Pub2ID Image Effects and Special Effects

The Markzware Pub2ID plug-in for InDesign can handle the conversion of various image effects and special effects when processing the file conversion from MS Publisher to Adobe ID.

Picture Formatting

The “Picture Format” option allows the MS Publisher user to manipulate placed images in several ways. Because InDesign has no counterpart feature for direct image formatting, most of this “on the fly” graphic editing is not supported, such as color, contrast, and brightness adjustments. Use of the feature “Set Transparent Color” is also not supported; i.e. the image will be converted but the transparency is removed together with any other MS Publisher “effects” that rely on it (see Text Wrap, above). Supported exceptions are:

Crop – Image crop is reproduced but an image scaled in MS Publisher that is also cropped is converted to the native scale image in the crop box in InDesign.

“Line/Border Style” – Supported only for single, double and triple stroke lines,  “standard” dash and “dot” dash lines (“fancy” dashes will be converted to standard dashes). Line color is supported.

Image box color fill is supported.

Color Transparency

Color Transparency is not supported.

Border Art

The “Border Art” option allows the MS Publisher user to select from a pallet of bitmap images which are then assembled to apply that bitmap around the image as a frame. Border Art is not supported.

Word Art

The “Word Art” option allows the MS Publisher user to select from a pallet of “artistic” style options (3d, color gradients, fit to path, etc.) and apply that style to any selected text. The text portion and base color used for the Word Art will convert to InDesign but, Word Art stylizing is not supported.

Background

The “Background” option allows the MS Publisher user to assign a background (texture, color, gradient, etc.) to the page from a pallet of options. Background is not supported.

Fill Effects

Gradient, Texture and Pattern are not supported; although you may see some remnant converted.

Workaround: If you are on a Windows system with both InDesign and MS Publisher installed, in some cases you can copy the filled item and paste it into InDesign. This may not always provide sufficient resolution of the fill for commercial printing purposes.

AutoShapes

The “AutoShapes” feature lets the MS Publisher user choose items from a pallet and place them on the page, such as thought balloons, starbursts, banners, flowchart items, lines, freeform drawings, etc. AutoShapes are not supported except as follows…

Some “Basic Shapes” will convert such as trapezoid freehand line and 3d Square.

Although a shape may not convert a place-holder object is placed on the InDesign page. That shape will contain any text placed in the shape as well as any color fill.

Certain AutoShapes may cause InDesign to crash, halt or fail to convert the document. There is no way to predict which AutoShapes might cause a crash.

Workaround: If you are on a Windows system with both InDesign and MS Publisher installed, in some cases you can copy the AutoShape and paste it into InDesign.

Design Gallery Objects

The DGO (Design Gallery Objects) feature lets the MS Publisher user choose items from a pallet and place them on the page, such as mastheads, sidebars, logos, forms, marquis and so forth. This feature is partially supported as follows…

GOs with any color gradient, blend, etc. may not convert exactly the same as the original, or convert at all. Some “fancy” DGOs may convert better than others.

Other DGOs will convert but may exhibit problems such as inversion, size, placement or may be incomplete or otherwise require rework.

DGOs are not extracted as graphic files.

Drawing Objects

The “Drawing” options on the left, vertical menu bar in MS Publisher allows the user to draw 4 types of lines and objects directly on the page: lines, ellipses, rectangles and arrow-lines. Drawing objects are generally supported as follows…

Single/Double/Triple lines, “standard” dash and “dot” dash lines are supported (“fancy” dashes will be converted to standard dashes). Line weights may be different.

“Pattern Line” borders are not supported, but converted to single stroke in InDesign.

Line color is supported.

Only standard arrow points are supported, not “fancy” points.

Insert Object

From the “Insert” menu, selecting “Object” allows the MS Publisher user to insert an OLE “live” file object into the document such as a PDF, Excel file, PowerPoint slide and so forth; much the same way as the MS Word user does. Insert Object is generally supported with some exceptions… 

Objects are converted as graphic files and are not editable in InDesign or in their source application.

OLE features are not supported such as live link to file and auto updating; Mac or Windows.

Objects are treated by Pub2ID like graphic elements and extracted to a folder. For the most part the extracted Objects are converted as EMF (Enhanced Windows Metafiles) files and loose their original file type. Some known exceptions being Bitmap files convert as PNG and MS Word files as WMF.

Note: MS Publisher  has no ability to extract any such inserted Object. Pub2ID extracted Objects are given arbitrary names and do not retain the original name or file format.

The kind of Objects that can be inserted into a MS Publisher file depend largely on which applications the MS Publisher user has installed on their machine, which also behave properly with OLE. Not every conceivable Object or variable was tested. Objects that have been tested with Pub2ID thus far are as follows:

PDF – PDFs exhibit variable results once placed in MS Publisher depending on how the PDF was created in the first place. Pub2ID reproduces the PDF faithfully according to how well or poorly MS Publisher handled the file.

Photoshop – Native PSD files from Photoshop v11.x were faithfully reproduced. Note: Unlike placed graphics, the extracted file in this case IS affected by any scaling done in the MS Publisher document. “Live” text and layers in the .psd  may be a problem.

Bitmap – A sample BMP was faithfully reproduced, plus scaling effect as noted above.

Excel Worksheet – A sample .xls file faithfully reproduced layout and text.

PowerPoint Slide – A sample .ppt file faithfully reproduced text and placed graphics.

Visio Drawing – A sample .vsd file faithfully reproduced shapes, lines and connectors.

MS Word Page – A sample .doc file faithfully reproduced text, table and placed graphics.

Content Library

MS Publisher 2007 allows the user to define any item on the page as a “Content Library” item; that can be selected and placed on the page. Since these items are composed of any elements that MS Publisher can produce on a page, items in the Content Library are supported provided they do not contain anything listed here as being unsupported.

Clip Art

Clip art placed in MS Publisher whether from the MS Publisher clip art library, the Microsoft Office library or a 3rd party library is supported provided the image does not contain any of the known unsupported features listed in this document.

3D Styles

MS Publisher allows the user to assign various 3 dimensional styles to certain objects. 3D is not supported for any objects nor any of the formatting options thereof.

Shadow Style

MS Publisher allows the user to apply a drop shadow to certain objects (this is apart from the shadow feature found in the text formatting tool). Shadow Styles are supported under the following conditions…

MS Publisher shadows are generally hard-edged “geometric” shadows with no user  formatting options. InDesign converted shadows are more natural, “organic” shadows and so the user will have to use the InDesign shadow formatting controls to restore the hard-edged MS Publisher “look and feel” if desired.

Shadow color and other formatting options are supported.

Objects with no background fill in MS Publisher: the shadow will map to the object shape.

Objects with background fill in MS Publisher: the shadow will map to the box.

Objects with no background fill but with a box outline in MS Publisher: the shadow will map to the outline. This behavior is supported except that the shadow will also map to the contents of the box including text, when converted.

To apply a shadow in MS Publisher a box must have background fill, an outline or both. If a shadow is applied to other than this, the shadow will not appear in MS Publisher but may appear after conversion to InDesign.