#63. Creating Custom Stroke Styles InDesign has 18 built-in stroke styles, ranging from stripes to dots, dashes, and hash marks. If these aren't enough for you, you can also create your own custom stroke styles. Sharing Stroke Styles Use the Save button in the Stroke Styles dialog box to share stroke styles with other InDesign users. When you save stroke styles, InDesign creates a separate file and assigns it a .lnst extension. Other InDesign users can click the Load button in the Stroke Styles palette, select a .lnst file, and click Open to add the stroke styles to a document. If no documents are open when you load stroke styles, they are added to the list of default styles and are automatically included in all new documents. |
To create a custom stroke style: 1. | Choose Stroke Styles in the Stroke palette menu.
| 2. | Click New in the Stroke Styles dialog box.
| 3. | In the New Stroke dialog box (Figure 63), enter a name for the style and choose a Type: Stripe, Dotted, or Dash. Use the controls in the New Stroke Style dialog box to specify the appearance of the style, and then click OK to close the dialog box and save the style, or click Add to save the style and continue creating new styles.
Figure 63. The controls for creating a custom stripe. The controls are slightly different for Dash and Dotted strokes. 
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There are too many controls in the New Stroke Style dialog box to attempt to explain each one. Fortunately, they're intuitive and easy to use. A few minutes of creative fiddling and you'll be comfortable. After you create a new stroke style, it's displayed in the (Stroke) Type menu in the Control palette and the Stroke palette, and you can choose it when applying a stroke to an object or text. If you want to modify the appearance of a custom stroke style, choose Stroke Styles in the Stroke palette menu, select the style in the list, and then click Edit. Make your changes, and then click OK to close the Edit Stroke Style dialog box. Click OK to close the Stroke Styles dialog box. |
