Creating SuperOverlays. Now, there is a panel for that.

We have written about the concept of a “SuperOverlay” before: Put anything you want above another overlay (wich is not possible with non-interactive things like background images).

In short, if you want something to be placed above —say— your video or slideshow, just convert it into a slideshow with two identical slides and set it to autoplay. 

This can be a hideous task when you just want to create them and test something or if you need to create many of them.

So I made a panel for you that will create these SuperOverlays with 2 simple clicks:

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The panel is available for InDesign CS6 in Adobe Exchange.

Adobe Exchange? Adobe launched Exchange last week: A marketplace place, similar to an app store like the one from Apple or Google Play, where you can get new panels and plugins very easily and install them right away.

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Install the Adobe Exchange Panel for CS6 from adobeexchange.com

After opening the Panel in CS6 you will find the “Create SuperOverlay” panel featured for InDesign, or search for it.

You can get the panel for free, install it and restart InDesign. You then can find the panel under “Extensions” in the window menu.

You can use SuperOverlays for different things:

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and many other things.

The panel also gives you the chance to simply revert the object to a free InDesign object that you can then edit and convert again to a SuperOverlay.

The Panel is using a script to set the specific settings in the Overlay Creator panel. This script will check if you selected a MSO. Big thanks to Uwe Laubender, who helped me a lot in making the script reliable.

If you are curious, the code is available on github. You can also review and rate the panel in the Adobe Exchange panel.

—Johannes