In this week’s InDesign FX tutorial, I show how to create a variety of 3D effects with the Bevel and Emboss effect in Adobe InDesign. In this video, I use several instances of Bevel and Emboss along with Drop Shadows and Inner Glow to create a realistic replica of a California license plate.

To start this technique, I show how to use an Outer Bevel to make raised letters that look like they were stamped in metal.

An Inner Glow with noise helps to add some realism by roughening up the edges of the letters.

Without the noise, the edges of the letters were too razor sharp to look real. I often find that adding deliberate defects, even subtle ones, can make an illustration like this look more realistic.

A close-up look at the top-left corner of the license plate reveals three different uses of beveled transparency effects:

The addition of a small Inner Bevel creates a highlight at the bottom of the registration month sticker, which adds a little thickness. An Outer Bevel applied in combination with an Inner Shadow creates the look of the screw hole. And by applying a larger Inner Bevel to the fill of the license plate, I can make it appear raised, while keeping a flat border.

At this point, you might be wondering how I knew to use all these specific effects. The answer is that I started by finding a real California license plate to use as a reference. I happened to have one handy, so I just set it next to my computer while I worked, but I could have just as easily worked from a photograph. When you’re trying to create a realistic effect such as this, I think it’s essential to work from a reference, so you can study the details of the object and identify which effects to apply. Then it’s just a matter of tinkering with the settings until what you see on your screen approaches the real object (or photograph).

I also have a member-exclusive video in the lynda.com library this week called Making a 3D object, in which I show how to use some vector drawing techniques along with Bevel and Emboss to create a bar of soap.

See you here again in two weeks with another InDesign effect!

Interested in more?
• The complete InDesign FX biweekly series
• All InDesign courses on lynda.com
• All courses by Mike Rankin on lynda.com

Suggested courses to watch next:
• InDesign Secrets
• InDesign CS6 Essential Training 
• InDesign CS6 New Features 
• Deke’s Techniques

This week’s InDesign FX video shows how to create the look of a photo glued into a scrapbook. The effect is achieved by adding a stroke to the photo, plus four triangular objects that resemble adhesive photo corners.

This technique is a nifty way of presenting a photo, and it illustrates effective use of small drop shadows, rounded corners, and the use of a light gray tint instead of pure white for added realism—all effects that have useful application in many other InDesign effects.

But maybe the most valuable aspect of this lesson is how it demonstrates a way to fix inconsistent shadows and highlights that undermine the realism of an effect, a common problem you can encounter when you flip or rotate objects after you’ve applied transparency effects to them.

To illustrate where the problem occurs, let’s consider each step in this effect.

First, the placed image is given a stroke and a drop shadow, so it looks like a printed photograph:

Then, the first photo corner is created by applying Bevel and Emboss effects to a small triangular object:

And the other three photo corners are created by duplicating, flipping, and rotating that triangle:

Can you spot the shadow and highlight problem with the photo corners in the image above? When they were flipped and rotated, so were the highlights and shadows of the Bevel and Emboss resulting in inconsistent and unrealistic lighting with visible highlights on all four sides.

As I show in the video, the way to fix this problem is to make the four triangle corners behave as one by converting them to a compound path. Then the Bevel and Emboss is applied to all four triangles at once, with highlights and shadows all aligned to a consistent angle.

An added benefit of making the corners into a compound path is that you can easily make changes to the triangle’s bevel attributes or the fill color.

I have another member-exclusive movie in the lynda.com library this week called Making new shadow effects, which shows how you can replace a typical Drop Shadow effect with shadow shapes and patterns of your own design.

See you here again in two weeks with another InDesign effect!

Interested in more?
• The complete InDesign FX bi-weekly series
• All InDesign courses on lynda.com
• All courses by Mike Rankin on lynda.com