“We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things” Herb Kelleher
Page 2 Ultimate InDesign Tutorial 2
INTRODUCTION
In this tutorial, we will be looking at more aspects and functions of InDesign which will increase your knowledge and allow you to become familiar with and use a few more of the features available.
You will be creating and using one InDesign file for this tutorial and keeping it for use in Tutorial 3. Building a document from scratch, the exercises will be using the features and functions learned in each section and Exercise as you go.
Create a folder named Tutorial 2 in your Ultimate Design folder.
Preferences include settings such as panel positions, measurement options, and display options for graphics and typography.
Launch InDesign (with no document open) and choose Edit > Preferences > General or press Ctrl+K. A window like this will appear:
On the left hand side we see a list of Preference Panels, and to the right, the details of the panel that is open.
With the General panel selected, tick the Prevent Selection of Locked Objects box.
Select the Units & Increments panel and make sure the box Horizontal and Vertical
measurement units are millimetres and that the Stroke units are in points.
Next, select Dictionary and change the Language setting to English: UK or English: USA, whichever you prefer.
In the Spelling Panel, check all the boxes in the Spelling and Dynamic Spelling areas. This is a great aid when either typing or importing text to check spelling as you go.
Open the Paragraph Panel in the Panel Dock and make sure the Hyphenate box is checked off.
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EXERCISE 2 - THE DOCUMENT
Create a new document using the following specifications:
Turn off the link box that you see in the Margins section of the New Document window. This will allow you to set each margin with a different value. The link box is circled in yellow. Click on the Preview option, circled in red, to see the changes that you make as you do them.
We won’t set any values for Columns yet as these will be different for each page and will be set individually later.
Save this file as Celebrate Summer in your Tutorial 2 folder. You will be working on this file from now on in all exercises that you see in this tutorial.
Click on the Pages Panel in the Dock. You should see the four pages as illustrated.
New Document window
Pages Panel showing 4 pages
Bleed
Bleed area is located outside the edges of a document that is used so that any imperfections in the trimming process do not create a visible white line along the edge of the page when an object is supposed to print all the way to the edge of a document.
Slug
Slug is an area outside the bleed where designer’s notes such as the client’s name, job name and number and dates can be placed.
Bleed
PageBorder
SlugDesigner’s Notes
Ultimate InDesign Tutorial 2 Page 5
CONTROL PANEL - OBJECTS
The Control Panel displays options for the currently selected tool and offers quick access to options, commands, and other panels related to the current page item or objects you select (this is called contextual). By default, the Control Panel is docked to the top of the document window. I strongly advise you leave it there.
With a document open, choose the Selection tool from the Tools panel and then select an object in your document.
Notice that the Control Panel information shows such things as the position, size, and rotation of that object.
Below is an illustration of the Control Panel when a non-text frame or object is selected.
To the right is the right hand side of the Control Panel when a text frame is selected.
Reference Point
Height Skew Angle
Frame Stroke Colour
Transparency Percentage
Object Corner Styles Auto-fit Toggle allows
the contents to resize as the frame resizes
Flip Horizontal/
Vertical
WidthRotate Angle
Rotate 90°
Frame Fill Colour
Text Wrap Options
Corner Radius
Frame Fitting
OptionsAlignment Options
Horizontal Position
Horizontal Scale
Vertical Position
Vertical Scale
Width/Height Link Toggle
Scale Link Toggle
Stroke Style
Angle and Flip Status
Stroke Weight
Object Effects
Number of Columns
Gutter Width
Balance Columns
Unbalance Columns
Fit frame to text content
Align Top
Align Centre
Align Bottom
Justify Vertically
Corner Options Dialogue (Alt+Click to open)
Select Next/Previous Object
(rarely used)
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CONTROL PANEL - CHARACTER
Character Formatting Controls
Font Style
KerningVertical Scale
Horizontal Scale Character Style
Left Indent
Right Indent
Font Family Font Size
Text Fill
Leading
All Caps Underline
Superscript
Small Caps Strike-through
Subscript
Tracking Baseline Shift
Skew Spelling
Stroke
First line Indent
Last line Indent
Align Left
Forced Centre Justify
Align Right
Align Centre
Forced Right Justify
Align to Spine
Align away from Spine
Forced Left Justify
Character Style Menu
This is what the Control Panel looks like when any text on the page is selected with the text tool and the Character Formatting Controls option has been selected. Virtually all elements of the text can be accessed and changed with the Control Panel.
Space before Paragraph
Space after Paragraph
Drop Cap number of
lines
Drop Cap number of lines
Bullet List
Numbered List
Ultimate InDesign Tutorial 2 Page 7
CONTROL PANEL - PARAGRAPH
Paragraph Formatting Controls
Font Style
Paragraph StyleLeft
IndentRight Indent
Space Before Line
Space After Line
Font Family Font Size
Leading
All Caps Underline
Superscript
Small CapsStrike-
throughSubscript
Hyphenate Toggle
Align to Baseline
First line Indent
Last line Indent
Drop Cap number of lines
Drop Cap number of characters
Align Left
Forced Centre Justify
Align Right
Align Centre
Forced Right Justify
Align to Spine
Align away from Spine
Forced Left
Justify
Paragraph Style Menu
Do not align to Baseline
Span Columns
Bullet List
Numbered List
Number of Columns
Gutter
Horizontal Cursor Position
This is what the Control Panel looks like when any text on the page is selected with the text tool and the Paragraph Formatting Controls option has been selected. Once again, virtually all elements of the paragraph can be accessed and changed via the Control Panel in
this state. You may notice that some elements of the Control Panel in this state duplicate some that are present when using the Character Formatting Controls option. These elements are those that are used the most and is useful having them on both forms of the Control Panel.
Kerning
Tracking
Shading Toggle
Shading Colour
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RULERS, MARGINS & GUIDES
Rulers
InDesign has both horizontal and vertical rulers which can be toggled on and off with the Ctrl+R command. These are illustrated below.
Here they are shown in millimetres. You can change the units used by right hand clicking on a ruler and the unit options will appear.
Guides
Guides are lines that can be placed at any point of the document as a reference for placing objects, text, images and are only visible while editing the document, that means they won’t appear at the final print.
InDesign has several classifications of guides but for now we will focus on the two that will concern us most.
Margins and Column Guides
When you create a New Document in InDesign, you are presented with the option to set Margins and Column Guides. This was discussed in Tutorial 1. However, you have the option of resetting these on individual pages in your document at a later date.
Go to Layout > Margins and Columns. A window will appear that looks like this:
Here, you can change the values for Margins and Columns. If you wish the Margins to be of different values, click off the link symbol, here outlined in orange.
Ruler Guides
In order to set a ruler guide, click and hold the cursor over the horizontal or vertical ruler and drag a ruler guide to the desired position. Release the mouse to drop the ruler guide into place. You will see a blue guideline appear on your page. Once you choose another object or draw another guideline it will become cyan.
New guide
Existing guides
Horizontal Ruler
Vertical Ruler
Hiding Guides and Rulers
You can hide the margin, column and ruler guides as you work with Crtl+Semicolon (;). This toggles on and off.
Ultimate InDesign Tutorial 2 Page 9
EXERCISE 3 - COLUMN GUIDES
Double click on Page 3 in the Pages panel. This time, change the Column values to:
Columns: 2 Gutter: 8mm
Do the same to Page 4.
Zoom out so that you can see all pages in your workspace. Do this by pressing Ctrl+Minus (-) several times. You should see something like this:
With the Pages panel open in your Celebrate Summer file, double click on Page 2. You should see Page 2 become shaded as illustrated below:
Select Layout > Margins and Columns. Change the Column values to:
Columns: 3 Gutter :8 mm
As in the illustration below:
So here we can now see that Page 1 has a single column, Page 2 has three Columns, and Pages 3 and 4 have two columns.
Remember to SAVE your file at this point.
“You can’t build on a weak foundation. You must have a
strong foundation if you’re going to have
strong design.”
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RULER GUIDES
Snap to Guides
Choose View > Grids & Guides and make sure the option ‘Snap to Guides’ has a tick next to it.
This will ensure that when you are positioning an object on your page, it will ‘snap’ to the exact location of the guides you have set up.
Moving Guides
Using the Selection Tool , click on a guideline. Then, simply move it to where you want it. However, to move it to an exact location, when you choose the guideline you can change the location on the Horizontal or Vertical axis in the Control Panel. Edit the position to what you require and the guide will move to that location.
Deleting Guides
You can delete individual Guides on a page by selecting a guide and pressing the Delete key. All guides on a page may be removed by selecting View > Grids & Guides> Delete All Guides on Spread.
Locking Guides
To lock guides, choose; View > Grids & Guides > Lock Guides This will prevent you accidentally moving any guides while you work.
Smart Guides
While working with InDesign you may have noticed some green lines appear as you move an object around the page. These are Smart Guides that help you align the object with others. They will appear when the object is aligned with another object close to it on the page; top, bottom, left, right and centre on both axis. You can toggle this feature on and off using Ctrl+U.
HANDY HINTZoom with a view
Here is a list of all Zoom shortcuts that you can use to make layout much easier. Remember, frames and text sometimes are small and will need to be magnified to see what you are doing.
Ctrl+Zero View whole page
Ctrl+Alt+Zero View whole spread
Ctrl+Plus (+) Zoom in
Ctrl+Minus (-) Zoom out
Ctrl+Space-bar Allows you to zoom to a selected area
“As a rule, conventions only become
conventions if they work.”
Ultimate InDesign Tutorial 2 Page 11
ALIGNING TEXT
Text can be justified within a text box in many ways but the only ones we will be concerned with are:
Pesto is a sauce originating in northern Italy, and traditionally consists of garlic, basil, pine nuts, olive oil and Parmesan cheese.
Pesto is a sauce originating in northern Italy, and traditionally
consists of garlic, basil, pine nuts, olive oil and Parmesan cheese.
Pesto is a sauce originating in northern Italy, and traditionally
consists of garlic, basil, pine nuts, olive oil and Parmesan cheese.
Left Justified Ctrl+Shift+L
Centre Justified Ctrl+Shift+C
Right Justified Ctrl+Shift+R
Good vs Bad Justification
Forced justification is sometimes used to get rid of the ‘ragged edges’ that occurs with left justification. This is often used in one column publications, such as books and novels, and in newspapers in conjunction with hyphenation. However, it can make it harder to read if the column width is small and there is no hyphenation.
In the two illustrations seen here, we have turned on the View H&J Violations option, Edit > Preferences > Composition then click on the H&J Violations option. H&J stands for Hyphenation and Justification. This will show you, in various strengths of yellow, where the text’s tracking (distance between words) is larger than normal. The eleventh line in the Forced Justification shows very large gaps between the words.
Forced Justification can cause more problems for people who already have reading problems such as dyslexia or bad eyesight. It is also harder to read in poor lighting conditions. It serves no purpose whatever.
I strongly recommended you never use it.
Left Justification
Forced Justification
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FRAMES & LINKED FILES
Graphic Frames
When you use one of the Frame tools (those are the ones with an “X” in the middle of them), InDesign creates a graphic frame. Choose the appropriate frame tool and then click, drag, and release.
Rounded Corners Handle
Anchoring Handle
Sizing Handles
Placing a Picture inside a Frame
With a Graphic Frame selected, press Ctrl+D or select File > Place from the Menu. Choose a file and press OK. Your chosen file will appear in the frame.
Linked Files
When you place a picture on your page, the file will automatically be linked. The image that appears in the InDesign document is a preview of the image stored somewhere else on your computer or network. If the file you linked to your InDesign document is changed, it must be updated.
When you print or export a document, InDesign uses the linked images to generate the information necessary to create a high quality printed document.
Link Panel showing link informationShape (Unassigned) Frames
These are used when you want a solid or transparent colour on your page.
Copy & Paste
Never copy and paste an image or picture into your InDesign document from another source (Word, internet etc). The image may not appear in the Link Panel and you have no control over the printing resolution, nor can you make any changes to the image itself. This is one of the hard and fast rules if you want your documents to print and publish properly.
Link symbol
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RESOLUTION
Resolution, scanning, and picture size is a vast and often confusing topic. For those new to desktop publishing it can be overwhelming. To help you through this, we’ll focus on some basic, easy to understand facts.
An image is composed of very small dots and appear to the eye as continuous tone. Every photograph and every image that you see in every book, magazine, calendar and art reproduction is comprised of dots at a resolution typically at 300DPI (300 dots per inch).
What is Resolution?
Resolution is one of the most important concepts to understand in digital imaging, design and digital photography. The term resolution describes both pixel count and pixel density. DPI (dots per inch) is probably a familiar term if you’ve bought or used a printer, a scanner or a digital camera. DPI is the measure of resolution we will use.
Dots and Pixels
For convenience, pixels and dots are the same thing. They’re just squares of colour. But as we shall learn, it is the size of the dots that is important when we speak of resolution.
How Many Dots?
There are two basic standards for resolution. Screen resolution, used as the standard for web design and viewing PDF documents, is 72DPI. Small enough to keep the file sizes to a minimum, but large enough so that individual dots may not be seen on the screen. And the majority of the files that we source from the internet are 72DPI.
Print resolution, however, must be much larger. Whether it be digital print, or traditional offset printing, the pixels must be small enough so that when a picture is printed we do not see individual squares of colour. This is usually set at 300DPI.
Below is an example of the same picture at both print (300DPI) and screen (72DPI) resolutions. The picture on the left is sharp, has more detail and will print well. The one on the right,
because of its lower resolution, will not be as sharp, has lost detail and the individual pixels are big enough to be visible. Zoom in on the two pictures to see this.
This “pixelation” will be pronounced if the picture is increased in size.
The two pictures above shows what happens when you increase the size of a picture within your file. If you increase the size of the picture, you increase the size of the pixels and you decrease the resolution. Effectively, the picture on the right is at 36DPI resolution. Zoom in on these to see the difference.
72 dpi 100% 72 dpi 200%
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RESOLUTION
Most pictures you download from the internet will be at screen (72DPI) resolution. The trick is to find pictures large enough that will print well. And when you have done that, how to manipulate them to print at 300DPI.
Below is a table of a list of sizes (in millimeters) and the corresponding pixel count you will be searching for:
For example, if we were looking for an image to fit a picture box measuring 100mm x 160mm, then we would need to find a picture that was a minimum size of 1181 x 1890 pixels.
When searching for pictures in Google, click on ‘Search Tools’. This will reveal an expanded search menu which includes ‘Size’. Use this to narrow down the search of images to the minimum size you require.
Once you find a picture you would like to use, click on it to give an expanded view. Wait until the picture reveals itself to full resolution. Right hand click the picture and choose ‘Save image as’ from the menu.
Save the picture to a relevant folder on your system and give it a descriptive name. Some pictures will have a name like ‘image32.jpg’ which tells you nothing about the picture itself. Choose a unique and descriptive name and save the file.Place the file into your InDesign file by pressing Ctrl+D or choose File > Place. Once you have placed it on the page, you may notice that the picture is very large. Adjusting Size and ResolutionOpen the Info Panel from the Panel Dock with the picture selected. You will see a panel like this:
This shows us two numbers; The Actual ppi and the Effective ppi (ppi is another way of writing DPI. It is the abbreviation of ’pixels per inch’).We need to change the Effective ppi to 300. With the picture selected, go to the Control Panel at the top of the workspace that looks like this;
and change the value to 24%. The picture will appear about a quarter of the size.
Now if we look at our Info panel, we will see that the Actual ppi is still 72, but the Effective ppi (the resolution the picture will printed at) will now be at the figure we require; 300 ppi.
Ultimate InDesign Tutorial 2 Page 15
WORKING WITH TEXT
Hidden Characters
As we type or when we import text, there are many keystrokes we make that we cannot see, but we know they are there.
To view these Hidden Characters choose:
Type > Show Hidden Characters
or press Ctrl+Alt+I. This command toggles on and off.
Below is a table of the most common Hidden Characters you will see:
Character Symbol Keystroke
Space Space-bar
Paragraph Break ¶ Enter
Soft Return Shift+Enter
Tab >> Tab
Story End # No shortcut
Soft Returns
Soft Returns push part of a line of text onto the following line without creating a new paragraph in the process. This enables you to reshape the look of a paragraph. Enter a soft return by pressing “Shift+Enter”. Below is an example:
Selecting Text
You may need to select some or all of the text in a Text Frame. To select all of the text within a text frame (and any text in the frames linked to it), choose the Type Tool, then click anywhere on the text. A vertical line cursor will appear. Press Ctrl+A and all the text will be highlighted as below:
If you only want to select a certain amount of text, using the Text Tool, Sweep across the text with the left button pressed and release when the desired text is selected:
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EXERCISE 4 - THE FRONT PAGE
Using the Rectangle Frame Tool draw a frame anywhere on Page 1 of your document Celebrate Summer. Change the size and position of the frame using the Control Panel with the following values:
Reference Point:
Top Left
Horizontal Position: 0 mm
Width: 213mm
Vertical Position: -3 mm
Height: 303 mm
Page 1 should look like Figure 1.
With the picture frame selected, place the file Cover picture.jpg found in the Tutorial 2 folder. This picture has the same dimensions as the frame and will fit exactly. Your page should look like Figure 2.
With the frame selected, choose Object > Lock so that you don’t accidentally move the picture while you work on the page.
Figure 1 Figure 2
Defining a Colour
Click Swatches in the Panel Dock and go to the pull down menu in the top right corner.
Choose New Color Swatch.
Click off the box Name with Color Value. This will allow you to name the colour.
Name the new colour “Recipe Green”. Make sure the Color Type is set to Process and the Color Mode is set to CMYK.
Now set the values of the new colour as follows:
Cyan: 80% Magenta 0%Yellow 100% Black 20%
Click OK and your new colour will appear in the Colour Swatch list.
If you double-click any user-defined colour in the Swatch, it will open up a Swatch Options panel and allow you to change the details of the colour. This change will be universal in a document, so if you have a colour named “Red” which is 100% Magenta and %100 Yellow, you can make it darker by adding a percentage of Black. This change will happen throughout the document where that colour has been applied.
Ultimate InDesign Tutorial 2 Page 17
EXERCISE 4 - THE FRONT PAGE
HANDY HINTLeading by example
Leading is the term used for the spacing between lines of type. When type was set by hand with metal, strips of lead were used to keep the lines of type apart. The larger the value, the larger the space. When the leading in InDesign is set to Auto (calculated at 120% of the type size) the value in the control panel will be in parentheses as in the figure below. Here it is 16.8 point.
Setting Cover Text
Draw a text frame with the Text Tool anywhere on the page. Move the frame with the Selection Tool so that the top left hand corner snaps to the top left corner of the margin guides. Check the values in the Control Panel are:
Select the Text Tool again and type ‘Celebrate’ then press the Enter key. Type ‘Summer’. Select all the text you have just typed.
Change the Font Family to Book Antiqua and the Font Style to Regular. Set the Font Size to 72 and the Leading to 72 also. Using the Swatch Panel, change the colour to Recipe Green. The Control Panel should now look like this:
Press Control+Alt+I so you can see the invisibles within the text. Select the word ‘Summer’ and right hand justify so that the word moves to the right of the text box.
Place the file Front page text.doc anywhere on Page 1.
Using the Control panel, resize the text frame to 145mm Wide x 35mm High. Move the text frame so that the bottom right hand corner aligns with the bottom right Margin intersection.
Select all the text within the frame and change the font to Book Antiqua at 24 point and set the justification right. Leave the leading as “Auto”. Make sure the text is Black. Set the vertical alignment to Align Bottom.
SAVE your file now!
The finished Front Page
Page 18 Ultimate InDesign Tutorial 2
EXERCISE 5 - MASTER PAGES
You can use Master Pages to create layout templates in a publication. You can include running headers and footers, which run across the top and bottom of the page respectively, and to add folios which include page numbers. Master Pages give the publication a consistent look and feel and save you time and effort by eliminating the need for you to create this content on every page manually.
Setting Folios and Page Numbers
You can have InDesign automatically apply page numbers, and using master pages makes it easy to have them applied in the same location on every page.
In the Pages Panel, double-click the Left Page icon for the A master page. This fits the left side of your A master page in the window and the left Master Page in the Pages Panel will appear shaded.
Draw a text frame about 50mm wide in the bottom left hand corner of the left Master Page, starting at the Margin intersection and extending to the bottom of the page as in the next illustration.
Choose Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Current Page Number.
The letter ‘A’ should appear in the text frame.
Now type four spaces followed by the words ‘Celebrate Summer’. Change the font to Book Antiqua with a size of 11 points. Vertically justify the text vertically so that it appears in the center of the text box.
Double-click the Right Page icon and draw another text box in the bottom right corner with the same dimensions as the first.
Type ‘Celebrate Summer’ followed by four spaces and add the page number as we did previously. Change the font and size and center justify vertically as before. Right hand justify the text so that the ‘A’ lines up with the right margin. Your folio should now look like this:
Now we can see on pages 2, 3 and 4 that the page numbers and the name of the publication appear in the folio area. If we added or moved any pages the folios would be added or corrected automatically. Note that the folio on page 1 does not appear. This is because it is obscured by the picture that covers the whole page.
SAVE your file now!
Ultimate InDesign Tutorial 2 Page 19
VERTICAL TEXT ALIGNMENT
As well as being able to align text left, centre and right, we can also align text vertically.
As we can see to the left, the same text has been aligned to the top, centre and bottom, with the last panel having the text force justified.
To do this, select a text frame and the vertical text alignment options appear in the Control Panel. Remember, do not select the text, you should just select the frame with the Selection Tool.
Select a text frame or create one in a new document and type a paragraph. Choose each of the four options in turn so you can see how it works.
Aligned Top Aligned Centre Aligned Bottom Force Justified
InDesign is the industry standard layout application for graphic design across the globe. Magazines, sales brochures, newspapers, stationery, flyers; everything that
has been printed or published in recent years has been created with InDesign.
This series of InDesign Tutorials will allow you to learn InDesign at your own pace.
InDesign will help you be creative in ways you never thought possible.
The tutorials were written using InDesign CC 2015 release.
