InDesign: CS4 Tip – Optical Margin Alignment and Live Area

Date posted: 30 May 2009

In an InDesign training session at a large New York advertising agency (that was switching from Quark to InDesign), one print production specialist brought up an interesting point. Unlike Quark, there are times in InDesign when parts of characters may appear outside of a Text Frame. So if the Text Frame is sized to the Live Area of the ad, parts of some characters could be outside of Safety. Hmm! Great point! To compensate for this potential problem with Optical Margin Alignment or Bottom Justify, along with other formatting features, I recommend setting up a small amount of Inset Spacing in Text Frame Options (Object>Text Frame Options) to move the all letters back inside the Text Frame. In this way, you can still use these great formatting features with no problem.

Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Adobe® Certified Training Provider. AdobeAce@comcast.net

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