You cannot change the opacity of layers in InDesign, you'll have to select the objects instead, and change those.

Well, yes, yes, and yes. (I think.) The only “no” I'd suggest is on saving as JPEG. [a]

If you reduce the size of an image in InDesign, you are automatically increasing its resolution. On exporting, InDesign may decide the resolution gets ridiculously high — default is above 450 dpi — and automatically downsample it to its default of 300 dpi. Therefore, it really doesn't matter if you downsample it yourself to 300 dpi, or let ID do it for you.

Downsampling does “degrade” the image quality, because it needs to throw away actual data. However, if the resolution after downsampling is still sufficiently high for your intended output target (print?), the degradation is not visible at all.

[a] Given a choice, you're better off saving as PSD. If you save as JPEG — even using the highest possible quality –, its compression introduces artifacts. That kind of artifacts is most visible when using the lowest quality (try it!), and they may very well be invisible at 300 dpi. But if you decide the image doesn't look right, open it again in PS, adjust something and save it again as JPEG, the amount of artifacts increase. Do it a couple of times, and it gets worse every time. PSD uses a lossless compressed format, so it doesn't suffer from this.

Thanks! (Me too!)

As with find & change, text variables, and section numbering, you cannot include real formatting in Index entries. There simply is no provision for formatting text that you input in the fields.

A possible workaround is to add 'formatting codes' into the index entries, and replace this with the correct formatting after generating the index. I would have suggested David's Automatically Format super/subscript trick (Auto Format Superscript and Subscript Numbers using GREP Styles), except … you happen to mention that “^7” yields a paragraph symbol. So his straightforward solution won't work.

The workaround is slightly more cumbersome to enter, but after that your index ought to be just fine every time you generate it.

1. Surround each of your superscripts with this: ^{text}, for example, to enter “x²” use “x^{2}”.

2. Surround each of your subscripts with this: _{text} — like this: “H_{2}O (water)”.

3. Create three character styles:

a. “HideMe” — set character color to “None” and horizontal scale to 1%.

b. “Super” — set character color to “Black”, horizontal scale to 100%, and position to Superscript.

c. “Sub” — same as Super, but with Subscript.

4. Add the following GREP styles to your Index Level 1 style (or any other style you are applying to the generated index text):

[_^]{.+?}

— apply character style “HideMe”.

(?<=^{).+?(?=})

— apply character style”Super”

(?<=_{).+?(?=})

— apply character style”Sub”.

The first character style effectively hides everything formatted with the codes ^{..} and _{..}, including all text in between. The Super and Sub styles make just the inside text visible again, and applies the correct formatting.

If you also want to include stuff like bold, italics, or underline, you can work out a similar system for these — all you have to do is add another code, and a character style that applies it.

How are you drawing that grid? Is it a table? (Because table lines do not obey the baseline grid, only text does.)

It would require you to sort by the contact/department field in your spreadsheet, then move the department “one level up” around all of the contact groups with that same department field.

I have no idea if that's even possible.

Here is my idea instead Let InDesign's XSLT parser do the hard work. If you import your original XML and apply this XSLT on importing, it will create a “dep_group” around a list of contacts for that department. The first element inside the dep_group is your original “department”, and this line is removed from the actual contact information.

XSLT:

(Warning: It seems some of the straight quotes are translated into 'curly' ones. Sorry 'bout that –you'll gonna have to weed them out one by one…)

If Adobe is going to incorporate it into CS6, should I send them my bank account number? :D

I'm still in the dark what you mean with a 3d ebook cover. A 3d cover for an ebook? A 3d picture of an ebook cover? (Which would be, I think, a contradictio in terminus.) Or, what Mike suggests, a 3d image to display on the 'cover' of an ebook?

The main reason Photoshop was suggested above, would be that it's a real drawing package, where InDesign is (emphatically) not. Even with Illustrator you could do better.

But Photoshop is far from 'the only way'. If you need a free high quality bitmap editor, you could try GIMP; Inkscape is a free vector imaging application.

Here is the best I could do using only InDesign. I made a guess at the thickness ;) — but, of course, your ebook wouldn't have a “thickness”.