Applying Strokes to Type | Adobe InDesign CS3 Bible

Text is made up of a series of outlines ‚ curves that form the shape ‚ as Figure 28-1 shows. When printed or displayed, those outlines are filled in, giving the appearance of a solid shape. When you resize text, programs like InDesign stretch those curves automatically, which is how InDesign lets you use almost any size imaginable for your text. Most programs keep those outlines hidden from you, using them only for their internal calculations.

Figure 28-1: Text is made up of invisible outlines that InDesign can then manipulate to change size and create special effects.

But InDesign lets you work with those outlines to create special effects called strokes. A stroke is an outline of the character that is made visible and given a thickness (called a weight ) and often a color . The thicker the stroke, the fatter the character will appear. Figure 28-2 shows some examples of what you can do with strokes.

Figure 28-2: Examples of how you can apply strokes ‚ a process that makes the outlines visible and lets you change their size and coloration ‚ to text.

Note ‚

As you increase stroke size, the stroke grows outward from the letter. That can cause overlapping into adjacent text, as you see in the "o " in Figure 28-2.

At first, using strokes with text can be a little confusing. There are several palettes and panes involved, and you'll also need to have defined the colors, tints , and gradient fills you want to use before you apply them. Figure 28-3 shows the palettes and panes involved:

In the same floating palette are usually four panes related to strokes: Stroke, Color, Gradient, and Attributes. Use these to apply the stroke's attributes. Note that the Color and Gradient panes display only existing color, tint, and gradient definitions ‚ you cannot create them from here.

Note ‚

Because InDesign lets you move panes to new palettes or to other existing palettes, these panes may not appear together on your system, but you can always access them through the Window menu. Note that the Stroke pane also has the keyboard shortcut F10 and the Color pane has the shortcut F6.

The Tools palette lets you switch between the stroke and the fill for text. (By default, the stroke is the active control in this palette.) It also lets you apply the last-used color and gradient to either the stroke or fill, saving you the hassle of switching to the Color pane.

You'll also need the Swatches pane open if you intend to define or use new colors, tints, or gradients for your strokes. Chapter 8 covers this in detail; choose Window ‚ Swatches or F5 to access this pane. You can open this pane at any time; new colors, tints, and gradients defined here will appear in the Color and Gradients pane immediately.

Note ‚

If question marks (?) display on the Fill or Stroke icons in either the Color pane or the Tools palette, that means there are several colors and/or gradients used in the selected text.

Cross-Reference ‚

See Chapter 8 for information on defining colors, swatches, tints, and gradient fills

Figure 28-3: The palettes and panes used to apply strokes to text. Note that all panes are showing all options (use the palette menu and Show Options to display all options).

To create a stroke:

Highlight the text with the Type tool that you want to apply a stroke to.

It can be as little as one character or as much as your entire story.
Go to the Stroke pane (use Window ‚ Stroke or F10 if it is not on your screen).

I suggest you move the pane so the text you're applying the stroke to remains visible on-screen and you can see the effects of your actions.

Use the Weight pop-up menu to select a thickness for the stroke, or just enter a value in increments as fine as 0.001 point.

Note that the other controls in this pane do not apply to strokes on text and, thus, are grayed out.

Note ‚

Once you've selected a weight, you can adjust it with the arrow icons ‚ up to increase and down to decrease ‚ but you cannot use these icons to increase the weight if the weight is empty or 0.

Here's where you get choices that may initially be confusing. If you want to change the stroke color, you have several options:

If you want to use the most recently used color, select the Stroke icon on the bottom of the Tools palette and then click the Apply Color button (refer to Figure 28-3).
If you want to pick a different color, select the Stroke icon on the bottom of the Tools palette and then click an existing color from, or create a new color in, the Swatches pane.
You can also select the stroke icon in either the Tools palette or Color pane, then drag the color onto either location's stroke icon or directly onto selected text.
Or you can use the Color pane. The small form of the pane shows just the None color and a range of tints (shades) for the last color used ‚ select a tint by clicking on the tint range at the location of the tint you want. The full version of the pane shown here (use its palette menu and its Show Options) lets you create colors by showing a range of colors (pick the color model ‚ LAB, RGB, or CMYK ‚ from the palette menu) and letting you define the color with sliders or by specifying exact percentages of each color. Select the Stroke icon on the pane, then select the color you want to apply.

Note ‚

The Color pane shows an additional item ‚ the Last Color button, as shown in Figure 28-3 ‚ only when the current stroke is set to either None or to a gradient. If you click the Last Color button, the last color selected (the button will be in this color) is applied to the stroke in place of None or of the gradient. You cannot use this to undo a color change ‚ it works only if the stroke did not have a solid color applied to it.

If you want to use a gradient fill, you also have some choices:

If you want to use the most recently used gradient, select the Stroke icon on the bottom of the Tool palette and then click the Apply Gradient button (refer to Figure 28-3).
Go to the Gradient pane and click the gradient ‚ it will be the last-used color. (If there are no gradients defined in your document, you will need to create one via the Swatches pane.) When you click the gradient, you will see gradient controls (refer to Figure 28-3). The bottom ones (squares) display the colors used in the gradient, while the top ones (diamonds) show the gradation slope. You can slide the colors to change how the gradient looks. You can also add color controls by double-clicking in the gradient bar; the color at that point will appear as a control that you can then slide. You can also change the gradient slope ‚ how quickly one color changes to the next by dragging the diamonds. Note that you cannot apply an angle to a gradient used on text.
If you want to pick a different gradient, select the Stroke icon on the bottom of the Tools palette and then click an existing gradient for, or create a new gradient in, the Swatches pane.

Note ‚

If you use the full Gradients pane (use the palette menu's Show Options item to display this, as shown in Figure 28-3), you can change the gradient type from radial (circular) to linear, or vice versa, as well as add exact percentages for the gradient controls (click a control then change its location percentage; that percentage starts at 0 at the far left and ends at 100% at the far right of the gradient bar).

In the Attributes pane, decide whether to enable Overprint Stroke.

Normally, this should not be checked. If checked, InDesign will have the stroke's color print on top of any object underneath them if you're making color separations for output to a printing press, which can make them appear wrong. For example, if you overprint blue on a yellow object, you get green where they overlap.

Tip ‚

You may want to overprint black strokes, since doing so ensures that there are no registration issues in four-color printing ‚ no gap between the black stroke and the underlying color.

When you apply gradient to text, you'll find that InDesign makes some assumptions that you may not like. The gradient is centered in the text frame, so as your text moves, the gradient appears to move as well (see Figure 28-4 for examples). The same gradient is applied to any text, so you cannot have a gradient reset for each center. (For example, if you use a radial gradient, you might want an effect where each letter appears to have a circular halo created from a gradient. You can't do that if you apply a gradient to the stroke, as the center of the radial gradient will be the center of the text frame, not of each character. You'll have to convert each letter to a graphic, as described later in this chapter, and apply the stroke to achieve this halo effect.)

Figure 28-4: InDesign keeps the gradient centrally located in your text frame, which affects how the gradient will appear in your text as the text moves within the frame. Here, you see three examples of how changes to the text frame's size ‚ and thus to the text's relative position ‚ affects the gradient for the 5-point strokes on this text.

The order in which you use the Color, Gradient, and Attributes panes doesn't matter, and you may find yourself jumping back and forth among those, the Stroke pane, and the Swatches pane as you experiment with various settings. In fact, expect to spend time experimenting ‚ it's a crucial part of defining and applying special effects that enhance rather than disrupt .

Note ‚

You can also apply these settings in character and paragraph styles via the Character Color pane in the New Character Style dialog box when creating or editing a style. Chapters 17 and 18 cover style creation in depth.