Comments on: Making Dynamic Text Wrap Permanent

By: Aaron

Aaron — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 02:33:41 +0000

Great tip, Anne-Marie. It’s nice that these older posts are here for posterity; a confused InDesign user is just a simple search away from clarity.

By: Klaus Nordby

Klaus Nordby — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:16:35 +0000

Anne-Marie, drop that attitude! It’s just a silly effectation on your part, and it has no affect on anyone!

By: James Wamser

James Wamser — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 23:11:22 +0000

Great Tip Anne-Marie!

Regarding the Flattening comments: We are using the Adobe PDF Print Engine (PDF/X-4) which does not require Flattening, although I agree with Dan Curry above that editing a PDF is a PITA.

By: Bilgin Ozkan

Bilgin Ozkan — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:47:01 +0000

“as long as the images haven’t been broken into multiple pieces from transparency flattening”

On another note, how do you prevent images being broken into multiple pieces? This is something I run into all the time at work.

By: Wa Veghel

Wa Veghel — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:18:07 +0000

Great tip!

By: Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:13:46 +0000

Jeff, you’re right … I’ll fix it. The effects/affects thing is weak spot in my writing, I’ve learned. Thanks for the eagle eye!

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:37:33 +0000

“…but even a small color adjustment that effects the edge pixels could force an adjacent character…”

Forgive my being anal, but shouldn’t that be “affects”?

By: Chris M.

Chris M. — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:33:34 +0000

I never knew that you could edit a path made from detect edges and it becomes independent of the original file changing, so this is very useful to me. In order to get the ultimate level of control some designers I know just draw an empty path independent of the image and make a text wrap around that, but this is much more efficient. I still like using that method though since the auto generated paths, even from alpha channels or Photoshop paths, tend to be way too complicated and not as smooth on the text.

Note that in CS2 it’s slightly different. It doesn’t say that the path is user modified, but it is. Also you can’t modify the distance from the path to the text and if you click “Include Inside Edges” then the path reverts back to its edge detected form. Very interesting.

By: Dan Curry

Dan Curry — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 20:24:55 +0000

As a 12-year prepress vet, I can tell you that editing images in a PDF is a major PITA. In some versions of Acrobat, it will even change the stacking order of the image if you edit it. We only do it as a last resort.

Sending along the native files is always a good idea, especially if the design is transparency-happy and no attention has been paid to stacking order with regard to flattening. Many of the designers I deal with have no clue how to analyze their file to look for possible flattening issues (I Love You, Flattener Preview!)

By: Klaus Nordby

Klaus Nordby — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:39:23 +0000

Oh, very interesting — thanks! I knew I could edit an auto-made text-wrap path, but not that doing so creates such a User-Modified Path, which then becomes “frozen” and not “live” anymore. Good stuff!