Comments on: InDesign Eye Candy, part 2: Shine On

By: Lee

Lee — Fri, 22 May 2009 10:54:17 +0000

Personally, I hate that shiny look as I associate it with Apple, and everything Apple represents.

To me, it says: “this product is made out of durable, wipe-clean plastic, so your toddler can pretend he’s using a grown-up’s product without any of the dangerous sharp edges (or complicated features) of the real thing.”

Yes, I’m not the biggest Apple fan! I know it’s really only a matter of personal preference, but this is how Apple products make me feel: constrained, sanitised and patronised.

By: Adi Ravid

Adi Ravid — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:21:31 +0000

One thing you can do to improve this technique, in both InDesign and Illustrator, is to use the Screen blending mode to apply the highlight gradient. This way you can change the color of the object to your liking, without the need to edit the colors of the highlighted area.
To do this for CMYK objects, you need the gradient shades to use an equal percentage of all CMYK channels. In this case, the 100% color = 100%C+100%M+100%Y+100K and 10% tint = 10%C+10%M+10%Y+10K.
After you apply this gradient to the the highlight object and set its blending mode to Screen, you can change the basic color of the object to whatever you want, while the highlight keeps shining on (and on, and on, and on…).

and..
To break that sharp chisel hard edge of the highlight, may I suggest applying a bit of Basic or Directional Feather to the object.

Also…
While Indesign forces us to use 2 separate objects for the body and highlight, in Illustrator you can use the Appearance panel to create the highlight as a secondary fill with Transform and Feather effects, and Screen blending mode applied to it.

By: Jason White

Jason White — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:13:06 +0000

I always make the circle white then use a gradient feather.

By: Eugene

Eugene — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:29:53 +0000

Indeed. I agree. Especially with the preview in the pages panel, can take an age to work, there’s many freezing moments happening.

I wish there was a way to turn off effects temporary like photoshops Hide Layer Effects.

By: Jerome

Jerome — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:19:50 +0000

While it is nice to have the ability to produce graphics like this in ID it can create some big problems once you enter the production phase of the project. These elements are editable so there is always the chance that you can accidently alter them when working on the document.

Also since they are live elements it creates more vector items on the page to draw and redraw when working on the page. I remember working on a book design where one spread had a 3-ring binder background with lined paper in it. It was expedient to do this in ID to start, but by the time it was done it took so long to redraw the page that it was unwieldy to work with. Luckily you can copy and paste out of ID to Illustrator once you have it designed the way you like it. I guess you could also export it in various ways, but I like the control of copy and paste and tweaking it in AI.

I have also gone the other way and built vector shapes in AI and pasted them into ID. AI’s drawing tools are a lot better than ID’s, especially when you take into account the Path and Pathfinder functions to build and alter shapes.

By: Mike Rankin

Mike Rankin — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:32:14 +0000

Eugene-

Yes! That thing is awesome. It kills me that the one thing missing from my AI 88 box is the video. Next time I’m out in Adobeland, maybe I’ll beg them to dig one out of their basement for me.

By: Eugene

Eugene — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:23:20 +0000

Mike – don’t forget the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNLFXKyCy0A

By: Mike Rankin

Mike Rankin — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:02:59 +0000

Long live AI! As someone who was pulling Venus’ vectors back when InDesign was a twinkle in Adobe’s eye, I’d never say InDesign is a substitute for Illustrator. Just the lack of a Blend tool is a “dealbreaker.” But I love how much you can do to fool the eye with just simple shapes and gradients right in ID. There are workflow considerations too that may make Illustrator the place to do this kind of work. Still, it’s nice to know you can do cool stuff in ID if you need to.

Also on the Illustrator front: If anyone’s interested in a trip down memory lane, here’s an “archaeological dig” I did last year thru an Illustrator 88 box, on its 20th birthday: http://publicious.net/2008/04/01/raiders-of-the-lost-art/

Fritz-
What can I say? The 8-Ball knows of your perfect score on the ACE.

By: Fritz

Fritz — Thu, 21 May 2009 13:19:44 +0000

Why do I get the feeling that the answer “go ask Fritz” is like go ask your father?

wait, does that mean Mike and I are married?

By: Steve Werner

Steve Werner — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:35:48 +0000

It’s very nice having the Illustrator-like effects in InDesign so you can do stuff like that.

That said, Illustrator remains the champ in that area. I was reminded of this as I was teaching a 2-day Illustrator class this week. Illustrator CS4, for example, added the ability to have transparency stops in the gradient. Why can’t we do that in InDesign?