Creating See-Through Text
April 26th, 2007Our colleague and contributor Pariah Burke came up with this fun trick (works in CS2 and CS3) for making transparent text in the article he and Anne-Marie wrote in the last issue of InDesign Magazine.
First, make a sandwich: Background image in back, then a frame with a fill of some color (such as Paper), then a text frame on top.
Select the text frame with the Selection tool and, in the Effects panel, set the Text Opacity (not the Object opacity!) to zero percent. The text will disappear. Don’t panic.
Group the text frame and the opaque colored frame together (Object > Group).
Turn on the Knockout Group checkbox in the Effects panel and you’re done!
Of course, you can easily go back and change the size of the opaque frame, or change its blending mode, or whatever. For example, here I’ve used the Direct Selection tool to make the frame larger (so that it covers the background image), then set its Opacity to 80% and its blending mode to Screen.
Note that you don’t have to use a separate colored frame. You can do this same effect with two frames: The background image and the text frame. Just set the background color of the text frame to Paper (or whatever color you want), change the opacity of the text, and then turn on Knockout Group. It still works, even though the “group” is just one object. But I don’t find this as useful because it’s hard to position the text inside the frame properly.
Of course, Branislav Milic also came up with another great way to do this using the Registration color and the Lighten mode in CS2, which he also wrote up for InDesign Magazine a year or so ago. But hey, we’re in CS3 now and this is sweet, easy, and flexible.
Well, CS3 might be the new dog on the block but CS2 is still the King of the Hill, and probably will be for the rest of the year for most large publishers.
I just tried this in CS2 and you can do this by just setting your text transparency to 0 and doing everything else the same way. Good stuff!
Jeff, you are right! As it says in the illustration above: Wow! I am embarassed to admit that I never even tried this in CS2! Thank you for trying it. I’ve edited the post above to make it clear that it works for CS2, too.
Jerome: You are, of course, correct. Most folks won’t have CS3 until later this year or even 2008. We will continue to provide both CS2 and CS3 tips here. (See? I was providing a CS2/3 tip here without even knowing it.
Now someone needs to try it in CS1!)
Happy to report (well I’d be happier with CS2 or CS3) it works in CS1 as well.
Hello! As a production person trying to learn more about InDesign designing, I am having a devil of a time finding the Effects panel. Is this a plug-in perhaps? Any help would be appreciated.Thank you!
Paula: In CS2 it’s called the Transparency palette. In CS3 it was given some new features and renamed the Effects panel.
Thank you! I appreciate it.
nice trick!!, illustrator users are very well familliar with this kind of transparency voodoo and its very nice to see how Indesign is gaining lots of what Illustrator and photoshop have especially in cs3, keep on the good wrok, Thank you.
David, thanks for this, and for your wonderful series on InDesign CS3, on Lynda.com. I didn’t imagine I could learn so much in so little time, and so easily. You are a great teacher. When will you complete the more advanced course?
u can also use the pathfinder: exclude upper object from object underneath.
That’s one step.
If I understand you correctly that would work but you’d need to convert the text to outlines.
The method David outlined above would keep the text live and therefore editable.
Bob, works in CS1 as described and with editable text without conversion to outlines.
Very nice hint, thank you.
Referring to what Roos said:
With this method you can add a drop shadow/outline/etc. Despite it being non-editable text, it seems you can do a lot more with it afterward.
Thanks Roos!
(oh, and thanks also to the InDesignSecrets gang!)