IDCS4

Here's an odd thing.

I made a rectangle, filled it with a gradient from black to white, and set the blending mode to "Lighten." I placed it on a MP spread for the Chapter Opening, so that the two-page photo would fade off on the verso page to white. (I applied it if the verso was blank, but not if it contained the last part of the preceding chapter.)

Here's the odd thing.

The book contains many chapters and I use a different photo in each one. All of the photos I used on the Ch Opening, except one, are normal and fill the rectangle. On one, a striking landscape, I deleted the sky--in Photoshop, I made it a transparent region. When I applied the gradient to it, it did exactly as expected EXCEPT where the gradient overlay the transparent part, ID showed it as a regular black fade to the left. Why did ID not try to blend the gradient to the white of the page? My workaround was to put a rectangle of white the same size position as the gradient on the lowest layer, so that when I applied the MP to the recto, the gradient was on the top layer, the photo was below it, and the white rectangle was on the lowest layer. When I gave ID a white object to blend with, it worked correctly. But when there was nothing besides the blank page behind the gradient, ID didn't use the "lighten" blending mode on the paper.


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Michael Brady
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