Creative Mentor

Archive for April, 2009

Working smart with object styles…

Object Styles allow you to capture object specific attributes such as fill, stroke, corner options, paragraph styles (my fave), text frame options, baseline options, story options, text wrap, anchored objects and frame fitting options. You can also capture transparency attributes and effects.

In previous posts this month we have looked at how to create styles, style overrides, redefining and breaking the link to the style, so I’m not going to go over that here with Object Styles. The methods are the same, just remember when working with an Object Style you need to be working from the “Object Styles” panel.

For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Styles | 1 Comment

Drop Caps made easy with Paragraph Styles…

You can embed a Drop Cap within a paragraph style easily. When you create a new paragraph style go down to the “Drop Caps and Nested Styles” tab. From the Drop Caps section, simply enter how many lines you would like the Drop Cap to cover, and also how many characters should be included as a Drop Cap.

You can also choose to apply a character style to your drop caps. If you haven’t yet created one, you can create it directly from the Character Style drop down menu, choose “New Character Style…”.

For more information on this topic via Adobe Help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Styles | 4 Comments

You can detach any applied styles…

Occasionally when working with paragraph and character styles, you will need to detach a style from your text. The process is quite simple and it works the same from both the Paragraph Styles and Character Styles panels.

To detach a paragraph style simply insert your type cursor within a specific paragraph, go to the fly out menu (located top right) of the Paragraph Styles panel and choose “Break Link to Style”. You’ll notice now that the previously active (highlighted blue) paragraph style is now no longer active.

With character styles you need to select the characters first, then go to the fly out menu (located top right) of the character styles panel and choose “Break Link to Style”. You’ll notice now that the previously active (highlighted blue) character style  is now no longer active.

“Break Link to Style” will also work in the same way with Object Styles, just select your object first then choose ”Break Link to Style” from the Object Styles panel.

For more information on this topic via Adobe Help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Styles | No Comments

Once styles are saved within your document they can be easily loaded into your next job…

It wouldn’t really be practical to create styles within one document and then have to re-create them in the next. Once you save a document that contains paragraph and character styles, you can use those styles in any document you like from that point on.

From either the “Paragraph Styles” or “Character Styles” panel, open the fly out menu (located at the top right of the panel) and choose “Load All Text Styles…”. A dialogue box will appear, asking you to navigate to the InDesign document that you’re wanting to load the styles from. Once located, select it and choose “Open”.

A “Load Styles” dialogue box will appear. Make sure you have checked any of the styles you’re wanting to bring into your document, any that you don’t want should remain unchecked. The way you tell which ones are paragraph styles and which are character styles, is by looking at the little icon next to the check box. Paragraph Styles are represented with a paragraph icon whilst character styles are indicated with an upper case letter A. You’ll notice also if you click on one of the styles you can see its attributes within the “Incoming Style Definition” box.

If you are bringing in a style that has the same name as one already in your current document, from the “Conflict with Existing Style” column, you can choose either “Auto Rename” or use “Incoming Style Definition”.

For more information on loading styles via Adobe help click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Styles | No Comments

Style multiple lines easily with Line Styles…

Nested Line Styles let us apply a character style to one or more lines within a paragraph. There really easy to create and apply, see video tutorial below.

To access Adobe Help for more info on Nested Line Styles click here.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Styles | No Comments

Embed a Character Style within a Paragraph Style to get the desired look…

Nested Styles allow us to customize a paragraph style, giving us even more creative effect and control when working with text. Put simply, a Nested Style is a character style embedded within a paragraph style.

To achieve the result above, create a paragraph style of some text and call it “Body”, then open the style options dialogue for that style. There are a few ways to open the style options dialogue, you can right click (two button mouse) or control click (one button mouse) on the “Body” style, you can even double click on the style name within the paragraph styles panel which will also open the style options dialogue.

Next, click on the “Drop Caps and Nested Styles” tab. From the “Nested Styles” section you need to choose “New Nested Style”. Now you need to tell the current “Body” paragraph style what character style and rules will be applied to our “New Nested Style”.

The first thing we need to do is to select a character style from the drop down menu. If you have previously created a character style it will appear in the drop down menu. If you haven’t, new to InDesign CS4 is the ability to create a style from any location that you can choose a style. So if you need to create a style at this stage choose “New Character Style…” from the drop down menu. When the new character style dialogue appears, keep things simple and change the character colour only. From the character colour tab, change your character swatch colour to Cyan. Now rename your new character style, we’ll call it “Cyan”. When done choose “OK”. Make sure your “Cyan” character style is now selected within the nested styles section.

The next step is to establish the rule which determines how the nested style will be applied to the paragraph. There are loads of options available here, however we are going to keep things simple, choose “through 1 Words”. When done, choose “OK” and the style options dialogue will close.

You should now see all paragraphs that have the “Body” style applied now also have every first word appearing in cyan. We have now embedded a character style within a paragraph style in its most basic form. I would encourage you to explore the other options available when setting up a nested style, the video tutorial below explains the other options in more detail.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Styles | No Comments

Well all the hard work is over, I’ve taken all my ACE exams and am happy to report that I passed all three.

I was very impressed by the standard of the exams this time round. The content was relevant to new CS4 features, the questions were clear and made sense, the difficulty level of the questions were high, and the exams were consistant across the board. Overall it made for an exciting challenge.

Adobe has done a great job of improving the exams, we’re a thousand times ahead of the CS3 equivalent. Congratulations to all the people involved.

I don’t like to toot my own horn, though anyone who’s interested in my scores can see the screenshots below.

Im glad it’s over!

Posted by Neil Oliver in ACE Exams, News | 1 Comment

Style multiple paragraphs at the same time with Next Styles…

WARNING - If you haven’t heard of or seen “Next Styles” in action you may want to consider watching the video tutorial below before you read this post.

Once you have created your styles, InDesign paragraph styles allow us the ability to style our text quickly and easily by setting up a next style. Put simply, a next style is a rule that you give a paragraph style telling it what should happen when you close a paragraph and start a new one. In our previous document we set three paragraph styles (header, sub header and body). Now we have these set, all we need to do is go into our “style options” dialogue and tell our styles what should happen to the next paragraph when we press return/enter.

Before we get started there’s a few things we need to consider so we don’t muck up our existing text. As a rule when editing styles it’s best to make sure you have no text frames selected, and also that your text cursor isn’t active within a text frame. These two scenarios are the number one reason people get frustrated with paragraph styles, so be careful.

Now that we don’t have a text frame selected, and our type cursor isn’t active within our text, go to the paragraph styles panel and locate the first style which you want to be applied to your paragraph. In our case it is our “Header” style. Now double click on the “Header” style and the “Style Options” dialogue will appear. You should be looking at the “General” tab by default, in the middle of this dialogue you’ll see a “Next Style” drop down menu. This is where we tell the “Header” style to follow with our “Sub Header” style, so choose “Sub Header” from the drop down menu. Now choose “OK” to close the “Style Options” dialogue.

Now we need to tell InDesign what to do after our “Sub Header” paragraph. We simply repeat the first step again, though this time we will choose “Body” as our next style. Double click on the “Sub Header” style in the paragraph styles panel, when the “Style Options” dialogue appears choose “Body” from the next style drop down menu. Now choose “OK” to close the “Style Options” dialogue.

We’re almost there! Repeating the last step again, this time we’ll open the “Style Options” dialogue for our “Body” paragraph style, and this is where we need to make a serious decision. Do we want our text to repeat the loop again, or do we want every paragraph style from this point on to maintain our current “Body” paragraph style?

If you wanting to keep the current “Body” style active, do the following. From the next style drop down choose “Same Style”. Now every new paragraph you create will have the “Body” style applied. Choose “OK” to close the “Style Options” dialogue.

However, if you’re wanting to loop back again so the following paragraphs start from “Header” then “Sub Header” and “Body”, you simply choose “Header” as your next style. Once done choose “OK” to close the “Style Options” dialogue. So now every fourth paragraph will be the beginning of a new loop.

Now it’s time to put our next styles in action. There are two main ways you can get Next Styles to work for you. You can have your styles apply as you type (Option 1) or you can have them apply to your text when you’re done (Option 2).

Option 1: To apply your styles as you type, create a new text frame, then choose the “Header” style from the paragraph styles panel. This step is very important, if your “Header” style is highlighted blue in the paragraph styles panel, you’re on track. Start typing your header text. When done, press return/enter. You have now created a new paragraph, and you’ll notice that the sub header style is now active within the paragraph styles panel and is being applied to your sub header text, when you type in your sub header text it will already be formatted correctly. When done, press return again. Now the body style is active, type in your body text and you should have three different paragraphs each formatted accordingly. If you press return/enter now you will either loop back to the header style or continue typing with the same style depending on the option you chose from the next style drop down in the style options dialogue.

Option 2: To apply your next styles to existing text, you have three options.

1. Apply next styles to all paragraphs within the selected frame - Select your existing text frame, with the “Selection” tool, then from the paragraph styles panel “right click” (two button mouse) or “control click” one button mouse and choose “Apply Header then Next Style”.

2. Apply next styles only to the selected text within the frame - Select some or all of the text within your frame and from the paragraph styles panel “right click” (two button mouse) or “control click” one button mouse and choose “Apply Header then Next Style”. If you selected three paragraphs, only those three will be styled, if you chose all the paragraphs within the frame, all paragraphs will be styled.

Take advantage of Next Styles where you can. They may not work in every situation, but when they do they’re priceless. Click here to access Adobe Help for more info on nested styles.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Styles | No Comments

What is an override? How do you redefine? Put simply, think of an override as the bad guy and redefine as the good guy…

An override is the name for any style that has different formatting attributes applied when compared to its default style. So far we have been working with three paragraph styles (Header, Sub Head and Body) and one character style (Number). Let’s say I closed the document down, and then someone else opened that same document and started changing the header text within from blue to green. Let’s also assume that that person didn’t know what a style was. When done, happy with themselves for doing the changes oh so quickly (Ha!), they shut down the file with no regard to how reckless they’ve been. So next time you open the file your suspicious of the documents new appearance and you’re ready to investigate.

Simply place your text cursor within the paragraph style which you want to check, open the Paragraph Styles panel and you will see your highlighted paragraph style (in blue). However, now you also see a little plus (+) symbol. What’s the deal, you say? Well, that little plus symbol is your indicator from InDesign that someone has tinkered with your style. The plus symbol simply means the style has an override applied, or in other words, that someone has changed the default style colour, which was blue, to green.

You have a few options at this point; you can remove the override, or redefine the style. Removing an override is like using undo. Once you remove that override, the text reverts back to its original style state. To remove an override, place your cursor within the affected paragraph, and from the Paragraph Styles panel click on the clear overrides icon located at the bottom of the panel. A quicker way to remove an override is to hold down “Option” (MAC) or “ALT” (PC) and click on the relevant styles name. Both ways will remove the little plus symbol and revert the text back to its original state (blue).

Now if you didn’t want to remove the override, and you wanted to permanently change the header text to green, you wouldn’t clear the override. Instead, you’d redefine the style. Redefining a style affects every single paragraph of text within your document that that header style has been applied to (something to keep in mind). To redefine this style now, insert your type cursor within the relevant paragraph, and from the Paragraph Styles panel open the flyout menu located at the top right of the panel and choose “Redefine Style”. Now the override disappears, and your style has been permanently changed throughout the document to have green as the default character colour.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Styles | 2 Comments

Once you’ve mastered Paragraph Styles, Character Styles are a cinch!

Character Styles behave in the same way as Paragraph Styles, however there are two main differences you should be aware of. The first is that a Character Style only captures formatting attributes specific to a particular character. The types of formatting captured are Basic Character Formats, Advanced Character Formats, Character Colour, Open Type Features, Underline Options and Strikethrough Options.

The second thing you need to be aware of is the way you create and apply a Character Style. In a Paragraph Style you simply place your cursor within the paragraph to create and apply it. When working with Character Style you need to isolate a specific character in your text by selecting it with the type tool. When you apply your Character Style you need to make sure you have selected the character, or characters that you’re wanting to apply it to. One thing to remember is that a Character Style isn’t exclusive to one character only, you can apply it to the first three words in a sentence if you want.

[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]

Posted by Neil Oliver in Styles | No Comments