The Graphic Mac

If you have an Adobe InDesign object with text wrap set on it and a text box on top of it keeps wrapping, you simply need to adjust your preferences.

Ideally, you want only the text below an object to wrap. This allows you to add text on top of an object, such as an overlay photo caption.

InDesign text wrap preferences

Go into InDesign’s preferences (Command + K) and select Composition from the list on the left, then just tick the Text Wrap Only Affects Text Beneath checkbox. I’m not really sure why this isn’t the default setting, because I can’t for the life of me figure out a time or reason why you would want it set otherwise.

InDesign's Character & Paragraph Control Bar saves space

If you keep your InDesign Character and Paragraph panels open on your screen at all times, you’re wasting a lot of space. The Control Bar across the top of the window displays virtually everything you see in the dedicated panels in a much more concise space while still keeping it all easily accessible to you when you need it. The trick is making it convenient to switch between the two if you have a smaller monitor.

On a 24″ LCD, InDesign will display the entire Character and Paragraph panels in the Control Bar at once (providing you have it set up to do so). But on smaller laptop screens, it cuts off much of it. But there is an easy way to switch between Character and Paragraph in the Control Bar. Simply hit Command + Option + 7 to switch between them at any time.

Working with color in Adobe InDesign

Callum Chapman has posted a great article on working with color in Adobe InDesign over at spyrestudios. This article is great for designers just getting started or still in school, and covers topics such as:

• Printing Requirements
• Color Models: RGB vs CMYK
• Adding Colors to the Swatches Panel
• Applying Colors to Objects
• Creating Strokes
• Creating and Applying Gradients to Objects
• Creating a Spot Color

Definitely worth a read. And be sure to check out the rest of the site, because it has some great stuff covering a variety of topics!

In a back & fourth discussion with a friend over the features in Adobe InDesign CS5, the topic of multiple page sizes came up.

My friend couldn’t for the the life of him figure out why you would want or need the feature in a page layout application.

Forgetting the fact that I prefer to think of InDesign as more than a “page layout” application, I offered him the first suggestion that appeared in my mental rolodex of uses for the feature. Expecting the standard “magazine foldouts” reason, my rather un-sexy answer surprised him. Having multiple page sizes in a single InDesign document is a great file management tool.
READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE.

I’ve already pointed out that Adobe InDesign CS5 adds many small new features. Another such feature is the ability to set your starting auto page number in the New Document dialog box.

The new Start Page # feature in InDesign's New Page dialog box

You’ll still need to create an Auto Page Number box on your page just as you always have, but prior to InDesign CS5, you had to manually set the starting page number to your document via the Numbering & Section Options contextual menu in the Pages panel. Now, you can set it right at the start of your document creation.

Not a huge feature, but a nice one for those who regularly create auto page numbers that don’t start with the number 1.

Knowing shortcuts in your applications can greatly improve your productivity. Thankfully, Adobe provides a plethora of them in all their applications, including InDesign CS5. One frequently used shortcut in my work day is adding a new page in a document; and it just kills me to see people making a trip up to the Layout>Pages menu to do it.

There are several ways to add a new page to your InDesign document, but the quickest way is simply to hit Command + Shift + P. Doing so will add a new page immediately following the page you’re currently viewing.

If you need more flexibility, consider holding the Option key while clicking the New Page icon in the Pages panel. This will bring-up the New Page dialog box, which offers you the ability to choose how many new pages you wish to add, where to add them in your document, and which Master Page to base them on.

This tip works in InDesign CS5, CS4, and possibly earlier – though I have no way to verify prior versions.

I was extremely happy to find out that one of the few scripts I used extensively in Adobe InDesign CS4 still works perfectly in the latest InDesign CS5 upgrade – making calendar creation dead simple.

Creating calendars is as easy as a few mouse clicks

Calendar Wizard, by Scott Selberg, makes creating editable calendars as simple as a few clicks of the mouse, a task that would make you nauseous if you had to do it manually in InDesign.

The script allows you to set numerous preferences before creating your calendar, such as what day of the week to start on, the ability to highlight holidays, and creating mini-calendars for the previous and next month in the corners. I don’t use scripts often, but this one is definitely worth keeping around.

Often times I look at an InDesign file someone else built and something just doesn’t look right about an image. Sure enough, I check the image scaling and find out that the horizontal and vertical scaling doesn’t match.

The easiest way to check the scaling of your images is to select the image with the Direct Selection tool in your InDesign Tools panel; it’s the second arrow tool (the white one) in the panel. Once the image is selected, the Control panel across the top of the screen will show you the image scaling. If the numbers don’t match, you can easily make an adjustment by typing the same numbers in both input boxes. Of course if you have the Constrain Proportions button clicked (the link icon just to the right of the scaling fields), you need only enter a percentage in one of the input boxes and hit enter to have the same percentage filled in both fields.