Textured background

[Rhoalin]

I do a lot of posters for medical conferences so they cannot be too fancy but I am trying to make them more interesting to look at.  I would like to make the background a litte different by giving it some texture.  At the moment, I just make a rectangle, clolur it up and send it to the back.  I have tried to do some backgrounds in Photoshop and import them but they then make the file size too big for my printer memory.  Can anyone help?

[Eugene Tyson]

Where you can create a background that is textured in InDesign it becomes a memory hog when using the effects.

Perhaps use Illustrator to create the textured background and place that as an image.

I have created a textured background in InDesign, but I export it to a pdf and then place it as an image.

What version of InDesign do you have? Do you have illustrator? What kind of texture do you want to create?

[Rhoalin]

I am using InDesign CS4 and I don't have illustrator.  How did you create your textured background in InDesign?  I'm not sure exactly what texture I'm looking for, just something that will make the posters more interesting than plain block colour.

[Eugene Tyson · Accepted solution]

I would do this on a new similar sized document, then I would export that to a pdf and place it as a background image in the design.

Ok this isn't the prettiest thing I've ever done but it's a quick one

Start with a yellow background

Add these effects

Then add these

Then use the Scripts folder to find Make Grid script (don't delete the background image, it's a choice in running the script)

You end up with a bunch of squares, so I change those blending modes. (You could even make the corners rounded here while they're all selected, or inverse rounded, or fancy, to get different patterns where they edges of the frame meet).

Then have a play with the blending modes

This isn't the only sort of thing you can create. Have a play with different colours and blending modes etc. and different amount of squares, etc.

Remember you can apply Effects to both the Object and the Fill, doubling up on your effects and what you can achieve.

[Peter Spier]

That's pretty slick, Eugene, but perhaps the OP would be happy with something like a simple gradient fill or a feather onthe background.

OP alsomentioned using a Photoshop image, and that may be "doable" too with the right settings. For a texture, particularly as a background, you generally don't need the same resolution you would use for a detailed photo, and a poster is usually meant to be viewed from a distance, which lowers the resolution rquirements as well (see Eugene's excellent explanation at Distance-Resolution Formula). Try reducing the resolution on your background image to say 150 ppi effective resolution, or even less and see if the file will print and the quality is acceptable.

[Eugene Tyson]

Thanks Peter - although the background does not have to be as complicated as I did. But using the satin effect and the distance and things in

the satin you can get some pretty good combinations and different blend modes you can get nice effects.

If you turn on the Preview in the bottom corner of the Effects Dialog box you will see it happening live and adjust to your tast.

Much of this will be covered with text frames and images and objects, so you can get a very nice background by playing around with different settingss

[phyllisj9]

You might also check out stock-art backgrounds.  The vector backgrounds shouldn't make your file too big.  Most of the backgrounds on stock-art sites are too busy, but if you keep looking you can find some subtle ones.  Just be sure to search for vector format only.

[Eugene Tyson]

Always read the EULA regarding any stock images and make sure you understand it. Some only allow use in promotional material, and some require a licence to use the image in print-runs, the more print runs the more costly the image may be.

[Rhoalin]

Thanks very much for all the help and advice. I have created a couple of backgrounds using Eugene's technique and they are perfect for the sort of thing that I am asked to do (not too fussy).

[Eugene Tyson]

Excellent, glad I could help.

[Eugene Tyson]

This is the latest textured background I've made.

The technique is very similar to the above, satin effects to the object and the exclusion technique for the fill.

I then used the Make Grid to duplicate the frames on top of the original. I then used the other script in the panel "Path effects" on all the frames, and used the Twirl and set it to 300%.

I then changed the Transparency of the frames on top to be Overlay and reduced the opacity to 43%

Yet another interesting way to introduce a textured background.

InDesign starts to run a bit slow from here. So I usually make a PDF with bleed and then insert the PDF into the layout as a background image.

Might just give you a few more ideas

[Larry G. Schneider]

Here's one from a picture of shadows cast by a bamboo shade converted to a one-bit grayscale and colorized