From the course: InDesign Secrets
158 Convert rounded corners to editable paths - InDesign Tutorial
From the course: InDesign Secrets
158 Convert rounded corners to editable paths
- Indesign has great feature called corner options or live corners, some people call them. And it lets you apply corner effects to any object. For example, I'll grab the frame tool and I'm just gonna drag out a frame on top of this photo. Then why don't we fill it with a color. I'll choose paper and then I'll stroke it with a black stroke. Let's make this a little bit thicker. So we can see it better. Ok, now that I've got my rectangle, I wanna change the corners. I wanna make them rounded. And I can do that in several places. I could go to the object menu and choose corner options. Or I could just change it here in the control panel using these controls, right here. But my favorite way of applying live corners is to switch to the selection tool. Which I can do by pressing the V key on my keyboard. Then I see this little yellow box in the upper right corner. All I have to do is click that. That switches it to live corner mode. Where I see four diamonds, little yellow diamonds on the corners. To get my rounded corners, I simply drag one of those over. There we go. Now I've got rounded corners and it looks pretty good. So that's cool but sometimes you wanna make a change to a corner that you just can't do without seeing the actual bezier points. The handles on the path. Fortunately, Indesign lets you convert these automatic corners into actual bezier curves. It's really easy to do but it's totally obscure. You'd never guess how. So I'd better show you. To convert live corners or corner options into bezier points, all you have to do is go to the object menu. Come down to the paths sub menu, and then choose close path. That's right, I'm converting a closed path into a closed path. At first it doesn't look like anything has changed. But if I switch to my direct selection tool, this white arrow tool in the tools panel, you can actually see the bezier points on the path. So that's kind of neat. Now you can do things with those points. For example, I could click and hold down on the pin tool to get this little pop-up menu. Then I could choose the convert direction point tool. Then I could change these different points. For example, I could just click and drag to make a really weird shape. I don't need that so I'm gonna undo with a command Z or control Z on Windows. And instead I'm gonna turn this into a speech bubble. I'm gonna make it look like this guy is saying something. So I'll go back to my pin tool. And I'm gonna click three times. I hover my cursor over the path until I see a little plus symbol next to the pin. That means I'm going to add points to this. And I'll click and then move over a little bit and click. And then move over a bit and then click again. Now to select one of those points, just that middle point. I need to deselect all of them, which I can do with a command shift A, or control shift A on Windows. So now I'll choose the direct selection tool in the tool panel. And I'll click right on that object, so I can see the points. But they're white instead of black, so I can choose a single point by hovering over it and then dragging it down. And when I drag that one point down, I get my speech bubble. So I created a sharp corner rectangle. I converted it into a rounded corner rectangle. And then converted it into actual bezier points. And then added my speech bubble, a little sharp corner right there in the middle. Now granted, it's not often that you need this but it's good know these tricks because when you need it, you really need it.
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Contents
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229 Batch converting ID files to current version with the Book panel6m 9s
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230 Getting around InDesign limitations6m 46s
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231 Creating better callout lines with effects and object styles5m 47s
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232 Swapping column and row information in tables6m 9s
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233 Making bigger text link targets4m 52s
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161 Keeping page numbers on top of master items3m 55s
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162 Adding automatic currency symbols in a table cell or before text3m 50s
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163 Make a pop-up footnote for your ebook3m 48s
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164 Deleting tabs at the beginning of paragraphs and applying a paragraph style3m 10s
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165 Five InDesign Presentation tips6m 28s
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111 Packaging images on the pasteboard3m 32s
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112 Automatically updating figure references for books6m 9s
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113 Adding Tool Tips to your form fields in InDesign3m 21s
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114 Setting poetry, flush left, center on longest line3m 54s
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115 Use bookmarks to navigate long documents in production4m 57s
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107 Using the same keyboard shortcut for two different commands with the Context feature5m 22s
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108 Making a text highlighter3m 33s
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109 Updating an interactive PDF without losing work done in Acrobat5m 30s
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110 Adding custom text at the beginning of each line automatically4m
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089 Three great Object Styles for any designer8m 1s
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090 Choosing alpha channel image transparency2m 25s
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091 Adding and reading metadata for InDesign files3m 25s
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092 Adding ALT tags to your images6m 59s
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093 How to Place & Link a text frame's text but not its formatting7m 4s
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094 Setting the baseline position of a caption2m 39s
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051 Five things that should be in every new file5m 19s
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052 Forcing EPUB page breaks with invisible objects6m 21s
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053 Understanding component information6m 39s
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054 Creating running heads using section markers4m 16s
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055 Making a font with InDesign using the IndyFont script5m 20s
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056 Finding where that color is used7m 17s
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047 Specifying an exact amount of space between objects5m 17s
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048 Fixing last lines that are too short8m 16s
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049 Creating web graphics from your InDesign artwork7m 20s
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050 Using “No Language” to suppress unwanted hyphenation, spell-checking, and smart quotes2m 48s
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037 Updating a linked table without losing formatting5m 18s
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038 Creating electronic sticky notes4m 49s
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039 Moving master page items to the top layer for visibility2m 48s
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040 Five guide tricks that will impress your coworkers6m 18s
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041 Letting InDesign add the diacritics4m 21s
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042 Using single-cell table cells for custom paragraph formatting6m 2s
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027 Creating running heads using variables5m 1s
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028 Live Caption tips and tricks8m 3s
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029 Making professional drop caps10m 37s
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030 Making two-state buttons in interactive documents5m 5s
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031 Moving pages from one document to another3m 15s
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032 Wrapping bulleted text around a curve5m 58s
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007 Selecting through and into objects using cmd-click and Select Above/Below5m 46s
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008 Some great tips and tricks for the Swatches panel9m 40s
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009 Saving down for backward compatibility with INX and IDML5m 54s
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010 Using the INX and IDML formats to fix problems4m 46s
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