This week’s InDesign FX video shows how to create the look of a photo glued into a scrapbook. The effect is achieved by adding a stroke to the photo, plus four triangular objects that resemble adhesive photo corners.
This technique is a nifty way of presenting a photo, and it illustrates effective use of small drop shadows, rounded corners, and the use of a light gray tint instead of pure white for added realism—all effects that have useful application in many other InDesign effects.
But maybe the most valuable aspect of this lesson is how it demonstrates a way to fix inconsistent shadows and highlights that undermine the realism of an effect, a common problem you can encounter when you flip or rotate objects after youve applied transparency effects to them.
To illustrate where the problem occurs, lets consider each step in this effect.
First, the placed image is given a stroke and a drop shadow, so it looks like a printed photograph:
Then, the first photo corner is created by applying Bevel and Emboss effects to a small triangular object:
And the other three photo corners are created by duplicating, flipping, and rotating that triangle:
Can you spot the shadow and highlight problem with the photo corners in the image above? When
Tags: Indesign Fx, Photo