Adobe InDesign

Easy Fixes for Microsoft Word Formatting in InDesign

Two free and easy-to-use scripts convert Word's local formatting to InDesign's character styles. Two more retain InDesign formatting when you export text formatted with automatically applied character styles.

Text Wrap and Text Formatting in InDesign

The most frequently asked questions I get from people who are new to InDesign revolves around Text Wrap; however, there are also questions about text formatting that don’t get asked. But I know they exist because when I’m presenting in front of an audience and I start formatting text, I can see the look of amazement on some folks’ faces as if they’re thinking, “Hey, I didn’t know you could do that!”

Conditional Text and InDesign CS4

InDesign has always supported the use of layers, but layers don’t always cut it when working with text. You can put a text frame on a layer and turn that layer on and off as needed, but it’s an all or nothing approach. What if you want to show and hide individual words or paragraphs and have the text automatically rewrap when you show or hide those words? With conditional text, it’s a breeze.

Fast Layout in Adobe InDesign CS4

Every now and then an app gets an update that really impacts your daily routine, and I’m happy to say that InDesign CS4 has some new-and-improved features that will do just that. InDesign is a page layout app, so anything that helps that process is a welcome addition, so let’s take a look at how CS4 will speed up your day-to-day work.

Automate Your Designs with Nested Styles in Adobe InDesign

We’re all used to working with style sheets (or least we should be). With each new version of InDesign, there seems to be a new way to style your content. We started with paragraph and character styles, then we got nested styles, followed by object styles, and finally table styles in InDesign CS3. As you can see, nested styles is not really new but it’s something that you should be taking advantage of, so let’s get to it.

The Appeal of Adobe InDesign

Working with InDesign is interesting. On the one hand, it’s not really a tool built for technical writers. It’s intended for people laying out magazines, brochures, other heavily designed print matter. As such, some things can be confusing. Cross references, figure references, a table of contents — get ready to search the help to figure these out. On the other hand, the power of the InDesign is somewhat captivating. You’re only limited by your own ignorance.

Learn InDesign One Feature at a Time

There’s simply no way to learn InDesign (or any other major application) all at once. If you’re a frustrated newcomer to InDesign, or even if you’ve been using it for some time and want to expand your knowledge, here’s a suggestion: Set aside about 15-20 minutes every day to learn the basics of one feature. It doesn’t really matter what that feature is.

InDesign CS3: Search Using GREP Expressions

On the GREP tab of the InDesign Find/Change dialog box, you can construct GREP expressions to find alphanumeric strings and patterns in long documents or many open documents. You can enter the GREP metacharacters manually or choose them from the Special Characters For Search list. GREP searches are case-sensitive by default.

Making the Most of XML with Adobe InCopy and InDesign

This session provides an overview of several real-world case studies describing publishers who have implemented an XML-based process with Adobe InDesign, InCopy, and editorial and production management systems, such as K4 and Woodwing. The session also provides best practices for incorporating these products in a production workflow covering activities such as: How to import XML into the Adobe products; How to export XML out of the Adobe products; How to structure templates (styles to tag and tags to styles mapping).

InDesign Secrets

If you try to find reliable information about InDesign on the Web you’ll find yourself scouring Adobe’s site or muddling through dozens of other sites for a tip or two. Now that you’ve found InDesign Secrets, it’s time to stop all that muddling.

Small Caps in InDesign CS3 and QuarkXPress 7

We previously discussed small caps and the importance of using true-drawn versions rather than computer-generated, “fake” ones. Many of today’s OpenType fonts include true-drawn small caps, making it easier than ever to take advantage of this typographically sophisticated feature, but the OpenType interface in both Adobe® InDesign® CS3 and QuarkXpress® 7 can be a bit confusing.

Word Spacing: How To

Space matters. Word space, that is. Different letter and word shapes call for subtly different amounts of space. Learn to see and finesse word spacing in both text and display type with these how-tos.

InDesign Shortcuts: Special Characters

The keyboard is rarely the friendliest path to symbols and special characters. Sometimes a bit of menu magic can guide you past the overwhelming Glyph palette. Indeed, the Special Character flyout palette in Adobe InDesign CS3 is a great shortcut to frequently-used characters and will spare your fingers the keyboard contortions.

OpenType Numerals in InDesign and Quark

Today’s OpenType fonts come equipped with a virtual buffet of numeral styles, but all those choices can be a bit much for your design application to swallow. Here’s a practical guide to help you find your way through the maze of oldstyle, lining, proportional, and tabular, in both InDesign and Quark.

Tab Leaders

Does designing a table of contents drive you dotty? Next time, remember to say “take me to your tab leader.” Learning how to use your application’s automated tab leader function is a great way to save time and keep your layouts looking professional, down to the last detail.

Creating a Multi-Page Document Using AutoFlow

In this tutorial, we are going to create a simple layout for an existing text document.

InDesign: Basic Page Setup

InDesign is Adobe's replacement for the aging PageMaker application. In many ways, InDesign is very similar to PageMaker, but there are differences that can throw an experienced PageMaker user for a loop (albeit briefly). In this tutorial you will set up a simple layout and master page.

Postcard Announcing an Exhibit

In this tutorial, we will create a postcard announcing a fictitious exhibit (or a real one if you have one coming up:) using InDesign. This tutorial was originally written for the InDesign Workshop.

Poster Announcing an Exhibit

This tutorial is a companion to 0002, and was part of the InDesign Workshop. We will create a companion poster announcing the same exhibition.

Better Than Ginzu Knives: InDesign's Pathfinder Commands

Every avid chef has little gizmos and gadgets, designed for specific tasks, that find their way to the back of a drawer and are then forgotten. Like those special tools, the Pathfinder commands in InDesign are often forgotten or considered too sophisticated for non-artistic types. Yet they can slice and dice and combine paths in unique ways that add vastly to the repertoire of the InDesign chef. Added to InDesign's other ways to mix up text and graphics, Pathfinder can help you further push the creative edge.

Efficiency: It's Not Just for Production Monkeys

With a few free tools from software companies and other users, you can carve out more time for what you really love -- creativity.

Alphabetizing Menu Commands

Ever forget the exact location of a menu command in InDesign? You can use this tip to make your menu commands easier to locate.

Compound Paths for Text Holes

You can use InDesign's compound paths and transparency features to create a recessed text compartment in an image.

Dragging and dropping into InDesign

There are a number of ways in which you can use drag and drop to get content in and out of InDesign.

Getting the Most Out of Guides

If you're used to other layout applications, you may be unaware of all the things you can do with ruler guides in InDesign. If you use guides in your work, read on.

Replacing Gradient Colors With a Swatch

InDesign shares a feature with Illustrator that enables you to select a color stop in a gradient and replace it by clicking on a color swatch in the swatches palette.

Understanding Frame Grids

The frame grid feature enables you to use multiple baseline grids on your pages.

Word Spacing Keyboard Shortcut

Ever been copyfitting and wished there was a quick way to kern word spacing but leave letterspacing alone? There is.

The Ins and Outs of InDesign

If you ever create multi page layouts such as brochures, newsletters or booklets there is an application that is made for you. InDesign, which can be purchased as a stand alone product or as part of the Adobe Creative Suite, has many, many tools for streamlining the process of setting up and working on these types of projects. In this article we will look at what InDesign is for and highlight some of the features that set it apart from other applications.

InDesign Tutorial: Advanced Typographical Controls

Find out how to use Adobe's single line and paragraph composer, hyphenation settings and other typographical controls.

Unexpected White Outlines Around Graphics In InDesign

Sometimes when making PDFs from InDesign, white outlines appear around graphics. Here's why and how to solve it.

Adobe InDesign Basics Class

This InDesign class will give you the basics on which you can then develop further skills and become proficient at using this powerful layout program. Further articles will be written to develop some subjects that might need to be taken more in-depth.

InDesign Tutorial: Add Style and Save Time with Paragraph Style Sheets

Paragraph Style Sheets can be real time savers for designers especially in the creation of long or multi-page documents.

InDesign Killer Tips

If you approach InDesign as you did your former page layout application, you may be missing out on some features that will make your life easier.

InDesign Tutorial: Design With Character - Character Style Sheets

Character Style Sheets can be real time savers for designers especially in the creation of long or multi-page documents. Character Style Sheets are simply recorded format that you can then use in your design at will. Consistency is one of the principles that designers must follow. Character Sheets help the designer so he doesn't have to apply manually the same type of formatting over and over again throughout the document.

Broadcasting Type

Putting type on a path is not a new concept. However, Adobe InDesign CS adds a new twist to it. Not only can you put type on a path, but you can also link from path to path to have one continuous text flow. In this tutorial we’ll use this technique to replicate Apple’s new AirPort Express ad.

InDesign Tutorial: The Paragraph Palette

With this tutorial you will learn how to use InDesign's Paragraph Palette. Here is an explanation of most of InDesign's Paragrah Palette's functions which should arm you with enough knowledge to do most design tasks you might need to do while laying out a design document.

Dragging and Dropping

There are a number of ways in which you can use drag and drop to get content in and out of InDesign. Here are my favorites: If you ever get a lot of content for a layout delivered to you in a folder full of images, logos, text files, etc., there's a fast and easy way to get the files into InDesign that will enable you to avoid placing them one by one.

InDesign CS Script Automation

Harness the power of scripts to automate common tasks in InDesign.

InDesign Tutorial: the Tools Palette - Part 3

InDesign Tutorial: The Tools Palette Part 2

This is a second tutorial about InDesign's Tools Palette, which follows a previous post from May 2005.

InDesign Tools Palette, Part 1

This is the first of several tutorials covering InDesign CS' tool palette. It covers the Selection tools, the Pen tool and the Type tool. It also gives tips and trick on how to make selections in InDesign.

Working with Colour in InDesign CS

Explains the use of the Colour Palette and Swatches palette and how they relate to each other. It also briefly covers the Gradient Palette. Informative links explaining the difference between RGB, CMYK, hues, tints, etc. are also provided.

InDesign Tutorial: Setting up a Document

Let's start with some basics. Here you will learn how to create a new document, add pages and other basic functions. A second tutorial will follow to complement this one.

InDesign's Work Area

This tutorial goes through the different parts that compose InDesign's work area. If you want to drive a car, you want to make sure that you know where the break is, where your wheel is, where your indicator is and so on. The same is for InDesign. You want to know where you can find all the tools that you will be using to create your InDesign documents.

Symbols Tutorial

Ever wonder, "What's the deal with Symbols?" Adobe Illustrator symbols can be useful beyond creating swarms of blue fish.

Threaded Text in InDesign CS

If you use Microsoft Word, you are used to the fact that if when your text will get to the end of a page, another page will be automatically added. With InDesign and most layout programs, this is a little bit different. This is because layout programs work with text boxes (or tex frames) which allow you more freedom when you lay out your document.

Open Up with OpenType Fonts

OpenType fonts act just like PostScript Type 1 or TrueType fonts in programs like Microsoft® Word or QuarkXPress, but Adobe® InDesign® can perform special tricks with them, such as replacing characters with swashes (fancy versions of a letter), or with ligatures for character pairs such as “ct” and “ffi.” InDesign ships with several OpenType fonts, including Adobe Garamond® Pro, Adobe CaslonTM Pro, Caflisch Pro, and Kozuka Mincho Pro (a Japanese typeface).

New Uses for Old Clipping Paths

No one enjoys drawing clipping paths (or, if they do, they rarely admit it in public). The transparency features in Adobe® InDesign® spare you the headaches of drawing clipping paths because the program honors background transparency in Adobe Photoshop® files. However, there are still times when a clipping path comes in handy, so don’t throw the Bézier out with the bathwater.

Creating Interactive Documents for PDF

Learn how to add movies, sound clips, and interactive buttons to an Adobe InDesign CS document. When you export the document to Adobe PDF, readers can view movies, play sound clips, and activate buttons in Adobe Acrobat. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to add a movie and buttons that play, pause, resume, and stop the movie in the exported PDF document.

InDesign CS Scripting Changes

InDesign CS has introduced a large number of changes in scripting. Some things are new, some are simple changes in terminology, and some are changes that will break existing scripts. This is a guide to some of these changes, and is designed primarily to help in moving scripts written for version 2.0.2 to CS.

InDesign How-To: Adding Custom Sizes to the Page Menu

Of course making custom page sizes if nothing new. But here's a handy InDesign CS trick for adding those custom page sizes to your Page menu so you can call it up at anytime.

Document Setup in Adobe InDesign CS

In this topic, you will set up a new document in Adobe InDesign CS.

Working With Graphics in Adobe InDesign CS

In this topic, you will place graphics on the page and then move, resize and crop them.

Get It Inline

Inline frames in Adobe InDesign help you keep your text and graphic frames (or text frames or groups) sticking together.

Plan Now, Play Later

Whip that document into shape - master the master page in InDesign and PageMaker.

Customizing Strokes Styles

With Adobe InDesign® you can create and edit custom dash, dot, and stripe stroke styles, giving you more control and freedom over how strokes look in your publications. You can also save the stroke styles you create, and then use them over and over again in other InDesign publications.

Get 100% Accurate Copyfitting

In the publishing world--when every word counts--knowing exactly how much space you have to work with is crucial. Because Adobe InDesign® 2.0 and Adobe InCopy 2.0 are tightly integrated and share the same composition engine, content.

Import Text Without Surprises

With a little forethought, placing text in InDesign becomes almost effortless.

Bridging the Gap Between Design and Editorial

With both Adobe InDesign® CS and Adobe InCopy® CS in your publishing workflow, writers and editors can compose stories in InCopy at the same time designers are laying out the pages using InDesign—without overwriting each other’s work.

Designing Text to Flow Around Objects

Wrapping text around objects—from basic shapes or frames to images with clipping paths—can give any publication a unique look and feel. In this tutorial, you’ll learn several ways to work with text wrap in Adobe InDesign® to achieve the look you want.

Enhance Text Design with Nested Styles

Creating nested styles is a great way to add unusual text effects to your document.With Adobe InDesign® CS, you can apply one character style to the beginning of a paragraph, and then determine where that character style stops and the next character style begins. By creating a paragraph style that includes these nested styles, you can quickly apply the effect to multiple paragraphs.

Format Text with Style Sheets

Format text once and apply the same style repeatedly and with ease. Style sheets in Adobe® InDesign® CS are a shortcut to formatting text.

Off the Paper and Onto the Web

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how we adapted content from a full-color, printed brochure to create a visually rich Web site for attendees at a fictional design conference. As you follow along, you’ll learn tips and tricks that can help you move content from InDesign to GoLive to get the results you want.

Transform a Single Source Into Many Designs

When one layout just isn’t enough, you can easily tag your Adobe® InDesign® document and export the content to an XML file. Different InDesign templates and Adobe GoLive® dynamic Web pages can then import the XML file and repurpose the content. Say goodbye to copy-and-paste and hello to the future of publishing!

Controlling Line Breaks with the Hyphenation Penalty Slider

Adobe InDesign 2.0 introduced a new feature that you can use to fine tune the way lines break in any given paragraph. You'll find the hyphenation penalty slider in InDesign's hyphenation dialog box. This document is meant to serve as an introduction to this feature so that you'll understand exactly how it works and how you can use it to control the way your lines break within paragraphs.

Designing a Distinctive Table

When you're working with complex data, a table may be your best option. Often, a logical series of rows and col-umns can communicate more clearly than paragraphs. Adobe® InDesign® 2.0 introduces a robust table feature that makes it easy to line up those rows and columns—and to format them in striking ways. Here we show you how you can make an easy-to-read table while using the graphical power of InDesign to integrate it into the style of your document.

Using Guides Effectively

Adobe InDesign 2 has some incredible features that aren't found in any other page-layout application and that's why so many designers are migrating to it. What's often overlooked, however, are the cool, subtle, yet powerful features for everyday production work.

Using OpenType Pro fonts in InDesign 1.x

This document is intended to serve as a brief introduction to both the new OpenType font file format, as well as the ways you take advantage of the advanced features of OpenType Pro fonts within InDesign.

Using Your Own Placeholder Text in InDesign

The Fill with Placeholder Text command in the Type menu fills one frame or a series of linked frames with placeholder text. This text serves as a temporary substitute for the text that will actually appear in your finished document. You can use this placeholder text to create templates or serve as a placeholder for text content in a document that's in process. The placeholder text produced by InDesign is known as 'Lorem Ipsum,' and it's a faux Latin intended to represent the space real words would occupy (and that's all). With InDesign 2.0, however, you have the option of replacing InDesign's default Lorem Ipsum text with placeholder text of your own.

Create Custom Grids

Suppose you have a publication with set column widths. You may not want to reset your columns or drag out multiple guides just to create tables or gridded content. The guides and Step and Repeat features in Adobe® InDesign® 1.5 make it easy to quickly create a custom grid to structure your content. This tip tells you how.

Adobe InDesign Tutorials

Get up to speed on some of the exciting new features in Adobe® InDesign® 2.0 with the following tutorials. Each consists of a Flash movie as well as step-by-step instructions and sample files for download, so you can follow along within InDesign. For demonstrations of key features, take a video tour in the InDesign 2.0 overview.

User-Friendly Web Sites Keep Agencies in Touch With Citizens

It used to be that people surfed the Web not knowing or even caring where they ended up. Now, more people are going to the Web to find critical information that they previously obtained — and can still get — from traditional sources. For all the convenience of the Web, going there for information can still be an adventure.