[John Mensinger]

With no files open, choose View > Show Bounding Box

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

^That.

Plus, try NOT drawing a text box. Just click with the type tool to set an insertion point.

Also, after entering a return to start a second line, you say your cursor doesn’t move down. Have you tried just typing anyway? Perhaps the cursor is moving down, but you have a screen redraw issue preventing you from seeing it. Be sure you have the latest driver for your display adapter installed.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

I suppose by “the filters stink,” you might mean that they take long to process and apply at that size/resolution.

Unless it’s expressly part of the assignment, you don’t really need 300ppi. Even for close-up viewing, you only need resolution equal to the line screen frequency of the output device x 1.5. For an 18 x 24 poster, you could easily get away with 150-200ppi.

The Effect: When you’re satisfied with your background texture, (concrete, stone, etc.), set your type on a layer above. Then Cmd/Ctrl+Click on the type layer thumbnail in the Layers Panel to load the letterforms as a selection.

Turn off the types layer’s visibility, target the background layer, and press Cmd/Ctrl+J to make a layer containing a copy of the letterforms from the background texture.

(Backgound layer visibility turned of for illustrative purposes.)

Double-Click the new layer and add Bevel and Emboss effects to produce the illusion of the letterforms embossed or debossed in the background.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

Ah, I see…sort of like a vector-based halftone pattern effect. Like you I would be at “square one” in conjuring up such a thing.

I did some experimenting with anchor point-targeted blends that might come close to producing what you want, but I’m not quite there yet, and it could get pretty complex with the serif letter forms. If I have any breakthroughs, I’ll post ’em here.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

With InDdesin not running, search your local and remote drives for “lock files.” These will have the file extension .idlk. Delete any you find.

InDesign writes these lock files every time you’re working on a document…usually in the same folder as the .indd file. When the file and InDesign are closed/quit in normal fashion, the lock file disappears, but when there’s a crash, it often stays behind in an orphaned state, and will interfere in linking/relinking during subsequent sessions the way you describe.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

In a sense, that would defeat the purpose of Camera Raw, where the idea is to make global adjustments in the largest available color space.

Perhaps if you frame the question in a more specific context with regard to what you’re attempting to accomplish, there may be other angles.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

It depends on the context of your intent.

If you want the image to be transparent, for instance, when you place it in InDesign, just leave it the way it is. In InDesign, set its Blend Mode to Multiply.

Similarly, if you’re trying to get rid of the white pixels for use as a Photoshop layer, just set the Layer Blend Mode to Multiply.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

Robert,

You’ve got some terms-mixing going on there, so I’m not certain I fully understand what you’re trying to achieve.

Paths are not tied to Layers, nor do they intrinsically define a Mask.

The Paths panel will “list” separate “work paths.” To copy from one work path to another, use the Path Selection Tool to select the desired path component(s), copy using Cmd/Ctrl+C. Then switch to another work path or create a new, empty one by clicking the New Path icon at the bottom of the Paths Panel, then paste using Cmd/Ctrl+V.

To leverage an existing path on a different layer, simply target that layer with the path in an active state.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

Here’s the thing, Eric: Even if you do manage to reproduce that effect on an Illustrator artboard, all the blurring/feathering will be rendered as rasters anyway. Such effects only exist as pixels, regardless of the application.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

InDesign “won’t let you”? What happens when you try?

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.