stroke text overlapping!

[damian_thegravy]

Hi

I'm working on a set of fairly large template document I have been given and there are some text styles that have a 2pt outline on 8 pt text which creates a chunky outline which works fine on a single line but when the text runs over to 2 lines or more the outline overlaps the characters on the above line!

Without increasing the leading a fair bit is there a way of placing the outline below the characters like you can do in illustrator via the appearance panel!

thanks in advance for you help

cheers

Damian

[Chad Chelius]

The only way that you can avoid this problem would be to reduce the stroke size or increase the leading.

[damian_thegravy]

Thanks Chad, I assumed this would be my only option,

was hoping there was a work around without outling text or have one text layer without a stroke positioned on top of one layer with a stroke!

Cheers though

[Obi-wan Kenobi]

Hi,

If you want to do what Vinny shows us with all kind of color, it seems … simple!

(^/)

[Chad Chelius]

What?

[Obi-wan Kenobi]

What? 

2 pts stroke:

4 pts stroke:

(^/)

[damian_thegravy]

Cool thanks, looks like what I want could you let me know how you achieved this??

cheers

D

[rob day]

You can also stroke with Drop Shadow or Outer Glow effects—set the Spread to 100% and the Mode to Normal:

[vinny38]

Rob,

I was going to suggest this workaround, but the result is just too ugly really, so I didn't send my answer ^^...

Even if we do not downsample greyscales images (yes... drop shadow is a greyscale image^^)... I find it quite unsatisfactory.

But, you're probably right mentioning this possibility...

Now, I am waiting for Obi-wan magical trick...

[Obi-wan Kenobi]

Nothing magic!

Just select no white text, duplicate-ouline it, change the text fill color in white and colorize the outline (no fill color, 4 pts stroke red color) and place it in background!

Of course, if several texts like this in the doc, find them and play the game again.

It's a basic situation. We could find others more complex!

I forgot: Do it everywhere in the doc using a script! If the text or the layout change, play it again [the script will remove all these outlines and create new ones].

Useful: "mark" your texts to be outlined [condition].

(^/)

[Obi-wan Kenobi]

Last thing: one layer per language!

(^/)

[damian_thegravy]

Thanks for this but Ill need to keep the text live as there will be countless corrections from the client etc. so outlining is not really an option in my case.

thanks for your time though

D

[vinny38]

Hmmmm. .. outlining...

I was expecting something more... magical ^^

To add another line to the list of possibilities : you could create two paragraph styles. One without stroke, and another with it. Then use the content collector to create a copy of your text frame, place the copy behind (on a locked layer maybe), matching the original frame position. Finally use links options in order to map the two styles.

In case of text edition, just updating links should do.

However this technique would require a lot of manipulation and editing text could be painful without using editor mode...

So,  ultimately, I would go for the very first answer : Chad's suggestion to change leading and/or font size...

Tout ça pour ça. ..

[Obi-wan Kenobi]

… Bon ! 

Vous m'obligez à écrire le script alors que je n'en avais pas envie !

Je ferai une vidéo "gratuite" [pas le script] !

Au sujet du texte, il reste évidemment totalement éditable !

(^/)

[damian_thegravy]

Thanks Rob, the glow / drop shadow is an options I guess, but a bit worried about what Vinny mentioned!

The cloning without a stroke is probably the safest way but I have translations across 10 or so languages to do on these text etc.

so may be tricky to control all translations and corrections etc.

thanks for your help though, as Vinny mentioned keen to see the Obi-Wan way!

cheers

D

[rob day]

so may be tricky to control all translations and corrections etc.

The script would help if there are many corrections. You could assign a key command and then it would just be a matter of clicking the top layer, delete, correct, and run the script again. But if there are others making the corrections it could create problems.

If you export as PDF/X-4 with grayscale downsampling turned off, it looks like the effect mask goes out as 1000ppi which is line art quality.

Or, rethink the design? It almost sounds like you are trying to get the equivalent of CC2017-18's paragraph shading feature?

[rob day]

was hoping there was a work around without outling text or have one text layer without a stroke positioned on top of one layer with a stroke!

Also if you are going to press with this, outline, transparency effects, and overprint hacks all have some of risk (many printers ignore manual overprints). The safe approach would be cloning without a stroke, which can be scripted—select your text frame and run:

app.copy();
app.pasteInPlace();
app.activeDocument.selection[0].parentStory.strokeWeight=0;

[BobLevine]

You can align the stroke to the inside or the outside using the stroke panel.

If it’s actually built into the style, edit the style and look in the character color pane of the styles options window.

[vinny38]

Nope...

But if (and only if!) your text is 100% black, you can set the stroke to overprint.

Don't forget to change view to Simulate Overprinting to see the expected result.

[damian_thegravy]

Thanks for taking the time Viiny but the text is white with a red outline! so overprint is not an option for me!

cheers

D