LAYOUT : the newsletter of page design

If you want to make a duplicate of a master page object while editing an Adobe InDesign layout, you can either (a) switch to the master page to copy it for pasting back into the layout, or (b) override the object directly in the layout and duplicate it. The problem is that (a) is fiddly while (b) leaves your master page object unlocked (overridden). Here’s a quick way to do it without breaking the link back to the master page. First, override the object as in (b) by holding down the Command+Shift (Mac) or Ctrl+Shift (Windows) keys and clicking on it with the Selection tool. Copy the overridden object to the clipboard by pressing Command+C (Mac) or Ctrl+C (Windows). Now apply the Undo command by pressing Command+Z (Mac) or Ctrl+Z (Windows). You will find that the Undo command reverses the override action, leaving the master page object untouched, but keeps the object copied in the clipboard. You can now just paste it back on to the layout to create a duplicate by pressing Command+V (Mac) or Ctrl+V (Windows).

When several items or objects in a page layout overlap, invariably the one that you want to edit is sitting behind another. Luckily, both QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign provide simple methods for selecting objects behind other objects. 

In QuarkXPress, hold down the Command-Opt-Shift (Mac) or Ctrl-Alt-Shift (Windows) keys and click on the item that’s in front of the others. With each subsequent click, QuarkXPress selects the next item further back in the stack until it reaches the back, whereupon the next click selects the front item again. When an obscured item is selected, you can move it using the cursor keys, apply colours to it, and select, retype and restyle text inside it if it’s a text box. You can also, of course, bring it to the front using the F5 key.

In Adobe InDesign, hold down the Command (Mac) or Ctrl (Windows) keys and click on the object that’s in front of the others. With each subsequent click, InDesign selects the next object further back in the stack until it reaches the back, whereupon the next click selects the front item again. Alternatively, you can select the front object, then repeatedly press Command-Opt-[ (Mac) or Ctrl-Alt-[ (Windows) to select each subsequent object behind, or hold down the Shift key as well to select each subsequent object in front.

When an obscured InDesign object is selected, you can move it using the cursor keys or by carefully clicking and dragging on the object's centre handle. You can also apply colours and object styles, but selecting text inside an obscured text frame is virtually impossible in InDesign because this usually requires an additional click with the Type tool. You can bring the selected object to the front using Command-Shift-] (Mac) or Ctrl-Shift-] (Windows).

InDesign CS3 also provides a set of buttons for selecting objects behind other objects, but these buttons have baffling pictograms that few people can remember easily. Just use the keyboard modifiers above instead.

When you’re learning Adobe InDesign, you are told that all the program palettes can be opened from the Window menu. While this is true, the most commonly used palettes — those for editing text — are collected under a Type and Tables submenu. This makes them fiddly to locate and launch. Ideally, try to learn the keyboard shortcuts for these palettes; until then, forget the Window menu and go hunting under the Type menu instead. Here you’ll find Character Styles, Paragraph Styles, Tabs, Glyphs and the Character and Paragraph palettes directly. You won’t find the Tables palette there, though. If you want a quick way of opening the Tables palette but can’t remember that the keyboard shortcut is Shift-F9, select a cell in any table (click inside the cell and tap the Escape key) and click the ‘palette toggle’ button at the right-hand end of the Control palette. This will actually open the Table, Stroke, Character and Paragraph palettes at the same time, but at least it gets the Table palette open with one click.

After experimenting with the Rotate, Shear and Transform tools in Adobe InDesign, you now want to return the objects back to their original appearance. Don’t waste time trying to re-adjust the objects using the same tools. Instead, switch to the Selection tool, click on one of your edited objects, then set the Rotation Angle and/or Shear X Angle fields in the Control palette back to zero. Simple, really.

Adobe Reader 8 allows you to run a spellcheck on text that has been typed into form fields and comments. It’s obviously a good way of ensuring accuracy when completing electronic forms before you submit them, and also jolly handy when participating in a collaborative review using Adobe Reader’s basic commenting functions. You can also expand the number of language dictionaries that Adobe Reader can use: 32 additional dictionaries are available to download from the Adobe website free of charge, for Windows and for Mac. Chinese, Korean and Japanese dictionaries (Windows only) can be downloaded here.

When you install Adobe Creative Suite 3, Adobe’s set of ICC profiles for RGB and CMYK workflows are installed too. But what if you need to make those exact same profiles available on another computer that doesn’t have CS3? Helpfully, Adobe has made these profiles available as a free download. The set includes Adobe RGB (1998), FOGRA28 Coated and FOGRA29 Uncoated. Available for Windows and for Mac.

Most users of Adobe software know that pressing the Tab key hides all on-screen palettes and that Shift-Tab hides all palettes except for the Tools palette. As usual, these shortcuts are hopeless when working with text in InDesign because they simply insert tab characters, but that’s another story. Less well known is the toggle for expanding and collapsing all docked palettes at the side of the screen in one go: Ctrl-Alt-Tab. This is a very handy way of keeping the unruly little buggers in check (a big problem with InDesign CS2), and the keyboard command also works whether you are editing text or not.

Have you ever laid out a page in a QuarkXPress Print Layout and wished you could save it to HTML as well? Well, to do this properly and take advantage of the web design tools, you should really copy or synchronize the content over to a Web Layout. But if all you want is a rough-and-ready HTML version of what you’ve already got in the existing Print Layout, hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys, then choose File > Export > HTML.

When you have grouped two or more items on a page in QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign, this doesn’t prevent you from editing the individual items independently from each other. In QuarkXPress, click away from the selected group, then click on any of its items using the Content tool: you can then reshape and move that item freely. As soon as you click back on any of the items using the Item tool, the entire group is selected again. InDesign uses a similar approach: use the Direct Selection tool (the white arrow) to work with individual objects, then pick up the entire group again using the Selection tool (black arrow).

By the way, the keyboard shortcut for ungrouping is Command-U (Mac) or Ctrl-U (Win) for QuarkXPress, but Command-Alt-G (Mac) or Ctrl-Alt-G (Win) for InDesign.

The proper way to draw L-shaped rules on a page, for example to separate a corner ad from the editorial copy around it, involves using the Pen tool in Adobe InDesign or Bézier Line tool in QuarkXPress. But if the Pen tool fills you with horror (the slightest twitch of the mouse can turn a straight line into a curve - disaster!), here’s a fairly simple way to do it using InDesign’s Line tool or QuarkXPress’ Orthogonal Line tool. Draw a horizontal line. Draw a vertical line. Select both lines, and use the Align buttons to align the two lines twice: (a) to the left or right, and (b) to the top or bottom. Your two lines will butt together at one end to form a seamless corner.
InDesign’s Align buttons can be found in the Control palette and Align palette. QuarkXPress 7’s Align buttons can be found in the Measurements palette (Space/Align tab) and XPert Align palette.