Indesign Software Induction 1

Adobe Indesign:

You rarely create anything within Indesign, It's used for layout so alot of the work before It will be done within Photoshop or Illustrator. This is because it's a layout and publishing program instead of editing and creation.

Indesign features many of the same tools that are present within Photoshop and within Illustrator also, on the left hand side tool bar. 

Indesign has 3 different types of documents it can create, for now we'll be picking document only.

Documents in Indesign are referred to as pages, as it's used mostly for print. It also has similar options to the previous softwares. Letter, legal and tabloid are ones we'd only use for in America.

Page size is the finished product of what you're making.

 Clicking onto 'More options' gives us Bleed and slug on the botton of the New document options. Adding columns adds in guides, the gutter is the space between the columns. Margins guides put guides on the page a specific distance from the edge of the page which add a white space to the edge of each page I lay out. Columns and Margins count as guides so they're are editable to change or to hide if needed or not.

The bleed and slug is to do with the trimming after the document has been printed. So in the industry you can't print A4 on A4 you print A4 onto a big sheet, so if I was to print A4 I'd print it onto A3 so I can had trimming so I can get the exact size of A4. To compensate for inaccurate trimming, everything has to bleed off the page, so for example a photograph it has to extend off the page 'bleed' off. So when it comes to trimming no white is left behind if there's a millimeter difference in trimming.

3mm is the standard bleed amount.

The slug is another area outside the page which can be used, and is larger than the bleed area. It is used to contain the printers marks like corner trim marks and registration marks used in the print process. 

Another specialty of Indesign is been able to work with multiple pages, also this can found in the box in the New document options box. Facing pages is used for spreads, and is ticked when it's ever in a book format, eg: a spread. Inner spread pages are facing pages, they face each other in a booklet.

The Black line is the edge of the page, where it will be trimmed.

The Purple line is the margin line, so I can be ignored.

The Red line is the bleed line.

File > Document Setup. This allows you to change or alter your document incase you forget to add in bleed guides or size and number of pages.

Margins and Columns then allows you to edit and alter you're margins and columns.

The pages palette allows you to add in each page and is represented by thumbnail. In the menu on the Pages pallete you can then insert pages too, there's more options here but just for now I'll be adding in 3 more pages, after page 1. You can also delete the pages by double-clicking the page and then clicking onto the rubbish bin.

If I was to have Facing pages ticked I would end up with thumbnails similar to the image below on the left hand side, so it shows that I have a spread. Image to the right of the thumbnails shows you it with facing pages unticked, they're all separate documents instead of been linked like facing pages with spreads.

I can also add in guide lines manually by dragging down from the ruler at the top of the window.

To do it more accurately I can use the menu here, in layout. This allows me to accurately add in rows and columns of guidelines. So below is a page with guides fitted to page, ticking to margins fits the guidelines within the margins instead of the edge of the page.

Indesign needs everything placed within a frame, so images and text. Creating a text box is similar to photoshop and illustator. Once I have a text box I can through Type > Placeholder text can insert gibberish text just so you can use the text box to get an idea how it'll look if you're playing with the layout of text.

Highlighting the text with the text tool, brings up the tool menu on the top part of the window, this gives me all the options to edit the text with, these can be found similarly within the Type menu. Once text is within the frame I can also edit the container that it's in using the selection tool I can change the size of the text box and It'll change the text accordingly so If I was to make it long and slender It'll space the text out to fit too it.

If you hold down on the text box with the selection tool It'll create a live update of the text-box as you move it about instead of creating a silhouette of the text box instead. Guidelines sometimes appear when moving a textbox about, green lines indicate that two frames are aligned while purple ones appear when frames are aligned centrally also. When you make a frame under a frame, when they get the same length green arrows appear to indicate that.

Because of the nature of the work, I'd often never have to write in the copy to be used in text files, It's possible to import text files into Indesign by clicking a text frame and then going to File > Place and automatically inserting the text into the frame.

If this was to appear, It indicates that there is a text overflow and there is too much text in the frame. To absolve this I can either, increase the size of the frame, create another frame for it to overflow into or decrease the size of the text. Double clicking the overflow indicator gets the indicator below which means I can create another text frame for the text to flow into. The two frames will then be linked together, so selecting all in one textbox selects it in the other one too.

Specifications for importing from Photoshop:

1.  Film format is correct. - .tiff or .psd - NOT JPEG.

2.  300dpi

3. CYMK or Greyscale

4.  Actual Size

Specifications for importing from Illustator:

1. .AI file

2. CYMK

For placing an image within Indesign there is two ways to go about it, one way is similar to the text tool. This method is exactly the same and brings up a little thumbnail of the image and upon clicking releases it into a frame.

I can also edit the content of the frame, when two concentric circles appear within the frame this allows me to move about the image within the space while the frame remains static. I can also use the handles on the sides of the frame which allow me to change the dimensions of the frame, holding down on the frame brings up a live feed again like the text file.

I can also change the size of the image, even though this is a bad idea it's handy if you need to slightly change a image, this is because of the resolution of the image once you start to enlarge it, it's going to reduce the original resolution of the image. To resize a image you have to double click the image to bring up the brown outline of the image holding shift and dragging out proportionally changes the size of the image.

The second way a image is by creating frame already existing, using the rectangle frame tool. This time importing a Illustrator art work file, the rectangle has crossed lines through it to indicate that it's a graphic frame. 

Importing in a AI file creates a image that looks rather pixelated that's because it's to keep the file size down, but instead when it's printed it'll be sharp as it is within illustrator. Since it's a illustrator file it can also be resized not unlike the a photograph type image. It's resolution is always high quality.