Chapter 8 Exploring Effects and Advanced Techniques

Chapter 8

Exploring Effects andAdvanced Techniques

• Use the Pathfinder panel• Create new stroke styles• Incorporate gridify behavior• Work with nested styles• Apply Live Corner effects• Work with effects and object styles• Work with multiple page sizes• Design with multiple documents

Chapter Objectives

Use the Pathfinder Panel

The Pathfinder panel allows you to create new complex shapes by overlapping simple objects.


The Pathfinder panel offers five pathfinder commands:

– Add– Subtract– Intersect– Exclude Overlap– Minus Back


The Add Pathfinder combines two or more overlapping objects into one object.


The Subtract Pathfinder causes the front-most object to “punch a hole” in the backmost object.


The Intersect Pathfinder removes everything but that which overlaps.


The Exclude Overlap Pathfinder creates a hole where two or more objects overlap.


The Minus Back Pathfinder punches a hole in the front object using the shape in the back.

Create New Stroke Styles

In the New Stroke Style dialog box you can create or customize three types of strokes:

– Dash– Dotted– Stripe

Incorporate Gridify Behavior

• You can position frames into a grid pattern in just one move using InDesign gridify behaviors.

• Use any of the frame creation tools, such as Rectangle, Polygon, or Type.

Incorporate Gridify Behavior• Click a frame tool • Start dragging • While you are dragging, press one of the

arrow keys as many times as you want to create copies of the frame in the direction of arrow.


Press and hold [Alt] (Win) or [option] (Mac) key while dragging an object, release the key, and press arrows to duplicate objects.


You can place multiple images in the grid dragging the place gun across it, while pressing the arrow keys.

Work with Nested Styles

• Nested styles are paragraph styles that contain two or more character styles.

• Without nested styles, you would need to apply character styles one at a time.


Three styles nested


In the Paragraph StyleOptions dialog box, you load the character stylesyou want to nest in theNested Styles section of the dialog box.

You will need to identify where a nested style ends, such as at periods or colons. If you have no such characters, use the End Nested Style Character command

Apply Live Corner Effects

To alleviate the boxy look of frame-based layouts, apply one of the five available Live Corner Effects.


• Select a frame.• Click the yellow square

that appears to activate Live Corner Effects.

• Click and drag one of the four yellow diamonds to apply Live Corner Effects to all corners.

Apply Live Corner Effects• Round Corners is the

default corner effect applied.

• Press [Shift] and drag diamond to affect only one corner.

Apply Live Corner Effects• To change to a different

effect, press and hold [Alt](Win) or [option] (Mac), then click one of the diamonds.

• To modify a single corner effect, shift-drag the yellow diamond.

Shift-drag to modify a single corner


Three different styles of Live Corner Effects applied

Work with Effects and Object Styles

• You can assign non-destructive effects to objects in your layout in the Effects dialog box.

• Non-destructive means they are not permanent.


• Effects include:– Glows– Shadows– Bevels– Embosses– Feathers

Three effects applied


• You can copy effects from one object to another by selecting an object that has the effect applied to it, and then dragging the fx icon to the other object.

Work with Effects and Object Styles• You can save all the

formatting you have done to an object as an object style.

• Select the formatted object, click the Object Style panel options button, then click New Object Style to name and save the style in the Object Style Options dialog box.

Working with Multiple Page Sizes

You can create multiple page sizes and multiple size master pages in one document.

Working with Multiple Page Sizes

An example of three different page sizes in one document output to PDF.

Designing with Multiple Documents

Add objects to a stack of captured items by:• Clicking objects.• Dragging a region to capture all content within that

region• Capturing already selected content using selection tools. InDesign remembers the sequence of capture so that the content is dropped in the same sequence later.


• Drop content by clicking the Drop Tool where you want the content.

• Drag while dropping to proportionately scale object with respect to its original object.

• Ribbon displays captured content and allows users to browse between captured items and determine the sequence of dropping.


Content Collector tool

Content Placer tool

Three place options (mouse over for description)