Adobe InDesign CC

About the Tutorial

Adobe InDesign is a part of the Adobe Creative Suite and is an upgrade from Aldus
PageMaker, a widely used Desktop Publishing (DTP) software which was subsequently
purchased by Adobe.

Adobe InDesign is available on Windows and Mac and can be purchased as a standalone
product or as part of the Adobe Creative Suite. The functions and capabilities of InDesign
are much more than what is possible with a word processing program such as Microsoft
Word. It is the de facto program used by large publishing houses and big websites. This
tutorial aims to give a comprehensive tour of the program enabling you to leverage its full
potential.

Audience
This tutorial is intended for InDesign users of all levels of experience. Beginners will find
valuable information on how to set up the right document layout and choosing the best
colors. Intermediate users will find information on adjusting transparency, inserting QR
codes and working with objects and layers.

Advanced users will find handy information on creating eBooks, preflighting and packaging
documents, and also transitioning workflows between InDesign and popular software such
as Word, Photoshop, and Illustrator. All lessons apply equally to users of both Windows
and Mac versions of the program.

Prerequisites
Users are expected to have a basic knowledge of navigating around their OS (Windows or Mac)
and installing software. If you’re installing this software for the first time, you would be needing
an Adobe account to download the latest trial version from Adobe’s website which is valid for
30 days, post which you can purchase and convert it into a subscription.

Purchasing a subscription also gives you access to other Creative Suite apps depending on your
plan. You can also purchase only InDesign; however, it would be more cost-effective to
purchase it in a bundle. It is recommended to ensure that your computer meets the minimum
requirements, which can be checked at https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/indesign/system-
requirements.html to ensure a smooth experience. You can work on your own templates or
download them online from www.indesignsecrets.com or any such website.

Copyright & Disclaimer

 Copyright 2017 by Tutorials Point (I) Pvt. Ltd.

All the content and graphics published in this e-book are the property of Tutorials Point (I)
Pvt. Ltd. The user of this e-book is prohibited to reuse, retain, copy, distribute or republish
any contents or a part of contents of this e-book in any manner without written consent
of the publisher.

We strive to update the contents of our website and tutorials as timely and as precisely as
possible, however, the contents may contain inaccuracies or errors. Tutorials Point (I) Pvt.
Ltd. provides no guarantee regarding the accuracy, timeliness or completeness of our
website or its contents including this tutorial. If you discover any errors on our website or
in this tutorial, please notify us at contact@tutorialspoint.com

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 Adobe InDesign CC

Table of Contents
About the Tutorial .................................................................................................................................... i

Audience .................................................................................................................................................. i

Prerequisites ............................................................................................................................................ i

Copyright & Disclaimer ............................................................................................................................. i

Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................... ii

1. DESKTOP PUBLISHING ─ INTRODUCTION............................................................................. 1

2. DESKTOP PUBLISHING ─ POPULAR DTP SOFTWARE ............................................................. 2

Adobe PageMaker ................................................................................................................................... 2

QuarkXpress............................................................................................................................................ 3

Microsoft Publisher ................................................................................................................................. 4

Serif PagePlus .......................................................................................................................................... 5

3. INDESIGN CC ─ INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 6

4. INDESIGN CC ─ WORKSPACE BASICS .................................................................................... 8

5. INDESIGN CC ─ CREATE THE FIRST DOCUMENT ................................................................. 13

6. INDESIGN CC ─ PAGE MANAGEMENT ................................................................................ 19

7. INDESIGN CC ─ SECTION OPTIONS ..................................................................................... 26

8. INDESIGN CC ─ TEXT FRAMES ............................................................................................ 28

9. INDESIGN CC ─ STORY EDITOR ........................................................................................... 30

10. INDESIGN CC ─ SPELLCHECKING FEATURES ....................................................................... 33

11. INDESIGN CC ─ FIND/CHANGE FUNCTION ......................................................................... 34

12. INDESIGN CC ─ IMPORT IMAGES ....................................................................................... 36

13. INDESIGN CC ─ IMAGE LINKS ............................................................................................. 37

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14. INDESIGN CC ─ EDIT IMAGES ............................................................................................. 39

15. INDESIGN CC ─ IMAGE FITTING ......................................................................................... 40

16. INDESIGN CC ─ IMAGE TRANSPARENCY ............................................................................. 42

17. INDESIGN CC ─ QR CODES ................................................................................................. 45

18. INDESIGN CC ─ SELECTION TOOLS & FILL STROKES ............................................................ 47

19. INDESIGN CC ─ IMAGE COLOR & TRANSPARENCY ............................................................. 50

20. INDESIGN CC ─ DROP SHADOWS ....................................................................................... 52

21. INDESIGN CC ─ SPECIAL EFFECTS TO OBJECTS ................................................................... 54

22. INDESIGN CC ─ EYEDROPPER TOOL ................................................................................... 55

23. INDESIGN CC ─ FIND/CHANGE FEATURE FOR OBJECTS ...................................................... 56

24. INDESIGN CC ─ SWATCHES PANEL ..................................................................................... 57

25. INDESIGN CC ─ COLOR PANEL............................................................................................ 58

26. INDESIGN CC ─ GRADIENTS & BLENDS ............................................................................... 59

27. INDESIGN CC ─ PATHS & OUTLINES ................................................................................... 62

28. INDESIGN CC ─ STACK OBJECTS ......................................................................................... 65

29. INDESIGN CC ─ LAYERS ...................................................................................................... 66

30. INDESIGN CC ─ NEST OBJECTS ........................................................................................... 69

31. INDESIGN CC ─ ALIGN OBJECTS ......................................................................................... 71

32. INDESIGN CC ─ TEXT WRAP & ANCHOR OBJECTS............................................................... 73

33. INDESIGN CC ─ OBJECT TRANSFORMATION....................................................................... 76

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34. INDESIGN CC ─ CHARACTERS ............................................................................................. 79

35. INDESIGN CC ─ TEXT FORMATTING ................................................................................... 80

36. INDESIGN CC ─ PARAGRAPH FORMATTING ....................................................................... 81

37. INDESIGN CC ─ PARAGRAPH & CHARACTER STYLES ........................................................... 83

38. INDESIGN CC ─ TABLES ...................................................................................................... 86

39. INDESIGN CC ─ LONG DOCUMENTS................................................................................... 91

40. INDESIGN CC ─ TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................. 93

41. INDESIGN CC ─ INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTS ....................................................................... 95

42. INDESIGN CC ─ EBOOK....................................................................................................... 98

43. INDESIGN CC ─ PREFLIGHTING......................................................................................... 100

44. INDESIGN CC ─ PACKAGE DOCUMENTS ........................................................................... 102

45. INDESIGN CC ─ PRINT DOCUMENTS & BOOKLETS............................................................ 104

46. INDESIGN CC ─ EXPORT DOCUMENTS AS PDFS................................................................ 108

47. INDESIGN CC ─ SELECTIVE TEXT FRAME EXPORT ............................................................. 112

48. INDESIGN CC ─ WORD & INDESIGN ................................................................................. 114

49. INDESIGN CC ─ WORD FILE IMPORT TO INDESIGN........................................................... 115

50. INDESIGN CC ─ WORD TO INDESIGN ............................................................................... 117

51. INDESIGN CC ─ PHOTOSHOP & ILLUSTRATOR WORKFLOWS............................................ 120

52. INDESIGN CC ─ EXPORT INDESIGN ARTWORK .................................................................. 125

53. INDESIGN CC ─ PRESERVE LAYERS & VECTORS ................................................................ 126

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 1. Desktop Publishing ─ Introduction
Adobe InDesign CC

Desktop Publishing (DTP) is the creation of electronic forms of information such as

documents, presentations, brochures, books, or even website content using computer
programs. DTP has evolved to be an important component of creating and disseminating
information as it allows an amalgamation of various tasks that are generally performed
independently at printing presses such as layouts, typesetting, graphic design, etc.

Evolution of DTP Software

Earlier, DTP was specifically meant to cater to printed matter but modern DTP allows for
even more forms of electronic content. A modern DTP software can be your word
processor, graphic design tool and publishing tool, all rolled into one package. With the
explosive growth of smartphones and mobile PCs, the way people consume information
has changed dramatically over the last decade. Modern DTP software enables content
output that caters dynamically to all screen sizes, without the need to republish the same
for each device or form factor.

Types of DTP Content

The content created by DTP software can be broadly classified into two categories –

 Electronic Pages
 Virtual Pages

Electronic pages commonly refer to websites, manuals, eBooks, digital archives,

presentations, etc. which are normally not printed but are shared digitally. This tutorial is
an example of an electronic page which can be opened in a browser.

Virtual pages on the other hand are electronic pages created in the DTP software which
are eventually published as printed pages. Virtual pages allow the author to visualize
exactly how the printed page will look and can help in easy editing. The process is called
WYSIWYG which stands for, ‘What You See Is What You Get’. This means all the
changes and formatting that are made will be exactly replicated in print.

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 2. Desktop Publishing ─ Popular DTP Software
Adobe InDesign CC

DTP software comes in all shapes and sizes. There are software to cater to every need
right from free software to professional grade subscription based software. Although
InDesign has now taken over the DTP market, in this section, we will take a look at some
of the popular DTP software other than InDesign that are also quite popular with the
publishers.

Adobe PageMaker
PageMaker was first originally developed by Aldus and was later acquired by Adobe in the
90s. PageMaker is one of the most popular DTP software even today but its development
has been stopped after version 7 although it is still being marketed to a select set of users.
PageMaker’s features are now integrated with InDesign, which Adobe actively promotes.

PageMaker has tools for almost all DTP applications except book publishing. It can import
files from PDFs, HTML, and convert QuarkXpress and Microsoft Publisher formats. It has
support for plugins and runs on both Mac and Windows.

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QuarkXpress
QuarkXpress was the de facto publishing standard before the advent of InDesign. It is still
under active development on both Mac and Windows and the latest version is more or less
feature similar to InDesign.

QuarkXpress supports converting Illustrator, PDF, EPS or even InDesign files into native
QuarkXpress objects and runs on a perpetual license instead of a subscription model. The
latest update also includes the ability to export HTML5 interactive publications. It also
supports plugins called, XTensions for additional capabilities.

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 Adobe InDesign CC

Microsoft Publisher
Microsoft Publisher is part of the Office 365 suite and is distributed as a standalone
application. It is extremely simple to create flyers, brochures or cover art with this program
as the interface is similar to other Office programs such as Word or Excel. It is more of an
entry level software targeted at home and small businesses and does not directly compete
with QuarkXpress or InDesign.

Microsoft Publisher is very easy to use and supports professional effects for text and
pictures along with the ability to natively import albums from Facebook, Flickr, and other
cloud services.

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Serif PagePlus
PagePlus has now become a legacy software with the reins passing on to Affinity Publisher,
which is yet to be released. However, Serif PagePlus continues to be a delight to anyone
who is at an intermediate level with respect to DTP.

It is a step up from Microsoft Publisher and supports the CMYK color space, which is
commonly used by printers and also OpenType fonts. It also has advanced features such
as font kerning and dynamic text flow along with a host of templates on the Serif website.
An icing on the cake is the presence of an integrated photo editor called PhotoLab, which
gives easy access to picture correction tools. The latest version also supports creation of
PDF files and eBooks suitable for Amazon Kindle. There’s also a free Starter Edition
available if you want to try out the software.

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 3. InDesign CC ─ IntroductionAdobe InDesign CC

Adobe InDesign is the industry leading DTP software for designing and layout of
professional documents for the web, print, as well as for mobile devices such as tablets or
smartphones.

InDesign has evolved from being a successor to PageMaker in version 1.0 to becoming a
powerhouse software, which can seamlessly work with other Adobe Creative Suite
applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator in the Creative Cloud suite.

The workflow in InDesign also comprises of word processing, which is usually done in a
standalone word processing program such as Microsoft Word, although InDesign is also a
capable word processor in itself. However, a lot of Microsoft Word styles are not carried
into InDesign when the users switch between these programs. Adobe released a
complimentary word processing program to InDesign called InCopy, which can read and
export the various text formatting styles that InDesign uses.

InDesign uses the .indd file format for storing InDesign content. Newer versions have
backward compatibility with files created in older versions of the program. Newer versions
can save the InDesign document as a .idml file, which can be read by versions till CS4.
For even more backward compatibility, the newer version can also export in the .inx
format.

InDesign can either be purchased individually or as a part of the Creative Suite under a
Creative Cloud subscription. The subscription enables the user to receive ongoing product
updates without purchasing new versions every time a major version number update is
released.

New features in Creative Cloud and InDesign CC 2017

Adobe InDesign is part of Creative Cloud (CC) which is a subscription service that bundles
InDesign along with other popular programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom,
Audition, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and many more.

The latest 2017 version of Creative Cloud can be downloaded by logging into the Adobe
website and downloading the Creative Cloud app which will allow you to install the various
CC programs that you are eligible for. You can also download trial versions to test drive
the software before committing to buying them.

In addition to commonly used apps, Adobe is introducing two new apps with the 2017
version called Experience Designer (XD) and Project Felix. Adobe XD provides UX
designers and UX testers with the tools to create great user interfaces for a variety of
screen sizes and device form factors. You can design interactive prototypes to test out a
wide variety of UX designs to ensure maximum app engagement by the users. Project
Felix is under beta testing and it aims to combine 2D and 3D workflows in one app without
having to learn the nuances of 3D creation.

The 2017 version of InDesign comes with some great new features to boost your
productivity. It includes new footnote capabilities to create footnotes that can span across
multiple pages and enhancements to the OpenType fonts. It includes direct integration
with Adobe Stock to find the assets licensed by Adobe, which you can simply drag and
drop into your document.

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You can also add public Creative Libraries, where you can share assets with a team across
all your Adobe apps. You can directly buy industry leading fonts from the Typekit
marketplace from within InDesign. These fonts are available to all the other CC apps as
well.

The cool new feature is the integration with Adobe Animate CC, which you can use to
create great animation effects to incorporate into EPUBs designed with InDesign, and
create interactive eBooks.

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 4. InDesign CC ─ Workspace Basics
Adobe InDesign CC

It is important to properly understand the user interface to get the most out of InDesign.
Let us take a quick tour of the user interface.

What we see above is the default interface for most installations. Remember that the
interface is fully customizable. The interface is grouped into many panels as follows.

Application Bar
First up, is the Application Bar on the top of the window beside the Help menu which allows
us to set the document zoom level or allow turning the rulers and guides on and off. It
also allows us to tile multiple windows vertically or horizontally. The Br and St icons stand
for Adobe Bridge and Adobe Stock respectively and you may or may not see them
depending on your installation.

Control Panel
Below the application bar is the long strip called the Control Panel which is a quintessential
component of the UI. The Control Panel basically allows you to change properties such as
text formatting, color fill, and a host of contextually dependent functions. It is freely
movable and you can float or dock it. Make sure you dock it in a place, which is convenient
as you’ll be using this very often.

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Document Layout
Next, we will take a look at the blank document. This blank document was created using
the default options in the New dialog box. We will be learning more about the New dialog
box in the next chapter. If you observe closely, the blank document is surrounded by black
borders. That is the limit of the printed page. The pink guides on the top and bottom define
the margins. The purple guides on the left and right are column guides.

If you have multiple columns, you will find that the purple guides define each column.
Neither the pink nor the purple guides print out or will be seen in the exported PDF.

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 Adobe InDesign CC

Toolbar
The Toolbar which is usually to the left of the main workspace contains all the tools
required to work with the document. It has the selection tools, the text tools, eyedropper
tools, etc. Clicking on these tools will open up further functions relevant to that tool in the
Control Panel described above. Some tools like the Type tool for example have a small
arrow underneath them which can reveal a similar tool with a different function.

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 Adobe InDesign CC

Panels Bar
To the right of the workspace is the Panels bar which has some additional fucntions. What
you see on the Panels bar can vary based on the workspace. Similar to the other window
components described above, the Panels bar can be moved around freely or docked to a
suitable position.

Clicking a button in the Panels bar will open up additional options. For example, clicking
the Stroke option will open a pop-out window allowing us to change the properties of the
stroke. You can add more functions to the Panel bar by going to the Window menu and
choosing the desired function.

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Ruler Measurements
It is important to be able to set the ruler measurements as desired. There are two ways
of doing this. One of the ways, is to right-click on the point where the horizontal and
vertical rulers intersect and select the desired measurement units. You can also hide the
rulers, if you don’t need them.

The other way, if you want to use a different measurement from now on for all new
documents, is to use the Units and Increments option in the Preferences dialog box in
the Edit menu or simply press Ctrl + K on Windows or Command + K on the Mac to open
the Preferences dialog box. This is detailed in the subsequent chapters.

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 5. InDesign CC ─ Create the First Document
Adobe InDesign CC

Being able to properly define the document that you intend to create is a fundamental
prerequisite to get the best out of InDesign. You can create a new document by pressing
Ctrl+N on Windows or Command+N on the Mac or go to the File menu, select New,
and then click on Document. This opens the New Document dialog box.

There are other options in the New menu, which allows you to create a Book or a Library
which we will deal with in later chapters. We shall focus on the Document command for
now. It pays to have a general understanding of the various options available in the New
Document dialog box so let us have a look at each of them.

Before moving on, it helps to turn on the Preview checkbox in the lower left corner of the
dialog box. This creates a preview of the document in which it is easy to visualize changes
such as page dimensions and other properties before creating the actual document. Note,
that the preview will disappear when you cancel creating the document.

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Defining the Intent of the Document

We see that there are a lot of options in the New Document dialog box. The first step is to
define the intent of the document. Expanding the Intent dropdown menu gives us three
options – Print, Web and Mobile.

The Print option is the de facto option that is chosen by most working with InDesign. It is
not just for printing documents on a printer, but also used for almost all forms of publishing
such as a product sheet or template or even a document for uploading to the Web.

Selecting the Print option changes the measurements to picas and the color space to CMYK.
Of course, these can be changed later.

The Web option can be slightly confusing as it doesn’t actually mean a web page. It means
documents that are delivered electronically such as PDFs or other on-screen documents.
Selecting the Web option changes the document measurements to pixels and the color
space to RGB, which is ideal for on-screen documents. Of course, the measurement values
can be custom set.

The Mobile option (sometimes called Digital Publishing in older versions of InDesign), lets
you prepare documents as independent apps or eBooks targeting specific device form
factors.

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When you choose Mobile, the Page Size now gives you an option of directly choosing from
popular devices and populates the Width and Height fields accordingly by changing the
units of measurement to pixels.

You can also specify a custom screen size for your device.

Selecting the Right Measurements

If you are comfortable with other scales of measurement, you can change them by going
to the Edit menu, Preferences and selecting Units and Increments. InDesign gives you a
whole range of units to choose from.

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 Adobe InDesign CC

Once, you’ve determined the intent of the document, you need to decide if you need to
have facing pages.

The Facing Pages option should only be selected if your document has left and right
pages that face each other like in a book. If you are only going to create a single page
document or a document that has different information in different pages such as a
brochure, it is better to turn the option off.

The Primary Text Frame adds a text frame to your Master Page which is useful if the text
flows from chapter to chapter like in a book. This can be left off by default.

Setting the Number of Pages and the Page Size

You can also set the number of pages the document will contain. This can also be left at 1
and additional pages added later. If you are working on a multi-chapter book, you can
choose to select from which page of the book you want to start from. Again, this can also
be set later.

The Page Size field is important to determine how this document will be printed. Selecting
the right page size is important so that the printer knows the exact measurements of the
printed page. You can choose from a set of default page sizes or define your own. Notice
that the Width and Height will change automatically based on the chosen option.

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When you select the Custom option, you get to input your own values in the Width and
Height boxes. You can input the values in a measurement of your choice and InDesign will
automatically convert that into the current measurement used in the document as defined
in the Units and Measurements preferences.

Say, for example, you input a value of 10 inches in the Width field by entering 10in and
pressing the TAB key. InDesign will automatically convert that value to 60p0 (60 picas)
which is the default measurement unit for this document.

You can also toggle the Orientation between landscape or portrait which essentially swaps
the Width and Height values.

The Columns area helps you define how many columns are to be created in the document.
The default is 1. The Gutter helps in defining the separation space between these columns.

Setting the Margins, Bleed, and Slug

The Margins area helps in defining the margins of the page. You can obviously go outside
the margins with your content but defining the margins helps in providing a perspective
to your document.

Notice that there is a chain icon in the middle, which means that the values are linked. If
you change a value for the Top margin, then the other values will also change. You can
also toggle the chain icon to decouple the values of the margins if you want custom
margins on each side. Note that the older versions of InDesign have Left and Right for the
Inside and Outside margin values respectively.

There is a Bleed and Slug option that is usually collapsed but can be revealed by clicking
the arrow beside it. Bleed is the amount of space outside the margins that you set so that
the printing press doesn’t cut off the actual content near the margins. Slug is the space
where you enter information for the printer to understand such as the color space used or
the number of pages, etc.

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Again, these options can be linked or set alone and generally need to be set only when
sending the page to an actual printing press.

Saving a Document Preset

As one works with a lot of document types and dimensions, you may find the need to recall
the settings in a click for each of the document types you work with. You can save each
of your settings as a custom preset and recall them whenever necessary.

Click the Save Document Preset icon right next to the Document Preset field and give a
name that you can remember so that it becomes easy to recall the settings later. You can
also delete the preset by clicking the Delete Document Preset icon right next to the Save
Document Preset icon.

Viewing the Document Display

The final two-column document looks like this and you can start adding your assets to this
document. Your workspace may vary a bit but that can be easily customized too. It is
imperative to get the right document settings in order to get the most out of InDesign.

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 6. InDesign CC ─ Page Management
Adobe InDesign CC

Page management is important if you are dealing with a document having multiple
pages. InDesign provides a lot of easy ways to insert, remove, or duplicate pages. Most
of these functions are accessed from the Pages menu under the Layout main menu.
However, we will use the Pages panel in the Panel Bar as it is much easier and intuitive.

The Pages Panel

We see that this document has two pages in two spreads. Clicking the Pages button on
the Panel Bar opens the flyout showing various options that are possible with this
document. Let us explore some of the options available in this panel.

The bottom of the Pages panel has three buttons. The first button is called Edit page size.
This lets you change the dimensions of the page, say from A4 to US Letter or A3. The
second button is called Create new page. This allows you to create a page right next to
the page currently selected in the Pages panel. The third button is called Delete selected
pages and allows you to delete the selected pages.

You can create pages and re-arrange them simply by dragging and dropping them as
desired within the Pages panel. You can also select multiple pages by pressing Ctrl on
Windows or Command on Mac and selecting the desired pages.

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Options in the Pages Panel

You can also make use of some more options to work with pages. Clicking the menu button
on the Pages panel opens up a menu, which allows you to have more control over page
management.

If you want to insert more than 1 page in the document, click the Insert Pages…
command in the menu. This opens up a dialog box wherein you can specify exactly how
many pages you want to insert and where you want them to be inserted.

Say, for example, you want to insert a page after page number 2, specify them in this box
to insert the page. You can also choose to insert the pages before, after, at the start, or
at the end of the document.

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If you want to move a page after a particular page number, you can use the Move Pages…
command in the same menu. You can specify the page number that you want to move
and the page number that you want to either move after, before, or at the start or end of
the document. Of course, you can also click and drag the pages to the desired position.

A neat feature is that you can also move pages from one open document to other.

Using the Page Tool

You can change the page dimensions of the pages in your document by going to the File
menu and selecting Document Setup… You can then specify your new Width and Height
values here. Do keep in mind that all the pages in the document will be affected by this.

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What if you wanted to change the dimensions of only a single page? The Page
tool on the toolbar is your answer. You might want to change the dimensions of a specific
page if you are preparing flyers or brochures that fold at specific pages. Using the Page
tool is simple and straightforward but you must remember to set the correct reference
point.

The above screenshot shows a two-page spread. If you look carefully, the first page on
the left-hand side has some handles along its four sides. This is the indication that the
Page tool is active on this particular page. Now, on the Control Panel at the top, you can
specify your desired dimensions.

Remember the reference point, we discussed earlier? That is the left most button with the
9 small spheres. Each sphere is a reference from which the rest of the adjustments to the
dimensions are made.

Say, for example, you want to reduce the page size towards the right, you would put a
reference point in any of the left most spheres to ensure that the left part of the page is
kept constant, while the right side is adjusted. This helps to avoid gaps in the page which
can look out of place in the finished document.

Master Pages
A master page, like the name suggests, defines the overall layout of the document. Any
changes to the size or number of pages on the master page affects the whole document.
You can have any number of master pages, but the first master is called the A-Master.
There is also a None master page which is devoid of the schema of the other master
pages.

Master pages are very essential when working with books or magazines where the content
flows from one page to the other.

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Clicking the Pages panel opens the flyout where you can select the A-Master and None
master pages. Double-clicking on the A-Master opens the two-page spread master page
which is basically blank. Notice that the individual pages in the panel show an A symbol.
That means that the A-Master master page is applied to them.

You can specify items on the master page such as header, footer, page numbers, or design
layouts that would apply to all the other pages to which this master page is applied.

Don’t want a master page element on any of your subsequent pages? No problem. Simply
drag the None master page in the Pages panel onto your desired page to remove any
master page defined layouts.

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Creating Page Numbers

Creating page numbers in InDesign is easy. Since you would want the page numbers to
appear on every page, you need to specify the location of page numbers in the master
page.

Say, for example, you want to number the pages in a book. Open the master page as
described earlier, and select a location for the display of your page numbers. Let us select
the bottom of the page for this example and draw a text bar at the bottom by clicking the
Type icon in the toolbar and dragging the textbox to the bottom of the page.

The key thing to remember is, you don’t enter any actual numbers here. What you do is,
tell InDesign that you want page numbers to appear in that position. To do that, go to the
Type menu, go to Insert Special Character, then Markers and finally select Current Page
Number. This will insert a symbol A in the textbox referring to the master page, A.

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You can duplicate this page number textbox to the second page of the master page by
holding down Alt + Shift on Windows or Opt + Shift on Mac and dragging the textbox
to the same position on the next page.

Now, when you check the other document pages, you will have the page numbers at the
exact position and with the same formatting you’ve specified in the master page.

In the above document, it can be seen that InDesign has automatically designated page
number 6 to the 6th page. Page number assignment is dynamic. As you add or delete
pages, the numbers are adjusted automatically saving you the trouble of manually
verifying them.

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 7. InDesign CC ─ Section Options
Adobe InDesign CC

In InDesign, it is possible to segregate the document into sections to specify different

types of page numbers for different types of content. For example, if you’re creating a
book, you might want to specify the beginning chapters such as Acknowledgements and
Preface in Roman numerals, while the actual chapters have normal numbers.

To do this, you need to create “sections” of the document to tell InDesign that the
numbering of each section is different. The section and numbering options can be accessed
from the menu of the Pages panel.

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Clicking the Numbering and Section Options… command will open a dialog box
wherein you can specify the starting page number for the page that you’ve selected. You
can also choose the style of numbering. The pages will follow the numbering system that
you have chosen till you select another page and repeat the same process.

The new section will start from the new selected page and this time you can select another
page numbering scheme.

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 8. InDesign CC ─ Text FramesAdobe InDesign CC

InDesign makes it easy to work with text. Like with every object in InDesign, text is
composed in frames called text frames.

Creating Text Frames

You can use the Type tool to create a text frame in which you can write the text. This
frame can be adjusted on the fly or even later.

It is also possible to convert a shape into a text frame. Simply draw the shape on to the
document, select the Type tool from the toolbar and click inside the shape. Note that the
cursor changes indicating that the shape is now being converted into a text frame. You
can enter text into the shape.

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 Adobe InDesign CC

Placing a Word Document as a Text Frame

It is possible to directly place a Word document as a text frame within an InDesign
document.

Go to the File menu and click on Place... This opens the Place dialog box. Select any Word,
RTF or text document that you want to insert into the document.

InDesign will analyze the document and show you a cursor with the text attached which
you can click on a desired area to directly place on the document or drag the cursor to
place it in a desired frame size.

Note that some formatting changes might occur when you place the Word document.

Note: The Place command places the document within the defined text frame even if it
contains many pages. If your document has multiple pages of text and you want
everything to be imported into InDesign, press and hold the Shift key while using the
Place command. You will notice that all the required pages are populated with your
imported content.

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 9. InDesign CC ─ Story Editor Adobe InDesign CC

InDesign has a nifty feature that allows you to edit text without any distractions or the
need to zoom in and zoom out of text frames. This feature is called the Story Editor which
you can invoke by selecting any text frame and going to the Edit menu and clicking Edit
in Story Editor or simply by pressing Ctrl + Y on Windows or Command + Y on Mac.

The Story Editor presents an easy to read, alternative layout for editing text. The default
font in the Story Editor may put off a lot of people but it can be changed in the Story Editor
Display section in Preferences. In this section, you can change the font, line spacing, text
color, background, and the theme.

Note: The changes are limited only to the Story Editor window and will not affect the font
in the actual text frame.

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 Adobe InDesign CC

Changes made in the Story Editor reflect immediately in the text frame. The Story Editor
also shows the entire text even if the actual text frame has only limited text in it.

Another ease of using the Story Editor can be seen by opening the Info panel, going to
the Window menu, and selecting Info.

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The Info panel shows precisely the number of words and characters selected and can be
very useful when working with large amounts of text.

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 10. InDesign CC ─ Spellchecking Features
Adobe InDesign CC

Spellchecking is often an important part of making the document look professional and
error-free. Just like your regular word processor, InDesign also has integrated
spellchecking capabilities with a few tricks up its sleeve.

The easiest way to spellcheck the document is to go to the Edit menu, select Spelling and
click on Check Spelling… or simply press Ctrl + I on Windows or Command + I on the
Mac. This will open the Check Spelling dialog box.

The Check Spelling dialog box scans the entire document and lists all the potential
corrections for a wrongly spelled word. You can either explore the corrections or skip the
word or if you know it to be correct, you can add the word to the dictionary.

InDesign also has a feature called Dynamic Spelling, which shows all the misspelt words
as you type. You can enable this by going to the Edit menu and selecting Dynamic Spelling.

Sometimes, you might need to use words from a different language to enhance the
vocabulary, which InDesign might interpret as a mistake. For example, something like
Merci, which means thanks in French. Fortunately, you can tell InDesign that this is a
different language by first selecting the word, then going to the Control Panel on the top
and selecting the desired language.

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 11. InDesign CC ─ Find/Change Function
Adobe InDesign CC

Find/Change is one of those functions that is simple but extremely powerful. As the name
suggests, the Find/Change function lets you find your query and change to something
else. You can find and change literally anything – even obscure stuff such as finding
multiple spaces and converting them to a single space or even changing frames from one
type to the other.

The most important part of this dialog box is defining the search criteria, which is
highlighted in yellow. You can confine your search using these options to locked layers,
hidden objects, footnotes, or even master pages. You can also limit your search to case
sensitive words or search only for specific words.

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The most important of all is using GREP. GREP in itself, requires a separate tutorial but in
short, GREP is a standard for finding patterns in text and is derived from a UNIX command
line utility called grep which stands for globally search a regular expression and print.

InDesign makes it easy to use GREP to find expression patterns in text such as special
characters or spaces or simply to apply character styles.

In this example, we want to find all dashes within the text and convert them into en-
dashes. An en-dash is slightly longer than a hyphen but shorter than an em-dash.

It is not possible to type an en-dash using a regular computer keyboard as it is a special

character. Most word processors convert a double hyphen into an em-dash but not an en-
dash.

To do this, go to the Query drop-down menu near the top of the Find/Change dialog box
and from the drop-down menu, select the Dash to En-dash option. You will see that
InDesign automatically populates the Find what and Change to fields with the GREP code.

Now just press the Change All button. In this case, InDesign has scanned the entire
document and made 31 replacements, i.e. it has converted all 31 instances where the
dash occurs, into an en-dash.

This can be very useful when working with large bodies of text where it is practically
impossible to scan each and every line of text to make changes.

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 12. InDesign CC ─ Import ImagesAdobe InDesign CC

InDesign offers more than a few ways to import images into your document. Of course,
you can copy paste between image programs and InDesign but it is better to use the Place
function instead, which offers more flexibility.

Go to the Place command in the File menu and select the image or images you want. Then
click anywhere inside the document where you want to insert the image or drag the frame
to insert the image within the frame dimensions. Note, that the aspect ratio is maintained
while dragging the frame.

You can directly drop an image into a frame, like a shape frame, if you already have one
in the document. You can also select multiple images and cycle through them. Selecting
multiple images can be especially useful if you want to stack them up vertically or
horizontally.

Select the required number of images and click Open in the Place dialog box to see the
Place cursor. Now, while holding down the left mouse button, draw a frame and press the
Up Arrow key to create a vertical stack or the Right Arrow key to create a column. You can
keep doing this till you are able to accommodate all your objects together. When you leave
the mouse button, the images will be stacked in the columns you have chosen.

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 13. InDesign CC ─ Image Links Adobe InDesign CC

Sometimes, when you try opening an InDesign file from another computer or online, you
will most likely encounter an error that says there are missing or modified links. What
does that mean?

Whenever you import or place an image or object into InDesign, you are not actually
placing the entire object or image but only a reference to it. InDesign assumes that the
original image or object is located separately on the disk. In most cases, you can just
press Update Links and InDesign will update any references of the modified links provided
you have them. It cannot however update the missing links – that has to be done by
ourselves.

However, if you want to know which are the exact objects that have gone missing or
modified, you need to use the Links panel.

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In this example, we have 3 modified links. These are seen collapsed under a single link
which when expanded, shows us the modified links (the ones with an exclamation mark
in a yellow triangle icon) and the corresponding page numbers.

Clicking on the page numbers directly takes us to the link that is modified. The Links panel
has functions to relink the files or create new ones. It also shows information about the
link such as the resolution, ICC profile, size, etc.

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 14. InDesign CC ─ Edit Images Adobe InDesign CC

InDesign is not an image editor per se but that should not stop you from making changes
to your images. InDesign gives you two options to edit your images – Edit original and
Edit with, both available in the Edit menu.

We’ve seen earlier that InDesign does not directly import images but only places the links
in that document. This enables a lot of flexibility when it comes to editing images. When
you choose Edit original, InDesign opens the image in an image editor. Just make the
required changes, save and close the image editor and the changes will instantly reflect in
your document because it is linked. No need to even relink the images.

Now, InDesign does not know that you have an editor such as Photoshop or Illustrator
installed. It merely relies on the file associations defined in your OS. Therefore, the Edit
original does not always open the right program, which is why we have Edit with.

Edit with enables you to select the editing program of your choice. Simply, open the file,
save the changes and close it. When you switch back to InDesign, you will see the changes
just as you’ve intended.

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 15. InDesign CC ─ Image FittingAdobe InDesign CC

Often, the images that we want to place in the document are larger and don’t fit completely
in the frame we want. InDesign offers tools to ensure that you are able to fit the images
exactly within the frames you want.

To do this, go to the Objects menu and then to the Fitting submenu. You will see that
there are a few fitting options for you.

The Fill Frame Proportionally command adjusts the image in the frame so that it fills
the frame completely. However, this can result in some of the image being cropped off as
shown in the following example.

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The Fit Content Proportionally command fills the whole content within the frame
without cropping the image.

Fit Frame to Content changes the frame size with respect to the size of the image.

Fit Content to Frame scales the image to fit in the frame. However, use this only when
needed as the scaling can be disproportionate.

Centre Content centers the image within the frame.

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 16. InDesign CC ─ Image Transparency
Adobe InDesign CC

Image transparency or if you are an image editor, the alpha channel, is very important to
ensure that the image you are inserting into the document blends with it instead of
appearing like an amateur cut-and-paste job.

There are two ways to get the separate image or the alpha channel from the background
and for both of these, we need to switch over to Photoshop.

One of the ways is to use the Clipping tool in Photoshop to draw a path around the object
we want to isolate from the background. This method, although useful, can result in sharp
edges and might not look professional especially when the clipped image is inserted into
the document. Hence, we will focus on the other way which is to isolate the alpha layer
from within Photoshop to get a better anti-aliased object that blends with the document.

In this example, let us say that you want to isolate the bird from the background. Place
the image into InDesign and go to the Edit menu and select Edit with and in the submenu,
choose Adobe Photoshop. You can also choose any other image editor you are accustomed
to, if it shows up in the Edit with menu.

Remember that although you can work with JPEGs, it is better to use Photoshop PSD files
as they preserve the channel information much better.

In this case, the selection of the bird has been made using the Magnetic Lasso tool (you
can also use the Pen tool if you need more precise cut outs) and loaded the selected part
of the image as a new Alpha channel called Alpha1.

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Now, click the Channels tab and drag this Alpha1 channel onto the Load channel as
selection icon, which is the first icon from the left in the bottom of the panel.

Next, go the Layers tab and click on Add layer mask icon to create a layer mask with the
transparency (be sure to unlock the layer if its locked).

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You will see that the bird has been isolated and the background has been made
transparent.

Save the image and return to InDesign to see the changes happen automatically.

Since the image is linked, any change that you do in Photoshop will reflect automatically
in InDesign. If you zoom into the image, you will find less of sharp edges and a much
more refined outline.

You can now fit the image into the frame by applying the image fitting commands
discussed in the previous chapter.

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 17. InDesign CC ─ QR Codes Adobe InDesign CC

QR codes are square blocks of graphical code that contain embedded information. QR
codes are being increasingly used to condense all information into a single image. The QR
code can contain an URL or product information or contact details.

QR codes can be read by smartphone cameras and a QR reader app. InDesign allows for
creation of QR codes to contain virtually any information. It is most useful if you have
contact details for a brochure and want to insert a QR code so that smartphone users can
easily lookup your information without having to enter it.

Go to the Object menu and select Generate QR Code. This will open a dialog box where
you can enter the information you want to generate a code.

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You can select the type of QR code you want. It can be a website, plain text, email message
or even a business card. You can also change the color of the code to your liking. When
you click OK, you will get a cursor similar to placing an image frame. Just drag it to the
desired size to insert the code. You can also place QR codes in existing frames.

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 18. InDesign CC ─ Selection Tools & FillAdobe
Strokes
InDesign CC

In this chapter, you will learn about the various selection tools in Adobe InDesign and how
to apply fill and strokes colors.

Selection Tools
There are two types of selection tools in InDesign. The commonly used Selection tool
(black arrow selection tool) and the Direct Selection tool.

You can perform a selection either by selection and drawing along the document to select
desired frames or simply press Ctrl+A on Windows or Command+A on the Mac to
select everything. You will notice that the selection shows some frames in red and some
in blue and even green. These indicate that these frames are in different layers which you
will notice if you have the Layers panel open.

The Direct Selection tool allows you to select a single point on a path and move just one
point. In the following example, just the vertex of the lower right of the frame has been
dragged while keeping the other points intact. The contents of the frame reflow
automatically.

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Applying Fill and Stroke Colors

InDesign makes it very easy to change the background color or fill and the border color or
stroke of any object – image or text.

Let us discuss fill first. Let us say that you would like to change the background color of
the object. First, make sure the object is selected. Go to the Control Panel on the top and
click the arrow next to the Fill function. The button directly below Fill is the Stroke.

You can select the available colors from here or create your own custom color value using
RGB, CMYK, or any of the many available color profiles. Say, you want to apply a Red
swatch. Select it from the menu to see the change.

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Now, if you want to change the stroke of the object, simply select the Stroke and decide
on the color as before. Let us make it black for this example. We see that the borders of
the image have now become black. Of course, you can select or define any color you like
and also customize the thickness of the border.

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 19. InDesign CC ─ Image Color & Transparency
Adobe InDesign CC

Coloring Imported Images

You can add color to images just like you add to objects. However, there are a few caveats
to keep in mind. This works only with raster images (such as Photoshop images, JPEGs,
TIFFs, etc.) and not with vector art (such as Illustrator).

The image should be saved in grayscale with no transparency.

Import any image using the Place command and either draw a frame or insert it into an
existing frame. You should double-click within the frame to select the image, otherwise
whatever color you choose will apply to the frame but not to the image itself.

Then go to the Swatches panel, make sure the foreground fill is selected and select the
desired color to be applied. You can also reduce or increase the intensity of the color by
adjusting the Tint value in the Swatches panel.

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Applying Transparency to Objects

It is easy to add transparency to objects in InDesign. You can add transparency to images,
text, or any other object. You can even change the transparencies of the fill and stroke.

Select the object that you want to apply the transparency effect to. Remember to click
inside the frame if you want to apply the effect to the image or text. Otherwise, the effect
will be applied to the frame.

Now, go to the Effects panel and adjust the opacity value to get the desired effect.

If the selected object is text, you can also experiment with different blending modes.

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 20. InDesign CC ─ Drop ShadowsAdobe InDesign CC

Drop shadows are a great way to make an object stand out and can give a sense of
depth to the object. However, care must be taken not to overuse them else, the document
can look too gaudy.

There are two ways to implement drop shadows in InDesign.

Using the Default Drop Shadow Function

There is a direct and easy way to create a drop shadow in InDesign. Just go to the Control
Panel and click the Drop Shadow icon. This will instantly create a drop shadow for the
object under selection.

You will see that a drop shadow has been applied to the image. If you notice carefully,
there is a fx written beside the object in the Effects panel (circled in red).

You can double-click the fx icon to gain more control over the drop shadow which we will
see next. Hovering over the fx icon gives a tooltip that tells you the effect applied to the
object.

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More Drop Shadow Settings

Double-clicking the fx icon opens up a dialog box to further fine tune the shadow
characteristics.

Here, you can change various parameters such as the spread, angle, and offset of the
shadow. You can also add a custom color to the shadow.

It is always a good idea to add some noise to the shadow (about 3-5%) to make it look
more natural.

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 21. InDesign CC ─ Special Effects to Objects
Adobe InDesign CC

InDesign allows you to add a whole range of effects to objects in your document. For this
example, we will look at some text effects such as Bevel and Emboss.

Remember that you however cannot apply effects to individual letters in the text but only
to the entire text frame.

In this example, we see that the Bevel and Emboss function creates a beveling effect to
the text. Like any other effect, you can adjust the intensity, angle, offset, and other
parameters.

You can play around with some of the other effects such as Inner Shadow, Inner Glow,
Outer Glow, etc. to create just the right effect to the objects in your document.

You can also apply multiple effects to the same object.

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 22. InDesign CC ─ Eyedropper Tool
Adobe InDesign CC

The Eyedropper tool is an easy way to apply formatting from one object or text to the
other.

Select the Eyedropper tool from the toolbar and click any formatting or style that you
want. You will notice that the Eyedropper which showed an empty icon, now shows a
partially filled one. You can now take this partially filled Eyedropper and apply it on to any
text or image.

In this example, the text style under the “Get in Touch” section is selected and the same
is applied for the text under the “Social Media” section.

You can also customize what styles the eyedropper should copy by double-clicking the
Eyedropper icon in the toolbar. This opens a dialog box where you can select which
properties of the item to eyedrop and which ones to exclude.

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 23. InDesign CC ─ Find/Change Feature for Objects
Adobe InDesign CC

We have seen earlier how to use the Find/Change feature to find and replace specific
text items easily. The same can be applied to objects.

For example, you can find an object with specific features such as fill or stroke and change
all objects matching this criterion to properties that you wish to change to.

Open the Find/Change dialog box by going to the Edit menu and selecting Find/Change…
or simply press Ctrl+F on Windows or Command+F on the Mac and in the Find/Change
box, select the Object tab.

Click inside the Find Object Format box to open the Find Object Format Options dialog box.
You can specify the criteria that you want to find within this box such fill, stroke, weight
of the stroke, etc.

Repeat the same for the Change Object Format area to open the Change Object Format
Options dialog box. Here, you will need to specify the resulting criteria. Once, you’ve done
that, return back to the Find/Change dialog box and press Change All.

InDesign will scan the whole document and make the changes you’ve specified.

This feature is much more efficient than the Eyedropper tool, especially if you are working
on a large document.

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 24. InDesign CC ─ Swatches Panel
Adobe InDesign CC

The Swatches panel or the colors panel is the main place to define colors or swatches for
your objects.

You can change colors or define custom colors based on the objective of your document.
If your primary destination is on-screen, you can define and select any CMYK or RGB color.
If you want to ensure printer compatibility, you can define any of the PANTONE colors
which are commonly used by printing presses.

Changing the color of an object, be it text or image (if it is non-transparent and in

grayscale) is simply a matter of selecting it and applying a desired color from the Swatches
panel.

If you want to edit a color, you can right-click on the color and select Swatch Options…
This opens the Swatch Options dialog box.

In this dialog box, you can manually adjust the CMYK values to get the target color you
want. In the Color Type dropdown menu, there are two options – Process and Spot.
Process is used when working with on-screen documents and is usually the default. Spot
is used if you want to define colors for printing.

In addition to editing an existing swatch, you can also create new swatches with the
appropriate color values.

Once you are done creating or editing the swatch, you can select any frame and click the
desired swatch to apply the color to the frame.

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 25. InDesign CC ─ Color Panel Adobe InDesign CC

In addition to the Swatches panel, you can also use the Color panel to select and define
colors.

The Color panel can be invoked by going to the Window menu, then to the Color submenu
and finally selecting the Color panel or simply press F6 on the keyboard.

When you open the Color panel, you can choose if you want it to display either the Lab,
CMYK or RGB color space.

The bottom of the color panel shows the tint ramp (if it’s a single color) or the Lab, CMYK
or RGB spectrum. Hovering over this tint ramp or spectrum, turns the cursor into the
Eyedropper tool, which you can use to select the desired color.

You can play around with the Color panel just like you would on the Swatches panel but
make sure you add color to your existing swatch collection by clicking Add to Swatches in
the Color panel options. Doing so, will enable you to reuse the color within, as well as
outside the document. Otherwise, it might be difficult to exactly reuse the same color as
the color selection from the Color panel is unnamed.

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 26. InDesign CC ─ Gradients & Blends
Adobe InDesign CC

Applying Gradients
Using gradients can lend some great effects to the document. For using gradients, create
an empty gradient swatch by going to the options of the Swatches panel and selecting
New Gradient Swatch and click Ok.

Right-click the new gradient swatch, which you will see now and select Swatch Options to
open the Gradient Options dialog box.

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In this case, the default gradient color is from white to black. Clicking the first stop (the
small white icon) in the Gradient Ramp allows you to define the CMYK color which you
want as the starting point of the gradient. You can also change this to RGB to Lab by
selecting the appropriate option from the Stop Color dropdown menu.

The Stop Color dropdown menu also allows you to select an existing swatch as your
gradient color.

You can also add a multi-stop gradient by clicking the Gradient Ramp. If you notice, you
will see a diamond shaped handle on top of the Gradient Ramp. That allows you to define
the extent of the gradient.

If you want to remove any of the gradient stops, click and drag the stop out of the ramp.

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Blending Gradients
You can fine tune the gradients you have created to have a more consistent look with the
rest of the document.

For this, let us create two gradient swatches – one will be a radial gradient and one will
be a linear one. Select the frames that you want these gradients to be applied.

To fine tune the gradients, select the Gradient panel and adjust the gradient’s start and
end points.

You can also select the Gradient Swatch Tool from the toolbar and simply drag a line within
the frame in the direction you want the gradient to be applied.

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 27. InDesign CC ─ Paths & Outlines
Adobe InDesign CC

There are many ways to create paths or Bezier curves in InDesign much similar to what
can be done in Adobe Illustrator or any vector graphics software.

Using the Pen Tool to Draw Bezier Curves

Select the Pen tool from the toolbar and draw on the document. You will notice that you
can start a new curve from the end vertex of the previous curve. If you hover the Pen tool
over any of the vertex points, the cursor will change to a Pen with a minus symbol, which
means that the vertex can be deleted.

The Pen tool can be used for basic Bezier curve drawing, however, if you want a finer
control over the geometry, you need to use the Pathfinder panel.

Using the Pathfinder Panel

The Pathfinder panel can be found by going to the Window menu, then to Objects and
Layout and finally selecting Pathfinder. The Pathfinder consolidates all the path tools under
one panel. You can close open paths or convert paths into known shapes.

For example, if you want to convert the earlier drawn path into a triangle, simply select
the Converts shape to triangle in the Convert shape section and you will have a perfect
triangle.

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If you find the need to frequently work with paths, it is a good idea to dock the Pathfinder
panel along with the other panels for easy access.

Creating Text Outlines

Creating text outlines is an easy and fun way to add some effects to text and change the
characteristics of individual letters or words without needing to change the whole font.

To create an outline of a shape or letter, select it using the Selection tool and go to the
Type menu and select Create Outlines.

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This will create an outline path of the selected text, in this case, the letters, O and K. There
will be a lot of vertices which are the paths along this outline. You can selectively add
effects to it such as transparency or drop shadows or just fill these outlines with an image
or color to enhance the effect.

To do that, use the Place command or select a color swatch to change the O and K part
of the letter. The outline of the object is treated like a frame within a frame. You can also
select a group of objects and create outlines for them.

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 28. InDesign CC ─ Stack ObjectsAdobe InDesign CC

All objects are arranged as stacks in the InDesign workspace. Every object has a X, Y, and
Z coordinate which will pinpoint the location and orientation of the object with respect to
the rest of the stack. You can bring the objects forward or move them backward as needed.

To do this, select the object that you want to move forward or backward, go to the Object
menu, then to the Arrange submenu and select the appropriate option.

Note that sometimes, the object might appear as though it has disappeared when you
bring it to the front or back. It has not gone anywhere. There could be another object
layer in between which is causing the object to visually disappear.

For example, the car in this image, ‘disappears’ when sent to back but comes back when
brought forward. This is because of the presence of another layer between the car image
and the text object.

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 29. InDesign CC ─ Layers Adobe InDesign CC

As seen before, working directly with object stacks can get confusing. Therefore, the ideal
way is to use layers to determine how the objects are actually stacked upon each other.

Layers can be used to create better organized objects. You can access layers from the
Layers panel.

Creating a New Layer

Clicking the Layers panel will reveal the layers in the document. You can create a new
layer by clicking the Create New Layer at the bottom on the Layers panel, which will
directly create a new layer or you can also hold down the Alt key on Windows or Option
key on the Mac and click on Create New Layer to get the New Layer dialog box.

You will notice that each layer is color coded and has an active square beside its name.
That square is an indication that elements of that layer are being worked on currently. You
can click and drag the square to another layer, which will reveal items belonging to that
layer. In the following example, clicking and dragging the blue square from the Background
layer to the Main layer, changes the square to red and highlights the elements in the
document belonging to the Main layer.

Clicking the eyeball icon in front of the layer name will hide or reveal the layer. Clicking
the box just beside the eyeball will lock the layer and prevent you from making edits to it.

Sometimes, you might want to see the layer on screen but need not have to print the
objects in that layer. To do this, double-click on the layer in which the object is present to
open the New Layer dialog box we’ve seen earlier. Then remove the checkmark beside the
Print Layer option. This will show the layer on screen but will not print it on paper or when
exported to PDF.

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Layer Objects
Every layer is composed of objects which can be rearranged within the layer or even
between the layers. Each object is given a name within a layer.

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For example, collapsing the Background layer will reveal the objects within it. The name
<rectangle> means the rectangular frame. Images if any, will be shown by their file
names. If there is some text within a text frame, the starting words of the text will be
shown so as to easily identify it.

It is possible to rearrange these objects by simply clicking and dragging the object (for
multiple object select by holding Ctrl on Windows or Command on Mac) into the desired
layer.

Sometimes, in a complex document, it can be difficult to keep track of what each

<rectangle> actually means. You can simply rename the object name by clicking once,
pausing for a second and clicking again. This will enable you to rename the object to
something more recognizable.

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 30. InDesign CC ─ Nest ObjectsAdobe InDesign CC

In this chapter, you will learn how to nest objects within frames. It is possible to nest one
frame within another frame or one object within another using the Paste Into command
in the Edit menu.

Nesting frames offers a lot of possibilities to create some good effects and the nesting can
continue even further.

In this example, we will nest the image in polygons to get a sense of perspective.

Create polygon frames by selecting the Polygon tool from the toolbar and draw as many
polygons as needed. You can get as creative as possible.

Now cut the background image by selecting it using the Selection tool and press Ctrl+X
on Windows or Command+X on the Mac.

Select each polygon and go to the Edit menu and select Paste Into to paste the relevant
parts of the image into each polygon.

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You can add some effects to this to make it stand out. To add effects to all the polygons
at once, click and drag along all the polygons with the Selection tool to select all of them
and go to the Objects menu and select Group to group them as a single object.

Now, go to the Effects panel and apply the desired effect, say a little bit of Bevel and
Emboss effect.

Nesting is very useful to create high impact content. You can also nest a text frame into
this new nest.

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 31. InDesign CC ─ Align ObjectsAdobe InDesign CC

InDesign offers a lot of flexibility when it comes to aligning objects. There are two ways in
which you can align objects with respect to each other – one is by using alignment guides
and the other is by using the Align panel.

Aligning Objects Using Alignment Guides

When you click and drag objects to position them with respect to other objects, you will
see green lines which serve as alignment guides. You can use these green lines to guide
you on positioning the object either with respect to the center of the reference
object/frame or with respect to the edges of the surrounding object/frame.

In the above example, it can be seen that the green box is being aligned with respect the
text box above and the vertical green line is the alignment guide, which shows the center
of the text box.

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Aligning Objects Using the Align Panel

The Align panel makes it easy to align multiple objects at once. To access the Align panel,
go to the Window menu, then go to the Object and Layout submenu and click Align to
open the Align panel. Note, that the Align panel is contained in the same Pathfinder panel
we’ve seen earlier.

The top row of the Align panel has options to align everything left, right, top, or bottom.

You can also use the Align panel to distribute objects within a given distance or align other
objects with respect to a reference object or the key object. In the above example, it can
be seen that all the selected objects could be aligned to the left with one click instead of
relying on alignment guides.

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 32. InDesign CC ─ Text Wrap & AnchorAdobe
Objects
InDesign CC

Text Wrapping
Text wrapping is making the text reflow along the boundaries of the frame or the object.
Text wrapping options can be set using the Text Wrap panel from the Window menu.

Let us take an example of text wrapping around an object. When you insert an image over
text, the text normally wraps itself around the frame of the image (which is usually
rectangular) but not the image itself (which can have a contour). The Text Wrap panel
allows you to define the image around which the text should wrap itself.

Place the image in the document and open the Text Wrap panel. With the image frame
selected, select the third option to wrap the text around the object. It is better if the
imported image has some transparency or alpha channel applied to it.

In the Contour Options type, select either Alpha Channel or Detect Edges to wrap the text
around the image. In the following example, we see that the text has been wrapped around
the bird’s body contour.

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Anchoring Objects
Anchored objects tell InDesign to keep the positioning of the object, while moving the
other objects around it. To do this, first we must anchor the object.

The easiest way to anchor or make an object in-line is to select the object and cut it into
the clipboard. Then use the Text tool to place the cursor in the original position of the cut
object and paste the object from the clipboard back again.

You will notice that the object is now placed on top of the text. To restore it back to its
original place, go to the Control Panel and select the Leading value to Auto as shown. This
will tell InDesign to allocate as much area as required by the object.

You will see the object being properly inserted. If you change the text above or below the
object, the object also flows along with the text as it is now anchored or in-line with the
text.

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In this page, even if we choose to edit or delete the text above the car, the car will follow
the edit instead of jumping above or below the text.

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 33. InDesign CC ─ Object Transformation
Adobe InDesign CC

InDesign allows for a lot of object transformations such as duplication, rotation, scaling,
skewing, and mirroring. We will discuss each in the subsequent sections.

Duplication
There are many ways to duplicate objects in InDesign but the simplest way is to press Alt
on Windows or Option on Mac and drag the object to create a duplicate. You will notice
that the object is duplicated in exactly the same proportions as the original.

You can also go to the Edit menu and select Duplicate to duplicate the object with the
same offsets. Or hold down Shift+Alt on Windows or Shift+Option on Mac and drag
the object to duplicate with the same alignment as the original.

Rotation
It is very easy to rotate an object within InDesign. You can either use the Rotate tool on
the toolbar or use the rotate option in the Control Panel. The rotate options allow you to
also specify the precise angle of rotation and also the axis of the rotation. The preset rotate
options in the Control Panel allow you to rotate the object at 90° angles.

You also flip the images vertically or horizontally using the Flip Horizontal and Flip Vertical
icons below the rotate icons.

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Scaling
There are many ways to scale objects in InDesign. You can use either the Free Transform
tool or the Selection tool from the toolbar.

Click the Free Transform tool and select the edge of the object and drag it to scale to the
desired size. You can hold down the Shift key while dragging to constrain the proportions.

You can also use the Selection tool for the same effect. However for proper scaling, you
have to press Shift+Ctrl on Windows or Shift+Command on Mac to scale
proportionally.

Skew
It is easy to skew the image or object to the precise required value. A straightforward way
is to use the Shear X Angle command in the Control Panel and enter a desired skew angle.

You can also use the Shear tool in the toolbar to skew an object. Select the Shear tool and
click within the object to set a reference point. Then simply turn the object till you get the
desired skew angle.

Mirroring or Flipping
Select the image or object to flip and click the Flip Horizontal or Flip Vertical in the
Control Panel.

It is important to pay attention to the reference point at the far left of the Control Panel
to ensure that the image does not go off the document.

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You can also flip using Alt on Windows or Option on Mac and clicking either the Flip
Horizontal or Flip Vertical button in the Control Panel. This makes a duplicate of the image
while flipping.

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 34. InDesign CC ─ Characters Adobe InDesign CC

InDesign offers a lot of choices for working with characters. Most of these options are in
the Control Panel.

The different options have been labelled 1 to 8 (in orange) so that you can easily follow.

(1) denotes the Character Formatting Controls. Whenever you edit any text or want to
change properties of the text, make sure that (1) is always selected.

(2) shows the fonts installed in the system. When you install InDesign, you will also be
installing fonts apart from the ones that come default with Windows or Mac OS. All the
fonts installed and their samples are listed here. You can also filter by name, if you are
already aware of the font’s name.

(3) denotes the properties of the font. You can change the typeface between regular, bold,
italics, etc. The exact properties depend on the font chosen.

(4) lets you change the size of the font. You can choose from an available list of sizes or
input your own size.

(5) allows you to change the leading of the sentence or paragraph. The leading is a
measurement of the space between the baseline of the text and the line above it. Be sure
to change the leading by selecting the whole paragraph, otherwise you will have an uneven
leading within the paragraph.

(6) has functions to convert all text to large caps, small caps, underline, strikethrough,
subscript, or superscript.

(7) changes the kerning of the font. The kerning is the font space between individual
characters.

(8) is called tracking, which is essentially kerning but for a group of characters such as a
complete word or a group of words.

You can play with individual options to change the typeface to your liking.

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 35. InDesign CC ─ Text Formatting
Adobe InDesign CC

As we’ve seen earlier, Find/Change is a versatile tool. You can now use it to change the
formatting across documents instead of having to manually search and replace them
yourselves.

To do this, select the text you want to change, copy it to the clipboard, bring up the
Find/Change dialog box from the Edit menu and paste the copied text into the Find what
field.

You can then specify the parameters you want the text to change into by clicking the
Change Format box and specify the changes that you want.

Before clicking Change All, just make sure to define the scope in the Search dropdown
menu as Story or Document to ensure that the change is reflected across the entire
document. Otherwise, the formatting change will be limited only to the selected text.

In the following example, we wanted to change the style of the text, “Perhaps” into
something different.

We see that there are a total of 11 changes made within the document along with the
initial word that was copied.

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 36. InDesign CC ─ Paragraph Formatting
Adobe InDesign CC

Just like character formatting, you can format paragraphs too with a wide range of options.
The different options have been labeled 1-10 (in orange) so that you can easily follow.

To adjust paragraph formatting options, select the Paragraph Formatting Controls (1) icon.

(2) represents all the paragraph alignment options available. You can align paragraphs
left, right, top, or bottom and even align them along the spine (of a book) if you are
creating a facing pages document.

(3) is the Left Indent and (4) is the First Line Left Indent. The difference is that, when you
click Left Indent, the entire paragraph is indented according to the indent value you set.
But that does not always look good, hence it is a good idea to indent only the first line of
the paragraph, which is when you will need to use First Line Left Indent.

Similarly, (5) and (6) denote Right Indent and Last Line Right Indent respectively. They
do a similar job like (3) and (4), this time, on the right side of the paragraph.

(7) and (9) represent the Space Before and Space After fields which allows you to insert
a space before or after the paragraph. It is always a recommended practice to use Space

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Before and Space After instead of manually using tabs, spaces or Enter key for paragraph
spacing.

(8) and (10) are Drop Cap Number of Lines and Drop Cap One or More Characters. This is
a unique effect, which allows you to extend the first letter which is usually in caps along
the specified number of lines for a more elegant and professional look as shown in the
above example.

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 37. InDesign CC ─ Paragraph & Character Styles
Adobe InDesign CC

Styles are useful in applying multiple formatting options at once with a single click. Styles
can be applied to paragraphs, characters, and even tables.

Paragraph Styles
It is easy to apply a set of styles to an entire paragraph with paragraph styles. To reveal
the paragraph styles in the current document, open the Paragraph Styles panel. Here, you
will see a list of styles in that document. Simply click any paragraph on the page and
choose the desired paragraph style to apply the formatting.

You can double-click on any paragraph style to edit it. This opens the Paragraph Style
Options dialog box in which you can specify the parameters you want to change. The Style
Settings area shows a summary of the different parameters for this style.

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Character Styles
Unlike the paragraph style, a character style can be set to define a single parameter such
as font, color, size, or a combination of any of these.

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Character styles can be set by opening the Character Styles panel and choosing the desired
style.

Similar to the paragraph style, you can simply double-click any character style to open the
Character Style Change dialog box. Even there, the Style Settings area shows a summary
of the different parameters for this style.

Although technically possible, character styles should be applied only to a word or two or
at the maximum, a sentence but never to a complete paragraph.

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 38. InDesign CC ─ Tables Adobe InDesign CC

InDesign provides several ways of working with tables. You can create a table from scratch
within a text frame or convert an existing data into a table. Note that the table created
will be an anchored object for the text frame.

Creating a New Table

To create a new table, simply select the Text tool and draw an area that you want to create
as a table.

Then go to the Tables menu and select Create Table… to open the Create Table dialog box.
Here, you can specify the number of rows and columns that you want in your table and
also specify if you need headers and footers for the table. Clicking OK will create the table
within your text frame.

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You can now enter data within this table. Moving the cursor over any of the rows or
columns will allow you to resize the row or column. Use Shift and drag outside of the table
to adjust the entire table proportionally.

Remember that to drag the rows or columns, you need the Type tool selected on the
toolbar as the table is considered to be a text frame. If you use the Selection tool, it will
move the whole text frame instead of just the row or column.

To delete the table, simply drag over the table and press Delete on your keyboard.

Creating a Table from Existing Data

Most of the time, it makes sense to convert an existing data into a table. You can import
a Word, Excel, Access (database) file, or even a text document and convert the contents
into a table.

Use the Text tool to create the text frame for your table. Then, use the Place command to
place your data into the text frame.

In the following example, we will use a simple text file containing information about
websites of some pharma companies and convert this into a table.

Select all the contents of the text frame by clicking the text and pressing Ctrl+A on
Windows or Command+A on the Mac. Go to the Table menu and select the Convert
Text to Table… option to open the Convert Text to Table dialog box.

You need to tell InDesign what it should consider as a row and column separator. For now,
the defaults will work. Click OK to create the table.

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We see that InDesign has created a table with the given data.

You can edit the contents of each cell just like how you would edit a regular text frame. If
you want an even distribution of rows and columns, you can simply select the rows or
columns and go to the Table menu and select either Distribute Rows Evenly or Distribute
Columns Evenly or both.

Formatting Tables
InDesign gives plenty of options to format the layout of the table.

All table formatting options are accessible from the Table Options dialog box. To access
this, simply go to the Table menu, then go to the Table Options submenu and choose Table
Setup…

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From here, you can choose how your borders should look like and what should be their
stroke, how you want individual rows and columns to be colored and a whole lot more. It
is easy to explore the options and change the necessary settings.

For this example, let us see the final output after doing some basic formatting. Before
doing this, it would be a good practice to define the first row of the table as the header.
To do this, go to the Table menu, then to the Convert Rows submenu and select, To
Header. This is useful when you have a table spanning multiple pages and it helps to have
the header on all the pages for easy reference.

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Now, we have a table that is reasonably well formatted. You can explore further options
in the Table Options dialog box to adjust the formatting to your liking.

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 39. InDesign CC ─ Long Documents
Adobe InDesign CC

It is always easier to break a long document which often runs into several hundred pages
into smaller chunks that are individual InDesign documents (file extension .indd) that can
be easily managed. How many chunks you break is entirely up to your liking.

You can combine all these individual InDesign documents into an InDesign book (file
extension. indb). To create a book, open the File menu, go to the New submenu and select
Book… This will open the Save dialog box and ask you to save the book file. Give it a name
and click OK. This will create the book and open the Book panel.

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In the following example, we have taken two .indd files. However, you can choose any
number of files by clicking the + symbol at the bottom of the panel. Once all the .indd
files are added, you will see that the page numbers are made continuous.

The icon next to the first document in the Book panel indicates the style source. It means,
this document is a source for whatever paragraph or character style changes that you
make. You can select any document as a style source.

The best part about using the Book panel is that this style source can be synchronized
with all other documents in the panel by clicking the double arrow icon in the bottom of
the panel. This will tell InDesign to look for style elements in the first document and
implement them in the subsequent documents.

You will get a confirmation once the synchronization is complete.

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 40. InDesign CC ─ Table of Contents
Adobe InDesign CC

The Table of Contents (ToC) is a very useful feature in InDesign not just to create a
chapter-wise ToC, but also to list out basically anything that has a paragraph style.

To access the ToC options, go to the Layout menu and select Table of Contents… to open
the Table of Contents dialog box. You might need to click More Options to reveal additional
options in the dialog box.

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There are a lot of options in here but the most important thing is to add the paragraph
style that resembles the chapter headings. In the above example, we have selected the
ch.title from the Other Styles area and pressed the <<Add button to add the style to the
Include Paragraph Styles area.

Next, define the entry style by selecting the appropriate style for your ToC in the Entry
Style dropdown menu. The entry style defines how the ToC labels look like. If you don’t
define the entry style, you will be having the original paragraph style in your ToC, which
might not look good.

Select the After Entry option in the Page Number dropdown menu to keep the page
numbers after the chapter entry. You also need to specify the code between the chapter
entry and the page number. The Right Indent Tab is specified by the code ^y. If you don’t
know the code, you can click the small right arrow beside the Between Entry and Number
box. The Right Indent Tab ensures that the page numbers align perfectly at the end of the
right side of the text frame.

Review the options and click OK to see the ToC. The above example shows a very basic
ToC. You can of course go ahead and customize the paragraph styles that you want as
discussed earlier and use them in the ToC to get all sorts of custom ToCs.

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 41. InDesign CC ─ Interactive Documents
Adobe InDesign CC

InDesign makes it easy to add hyperlinks and bookmarks to make your document
interactive. However, keep in mind that the interactivity you add will not be evident in the
InDesign workspace but will be seen in the exported PDF. We will discuss a few interactive
elements in this chapter. It makes sense to set the workspace from Advanced to
Interactive for PDF to enable easy access to interactive panels.

Adding URL Hyperlinks

It is very easy to add URL hyperlinks to any object in InDesign. You can add hyperlinks to
an object so that clicking the object in the PDF will take the user to the website or you can
add hyperlinks to text to get the same result.

In the following example, we have selected the text to point to a hyperlink. Go to the
Hyperlink panel and click the Create new hyperlink at the bottom of the panel to open the
New Hyperlink dialog box.

Make sure the Link To field is set to URL. Type the URL in the URL field and click OK.
InDesign now creates the URL for the text selected. Whenever you export this as a PDF
and click the text, it will open the URL in your default web browser.

Hyperlinking a Page
Similar to hyperlinking a URL, it is also possible to hyperlink an object or text to a specific
page in the document. Clicking the text or object will take the user to the linked page.

In the following example, let us consider a text called Introduction, clicking which we want
the user to go to Chapter 1. Select the text and click the Create new hyperlink at the
bottom of the panel to open the New Hyperlink dialog box.

This time, instead of the URL, select Page in the Link To dropdown menu. We know Chapter
1 of this book starts from page a1, so in the Page dropdown menu, select a1. We want
the contents of the chapter to zoom to fit inside window, so we will select Fit in Window in
the Zoom Setting. Click OK to add the hyperlink to the document.

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Now, whenever this is exported as a PDF, any user who clicks on the Introduction text will
go directly to Chapter 1.

Adding Bookmarks
Bookmarks are also hyperlinks which make it easier for the user to navigate the document.
You can create a bookmark for every page or simply create a ToC to insert bookmarks.
Bookmarks are automatically created when you insert a ToC.

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In this example, we have already created the ToC from the earlier chapter. You can access
the bookmarks from the Bookmarks panel present in the same Hyperlinks panel.

Exporting Interactive Documents

As discussed in the beginning of this chapter, you cannot view the interactivity within the
actual InDesign workspace. You have to export it as a PDF. There are several options
available when you export it as a PDF.

To export a document as a PDF, go to the File menu, then click on Export… If you notice,
among the various export formats available, there are two Adobe PDF export options –
one is the Adobe PDF (Interactive) and the other is Adobe PDF (Print).

For all intents and purposes, you need to select the Adobe PDF (Print) unless you have
multimedia content such as movies or audio in the document. Click Save. This will open
the Export Adobe PDF dialog box.

There are a lot of settings to get the exact PDF output you want but just make sure to set
the Compatibility to Acrobat 6 (PDF 1.5) or higher.

In the Include section, make sure Bookmarks and Hyperlinks checkboxes are turned on.
You can also turn on the View PDF after Exporting in the Options section to open the PDF
in your PDF viewer after export.

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 42. InDesign CC ─ eBook Adobe InDesign CC

The EPUB format is the standard format for publishing eBooks which can be read on a
variety of mobile devices. If you want your book to have a wide audience, you should
definitely consider publishing it in the EPUB format. InDesign allows you to directly export
the book as an EPUB. Creating EPUBs from InDesign is actually a complex process but we
will cover the basics here to get you started.

To export the file, go to the File menu, click Export and choose the Save as type as EPUB
(Fixed Layout). This will open the EPUB export options dialog box. You can directly click
OK, if you don’t want to change the options. But doing so, might not give you the document
with the correct layout.

To get the most accurate layout possible for your EPUB, you need to let InDesign know
the sequence of your content. To do this, go to the Window menu and select Articles to
open the Articles panel. Here, click the Create New Article button to add an article.

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Now, use the Selection tool to drag a frame onto this created article. You can also select
a frame using the Selection tool and click on the + symbol in the Articles panel.

Once you’ve added all the articles, go back to the EPUB export options and now select
Same as Articles Panel in Order dropdown menu in the Content section. This will make
sure that InDesign follows the exact same order you have specified in the Articles panel.
Click OK to export the document and view in your default EPUB reader.

If you do not have an EPUB reader installed, you can download one from Adobe called
Adobe Digital Editions from http://labs.adobe.com

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 43. InDesign CC ─ Preflighting Adobe InDesign CC

Preflighting is the process of ensuring that all aspects of the document are perfect before
going to print. InDesign constantly preflights the documents every time you work with
them.

Viewing Preflight Errors

The above document shows it has 8 errors in the status bar. Double-clicking this message
in the status bar will open the Preflight panel, which lists all the errors that InDesign has
found. You can directly jump to the page in which the error has been discovered. Once all
the errors are corrected, the red error light changes to green, indicating, No errors.

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Changing Preflight Profiles

It is possible to define your own preflight profile so that you get to determine the errors
you should be alerted to. To do this, go to the Define Profiles… option in the Preflight panel
menu to open the Preflight Profiles dialog box. InDesign ships with two built-in preflight
profiles – Basic and Desktop Publishing with the option of adding your own profiles.
You can choose the errors that InDesign should look for when preflighting the document.
Remember that the Basic profile cannot be edited.

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 44. InDesign CC ─ Package Documents
Adobe InDesign CC

We have seen how InDesign links images and objects into the document instead of
embedding them directly. This works well most of the time till you want to share the
document, say, with your printing press. Most of the time, they will not be having access
to your image assets or fonts and might get linking errors or missing font errors.

In order to avoid these hassles, InDesign provides a way for you to package the document.
The packaged document contains all the required assets, fonts, and also instructions to
the printing press in one folder along with the .indd file.

To prepare a document for packaging, open the document, do the required preflighting
and go to the File menu and select Package… This will open the Package dialog box.

The Package dialog box shows a summary of various components of the documents and
any of the errors it has found. You can export the reports if you wish by clicking Report…
and saving it as a text file. If not, you can simply select the Package… option and select a
file name and location for the document on your hard drive. This is not the actual
packaging yet.

Once you save the package, you will get the Printing Instructions dialog box where you
can give your contact information and any instructions you want to tell the printing press.

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Most printing presses ignore this information, unless you specify to look at it. It is always
better to have a correspondence with the press either by phone or email instead of using
the Printing Instructions dialog box. Click Continue when done and give a location for the
package.

You might get a warning box about the use of copyrighted fonts. Be careful when you
package fonts that you have purchased separately as they come with usage and
distribution restrictions. Click OK to continue.

InDesign will show the progress of the packaging. Once it is completed, you will be able
to find the package along with the instructions file in the destination you have selected.

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 45. InDesign CC ─ Print Documents & Booklets
Adobe InDesign CC

Printing Documents
Printing documents is easy with InDesign. To print a document, go to the File menu and
select Print… This will open the Print dialog box which gives you a lot of fine control over
the printing.

The bottom left of the box shows a preview of the document and how it fits into the printed
page. The Setup group allows you to set options such as page orientation, page size,
position of the content, etc.

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It would be a good idea to set all the possible and required print options in this dialog itself
if the same options are available in your printer driver as well. Doing so will avoid a lot of
potential conflicts between InDesign and your printer driver.

The Marks and Bleed group allows you to print the bleed and slug marks, the color bar,
crop marks, etc. which can be useful but not necessary.

Depending on your printer, you might want to change the print output in the Output group
to Composite RGB, Composite Gray or Composite CMYK. Generally, for home inkjet
printers, Composite RGB or Composite Gray will do. Anything above that, it is always
recommended to use Composite CMYK.

An important thing to note before high quality printing is to go to the Advanced group and
select the High Resolution preset in the Transparency Flattener area.

You can also save all these settings as a preset so that you can recall them whenever you
want.

Printing Booklets
For less complex jobs like printing booklets on your own, you can use the Print Booklet…
command from the File menu.

The Print Booklet… command is very useful to sample your booklet before giving it to the
press so that you can have a real idea of how it would look on paper.

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There are however, a few caveats to using this feature. The first thing to remember is that
Print Booklet always prints the 1st and last page on one spread, followed by the 2nd and
last but one and so on until all the pages are printed. This is because of how the booklet
will fold when you stitch it. The other important caveat to remember is the number of
pages in the document should be divisible by 4 (you can fold a paper in half to understand
why).

You can leave most of the options in the Print Booklet dialog box as defaults. However
more often than not, you will find a yellow exclamation near the Preview page indicating
that something is wrong; most probably the page will not be fitting inside the booklet.

To rectify this, simply select the Preview page, go to Print Settings… and in the Print
Settings dialog box, adjust the settings in the Setup group to make the content scales to
the page and click OK to return to the Preview page in the Print Booklet dialog box. You
will notice that the yellow exclamation is gone and the document has correctly fit into the
page.

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You will also notice that InDesign adds extra blank pages if you have excess or less number
of pages that are divisible by 4 to ensure that the booklet format is printed properly. You
will also notice page number watermarks are on in the preview. These are just for
indication and will not be printed on the final booklet. Click Print to print the booklet.

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 46. InDesign CC ─ Export Documents as PDFs
Adobe InDesign CC

Exporting PDFs is very easy with InDesign. Just go to the Export dialog box from the File
menu and select where you want to save the PDF. The Export Adobe PDF dialog box gives
you a lot of presets to choose from right out of the box.

Selecting the Right Preset

If you click the Adobe PDF Preset dropdown menu, you will see that there are a lot of PDF
format options available. The most used include PDF/x-1a (for North America) and PDF/x-
3a (for Europe). You might have to consult with your printing press before deciding on the
format.

If your printing press supports it, select the PDF/x-4 for even more control over things
such as transparency and a wider color gamut. For all other purposes, including on-screen
ones, it is recommended to use the High Quality Print preset. It is better to avoid the
Smallest File Size preset as much as possible as it can affect the resolution and colors of
the images to reduce the file size.

When you set the Compatibility to Acrobat 6 (PDF 1.5) or higher, you get the option to
Create Tagged PDF in the Options section of this dialog box. This function allows you to
tag keywords in the PDF, which makes indexing by search engines possible. It also allows
for accessiblity options for the disabled as screen reader software can read the tagged
data in the PDF.

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Compression Options
You can determine the amount of compression that InDesign should use while exporting
the PDF. It has a large impact on the resulting file size and also on how well the PDF
renders for the web. If you are simply displaying the document for the web, a lower pixel
per inch (ppi) value would suffice. If you intend to have a high quality printout, then you
need a higher ppi. The compression options can be accessed from the Compression section
of the Export Adobe PDF dialog box.

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For exporting to the web, in the Color Images section, set the Bicubic Downsampling to
box to about 150 and the Image Quality to Medium. Do the same for the Grayscale Images
section as well if your document has grayscale images.

Output Options
In the Output section of the Export Adobe PDF dialog box, you might want to review the
settings in the Color area.

If you are going to view the PDF on-screen, it is better to leave the defaults as such and
make sure that Include Tagged Source Profiles is selected in the Profile Inclusion Policy.
This ensures that all images are a part of this PDF. This applies to only the RGB colors.

If you are printing, you need to change the Color Conversion option to Convert to
Destination and select one of the different destination types, which are about the type of
printed paper, in the Destination dropdown menu.

Security Options
A PDF being one of the most commonly used document exchange format, can be
vulnerable if you are sharing sensitive data. It is always advisable to password protect
your PDF file to ensure confidentiality of information.

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In the Export Adobe PDF dialog box, go to the Security section and select the Require a
password to open the document checkbox and enter a password. Only those who know
the password can open the PDF.

You can also use passwords for conditional restrictions. You can select what a user can or
cannot do when he/she opens the document. The earlier password protection feature
restricts access to the entire document. Here, you can specify the tasks the user has
permission for.

For example, you can prevent the document from printing in low resolution or high
resolution or even from printing at all. You can even prevent users from copying the
content of the document to the clipboard, commenting, and extracting specific pages or
even filling forms and signing. This is perfect if your sharing highly sensitive information
with colleagues or outsiders.

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 47. InDesign CC ─ Selective Text FrameAdobe
Export
InDesign CC

Sometimes, you might not want to export the whole document but only the text in selected
text frames. InDesign makes it easy and offers you choices into the formats that you can
export. We will explore two methods here, one is by using the Export command and the
second by running scripts.

Exporting Text From a Frame Using the Export Command

We have used the Export command earlier to export files as PDFs. When you want to
export just the text from a text frame, make sure the text cursor is inside the text frame
and go to the File menu and click Export… You will now have a few additional choices.

The three main formats for exporting text are Text Only (.txt), Rich Text Format (.rtf) and
Adobe InDesign Tagged Text (.txt). Text Only is a simple text format devoid of any
formatting. It just exports the plain text. Rich Text Format allows for basic formatting
and can be read by many word processors such as Microsoft Word.

Adobe InDesign Tagged Text format allows you to export the text with all the available
InDesign formatting embedded in it. But it can only be read by other InDesign programs
and not by any other word processor. This is useful if you are exporting text to work on
another workstation with InDesign installed.

Exporting Text Using Scripts

InDesign is a very flexible program and its functionality can be extended by small snippets
of code called scripts which are custom written to enhance the program’s functionality.
InDesign can read scripts written in JavaScript (.jsx; Windows and Mac), AppleScript (.scpt
or .as; Mac only) or Visual Basic scripts (.vbs; Windows only).

InDesign comes with some built-in scripts, which can be accessed by going to the Window
menu, then to the Utilities submenu and selecting Scripts. This opens the Scripts panel,
which lists all the available scripts on the computer.

There are two levels of scripts in the Scripts panel - Application and User. Application
lists all the scripts that come with InDesign out of the box. It contains sample scripts in
JavaScript along with VBScript (if on Windows) or AppleScript (if on the Mac). User lists
all scripts that are installed by the user. You can locate these scripts on your hard drive

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by right-clicking on either the script or the parent folder and selecting Reveal in Explorer
on Windows or Reveal in Finder on the Mac.

For exporting all the text from text frames, expand the Samples folder under the JavaScript
folder, which is under Application and scroll down till you see the script named
ExportAllStories.jsx. Double-click to run the script. This will open a dialog box asking you
to select the export text format.

As described earlier, select the desired format according to your needs and click OK to
select a destination to save the file. The script works in the background and saves the
exported file in the specified destination.

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 48. InDesign CC ─ Word & InDesign
Adobe InDesign CC

Using Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign together is possible and can be an important
part of your workflow. There are fundamental differences in how Word and InDesign
function. Word is a word processor at its core. It has all the features you need to create
elegant as well professional documents comprising mainly of continuous text. InDesign is
a page layout program, which can also process text. The primary function of InDesign is
to layout page elements and have better control over your document.

Of course, you do not normally use InDesign to write letters or essays and the users
normally juggle between these two programs. Understanding these two programs begin
with knowing how they handle text.

Word has paragraph and character styles as well which you can find in the Styles panel in
the Home tab on the Office ribbon. By default, all formatting in the text apart from
headings and titles, goes into the Normal style.

In InDesign as we have been seeing till now, each text frame or even parts of the text by
default is grouped under the Basic Paragraph style. However, this offers a lot of
customizations and font options that is not normally dealt in Word. Knowing this difference
is important when you want to import text formatted with Word styles into InDesign.

You should also remember that in Word, you directly work with text in a blank document
but in InDesign everything happens in frames. You cannot just type directly on a blank
document without creating a text frame.

Another point to be aware of is, the color scheme used in Word is RGB, while in InDesign
it can be either RGB or CMYK depending on the intent of the document.

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 49. InDesign CC ─ Word File Import to InDesign
Adobe InDesign CC

The Place command in the File menu lets you import a Word file into InDesign. In the Place
dialog box, make sure that Show Import Options checkbox is checked.

In the Microsoft Word Import Options dialog box, ensure that the radio button, Preserve
Styles and Formatting from Text and Tables in the Formatting section is selected. This will
ensure translation of most of the Word styles into InDesign.

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Click OK to get the Place cursor in your InDesign document and drag to draw a text frame
and place the Word document inside the text frame.

Most of the Word formatting does indeed carry over into InDesign. Things such as bullets
and numbering, basic font settings, leading and paragraph styles do carry over just fine.

However, things such as WordArt, highlights, overridden Word styles and image formatting
might not carry over well.

Tables carry over well but you might need to readjust the row and column sizes.

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 50. InDesign CC ─ Word to InDesign
Adobe InDesign CC

Retaining Formatting Overrides

The advantage of using the Place command over simple cut and paste is that you can
choose to strip off formatting but just keep the overrides or modifications to the style
which you can then further tune in InDesign. When importing, using the Place command
make sure that Show Import Options checkbox is checked.

In the Microsoft Word Import Options dialog box, ensure that the radio button, Remove
Styles and Formatting from Text and Tables in the Formatting section is selected and the
Preserve Local Overrides checkbox is checked. This will ensure removal of all Word styles
but will preserve font overrides such as bold, italics, etc. when importing into InDesign.

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You will see that InDesign has imported the Word document without any of the formatting
styles but retained font overrides such as bold, italics, etc.

The Paragraph Styles panel shows Basic Paragraph which means all the style of the
document is now InDesign default.

From here, you can choose to apply any paragraph or character style in InDesign.

Style Mapping
Style mapping is useful if you want InDesign to correlate the Word styles in your imported
document into styles that InDesign can understand. You can map both paragraph and
character styles so that when you import the document, the mapped styles are applied
automatically.

While importing using the Place command, make sure that Show Import Options checkbox
is checked.

In the Microsoft Word Import Options dialog box, ensure that the radio button, Preserve
Styles and Formatting from Text and Tables in the Formatting section is selected. Then at
the end of the Formatting section, make sure that the Customize Style Import radio button
is selected and then click Style Mapping to open the Style Mapping dialog box.

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The Style Mapping dialog box shows two columns – on the left is the Microsoft Word style
which is present in the Word document that you are importing and on the right is the
InDesign style that you want to apply correspondingly.

There are both paragraph and character styles shown (denoted by the paragraph symbol
and A symbol respectively) and for each Word style, you can choose the available InDesign
style by clicking the down arrow beside each InDesign style.

Once you are done, click OK and OK again to import the Word document with the required
formatting.

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51. InDesign CC ─ Photoshop & Illustrator Adobe
Workflows
InDesign CC

Using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator along with InDesign generally completes the
creative workflow for most people. All these programs interact well with each other and
you might find yourself constantly juggling between these three programs.

InDesign makes it easy to move between all three of them. However, instead of just
selecting your image and copy pasting between Photoshop or Illustrator and InDesign,
there are some rules to follow.

Importing Images from Photoshop

Photoshop is a bitmap raster image program which means that images can lose or gain
resolution with scaling. Most of the images we deal with daily are raster image formats.
Images that are able to maintain native resolution no matter the scaling are called vector
images which are the kind of images that Illustrator deals with.
The most important thing to remember when integrating Photoshop with InDesign is the file
format that you choose to work with. JPEGs are the default and are fine with most cases but if
you want to have high quality images, layer, and transparency information, JPEGs are not the
ones you should be using. Photoshop supports literally almost all the image formats there is
but the best choice remains the Photoshop format, also known as PSD.

When you work with an image in Photoshop, you might want to include transparency
information or isolate the foreground from the background in another layer. Importing this
transparency image or alpha channel will help the object to blend easily with the rest of
the document when you import it into InDesign.

Always use the Place command instead of simply copy and paste to have more flexibility
on your imports.

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In the following example, we see that there is a transparency layer behind the bird which
has been created in Photoshop and saved as a native PSD file.

We can now use the Place command to place the image of the bird directly in the InDesign
document. Make sure that the Show Import Options checkbox is checked.

This will open the Image Import Options dialog box.

This dialog box will allow you to select which layer of the image you want to import and
also allows you to select the transparency layer. Here it shows the preview of the bird. We
can go ahead and import it by pressing OK.

This will reveal the Place cursor with the image. Simply drag a frame with the Place cursor
to place the image in the frame.

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If you have clipping paths in your original Photoshop image, you can select the clipping
paths or the alpha channel while importing the image. It is always better to go with the
alpha channel to ensure anti-aliasing and smooth blending.

Importing Images from Illustrator

Importing Illustrator files is a little tricky. Similar to Photoshop, you need to save the
Illustrator drawing in a compatible format before InDesign can make sense of it. The best
formats suited for this are native Adobe Illustrator (.ai) files and Adobe PDF (.pdf) files.
InDesign does not yet have support for import Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg) files so if
you have .svg files that you want to work with, you might want to save them as .ai or .pdf
from Illustrator before importing them into InDesign. Try to avoid .eps files as much as
possible.

When you save the file as a .ai file, the Illustrator Options dialog box opens. Be sure to
check the Create PDF Compatible File in the Options section otherwise InDesign will not
be able to read the .ai file.

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Now, use the Place command in InDesign. This will open the Place PDF dialog box
(remember that the PDF is embedded within the .ai file) if the Show Import Options dialog
box is checked when using Place or you can also hold down the Shift key when using Place.
Here, you can choose which layers you want to import and click OK.

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You will see the Place cursor on the InDesign document. Drag a frame to place the vector
art within it.

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 52. InDesign CC ─ Export InDesign Artwork
Adobe InDesign CC

Just like it is easy to import PSD and AI files into InDesign, it is also easy to export InDesign
artwork into either of these programs. The simplest method to do this is copy and paste.
The procedure is the same for both the programs but keep in mind that the objects’ paths
in InDesign are more appropriately imported into Illustrator to retain the vector paths
rather than in Photoshop. Photoshop rasterizes the image so you are left with fewer editing
options.

It is always recommended to first import the InDesign artwork into Illustrator and then
take it from Illustrator to Photoshop.

To copy the InDesign artwork, simply select the desired objects using the Selection tool
and press Ctrl+C on Windows or Command+C on the Mac to copy the objects to the
clipboard.

Create a new Illustrator document and press Ctrl+V on Windows or Command+V on

the Mac to paste the InDesign artwork. You will notice that all the vector paths are carried
over to the Illustrator document and you are also able to scale freely without loss of
resolution.

However, while pasting the same artwork in Photoshop, you will see that there is loss of
resolution and the image gets rasterized. It is still pasted as a vector smart object but in
order to change the paths, you need to go back to Illustrator, change the paths, save the
file and come back to Photoshop.

Therefore, it is always recommended to import InDesign artwork into Illustrator than

Photoshop. If you must use Photoshop, then import it into Photoshop via Illustrator but
never paste directly.

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 53. InDesign CC ─ Preserve Layers & Vectors
Adobe InDesign CC

Photoshop can do both vector and bitmap image processing. However, when you import
Photoshop vector shapes into InDesign, you will find that the vector path information is
lost. As a result, any text that you have created in Photoshop, will become rasterized when
you import into InDesign and can lead to low quality prints.

The best way to avoid this situation is to save the original Photoshop image as a PDF file
instead of PSD.

However, you should remember that saving as a PDF causes Photoshop to discard layer
information. Hence, when you add or remove layers from the original file, it might not
reflect in your InDesign document. Again, the best workaround for this is to use Illustrator
.ai files. Layer information is preserved in .ai files much better.

In the following example, we see that there is no loss of information in the imported PDF
file as the vector information is preserved, when the file is saved as PDF in Photoshop.

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