Indesign Secrets

Why do so many people want their all the text in their documents converted to outlines? Don’t answer that; I’ve heard the reasons, and they all make me sad. Nevertheless, some people do want all the text converted, and they find themselves up a creek because Type > Create Outlines doesn’t always give them what they want. Specifically, paragraph rules (rule above/below) disappear. Bullets and numbering disappear. Underlines and strikethroughs disappear. All kinds of stuff disappears, and that’s not good.

Fortunately, there is a better way to convert text to outlines…

Colette wrote to us wondering about that alarming message that sometimes appears when you print from InDesign:
This document may contain binary EPS files, which can cause the print job to fail. If the printer produces output, then the binary did not interfere with printing. Do you want to print this document?
This message has freaked out […]

We get plenty of questions regarding InDesign’s preflight feature, but they usually come down to, “What the heck?!” Here’s the problem: InDesign’s File > Preflight feature doesn’t totally suck, but it isn’t particularly good. However, because InDesign tends to be chock full o’ great features, users keep thinking, “I bet I just don’t get it. […]

When you print a page that is smaller than the paper on which you’re printing, InDesign gives you very little to indicate the page boundary. You could turn on crop marks in the Marks and Bleed pane of the Print dialog box, but that still won’t provide a clear edge from corner to corner. Many […]

About a year ago, when InDesign CS3 arrived, it brought with it a host of new ways to create transparency effects, using the new Effects panel. However, the question always comes up, “But will it print?”
At the same time that the Effects panel arrived, the solution to the printing problem arrived as well. This was […]

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 […]

Michael Ninness, Adobe’s Senior Product Manager of InDesign, opened The InDesign Conference in Miami today with a demo of some technology that Adobe is working on. He made it very clear that this was not necessarily going to be in any future version of InDesign, but that they’re considering it and wanted to get the […]

J.K. wrote:
I am in the process of printing a postcard out of InDesign CS3. The background was created in Photoshop CS3, and the information has been added with InDesign. When printing a proof from Photoshop, I get the color I expect to get. Printing out of InDesign, I do not. I even created a box […]

In the continuing soap opera revolving around whether InDesign CS3 is compatible with Apple’s latest operating system version, Leopard, a new chapter has been added, but the serial continues. On Monday, February 11, Apple released the latest update to Leopard—10.5.2. While it included a very large number of bug fixes and enhancements, it does not […]