In Adobe Indesign, why when I do "effects" (drop shadow, stroke) does it apply to the text BOX not the text?

Question

This is driving me crazy. All i hear about is how wonderful Indesign is with text and I just have issue after issue. I use photoshop all the time and absolutely love it and can do way more with it than I can with Indesign. I realize this is probably because I don't know it as well. Every time I try to do text effects they look like crap. Half the time it will refuse to stroke the actual logo or letters but puts a stroke around the text box. Why would I ever want stroke around a text box that you aren't supposed to see?
This will also happen with other effects like inner and outer glow, and drop shadow. Am I missing a step? Is there a way to select just the text? Sometimes I get it to work sometimes I can't I'm sure it isn't as hard as I am making it. I find this program to be so much more difficult than it needs to be.

To be honest, half the time I make graphics and designs in Photoshop and then overlay them into Indesign solely to save them in specific formats because I find the program to be tiresome. Any help would be awesome.

Answer 1

I feel your pain. You're more aware of what the problem is than you know though.



To stroke letters:

Make sure the letters are selected, not the box. So hit the type tool, double-click (you know the drill). At that point, on the top left of the "Swatches" palette, hit the incredibly small "Stoke" box so it moves to the front. Then choose your color. Open the "Stroke" palette and make sure the outline's "Weight" is the thickness that you want. You also have the options of setting the stroke on the outside, inside or center of the actual letter's edge.



I was told long ago, via Before & After magazine, that the best way to have outlined text look natural is to:

A.) Set the word

B.) Kern it wider

C.) Apply the outline

D.) Make a copy of that

E.) Exact paste

F.) remove the outline from the top copy



Now... if you don't select the text with the text tool, but use the "Selection" or "Direct Selection (one of the top two tools), it will apply the effect to the box instead. Yeah, seriously. I feel your pain. But over the last four years this annoying option has actually come in handy for me because you can apply the multiply affect to a photo within a box and it can help you in certain circumstances.



FYI: Know that you can place layered PSD files in InDesign and turn on/off the PSD's layers via InDesign's "Object Layer Options" palette.



I hope this helps.





Adrienne

Answer 2

Drop Shadow In Indesign

Answer 3

Yeah! Bq: never Bq 2: i've never heard of a guy texting "xx", but if he does he probably likes you! Bq 3: edit