Adobe InDesign Workshop 2

When you place an image in InDesign it only shows a very low quality preview of the work. InDesign does this to keep the size of the file to a minimum.

Links Pallet

You can navigate to any image by clicking on the page number next to it within the links pallet.

InDesign needs to know the location of the original image to be able to print the preview.

When you print the InDesign file, the software finds the original image and prints that.

To allow this to work both the InDesign file and the images must be saved, preferably in the same location.

If the pictures/images are not there, InDesign will be unable to find them, however, it will still show the low quality preview.

If this happens it is possible to manually search for the image.

To change the quality of the preview you go to ‘View’ and then ‘Display performance’. The options are:

-                Fast display

-                Typical display

-                High quality display

 

Although it is best to prepare images in Photoshop there is some flexibility within InDesign.

If the file is too large or the wrong size it is possible to shrink and manipulate the size using the ‘content grabber’.

Using the Link Pallet and selecting the image you can see how much it has been scaled by.

This enables you to open the image using Photoshop and change it to the correct size.

The image can be opened in Photoshop through InDesign

Right click – open with Photoshop

To set images to always open in Photoshop, using this method, you must make Photoshop your default.

This is done by finding the TIFF file – Command I – Open with Adobe Photoshop – Change all

The keyboard shortcut for this is – Alt and double clicking the image.

In Photoshop the image size is changed in the usual way, however, it needs to be changed to percent. You can then input the percentage found in InDesign. At this point it is important to make sure that the ‘resample’ box has been checked and that it is in the right colour mode and then saved over the existing file.

 

Once the image has been edited in Photoshop it should automatically update in InDesign. If it does not update automatically, the small attention symbol must be clicked at the top of the image frame.

When to use .tif and when to use .psd:

It depends on if you are creating layer of the image and using opacity/transparency.

When changing the opacity/transparency of and object the background must be turned into a layer.

How to view your page as it will print:

This can be done using a quick keyboard shortcut – ‘W’

The different preview settings are found at the bottom of the tool bar.

Frames:

Managing Stacking order

Object – arrange –

Interaction of image and text

Text frames can be shapes other than rectangles.

If the image obscures the text, text wrap can be used.

Window – text wrap –

- Combining images with a body of text.

Text wrap – contour options – Alpha Channel

This is when the wrap follows the contours set out. If this is an image from Photoshop, with a transparent background, it will wrap around the image and not the transparent background.

This can be done with empty frames.

The pen tool can be used to create a frame, which can then be filled with either, text, images or nothing.

Once the shape has been drawn using the pen tool, you select:

Object – content – text/graphic/unassigned

Text frames can also be manipulated using their anchor points, as with Illustrator.

Work produced in Illustrator can be copied and pasted straight into InDesign.

Illustrator: Select work – copy –

InDesign: new page – paste

This image appears in full quality as the whole thing has been pasted across, meaning no linked file.

Applying Colours:

This can be done either using the ‘colour pallet’ or the ‘swatches pallet’.

The ‘swatches pallet’ allows you to store your own colours so that you can get a colour consistency throughout the work.

The ‘stroke pallet’ is used for outlines, their colour and their thickness.

Using the pallets the colour of the text and the text frame can be changed.

 Using the type tool you can also select sections of type and colour them differently to the rest of the type.

Printing and Saving:

Save as a PDF

Presets

            -           Press quality - commercial standard, the highest and best quality available

            -           Smallest file size – only suitable for screen – lowest quality

            -           High quality print – middle quality

Presets are all set up – export.