InDesign CS4 for Macintosh and Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide

When I was in advertising, we used to lay clear acetate sheets over our mechanical board as a way to create variations for our layouts. One acetate layer might have copy and prices for a test market newspaper ad. Another piece of acetate might have prices for a special Sunday-circular ad. Yet another might have copy without prices for the national magazine ads. The artwork and other graphics stayed on the bottom layer and were visible through the acetate layers.

When the mechanical was sent to be printed, the print shop workers flipped the different acetate sheets on or off the board to create the different types of ads. Because a new mechanical didn't have to be created for each variation, it saved a lot of time and effort.

InDesign gives you the same sort of flexibility with electronic layers. You may have just two layers one for text, the other for graphics. Or you may have a document with hundreds of different layers.

For instance, if you have English and French versions of a document, you can put the text for each language on its own layer. You can then display just one version at a time.