InDesign: Switch between text and object fill

A very quick tip, this one:

If you're applying colours to a text box via the swatches palette hit 'j' to toggle between text colour and object colour.

Resetting Preferences

From time to time things stop working in InDesign.

Point in case: I was training a group of four people earlier this week and for no apparent reason some of the InDesign tools refused to work properly for one person only.

At times like this the very first thing that I do is close the document and then re-open it. If this doesn't do anything I would then quit the program and relaunch it. If this doesn't work I would then reset InDesign's preferences.

To do this, launch InDesign and then hit Apple-alt-shift-cmd and hold these keys down until a prompt appears asking if you want to reset preferences. More often than not, this will do the trick.

It's a handy thing to know. Especially when it's Friday afternoon and ten minutes before a deadline.

Controlling fill and stoke

A few simple shortcuts to make working with fills and stokes a little easier. (In Photoshop's case, make that foreground and background).

X – This will toggle between fill and stoke at the foot of the tool pallette.

Shift-X This will transpose fill and stroke.

D - This will set an object back to its default white fill and black stroke.

, – This will fill and object with the last used fill.

. – This will fill an object with the last used gradient.

/ – This will clear an object of fill or stroke.

J - This will toggle between selecting object fill and text fill in the swatches pallette.

InDesign: Unlocking Master Page Elements

If you're a Quark user moving over to InDesign you may be a little perturbed by the fact that InDesign has the habit of locking all master page elements. The new user could spend a lot of time trying to solve this quandary, and may end up looking in the pallette menu of the pages to find the command 'Override all master page items'.

This, however, has the effect of unlocking all master page items, somthing that you probably won't want to be doing.

The best way of locally unlocking items is very simple: hold down Apple-Shift or Command-Shift and double-click on the item you wish to unlock.

InDesign: Paragraph and Character Panes

Another simple but essential hint: The more you use InDesign the more you realise that you spend half of your life flipping between the paragraph and character panes of the control panel.

Here's the keyboard shortcut: if you don't know it already it will save your life. Well, maybe not your life but you may just keep your hair a little longer.

Apple-alt-7 or Control-alt-7.

Post Your Questions Here

If you're using the Adobe Creative Studio and need help then post a question in this thread. If you do this we'll create a new post to address your question.

Illustrator: Easter Egg

A bit of an old one this, but still fun.

Go to the bottom of the Illustrator screen and click on the arrow next to 'Selection' holding down the alt or option key. Check out the 'Show' sub-menu for a few hidden extras…

InDesign: Set Up A Baseline Grid

How many times have you flicked throught a newspaper or magazine and noticed that text is not lining up across columns? While this is not a deal breaker it's ugly and lazy work, especially when it's so easy to set up a baseline grid and correct this problem.

Setting up a baseline grid is something that I normally do at the very start of a publishing project. A lot of designers try this and get deterred by the fact that their leading (line spacing) values tend to mess up. This occurs because InDesign's default baseline grid is set to 4.233mm (in other words 12pt or 1 pica) and if your leading happens to be more than this you end up aligning your text to every other line on the baseline grid. Too many designers get this far and then give up.

The solution is simplicity itself:

1. Set your leading and make a note of what is.

2. Go to InDesign > Preferences > Grids... and set the Grid's 'Start' value to whatever your top margin is for the page. Next set the 'Increment Every:' to whatever your leading happens to be. Make sure that you include whatever measurement unit that you are using (i.e. if you are using pts then type '14pt' into the field).

3. Finally, select your type and in the paragraph pane of the control panel hit the 'Align To Baseline Grid' button (even better if you can do this in the paragraph style sheets dialogue box).

Now you're up and running...