01 - Basics - Toolbars, Options and Panels

Transcription

1 InDesign Manual 01 - Basics - Toolbars, Options and Panels st edition This InDesign Manual is one of an introductory series specially written for the Arts and Humanities Students at UEA by the Media Suite Team mediasuite@uea.ac.uk.

2 Orientation After you have opened InDesign you will find the main toolbar on the left, the panels on the right and in the top bar above the document area, the different options which change according to your selection. File Menu As with all programs you have the file menu system toolbar at the top of the page. Control Menu Workspace Menu As you select different tools from the left hand toolbar, this area will display different settings and information for that tool. Here you can set your workspace up exactly how you want it and save it for future projects. Or you can totally reset it to one of the preset default layouts at anytime. Icon Panel The icon panels can be closed and then fly out once clicked or they can be brought into the open panel section, letting you customise what you most see or use. Main Toolbar The main toolbar has a wide array of tools you can select and adjust. Many of them have a small flyout menu with more tools for you to choose from. As soon as you select a tool from this left hand menu, you will notice that the control menu (above) changes. Open Panels These panels stay open with extra tabs to help you access your most often used tools. Pasteboard The grey area of the document is used like a pasteboard, any items in this area will not be printed. Keep images for later, or your original text, or a list of things, to help you with your layout. Info The info at the bottom helps us move to the end of the document, or just to the next page. The green/red dot at the bottom shows us any errors in the preflight test. If it shows red, your document has a problem and may not print as you want it to. This is good to quickly see missing fonts, overset text, or missing links. PAGE 2 Document Area The white area is your actual page, where you will bring your layout together. Anything within the page edge will be printed, if you have setup a bleed (to print to the edges) this will be a red outline, and a slug will be a blue outline. PAGE 3

3 Menu Orientation A closer look at the menus, this is also useful to see the keyboard short-cuts. Layout File All of the usual items under the file menu. You can also alter your page, bleed, slug and facing pages through the Document Setup. Edit Useful edit menu with Duplicate and Step and Repeat, or for linking text created in InCopy. Add pages, margins, rulers, page numbering and alternate layouts for web publishing. Plus navigate through the pages or spreads. Type Change your fonts and sizes from this menu, insert special characters such as automatic page numbering, and show hidden characters. Object Transform, scale and arrange objects and frames. Select content fitting and effects, or use a pre-defined clipping path within pre-made graphics. PAGE 4 PAGE 5

4 Menu Orientation A closer look at the menus, this also useful to see the short-cuts. InDesign Toolbar Showing the expanded flyouts for each tool Selection Tool - to select objects Direct Selection Tool - To select the image within a frame or points on a path Page Tool - Insert pages from the control menu Gap Tool - Us this to change gaps between objects Content Collector Tool - Collect page items Content Placer Tool - Place items from the collection Type Tool - To create and edit text boxes Type on a Path Tool - Type onto existing paths Line Tool - Draw simple lines Pen Tool - Draw custom vector shapes Add Anchor Point Tool - Add points onto vector path Delete Anchor Point Tool - Delete anchor points Convert Point Tool - Convert a sharp point to a curve Pencil Tool - Draw freehand on the page Smooth Tool - add more points for smoother paths Erase Tool - erase points Rectangle Frame Tool - Draw a rectangle frame Ellipse Frame Tool - Draw an ellipse frame Polygon Frame Tool - Draw a polygonal frame Scissors Tool - Cut paths Free Transform Tool - Rotate and scale your object Rotate Tool - Rotate only, specify degrees Table Manage tables within InDesign with similar choices as Microsoft Word. View Zoom in and out from this menu and preview your layout in high quality by changing the Display performance to High Quality. Window Choose which panels to see from the window menu then drag them into your open panel, or icon panel areas to customise your layout. You can also view all of the documents open from here. Scale Tool - Scale only, specify ratio Shear Tool - Shear your object Gradient Swatch Tool - Fill your object with a gradient Gradient Feather Tool - Fill your object with a feathered opacity gradient Note Tool - Add a non-printing note to the document Eyedropper Tool - Used to sample colours Colour Theme Tool - Use a pre-defined colour theme Measure Tool - Measure distances for accurate layout Hand Tool - Move around your document Zoom Tool - Quickly zoom in or out by selecting this tool Fill and Stroke - Fill and stroke values, and quickly switch them Preview Style Pane - preview your layout in different ways Note the letter next to the right of the tool text, you can use this as a keyboard short-cut for that tool. PAGE 6 PAGE 7

5 Putting the basics into action Single Page Poster After opening InDesign you are presented with a menu for New, or to open a recent document, alongside the new menu are popular preset sizes for documents that you can make in InDesign. Add a colour or a gradient fill from either the top menu, or click on the colour swatch at the bottom in the left hand tool menu. to be 10mm, make sure you place important items well within this guide. Before we can type or add images we need to layout the areas by creating the boxes for them to go into, so let s add some elements. Click on the type tool in the left hand tool menu and click and drag to create a type box. The blue frame is like a window into the actual content, so we can crop or focus in on the important area of the image or you can fit the content to the frame to make sure we don t lose any part of that image. Because we have drawn this coloured box after the other elements it will sit on top of everything, so to move it behind the other elements, select the box then go to the Object menu and select Arrange>Send to Back. To make a simple one page single sided poster you would select the A3 print option and that will set you up with a single page document, (or you could enter your own customised width and height requirements). One you have added some text in, you can style it by highlighting the characters and then choosing the font, size, alignment, etc, from the top menu area. Placing any images into InDesign only links to the file, so be sure to keep all elements of any InDesign Project in the one folder. Using the text tool, draw another text frame to add in your content underneath the image. Adjust the margins to 10mm and add a bleed of 5mm, the icon that looks like a link keeps the margins the same on all sides and will alter all of the numbers together. Click OK to start a new document. The red line just outside of the white page is where your bleed area is, anything overlapping this line will not print, but it will give you edge to edge colour printing (if your printer allows) The purple line just inside the edge of the page is the margin you set up Then to add an image we need to draw a frame to put it in, use the tools from the left hand side to choose the frame shape that you want. Once you ve drawn your frame you can go to the menu and choose file>place to select an image to bring into the frame. Copy and paste your text in and use the font styling menu which will appear at the top to format it. If you see a small red box appear on the bottom right of the text frame, this indicates that you have too much text for the size of box you have drawn and you will either need to resize your font, or resize the text frame itself using any of the anchor points. Whilst the text object is selected you can also add columns from the options in the control menu to help adjust text layout. To alter text colour, you need to make sure you have text colour swatch highlighted and then you are able to colour as you would normally....hit shift and W to preview your single page poster in full screen presentation style... The easiest way to include a colour background on a poster or document is to add in a box, either a rectangle or ellipse, and draw it on your page. When your image appears you will see a blue outline of the frame, but if you hover over the image you will also see a brown outline, which is the edge of the image. PAGE 8 PAGE 9

6 Multi-Page Document One of InDesign s strengths is its ability to make multi-page documents, ranging from a small 2 sided booklet up to a book with hundreds of pages. One of the key elements within InDesign to master are the use of Styles and Master Page layout. This gives the ability to style text and elements over many pages and chapters, without having to alter each page separately and gives continuity to your design. When setting up multi-page documents you will need to tick on the facing pages option, this gives you an inner and outer margin and a left and right page, giving the bookbinders or printers extra space to bind, print and fold your publication. To setup an automatically connected text frame between your starting pages, just tick on the Primary text frame option and let s add 3 columns with a 5mm gutter (the space between the text columns). Don t forget that you can alter these settings through File>Document Setup at any time. Press OK to start your new magazine style document. You should be presented with a screen showing page A with your 3 columns and text box ready to go, make sure you have your page panel window open so that you can see pages 1-8. Because we want to put a large image on the first page, we need to use a different master page style, so, in the Pages Panel we drag the [None] Master onto page 1 Repeat on the other pages and then click into the first text box and add your text. Now you can alter the entirety of your text across pages and chapters just by altering the values from the Paragraph Style box. Don t forget that if you text overflows you will see a small red plus sign on the last linked text box, warning you that there is a problem within your document. To add automatic page numbers to your layout, you will need to work on the Master Pages, so double click on the A Master icon in the Pages Panel. To remove the red overflow, either resize your text boxes, or resize the font itself. Let s add our first paragraph style to do just that. Highlight/Select all of your text (ctrl+a) and using the choices that appear at the top, alter the font size and style for your main text, usually referred to as the body text, until you reach a style you would like to use throughout your document. Once happy, and with the text still selected click on create new style icon in the bottom of the Paragraph styles panel. If you can t see the Paragraph Panel, go to Window>Style>Paragraph Styles. So let s put together a custom sized 8 page magazine article. Make a new document with 8 facing pages, width of 210mm by height of 210mm, add a margin of 10mm, a bleed of 5mm and a slug of 10mm. In the page preview panel you should now see that page 1 does not have the little A in the corner, which means it is not associated with the A Master template. Click on create new style and you will see a new style appear called Paragraph Style 1, double click in the space just to the right of the text Paragraph Style 1 in the Styles Panel and your option box should pop up. Good practice is to either name it from it s values, such as below Paragraph Gill 12, or to call it body text or main text to denote what it should be styling, try not to leave it as Paragraph 1. Paragraph Style setup PAGE 10 Using the black arrow selection tool just drag the middle top handle of the text box down until the height of the box is 80mm. Use the information in the control panel at the top to help you. To make sure you are on the master pages just check in the lower left section of the bottom bar, it should say A Master. Then add a small text box to either the left or right master page in the area you would expect page numbers to appear. I added the words Page to my page numbers just to preview the text style You should start by creating a new paragraph style for your page numbers, and when you are ready make sure your text cursor is in the right place and flashing, then go Type>Insert Special Character>Markers>Current Page Number and a capital A should appear. Copy and paste this onto the facing page and then position it in the right place for numbers on both sides. Now when you go back to view your normal pages they should appear with page numbers. Lets add a couple of graphic elements to our Master Page. Double click on the Master in the pages panel and add two horizontal lines across the top and bottom margin line using the line tool from the left hand menu. Before I bring my text into my document I m going to adjust the height of the text frames on every page, to leave a nice space for an image/graphic above it. This gives us a full print publication layout with marks for the printers, space for bleed out images or colour boxes and a working inner margin to keep all of the most important information within normal printing bounds. Adding Automatic Page Numbers You will see that in the short description in the Style Settings panel of this option box it will have picked up on all of the styling that you used. Simply select the line tool and click and drag, being careful to keep the line straight (use shift to constrain the angle). You can also see how long the line is in the info control area at the top (L value). PAGE 11

7 Advanced Layout Convert a shape Top Tips Make another line at the top, and then you can use the choices both for the thickness and style of line and also colour the line by clicking on the colour swatch. This is how we get graphical elements onto the Master Pages, this could be a logo, the name of the magazine or article or a coloured shape. The master pages can be a very powerful tool and you can add more Master Pages, by right clicking in the Master area and selecting New Master. Now that your Master Pages are set you are free to start putting in your images, adding more Paragraph Styles and finalising your layout. Text Wrap One last tool to get to grips with in InDesign is the text wrap tool, which is used to wrap text around other elements in our page. Place an image into your document, overlapping some text, then open the Text Wrap Panel, Window>Text Wrap, with the image frame still selected we can click on any of the little icons at the top. The first icon is for no text wrap the second icon will just wrap the text around the outer shape (as shown to the left) - the third icon will wrap the text around the object shape and the fourth will jump object (as below) and the last icon will jump the text to the next column, just try it out and use what s best. This manual is produced with a mixture of wrap bounding box and jump object, depending on the needs of the text and the size of the image. You can also specify extra padding in the options below the top icons if you find the text needs a little more breathing space. After you create a rectangular frame for your image you might decide that you d like to see how it would look in an ellipse. Just go to Object>Convert Shape and choose the shape of your choice. InDesign will convert your existing shape into the one you want. Compound path frames Everyone knows that you can place a single image in a single frame. However, few know that you can actually place a single image in multiple frames for a visual effect. Select the Rectangle, Ellipse, or Polygon Frame tool and create two or more frames. Choose the Selection tool and Shift-click each frame. Choose Objects>Paths>Make Compound Paths. Go to File>Place, select the image of your choice, and click Open. InDesign will automatically place the image inside your new frames. Alignment When you have many objects or frames on the page InDesign has a powerful Align tool. Open the Align palette by going to Window > Object & Layout > Align. With multiple objects selected you can either align the objects between themselves or align them to the margins, the page or even the spread. It is also possible to define the amount of space inbetween the objects. Image Fitting If you are missing part of your image make sure to fit the content appropriately. When you have an image selected use the content fitting options to fill the frame proportionally or to centre your image. Overflowing type If you have a small red cross at the bottom right corner of a text frame, this means you have over-set text, or text that goes beyond the bounds of the type frame, either increase your text frame size, or reduce the font size. Selection Master Pages To move or resize objects use the black selection arrow at the top of the tools (V). Place repetitive items, such as page numbers, the title of the article or author on the Master Pages. You can even set up rules and margins here. Use Styles Make sure you are setting up paragraph styles for your document, make a new style from what you have selected and name it sensibly. Show Hidden Characters Turn on the hidden characters from the type menu to see punctuation marks, spaces and carriage returns in your document. Layers Use Layers to keep groups of items together such as images, backgrounds and text. Eyedropper Get Clicking Use the eyedropper tool to pick out colours from images to use in your layout. When in text, two clicks will select the word, three will select the whole sentence and four will select the whole paragraph. Keep it together Placing any images into InDesign only links to the file, so be sure to keep all elements of any InDesign Project in the one folder. Numerical Return Use the numerical return key to move to the next column of text. Page Changer Don t forget that you can alter your page size and layout settings through File>Document Setup at any time. Overlapping Frames If you have multiple text/image frames on top of each other you can move through them one by one. To do this hold down Command and click until you reach the element needed. InDesign will select the top frame initially and work its way down to the bottom item through the layers. Preview modes You can see your document in many different preview options, as well as viewing it with bleed and slug, you can also view it without any markup information or in a full screen presentation mode. Links Panel Use the links panel to view information about any images or linked files you might have in your document. It will show the scaling %, the file path and usage and page information, you can also relink to different images from this panel. PAGE 12 PAGE 13

8 The UEA Media Suite Faculty of Arts and Humanities With State of the Art digitisation equipment the newly built Media Suite will allow researchers and postgraduate students to digitise, interpret and visualise materials using the recording studios, radio drama studio, a twenty workstation teaching suite, a digitisation lab, a breakout room and nine dedicated edit suites and will become a high quality focal point for digital humanities research at UEA. This InDesign Manual is one of an introductory series specially written for the Arts and Humanities Students at UEA by the Media Suite Team.