In todays workshop lesson (taught by George), we got to learn the basics of InDesign from the start. This was great for the beginners and great for the self taught users that needed a nudge in the right direction. George started off by telling us about basic Adobe Suite and what each thing is used for.
Photoshop is for editing and manipulating images
Illustrator is for creating vector images
After Effects is for creating digital motion graphics and visual effects
InDesign is for presenting all of your finished work
To start off, before you even open InDesign, create a folder somewhere easily accessible (Desktop) and name it something relevant to your work. This will be the folder that you put everything that's going into your InDesign file in. The reasons for this is because if you would like to eventually print this InDesign document, you will need every image present in the file saved onto the computer you are printing it from otherwise it won't print. The other reason is because if you copy and paste an image, it will pixelate, whereas is you download the image to your computer and insert it into the document, it will be a much higher resolution.
Page Setup
1) Document Preset: Default/Custom
Default = The settings preset by InDesign
Custom = When you change any of the the settings preset by InDesign
2) Intent: Print/Web/Digital Publishing
Print = Posters, Flyers, Booklets, etc...
Web = Webpage
Digital Publishing = Apps
3) Number of Pages: Single/Multiple pages
4) Facing Pages: Single/Double page spread
5) Page Size: A5/A4/A3/A2/A1/A0
6) Orientation: Landscape/Portrait
Landscape = Horizontal
Portrait = Vertical
7) Columns: A vertical division of text
8) Gutter: The space between two columns
9) Margins: The blank space at the top/bottom/left/right
10) Bleed: Print edge to trim
To extend beyond the print edge of a design piece, ensuring that no unprinted edges (margins) occur in the final trimmed document
11) Slug: Non-printing Information (such as a title and date) used to identify a document
12) Pasteboard: The area around the page where you can put objects that you might want while you are designing, but will not get printed
Once that was all sorted, we clicked 'OK' and it looked like this:
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Anything placed on the master page will duplicate on every page.
The next thing we did was draw guide lines and put page numbers on the master page. To make a guide line, we clicked on the ruler at the top of the page and dragged it down to where we wanted it; this appears as a bright blue line. In our case, we wanted it to be at 289mm (the bottom of the page).
To add the page numbers, we had to go to the 'Text' tool and type "Page" fairly small > Go the the top menu bar and click on 'Type' > Find 'Insert Special Character' > Go to 'Markers' > Click "Current page number'. This will now make your "Page" say "Page A", Page A is the master page but all of the other pages will be numbered. We centred "Page A" so it sat in the middle of the text box then made the text box as small as possible (so that it wouldn't interfere with any other objects) and moved it down the sit on the guide line.
Using the 'Line' tool, we drew a line over the guide line, this crossed through the text box. We clicked on the 'Colour Pallet' with "Page A" selected and blocked out the background in white to break the line. We then went to 'Layers' and placed the "line" layer under the "page" layer so the white text box blocked out the line where the text was.
Next we selected the 'Line' tool again and drew a vertical line down the middle of the left Gutter, we then learnt that if you hold down the 'alt' key and click on the line, it makes another copy that we dragged to the centre of the right Gutter.
*CLICK ON PAGE 1*
Guidelines
Horizontal -
39mm
45mm
51mm
57mm
64mm
115mm
120mm
Vertical -
95mm
Next we clicked on the 'Rectangle' tool and drew a rectangle at the top of the page and over the first guideline to the second one down. We then went down to the colour fill and picked a colour to fill it. Clicking on the 'Text' tool, we made a tex box fairly large and typed in the word "DTP", changed the size to 100pt and the font to 'Palatino Bold'.
How to insert a body of text
Making sure that nothing is currently selected, we went to 'File' > 'Place' > (locate the plain text file you want to insert). A square of writing was attached to our cursors that moved wherever we move the cursor, when we clicked in the first column, it filled it with text, but not all of the text so we went down to the small, red + sign in a box, this allowed us to place the next bit of writing in the next column and so on until the columns were filled.
To add smaller text boxes, we held down the 'alt' key and drew a text box the size we needed.
Next we selected all of the text and added 5mm after every paragraph with the 'Space After' tool. We then did the same with 5mm but using the 'Indent' tool.
We clicked out of the highlighted paragraphs and clicked anywhere within the first paragraph on the page then selected the 'Drop Cap Number of Lines' tool and make it 4 or 5. This makes the first letter of the paragraph 4 or 5 line bigger that the rest of the text. Drop Caps shows the start of an article on a multi-article page or just looks effective.
Inserting an image
'File' > 'Place' > (find image you'd like to insert) > click and drag to the size you would like the image (if you just click it to insert it at its original size, it will just pixelate).
To get rid of very plain background, select the image > Got to 'Object' in the menu bar > Select 'Clipping Path' > 'Options' > Type: Detect Edges. You can play with the 'Threshold' but normally you don't need to.
To get rid of more complicated backgrounds, you need to put your image into Photoshop and, using the 'Pen' tool, select the whole way around the object you want to keep in the image > DO NOT deselect the path > save it as it is > Insert the image into InDesign (how you would normally) > Select the image > Go to 'Object' > Find 'Clipping Path' > 'Options' > Type: Photoshop Path.
Wrapping text around an image
Select the image > Go up to 'Window' > Click on 'Text Wrap' > (Change the options to suit the kind of wrap you would like around your image).
Type text inside/around a shape
Using the 'Pen' tool, draw any shape path of your choice > Click on the 'Text' tool and click inside the shape > Paste the text you want inside the shape.
Hold down 'Text' tool and select 'Type on Path' tool > Click on the line of the shape > Type or paste your text.
Manipulating text
Select the 'Text' tool and type of word/s > Highlight your text > Hold down 'cmd' > Distort image.
Select the 'Text' tool and type of word/s > Highlight your text > Go up to 'Type' > Select 'Creative Outlines' > Click on the 'Pen' tool > Distort using anchor points (> 'File' > 'Place' > (select an image) > The image shows as the background of the text)
Notes
* Hold down Ctrl + (click on the ruler at the top) to change from 'cm' to 'mm'
* Shift + Cmd = Editing something set on the master page to suit the current page you are on
* Hold down 'Cmd' to click through overlapping layers on a page
* To get the best quality photographs on a digital camera, set your images to RAW, it will take up a lot more space as they're bigger but you will be able to use and edit them professionally
* Copy and Pasting images into Adobe programs pixelates them so you should save and import the images you are going to use
* If you save you InDesign document as 'InDesign CS4 or later (IDML)', this means it is backwards compatible all the way back to CS4. This allows you to open the document in CS4, CS5, CS6 and CC
