When to Watch Out for InDesign

Adobe InDesign is a very powerful layout program. However, all that power comes at a price: a steep learning curve. If you don't understand how InDesign works, it can make life very difficult for you. This article will point out some of the pitfalls you can fall into using InDesign and how to deal with them.

The Tale of the Two Composers

One of InDesign's major strengths is its control of typography. InDesign has several features that can make paragraph text look great, automatically. However, these controls can also cause frustration. Adobe provided two controls over paragraph type, the Paragraph Composer and the Single-Line Composer.

Both are reached by viewing the Paragraph palette menu. The Paragraph Composer adjusts text on both sides of the line you are working on, within the paragraph, to try and produce lines of text that most closely match your settings. The Single-Line Composer only adjusts the line you are working on. Most of the time, leaving the default Paragraph Composer on will give you good results, but not every time. If the Paragraph Composer creates an individual line of text that does not look good to you, you have two ways of fixing it: adjust the Hyphenation and Justification settings for that paragraph only, which will change how the Paragraph Composer adjusts text, or switch to Single-Line Composer and edit that line. In most cases, switching to the Single-Line Composer for that paragraph will be much easier than trying to get the Paragraph Composer to read your mind. But it will also mean that you now have most of your text set with the Paragraph Composer, except for the paragraph you didn't like. If you later make any text changes to this paragraph, remember that it is still set to Single-Line Composer.

Unprintable Gradients

InDesign gives you many controls over color, including gradients. But Adobe also assumes you understand printing enough to know when an effect won't work. And you know what happens when people make assumptions. For instance, applying a gradient to body text, with its very thin strokes, will probably not print. If you come up with a design that makes you wonder whether it will work, please call us.

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