Adobe InDesign is the king of multi-page documents its strength and flexibility allow you to design complicated documents with ease. Here are some tips to understand the strength behind the application.
Master Pages
When designing a magazine or catalog using master pages will definitely save you time in construction and maintaining uniformity throughout the layout. You can insert layout elements on multiple master pages, such as category pages, footer notes, etc. By default you can't select Master page elements when on a regular page so no worry of accidentally moving or editing Master Page content unless you are on a master page itself. If you want to edit an element instance of the Master Page element on a particular page, just hold down shift + Ctrl Key while clicking on the element to edit it. This will only change the Master Page element for that particular page, to make global Master Page edits you have to actually edit the master page.Master pages are best used with graphic elements that will not change throughout the publication. To apply a master page simply drag it from the Master Pages pane to the Pages pane in the palette.
Also if you already started working on a page and want it to be a Master Page, just drag it from the Pages pane to the Mater Page pane. Presto done.
Frames
InDesign uses Frames to place your content whether text or images on a document, Text frame for text and Image Frame for images. They come in square, round, and polygon shapes.
You can use File>Place to import files whether it is text or images. Conversely you can just simply just drag and drop from inside Windows Explorer, this automatically creates a frame for you, and creates a link to that file.
Resizing Content in Frames
Some helpful shortcuts to remember for resizing content in frames are:- To keep the frame size the same and fit content proportionally press Shift + Alt + Ctrl + E.
- To fill the frame proportionally use Shift + Ctrl + Alt + C.
- To center content in a frame press Ctrl + Shift + E.
- Fitting frame to content press Ctrl + Alt + C.
Selecting Frames
Selecting Frames, when you have multiple frames over-lapping each other selection becomes more difficult. To make it easy just hold down the Ctrl key will clicking on the area and it will cycle through the different frames until the one you want pops up.Colour in Your Documents
InDesign is set up quite similar to Illustrator as it applies to colour working with colour sliders directly in RGB (Web Work) & CMYK (Print Work). Also you choose either the fill, stroke, or text colour swatches to change colours.
You can also import swatches from both Illustrator or Photoshop into InDesign. Spot colours can be selected from the libraries.
Find/Change for Text Heavy Documents
A great tool in InDesign especially for documents that are text heavy is the Find/Change feature.
Just in case your boss or client wants you to change all instances of a word, phrase, or title. If you have a 300 page book it could be quite time consuming to do it manually, that's why this feature comes in really handy. To enable it just use the shortcut Ctrl + F or find it in the edit menu. It is as easy as typing in the phrase you want to change, typing in the new one, and clicking on the replace all.
Hope you enjoyed these tips will post part two and three over the next few days as usual like it and follow us on your social media or sign up for an email to update you when I post, also you can subscribe to an RSS feed if you like the form is in the right sidebar.
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Video Links to InDesign Tutorials
InDesign Basics: Importing pictures and text
How to work with InDesign master pages
Creating Album Templates In InDesign
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