QuarkXPress Integration with Adobe Creative Suite 3
Page 11

Transparency

QuarkXPress 7 is full of magic, but if you've yet to explore the many new features of QuarkXPress 7, click here to read our first article on the topic: X-Ray Magazine v3n1: The Magic of QuarkXPress 7.

InDesign and QuarkXPress take different approaches to transparency.

InDesign CS2 users are accustomed to applying a single transparency setting to an entire InDesign object. InDesign CS3 users have learned to use the transparency palette that allows separate transparency settings for an object’s stroke, fill, and all of its text (although for some selections, such as a table, you only have access to a single opacity setting since it is treated as the text component of a text frame.

However, you’ll search in vain for a transparency palette in QuarkXPress 7. Instead, transparency, or rather opacity, can be applied wherever a color can be applied and also to any image. This is a very flexible approach that allows you to do things such as fade from 30% opaque blue to 80% opaque green, apply transparency to a single character, use semi­transparent fills on a dashed line, and more. You’ll find transparency controls at your fingertips in a number of places, including in style sheets and other features.

The most common way to access transparency is via the measurements palette or color palette. You’ll see an opacity slider next to your box color, text color, stroke color, and so on, in the various tabs of the measurements palette.

If you want to make an image transparent, then select that image and use the color palette to reduce its opacity.

The picture box itself can have separate background opacity, and in the case of grayscale images, the image can have separate opacities set for picture color and picture background for some really eye­catching effects.

QuarkXPress lacks the emboss, silk, and other new transparency effects features of InDesign CS3, but the popular glow effect from Photoshop is very easily created via QuarkXPress drop shadows (see below); and, of course, those effects can be set up in Photoshop and imported into QuarkXPress.

Drop shadows

Drop shadows can be applied from the measurements palette or the modify dialogue box. Drop shadows in QuarkXPress work very much like those in InDesign, with a few extra features.

You can skew a drop shadow in QuarkXPress, for a pseudo three-dimensional look.

You can uncheck the inherit opacity button, allowing the item and its shadow to have different transparencies. This allows any number of different creative effects, including turning the opacity of text to 0%, but keeping the drop shadow at 75%, and having editable blurred text.

Figure 4 Editable blurred text.

Drop shadows in QuarkXPress can also have runaround drop shadow turned on. This means you don’t have to manually edit the runaround of the image itself to make sure that your drop shadows don’t obscure your text, which can be a big time saver.

If you would like to make your objects appear to glow, use a light color for the drop shadow, and alter the blur/scale and offset settings to get the look you want. Make sure you also turn off the multiply drop shadow option when you are making a glow effect rather than a real drop shadow.

Alpha channels (masks)

Alpha channels allow users to create soft or partially opaque masks for their images. QuarkXPress supports alpha channels much like InDesign with a couple of additional features.

QuarkXPress can switch between alpha channels on the fly, without having to re-import the image as InDesign does. You’ll see a mask control on the measurements palette.

QuarkXPress can use any channel in a TIFF or PSD as an alpha channel, even if it was originally set up for some other purpose.

QuarkXPress can soften an alpha channel non­destructively, meaning that if the image looks nicely masked at full size, but too sharp at 25% reduction, you can simply soften the smaller alpha channel in QuarkXPress using picture effects > gaussian blur and by un-checking blur picture. (Click here to review the section on picture effects.) There’s no need to make two separate channels, and you can see your results live in your layout where it matters.

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