Stockholm Day 2
The second day of the conference went even better than the first.
I didn’t get to see any of the other speakers’s sessions as I was stuck in my own for most of the day. But our tips and tricks session at the end was loads of fun.
Richard Rönnbäck started the ball rolling with Branislav Millic’s world-famous tip on how to use Registration color to create editable text with an image within. Then he showed a variation using his own user-defined color for more effects. I always thought Richard was an older guy. Turns out he is. He just looks much younger.
Jan Suhr did some cool tips on exchanging colors using ASE files.
Kirsten Helge complained that Richard stole the tip she was going to do. But then showed some excellent tips on how to apply special effects such as drop shadows and feathers to first line drop caps.
We arm-twisted Nini Tjader into coming up and doing some tips. She entertained everyone with a load of ID Easter Eggs including the Friendly Alien and stroke effects.
But my total favorite effect was Richard’s second set of tips on working with layers.
He started off by showing a document with all sorts of specialized layer names. How do you quickly, and easily add those layers to new documents. Richard showed how to apply an object to each of those existing layers.
Then he showed how to grab all those objects and convert them into a snippet.
Then he turned on the Paste Remembers Layers command in the Layers palette.
Once they were in snippet form, the snippet could be dragged onto any new document. With Paste Remembers Layers on, the snippet automatically created the correct layers.
Cool!
I thought that tip about doin snippets and remember layers was originally Branislavs tip actually…
Mikael, attendee at the Indesign CS2-conference
I remember Branislav showing this trick in London last year.
My DEAR BRANISLAV!!!
I apologize completely!
While Richard gave you credit for his first tip, I don’t believe he credited you for the Paste Remembers Layers with Snippets tip.
Your brilliance amazes me, even when I don’t know it is you doing the brilliance!
Sandee
how about telling those who do not know “Branislav’s editable image-text tip” works how it is done. I sure could use it.
Thanx a lot
Gerd
Hi Sandee
How about telling us all how Branislav’s text image tip works.
I would really appreciate that. Thanx.
Gerd
P.S. To whoever sorts out problems with this website. It seems difficult for submitted comments to actually register!!!
It just came to me that you can use a variation of Branislav’s trick to put a vertically-oriented graduated fill “into” some text without having to worry about the fill wanting to extend the whole height of the text frame.
I just did this for a headline (in this case, I’m assuming that the text is on a white background):
1. Define a paragraph style that calls for the text to be set in the Registration Color. Give it a Rule Below that is colored Paper and is (say) 24 points set at -20 offset (so it extends 4 points below the baseline.
2. Create a rectangle that is 24 points high and the width of your columns. Give it the graduated fill, oriented at either 90 or 270 degrees as needed.
3. Paste the rectangle into the first insertion point of the paragraph and set its anchored object options so that it exactly sits over the paragraph rule.
4. And, the coup de grace: choose the transparency setting Lighten for the rectangle.
5. Finally, make an object style for the rectangle that includes the fill, transparency and anchored object settings, and make a paragraph style for the head.
Dave
Guys, the most important thing is not who pulls the plug first on a tip, the most important question is : when will this #!@&”‘# XPress die !
Dave, again you stunned me with the way you see things in ID.
While I did credit Branislav for the transparency trick I couldn’t credit him for the second, as I whipped it up just moments before showing it!
My original plan was to show how items stored in a library can do the same (of course) but knowing that snippets are just a description of objects and their properties it occurred to me that a snippet should work the same way as library objects do, and the minute before I got up on stage I tried it and thought “that’s even better”
I should have figured out that Branislav would already done it :-)
// Richard
Wow, whipped it up right in front of us!
Yes, I think we all have to agree that ANY tip we come up with, Branislav has already done!