Using layered fonts for drop caps

[Benjamin39010368auuu]

Hi community,

I am trying to make a drop cap style that uses layered fonts.  I am also very much learning inDesign as an amateur. 

Right now I understand how to take text in a text box and using layers make a multilayered font.  If I do it manually, I can achieve the right look with a background font of one color, a midground another, and the foreground with another.  With the layers it looks great.  I can even merge the three layers into one.

I want to take this finished "triple font" and make it my drop cap font.  Is there a way to do this?

Important: I am using this drop cap in a data merge and it will be applied to many entries (100's), so I can't go in and do it manually one-at-a-time.    

Thanks for any help!

[Peter Spier]

Rather than three layers, which almost certainly will not work for the drop cap (maybe with a script), I would play with a character style that adds a drop shadow for the outer color, a stroke for the mid, and a character color for the foreground.

Whether this can work in your data merge I can't say without seeing the data and how it is set up.

[Benjamin39010368auuu]

The only problem is that the layered font style is quite elaborate- it looks like an illuminated letter with flowers, etc.  Ideally, the finished product would have these illuminated drop caps.  

[Benjamin39010368auuu]

Sorry, to further clarify:  one layer is the flower stems, one layer is the flower petals, and one layer is the letter itself.  The font is very versatile because all three colors can be changed independently of each other making a very elegant finished product.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Benjamin39010368auuu 

Can you post a screenshot?

Can you make it as an object - this letter with all the extras - and place it as an InLine graphic object?

Even if you use DataMerge and have 100s of those - even different ones - use some unique tag/marker foor each, then replace them with a Clipboard contents - first copy this graphic to Clipboard.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I've never seen a font of this model, but it seems as if it should have a plugin for management in anything but short, static use.

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

So as in the answer below: create your layered/colored capitals in a consistent template frame and export them as graphics. Then place them as inline anchored graphics. I don't think any combination of ID "live" features is going to get you where you want with any... stablity.

What's sending this off the rails is using the layered elements as a system-generated drop cap. It may be easy to layer and manage this element as a static one (a headline or title, for example), but trying to hand it over to ID's automated DC generation is probably not workable.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Create them as graphics and place them inline. Then, at the cost of having to create and place a few elements, you have unlimited artistic range.

Some things are not worth doing with automated features. 🙂

[Peter Spier]

Yeah, if it's that elaborate anchored objects (inline graphics) is the way to go. You can add an image field to the Data Merge and either drop the first character from the text field in your data or use a GREP find change to do it after.

[Benjamin39010368auuu]

Ok.  Sounds like the graphics way is this best way forward.  But would there be a way, after I create a graphic for each letter and have a placeholder graphic within the data merge, for some degree of automation to insert the correct graphic letter for the first letter of the word?  Because it would be too much to do manually.

[Peter Spier · Accepted solution]

The way to handle this in the data merge is to first make a folder with a separate graphic file for each letter you will need, then list the correct file name in the data set for each record.

You will have a graphic frame to hold the image file in your template.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Benjamin39010368auuu

It could be done as post-processing. 

As I've said before - you could insert some kind of tag and then replace with your graphic. 

Or if you've ParaStyle applied - replace first letter for this ParaStyle. 

Easily scriptable.