working with Masters for Indesign CS

[Peter Baggio]

I think I'm getting the hang of using Indesign Cs but I'm still a little confused about the masters. I understand having an A master but what does B Master do? I thought maybe it was to do complex layout and have it flow through the whole document but you can only add either one or the other master at a time not both.

Could someone clarify this for me?

Thank you

[Broacher]

A and B are just two default masters (all masters are lettered to differentiate from the pages themselves). There's no practical limit to how many masters you can use. Also very handy and potentially powerful is the ability to base new masters on existing ones.

[resdog]

The ability to base a master on another is why it's there. Say you have Master A, that has your logo watermarked. Now, you want every page in your document to have this watermark, but you want only the even pages to have a blue bar down the left side as well as the watermark. Create a new master page, based on Master A, and you newly created master B will have the watermarked logo on it as well as anything you add to it. Now, if you change the Master A (change the logo design or add a star or something) Master B will update as well. This is a really time-saving feature, once you learn how to use it.

[Neuro]

The above practice is popular for newsletters, books and flyers that have a standard setup that you want to be there each time. Resdog had the best explination. I have seen some books with crazy amounts of master pages. It's really all based on how much stuff you have that is standard for certain pages. It is supposed to save you time. Can get a bit confusing though.

'Thats just my opinion, I could be wrong.' - Dennis Miller


** Personal Blog - Updated 2/3/05


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[uncle carbunkle]

catalogue, 30 different vendor logos for (seemingly) random left and right headers, 850 pages.

::did you ever know that you're my hero?::</font>

Control the master pages or the master pages will control you...

*crowd stand in awe*

But to sum it up you guys nailed it. Master pages can be used to create standard objects you want to keep consistent but as stated sometimes you have an index that is 10 pages long and you can base it on your layout master but you might not want to reuse all the elements used in your initial layout. Currently I’m using about three different masters for each partition of the catalog if I had included all the section together that would be about 20 Master or more which can get very hairy.

Graphic Design Heroes! Call me Captain Type Caster. I’ve fought off “The Evil Cosmic Sans” for year but it seems “Dr. Extreme Untalent” keeps bringing him back. I must find a way to defeat this evil creature.

Capt. Creative bring me those comps…