Subtitles of the Movie

Applying Transparency and Drop Shadows. QuarkXPress introduced transparency at version 7, but it is handled differently than the approach taken by other applications. In QuarkXPress, transparency is a color-based attribute. What this means is that anything to which you are able to apply color, you can apply transparency. You'll also find that the transparency slider is available in all the places from where you choose color. In this movie I will show you how to apply transparency. This movie contains Work Files that are available on the course CD and for download by VTC Online University members. To get started, download the file named Transparency. Let's get started by looking at some examples of how transparency can be used. In these examples I've used a number of different transparencies. As we click through and use this feature you'll note that the field options are called opacity. Opacity is the opposite of transparency. An item that is more transparent is less opaque. An item that is more opaque is less transparent. As you modify the transparency with the slider controls or type values into the fields provided, keep in mind that a higher number, something like 85 to 100 percent is more dense, therefore more opaque and less transparent. A lower number, something like zero to ten percent is clearer, therefore more transparent. Let's click through the objects on this page and take a look at the settings that I have applied. Feel free to change any settings and see how they affect the overall design. Drag items around and notice how the transparency behaves as transparent items are stacked. This is none content box with a solid pantone blue applied and no transparency. This is none content box with a yellow radial blend. The first color of the blend is none and the second is yellow. I have applied a transparency to the yellow. This is a PictureBox with a picture placed but offset so that you can see the background. The background is white with transparency applied. You can see that as I move the picture around in the box. The PictureBox has a -frame applied with a color with separate opacity applied to the dashes and to the gaps. Here is a none content box with a linear blend. The first color is blue with a transparency. The second color is white. Lastly I have a text box with white text and opacity applied. What's interesting to note about these transparencies is that they compound. Here in the areas where I have multiple items with varying transparencies, you can see the color gain. This is most visible here where this blend overlaps the frame. Opacity can be applied to text on a character-by-character basis, just like color. It can even be saved as a character-level style sheet. That's true of item styles as well. Simply save the color and transparency values to the item style and apply it where needed. Unfortunately, transparency is not available as Text Find Change so you can not search or replace a value but if you save it to a style sheet, you can simply change the values saved and the update is used throughout the project. Applying transparency to items in QuarkXPress is very easy. The controls for doing so are conveniently located throughout palettes, dialogs and menus. Including them as a text style or item styles makes changing your mind about the settings really easy. Now that you understand how transparency works and can interact with the opacity controls, let's have a look at drop shadows. Drop shadows use the opacity controls too. In my first example I have used an alpha channel to mask out the background of this image. With just the puppy showing, I used the Drop Shadows Tab of the Measurements Palette to turn on the shadow feature. You could also do this in the Drop Shadows Tab of the Modify Dialog Box. Drop shadows can also be used to create a glow around an item or text within a text box. Simply change the offset here to zero degrees. You'll probably need to set the drop shadow blur amount to a higher number than you might use for a drop shadow. In addition to the drop shadow opacity, you may also change the color. Use the color swatch here on the Measurements Palette and then adjust the opacity using the slider. Here's a use of opacity of zero percent applied to the picture and the drop shadow. To achieve this effect you need to tick this check box for Inherit Opacity to turn it off; otherwise your shadow will inherit the zero percent opacity that you applied to the image. I really like how QuarkXPress handles transparency by making it a color-based feature. I think it offers more flexibility for your design. Once you understand how these features work, I'm sure you'll agree.