The Amazing fx Icon in InDesign

One of the handiest tools when you’re working with InDesign’s transparency effects is the humble (yet mighty) fx icon. Not the one you can see up in the Control panel, but the one that appears in the Effects panel when you select an object that has effects applied to it (either reduced opacity, a blend mode other than Normal, or an effect like Drop Shadow, Feather, etc).



But the fx icon is much more than a mere indicator of the presence of effects. Here are some other useful things you can do with it.

You can hover your cursor over it to see a tooltip of which effects have been applied to the selected object.



You can drag it to a different level in the panel to change where the effects are applied. For example, when a Bevel and Emboss effect has been applied to the Fill of an object, you see the fx icon next to Fill. To instead apply the Bevel and Emboss to the object's stroke, simply drag the fx icon to the Stroke level.




You can also use the fx icon to duplicate fx at different levels by Option/Alt-dragging. In this way, you can create separate Bevel and Emboss effects at both the Stroke and Fill Levels.



Furthermore, you can drag the fx icon and drop it on top of another object to apply effects. The object that you drop the fx icon onto can be on a different spread or even in a different document.





And you can even right-click on the icon to choose a specific effect to apply or edit.



It's fx-cellent!