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*** DesignGeek ***
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Tips and techniques for the digital designer
In this issue:
-- Favorite InDesign Student Tips
-- Quark Forums Re-Open
-- Photoshop Fix Newsletter, Featuring HerGeekness
Issue 22, 6/16/04
Written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion
... for her clients, colleagues, random contacts and interested subscribers
© 2004 Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
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Favorite InDesign Student Tips
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When I'm in the middle of a software training session, I love how student's questions about and experiments with neglected corners of the program often lead to new discoveries.
I've been doing a lot of InDesign training lately. Here are a few of my favorites tiplets discovered by students during these sessions:
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Change the Default Font
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Tired of how Times 12/Auto is the default font every time you create a new text frame? Since InDesign lacks a "Normal" Paragraph Style or Character Style, it appears there's nothing you can modify to change that.
Ah, but there is, as my very first InDesign student inadvertently proved to me last summer. (His question was, "I accidentally changed the default font to MarkerFelt, how do I get it back to Times?")
To change the default font for an active document, deselect everything (Command/Ctrl-Shift-A) and choose a different typeface from the Control palette (you'll need the Type tool selected) or the Character palette with any tool selected. From then on, all new text frames you create will default to that face.
To make it the default for new text frames in every document, do the change with no InDesign documents open.
There's tons of stuff you can access in InDesign with no documents open, by the way, such as Text Frame Options and Stroke and Fill settings for the Shape and Line tools. Any change you make gets saved in your application preferences file as the new default for that tool, dialog, or palette field.
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Images in Type Outlines
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You probably already know that you can convert selected text to outlines in InDesign (from the Type menu), and you may already know that those outlines can be used as a clipping path/custom-shaped frame for an image. (Place the image into the outlined type, or copy the image from elsewhere in your doc, select the outlined type and choose Paste Into.)
All this can be done in QuarkXPress as well via the Text to Box command in the Style menu, which converts a selected line of text to a picture box.
But InDesign has a feature that Quark doesn't have: It can paste a single image into two or more lines of outlined type objects, while Quark limits you to single line. It's perfect for when you have, say, a three-line headline into which you want to paste one continuous image.
The student discoverer was a talented Adobe Illustrator whiz who was bored with the Pen tool stuff his fellow InDesign training colleagues were working on, and was just poking around the menus during the session.
To turn multiple lines of outlined type into a single image frame in InDesign:
1. With the Type or Selection tool, select the lines/instances of text you want to convert and choose Type -> Create Outlines. (If there's other text in the same frame that you want to keep live, make your selection with the Type tool, then hold down the Option/Alt key so your selection is converted to outlines in a new frame. The construction technique doesn't work while the outlined type is an inline frame in a text flow.)
2. If you end up with two or more lines of outlined type in a single text frame (as in a three-line headline), those are also acting as inline graphics. You'll need to get them out of the frame. Use the Selection tool to select the first line, then Cut and Paste so it's a "stand-alone" instance of outlined type. Do the same to the others, and delete the empty text frame when you're done.
Note: If you started with multiple text frames, each with one line of type, you won't need to do this step.
3. If necessary, use the Selection tool to realign the instances of outlined type, making sure they're near enough to each other to show the full image.
4. Shift-click or drag a selection rectangle around all instances of outlined type to select them all, and choose Object -> Compound Paths -> Make; or Object -> Pathfinder -> Add. As long as the paths aren't touching or overlapping, their appearance remains the same after this action. It's like a geek version of the Group command.
That's it. Now when you File -> Place an image into any of the outlined type instances, all the ones you "grouped" act as a single image frame. Use the Direct Selection tool as usual to manipulate the image inside of the paths.
If you want, you can also cut or copy your new artwork with the Selection tool, switch to the Type tool and paste it into a live text frame, so your compound-outlined-image-thing flows with the text as an inline frame. Heh ... that'll really freak 'em out down in pre-press!
Clever grasshoppers will realize that Step #4 can be used to unify all sorts of InDesign objects to contain a single image, not just blocks of outlined type.
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Disappearing Side Handles
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When you make a text frame fairly shallow -- less than an inch or so tall -- the In Port and Out Port squares (used for threading text frames) which are also located on the sides can hide the frame's side handles. I used to zoom in very closely so that the frame "grew" large enough that the side handles were revealed, allowing me to drag on them change width without changing height.
So the other day I'm in a training session, walking around coaching people while they're working on a project, and notice a designer is in the same situation, trying to widen a short text frame (a footer) without the benefit of side handles. I was just about to suggest she zoom in to reveal the handles, when she just up and dragged with the Selection tool on the right-hand Out Port, and bloop! it obligingly resized.
D'oh!
Dragging on the ports when you *can* see the side handles doesn't do anything. It only works when necessary, when they're the only side handle-like things you've got.
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Quark Forums Re-Open
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A couple weeks ago Quark opened its online user support forums again, after being AWOL for almost a year:
<http://www.quark.com/service/forums/>
It's a user-to-user sort of support forum, not a venue to get support from Quark reps themselves. Nice to see it back. (Though I hope someone at Quark sets up some topic subcategories asap; it's a little difficult to use in its current, default phpBBB state.)
They reopened their forums just in time to announce it at the recent Quark Summit, a gathering of power Quark users at company headquarters. Here's a good story about the summit:
<http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/21511.html>
As noted in that report (written by a consultant to Quark, but fairly well-covered), Quark's releasing two free XTensions that only work with version 6.x, and one is already available for downloading:
QuarkXClusive (available now)
<http://www.quark.com/products/xpress/quarkxclusive.html>
and
QuarkVista (available "later this year")
http://www.quark.com/products/xpress/quarkvista.html
QuarkXClusive does database-driven variable printing (think mail merge on steroids) but its output only works on HP Indigo digital presses. There are commercial XTs that do variable printing to any PostScript device, but on the other hand, they're not free.
On the QuarkVista page, Quark is showing an intriguing Image Adjustment palette that allows the user to run "non-destructive filters, adjustments and effects" to imported raster art within QuarkXPress. Innaresting.
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Photoshop Fix Newsletter, Featuring HerGeekness
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A beautiful new 4/C monthly newsletter, Photoshop Fix, just started coming out a couple months ago. If you're into Photoshop at an intermediate or advanced level, you should check it out.
<http://www.dynamicgraphics.com/PUBS/PSF/PSFix.aspx>
It's another slickly-designed and well-written/illustrated publication from Dynamics Graphics Group, the same people who do STEP Inside Design and sbs digital design. I like Photoshop Fix's orientation towards the "how and why" behind the step-by-step tutorials. It makes it easier to apply the techniques to your own projects.
I'm the "Guest Expert" for the July 2004 issue, my stuff takes up the last 2-page spread. Please go out and buy ten copies or so of this issue for yourself, your friends and colleagues. Thank you.
Seriously, subs are $60 a year during the charter subscription period, not a bad deal for a 4/C monthly with no ads.
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TRAINING FROM SENECA GOES ON AND ON AND ON...
All of our design software training includes 3 years of 24/7 follow-up support from me by phone or e-mail for each student in the session. It's like having your own personal consultant at your beck and call. Clients love it for getting a quick answer, or when they're working outside of "normal" business hours, when Adobe or Quark's tech support departments are closed.
This phenomenal level of support is just one of the benefits I offer to training clients. To learn more, contact me or fill out the no-obligation "Request a Training Quote' form on Seneca's site:
<http://www.senecadesign.com/training/request.html>
Recent training clients include BBDO Chicago (InDesign); S & C Electric (InDesign); Emergency Nurses Association (Quark 6, Photoshop CS and Illustrator CS); McDougal Littell (InDesign); the Chicago Cubs (Quark 6) and Phototype Engraving (Illustrator CS).
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DesignGeek is a free bimonthly publication written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion, a cross-media designer and authorized Adobe and Quark training provider. She owns Seneca Design & Training, Inc. in Chicago, Illinois (http://www.senecadesign.com/).
To subscribe to DesignGeek or read archived issues, go to its home on Seneca's site: http://www.senecadesign.com/designgeek/subscribe.html
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Copyright 2004 by Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
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