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InDesign 2.0: Painting Pictures with Picket Fences

By Nick Hodge | August 6, 2002

 

18th Septem­ber 2008: Gary Sped­ding has an update for later ver­sions of InDes­ign: http://spedsblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/floating-frames-effect-in-indesign.html

I arrived home today and my cable modem con­nec­tion to the inter­net was down. Thanks Big­pond! Bum­mer. Hmm, may this is a good time to noodle around with com­pound paths in Illus­trator 10 and InDes­ign 2.

Making/releasing com­pound paths is a fea­ture that has been in InDes­ign since the first ver­sion, but its some­thing that I use and see rarely used. Its under Objects>Compound Path>Make or Release.

In my nood­ling, I found an inter­est­ing trait of InDes­ign 2.0 that might make for a cool design effect. I call it “paint­ing picket fence pictures”

Step 1: Cre­ate the Picket fence Illus­trator. This is a simple rect­angle in the back­ground, and 5 equal-sized rect­angles placed over the top. The under­ly­ing rect­angle has been col­oured Cyan for easier viewing.

[1274] pf_1.jpg

Step 2: Group top 5 rect­angles. By group­ing the top objects, this ensures that the top object is treated as one shape, and when we use the Pathfinder palette, they will “cookie cut­ter” through the rect­angle underneath.

[1275] pf_2.jpg

Step 3: Pathfinder, Exclude Over­lap­ping. Using the Window>Pathfinder palette, cre­ate a com­pound path with see through pan­els. The grouped object above cuts through the rect­angle shape underneath.

[1276] pf_3.jpg

Step 4: Object>Expand Appear­ance. To enable a suc­cess­ful copy and paste from Illus­trator to InDes­ign, we need to expand the appear­ance into a com­plex vec­tor shape.

[1277] pf_4.jpg

Step 5: Ensure AICB Clip­board format. The most appro­pri­ate format to copy this ele­ment from Illus­trator to InDes­ign is Adobe Illus­trator Clip­board. Also ensure the paths are pre­served. Select the ele­ment (best place is the Windows>Layers palette using the meat­ball on the right) and Edit>Copy

[1278] pf_5.gif

Step 6: Paste into InDes­ign. Here we see the res­ult of the paste into InDes­ign. Now for some fun!

[1279] pf_6.jpg

Step 7: Place image Into. File>Place, select your image (or PDF, EPS) and ensure it goes into the new shape. The “loaded cursor” will change have brack­ets around the place gun, indic­at­ing it is pla­cing into the frame. Below you see the res­ult of “patient user mode” — this occurs when mov­ing the image inside the picket-fence shape. The second image below illus­trates how the image is “cut out” by the com­pound shape.

[1280] pf_7.jpg

[1281] pf_7a.jpg

Step 8: Object>Compound Path>Release. This is where the fun starts. When you release a com­pound path in InDes­ign where there is an image place, it cre­ates mul­tiple shapes with the same image placed into each shape, each with its own rel­at­ive pos­i­tion­ing. It still looks like one com­pound image, but appear­ances can be deceiving!

[1282] pf_8.jpg

Step 9: Move top objects for a sur­prise! In the example below, the rect­angle at the bot­tom I have applied 50% Nor­mal blend mode. The pos­i­tion of the top frames have been adjus­ted, and a drop shadow applied to lift them from the back­ground. Obvi­ously, you would adjust this to taste and stricter design con­straints — but I think the pro­cess is illus­trated here. Good luck and happy painting!

[1283] pf_9.jpg

Thanks to: Cari Jansen for the inspir­a­tion to revisit com­pound paths, and Big­pond for 6+ hours of pro­ductiv­ity sans-Internet. Not.

Topics: mungenet | 5 Comments »

5 Responses to “InDesign 2.0: Painting Pictures with Picket Fences”

  1. John Trev Says:
    October 4th, 2007 at 7:30 pm

    Since vinyl fen­cing is U.V. pro­tec­ted it never needs to be painted. The color goes all the way through the mater­ial so scratches or gouges are almost invis­ible. The posts are made of 100% vir­gin vinyl and will never rot, shrink, decom­pose or rust like a wood or iron fence post. Although wood fence or iron fen­cing may ini­tially cost less than vinyl fence, that advant­age is soon lost because of paint­ing, repair, main­ten­ance and replace­ment.
    For more details visit http://avinylfence.blogspot.com

  2. Judi Says:
    April 30th, 2008 at 9:41 pm

    This is the inform­a­tion that I was seek­ing. Thank you!!!!

  3. Gary Spedding Says:
    September 18th, 2008 at 4:36 am

    But none of us here in the US could ever get this to work. Maybe it relied on the earlier ver­sions of the Apps. As we have seen some­times a way to do some­thing is lost in a newer version.

    Though we have solved doing this effect dir­ectly in InDes­ign alone and have presen­ted it here in the US.

    Gary.

  4. Nick Hodge Says:
    September 18th, 2008 at 10:16 am

    Gary

    … sadly, now I am no longer with Adobe –> I don’t get access to InDes­ign :-(

    Nick

  5. Gary Spedding Says:
    September 19th, 2008 at 11:38 pm

    Nick, I got an E-mail on your no longer being with Adobe but I only just noticed your update oin this post. Thanks for that and I wish you well in your new endeavors.

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