Adobe InDesign CS/CS2 Breakthroughs [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Putting Colors to Work

Stop the Color Shifting

When I place an image that I know contains the same color as one of my InDesign swatches, the images color doesn't match other objects that use the swatch color.

Make sure InDesign's color management system is turned on (choose Edit > Color Settings) and make sure the settings are appropriate for the type of publication you're creating. Even if a placed image was created in a non-color managed program, InDesign will use its color settings to manage the screen preview. You may need to turn on View > Overprint Preview and View > Display Performance > High Quality Display for the best-looking EPS and PDF images. For more on color management, check out the book David wrote with Olav Martin Kvern, Real World InDesign, or Bruce Fraser's (et al) Real World Color Management.

Color the Text, not the Text Frame

There is a secret password or incantation, I believe, that InDesign needs to hear before the action of selecting a text frame, then clicking a color swatch results in the text being colored the letterforms themselves and not the frame background. I know it can be done because I saw an Adobe magician perform the feat at a local seminar. But when I searched the Book of Runes InDesign's online help files I came up empty.

You'll need a rubber chicken, three candles and a newt's eyeball … oh wait, that's for the QuarkXPress Breakthroughs book. For you, it's simple. Select the text frame with either Selection tool, but before you click a color swatch, click the tiny T icon (below the Fill/Stroke icons) in the Tools, Color, or Swatches palette (Figure 5-11). That tells InDesign that any formatting commands you make, including color swatch selection, will format the Text all the text in the frame not the Frame itself. The icon to the left of the tiny T stands for "formatting affects frame" and is selected by default.

Accurately Preview Text Color Changes

When I select text with the Type tool and change its color, the color that gets applied is the opposite of the color I want. I choose a green color swatch, InDesign shows me purple text. I click on a red color, the text turns blue. It's not until I click elsewhere to deselect the text that I see the actual color applied to it. Often, it's not exactly the right shade, so I have to repeat the madness, all the while guessing what the final color is going to look like once I deselect the text.

Here are three fixes for you. First, you can click an insertion point right before the word(s) you want to color and open the Story Editor (Edit > Edit in Story Editor). Your cursor will be at the same point in the Story Editor's text flow, making it easy to find the text you're about to edit. Resize and/or reposition the Story Editor window if necessary so that you can see the about-to-be-colorized text in the Layout window in back. While still in the Story Editor, select the text you want to color and click a color swatch. Nothing will change in the Story Editor, but the Layout will update to show the new color applied (Figure 5-12). When you're satisfied with the text color, close the Story Editor window and return from whence you came.

Second, you can select Window > Arrange > New Window to create a second window of your document. Similar to the Story Editor fix, if you change the color in one window, you can see what it'll look like in the other window.

Here's our favorite method, though: After applying a color to selected text, Command-click/Ctrl-click on the text frame and keep the mouse button held down. Don't move the mouse (or else you'll reposition the text frame). But while the mouse button is held down, the text appears deselected so you can see the color. When you let go of the mouse button, the selection comes back.

Preview Aliased Inks

In the middle of a project, when I use the Ink Manager (from the Swatches palette menu) to alias one ink to another, nothing changes on my screen. I can only see if InDesign is actually going to alias it correctly if I print separations. (I have faith in InDesign, but not that much faith.)

To see the effects of ink aliasing, turn on Overprint Preview in your View menu. By the way, there's really no reason to print out separations if you're just checking what's going to end up on which plates. Use the Separations Preview palette instead (Window > Output > Separations Preview). It's faster and kinder to the environment.

Replace Color

I need to search for certain colors in my document and replace them with another color, but InDesign has no find/change for colors. Do I have to search manually throughout my 300-page file? Ouch.

It all depends on what the color is applied to. If you need to replace every instance of the color throughout your file, you can either redefine the color watch to what you need, or just delete the swatch. When you delete a swatch, InDesign asks what color you want to replace it with (as long as at least one object in your document is assigned that color).

If you have text and objects colored with a swatch and you only want to change the text color, you can use Edit > Find/Change. Don't enter anything into the Find What or Change To fields, because you're not going to change characters, just how those characters are formatted (their color, in this case). To do that, click the More Options button, revealing the Find Format and Change Format fields. Click on each of these buttons, in turn, to set up what color text should be found, and what color it should become (Figure 5-13).

If you want to change the objects' color but not the text, then take an extra couple of steps: Duplicate the color (drag its swatch on top of the New Color button) and perform the Find/Change to change the text color to this duplicate color. Finally, delete the original color, replacing it with some other color.

Clear Just the Text Color, Not Everything, in Find/Change

I use the "More Options" fields in Find/Change a lot. I'm happy with most of the features, but one thing bugs me. If I choose a Character Color swatch in one of the Format Settings areas, and later decide that I don't want to include that setting in my format changes (that is, I don't care what color the character is), I can't get rid of just that setting. I have to click the Clear button for all the settings. Then I have to reconstruct everything else (Font Family, type size, indents, etc.) that used to be part of my Format Settings.

Command-click/Ctrl-click the Fill or Stroke icon in the Character Color panel to clear just that setting. You'll see the icon revert back to its "Riddler" state (filled up with all those question marks, like The Riddler's costume on Batman), which means "any color" (Figure 5-14).

This works in the Edit Character Style dialog box, too. (It doesn't work for paragraph styles, though; there you always have to specify a color.)

Track Down Mystery Spot Colors

InDesign's Preflight dialog box (File > Preflight) is reporting that I'm using Pantone 286 somewhere in my 200-page document. I'm sure it got imported when I placed an image that uses it, but how am I supposed to tell which image? The Preflight dialog box doesn't have a "Show" button. (And of course, neither does the Swatches palette.)

Open the Separations Preview palette (Window > Output > Separations Preview), turn on Separations from its popup menu, and hide all the plates except for the one belonging to the mystery spot color. Any instance of that color will appear to be colored Black in your document, since you're viewing a single separation plate."

Your document may look completely white, meaning that the spot color isn't used on the pages you're currently viewing. You'll have to scroll through all the pages to find the one(s) with the stowaway.

Since your document is 200 pages long, you might want to decrease the view scale drastically to something like 10% or 20% so you can see multiple spreads at a time as you scroll. When you see some black-colored artwork, click on it with the Selection tool. The graphic immediately becomes selected in the Links palette, so you know who the culprit is.