Generally I let the nerd herd (aka our talented team of web developers) be the ones to get excited about math related functionality. However, I gotta say, I do get excited about the way InDesign allows you to do math in the control panel. Probably because anything that does the math for me is exciting! How does it work? Imagine you have a frame with an image in it on the page and you know that it would probably fit better if it were 2.125″ bigger. In the Width field up in the Control panel, type +2.125 next to the existing size. When you’re done, press Tab or Return (PC: Enter) and InDesign will do the math for you to adjust the size of your frame. This also works in the X and Y axis fields — allowing you to move items by a specified amount without doing the math yourself. You can also use different functions, such as subtraction (–), multiplication (*), and division (/).
Posts Tagged ‘InDesign’
Quick Tip: Math for designerds
Friday, July 16th, 2010Quick Tip: Will you be my plus one?
Friday, June 11th, 2010
I learned a little InDesign trick recently that has really decreased my level of frustration when working with documents with multiple sections. Maybe it is just me, but every time I want to print or create a PDF of a portion of a multi-section InDesign document I run into trouble. I have the hardest time entering the section names/page numbers that correspond to the pages I would like to print into the Range box in the Print Dialogue box.
One way to help figure this out is to click on each of the pages you want to print in InDesign and check the page number box in the bottom left side of the screen. This will show you exactly how to enter each page number (eg Sec2:4). Then you will just need to type these pages into the Range box in EXACTLY the same format.
However, my new favorite way to avoid all of this nonsense is to use the magic plus sign! Simply put a “+” in front of the page number and it will tell InDesign to use absolute page numbering. So “+1″ always refers to the first page in your document, regardless of what section it is in. I love that!
Quick Tips: Importing text from Word into InDesign
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
I don’t know about you, but I hate it when I bring copy into InDesign from Word and it brings with it a bunch of formatting or paragraph and character styles that I don’t want or need. Luckily there is a super simple remedy.
1. When placing text into InDesign choose File > Place.
2. Navigate to and click (but don’t double click) the Word document you’d like to place.
3. With the document selected click the “Show Import Options” check box and click Open.
4. This will bring up an import options dialogue box. Choose “Remove Styles and Formatting from Text and Tables” and click OK.
Viola! No more pesky styles and unwanted formatting. Note that you can also use this same process when bringing text in from Excel. The Import Options dialogue box also includes some other options that you can turn off and on to control how your text is imported. Oh so simple, but yet so helpful!
Object Layer Options in InDesign
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009A few weeks ago, I was shown an InDesign feature (by a designer that shall remain nameless) that I never knew existed. It’s called Object Layer Options, and it lets you control which layers are visible when you place a layered Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign or Acrobat (pdf) document into InDesign. I don’t know how I ever got along without it, as I’ve used it on numerous occasions in just the past few weeks.
Say, for example, I have a Photoshop document containing multiple layers that I want to place into InDesign. To show its different layers, I no longer need to use Photoshop to turn off all the layers except the one I want visible and save a separate file for each layer. Now, I can just place this ONE file multiple times and choose which layer(s) I want showing in each instance.
You can either do this after you have placed the file or as you are placing the file. If you have already placed the file, select the picture box containing the file and click Object > Object Layer Options…
(Right clicking on the picture box also brings up the Object Layer Options…)
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Then choose which layer you want to show by clicking on or off the eyeball icon.
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You can also choose which layer you want showing when you initially place the image.
In the Place dialogue box in the bottom left corner, check Show Import Options.
When you select your file and click Open, another dialogue box will open in which you can choose which layer you would like showing.
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Hope this saves you some time in the future!
