InDesignSecretsCreating 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!
We just upgraded from CS2 to CS4. We had a custom crop setup for Japanese crops in CS2. We work in InDesign, and could select these Japanese crops through the drop down menu during the export dialog sequence. Now that we’re on CS4, we need to customize the crops options again. These custom crops are .mrk files; I believe they originally went into the PrintSPT folder. I can’t find that folder on CS4.
Can you point us in the right direction? Thanks.
Brenda
Brenda, what OS are you using?
In my OS X Leopard (with CS4), the PrintSpt folder
is still at the same location as before (HD/Library/Application Support/Adobe/PrintSpt).
We have successfully altered our .mrk file to what we want except for spot plates across multiple pages. If we have, for example, FOIL and GLITTER as spot colours on page 1, it does put those names onto the PDF. It also puts the two spot colour names on page 2 despite there only being 4 colour process on page 2. Is there a way to only have the plate names appearing that occur on a particular page in a multi-page pdf? We are using CS3.
Many thanks
I am Using CS5 on a windows7-machine. I can´t find the printspt-folder. Can anyone help me?
Regards Chris
@Christian: Unfortunately, I haven’t found anyone who has found this folder in Windows 7. It has either gone away or is very well hidden. Sorry!
where to find or put the PrintSpt folder in VISTA.
Still noone around who has located the printspt folder in windows7/cs5 ?
Would be very helpful!
Thanks – Frank.
So I’m running Mac OS 10.6.8 and CS5, and I am trying to manually tile a page and have the page info show up, even when I crop very close up. Is there a way to do this? I tried the .mrk file and got it to show in my Marks and Bleed settings, but I can’t get it to do anything when I tile. Any suggestions?
@ Paul or anyone else: How did you get the spot color names to show on a composite pdf?
@ Carina, I am on CS5 as well, where did you find the .mrk file, I cannot locate on my mac, thanks
@ Jon, mine was in “/Library/Application Support/Adobe/PrintSpt”
After 2 hours looking for that printSpt ..
I;m using CS5 and Windows 7
It is here
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\PrintSpt
Good luck
Amit