From the course: InDesign Secrets
272 Reverse text when partially over a dark object - InDesign Tutorial
From the course: InDesign Secrets
272 Reverse text when partially over a dark object
- [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.
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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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