Indesign Secrets

Our friend Carlie wrote us with a problem that was so perplexing (and the solution so vexing and unpleasant) that I must share it with you. She wondered why a placed PDF file — a CMYK image created in Illustrator — was changing its CMYK values upon output. After all, she was using Preserve Numbers […]

When you fill an object or text with the default [Black] swatch at 100% opacity, it overprints any color behind it. Objects using any other swatch or any other percentage of [Black] automatically knock out (create a hole in) background colors when the file is output to color separations for printing.
To force objects that would […]

Jim wrote:

I played with the Feather effect on one of our documents. When I applied a feather to one graphic, the feathered graphic AND the rest of the graphics on the page got lighter. In another file, applying a dropshadow caused the graphic to become lighter. What could be going on?

This is a common cry from InDesign users… “all the images suddenly changed! What happened?” You identified the cause perfectly: You added a transparency effect. When you add any kind of transparency effect — including placing an image that has tranparency in it, or using any of the features in the Effects panel — the whole spread may change because InDesign forces the display…

A mask covers your face so you can’t see it, right? And masking tape covers something so that when you paint over it, the thing under the tape (usually a wall or a window) doesn’t get painted. Digital masking tape is the same: It covers or masks something so you don’t see it.
Last year I […]

If you’re a productivity fanatic like me, you’re always searching out ways to use keyboard shortcuts for frequently-accessed choices from InDesign’s bazillion menus and panels. Armed with our trusty Keyboard Shortcuts poster, the ability to create custom shortcuts (for individual text and object styles, too), and our old friend Quick Apply, almost all formatting in InDesign can be done by selecting something and tapping out a shortcut.

Almost all. The tint field and the individual color swatches in the Swatches panel appear to have been left out of the keyboard shortcut party. They’re

PMF wrote: Can you make letters interlock in InDesign? That is, have part of a letter cross over another letter but have another part stay behind the letter so that it links rather than just goes on front or behind. I know you can do it in Photoshop, but is there a way to do it in InDesign?

I learned something new and interesting about InDesign while researching your question! I’ll get to that in just a moment First, the one thing that is for sure is: You can do this, but you have to convert the text to outlines.

Here’s the original three letters in a text frame…

As Pariah mentioned a while back, the ASE (adobe swatch exchange) system is great for moving color swatches back and forth among the Suite programs. But some swatches won’t come along for the ride… notably gradients. This is too bad, because Adobe Illustrator ships with some really cool gradients.

Now, I’m now Illustrator expert, but I know that I can find great gradient swatches in Illustrator’s Swatches panel flyout menu….

Elizabeth wrote: We recently printed a piece that used a metallic silver spot on uncoated stock (specifically, PMS 877U). When building the mechanical, we realized there is no Metallic Uncoated Pantone library accessible via the swatches palette in InDesign. Why is this?

While InDesign (CS2 or CS3) does ship with a whole mess o’ libraries, including Pantone Metallic Coated, it does not come with metallic uncoated. But you know what? You can always just make your own. This is an important aspect of spot colors: You can always build your own, and as long as you give it the right name, it’ll work….

Delia wrote: I recently worked on an internal design for a book, using black plus a spot (PMS) colour, but in the end I couldn’t delete the unused PMS colours from the Swatch palette. I would choose ’select all unused’ in the swatch palette and the colour would be highlighted, but when I tried to delete it by dragging to the trash, the trash icon would be ghosted.

You are not alone in this problem, Delia. This has plagued many InDesign usrs. Invincible color swatches (ones that cannot be deleted) usually occur when the spot colour has been used in a graphic (usually EPS, PDF, or PSD). Sometimes you don’t even realize the color is in the graphic, and there, and it’s not easy to figure out (though here’s one method). Unless you change or delete that graphic, you won’t be able to remove the color swatch.

However, occassionally, the color is really stuck, usually due…

Perhaps you know that InDesign’s Ink Alias feature (hidden inside the Ink Manager) lets you alias one spot color to another. But you can force it to alias to a process color, too, if you’re a bit tricky about it.

First, what is aliasing? Let’s say you have imported AI, PDF, and PSD files with spot color Pantone 286C, and you’ve used that same spot color to fill or stroke InDesign objects and type, too. Suddenly, your client tells you that they’ve changed their corporate color to “Pantone 235 C” and you need to update…