Creating Custom Printer Marks in InDesign
M. asked:
Can I customize the crop marks and registration marks that InDesign creates?
I never thought you could until Olav Martin Kvern, my co-author on Real World InDesign discovered a secret method using PMD (also known as .mrk) files. It’s obscure, it’s not necessarily for the faint of heart, but it’s not that hard and it’s very powerful.
For example, you could make an .mrk file that places the page information on the page instead of outside the trim area. This might be helpful if you were printing a Letter sized page on Letter sized paper and didn’t have room for the crop marks and page info.
Ole and I wrote up the MRK file definition in Real World InDesign, but we’ve decided to post that section here as a PDF file for everyone to enjoy.
The PDF file includes several examples, including some source code that you can download from here. For example, there’s a mrk file that makes InDesign’s printer marks look very similar to those found in QuarkXPress.
The description includes a list of customization codes and explanations for how to type them in an MRK file, including detailed illustrations such as this one:
Obviously, if you like this kind of InDepth information, we hope you’ll go ahead and buy the whole book itself.
By the way, I know someone here is going to say, “Dude! Where’s the CS3 version of the book?” Well, we’re working on it as fast as our fingers can go. It should be out in another couple of months. You can order a prerelease version at Amazon.com and be the first in your neighborhood to get it!
David (and Ole) thanks so much for making that PDF available!
But it took me for-EV-er to find the button that would let me downoad it. Could you make it a little bigger?
Jumping jackrabbits, Batman, this should have been the “Obscure Feature of the Year… ear… ear…” in Episode 52. Thanks for posting the PDF. I had no idea you could do this.
Hi guys
Is there a way to customize the way ID’s page information slug is formatted (6 pt, lower left corner) by default?
Thanks as always-
Skip Baker
Newcombe: Did you download and read the PDF? You can make your own custom mark, including changing the size and position of the page info slug. To make this the default, you need to change the default printer preset.
This is very useful! Thanks so much for sharing.
I am creating a PMD according to the directions, but I wonder if there is a way to NOT define an element (color bar, for example) and have the default show. I find when printing all marks using a PMD with an undefined element, it does not print that element even if all printer’s marks are checked in the print dialog. (also, I figured I could copy from the default PMD and paste into my own, but I cannot find any default .mrk files. ) I guess my question is: how can I get a copy of the default.mrk? Thanks so much!!
Hi, This is great. I wish i’d known about this before a previous project of ours. We met a lot of issues regrading printers marks that dont match the source file. Our team got in trouble because of that simple thing. Anyhow, Is there a way to change the font of the page information? Say I want it to display courier, exactly how quark displays it?
Karoldev, I believe it normally does use Courier, no? There is a sample in that PDF (or at least in Real World InDesign CS2) that shows how to make a QuarkXPress style of printer marks.
Very cool, thanks. Has anyone found a way to get the CMYKTextColor parameter to work for the slug text? I tried entering ” CMYKTextColor [0 1 0 0]” for magenta, along with other variations, but no love.
Is there a PrintSpt folder for CS3? We’re migrating and would like to keep our *.mrk files from CS2 to use for InDesign CS3.
MHong, yes this appears to work in CS3, too.
Does anything allow you to alter where InDesign decides to cut off the page information on the right side? Our files have long names due to job numbers, descriptors, size info, version numbers, etc., and the name is always cut off. This makes it difficult for our AEs to keep different printouts separate from each other. With Quark we never had that problem. Thanks for your help!
Alan, the “cut off” is based on the bleed amount. Perhaps you just need to increase the bleed value on the right side?
Thank you soooo much. All I wanted to do was to control the length of the crop marks. This simple solution has alluded me for a long time.
I managed to get the plate colors to not print on top of each other, however the pantone names do not show up, only cmyk. They do show up if I print separations, but I need to export composite pdf’s. Any help with this is appreciated.
David, thanks for replying. Perhaps I wasn’t clear in explaining my problem, but just in case I attempted several different bleed settings, to no effect. The name still cuts off after 32 characters, with “1 1″ added at the end, presumably to indicate section and page numbers. The name never so much as crosses the center of the document, much less gets close to the right side bleed. Thanks for your help.
The name cuts off after 32 characters, with “1 1? How to define the “PubName” length? is there any options… Kindly need your help. Thanks in advance.
I’m sorry, but I don’t have any good suggestions for you. It sounds like a limitation of ID. Perhaps they’ll remove that in a future version. In the meantime, you might want to use variables and slug area to handle that data.
All I want to do is change the font for the page information from Times New Roman to Helvetica. Can I do that?
Many thanks for the .pdf excerpt and outstanding tip. I’m in CS3 and cannot find a “PrintSpt” folder. Any suggestions?
I am editing the Quark style code to get rid of the “Platecolor” from the page information. However if I delete the format string and the info value none of the information prints. Can you help?
This is a fantastic site.
The PrintSpt folder can be found here on a Mac – HD/Library/Application Support/Adobe.
Tim, I’m glad you like the site, but unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer for you for this edit. There’s no good documentation on this, so a lot of it comes down to trial and error.
Like Eric, I’m bursting to try this out in CS3, but I cannot for the life of me find out where to find or put the PrintSpt folder in XP.
(Sorry if this posts twice.) In XP, the folder is in %commonprogramfiles%\Adobe, and the tip works very well. Thanks to you both.
Hi,
Anyone know if the is a way of putting the file path on the page information?
@Bartleby: You can add the file path (and other file info) using text variables. I talk about how in this post.
I tried the Quark-esque sample in IDCS3 (we recently switched and our plateroom doesn’t like the change) and got a strange echo with gibberish characters behind the plate information (Process Black) when outputting as composite gray.
When I copy-paste the string out of a resulting PDF, the text turns out to read thus:
(Process CMYBCMYBelelyaalglclconekekw))n)ta)
Which looks like it’s jumbling the plate information for all the parts of the composite.
Now, this is clearly an issue with the way Indesign’s designing the string for plate information, and the proper plate information is readable, but does anyone have any ideas on how I could clean this up?
I use OSX, CS3. Did everything I was told to get the .mrk file into the right folder so InDesign would print registration marks like Quark to make my pressroom happy — but the film looked exactly the same. Any ideas what happened?
@Scott: You still need to choose your mrk file in the Type pop-up menu, in the Marks & Bleed pane. (It’s usually set to Default.) Does that help?
That seems do have done the trick. Thanks for the quick help.
Well, I got the custom marks, but now I can’t get anything to come out of the Panther even remotely correct. I have all of the page size info set the same as Quark, but my pages are coming out with just portions, and always turned 90 degrees.
I’ve tried it on a few different machines, and it’s always screwed up. I’m wondering if there’s something screwy in the .mrk file that is throwing the Panther a curveball, or if I don’t have the most recent drivers installed on my Panther.
Hi David
I like this a lot!
)
But I have one final wish. In my company, we would like to be able to see, from which user the document was printed.
Is there any way to include initials for the user currently logged in to the system in the mrk fil. As far as I can see I can’t use InfoValues for this one, and I’m wondering how to do it then.
In the oooold days of Quark we we’re actually able to do exactly that, and I’m a bit amazed if IDCS2 can’t do it. Please help.
)
We’re in CS2 at the moment btw.
@Robert: Check out my answer to Bartleby above.
I have a problem finding the PrintSpt folder for IDCS3 in windows Vista. Can any one help me with this? Thanks a lot….
I get this message (printed where the page info should be) when using the mrk files posted here. I am using IDCS3 in Vista.
PAGEMARKS DEFINITION FILE ERROR
Ideas?
@Tom and @David: I’m sorry, but I don’t have a copy of Vista to try this on right now. (I’ve secretly made the executive decision that Vista never really happened, and that all Windows users will skip from XP to Win7.)
I have never seen that error, so I’m not sure what could be going on. Weird.
Is there a way to change the color of the crop and bleed marks using the .mrk file?
I’m using CS3. I’m outputting an all black job and I don’t want the crop and bleed marks to be in spot color named “all” (the printing people object to it for some reason!).
@Jim: I don’t think the crop marks are in a spot color; what makes you think that? They’re in “registration” color (all color plates). But no, I don’t think there’s any way to change the color itself.
I’ve just tried the marks file on vista with CS4 and I’m also getting the pagemarks definition error.
The lines appear in the top left corner of the page but then I get the error.
Print your file with no printer marks. Take it over to Adobe Acrobat Pro and add the tombo marks there.
You have the option of selecting the type of marks you want.