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The ability to easily wrap text around images and other objects in InDesign is one of the great features of the awesomely powerful page layout application.
However there is one niggling problem as a graphic designer when using InDesign to produce pay layouts for clients. Picture this scenario: A client has provided copy and images for a short document. It's very text heavy with a few nice images to beak up the text. You, the designer, have laid out the text and images, hopefully using stylesheets and the client is happy with the head, title, body and other text styles, and the position of the images. Then, the client updates the copy and you have to replace much of the text. Suddenly the text reflows and your well-placed images now appear alongside different text! So how to anchor images in InDesign?
There is an easy solution: Place your images or objects in the copy as anchored objects! That way they will move as the text length changes. It's as easy as this:
1 Select the image/object you wish to anchor to the text.
2 cmd+x or Edit>Cut
3 Place the text cursor or I-beam at the point in the text you wish to anchor the image/object
4 cmd+v or Edit>Paste
5 Use the Text Wrap pallet to set the wrapping options and text offset
6 Select the image/object with the direct select tool (black arrow) and go to Object>Anchored Object>Options
7 Set the anchored object position within the text in relation to the page (can be a bit fiddly, but just experiment and all will become clear)
8 Here is the anchored image in the text - the anchor position is circled
Now, if the copy length changes and text reflows, the images or objects will move with the anchor, even across pages and spreads! The anchor is also easily removed by going to Object>Anchored Objects>Release.
A good habit to get into when typesetting in InDesign is to use the Align to Baseline Grid function to ensure lines of text on neighbouring columns sit on the same baseline.
However, the baseline spacing panel isn't that obvious…
In the menu bar, go to InDesign>Preferences>Grid. Here you will find the area where you can adjust the baseline grid, application-wide. The options available are: baseline start distance from top margin, relative to…, increment (this should be set to the body text leading unit, for example if your body text is 12pt on 14pt leading enter 14pt in the increment box), and view threshold for zoom level.
To make the grid visible go to View>Grids and Guides>Show Baseline Grid, and to align the text to this grid highlight the text and click on the Align to Baseline Grid button in the bottom right hand corner of the Paragraph palette.
So, you've gone and added some folder or file shortcuts to your Finder sidebar (you know, the list of files and folders down the left hand side of your Mac OS X Finder window) and you can jump to regularly used stuff quickly.
Pretty cool, huh?
But after a while the list gets big and you can't see what you need quickly anymore. Maybe it's a shortcut to an old server item, or a file that doesn't exist anymore… Usually one would drag the item out of the Finder sidebar and the item disappears. But sometimes those pesky shortcuts just won't budge!
A little tip to remove them for good is to drag the stubborn favourite item out of the sidebar while holding Alt & Cmd. This forces the deletion!
Vickers Creative is proud to announce Saferworld as a new client, designing their Gender & Security training document for Nepal.
Images to follow.
Just like it's more type-friendly brother InDesign, Adobe Illustrator also features multi-column text boxes. Although in Illy, it's not as obvious but just as easy:
Create a text box using the Type tool. With the text box highlights go to Type>Area Type Options. From there you can set the following:
Text box width/height
Rows/columns (and their span/gutter)
Offset/inset spacing
Flow direction of text.
Makes Illustrator that little bit more powerful when trying to set text, huh?
Creating clipping masks in Creative Suite has a different approach for each of its programs, despite being a 'suite'. Here I'll explain how to mask an image or object in InDesign.
A clipping mask is simply the masking, or selective hiding, of parts of an image or object against a given shape. The shape can be rectangular, circular, or an arbitrary path drawn with the pen tool. It's the preferred method of cropping as the designer can non-destructively crop an image, for example in a magazine layout, then move the mask around the image in order to find a better crop.
If you're used to creating clipping masks in Illustrator or Photoshop you might find doing the same in InDesign a bit baffling at first - I know I did! Illustrator has probably the most logical way of dealing with masks: Path on top, image below, select both objects, highlight the path in the layers palette and hit F7 - a new group is created with the clipping mask on top, easy! Photoshop works the opposite way, obviously: Image above, path below, in the layers palette Alt-click on the dividing line between the two layers. Or use the new 'Mask' palette in more recent versions of Photoshop, which has a nifty opacity and feather feature, which is quite nice for softening masks when used in a montage.
InDesign requires you to do a third process. One must 'Paste Into' the mask!
Images brought into InDesign from Finder/Explorer/Bridge will automatically have a clipping mask attached. Try it: Selecting an image with the direct arrow pointer (black arrow) will select the image and give it a blue bounding box with handles:
Now deselect and reselect with the indirect arrow pointer (white arrow) - notice the bounding box is now brown with handles?
The blue represents the clipping mask which can be resized, cropping or masking the image:
The brown is the actual limits of the image, which can extend invisibly beyond the blue mask. One can use the brown handles to resize the image directly (keeping a finger on the Shift key to keep proportions, of course).
Scenario: You've just created a shape with a gradient, or some outlined type which you want to mask against another shape - how do you do that?
Well, simply create your object:
Then create your new mask shape:
Select the object you want want masked and Edit>Cut or Cmd+X:
Then select your mask and hit Edit>Paste Into or Alt+Cmd+V:
Voila! Your fancy gradient is now inside your mask!
