Other Special Effects?

[Skyline@adobeforums.com]

Am generally pleased with InDesign, having made the switch from Quark. We are especially impressed with the seamless, clean way ID does drop shadows and feathering (compared to the clunky way Quark does shadows with an XT required no less).

Since Adobe has apparently found a way to do these two things so well, I was wondering if anything else might be on the horizon or even available presently and we missed it. It seems like if you could do a drop shadow, it's not a big leap to have a "glow" feature, for instance. What about bevels, motion, etc.?

If Adobe doesn't itself have more effects available or planned for ID, might not this be a great opportunity for a plug-in similar to Eye Candy for Photoshop? Or does it already exist and I just can't find the right Google search term? If so, does anyone have first-hand experience with it; how easy does it install and perform?

[Bob_Levine]

See [url]www.alap.com[/url] for InEffects. Nice but pricy at $100.00.

Bob

[Jens Schulze]

The glow feature can be simulated depending on the tranparency mode
settings, the used color and the offset of the shadow, but I think you will
have more control and modification possibilities when using Photoshop - and
with InDesign supporting native PSD files even with transparency, this works
like a charme.
Have you already discovered that you can set the transparency value and mode
for every page object?

Jens

[Skyline@adobeforums.com]

Thanks Bob, that was fast--and great news! Ordinarily I'd shy away from anything version 1.0, but since both you and David Blatner recommend InEffects, I'm rolling the dice. If it installs and works flawlessly, $100 well spent.

Jens, thanks for the input. Being able to Place .psd files with transparency in ID is sure better than the "old" way with Quark (clumsy clipping paths, converting to .tif). However, the time savings and streamlined workflow that doing these things right in ID allows is very appealing. If InEffects works as well as ID's native drop shadows and feathering does, I'll be pleased. And I hope this is only the beginning--that ALAP, Adobe, or someone else picks this ball up and runs with it.

[Bob_Levine]

Slyline,

Note that you can download it and use it for 15 days before paying for a
license. Also note that it uses ID's built in effects to do what it
does. IOW, the glow is actually done by using the drop shadow.

It works very nicely but for my work it just isn't worth the money. I
did test it out and couldn't find anything wrong with it. Just note that
if you are going to be sending live ID files to anyone, you'll have to
supply them with a special viewer --which is free of charge -- or the
files won't open properly.

Bob

[Skyline@adobeforums.com]

I did not catch the small print about the viewer. Probably irrelevant in our case anyway--we only supply PDFs to print vendors and clients.