By: Michael Murphy
October 24 2007 • 2:23 PM
The InDesigner - Episode 44: That’s a Wrap
It’s that little feature we all take for granted, but InDesign’s Text Wrap is a vast improvement over that other page layout application’s Runaround feature. This episode takes an in-depth look at all of InDesign’s Text Wrap options, reveals a few peculiarities to watch out for, and demonstrates the additional options added in CS3.
Download it now or watch it in your browser:
The InDesigner - Episode 44 (15:11 mins. | 31.9 MB)
I know I can create a clipping path with Object>Clipping Path and adjust the tolerance etc. what’s the difference using InDesigns Clipping path that it creates from Detect Edges, than just using the Detect Edges in the wrap around?
Plus, I know you can’t justify a text box that has an image with wrap on it, very annoying, but you can adjust the baseline options of that text frame to make it look justified, you could adjust the leading, but then you would have to adjust it for each time you made text edits as it would push paragraphs over to the next page and so on.
Thanks for another great video. It’s good to see things in action.
Nice job Michael!
Of course, you’ve picked one of my hot button features. And you nicely glossed over the things that drive me nuts about InDesign’s text wrap feature.
1. InDesign does a terrible job of wrapping a circle (particularly at the bottom).
2. If you have the wrap just where you want it but you want to nudge the graphic, you can’t without also moving the wrap.
3. (Conversely), if you have the graphic just where you want it but you want to nudge a custom wrap, you can’t without tediously using the direct select tool a point at a time.
4. Once your wrap becomes a custom wrap, you can’t adjust its offset (again, except by tediously moving each point one at a time).
Dave
Dave — I do tend to accentuate the positive, and try to present the best of a feature and its possibilities, but I don’t disagree with any of your points. Specifically, number four was mentioned in the “director’s cut” of the episode, but due to technical and continuity issues, had to be removed.
It’s already become a habit for me to come up with other ways to deal with the annoyances of 1, 2 and 3 that I don’t think about them. 2 and 3 should be handled with a user specified option such as “Keep Wrap Object with Frame”. Fingers crossed for CS4, I guess.
I find 4 to the the most annoying, but also the must understandable limitation. Once a user-defined wrap path doesn’t have a consistent offset, what is InDesign’s basis for determining from where to measure the distance from object to wrap object?
Eugene — Excellent point about the Object > Clipping Path method. In my approach to the episode, the Clipping Path function and the Text Wrap functions were two different entities, but they can be combined quite effectively, and you can achieve the same results I did here, for the most part.
The one thing that creating a clipping path automatically (which, in my opinion, won’t be all that great or accurate a path) can do that my method didn’t was that it acts as a mask for the image.
In my example, if I’d created a clipping path within InDesign, I could then have kept the beer glass photo above the text, because the white filling the rest of the frame would have been clipped away. Theoretically, it could also have been placed over a colored background and been silhouetted.
However, for those times when a clipping path is absolutely necessary, there’s really no substitute for an accurately-drawn path that you do yourself, especially if you want an object to have a razor-sharp PostScript edge when placed over a colored backround.
In general, I prefer to use Alpha channels and transparency to achieve these results in my layouts, because few things in real life have razor-sharp edges and a few soft edges go a long way to minimizing a “cut-out” look.
Thanks for the comment. It expands very well on the possibilities opened up in the episode.
Absolutely fabulous! Neat stuff for InDesign and for the topic of beer - which is my world. So I learned how to do beer articles as well as other neat ways to use InDesign. Thanks and Cheers!
Thanks for clearing that up Mr. Murphy. I had used the clipping path as a mask before, by inverting it, and it works out with text and stuff. But I just wasn’t sure of the co-relation this had with the detect edges and the clipping path, as both were/are almost identical.
The reason I asked was because I was trying to use the clipping path method for the runaround so that the Justified Text box would conform, but it just doesn’t, that’s why I suggested the baseline options for that specific frame, it was the only thing that kinda worked.
My poor heart skipped a beat when you started the part about justified text, but alas, ’twas for naught. That is one of the most frustrating things for me. I know I could play around with leading and align-to-grid settings to get the same effect, but it would be so much easier to just be able to set the text frame option to “justify” and be done with it.
Excellent, the long awaited new episode! Busy downloading it right now & can’t wait to sink my teeth into it. PS: thanks for the secret tip: Got me Nigel’s book. All I can say is “wow, my heads going to explode”. Thanks again for the great show.
Michael, thanks for another great episode! It’s such a relief to SEE the ID-ideas in video action. I wish Certain Other People in this vicinity would start making video podcasts, instead of just endlessly talking-ing-ing-ing! :-)
As one of those Certain Other People, I can say that we love having Michael around to do the heavy video lifting. Anne-Marie and I may do videos someday (we already do for Lynda.com, of course), but TheInDesigner is our favorite videocast! Besides, it’s good to do what you do best, and we love talking. ;)
I like both methods. David and Anne-Marie provide an audio approach, meaning I have InDesign open in front of me and pause and play experimenting with what they are talking about. The video is also good, as it’s great to see things working visually, especially if it’s hard to grasp what is going on.
Both are great and personally I wouldn’t change it unless it was a visually related topic, or an audio as the case may be. I do like ending all the sentences with this ending-ing-ing-ing though. I might do that from now on.
Oh please, no-no-no-no-no!
Dave
What’s your problem -oblem -oblem, Dave -ave -ave?
Just as every InDesign document is required by law to have at least one drop shadow, each of our podcasts must have an echo effect.
;-)
I work in prepress, and any time you use “detect edges” in InDesign for text wrap (or “Auto Image” in Quark) you are opening yourself up for problems.
Since these “features” use the color values of the image as the basis for how text wraps, any changes in the image, such as a color correction, can cause type to reflow.
Same with using the clipping path or alpha channel as the basis for text wrap. The use of these methods many times casues problems for us since we routinely correct images for color and/or clipping.
I don’t recommend using any of InDesign or Quark’s “detect” or “auto” features for text wrap (Or anything else for that matter, especially when it comes to silhouetting images. There still is no substitute for a good clipping path or alpha channel.)
Using “wrap around bounding box” or drawing a separate, empty frame with a wrap applied will avoid problems of type reflowing due to changes in the color, clipping path or alpha channel of the image.
Chas, that’s an interesting point. But you can get around the problem pretty easily by choosing the Direct Selection tool, clicking on the image, and then nudging any point on the text wrap. The wrap then becomes “user modified” and won’t change if the image changes.
Thanks David, that’s a great solution, and the method you present makes it easy for designers and will prevent the problems I described… for Text Wrap.
As much as I love InDesign, I still feel that this and other “auto” features can leave yourself open to problems. But I guess that’s a different topic!
When setting a text wrap, it seems as if the unit of measure is off. For example, if I try to set up a .5″ inset, it is obviously not .5″. It is considerably smaller. It seems like my units/increments are off, but when I check them, it still says inches. Can anyone help me?