Effects

InDesign offers many ways to nondestructively alter the appearance of objects. We can use Corner Options to alter the shape of corners on any object (that has corners), and we can use Effects to do things like create Drop Shadows or have an image fade out (Feather).

Live Corners Widget and Corner Options Dialog Box

Every rectangle (any rectangular frame) exhibits a square, gold Live Corners widget near its upper-right corner. Clicking it engages the corner-editing feature. Drag a diamond to increase a corner’s size. Once the corners have some size, option/Alt-clicking on a diamond cycles through various shapes. Note that holding down the shift key while adjusting the size or shape of a corner changes only that corner.

Any shape with corners can have its corners decorated like this. Simply go to Object > Corner Options… and choose the shape and size you like. For non-rectangular shapes, all corners get the same treatment.

Effects Panel & Dialog Box

There are many effects available via the Effects panel (or the fx section of the Control panel). The ones I use most frequently are illustrated below.

Let’s start with the red square. It fades in from left to right. Where there’s nothing behind, it simply looks red, but over the image, it looks like a sheet of red plastic or glass (a color filter, maybe) through which we’re looking at the image. To apply the fade-in effect, I clicked the fx button at the bottom of the Effects panel and chose Directional Feather. Those settings are below. For the colored filter effect, I again reached for the Effects panel, but chose Multiply from the Blend Mode menu at top left (next to the Opacity field). The default blend mode is Normal. Multiply makes the object to which it’s applied act like a color transparency.

The best way to gain a working knowledge of blend modes is to use them. Place one photo over another and change its blend mode.

While exploring the Effects dialog box, there are certain recurring terms you’ll see.

Choke or Spread This controls the abruptness of a transition. Choke makes a directional feather more abrupt, for example, and Spread makes a shadow less fuzzy.

Shape Only in the Direction Feather, Shape takes a few values. Leading Edges and All Edges make it appear that an irregularly shaped object is being eroded from one direction, whereas a half-inch feather to First Edge Only means that the first half-inch of the object experiences the fade. This setting is used for figures throughout this book wherever you see a fade-in.

Noise This is applied to shadows and feathers to make them more grainy. This can help them hold up when output to certain kinds of printers. Note that a little goes a long way! Use sparingly, if at all.

Mode Blend modes are used to make shadows darken what they are cast upon (Multiply) and to make glows lighten whatever might be behind them (Screen), for example.

Angle For a shadow, this is the direction from which the virtual light must be shining. For other effects, like feathers, this is an adjustment to the specified side to which the effect is applied.