Comments on: Turn Any Object Into a Transparency Mask

By: Cian de Locke

Cian de Locke — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:37:28 +0000

John Stanfield said:
February 4th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Is there any way to exclude the text frame from the mask? Even with the stroke set to “None” it still is knocking out?

Hi John: Try Command Ctrl H to Show/Hide Frame Edges

By: S.M.Nawaz kukkikatte

S.M.Nawaz kukkikatte — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 11:31:56 +0000

thanks David! very nice technics

By: Martin

Martin — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:02:04 +0000

Thanks David and Branislav! fun tricks

By: John Stanfield

John Stanfield — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:31:05 +0000

Thanks David! That’s all it was. Man! What a cool trick!

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 05:00:17 +0000

Tiffany, sorry, I don’t know of anything like that other than my favorite InDesign vector plug-in: Illustrator! It works great, and you can copy and paste vectors back and forth.

John, the text frame is knocking out? Are you sure it’s really knocking out in the final PDF or print? Not just on screen? I see the frame knock out, too, until I go into Preview mode (press W) or print or export. Just a screen artifact, I think.

By: John Stanfield

John Stanfield — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:20:19 +0000

Is there any way to exclude the text frame from the mask? Even with the stroke set to “None” it still is knocking out?

By: Tiffany Hamilton

Tiffany Hamilton — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:42:43 +0000

Does anyone know if you can create 3D effects in InDesign? I know about the drop shadow feature but was looking for something similar to the 3D effects you can do with shapes in Powerpoint. Thanks

By: Mike Coyle

Mike Coyle — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 09:45:38 +0000

Great and such a simple technique. Only yesterday I had used the pathfinder to create a similar effect. This is much better. Thank you David.

By: Eugene

Eugene — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:15:26 +0000

Hi David, I was actually just explaining how I used to do it (up until today), the soft edges is a sweet touch and certainly a nice concept.

Every time you guys make a new post I learn something new.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:24:04 +0000

Eugene, compound objects sort of work, but they’re a major hassle. More importantly, however, you can’t make a soft-alpha-edge mask with a compound object, as I showed above.

Branislav, I knew you had done those cool transparency effects, but I couldn’t find the link to the PDF! Thanks for reminding me where that is on our own site. Yes, Branislav’s PDF is a “must read” for ID users.