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Using handwritten text in InDesign

New Here ,
Oct 15, 2021 Oct 15, 2021

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Hi-

I'm new to using InDesign.  I'm trying to help someone who's creating a book dummy.  For artistic reasons, she wants to use her own handwriting as captions for photos.  We've experimented with a touchpad and Photoshop to write directly on images.  We also want to write in blank spaces -- such as margins, empty pages, etc.

The questions are, can we do this directly in InDesign? If so, how?

I want to emphasize we don't want to use the type tool.  We want to write directly onto the page with a touchpad.  I know that writing onto paper and scanning is possible, but we'd also like to avoid that.

Thanks for the help.

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Community Expert ,
Oct 15, 2021 Oct 15, 2021

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Have you tried the pencil tool?

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New Here ,
Oct 15, 2021 Oct 15, 2021

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Thanks.  Yes, we've tried the pencil tool but it seems rather awkward with the anchor points appearing.  Is there a way to do this without dealing with those?

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Community Expert ,
Oct 15, 2021 Oct 15, 2021

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Did you try to use a drawing tablet?

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Community Expert ,
Oct 15, 2021 Oct 15, 2021

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Having a typeface made seems pretty exorbitant in price, I just look and wow. My recommendation would be hand write each one on a nice white paper. Scan it into photoshop. Clean up what you do not want, drop the background. Then save as a .psd. Place into InDesign as a picture. You can size it in InDesign to fit the hand written captions as needed.

Lee- Graphic Designer, Print Specialist, Photographer

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New Here ,
Oct 15, 2021 Oct 15, 2021

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Thanks.  This is the backup plan, but I was hoping to avoid the extra steps of scanning, adjusting in Photoshop, and importing into InDesign.

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Community Expert ,
Oct 15, 2021 Oct 15, 2021

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I think this is the only reasonable solution, despite the steps involved. It also gives you a great deal of control over the result.

 

Whatever the result in the final publication, the idea smacks of "But I do this all the time on my iPad!" and may not be easily applicable to a publishing platform, InDesign or any other. There are a lot of such things, trivial/easy on touch or other platforms but not replicable on a desktop/app. 🙂


╟ Word & InDesign to Kindle & EPUB: a Guide to Pro Results (Amazon) ╢

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Community Expert ,
Oct 15, 2021 Oct 15, 2021

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Check out Fontself, a plugin for Photoshop and/or Illustrator. 

https://www.fontself.com/

$39 US for just one program plugin or $59 US for both programs.

 

I've used it and it is fairly easy to create a font.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

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New Here ,
Oct 15, 2021 Oct 15, 2021

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Thanks, I'll take a look.  But I don't really want to create a font.  I want to use the actual handwriting.  Seems it's either the pencil tool or write on paper and scan.

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Community Expert ,
Oct 15, 2021 Oct 15, 2021

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If you write and scan each letter, you can easily make a font. Unless you have a Wacom-type tablet on your computer or an iPad-type tablet, you won't get natural handwriting. 

 

To me, the choices are:

  • Create a natural-looking font with one's own handwriting.
  • Write and scan the different lines/paragraphs of text and treat as art.
  • Get a tablet for your computer or use a standalone tablet [added] or a touch-screen computer.
David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

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Community Expert ,
Oct 15, 2021 Oct 15, 2021

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Well, I've found doing this kind of thing in Illustrator and then placing a PDF to be quite easy especially with a Windows touch device.

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Community Expert ,
Oct 15, 2021 Oct 15, 2021

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Thanks, Bob. Forgot to mention a touch-screen computer (even though I have three of them!).

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

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