Friday 18 March 2011

Indesign workshops 1 and 2

 Indesign is similar in appearance to Illustrator and Photoshop.  The tools and menus are also the same or similar in most cases.
One of the most important aspects is the page setup.

1.  Establish what the final printed, trimmed size of the outcome.
2.  Set up the page size
3.  Columns sets out the guides on the document.  The gutter is the space between each column
4.   Margins can be 0 or default
5.   Bleed is to control the borders so don't end up with white edge. - Standard bleed= 3mm
6.   Slug defines an area outside the page and bleeds to enable printer marks to be printed.
7. Set number of pages
8. Facing pages are for books so for example if for an A3 poster uncheck.
9.  Facing pages have inside and outside margins


To change anything on a document  - File, document setup.

The Black line is the cut document size.

Pallets

Use the pages menu to see the whole document menu.

Use selection tool on rulers to drag the guides to add vertical and horizontal guides if needed.

Options with the document
Add text
Image
Layout
set up grid
margins, columns, guides
Add colour
Line
Shapes

Everything is contained within a frame

One option to add text

Type
Fill with placeholder text (this gives guides/clues to decide type size, placemnet)
Can view Character A or paragraph using the tool bar.


Can also use the type menu to Edit:

Type, Character creates a floating pallet

Selection tool allows you to work with frames eg resize or reposition

If there is too much text in the box click and drag. (the red + sign indicates there is too much text in the box)



Can also get the text to flow from one text box/ column to another use the small square box on a blank frame.

Can view the page without margin guides

"W" preview mode
"W" Jump back

To get the text to go diagonally

Can rotate the frame use 'select'

Can skew the frame

Can create shapes using the pen tool

Can contain text in virtually any shape.

Images

Are contained in frames

Prepare images in Illustrator and Photoshop.

The image sneed to be ready to print resolution 300dpi

File format - Tiff, PSD

Don't use JPEG files 

Color mode is CMYK or greyscale

Actual size for the document
 eg A + 6mm bleed

Don't ry to put smaller images in and enlarge

Illustrator can be any size as they don't work with resolution.

To save files

Create a new folder

Place any images in the new folder which will be going into your Indesign document.

To insert images

1  Create an empty frame
    Rectangle tool frame
    File
    Place

or

2. Don't create a frame
    File 
    place 
    Click once, Indesign creates a frame

Can use the frame to crop images down.

If click on image using the hand tool can reposition the image within the frame.

If the actual image are not in the file, Indesign will pick the low resolution format.

The view menu allows you to change the display preferences switch to high quality display.

To work with colour

Same as Illustrator -fill and stroke
Use Swatches Pallet as it is the control at the top which allows the colour to be changes.

Can arrange items in object Objects Menu - arrange to send back

Swatches pallet 

Can achieve consistency saving swatches


Week 2

The interaction between frames on the page

Frames can overlap
Frames can be elipses, pen tool shapes

To place an image within a column of text

Options
1 Change the shape of the two columns
2. text wrap

Define how an overlaying frames effects the frame underneath

Apply text wrap to the frame on top (not the text frame)

Select the frame
Options 

1. On options tool bar default setting is no text wrap
2. Wrap any text around the boundary box (window menu, text wrap pallet)
3. Wrap around the object shape.  To wrap text around a transparency choose contour.
4. Contour options  - Alpha channel, Transparency

Transparent PSD files from photoshop work as transparent files in Indesign

Can still use offset to move text as well.

Task

Accurate replication of double page spread
Create CMYK colours
Use place holder text
use headlines
Use similar san s serif typeface.



When inserting images to maintain trasparent backgrounds remember to save as a tiff and tick save transparency.  Then create frame and place the tiff in the document.
I needed to finish this at home where I have CS4.  On the face of it it would not let me open the CS5 Indesign nor would Indesign cs5 allow me to save it as CS4.  I managed to find this which explained how to open up current Indesign docs in earlier versions of Indesign:


The finished exercise:




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