From the course: InDesign Secrets
146 Make a transparency mask in InDesign - InDesign Tutorial
From the course: InDesign Secrets
146 Make a transparency mask in InDesign
If you've used Photoshop or Illustrator before, you probably know the concept of a mask. A mask, well it masks away part of an object, making it invisible so that you can see through it or past it. Masks are really useful in a wide variety of effects. But you can can look high and low and throughout InDesign and you won't find anything with the name mask in it, but that doesn't mean you can't make a mask in InDesign. You just have to be clever about it. Here's how it works. I have three different objects that I'm going to be working with. The background image, in this case this red, orange piece of art. The foreground image, this kind of yellow, white piece of art. And my mask, which is going to be the word art. I'm going to put one on top of the other. So I'll put my white art on top of the orange art, so that you won't be able to see it at all. It's opaque, right? Cannot see through it. Then I'm going to put my mask on top of that. I'm going to be using this word art as a mask to punch a hole through this white yellow piece of art so I can see the red art behind it. To make it work it's a three step process. First, open the Effects panel and apply a zero opacity to the mask itself. In this case, it's that text frame. I'm going to select the opacity just by clicking on the word Opacity and set it to zero, and then hit Return or Enter. That makes that mask, that text frame, completely disappear. We cannot see it at all. Step two is to select the mask, that text frame, and the artwork or the object that I'm trying to punch a hole in. So, I'll simply Shift+click on this background art. So, I have two things selected. The object I'm trying to put a hole in and the mask itself sitting on top of it. And while both of them are selected, I'm going to group them by going to the Object menu and choosing Group. Finally, I'm going to turn on the mask feature. Like I said, nothing says mask feature, but I'm going to tell you where it's hiding. Inside the Effects panel, there's a little check box called Knockout Group. Well, you've probably seen that and you've wondered what the heck does that feature do? Well, I'm going to tell you. It forces the effect, the transparency effect, in this case, that opacity to only apply inside the group and to the entire group. So, as soon as I turn it on, it applies that 0% opacity to the entire group. And there you go! There's the mask on the object. Now, the great thing about masks are they're editable. You can change them really easily. So, in InDesign, all I have to do to go inside this group is to double-click. Double-click. And I've selected the mask, that text frame once again. And now I can move it. And you can see that it's completely editable. I can move it anywhere I want, and it will automatically update. I can even double-click again to select inside that text frame, and edit the text. So, I'll just delete the word art and I'll type a different word. Masking in InDesign is so easy, as long as you follow those steps. Now, I do need to point out something important. Let's go and make a PDF of this. I'll go to the File menu, choose Export, and then I'll make a PDF up on my desktop. I'll just click Save. PDFs of these kind of transparency effects work great when you open them in Adobe Acrobat. But if I make this PDF and open it in, let's say, Mac Preview, or some other non-Adobe PDF reader, it might not look right. You might not see the transparency effect properly. And then you'll be coming to me saying, hey, your trick didn't work. Well, the trick works fine. But non-Adobe PDF readers don't always work fine. However, if you need to make sure it works no matter what reader someone opens the PDF in, then make sure you export this in the Acrobat 4 format, which you can get by choosing the PDF X1 A PDF preset. You see, that changes compatibility to Acrobat 4. This does what's called flattening the transparency effect behind the scenes inside the PDF, so that it'll work right everywhere.
Download courses and learn on the go
Watch courses on your mobile device without an internet connection. Download courses using your iOS or Android LinkedIn Learning app.
Contents
-
-
161 Keeping page numbers on top of master items3m 55s
-
162 Adding automatic currency symbols in a table cell or before text3m 50s
-
163 Make a pop-up footnote for your ebook3m 48s
-
164 Deleting tabs at the beginning of paragraphs and applying a paragraph style3m 10s
-
165 Five InDesign Presentation tips6m 28s
-
-
-
089 Three great Object Styles for any designer8m 1s
-
090 Choosing alpha channel image transparency2m 25s
-
091 Adding and reading metadata for InDesign files3m 25s
-
092 Adding ALT tags to your images6m 59s
-
093 How to Place & Link a text frame's text but not its formatting7m 4s
-
094 Setting the baseline position of a caption2m 39s
-
-
-
051 Five things that should be in every new file5m 19s
-
052 Forcing EPUB page breaks with invisible objects6m 21s
-
053 Understanding component information6m 39s
-
054 Creating running heads using section markers4m 16s
-
055 Making a font with InDesign using the IndyFont script5m 20s
-
056 Finding where that color is used7m 17s
-
-
-
037 Updating a linked table without losing formatting5m 18s
-
038 Creating electronic sticky notes4m 49s
-
039 Moving master page items to the top layer for visibility2m 48s
-
040 Five guide tricks that will impress your coworkers6m 18s
-
041 Letting InDesign add the diacritics4m 21s
-
042 Using single-cell table cells for custom paragraph formatting6m 2s
-