2 things I wish InDesign had, which Quark does have

[Gregg]

Wonky title, I know.

There are 2 things that I used often in Quark which are not available in InDesign (at least, I am not aware of them being available).

They are:
1). Being able to globally change the Overprint attributes of a spot color. In Quark you could select a Spot color, Edit - Colors, and instruct that spot color to overprint all other colors. This came in very hand for me, since our TextPlate black swatch needs to overprint everything in order to be co-edition friendly. The workaround I have in InDesign is to use the Find/Change feature and find everything using the TextPlate swatch with no overprint attributes and change it to Overprint. It works fine, but still would be easier to do it globally from the start.

2). In Quark you could scroll from page to page at the exact same location and magnification by holding down Option when hitting page down. I used this all the time when checking bleed, or to see if artwork was too close to the trim. I have not been able to find anything similar in ID.

Any tips? Using CS4.

 

[jdaghir]

If you are using InDesign for your trapping I think you can use the Ink Manger to accomplish what you want. In the Ink Manger change the ink type of the TextPlate swatch from Normal to Transparent and then I believe it will overprint all other separations. I haven't actually tried this to confirm it, but I think it should work.

Can't help you with 2.

 

[LoneGoose]

Also, there needs to be an option in Indy to convert a (necessarily thick) stroke to a fill. I don't know if the latest version has this as I'm still on CS2. There seems to be little reason why they can't start bringing the finer advantages of Illustrator into InDesign...

 

[LoneGoose]

...and that darned "PDF Failed to Import" message when you haven't clicked "show import options"! Why, if it can't find the trim box or whatever it's looking for, can't it just bring up the import options and make you select "crop box"?

 

[Glenn McDowall]

can InDesign copy the image from one picture bounding box into another and hold the x y offsets yet?
Couldn't manage this with CS2 or CS3

 

[LoneGoose]

If the images are the same size, you could just relink and it'll keep offsets and sizing etc.

 

[Glenn McDowall]

A specific example would be for interlocking cartons, each individual carton would have different offsets and PDF Boxes due to inconsistent artworking in Illustrator. Each InDesign bounding box would be consistent but may have extra bleed on one edge. If you have say ten cartons and Sheet1 uses 3 of them 7up and Sheet2 uses 7 of them 3up. In Quark you only needed to get each one in position once and the step of the bounding boxes correct. You could then copy and paste any image into the required bounding box. I could never get this to work in InDesign because it picks up the offsets of the existing placement instead of the copied placement. It would also make a difference when the boxes were rotated 180.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

You can make an offset part of an object style, applyinhg that object style to multiple frames would offset all to the same offset.

 

[oxburger]

CS5 does #2.

 

[oxburger]

CS5 does #2 by double clicking the pages in the pages palette after selecting the area by zooming in.

 

[Gregg]

CS5 does #2 by double clicking the pages in the pages palette after selecting the area by zooming in.

What do you know! Turns out CS4 does this, too.

Thanks Oxburger!

 

[pcmodem]

On Windows you can do this same thing by pressing the Alt + Page Down/Page Up. Probably Option + Page Up/Page Down on the Mac.

 

[Qbot]

Anybody know how to get a spot color to overprint all other colors in quark 9. Someone posted a response saying this could be done under edit colors but the operator said there was no such overprint box to be checked. He said he had to select each box/element separately and found a dialog box under trapping that would overprint the spot color. A major pain to have to select all the stuff individually. I have no Quark on my mac and am trying to get this mystery solved without actually be able to monkey around with it on my own.

 

[curveto]

Also, there needs to be an option in Indy to convert a (necessarily thick) stroke to a fill. I don't know if the latest version has this as I'm still on CS2. There seems to be little reason why they can't start bringing the finer advantages of Illustrator into InDesign...

Curious... Why?

 

[oxburger]

Curious... Why?

Maybe because the trapping software being used treats strokes different from fills?

That would be the only thing I could thing of.

 

[LoneGoose]

Being able to convert a stroke to a fill is a very useful feature - especially during the design phase (e.g. borders etc). In the prepress stage, I've also needed it to set up files for cutting on the vinyl cutter; I would think it's also necessary for most CAD programs. For example, a designer might be seeing a thick line that they've made as a stroke, but a CAD program might import it as a hairline with no thickness - you need to convert it to a fill to make sure nothing goes wrong in-between.

Illustrator can do it, but it would be helpful not having to copy-and-paste between Indy and Illustrator all the time.