sandwich two slides together and hold them up to a light: The strengths of the colors in the slides are combined. (I confess I think of them as being […]

Steve Werner has posted an excellent solution to the Dreaded White Box (DWB) syndrome, wherein you see white boxes around shadows and other transparency effects interacting with spot color content. The answer, as Steve points out, is for your print service provider to turn on PostScript Overprint at the RIP. (And, for correct viewing in […]