10 things you didn’t know Adobe InDesign could do

InDesign is a great bit of software, but like with any programme there often lots of little tricks just waiting to be discovered. Here’s a few techniques, tools or features that have alluded me or I think are pretty cool. Hope some are new and useful for you.

Drop caps
This is one I am sure that almost everyone knows, but it alluded me for a while so I thought I would include it. I used to do my drop caps manually, but they are easy to do and control in the paragraph pallette (window>paragraph). The bottom left box controls how big the drop cap is (lines down, so a 3 would mean it goes across 3 lines of text) and the bottom right box, how many letters it applies to.

Align to x height
This can be especially useful when aligning text to objects. Using the text frame options (apple B). You can align the x height of the first line of text to the top of the text box rather than just the top of the highest letter, as is the default setting. That way, if your text box and an image are aligned vertically, the image aligns with the x height.

Monotone image
This is one of my favourite tricks in InDesign. It allows you to edit the colour of images, making them monotone. This works easiest with black and white tiffs. This allows you to edit the black or white tones directly in the swatches pallette. If you select the box with the selection tool (normal black arrow) the colour in your swatches pallette should show up as white. If you click on another colour, it replaces all white tones in the image with this colour. If you use the direct selection tool (white arrow) to select the picture, it allows you to change the black tones in the image giving you a monotone effect. This can look good on images, I also use it if I place a logo image file which has a white background over flat colour. I simple replace the white in the image file to the same as the colour behind it. That way you miss the white box that would be around it otherwise.

You can also use a similar effect to change coloured images. First use the selection tool again to select the image box. change this to whatever colour you like. Assuming the image occupies the entire box, nothing will change so far. Still selecting the image frame, go to window>effects>transparency. Click on the basic blending mode menu and change this to luminocity. There ya go!

Text underline options
Yes, you can even control your basic text underlines. I only just became aware of this one but thought it was great and really useful. You can also control this in a similar way with paragraph rules, but then you kind of have to do the whole paragraph which is not ideal. To do this, simply highlight the text you want underlined. Then look in your top bar options, there should be a little black arrow towards the top right. Click on this and select underline options. Here you can control everything you need. I have selected a thick line with a nice diagonal line effect. From here you can make paragraph or character styles out of this, allowing you to duplicate the effect with ease! You can change it in paragraph styles by tweaking the underline options category.

Transparency multiply

This is a really nice effect that again does something like make any white in the image or object transparent. As you can see it is great for overlapping images or shapes. It can also be really useful. As I have demonstrated below, you can use it on gradients to create a clean shadow effect easily. You can find multiply in your transparency pallette Wwindow>transparency) under the blending modes.

Go back in time
Again this is something probably most people do, but its one of my favourites tricks. Copy and paste in InDesign, seem to work outside of the undo/redo commands. So on previous versions on InDesign if you went undo undo undo…then copied something and pressed undo again it would undo the copy command. On the more recent version however this is not the case. So, if you think maybe the layout you had half hour ago, which has since changed, might have been better, simply undo till you find it again, copy the page contents, redo back till the pages current state, create a new page and then paste in. Now you can compare the two! Obviously it is useful for more than just this, but what a great function! Thats right, you can go back in time in InDesign, and drag items into the future.

Step and repeat

This is a really useful tool, and it always suprises me how few designers use it. Its great if you need a consistent pattern across a page, or images tiled across the page. Basically anything that needs to be repeated. Select the object and go to edit>step and repeat, the dialogue box will pop up as shown below. Its pretty easy to use. Repeat count is how many you want, and the horizontal or vertical offset is how far it will move. In this example my box is 40mm square, so I have put the horizontal offset at 50mm to allow a 10mm margin.

You can the do the same trick vertically selecting the multiple boxes. And Viola, we have a page with evenly spaced boxes.

Reflections
Reflections. They are not for everyone, but are being more used now than ever. There is a really easy way of achieving this effect in InDesign. Firstly start with an object. Copy the object and paste it in place (Edit>Paste in place). Now, grab the central top point of the object, hold down apple and drag this downwards past the bottom of the original object to about half its original height. The object, as you will see is distorted, but that’s OK for this purpose.

Now, bring up your effects pallette (Window>Effects), and whilst selecting your distorted copied object click on the effects button at the fottom (fx symbol). Select the gradient feather option.

You will need to change the angle in options to 90 degrees. The gradient stops bar at the top, controls the amount of transparency on the object. If you want less, simply drag the right transparent arrow to the left. Its also probably a good idea to click on the black point in the gradient stops bar and change the opacity – I have selected 60%. And there you have it – an InDesign reflection effect. The same technique can be used to gain transparency generally.

Gaussian blur and other text effects
There is no actual Gaussian blur tool within InDesign, but it is possible to create a similar effect by using the drop shadow tool. This example will show it can be done on text, but it will work on other flat objects as well. First of all create the text which you would like to blur.

Now apply a drop shadow effect (Window>Effects>Drop Shadow). The options window will pop up, deselect the drop shadow. Now, change the settings for option in the top left corner to text rather than object. Also, deselect the Object Knocks Out Shadow option towards the bottom right. Press ok.

Now change the text colour to paper. On the effects panel again select text. Now change the blending mode which will currently be normal to multiply. This will make the white or paper fill invisible leaving a nice blurred effect. The great thing about this is you can now keep typing if need be.

If you want to take it further you can apply other effects to the text and just have a play. Here I have added drop shadow, bevel emboss, outer glow and satin. Although perhaps it is a bit much?

Interactive buttons in pdf

This is especially relevant for a designer who wishes to build a pdf portfolio. Basically it allows you to export a pdf with buttons which control large images to appear. You can even add rollover effects to the buttons. Almost exactly like a website portfolio.

So, lets start. Firstly place all the images onto the page. Start off with the small er images which will act as the buttons. Place each one on a separate layer, this will help to keep the file organised.

Next create the large images you want to appear once the button has been pressed. Put these on the same layer as the button they correspond to. Now we want to turn all our images into buttons, even the large ones. Call the small er images button 1-6, and the larger images, button image 1-6.

Now lets add the rollover function to the buttons. Go to window>interactive>states which will bring u the states panel. Selecting the button you want to apply the rollover to, click the third icon along at the bottom to ‘create a new optional state’. This should automatically create a rollover image. Currently it will be the same image…so whilst selecting the rollover layer on the states panel, insert the image you want to appear as the rollover into the button box. I have chosen a black tinted image, which was made in photoshop. You may need to rescale this to fit the box. Do this to each of the smaller buttons. You won’t be able to see the rollover yet as it will only appear in an exported pdf.

So now all our images are buttons and we have the rollover in place. Now lets get some more interactivity going. The way this works, is that we will place an event on each button to hide all the button images bar one. That way when you click on the button, it will show its corresponding image. Within the states panel, and making sure the original button layer of button 1 is selected (the one entitled up, not rollover), click on the options arrow on the top right and select button options. Leave general as it is and click on behaviours. Leave the event panel as mouse up, and change the behaviours panel to Show/Hide Fields. The button images are what you want to edit here. Make button image 1 visible by clicking on it once. All the others make invisible by clicking on them twice. A not visible symbol will appear next to them. Click on the add button, and you will see this behaviour appear in the left hand panel. Press OK. You need to add these behaviours to all the small buttons, changing the behaviour accordingly. So on Button 2, on mouse, you would have Button image 2 visible and all the others invisible.

And that is our file done I have added a title to mine as well. Now we need to export it as a pdf. Go to file>export and select pdf in the format panel. In the pdf options box, you must tick the interactive elements in the include options. And thats it! an interactive pdf portfolio with rollover buttons. Enjoy.

This tutorial was made in CS3, but the process is the same in CS4. In CS4, you can even export the file as a swf, for web use. Click here for a tutorial to export as a swf from CS4. Is there anything Adobe InDesign can’t do? I hear you ask!