Jim wrote:

I played with the Feather effect on one of our documents. When I applied a feather to one graphic, the feathered graphic AND the rest of the graphics on the page got lighter. In another file, applying a dropshadow caused the graphic to become lighter. What could be going on?

This is a common cry from InDesign users… “all the images suddenly changed! What happened?” You identified the cause perfectly: You added a transparency effect. When you add any kind of transparency effect — including placing an image that has tranparency in it, or using any of the features in the Effects panel — the whole spread may change because InDesign forces the display…