- What's the number one, coolest, most amazing feature in InDesign? Well, XML, of course. No, no, I'm just kidding. It's transparency. We've already looked at how InDesign can import images with transparency, but now let's take a step further and look at how you can apply transparency effects to any object in InDesign. I have my magazine article file open from my exercise files folder, and I'd like to apply some interesting transparency effects to this text up here. So I'll select that text frame, and I'm gonna zoom in to 400% by pressing command four on the Mac or control four on Windows.
Now, I'm going to open up the control central for all transparency effects, and that is the effects panel over here in the dock. If you don't see the effects panel in your dock, then you might need to change your workspace or you can choose it out of the window menu. Now you can apply a transparency effect to any object on your page, whether it's a graphic frame, a text frame, a line, or whatever. The first thing we're going to do here is change the opacity. That's this control in the upper right corner.
I'll click once on the word opacity. That's just a shortcut for selecting all the text inside that field. And I'll change this down to, say, 70%, and then hit enter. Now all the text, the whole object, in fact, is 70% opaque, that is 30% transparent. I can also change this interactively by clicking on this little triangle to the right of the field. Now I can just drag to the left or to the right. Now the second transparency effect you can apply in the effects panel is the blending mode.
That's the popup menu over here in the upper left corner. Right now, the blending mode is set to normal. But you can see that we have a lot of different options here. Almost all the options from Photoshop or Illustrator show up here. So, for example, we could set this to multiply. Multiply kind of burns the effect into the background. Or we could choose screen. Screen is just the opposite of multiply. It's kind of like shining a light on a screen. Multiply always makes the effect darker, and screen always makes it lighter.
I should point out that if you want to see your transparency effects as best as possible, you should go to the view menu, come down to display performance, and then make sure you're set to high quality display. That way you could always see the high resolution images and the high quality transparency effects. This won't affect how it's going to print out, of course, but it does make them look better on screen. All right, that's looking pretty good. Now I want to change the transparency of a different object on the spread. I'm gonna zoom back to fit the page in the window by pressing command zero or control zero on Windows.
I'm gonna choose this text frame down here, this caption, and I'm gonna zoom in on it by pressing command four or control four on Windows. This white frame with this black text looks pretty good, but I'd like to see through the white a little bit. Now I could select this whole frame, go up to the effects panel, and change the opacity to, say, 70%. But the problem with this is that it makes the entire object 70% opaque. That is, I can see through the background, but I can also see through the text.
It made the black text kind of dark gray text. I don't want to do that. So let's go ahead and set this back to 100% again. Instead, what I want to do is change the opacity of the background fill but not the text. Fortunately, the effects panel lets me do that. It all has to do with what is selected down here in this list. Right now, object is selected, which means that the opacity and the blending modes are going to be applied to the entire object. But I only want to change the opacity of the fill, so I'll click on fill here.
Now any change I make inside the effects panel will only affect the fill of the object. So again, I'll come up here and change this to 70%. You might not see a big difference here on screen, but believe me, it makes a big difference. The background fill is transparent, but the text is nice and solid. By the way, you don't even have to open the effects panel to do all these things. Even if the effects panel is closed, you can still get to many of those effects up here in the control panel.
For example, I could change the transparency of this object from 70 up to 80%. That makes it a little bit less transparent. I can also tell InDesign what part of the object to affect in this popup menu over here. That's the same thing as selecting one of those items from the list inside the effects panel. Changing the opacity or blending mode of an object is cool, but it's just the beginning when it comes to InDesign's transparency features. In the next few movies, we'll look at some of the most common transparency effects, starting with everyone's favorite, the drop shadow.
Author
Updated
1/12/2016Released
6/19/2015Want to learn InDesign in just 20 minutes? Watch the first chapter, which concentrates on the most essential skills: editing text, adding graphics, moving objects, and creating PDFs. Once you're ready to move on, InDesign insider David Blatner will show you the rest of what InDesign has to offer. Learn how to navigate and customize the workspace, manage documents and pages, format text and graphics, experiment with color and gradients, draw and transform shapes, create interactive documents, package your designs for print, and much more.
- Getting started with InDesign in just 30 minutes
- Setting up a new document
- Inserting text
- Placing graphics
- Formatting objects
- Creating color and gradient swatches
- Organizing InDesign projects with layers
- Transforming objects
- Incorporating drop caps, bullets, and numbering
- Applying character and object styles
- Building tables
- Creating an interactive PDF and exporting to EPUB
- Printing and exporting
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
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Q: This course was updated on 01/12/2016. What changed?
A: We added one new movie covering the revised InDesign CC interface, including the new Start workspace, released in November 2015.
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InDesign Secrets
with David Blatner38h 45m Intermediate -
InDesign: Beyond the Essentials
with David Blatner4h 54m Intermediate
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Introduction
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Welcome1m 4s
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Using the exercise files2m 21s
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How this course is updated1m 20s
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1. Learn InDesign in 30 Minutes
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Getting started2m 44s
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Adding or editing text3m 47s
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Adding or replacing graphics4m 22s
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Moving objects around4m 43s
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Printing and creating a PDF5m 45s
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2. Working with InDesign Documents
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Navigating and zooming8m 35s
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Selecting objects6m 50s
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Working with panels7m 24s
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3. Creating a Document
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New documents10m 40s
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Adding text frames5m 30s
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Typing and editing text3m 11s
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Importing graphics8m 51s
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4. Managing Pages
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Overriding master page items3m 52s
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Changing page size6m 43s
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Adding page numbering2m 45s
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5. Text
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Inserting special characters5m 40s
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Importing text4m 46s
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Threading text frames5m 1s
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Setting text frame columns5m 33s
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Putting text on a path7m 29s
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Using the Story Editor6m 42s
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Checking spelling6m 18s
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Using Find/Change7m 59s
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6. Graphics
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Using the Links panel9m 47s
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Inserting QR codes3m 48s
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7. Formatting Objects
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Colorizing images2m 35s
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Adjusting transparency4m 53s
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Adding drop shadows4m 31s
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8. Color
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Creating color swatches6m 2s
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Creating gradient swatches5m 10s
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Applying gradients6m 48s
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9. Frames and Paths
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Creating text outlines5m 10s
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10. Managing Objects
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Stacking objects2m 13s
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Grouping and locking objects3m 38s
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Nesting objects4m 53s
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Aligning and distributing5m 16s
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Understanding text wrap6m 41s
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Using anchored objects5m 37s
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11. Transforming Objects
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Duplicating objects6m 56s
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Rotating objects3m 3s
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Scaling objects5m 53s
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Skewing objects1m 55s
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Mirroring objects3m 35s
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12. Character Formatting
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Changing case4m 28s
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Using Find Font5m 43s
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13. Paragraph Formatting
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Using drop caps2m 50s
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Shading paragraphs and boxes2m 47s
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Setting tabs9m 7s
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Adding automatic bullets5m 45s
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Numbering paragraphs7m 12s
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14. Styles
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Using character styles6m 16s
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Using object styles4m 28s
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15. Tables
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Creating a table5m 33s
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Adjusting rows and columns4m 11s
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Formatting a table5m 31s
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Formatting cells7m 46s
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16. Interactive Documents
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Adding hyperlinks5m 17s
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Creating an interactive PDF7m 38s
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Exporting a reflowable EPUB8m 37s
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17. Packaging, Printing, and Exporting
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Packaging for output7m 11s
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Using the Print dialog box6m 28s
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Exporting a PDF10m 5s
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Exporting text4m 2s
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Conclusion
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Next steps1m 59s
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Video: Adjusting transparency