Inverting the colors of a document depending on the background it is imported into

[deec84161997]

This is a bit of an odd question, but is there a way to invert the colours of an image or indesign file that has been inserted into a second document?

The situation is i have one document that is regularly edited and used in various other documents. Some of those documents have a dark backdrop requiring that the text be white whilst others require the text to be black.

[Eugene Tyson]

You could have all the text on a layer - call it 'black text'

Then duplicate that layer and call it 'white text' - and change all the text to white.
(you could do this by setting up styles for black/white text - there might be a bit of internal setup for you)

I'm not 100% sure if this would work - but I cannot see why it wouldn't without test it.

But if you take your Text and copy the text frame.

Then on a layer choose Edit>Paste Link

That should create a seaparate link in the Links panel - then change the style or the colour of the text to White.

Once you edit the original text in Black - the Links panel should show an update - and update the link and the text should update.

I think the colour will stay White. 
(untested)

Once it's done - when you place the document - you can then set which layer to show through Object>Layer Options.

There could be other ways like changing the Blend Mode in the Effects Panel - but this introduces transparency to the document and could have unintentional side effects down the road, like rasterising text etc. 

[deec84161997]

I've tested this and from what i can tell unfortunately it seems that editing the original text box will result in the linked version reverting to the original colour.

[Eugene Tyson · Accepted solution]

That was only an exercise in seeing if it would work and less work in updating the 2nd text layer.

You can still put all your black text on one layer - and duplicate that layer - and change the text to white.

You could change all the text on that layer to white by turning off all the other layers and find and replace for text to change black colour to white.

It would be fast enough.

You can then turn on the white text layer for when you need it.