Working with Paragraph Shading in Adobe InDesign CC (2015 release)
To call attention to text within a story, you can apply shading to a paragraph. Your first inclination to create this effect might be to draw a frame, fill it with a tint of color, and place it behind the text. However, this effect will not flow with the text as it’s edited. You could also place the text in a separate frame with a background tint and then anchor that frame in the text. However, this is a time-consuming method for creating a simple effect. Fortunately, InDesign CC 2015 provides a new paragraph shading feature that you can quickly and automatically apply through a paragraph style. In addition, InDesign provides many options for fine-tuning the shading.
Applying shading to a paragraph
First, you will apply shading to the paragraph containing the author’s biography, which is at the end of the story. Later, you will save this effect as part of the paragraph style.
Using the Type tool (
), click to place an insertion point in the author biography at the end of the magazine article. This selects the paragraph.Choose Type > Paragraph to display the Paragraph panel.
Check Shading in the lower-left corner of the Paragraph panel.
To change the color of the shading, click the menu to the right of the Shading box. Select the last color, C=97 M=62 Y=21 K=8, to apply the blue color as shading to the paragraph.
To fine-tune the shading, choose Paragraph Shading from the Paragraph panel menu.
- Select the Preview option. Move the dialog box so that you can see the paragraph.
- At the top of the Paragraph Shading dialog box, check Shading On.
- In the Paragraph Shading dialog box, enter 20 in the Tint field.
Enter p6 in the Top field in the Offsets area.
- Choose Text from the Width field to see how the shading adjusts to the longest line of text. Then, choose Column again.
Click OK to apply the changes.
The paragraph is now shaded with a light blue that matches the other tints used on the page.
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