Last week I presented a free eSeminar for Adobe on the topic of InDesign CS3. It was part of the Adobe Solutions Network Service Provider program. (The ASN program is pretty amazing… seems like very good value for what you get!) I had fun showing all the fun new CS3 stuff, and attendees on the Adobe Connect presentation were able to ask questions. Unfortunately, I was unable to answer all the questions in the time allotted, so I figured I’d take a moment to answer more of them here. Perhaps the answers will be interesting even to folks who weren’t tuned in to the session.
Q: We have a RGB to CMYK Rip for our printers. Do I want to have a RGB transparency blend space?
A: Excellent question. In the vast majority of cases, if you’re going to be printing separations somewhere along the line, you want to leave the Edit > Transparency Blend Space submenu set to Document CMYK. If you’re not planning on printing separations (for example, if your final output is to an inkjet printer or an onscreen PDF) then you should set this to Document RGB.
Q: Are there any training files available for us to use when learning CS3?
A: There are LOTS of resources available! Some of the easiest are via videos. For example, the CS3 Video Workshop and the InDesign CS3 Essentials and InCopy CS3 Essentials videos at lynda.com. There are also great articles in InDesign Magazine and blog and podcast entries here at indesignsecrets.com.
Q: Re: processing DCS files.. would you get a high resolution preview when making a PDF?
A: Yes, InDesign merges the high resolution DCS plates together when it builds a PDF (or prints) so that you get the high-resolution data in the PDF file. It’s increasingly rare to use DCS anymore, though; in most cases, I would encourage you to explore saving your spot color images in the PSD file format instead.
Q: Is an InDesign file link printer-safe? I’ve been told by my printers that I should only submit an InDesign file for print with links that are either tiff or eps.
A: I answered this online, but I want to repeat my answer here: Printers who insist on EPS and TIFF images are stuck in the 20th century! EPS is a dying file format (though I don’t expect it to ever truly die, as it’s useful in a few minor circumstances). There is simply nothing wrong with using PSD, AI, and PDF in your InDesign documents. So yes, as far as I can tell, importing an INDD file into InDesign CS3 really is safe for print. If your printer balks, tell them you’ll take your business to someone who is willing to live in the 21st century.
Q: How do I change my default font in InDesign from Times to my firm’s standard font?
A: You can change the default font by changing the Basic Paragraph Style definition in the Paragraph Styles palette. But you can override that with local formatting by choosing a font while nothing is selected on your page. You can even do this while no documents are open (just select the Type tool to get text formatting options in the Control panel) which will change all documents you later create. However, I urge people to change the paragraph style, not apply local formatting on top of the current style.
Q: Once I have CS3 on my computer, will my old files open in CS3 or will they still open in CS2?
A: You can have both CS2 and CS3 (and even earlier versions) on your computer at the same time. Unfortunately, I don’t right now, so I can’t test this. In theory, after you install CS3, double-clicking on a file on the Mac will open it in the version it was created. However, I believe in Windows it will always open in CS3. Can someone confirm this?
Q: Can frame fitting options be part of an object style?
A: Oh yes! The Frame Fitting Options features, new in CS3, can definitely be part of an object style. That means you can click on the object style and InDesign can automatically crop, position, and fit any image inside a frame. Wonderful feature!
Q: Does placing the InDesign file inside an InDesign file increase the size of the file when making a pdf?
A: Not really. Remember that importing an InDesign file is similar to opening the InDesign file, exporting it as PDF, and then importing that PDF file.
Q: Does Add Used Colors work for Photoshop files?
A: You mean the “Add Colors to Swatches” feature in the Swatches palette menu? No, it can’t see inside a Photoshop file (or an Illustrator file, or any other imported file), grab the unnamed colors and make them into swatches in InDesign. However, if you need to add a color from a Photoshop file, you can use the Eyedropper tool. Click on the Photoshop image, then select Add to Swatches from the Color palette flyout menu.
Q: Can you make the High Resolution transparency flattener preset the default?
A: You can do this by creating a PDF Export Preset. After you set up the PDF export options just the way you want them, click Save Preset at the bottom of the dialog box and name the preset. As soon as you choose this from the Preset popup menu, InDesign remembers your choice (it’s “sticky”) and you’ll get it by default.
Q: Will Find & Change Colors change in Illustrator files used in document too?
A: No. While the Find/Change dialog box in CS3 now lets you search for (and replace) object formatting (including colors), it only works on InDesign objects, not imported graphics.
Q: What version(s) of Quark files can CS3 open?
A: Same as CS1 and CS2: QuarkXPress 3.3 and 4.0 documents. If you need to open docs from later versions of XPress, check out Markzware’s Q2ID plug-in.
Q: When I layout my page in two colors, may I use Effect options?
A: The Effects panel in CS3 works with any colors, including Pantone spot colors. It’s quite amazing to be able to apply a bevel effect to some Pantone colored text. I don’t think that’s possible elsewhere (even in Photoshop).
Q: Along with the new place features is it now possible to place a multi-page PDF document across multiple pages in InDesign?
A: You have been able to do that for a long time… you just didn’t know you could. The trick is the PlaceMultiPagePDF script that ships with InDesign, but isn’t installed by default. The good (great!) news about CS3 is that the scripts are installed by default. So just choose Window > Automation > Scripts, then open the Application scripts folder and look for PlaceMultiPagePDF. Double-click on it to create a new document, adding each page of the PDF to a page in the file.
Q: When you were showing the ink coverage being too high, how would you address that?
A: The Separations Preview palette (Window > Output > Separations Preview) lets you see if areas of your document exceed an ink limit. Anything beyond the limit appears as red on screen. However, there is no automatic way to “fix” this. In the example I showed in the eSeminar, I would have had to open the CMYK image in Photoshop and change it there. If the out-of-limit colors were InDesign swatches, I would have to adjust the swatch in InDesign.
Q: In CS2, a drop shadow applied to an object would not retain it’s relationship to the object when rotated (you’d have to edit the drop shadow offset to match the new rotation of the object). Is this fixed in CS3?
A: Nope. The angle of the shadow is based on the page, not the object. Note that CS3 does have one change to drop shadow angle, though: You can now turn on Use Global Light, which ensures that all objects (well, all the objects with this feature enabled) will get the same angle.
Q: When you export your doc as XML, do the auto-numbering/lettering/bulleting carry through to XML?
A: I’m not sure what auto-lettering is, but I believe the answer to all of these is: No. If you use an auto-bullet or auto-number, the bullet or number is not actually text in the paragraph; rather, it’s formatting, just like the font or size is formatting. If you need the number or letter in the text itself, you should select the text, right-click on it, then choose Convert Numbering (or Bullets) to Text.
Well, that’s just about all the questions I can answer here. (There were some questions about Bridge and Photoshop and whatnot, but we’re focusing on InDesign here.) I hope that you find these answers useful! Thanks for reading along!
This article was last modified on December 18, 2021
This article was first published on April 26, 2007
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