Join David Blatner for an in-depth discussion in this video 272 Reverse text when partially over a dark object, part of InDesign Secrets.
- [David] Here's an interesting problem: black text over a dark background, and not entirely over the dark background, of course, but just partially. If it were fully over the background, then it's an easy fix, right? Because you could just make the text color white or some light color. But when it's like this, well, there's really no built-in feature that lets you make the text magically change color when the background changes. But that won't stop us, right? Because there's always a workaround. In this case, what we want to do is create a duplicate, a clone of one or more of these objects.
So in this case, I'm going to duplicate this text frame, and I'll do that by selecting it and then copying it to the clipboard with a Command-C or a Control-C on Windows. Now, I want to paste it back in exactly the same place, but I want to put it in just the area where this black triangle is. To do that, I'll select that triangle, which is just an empty frame set to black fill, and now, I'll go to the Edit menu, and I'll choose Paste Into.
Now it doesn't look like anything's changed, but it has. I've now put a duplicate of that text frame inside that triangle, but of course, it's black on black, so you can't see it. So let's go ahead and change the color of the text inside the triangle. Because the triangle is still selected, I can select what's inside the triangle by going to the Control Panel, and clicking on this little button over here. That's the Select content button. It looks kind of like an org chart, with a down arrow underneath it. When I click on that, it selects whatever is nested inside the triangle, which is, of course, that text frame.
I can change the color of that text by coming over here to the Fill pop-up menu, and I'm going to click on that, and then I'll click on this little T icon, that's the Formatting effects text icon. Now, any change I make to the color will affect the text inside the frame, not the frame itself. In this case, I'll choose Paper, or white. Now, when I do that, all I see is this very faint outline of white around the text. The reason is, the original text frame, this text frame out here, is still on top of the black triangle.
So I'm going to select this over here. I'm just going to click on the text frame that's appearing over on the left side here, and I'm going to send it behind the triangle, by going to the Object menu, choosing Arrange, and then choosing Send to Back. And there we go. Remember, we actually have three different objects. We have the text frame with the black text in the back, we have the black triangle over here, and then inside, nested inside that black triangle, there's another text frame that has white text in it, but it all aligns perfectly.
Of course, if I click on one of these and move it, the whole thing breaks. So that's not good. Let's go ahead and Command-Z, or Control-Z to undo that. We want to select all of those objects, and then group them together, by going to the Object menu and choosing Group. There we go. Now, I'm going to repeat this one more time, but this time, with text over an image. I have one of those down here, so I'll just press page down, and we can see that we have text sitting on top of an image. Because it's on top of a graphic, we have to do this technique a little bit differently, because this time, the frame has a picture inside of it, so I cannot nest that text into it.
So in this case, I'm going to select both of these objects, and I'll duplicate them. Command-C, to copy them to a clipboard, or Control-C on Windows, and then Edit, Paste in Place. Paste in Place puts those objects in exactly the same place on the page. So, good. Now, I want to select the duplicate image, so I'll just click out here, where there's no object selected, and then click on the duplicate frame, here. So that's selected. And I want to delete the image inside of that frame. So I'll double click, to select the image inside the frame, and then hit the Delete key on my keyboard, to simply delete it.
So now I have an empty frame, which is in exactly the same place as the other frame beneath it. I can see the empty frame, if I press the W key, to come out of preview mode. So now you see the graphic frame sitting on top of the image. Now the rest of the process is pretty much the same as before. I'll select the text frame down here, and I'll fill the text with white, by going to the Fill pop-up menu, clicking the T icon, and then clicking Paper. Now I've got white text.
So while that text frame is selected, I'll go to the Edit menu, and cut it, select my graphic frame, the empty one, and click Edit, Paste Into. And finally, I'll select the original text frame, the one with the black text in it, head up to the Object menu, Arrange, and Send to Back. Oh, and I do want to group them. I'll select all of those objects, and Object, Group them. There we go. Now, of course, there are a lot of designers who will say they hate the look of this, because it makes the text hard to read.
And, sure, that's true. You do want to be careful. But if your design calls for this kind of effect, at least now you know how you can achieve it.
Updated
12/5/2019Released
8/25/2011New techniques will be added to the collection every other week, so check back early and often. Find more tips and tricks at indesignsecrets.com.Note: Because this is an ongoing series, viewers will not receive a certificate of completion.
Skill Level Intermediate
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