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driesvg
driesvg
Participant
March 7, 2023
Answered

Background color on text

  • March 7, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 1344 views

Hello,

 

For the cover of a magazine I want to place the titles with a semi-tranparant background.

 

First picture: what I want to achieve (made in illustrrator)

Second picture: what I have so far. I want the black background to be transparant. This background is created by tweaking the underlining options so they appear behind the text (not sure if this is the right trick).

 

Thanks!

 

 

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer jmlevy

You could use 2 text frames with a black bakground and lower the background opacity of each frame.

Edit: just to be clear, I wrote “2 frames” because I saw 2 lines of text in your screenshot, but in my example one frame is enough.

3 replies

driesvg
driesvgAuthor
Participant
March 8, 2023

Thx, I'll test boath approaches and see what works best 🙂

jmlevy
Community Expert
jmlevyCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
March 7, 2023

You could use 2 text frames with a black bakground and lower the background opacity of each frame.

Edit: just to be clear, I wrote “2 frames” because I saw 2 lines of text in your screenshot, but in my example one frame is enough.

James Gifford—NitroPress
James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
March 7, 2023

One approach would be to use InDesign's Paragraph Shading feature (in the list of each Paragraph Style's menu), but I don't think transparency is supported, only tint levels.

 

I don't believe there is any solution in which such shading could be integral to the text; ID has no features that allow assigning transparency to only one part of an element. (That is, if the text is 100% solid, any background, under/overlining, border etc. must also be completely solid.)

 

If it's for a magazine cover where some manual composition is both expected and a reasonable way to achieve the layout, simply using a shape around the text, such as a series of rectangles of defined height, and assigning them or their layer the desired opacity would be the first approach I can think of. There are other ways to combine text and shapes and levels of opacity, but all are variations on that.

 

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