268 Techniques to convert text to outlines

- [Instructor] Maybe you need to convert some text to outlines, I'm not talking about converting all the text in your document to outlines, but just a little bit. Now, we've shared in another InDesign secrets movie how you should deal with converting a whole document to outlines and why you should try to avoid it. But sometimes, you do need to convert just a word or a phrase to outlines for some special effect, like putting a picture inside the text or something like that. Now, if you need to do that, there are a few things that you need to understand about converting to outlines, so I want to cover that here.

The first thing you need to decide when converting text to outlines is whether you want all the text in a frame or just some of the text. If you want all the text, then select the frame with the selection tool, but if you want just some of the text, then select just that text with the type tool. So for example, I can double click here, which is to the type tool and then I'll select just two characters inside this text. I'll go up to the Type menu, and I'll choose Create Outlines.

Now, several different things just happened. First, the text was converted to outlines. So, that's a path now. It's no longer editable text. Next, it replaced the text that I had selected. It deleted the editable text and it put this text shaped frame in as an inline object instead. And finally, did you see how this other text to the right moved slightly? That usually happens when you convert just a piece of text rather than the whole frame.

And the reason is that these aren't letters anymore, so any kerning or tracking on them is removed. Okay, let me undo that by pressing Command + z or Ctrl + z on Windows. Now it's back to editable text and I'm going to do the same thing, but this time, I'm going to hold down the Option key on the Mac or the Alt key on Windows when I choose Create Outlines. Now as you know, Option or Alt means duplicate the object, and in fact, that's exactly what happened here.

InDesign converted the text, but it did not delete the original. It made a copy of it. See, I can choose the selection tool, and just drag this copy out here. So, it's a separate frame, right? But it's not text, it's outlines. And I can see those outlines by choosing the direct selection tool, otherwise known as the white arrow tool. See how you can now see the points on the path? Now that trick with the Option or Alt key works for the whole frame too. For example, I'll delete those paths just by pressing the Delete key, and now I'm going to grab the selection tool, select the whole frame, and I'm going to hold down the Opt or the Alt key when I choose Create Outlines.

So now I have two different frames, the one that's shaped like text, I'll pull that down here, and now I can do stuff with this text. For example, I'll go to the File menu, and I'll choose Place, and then I'm going to choose this picture and click OK. And now you can see that picture, I can place that picture inside part of this text. Now why did the picture just go inside the top part of the text? Well, when you convert more than one line of text into outlines, each line becomes its own object, and then those objects become grouped together.

So in this case, there's two different objects: the word InDesign and the word Secrets. They're grouped together, but when I place the image, it just went into one of those objects. So again, the original text frame is up here, that's still editable text. And I have this group of objects down here. Now, there's one more thing you need to understand about how InDesign coverts text to outlines. I'm going to go up to the Object menu and Ungroup these objects so that I have two different objects. First, the word InDesign and second the word Secrets.

Now all of this moves together, so it looks like another group, right? But it's not a group. This is a single path, just one object. Now technically, this is called a compound path because it's a collection of separate paths. Sometimes, you'll find you need to break these up into separate objects. And I can do that by going to the Object menu, choosing the Paths submenu, and then choosing Release Compound Path. So, that worked, but some of the text changed a little bit.

Specifically, the counters or the holes inside the letter e were removed. Well, they weren't removed, but they no longer look like holes. When you release your compound paths, anything that looks like a hole is lost because all of those are separate paths now, and this is a royal pain, but I just don't think there's any good way around it. If you release the compound paths, you have to put those letters back together again. And there are various ways to do that, but by far the easiest way is to go to the Window menu, choose Object & Layout, and then choose Pathfinder.

Next, select the paths that you want to affect, in this case the outline of the e and the outline of the hole in the e. And then, in the Pathfinder section of the Pathfinder panel, click the second button, that's the subtract button. That means take the top object and knock a hole in the bottom object. So, now that character is back to being its own little compound path, but it's separate from these other letters. See how I can pull it out? Now I can select the objects from the other e, click that button again, and we're back in business.

Anyway, these are a few of the most important things that you need to keep in mind when you're converting text to outlines.