Seattle InDesign User Group Meeting Notes Archive
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Presentations
This month we focused on InDesign® plug-ins. We had two guests show a range of plug-ins that covered tools for individuals and tools for enterprise-level production.
ALAP (a lowly apprentice productions, inc.)
Paul Schmitt, President of ALAP, flew up from California to show what his plug-ins offer. InTools, ALAP's new tool pack, offers six tools for manipulating your content and design including nudging (where you can control the amount of nudge in the tool), path operations for InDesign (like we’re used to in Illustrator®), a super star/polygon tool, a tool for making item marks and dimensioning for print design, a tool that lets you print part of a page, and InModify, which is similar to command-M for a Quark user (or a giant dialog box that allows you to manipulate many attributes of objects in a single dialog box). Paul supplied a stack of InTools disks that we used in the prize drawings. Thanks Paul!
We also saw InBooklet, ALAP’s imposition software for your print dialog. InBooklet can create a new document with printer spreads or can print these spreads directly. Paul recommended printing the spreads directly if you have a design that has crossovers.
And we got a preview of an unreleased plug-in called InEffects, which creates Photoshop®-like raster effects such as drop shadows, bevel and emboss, inner shadows, and inner and outer glows. Paul demonstrated a couple of these effects and then added InDesign drop-shadows to an object…WOW!
When someone asked Paul whether his plug-ins need to be packaged for a service provider, Paul responded, “No.” The ALAP plug-ins manipulate objects but aren’t required to output the file, with one exception. The upcoming InEffects plug-in will be a two-part plug-in: a free engine for output and an interface (that we use with InDesign) that we purchase.
RR Systems
Scott Rudolph showed us a big plug-in system, a combined asset management system called Catalog Composer. Scott runs SQL and a huge database on his laptop that controls the information and images for building publications for a client. He showed how he can use a single entry for a slew of products and how a change in the entry is reflected in all the products.
Then Scott moved over to InDesign and used a plug-in called Print Publisher to build a catalog page from the database content. He just dragged objects onto a document to create the layout. The objects were already set up to use certain paragraph styles in the document, so formatting was automatic. He used WoodWing’s Smart Styles plug-in to format tables and mentioned that a future version of this system might include the Smart Styles function.
Then Scott showed the power of the database: He changed the language that the catalog would use. His database already had the translated content, and all the content changed to use the new language. Amazing — this is how it should be.
Tips and Tricks
After the break, Colin Fleming shared some tips and tricks for getting along better with InDesign.
Deselecting text quickly:
Use this tip to get out of text quickly and switch tools, for this example we're switching to the Selection Tool (V):
- Deselect all (Edit>Deselect All or cmd-shift A (M) or cntrl-shift A (W)), then then press V to switch.
- Toggle to the selection tool by pressing cmd/cntrl, and then press V to switch tools.
- Click anywhere in your document where there is no frame, and then press V to switch tools.
Zooming to the previous:
- Press cmd-opt-2 (M) or cntrl-alt-2 (W) to toggle between your last two zoom levels.
Adding guides to your page edge:
Objects that bleed hide your page edge. I add guides to my page edge with the Layout>Create Guides… command. Create one row and one column to the page edge and you get four guides in the right place! We'll talk about a script for creating bleed guides at the next meeting!
Switching color space in the Color palette:
InDesign used black as the default color. If you go to the color palette to mix a color, you have to change the color space you’re using with the flyout menu for the palette. Too complicated!
- Shift-click on the color ramp across the bottom edge of the color palette. Toggle through RGB, CMYK, Lab, and (if you were using a swatch when you started) tints.
(This works in slightly different ways in Illustrator and Photoshop — beware! Shift-clicking the ramp in Photoshop will cycle through the ramps but doesn't change the sliders, while in Illustrator the ramps and sliders change like in InDesign. But, if you cycle through the tint ramp your color may change to gray!)
Default measurement units:
- Tired of seeing picas in the New Document dialog? Close all your InDesign documents, and then change your Preferences>Units & Increments values to inches. All new documents will default to inches!
Added Tips
Flipping objects:
I always forget where this one is when I'm working really fast. To flip an object horizontally, vertically, or in both directions, select it, go to the transform palette, pick a proxy point to flip across, and use the flyout menu for the palette — this is where you'll find the flipping commands.
If you need to flip objects frequently — one person at the meeting said they do this constantly for a newspaper, and you can always add a custom keyboard shortcut for this — do the following:
- Go to Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts.
- Click the New Set button so you work on a copy of shortcuts.
- Change the Product Area menu to Palette Menus
- Scroll through the list to Transform: Flip (both, horizontal, or vertical).
- Choose the flipping for which you want to add a keyboard shortcut, and then click into the New Shortcut: field.
- Press the shortcut key combination you want to use, check to see if the shortcut is already used by another command; if not, press Assign.
- Press OK to leave the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog and then test your new shortcut.
Note: InDesign will flip the object across the current proxy point in the Transform panel or wherever you have defined a transformation point with one of the transform tools (rotate, scale, skew).
Thanks for the prizes!
Big thanks to Paul Schmitt for the ALAP InTools prizes, and for pulling out two copies of InBooklet too! Adobe provided the stack of books and software, who knew someone would leave with Premier®?!
And thanks for the help!
Thanks to David, Jack, and Ed for their help with checking people in and taking photos for the meeting notes. If anyone is interested in helping out with our meetings, or if you have an idea for a future topic, contact the chapter representative.
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