Here we break down the basics of Masters, and share some tips on how to get the most from one of InDesign’s handiest features.

1. What is a Master Page?

The basic principle of a Master page is this:

Whatever you place onto the Master page will be visible on all the pages of your document that have the Master applied to them

You can edit the Master, and add elements to it that you want to appear across multiple pages, such as page numbers, running headers and borders. Masters are indispensable when creating multi-page documents like magazines, books, reports and brochures, allowing you to add design elements across a number of specified pages, creating a sense of consistency and professionalism in your document.

You can also create multiple Master pages, each with different design elements. A good example for when it would be appropriate to use multiple Master pages is when you’re designing a book that’s split into chapters. You might have one Master page for the opening page of a chapter, and another Master for the pages that sit within the chapter. You can also add different Masters for index pages and contents pages, which may require different page numbering systems or headers.

2. Where Do I Find the Master Pages?

When you create a new document in InDesign, the software automatically creates two new Master pages for the document, which are visible at the top of the Pages panel (Window > Pages).

One of these Masters is called, by default, the ‘A-Master’, and depending on whether you’ve set the document up with single pages or facing spreads, will be made up of one or two pages.

The A-Master is automatically applied to all the pages in your new document, which means that anything you put onto the A-Master will show up on all pages of your document.

The Master page above the A-Master in the Pages panel is, in fact, not really a Master. It’s called [None], and by dragging this down onto a page icon in the panel below you can wipe the page of any applied Master.

3. How Do I Edit a Master Page?

Masters are quick and simple to edit—simply double-click on one of the Master page icons in the Pages panel to bring it up on screen. You can now edit the Master as you would a normal page. Let’s walk through the steps of editing an A-Master for a magzine, and look at how to add simple features like page numbers, running headers and background color.

Step 1

In this document, I want to create a Master that will add a few consistent elements to the pages of articles in the magazine. To do this, I double-click on the A-Master icon in the Pages panel (Window > Pages). This is a two-page Master as the document has been set up with facing pages; clicking on either the left or right page of the Master will bring up the full spread on screen.

Step 2

Now you’re ready to start editing your Master!

Think about the elements that will remain consistent across a group of pages. You can only edit these elements on the Master, and they will all sit behind the page content, so try to focus on elements that make up the background and basic template of your page.

For the A-Master for this magazine I’m going to add background color, page numbers and running headers. First, I take the Rectangle Tool (M) and drag onto the Master to create a rectangle that fills the entire left-hand page. Using the Swatches panel (Window > Color > Swatches) I give the shape a black color fill.

I Copy > Paste the rectangle and place the pasted shape on the right-hand page of the Master.

By keeping the color in separate shapes on each page I can apply only the left- or right-hand page to a spread in my magazine. If I was to extend a single shape across the whole of the spread, the color would be applied to both pages of a spread automatically.

Step 3

I can also add page numbers to my A-Master. To do this, I zoom into the bottom left-hand corner of the left page, and use the Type Tool (T) to create a text frame. Placing my type cursor into the frame, I head up to Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Current Page Number. As this is the A-Master InDesign flags this up as an ‘A’ (this will adjust to the correct page number in the pages of my magazine).

I can format the page number using either the Character window (Window > Type & Tables > Character) or the Formatting Controls panel running along the top of the workspace.

Then I Copy > Paste the page number’s text frame and manouver it over onto the right-hand page of the Master. I switch the text to Align Right using the Paragraph window (Window > Type & Tables > Paragraph).

Step 4

Using the Type Tool (T) I create a long text frame at the top of the right page, adjusting this to read the issue’s date, and then format the text to adjust the size, font and color. I rotate the frame 90° (Right-Click [Windows] or Ctrl-Click [Mac] > Transform > Rotate).

I Copy > Paste this text frame, moving it over to the top of the left page, and adjusting the text to read the magazine’s title. Then I rotate it 180°.

4. How Do I Apply a Master to Pages in my Document?

By clicking on one of the page icons in the lower part of the Pages panel I am taken back to my document. I can see that the pages have all been updated with the edits I made to the A-Master. This looks great on some of the article pages…

…but I don’t want to have this Master applied to all the pages. I then have two choices. I can either click and drag down the [None] Master page icon in the Pages panel, dropping it onto pages which I don’t want to have a Master.

Or I can create a new Master page to apply to different pages. For example, I might want to create a second Master which has the same page numbers and headers, but has a white background and black text instead.

To create a new Master you can go to the Pages panel’s drop-down menu and choose New Master.

This opens up a New Master dialogue box. From here you can set the specs for your new Master. If you want to create a new Master that contains all the elements of an existing Master and you simply want to build on this you can choose the appropriate Master from the Based on Master menu.

However, as here I want to create a Master with similar elements to the A-Master but I want to be able to edit them too, I can simply create a copy of the Master by selecting both pages of the A-Master (hold down Shift while you do this) and dragging it down onto the Create New Page icon at the bottom of the Pages panel.

From here I can edit this new B-Master, such as removing the colored background and editing the text to a black color.

To apply this B-Master to other pages in the document, I select either the left or right page of the B-Master in the Pages panel and drag and drop it onto the relevant pages.

5. Pro Tips for Using Masters

Master pages can be as simple or complex as you like. If you want your document to look extremely consistent, you can edit the Master to include elements that will help your whole document feel even more uniform. Here are just a few things you can do with Master pages that will help take your designs to the next level:

• You can add linked text frames to your Master. This is particularly handy for typesetting long, text-heavy documents like books. Place a series of linked text frames on the Master page, but don’t fill them with text. When you return to the document’s pages, you’ll be able to feed text into the Master’s text frames without needing to add new text frames to each new page.
• The elements sitting on your Master page don’t necessarily need to sit behind the content of your pages. By placing some or all of the elements on your Master page onto a separate, top layer in your document (Window > Layers) you can ensure that page numbers and headers will always sit on top of other content.
• You can create as many Master pages as you like. For long documents some designers will use a wide range of Masters, treating them as templates for specific sections of a book or magazine.
• You can delete Masters by selecting the Master and either Right-Clicking (Windows) or Ctrl-Clicking (Mac) > Delete, or dragging the Master down onto the trash can icon at the bottom right of the Pages panel. You will be prompted with a warning message if the Master is applied to pages in your document. If you go ahead with the deletion, InDesign will apply the [None] Master to the affected page(s).

Want free InDesign templates? Of course you do! Find a range of ready-to-edit templates for book covers, business cards and more.

Find more InDesign tutorials here, and make sure to check out our edit of the best design inspiration to keep your ideas flowing.

The post InDesign Basics: A Quick Guide to Master Pages appeared first on InDesignSkills.

Read on to find out how you can quickly and easily delete excessive text without compromising your sanity…

1. The Tip That Will Banish Overset Text from your Documents…

We’ve all been there—perhaps opened up a document from a third party to find huge amounts of overset text errors or simply made the mistake of importing too much text in the first place. Rather than spending the time manually accessing and deleting the overset text…(I mean, seriously, who has time to highlight and delete pages upon pages of text?)…you can use a simple keyboard shortcut to select all the text sitting past where you place your type cursor.

First up, you may want to find out how much overset text you’re dealing with here; which is when the InDesign Story Editor feature comes in handy.

But you may just want to get rid of that text asap, and give your InDesign Preflight the green light. If that’s the case, take the Type Tool (T), then place your cursor at the end of the section of text you want to keep. Then use this keyboard shortcut to select all the remaining text, even text that isn’t visible on the document:

Use Ctrl if you’re using a Windows system, and Cmd if you’re on a Mac OS. If you can’t find an ‘End’ key on your mac keyboard, hold down the down arrow for a few seconds instead, to select all the text to the end.

Then simple hit Delete to banish the text forever, and make your Preflight panel very happy!

Discover more about threading text in InDesign efficiently through your InDesign documents, and how to create a book in InDesign. Looking for more tutorials and tips? Head on over to our InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Secret: How to Get Rid of Excessive Overset Text appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• Why you should proof your InDesign documents

• How you can use the Preflight panel to perform a technical proof of your work

1. Why do I need to proof my InDesign work?

It’s amazing how many errors can become glaringly obvious on a printed document, compared to just glancing over it when it’s up on screen. But sadly there’s no ‘Undo’ button when your printed items get delivered. Proofing your InDesign work before you send it to print is an essential step in minimizing the number of errors, both in terms of content and on a technical level.

Before you even look into performing a Preflight, which we’ll take a more in-depth look at here, you should check for spelling errors by conducting a spell check. You can also get some more stats about the text content in your document by seeing what you can find out from the Info panel.

OK, so what is Preflight? It sounds like something you might have to do before an aircraft takes off, and it is really the same idea, but instead for preparing a design document to ‘take off’ from the screen to go to the printing press.

Before you can export your InDesign document to a print-ready format, you need to make sure that everything is going to print in the way that you want it to. The Preflight panel is going to flag up any technical issues that might cause a problem when you want to package your InDesign file, export it, or send it to a printer.

2. How do I perform a ‘Preflight’?

Preflight is an essential part of the InDesign proof process, and is especially important for addressing technical errors, like missing images, missing fonts or overset text.

Let’s see the Preflight panel in action…

…Here we have an open InDesign document. And at first glance, all looks fine. But then, if I take a look down at the bottom left of the screen, I notice a little red circle, next to some text reading ‘3 errors’. As long as there is a red circle here, this means that there are errors in the document that need to be addressed before I send the document to print.

If I double-click on the red circle, I will open up the Preflight panel. You can also access the Preflight panel from the top menu, under Window > Output > Preflight.

First up, at the top left of the panel you can see a check box for turning Preflight On and Off. As a rule, you should always have Preflight set to On. This means that InDesign will actively flag up technical errors as you work, and update them to ‘No errors’ as you resolve them.

In the main part of the panel is the Error window. In this window, Preflight lists the errors it’s found, and categorises them into different groups. At the top here, there’s one Links error, for example.

If I click on the grey arrow to the left of the text, the error message expands, to reveal it’s a missing link. Clicking the grey arrow again the name of the missing link is revealed. If you double-click the name of the link, InDesign will take you directly to it in your document. Handy!

Click to select the name of the link in the Preflight panel, then expand the Info window at the bottom of the panel. InDesign is trying to help you out here, so it tells you what the specific problem is, and how you can resolve it.

It’s telling me to head over to the Links panel and use the Relink button to find the missing file. With the missing link highlighted – it will be flagged up with a red question mark if missing – I click on the Relink button, symbolised by a chain link, at the bottom of the top section of the Links panel.

From here, I can track down the missing link, and click Open to relink it. Find out more about working with images in InDesign here.

That’s the missing link resolved, and I can see in the Preflight panel that the missing link error has vanished, and I’m left now with just two errors to deal with.

These remaining errors are something to do with Text, and I can find out more by again clicking the grey arrows to reveal the specific error, and then the specific location of the text error. What we’ve got here is two instances of overset text, where text is overspilling a text frame.

If I double-click on the ‘Text Frame’ name, I’m taken directly to the text frame with the overset text.

I then take my cursor and drag the frame down to extend it, until the text error disappears from the Preflight panel.

After resolving all the errors flagged up in the Preflight panel, the Preflight circle turns green and a message comes up at the bottom of the panel reading ‘No errors’. That’s when you know your Preflight is complete, and you’re ready to prepare your document to send to print.

The Preflight panel is a simple, one-stop solution for addressing technical errors in your InDesign layouts. Taking just 5 minutes to run a Preflight before you prepare your document for sending to a colleague or sending to print will make a huge difference to the final quality of your work. And you won’t be biting your nails when that print delivery box arrives!

Click to find out more about conducting a spell check of your InDesign work and how to add a bleed to your print designs. Looking for more tutorials and tips? Head on over to our InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Basics: Proof your InDesign work with Preflight appeared first on InDesignSkills.

Consider everything listed here and in Part One, and there’s no need to fear sending your work to the press. Here in Part Two we’ll take you through:

• Why you should export to ‘Reader’s Spreads’

• How to accommodate for trimming and binding

• Choosing paper weights and finishes

• How to export and package your InDesign work

• Asking for a proof and providing a mock-up

• How to pick the right printing method for the job

1. Why you should export to ‘Reader’s Spreads’, not ‘Printer’s Spreads’

If you’re creating a document with multiple pages, such as a book, for sending to print, you might notice from existing examples of printed books that a page in the first chapter of a book is often physically connected to a page in the last chapter, forming a single spread.

The printed book has been put together by the printer using ‘Printer’s Spreads’. This is when the printer rearranges the order of the pages in order for the book to be bound.

Your job, however, is not to export your ‘print-ready’ file set up as Printer’s Spreads. It’s much simpler, both for you and the printer, if you set up your document as ‘Reader’s Spreads’, i.e. how the reader would actually view the document, page 1, then page 2, then page 3 etc.

Let the printer do their job (they’re pretty good at it, after all) – they will be able to arrange your print-ready file in the way that will work best for them to print and bind.

As a bonus, you’ll spare everyone a whole load of confusion at the press when you try to explain why page 2 is sat opposite page 15 (even more confusing if you haven’t included page numbers on your design!). This little parrot is just really confused about your attempt at Printer’s Spreads…

So don’t even go there – just export the file in the same page order that you’ve been working on in InDesign.

You should also include any blank pages that feature in your multi-page document, whether it’s a few pages at the beginning of a book, or the reverse side of some pages in an annual report. Sure, they don’t contain anything that needs to be actually printed, but including them in your exported file will help your printer understand the structure of the document, and accommodate for any blank pages you want included in the final print product.

2. Accommodate for trimming and binding

Once your design is printed, it will be trimmed. The excess parts of the paper (including the Slug and Bleed) will be cut away, leaving your final layout intact, up to the trim edge.

You should be aware that trimming errors can and do happen (printers are only human after all), but you can minimise the visibility of any slight trimming errors by doing two things. Firstly, as we mentioned over in Part One, you should include a Bleed.

A bleed is an extra space around the perimeter of your layout that extends past the edge of the page(s). You should always include a bleed if any elements (e.g. images, colored backgrounds) on your layout will cross the edge of the page (also known as the trim edge).

The second thing you can do to minimise trimming errors is to make your Margins lovely and wide. Margins that are narrow will appear even more narrow if the trim is out by a millimetre or two. So make sure you give your document generous margins (at least as wide as the InDesign default width of 12.7 mm). If in doubt, make them wider – while also minimising the visibility of a poor trim job, wide margins will also give your layouts room to breathe and make them look instantly more attractive.

3. Choose the right paper weight and finish

When you first start to draft your design on the computer, consider what sort of material your design will be printed on. Different paper weights and finishes can dramatically effect your final print result, and you should have a good idea of the sort of ‘look’ you’d like to achieve before you commit the work to print.

Design by Rita Neves

Firstly, you should choose a suitable Paper Weight (and I don’t mean a nice weighty stone that keeps your desk papers together). Paper comes in a large range of different ‘weights’, measured in GSM (Grams per Square Meter), which will effect how thick the paper feels. Thicker papers tend to be of better quality (and are therefore usually more expensive). You should feel confident selecting an appropriate paper weight that’s going to suit the item you’re printing (and your budget!).

Here are our recommendations for paper weights:

• If you are printing a newspaper a low GSM would be suitable, something between 35 and 55 GSM.
• Flyers or low-market brochures might need a slightly heavier paper, around 110 to 160 GSM.
• Magazine covers tend to be on the heavier side, from around 180 GSM for a mid-market title, edging up to over 250 GSM for a high-end glossy.
• For a sturdier card weight, like a business card, you should be looking at upwards of 350 GSM to give a luxurious, weighty feel.

You also should know a bit about Paper Finishes. Your printer will ask you to provide a combination of paper specifications for the job – your desired weight and finish. Finishes fall into two main categories – Coated and Uncoated.

Uncoated paper is a suitable choice for printing letterhead, stationery or lower-quality leaflets and flyers. The feel of the finish is smoother and stronger than standard copy paper.

Coated paper falls into two sub-groups – matte-coated and gloss-coated. Matte-coated gives a smooth, unglossy finish and can give your print documents a modern, pared-back look. Gloss-coated paper is smooth and with a slightly reflective finish, giving your documents a glossy, high-end look. Because the ink sits on the surface of the coating, rather than absorbing into the paper, colors appear more vibrant and rich.

This parrot would love to be printed on gloss-coated paper if possible:

4. Exporting and Packaging your InDesign files

Once you’ve completed your InDesign work, and feel ready to go to print, you can export your design as a print-ready file. In theory this print-ready file is suitable for going straight to press.

It’s a wise idea to get in touch with the printer first and see if they have a preferred format for print-ready files. Most printers would probably prefer a Press Quality PDF (Portable Document Format) version of your design, but they might also accept files in other CMYK-compatible formats, such as high-resolution (minimum 300 dpi) JPEG or TIFF files.

To export your InDesign document, go to File > Export on the main menu and choose Adobe PDF (Print) from the Format drop-down menu in the Export window.

In the Export Adobe PDF window that opens, choose [Press Quality] from the Adobe PDF Preset menu.

You should also make sure to export your print-ready file with the Bleed included. If you’re exporting to a PDF format, you can check the option in the Export window to include a bleed.

You can also choose to include Printer’s Marks in your exported print-ready file, which includes trim and crop marks, center marks, and page information. These can be really useful to the printer when preparing your work for the press.

If your printer has requested the original InDesign, or ‘native’, files, this is because this gives the printer the freedom to re-export the file if they need to make any minor technical adjustments. You will need to Package your InDesign file before you send it. Check out this quick and simple tutorial on how to package your files.

5. Provide a mock-up and ask for a print proof

You can’t expect your printer to be a mind-reader; they can only work from what they have been given, in terms of the print-ready or native (e.g. InDesign, Photoshop etc.) files, as well as from your instructions given over email, phone or face-to-face in person. Before you commit to the print run, there are two things you can do that will really help your printer to complete the job in the way you want it to.

The first thing you can do is to create a physical mock-up of the document you are sending to print and share this with your printer. This is especially useful if your document has multiple pages or complicated elements like folds and die cuts, that might not be immediately obvious looking at the print-ready digital file only.

There’s no problem with your mock-up being a bit rough-and-ready, printed at home or at the office – just make sure it shows the final layout of the document clearly, and be sure to incorporate essential info like page numbers, for example. It might also be useful to indicate where pages should be printed on one side or both sides.

Once you’ve shared you mock-up with the printer, and handed over your print-ready file(s), ask if the printer can give you a professional print proof for checking and sign-off, before proceeding with the full print-run. Most printers will offer a proof at no extra cost to the agreed quote for the full print run, and you’d be amazed at how many errors and mistakes can be suddenly glaringly obvious when down on printed paper! Rectify the file if you need to, get a second proof if you have the time, and give the go-ahead for the full print-run only when you’re happy.

6. Pick the right printing method for the job!

Before you select the printer you’re going to use to print your designs, you should know a little about the main print services commercial printers use. The print process can differ depending on the printer, with some championing more traditional offset printing and others singing the praises of digital printing. Commercial printers generally fall into two camps (though some offer both services): Digital Printing or Offset Litho Printing.

Offset printing is a very common commercial printing process, suitable for high volumes. The image to be printed is burned onto a plate and then transferred (offset) from the plate to a rubber blanket, before transferring to the printing surface. Image quality in offset printing is high and the process is cost-efficient at high volumes, so it’s a popular and usually pretty safe choice.

Digital printing is less mechanical, so it takes less time to prepare for printing. As a result, turn-around times for print jobs are quicker, and printing at low-volumes is also better-value. The jury’s still out on whether image quality is quite as good as that offered by the offset printing process.

Either printing method could be suitable for your job, depending on your project’s requirements. Shop around your local area and check out what different printers are offering, in terms of price and quality, for each print method.

7. You’re ready to print…

…In this two-part tutorial (find Part One here) we’ve taken a look at some of the key things you need to think about when preparing your InDesign documents for print. Use the following as your essential checklist when you prepare and send an InDesign document for print.

• Remember to include a Bleed in your InDesign document
• Optimise colour for printing by using CMYK (and Spot Colours) only
• Check the legibility of type by printing a sample and asking others to read it
• Ensure all the images used in your design are high-resolution (more than 300 DPI)
• Export your InDesign file as ‘Reader’s Spreads’
• Accommodate for trimming errors by including a Bleed and increasing the width of margins
•  Think about which paper weight and finish will suit your print project
• Export and package your InDesign work ready for sending to the printer
• Provide the printer with a mock-up for multi-page or folded documents and ask for a print proof
• Pick the right printing method for the job (Digital or Offset Litho)

If you check off every item in this list you’re guaranteed to have no nasty shocks when the printer drops off that delivery box. And you’ll make this colourful, print-friendly macaw very, very happy…

Check out Part One of this tutorial to find out more about preparing your InDesign work for print. For more handy InDesign tips and tricks head over to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post How to Prepare Your InDesign Work for Print: Part 2 of 2 appeared first on InDesignSkills.

But there’s no need to panic! We’ll take you through the only checklist you’ll ever need for preparing and sending any InDesign document to print. In the first part of this two-part tutorial we’ll look at:

• Why you should never forget about the Bleed!

• How to optimise colour for printing

• How to maximise the legibility of text

• How to print your images at the highest quality possible

Check out Part Two of this tutorial to find out about exporting your work to ‘Reader’s Spreads‘, choosing paper weights and finishes and selecting the right printing method for the job.

1. Don’t forget the Bleed!

It’s a printer’s worst (and without a doubt most common) nightmare – receiving a ‘print-ready’ file from a customer that doesn’t have a bleed. Don’t be that customer!

Be nice to your friendly neighbourhood printer and be sure to include a bleed (and export it) when you set up your document on the computer.

Familiarise yourself with what a bleed is, how to set one up on your InDesign work, and how to export your print-ready file with a bleed included, by clicking here.

2. Optimise your colour for print

Every macaw worth his salt knows that colour is at the heart of the print process.

A combination of coloured inks (even if your document is only in black and white) creates your printed result. Get familiar with the main rules for printing colour, and you’ll feel much more confident about creating layouts that look as good on printed paper as they do on your computer screen.

First up, always remember to render your InDesign work in CMYK, not RGB.

You should (almost; see comments on Spot Colors below) always set colour in your print layouts in a CMYK colour mode. CMYK refers to the four inks that are used in four-color printing, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Black). Each colour in your design will be printed using a combination of these four inks.

You should never set your print documents in an RGB color mode (even if you’ve been working in an RGB file, make sure to convert the file on export to CMYK). RGB (which is rendered through interaction of Red, Green and Blue light) is only suitable for layouts that will be viewed online or in digital format on screen.

Though you will almost always print using CMYK, you should also be aware of when it’s appropriate to include Spot Colours in your print-ready files. Spot, sometimes termed ‘Solid’, colors, are created by an ink, either pure or mixed, that is printed on a single print run.

What this means is that if you choose to include a Spot color (e.g. a Pantone color, or metallic or fluorescent inks) in your print design, the printer will have to prepare a completely separate plate for the spot color to be printed.

Including Spot colours in your artwork can have its advantages – the final colour result is often much more accurate (more spot-on!), with less colour variation. On larger print runs using Spot colours can even be more economical (if you’re dealing with three or less than three colors). However, on short print runs including Spot colors in your designs can be pricey; make sure you get a quote from your printer before you incorporate a Spot color into your design.

3. Maximise the legibility of text

This parrot doesn’t have fantastic eyesight.

He struggles to read text set at a small 10 pt size, and he’s certainly not alone. Even if your eyesight is fantastic, others may struggle to read small-size text without some difficulty.

What this ill-sighted parrot demonstrates is that you must aim to get your text sizing right! A common issue you may encounter when sending your work to print is that the size of text appears too big or too small. Type Size is really important to get right, as illegible documents, however good-looking, will be immediately off-putting to a reader.

Also consider choosing appropriate font sizing to suit both the document type and the audience for the document. Who will be reading my brochure/poster/book? Will they be expected to spend more time reading it (e.g. a book layout) or will it only be attracting a quick glance (e.g. a flyer or poster)?

If you’re creating layouts for a book, it’s probably OK to size type a little on the smaller side (pick up some tips on how to create book layouts in InDesign with this tutorial), but you might need to amp up the size of text on a flyer, to make sure you catch and hold the attention of a casual reader.

The best way to make sure you’re using the right font size is to print out a sample of the layout at actual size, and ask a few colleagues or (patient) friends to look it over. How many people in your sample found the size OK to read? If fewer than 90% of your sample had difficulty with the type size, change it!

Related to the size of text, and equally important, is also the Weight of the typeface – is it too thin and faint when printed? Do you need to set that sentence in Bold to make it stand out? Can you draw the eye to something important or different by applying an Italic weight, for example?

4. Ensure your graphics are printed in high-resolution

Every macaw (and I mean every macaw) wants their photos to be printed in crisp and clear high-resolution. Including these two. They’ll get pretty angry otherwise…

If you’re including graphics in your print layout, whether that’s photos or illustrations, you have to make sure they are of high enough resolution to print. Low-resolution images produce blurry, pixelated print results. High-resolution graphics, by contrast, will look sharp and clear when you go to the printing press.

You should be aware from the start, when you begin to put together your layouts in InDesign, that different image formats can appear very different on the printed page.

Photographs often cause the most misery when producing print layouts – this is because they are Bitmap graphics, not vectors. Bitmap graphics (e.g. JPEG, TIFF, PNG, PSD) are made up of a number of tiny pixels. If you resize a bitmap graphic, and then resave it, some of the quality of the original image can be lost (particularly problematic with JPEG images), which results in a more pixelated image. You should make sure that your bitmap images have a high rate of DPI (see comments on DPI below) before you include them in your print designs.

Vector graphics, like Illustrator (AI) and EPS file formats, are made up of scalable objects, and as a result will not lose their quality if resized.

The final word on image format is as long as the quality of the image(s) is high (the DPI is high [more than 300 DPI as a rough guide]), there’s no reason why both bitmap and vector graphics can’t work equally well in your print layouts.

You must also learn to recognise the difference between image size and image quality. Say a colleague or client has sent over a JPEG image that they want you to use in your design, and from what you can see, the file size is OK – between 3 and 5 MB. But then you open up the file and see that the image appears pixelated and, frankly, a bit rubbish. What gives?

The picture of the parrot on the left is the same file size as the image of the parrot on the right, but the DPI for the left-hand image is higher, which results in a crisper, clearer image.

Even though the file size of the image is usually a good indicator of quality, the quality of a bitmap image is not determined by the size of the file, or even the dimensions of the image. Quality is determined by DPI (Dots per Inch). DPI describes the resolution number of dots per inch that make up the colors and tones of an image.

You should always aim for a high DPI count for any image you’re hoping to use in a print layout. If your options are exhausted, and you have to use a slightly blurry or pixelated image, with a lower DPI, consider first upping the DPI manually in Photoshop and then setting it a reduced scale in your design. Remember that pixelation and blurring will appear much more obvious on the printed page than it will on screen.

Check out Part Two of this tutorial to find out more about preparing, exporting and sending your InDesign work to print. For more useful InDesign tips and tricks pay a visit to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post How to Prepare Your InDesign Work for Print: Part 1 of 2 appeared first on InDesignSkills.

Here, we’ll give you an overview of:

• What ‘Rich Black’ is and why you should use it for your print designs

• How to create a ‘Rich Black’ and adjust it for warmer or cooler tones

1. Why Does My ‘Black’ Look Washed Out?

You’ll notice that InDesign provides you with a default [Black] swatch in the Swatches panel (Window > Color > Swatches) when you create any new print document.

You’ll also notice that when you colour text or other elements in your InDesign document with this [Black] CMYK swatch and send the document to print, that the result can come out looking…well…a little more grey than black.

This is because the default [Black] swatch provided in the Swatches panel isn’t actually a true black at all – it’s just 100% of the Key (Black) pigment from the CMYK spectrum, and O% of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow.

Nobody wants their blacks to look less than dark, dramatic and high-contrast! Sorry, grey cat…

To remedy your washed-out black, you need to create a New CMYK Swatch, something printers and industry-insiders know as a ‘Rich Black’.

A Rich Black is a much darker, truer black that looks like the depths of space, the dead of night, or indeed this very black cat…

2. How Do I Create a ‘Rich Black’?

To create a Rich Black, you simply need to increase the levels of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow when you create a new CMYK swatch, and keep the level of Key (Black) at a level of 100%.

To create a new CMYK Swatch, open up the Swatches panel (Window > Color > Swatches) and click to select one of the existing color swatches (any will do). Click on the New Swatch icon at the bottom of the panel, or select New Color Swatch… from the panel’s drop-down menu.

In the Create New Swatch window, first up the level of K to 100%.

Now you have to decide what kind of Rich Black you want to create. That’s right – there’s no single set value for a Rich Black swatch. You can create a warmer or cooler Rich Black depending on the levels you set for Yellow (warmer) and Cyan (cooler).

Try out these different Rich Black settings to create different subtle tones in your printed result:

• Cool Rich Black: C=60 M=50 Y=40 K=100
• Warm Rich Black: C=40 M=60 Y=60 K=100

Different printers will often have different preferences for processing Rich Black. So if you’re still unsure what to use, just get in touch with your printer and ask after their recommendation for CMYK levels of Rich Black.

3. OK…That’s simple enough. Anything else I should know?

Yes! You should never use the [Registration] swatch provided in the InDesign Swatches panel as a substitute for black.

Why? Because [Registration] is 100% of everything – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key – and will cause a lot of problems for printing if you use it on your finished document.

The [Registration] swatch is only used on Registration Marks, which are visible when you export your InDesign document as a print-ready PDF file.

Stick with a Rich Black, and you’ll be sure to create darkly dramatic, high-contrast print results every time! Look how happy this cat is now that he knows you’ll be able to print text and graphics in a lovely true black color…

Find out more about understanding and working with colour in InDesign and how to prepare your documents for print by adding a Bleed to your print designs.

To discover more handy InDesign tips and tutorials head over to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Tips: How Do I Print True Black? appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• How you can use the Info panel in InDesign to conduct a word-count

• How you can find out other information about your InDesign document using the Info panel

1. What is the Info panel?

The Info panel is going to give you a lot of info about your document, unsurprisingly…

…Let’s get the panel opened up. To do this, go to the Window option on the menu bar and select Info from the drop-down menu.

It’s about a third of the way down. Or, you could just tap F8 on the keyboard to open it up.

So here it is – the Info panel.

It’s a tiny little panel but it’s quite powerful, and from this you can do a number of useful tasks to do with text, which can be particularly useful if you’re working with a text-heavy document like a book or a magazine, and you might need to check some details either to pass on to a colleague or to the publisher. 

2. How Do I Use the Info panel?

You can conduct a word-count, a character-count, a paragraph-count and also a line-count from the Info panel.

At the moment, the panel’s looking a bit empty, but that’s because you’ve not got any of the text in the document selected.

Let’s just show you how the Info panel works. To demonstrate, I’m going to navigate to the first page of a magazine document in InDesign (Learn how to create a magazine from scratch with our series of tutorials here).

Select the Type Tool from the Tools panel (or hit T on the keyboard). You can either highlight the text in a text frame, or if you just want to make a count of all the text that’s sat in the text frame, and might be linked to other text frames, you can just simply sit your cursor somewhere in the text in the frame.

So here I click once into the ‘Fresh Autumn Flavors!’ sub-heading, and the Info panel pauses for a moment before the lower half of the panel fills with information about the text in that frame. The Info panel’s telling us that there are 21 characters in this frame, 3 words, 3 lines, and 2 paragraphs.

So that may not be so useful if you’re just looking at a sub-heading, but if we want to find out the word count of a much larger piece of text that can be much more useful.

Now if I take our Type cursor and just highlight all the text in the first column on this page of the magazine document, beginning with the text ‘JO JAN travels to Maine…’, we will just get text counts for the highlighted text only appearing in the Info panel.

In this first column we’ve got about 140 words, and 3 paragraphs.

But if we just place the cursor anywhere in that text frame, or in one of the text frames it’s connected to, we’ll get a full text count for all the text that sits in those linked frames, and it will include text that’s flowing over onto other pages as well. Here we can tell that the article has 837 words, for example. 

Now imagine if you’ve got a scenario where you need to be keeping within a specified word count for a long document, like a book, for example. Just by placing your Type cursor in one of the text frames in the document and opening the Info panel, you’re equipped to find out the total word count of the document instantly (depending on whether all the text frames are successfully threaded to each other).

The Info panel is a useful little InDesign function to be aware of. It can be especially useful when you come to the editing stages of a text-heavy document – it’s good to know that you can retrieve quite a bit of detail about the quantity of text by simply going to Window > Info.

Click to find out more about creating InDesign documents or How to add a bleed to your print designs. To find more useful InDesign tips and tricks pay a visit to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Basics: How to Conduct a Word-Count appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• The basics of color theory, including the three main color models – RGB, CMYK and Spot Color
• How you can change and manage InDesign’s color mode

1. What is RGB Color and When Do I Use It?

‘RGB’ stands for Red, Green and Blue. RGB color is rendered through the emission of light from the screen of a digital device.

The light generated by your device’s screen, so whether that’s a desktop or laptop computer, a tablet, or an eBook reader, is made up of red, blue and green light, which combine in different ways to create different colors.

Because RGB color is created via colored light, not colored ink, it is optimised for digital and web design, not print design. So, you should only be looking to use an RGB Color Mode when creating designs for digital publishing (e.g. eBooks) or for online use (e.g. web banners).

Skip to the end of the page to find out how you can adjust InDesign’s Color Mode…

2. What is CMYK Color and When Do I Use It?

CMYK color is very different to RGB color, as CMYK is based on a combination of coloured inks, not light.

‘CMYK’ stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (which is Black). These four colours are the base inks which can be combined to create a huge spectrum of different colors.

Because CMYK is based on a combination of colored inks, it’s ideally suited for creating documents for print.

So basically, whenever you’re working on a document you think at some point will be printed in some way or another, whether that’s at home, in-office or through a commercial printer, you should always be working in a CMYK Colour Mode.

When you set colours in your InDesign document to CMYK color swatches, you create a Process Separation. What does this mean? This means that all the CMYK colours on your layout will be printed onto one plate during the printing process, in one single print run. Because CMYK color can be printed in one go, on a single print run, this keeps the printing process efficient and the cost of the print job low (depending on the print volume).

3. What is a ‘Spot’ Color and When Do I Use It?

What can be mind-boggling is that CMYK is not the only type of colour model that is suitable for printing. You can also use something called Spot Colors in your print designs.

OK…so what’s a Spot Color? When you define a color in your InDesign document as a Spot Color, the color will be pulled onto a separate printing plate and the color will have to be printed during a separate print run. This is called a Spot Separation.

So, when would you want to use a Spot Color?

This can be useful if you want to ensure that a particular color is going to be printed very accurately, without any variation, and if this is what you’d like to achieve you can set the Spot Color as a Pantone Color.

Pantone is an international color-matching system, that gives standardised colour pigments a unique number. Pantone colours are more complex than CMYK colors, and can be made up from a combination of 13, rather than only 4 (for CMYK), base pigments. As a result you can source more unique and special colors from the Pantone catalogue.

You can also use a Spot Color in your designs when you want to print a special kind of ink, like metallics or flourescents, which don’t feature in the range of CMYK options.

4. OK…But When Should I Use CMYK and/or Spot Colors in InDesign?

Let’s simplify the CMYK and Spot Color systems, and break down when you would use either of the models or a combination of both on your InDesign work…

…If you’re creating an InDesign layout that uses more than three colours you shouldn’t normally need to use any Spot Color, unless like we’ve just talked about, if you want to create a particularly special color effect with a Pantone, metallic or fluorescent. In most cases, you should be looking at just setting your color in CMYK.

This is because the printer would have to perform a separate, additional print run for each Spot Color you apply to the document. This adds time and money to the print job. So if you’re creating something in full-color, you can feel confident that setting your whole document in CMYK is the best way to go.

If you do want to use a Spot Color in your design and keep your printing costs down, the best thing to do is create a black and white document which just uses one single pop of color, which you can set as a Spot Color. And because you’re not printing a full-color layout, that’s going to keep the print job more economical, particularly if you’re printing in large volumes.

If you’re still feeling a little confused about color – that’s OK, it is a bit confusing – just remember that 9 times out of 10 CMYK color is the way to go!

And the other key thing to remember is that you should never print in RGB color, unless you want some very unpredictable results. And you should only really need to use Spot Colors in special instances.

5. How Do I Adjust the Color Mode in InDesign?

When you first create a new document in InDesign, you can adjust the Color Mode of the document by setting the Intent of the document to Print (CMYK), Web (RGB) or Digital Publishing (RGB).

By choosing Print from the Intent drop-down menu, InDesign automatically sets the Color Mode of the new document to CMYK. All the default colours stored in the Swatches panel are set as CMYK Color Swatches.

However, this doesn’t actually prevent you from creating new Color Swatches that are RGB (not suitable if you’re creating for print) or Spot Color (can be OK, depending on your desired print result) swatches, or prevent you from placing graphics into your InDesign document that have an RGB colorspace.

As you work on your print documents you need to keep an eye out that you’re sticking to CMYK colours. And the best way to do this is to manage colour in InDesign, which you can do from the Swatches panel (Window > Color > Swatches).

Click to find out more about creating InDesign documents or How to add a bleed to your print designs. To find more useful InDesign tips and tricks pay a visit to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Basics: The Beginner’s Guide to Color appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• How you can use the Page Tool to create custom page sizes as you work
• How the Liquid Layout function can keep the content of your page proportional
• How Master pages can help you achieve easy-peasy page size changes in your InDesign document

1. Meet your new best friend…the Page Tool

You probably already know how to create a new InDesign document which shares the same page size and orientation throughout. But what happens when you want to resize a single page to, say, provide a pull-out section in the middle of a book? Or you want to rotate a page to allow the viewer to read a single page in landscape, rather than portrait, format?

This is where the Page Tool (Shift + P) comes in handy. The Page Tool (Shift + P) is a really useful little tool that you can find in the Tools panel.

Up near the top of the Tools panel, just the third option down, is the Page Tool. It looks like a white rectangle with a small cursor at the corner. 

Click the Page Tool to activate it. Now, here we have a few pages from this layout for Foodie Magazine, just to demonstrate. Now, let’s say the printer has been in touch with me, and wants the back cover of the magazine to be slightly larger than the inside pages of the magazine. This seems pretty unlikely, unless we were going to be creating a hard-bound cover, but let’s just take this as an example.

With the Page Tool selected I then click onto the back cover page to tell the Page Tool that this is the page we want to resize. Small white extension marks have appeared around the edge of the page.

To resize the page, I need to navigate up to the controls panel running along the top of the workspace. You’ll notice that some new options have appeared. We’ve got some text boxes where we can manually type in a revised Width and/or Height measurement for the page. So you can resize using that method, if you want to create a non-standard size for the page.

To the right of the Height and Width text boxes you can also access a drop-down menu of standard page sizes. So we can adjust the page size to something like A3 or Letter, or we can select a pre-saved Custom Page Size from the options towards the top of the menu if we scroll upwards.

Let’s set a custom Width and Height, adding 2 mm to the size on all sides. So I can type in 214 mm for the Width and 301 mm for the Height.

And we are also given the option to adjust the orientation of the page, from the Landscape and Portrait icons to the right of the standard page size drop-down menu.

And then, when we’re happy with the revised size of the page we can go back to the usual Selection Tool, by clicking the top black cursor in the Tools panel, and begin to reshuffle and resize the content on the page to fit the page’s new dimensions.

2. Hmm…OK…but how do I keep the content on the page proportional?

Well that’s all fine I guess…but isn’t there a more efficient way of reorganising your page’s content once you’ve resized something?

Well, the answer is yes – there’s this nifty feature called Liquid Layout, which arranges the content on the page according to how you resize it, and to what orientation you set the page to.

We can see a very reduced option for applying Liquid Layout from this top control panel, but let’s open up the full Liquid Layout panel, so we can take a really good look. Go to Window > Interactive > Liquid Layout.

You’ll notice that this panel is greyed out whenever we don’t have the Page Tool selected. Keep the Page Tool selected in order to use Liquid Layout.

The default Liquid Layout Rule is called Controlled by Master. That means that whatever Rule has been applied to a Master, will be applied in turn to the page or pages that Master is applied to.

From the Pages panel I can see that this back cover page has a Master called ‘E-Back Cover’ applied to it. So let’s double-click that Master page to bring it up on screen.

When I select the E-Master with the Page Tool, the Liquid Layout panel tells me that the Liquid Layout Rule is set to Off. So this means when I resize any page with the E-Master applied to it, nothing will happen to the content on the page.

But if I return to the Master and adjust the Liquid Layout Rule to Re-center, for example, you’ll see that I can now the content of the page remains centered on the page as I resize.

If I choose Scale as the Liquid Layout Rule for the Master, the content will resize, and scale up or down uniformly, as you resize the page.

Note: If I want to permanently change the size of the page I have to hold down the Alt key while I resize. If I don’t the page will just snap back to size.

Pretty neat. This is particularly useful when you have a lot of carefully prepared content on your page, and you don’t want to lose the proportions. 

And that’s how you resize pages in your InDesign documents using the Page Tool. The rule of thumb is:

• If your page is blank or has very little content, you can just resize using the options available in the Controls Panel at the top of the InDesign Workspace.

• If your page is content-heavy, open the Liquid Layout panel (Window > Interactive > Liquid Layout); set the Rule of the page to Controlled by Master, and adjust the Master’s Liquid Layout Rule to one of the following options: Scale, Re-center, Object-Based, or Guide-Based, depending on how you want your content to adjust on the page that has that Master applied to it. This will keep give you much more control over the arrangement of elements on the page.

Using the Page Tool, and becoming familiar with the Liquid Layout function, in InDesign can really transform the way you approach designing and editing documents. They allow you to be flexible in your work, accommodating changes to page size and orientation without having to rethink the whole layout of the page from scratch.

To find out more about pages and Masters InDesign, check out our detailed look at the Pages panel here. To find more useful InDesign tips and tricks pay a visit to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Basics: How Do I Change the Size of a Page in My Document? appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• What the heck is a Bleed??
• When do I need to use a Bleed?
• How do I add a Bleed to my InDesign document?
• How do I export my document, including the Bleed?

1. So…what exactly is a Bleed?

This is a really common question, so don’t worry if you don’t know (or think you know, but aren’t completely sure!).

A Bleed is the area just extending past the edge of the page, past the trim edge. So here in this diagram you can see the edge of the bleed marked out skirting around the outer edge of the page.

A Bleed acts as a margin of error when the document is trimmed, after it’s been printed. So, if you have any content that will cross the edge of the page, such as a coloured background or maybe an image, you should extend it into the bleed to avoid any white lines appearing around the edge of your document. Printers are human after all – trimming errors can happen, and they are just an inevitable part of the print process. This could just be a tiny millimetre-wide margin of error, but if you don’t extend your content into a bleed, it will still be visible.

By including a bleed in your InDesign documents you can help to make your final print product look flawless, and minimise the visibility of any trimming errors.

2. When do I need to use a Bleed?

A Bleed is essential to include if you’re creating any document for print. The rule for applying a bleed in InDesign is as follows:

If you’re creating a single page document you can set a bleed all the way around the document.

But if you’re creating a document with facing pages, that’s going to be bound, like a book, you don’t need to include a bleed on the inside edge. Firstly, because nobody’s going to see it, as the page edge will be sucked into the bind, and second, because if you export the InDesign document as a spread (not as single pages), the bleeds on the inside edges (the inside is the edge of the page that will be bound) will cross onto the opposite page, which is unsightly, like in the example below.

This magazine spread was mistakenly set up with a 5 mm bleed on the Inside Edge, but on exporting the spread as a PDF, it becomes apparent that the content of the inside bleed has spilled onto each opposing page. You can see that the image of the fish has crossed the central page divider, and spilled into the image of the boats.

If you’re creating a document made up of facing pages, that you’re intending to bind, be sure to set the bleed on the Top, Bottom and Outside edges only. We’ll take a look at how you can set up your bleed in InDesign next.

3. Add a Bleed to your InDesign document

It’s best to set up your InDesign document with a bleed before you start working on your document. You can add a bleed later, by going to File > Document Setup, but it can be fiddly as InDesign will only apply your revised settings to the pages you currently have selected.

The best place to start is right at the beginning of the process, in the New Document window. When you go to File > New > Document to create a new InDesign document (or select New > Document from the Welcome window), the option to apply a bleed to your document is down at the bottom of the New Document window, just above Slug.

In this example, I want to create the inside pages for a paperback book. Because the pages are going to be bound in the center of each spread, I won’t need a bleed on the Inside edge.

I type in 3 mm into the Top Bleed text box, then click the chain icon at the far right of the Outside text box to break the uniform values, and get rid of the bleed on the Inside edge, reducing it to 0 mm. Once I’ve set up the rest of my document I can close the panel and create the new document by clicking OK.

4. Export your InDesign document with a Bleed

Once you’ve finished your InDesign artwork and are ready to export it to a print-ready format, you should ensure that your beautiful bleed is exported along with the rest of the document.

The best way to prepare a print-ready file is to export the document as a PDF. Go to File > Export and select Adobe PDF (Print) from the drop-down menu in the Export window.

Click Save.

In the Export Adobe PDF window, under the General options, select [Press Quality] from the Adobe PDF Preset drop-down menu.

From the menu on the left-hand side of the window select Marks and Bleeds to open up a new set of options.

Under Marks, check All Printer’s Marks.

To ensure your carefully prepared bleed is included in the final exported file, check Use Document Bleed Settings under Bleed and Slug.

Click Export at the bottom right corner of the window to create your PDF file. Your file will now include your predefined bleed, and is ready to send to the printers.

Adding a bleed to your InDesign documents is essential when creating documents that will be printed professionally. Avoid unsightly trim errors (or even worse a lecture from your disgruntled printer!) by being sure to include a bleed in all your InDesign work. To find out more about setting up documents in InDesign, check out our detailed look at the New Document panel here. To find more useful InDesign tips and tricks pay a visit to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Basics: What is a Bleed and When Do I Use It? appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• Why packaging your InDesign work is an important step after proofing and Preflight

• How to Package your InDesign file

Why should I package my InDesign files?

If you want to send your InDesign document to a colleague, client or to the printers, you should ‘package’ the file so that all the linked elements in your document are retrieved and contained in a ready-to-send folder.

It’s a common error to send on your unpackaged InDesign file via email, large file transfer or USB. The recipient will be able to open and view the file, but the linked images will flag up as missing in the Links panel. Unless the recipient also has all the relevant fonts installed on their computer, the fonts you carefully applied in your original document will also be listed as missing, and will be replaced with a temporary alternative font in InDesign.

This is frustrating for both you and the recipient and may even result in erroneous changes being made to your document. Let’s look at how you can Package your InDesign work and prevent a headache!

Step 1: Proof and Preflight

I’ve prepared the artwork for a magazine cover, in InDesign, for the next issue of Foodie Magazine. Learn how to design layouts for the magazine with our fun series of tutorials.

I first check the document for errors (check out how to perform a Spell Check on your document here) and perform a Preflight (Window > Output > Preflight); then save the file (File > Save) once I’m happy.

Then I go up to File > Package.

Step 2: Check for Errors

The Package options window opens. To the left of the window there is a list of options.

Navigate down through the options and check the box that says Show Problems Only for each option. So here, under Fonts we have no problems. Great!

But here, under Links and Images two images are flagged up as using an RGB colour space (not CMYK, which would be better suited for print).

However, this isn’t a problem as the InDesign file will eventually be exported to a print PDF for printing, and all RGB colour will be converted to CMYK. So let’s not take any action on that; and go ahead and click the Package button.

Step 3: Save and Navigate to Your Packaged File

Click OK and select an appropriate place to save the packaged file.

InDesign will package your file in your chosen location. Navigate to the location and you can see that InDesign has placed a copy of the InDesign (.indd) file in the folder, alongside folders for Links and Document Fonts, and a copy of your entered Instructions.

You can share your packaged folder straight away via USB or Hard Drive; or you can compress the file (e.g. in ZIP format) to send over email or large file transfer.

Great work! Your recipient will be thrilled!

Packaging files is a simple and essential skill that will help to preserve your InDesign work as you intended, no matter how many individuals you share your file with. To find more useful InDesign tips and tricks head over to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Basics: Why Package Your InDesign Files? appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• How to create Character Styles and Paragraph Styles

• How to create Object Styles

• How to apply your saved Styles to elements in your InDesign document

Step 1: Find and Open the Styles panels

You can find all the Styles panels by going to Window > Styles. Here you’ll find five options for applying styles to different elements. When you open a particular Style panel, you’ll notice that they group with other related Style windows.

Character Styles and Paragraph Styles can both be applied to text. A Character Style remembers formatting for single characters, words or phrases. A Paragraph Style will remember the formatting applied to a whole paragraph (a section of text separated from other text by line breaks).

Table, Table Styles and Cell Styles are grouped together in one panel.

Object Styles has its own panel (Window > Styles > Object Styles). You can apply an Object Style to graphics, shapes and frames.

Step 2: Create and Apply a Character Style

Once you’ve formatted a letter, word or phrase, you can save your edits as a Character Style, to apply to other parts of your text with ease. In this example, for a magazine layout, I have set the first word of a short extract in a decorative font, LeckerliOne Regular, and set the size to 32 pt and the colour to a dark red CMYK swatch. The text is also aligned center.

Open the Character Styles panel (Window > Styles > Character Styles). Highlight the relevant text and either click on the small square icon at the bottom right of the panel (Create new style) or select New Character Style from the panel’s drop-down menu.

The New Character Style window opens. You can give the style a recognisable name, and scroll through the formatting options from the left-hand menu; editing them further if you want to.

Click OK and the Style appears in the Character Styles panel. Highlight individual letters, words or phrases in the text of your document and simply click on the Style’s name in the panel to apply it.

Step 3: Create and Apply a Paragraph Style

To create a Paragraph Style, first format a single paragraph of text. You can apply a Drop Cap and Indents, as well as Font, Size, Weight, Leading, Tracking and Alignment.

You can then either place your cursor somewhere in the paragraph or highlight the paragraph before selecting New Paragraph Style from the Paragraph Styles (Window > Styles > Paragraph Styles) panel’s drop-down menu.

You’ll notice there are two sets of menus running along the left-hand side of the panel. The top menu lists the formatting attributes already applied to the text, but you can add further attributes from the bottom menu. Check the Preview box to see your edits as you go.

You can also create a Nested Style by selecting Drop Cap and Nested Styles from the left-hand menu. This allows you to ‘nest’ a Character Style within the Paragraph Style, allowing you to define more specific formatting rules for some characters in the paragraph.

When you’re happy with the settings you’ve defined for the Style and given the Style a name, back under the General options, click OK.

You can apply the Style to a paragraph by resting your cursor in a paragraph of text and clicking the name of the Style in the Paragraph Styles panel.

Step 4: Create and Apply an Object Style

You can apply an Object Style to graphics, shapes and frames. Formatting attributes like Fill, Stroke (colour and weight), gradients and transparencies, as well as text wrap settings, can be saved as an Object Style and applied to objects. Open the Object Styles panel by going to Window > Styles > Object Styles.

As an example, this polygon, with a solid white Fill and a decorative dark red Stroke, is being used as a background shape for a magazine layout (the text frame is separate from the polygon, and layered on top).

Select just the shape alone (you can also copy formatting from a text or image frame) and select New Object Style from the drop-down menu in the Object Styles panel.

In the window that opens give the Style a name, here I’ve named the Style ‘Magazine – Polygon’.

The top left-hand menu lists attributes already applied to the shape, but you can add extra attributes from the bottom left-hand menu, such as transparency, drop shadow, bevel etc.

Once you’re happy with the formatting, click OK to add the Style to the Object Styles panel.

You can then apply the Object Style to other objects (frames, shapes) in your document. Click to select the shape you want to edit, then click once on the name of the Object Style in the Object Style panel.

In this example, you can see how the Style applies all the formatting characteristics of the original shape, such as the Fill Colour, Stroke Colour, Stroke Weight and Stroke Type, to this shape created using the Ellipse Tool (L), but the Style doesn’t alter the original shape of the shape/frame.

Get in the habit of using Styles and see your InDesign documents become more polished and the time spent formatting your designs cut dramatically. Build on your knowledge and develop more InDesign skills using our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Basics: The Beginner’s Guide to InDesign Styles appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• Learn how to thread text across text frames

• Cut or Delete unwanted text frames

• Learn how to troubleshoot problems, including overset text, using the Story Editor and Info panel

Step 1: Thread Text Across Frames

Once you have created a text frame and inserted text into it you may find there is too much text to sit in the frame without overflowing. You will see a small red + symbol at the bottom right-hand corner of the text frame.

The first thing to do is to set up a series of text frames to allow the text to flow into. Select the Type Tool (T) and drag to create new frames across the page(s) of your document.

Return to the first text frame and click once on the + symbol to load the cursor with text. A tiny script symbol will appear next to your cursor.

Hover over the next text frame and click once inside it. The text will flow into the frame. Continue this process until all your text is contained within text frames.

A green No errors notice will appear at the bottom left of the screen (from the Preflight panel) once all the text is visible in the document.

To view how the text frames are connected go to View > Extras > Show Text Threads.

In Normal Mode (View > Screen Mode > Normal, or tap W on the keyboard), when you select a text frame, you will see the Threads connecting the frames, showing how the text is ordered throughout the document.

If you have loaded your cursor with text, but have no text frame prepared to flow the text into, you can click anywhere on the page. InDesign will create a text frame automatically, and channel the text into it. You can then choose to resize the text frame.

Step 2: Delete or Cut Threaded Frames

You may want to delete or cut a text frame from a threaded sequence.

To cut (and optionally paste elsewhere, complete with a copy of the text from that point forward), select the text frame(s) with the Selection Tool (V, Escape) and go to Edit > Cut.

To delete, simply select, as above, and hit the Backspace or Delete key.

Step 3: Help! My Text Has Disappeared!

Sometimes you might encounter problems with threaded text. For example, if you have received a third party InDesign file which includes some text that you know is in the document (or should be) but may not be showing up on screen.

To check the text is definitely there in the document, go to Edit > Edit in Story Editor. The Story Editor function allows you to view all the text content in the document, regardless of whether it’s overflowing any text frames, or is set in an invisible color or opacity. It will also highlight any problems, such as if any of the text is overset (overflowing the text frames).

You can also open the Info panel (Window > Info) to view how much text is overset. This is shown next to the number of Words, indicated by a + sign.

So in the document example here, we have 308 words, plus an additional 141 words which are not visible as they are overflowing a text frame.

If you’re concerned about missing any incidents of overset text, particularly in you’re working with a long document, don’t be!

When you go to Export or Package your InDesign file, ready for print or for handing over to a colleague or client, InDesign will flag up a Warning window, notifying you if you have any overset text, and on which page(s) the error occurs.

Simply click Cancel to return to your document; navigate to the indicated pages to rectify the problem.

Next step, find out how to wrap text around images. You can develop more basic skills from our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Basics: ‘Threading’ Text appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• Learn how to Place images into your InDesign document

• Learn how to Link images, and rectify Missing Links using the Links and Preflight panels

Step 1: Understanding How Images Work in InDesign

The first key rule to remember is that images are Placed and Linked in InDesign. They are not embedded, as you might do with a Word Document or in Photoshop.

When you Place an image, InDesign remembers the Link to that image’s location in the relevant folder on your computer. This means you can work quickly and efficiently without dealing with a large quantity of heavy images slowing down your workflow. If you move an image to another location on your computer, i.e. another folder or drive, InDesign will be unable to locate the image and will flag up a warning in the Preflight panel (Window > Output > Preflight).

You can also spot an error relating to an image, which is missing or has been edited since you placed it, from the Links panel (Window > Links).

You can insert an image into an InDesign document by going to File > Place.

Step 2: Working with Frames

The second rule of images in InDesign is to remember that InDesign places images within a Frame. Whether you prepare a frame before placing the image, or you place the image straight into the document (File > Place) InDesign will contain the image within a four-sided frame by default.

You can choose from three Frame Shapes in the Tools panel (Window > Tools), Rectangle (F), Ellipse and Polygon. These are marked out as different to the Shape Tools by a x shape running through the centre of them.

Select a Frame Tool, and click and drag to create a frame (hold Shift to create a perfect shape).

With the frame selected, go to File > Place and select an image. Click Open.

You can arrange the image in the frame by double-clicking to select the image itself within the frame (it will be marked by a brown line around the edges) and holding Shift while readjusting.

Or you can choose from the options available to you in the control panel which appears at the top of the screen. Fill Frame Proportionally is usually a good option to pick; InDesign will resize the image to the size of the frame, and center the content.

You can resize the frame of an image with ease at any time, simply by moving the edges of the frame using the Selection Tool (V, Escape).

However, you will notice that this won’t have any effect on the size or location of the image itself. To select the image directly, double-click on the frame. A brown line will appear around the image, and a small hand icon will also appear, indicating that the image itself is selected.

You can adjust the size of the image, its position in the frame and you can also Rotate it manually or by performing the action Right-Click (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac OS) > Transform.

Step 3: Help! I’ve got an Error in my Preflight panel!

After inserting images, you can go to Window > Links to view the Links Panel and deal with any images that might be missing or images that have been edited since you placed the original file.

These will be flagged up with a ? (which indicates a missing file) or ! (which indicates a changed file) symbol.

Click on the name in the panel to select the missing image and select the chain-link icon at the bottom of the panel to locate the missing image on your computer.

You will notice that the same ‘chain link’ icon appears at the top left corner of an image frame when the image is successfully linked. Likewise, a ? or ! symbol will appear next to the image frame if the link is broken.

To find out about wrapping text around images, try reading this article. You can develop more basic skills from our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Basics: Working with Images appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• Learn how to Place text into your InDesign document

• Learn how to preserve the format of your source text

Option A: The Simple Methods for Inserting Text

There are three principle methods to insert text into your InDesign document, each of which have their advantages and drawbacks. (For help setting up an InDesign document, read this quick tutorial first.)

For each method, you should first prepare a text frame, or series of text frames for the text to be entered into, using the Type Tool (T). You can prepare a series of text frames, and thread them together before you insert any text.

The simplest two methods for inserting text are:

• To type text directly into the document (which can be manageable for short headings, titles and captions, but is a time-consuming method).

• To copy text from your source document and Edit > Paste the text into your InDesign document (which will not carry over any text formatting that may have been applied to the source document).

This shows an original source file created in Microsoft Word, and is the opening chapter of the classic novel, Alice in Wonderland. Some text formatting, such as font choice, font size, first-line indents and text alignment have been applied to the document.

If we simply copy and paste the content from the Pages document into our InDesign document, the formatting will be lost, only the paragraph structure of the chapter will be maintained. The text will adapt to the default style that has been applied to the InDesign text frame.

This method potentially gives you more control over the formatting of the text, but you have to define Styles etc in InDesign, and this can be time-consuming.

Option B: Import Text from a Word-Processing Application

A third option for inserting large quantities of text is:

• to import the text from an existing source file, like a Word or Pages document, by using the Place function (this can maintain the formatting of the original document).

This is the preferred method used by InDesign professionals when dealing with long documents, such as books, reports or catalogues.

Before you place the source file, you should be sure to clean the file of any potential ‘junk’ that might disrupt the import of the text. In your word-processing software, you should choose to Accept All Changes if the document has a number of tracked changes or notes.

In InDesign, ensure you have a text frame, or a series of threaded text frames, prepared on your document.

Then click away from the frames, onto the pasteboard. Go to File > Place.

Navigate to your source file and check Show Import Options at the bottom of the window. Click Open. The Import Options window will appear, allowing you to select which parts of the text you want to import. You can choose whether to import contents, index, footnotes and endnotes, and you can also tell InDesign how to manage formatting.

You can check the box next to Remove Styles and Formatting from Text and Tables to just import the text without any of the formatting applied to it in the source file. This can be a good way of managing the text, as it gives you more direct control over the formatting of the text going forward in InDesign.

The second option is to keep Preserve Styles and Formatting from Text and Tables checked to keep your existing formatting.

Click OK.

Your cursor will load with a symbol showing the first few lines of the text. Hover over the first text frame and click once. The text will flow into the frame and into any other text frames the first frame is threaded to.

You may get a warning window flashing up detailing any compatibility issues. A common issue , for example, might be a missing font. You can choose to Find Font, and pick a replacement, or just click OK. All text set in a missing font will be highlighted in the Normal Screen Mode.

A final option for placing text from a source file is to check Customize Style Import, at the bottom of the Import Options window. This option is only viable if you are sure that styles have been set up correctly in the source file.

Click on Style Mapping to the right of the check box. This function allows you to assign pre-existing InDesign styles to match the styles in your source file.

Once you have assigned styles, click OK. Then click OK again in the Import Options window.

Click once in the first text frame. Your text flows into the document, formatted according to your instructions.

Explore more beginner-level InDesign tutorials here.

The post InDesign Basics: Importing Text from a Word Document appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• Learn about the InDesign Workspace

• Understand Master pages

• Learn how to navigate through your InDesign document using the Pages panel

Step 1: Locate/Open the Pages panel

When you click the OK button in the New Document window, InDesign creates a blank document set up to your specifications. If you’re used to working in a single-page programme, like Illustrator or Photoshop, or even a word-processing programme, like Microsoft Word or Pages, the way that documents are laid out and navigated through in InDesign can seem quite different and may not be immediately intuitive.

Unless you have set your Preferences to open a pre-defined Workspace, InDesign will open the workspace (the collection and arrangement of panels) in Essentials mode. You can view this, or alter the workspace to suit your specific purposes, from the top right of the control panel running along the top of your screen.

One of the most important, and useful, panels in InDesign is the Pages panel. This will open by default, or you can find it in the Window menu (Window > Pages). You will see that the panel is actually a group of three panels: Pages, Layers and Links.

The Layers panel allows you to manage layers in your document, just as you would in Photoshop or Illustrator. You can choose to View or Hide layers, and Lock or Unlock them, by clicking in the two square spaces to the left of the layer’s name in the panel.

The Links panel keeps track of the images you have placed into your document, and to which folders on your computer they are located (‘linked’ to).

Step 2: Managing Masters from the Pages panel

For now, let’s look more closely at the Pages panel. At the top of the panel you’ll see a section with two default Master pages, one single page named [None], and a second, a two-page spread, named A-Master.

To edit the A-Master, double-click the page icon in the panel to bring it up on screen. You can place elements on a Master page, and these will be applied in turn to all pages in the document that have that Master applied to them.

A letter, e.g. ‘A’, will appear at the top right corner of the relevant page icon in the panel, indicating which Master is being applied to that page. By default, all pages in your new document will have the A-Master applied to them.

To apply [None] (i.e. no Master) or a Master (e.g. A-Master) to a page, simply click and drag the Master’s page icon and drop onto a page in the lower section of the Pages panel.

To create a new Master, navigate to the drop-down menu accessible at the top-right of the Pages panel, and select New Master. In the New Master window you can give the Master a Prefix, a Name, and state whether it should be based on an existing Master (i.e. pick up the elements on that Master, and update the new Master accordingly, if you make changes to the original Master.)

Step 3: Navigating and Editing using the Pages panel

The lower half of the Pages panel shows the actual pages making up the document. When you print the document, only these pages will be printed, not the Master pages.

If you checked Facing Pages in the New Document window, the document will always begin on a right-hand page, whether you have an odd or even number of pages. This mimics the layout of a spread-based document, like a book or magazine.

The first page, unless otherwise specified, will be Page 1. You can navigate through your document by double-clicking on the page icons in the panel. The page which is currently up on screen will be highlighted in the panel.

To create a new page, which will be added after the page that is currently selected, click the Create New Page icon at the bottom right of the Pages panel. To delete a page, click the relevant page icon in the panel, and then click the trash-can icon at the bottom right corner of the panel.

Explore more super quick InDesign tutorials like this.

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• Learn how to apply Page Numbers to Master Pages

• Divide your document into Sections, which is appropriate if you’re creating a longer document, such as a book or report

Step 1: Apply Page Numbers to a Master Page

Inserting page numbers into your InDesign document is quick and simple. The first thing to realise is that InDesign numbers pages according to the page numbers listed in the Pages Panel (Window > Pages). Unless you want to spend the time manually inserting individual page numbers to override this, you should understand how to define sections in your document (see Step 2, below).

For now though, let’s assume you have a document with just one uniform section, going from Page 1, the first page of the document, to Page x, the last page of the document.

Here, I set up a 16-page document, with Facing Pages. In the Pages Panel, this is what the document will look like:

First things first, double-click on the default A-Master page icon in the top section of the Pages Panel. This brings up the Master page spread on screen. Remember, everything we place on the A-Master spread will be applied to the pages which have that Master applied to them. To refamiliarise yourself with Masters, click here.

Because this document has facing pages, we want to insert page numbers on both the left and right pages. For now, navigate to the bottom-left corner of the left-hand page by zooming in (Ctrl + [Windows] or Cmd + [Mac]). Select the Type Tool (T) from the Tools Panel (Window > Tools) and drag to create a small text frame, resting the top of the frame against the margin.

Set the text orientation to Align Left from the Character Formatting Controls panel running along the top of the screen. You can also set the formatting of the page number at this stage, such as Font, Size and Colour.

Then go to Type in the menu running along the top of the screen and select Insert Special Character > Markers > Current Page Number. An A Marker will be dropped into the text frame. This will adjust to the relevant page number on each page in your document.

Select the text frame with the Selection Tool (V, Escape) and go to Edit > Copy and Edit > Paste. Manoeuvre this second text frame onto the right-hand page in a mirrored position. InDesign will provide pop-up guidelines once the text frame lines up exactly with the frame on the left-hand page. Once your happy with the positioning, select the Type Tool (T) and adjust the orientation of the text to Align Right from the Character Formatting Controls panel, as before.

And you’re done! The page markers on the Master will be applied to every page that has the Master applied to it.

To apply the Master to a page, click and drag the A-Master page icon and drop onto the relevant page icon in the Pages Panel.

Step 2: Create Sections in your InDesign document

Larger documents like books and reports may benefit from being split up into sections. In this example we’ll create two simple sections for a short book. Section I will consist of introductory pages and be set in roman numerals, i – vi. Section II will be made up of the main pages of the book, set in standard numbers, from 1 – 10.

If you created the document example in the first step, above, use this same document if you’d like to create your own example document in InDesign.

This is how our document looks. It’s 16 pages long and has page numbers applied to it, as in Step 1, throughout. You can see that the main text of the book starts on Page 7 of the document, and that the page number marker has adjusted accordingly to mark this as 7. But we want this to be numbered as 1 in the book instead. So, let’s discover how to do just that.

Firstly, select the page icon of the first page in the document in the Pages Panel (Window > Pages). Then navigate to the drop-down menu in the Pages Panel, which you can find at the top-right corner of the panel.

Select Numbering & Section Options... to open the Numbering & Section Options window.

Here, you’re presented with a range of options which affect the way your document is numbered and organised. For now, check the option Start Page Numbering at, overriding Automatic Numbering. Then navigate down to the Style drop-down menu and select i, ii, iii, iv… from the options available. Click OK.

All the pages in your document will now be set in Roman Numerals.

Now, select the relevant page icon in the Pages Panel which represents the page you want to set as the first page of the second section of your document. In this example, this is Page 7 (which is currently numbered as vii). As before, go to the drop-down menu in the Pages Panel and select Numbering & Section Options… to open the Numbering & Section Options window. Again, check Start Page Numbering at, and from the Style drop-down menu select 1, 2, 3, 4… from the options available. Click OK.

A new section, beginning on page 7 of the document but numbered as 1, has been created.

Great work!

TIP: If you want to remove page numbers from some pages in your document, e.g. a title page or a blank page, click and drag the [None] Master page icon from the Pages Panel and drop onto the relevant page icon(s) in the lower part of the Pages Panel.

Develop more skills from our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Basics: Insert Page Numbers and Create Sections appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• Become familiar with the Text Wrap Panel

• Apply different types of Text Wrap to a shape or frame

Step 1: Create a Frame or Shape and run Text behind them

The easiest way to set up your document for text-wrapping is to position your text frame(s) behind the image frame or shape you want to apply the text wrap effect to. This means you can easily select your frame/shape.

In this example, I have created two columns of text using the Type Tool (T), threading the text between them by clicking once on the bottom right corner of the left-hand column, then once again in the right-hand column.

Then I selected the Rectangle Frame Tool (F) and dragged to create an image frame, before going to File > Place > Open to place an image in the frame. I selected the Ellipse Frame Tool and, holding down Shift, dragged to create a perfect circular frame before placing a second image in this new frame.

Step 2: Open the Text Wrap Panel

Select the image frame or shape and go to Window > Text Wrap to open the Text Wrap Panel.

Across the top of the panel there are five icons, each of which indicate a different way of applying the text wrap. The icon to the far left, selected by default, has No Text Wrap applied to your frame/shape. Click on the second icon along from the left to apply a wrap around the Bounding Box of the frame/shape.

You can adjust the Offset values to increase or decrease the distance between the text and the edge of your frame/shape.

You can also adjust the direction of the wrap from the Wrap Options drop-down menu.

Experiment with different ways of applying a wrap using the icons in the Text Wrap Panel. You can wrap text around an Object’s Shape to give a more closely fitted appearance to the wrap. This can work particularly well with outlined text (Type > Create Outlines), which gives a dramatic typographic effect.

Read for more, check out our whole range of quick InDesign tutorials for beginners.

The post InDesign Basics: Wrap Text around Shapes and Images appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• Understand how Gradients work in InDesign

• Become familiar with the Effects Window

• Apply Gradient and Feather Effects

Step 1: Create a Frame or Shape

In order to apply a Gradient in InDesign, you must create a frame or shape to apply the effect to.

To create an image frame:

Select the Rectangle (F), Ellipse or Polygon Frame Tool from the Tools Panel (Window > Tools) and drag to create a frame on the page. Go to File > Place > Open to insert an image.

To create a shape:

Select the Rectangle (M), Ellipse (L) or Polygon Tool from the Tools Panel (Window > Tools) and drag to create a shape on the page. Fill the shape with color to be able to see a gradient effect once applied.

Step 2: Open the Effects Window and Apply a Gradient Feather

Select your shape or frame with the Selection Tool (V, Escape) and then go to the top menu. Object > Effects > Gradient Feather… opens the Effects window.

Gradient Feather applies an easy to adjust Linear or Radial gradient to your shape or frame. Adjust the gradient to Radial from the Type drop-down menu. You can adjust the extent of the gradient using the Gradient Stops slider, and choose to flip the direction of the gradient by selecting the Reverse Gradient icon to the right of the slider.

You can also adjust the Opacity and Angle of the gradient.

Once you’re happy with the result, click OK.

Step 3: Apply a Basic Feather

On the left-hand side of the Effects window you will notice a list of possible effects you can apply to your shape or frame. Two places above the Gradient Feather effect is Basic Feather. Click on Basic Feather to open the options for this effect.

Basic Feather applies a uniform, more subtle gradient around the edges of your shape or frame, with a defined boundary. You can adjust the Feather Width, Choke (which effects how diffused the edges appear), the appearance of the Corners and the amount of Noise (grainy appearance) from the Effects window.

When you’re pleased with the look, click OK.

Step 4: Apply a Directional Feather

There is a third gradient effect you can apply to your shape or frame from the Effects window. This is the Directional Feather effect, which sits between the Basic Feather and Gradient Feather options. Click on Directional Feather to adjust the options for this effect.

Directional Feather gives a uniform gradient effect with a sharper appearance. As with the Basic Feather, you can adjust the Feather Width, Choke and Noise, but you can also give the effect more direction, by adjusting the Shape, giving the fill of the frame or shape a jaunty appearance.

When you’re happy with the effect, click OK.

You can remove a gradient or feather effect by navigating back to the Effects window (Object > Effects > click on one of the Feather or Gradient options) and unchecking the check box next to the name of the effect.

Can’t wait to learn more? Check out all our InDesign tutorials.

The post InDesign Basics: Gradients in InDesign appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• How to set suitable Page Sizes and Margins for Paperback and Hardback books
• How to create simple Master Pages for maintaining consistency throughout your book
• How to define Page Numbering Sections
• This tutorial covers how to create the inside pages of a book. Check back soon for a Book Cover Template tutorial.

Step 1: Creating a Book File

First things first – how does InDesign help you to create a book? Before you go to create a New Document in InDesign, you should know that InDesign offers you a really useful feature for creating long book documents – these are called Book Files.

A Book File is a collection of documents grouped together to form a whole book. You can share Styles across the documents within the Book and the Numbering Sequence will continue from one document to the next. You can also make edits to your book more quickly and easily when you work from a Book File. Instead of opening a single large file with a high number of pages, you can simply bring up the section or chapter you would like to edit.

Note: In this tutorial we are creating a book for print. For producing digital and eBooks, check back soon for more tutorials.

Let’s start by creating our own Book File. Open InDesign. From the Welcome Window, select Book from the Create New list. You can also go to File > New > Book. You’ll be prompted to give the Book a Name and to Save it. Find a suitable name and location, then click OK.

A small window will appear, which is currently empty. You’ll notice when you click the + icon that InDesign wants you to add an existing InDesign document to the Book.

The next step is to create your first Chapter or Section, which we’ll then add to the Book File…

Step 2: Creating your first Document

First, decide how your book will be divided up. If it’s a long book, you may have split the text into Chapters. If it’s very long, you may have Sections, with Chapters sitting within them.

Your first task is to create a document which will feature the formatting Styles you will be using across the whole book. A good place to start is with the first chapter of your book. Save your introductory pages to do afterwards, as they will have some unique formatting atypical to the chapters in the book.

For a Standard Paperback:

(United States ‘B’ Format – 130mm x 198mm [5.12″ x 7.8″]).

Go to File > New Document to open the New Document Window.  Ensure the Intent is set to Print. Set the No. of Pages to 10 (you may know the number of pages your text will probably fill, but you can easily add or delete extra pages as you go) and keep Facing Pages checked.

Next up, set the Print Size by selecting Custom… from the drop-down menu. In the Custom Page Size window type a Name for your custom page size, such as B – Paperback. Set the Width to 130 mm and the Height to 198 mm, click Add to save it to the custom list (this means you can reuse this Size template for future documents by simply selecting it from the Custom menu), and then OK.

Back in the New Document window, we can set the Margins and the Bleed (to find out more about the basics of creating New Documents, click here).

If you look at an example of a Paperback book, you’ll notice that the Inside Margin (i.e. the margin which sits against the bind of the book) will be a little more generous than the Outside Margin. This is to allow for a few millimeters of the page to be sucked into the binding and the fold created by the binding. For a glue-bound (otherwise know as ‘perfect bound’) Paperback, whatever the page size, allow an extra 3 mm on the Inside Margin.

Set the Margins to: Top 15 mm, Bottom 20 mm, Inside 18 mm, Outside 15 mm.

Include a Bleed if you will have any pages in the book with content that will cross the edge of the page (e.g. colored pages, or images that extend across the edge of the page). If you’re producing a standard typeset paperback on white paper, you might not need one.

Set the Bleed to: Top 5 mm, Bottom 5 mm, Inside 0 mm, Outside 5 mm. You won’t need a Bleed on the Inside edge. And click OK.

For a Standard Hardback:

Hardcover sizes vary widely, the dimensions stated here are common for printing hardcover novels.

Go to File > New Document to open the New Document Window.  Ensure the Intent is set to Print. Set the No. of Pages to 10 and keep Facing Pages checked.

Next up, set the Print Size by selecting Custom… from the drop-down menu. In the Custom Page Size window type a Name for your custom page size, such as Hardback Novel. Set the Width to 151 mm and the Height to 233 mm, click Add to save it to the custom list, and then OK.

In the New Document window, let’s set the Margins and the Bleed.

If you look at an example of a Hardback book, you’ll notice that the Inside Margin will be more generous than the Outside Margin, even more so than a Paperback if the hardback has Stitch Binding. For a glue-bound (perfect bound) Hardback, whatever the page size, allow an extra 5 mm on the Inside Margin. For a stitch-bound hardback, you may need a little extra added to the Inside Margin; check with your printer before you set up your document.

Set the Margins to: Top 23 mm, Bottom 25 mm, Inside 25 mm, Outside 20 mm.

Include a Bleed if you will have any pages in the book with content that will cross the edge of the page (e.g. colored pages, or images that extend across the edge of the page). If you’re producing a standard typeset hardback on white paper, you might not need one.

Set the Bleed to: Top 5 mm, Bottom 5 mm, Inside 0 mm, Outside 5 mm. You won’t need a Bleed on the Inside edge. Click OK.

Step 3: Creating a simple set of Master Pages for your book

Now you have set up the first document for your book, you should create a set of Master Pages to carry common features (such as page numbers and page headers) across all the pages. Here we’ll be working using the Paperback document we set up earlier, in Step 2, but you can follow the same steps for a Hardback as well.

Open the Pages Panel by going to Window > Pages in the top menu bar. You’ll notice at the top of the Pages Panel there is a marked-off section, with a default Master spread, A-Master. Double-click on the double-page icon on the right-hand side of the Panel to bring up the A-Master on screen.

Now click in the top-right corner of the Pages Panel, to bring up a drop-down menu. Select Master Options for A-Master… to open an options window for the Master. Rename the Master as Start of Chapter – Master and click OK.

This will be the Master spread applied to all pages which begin a chapter, i.e. the text will start halfway down the page and there will be a prominent chapter title.

We will also need to create a second Master spread, for applying to all pages in the body of chapters, i.e. simple text-filled pages with page numbers and a running header at the top of each page. To do this, click once again in the top-right of the Pages Panel to open the drop-down menu. Select New Master…

In the New Master window that appears, set the Prefix to B and name the Master Body – Master. Click OK.

Now you can edit the Masters and then apply them to the relevant pages.

On the Start of Chapter – Master you can insert page numbers at the bottom of each page. Create a text frame using the Type Tool (T) and stretch it centrally across the margins of the left-hand page. Set your desired Font (here I’ve used Fournier Std), Size and a Centered Orientation (using the options available to you in the Character Formatting Panel). Then go to Type > Insert Special Characters > Markers > Current Page Number to drop in a flexible page number glyph. This will appear as A on the Master but will adapt to the given page number on the pages themselves.

TIP: You can also flank the page number with decorative glyphs (Window > Type & Tables > Glyphs to view the full selection available to you in your chosen font) to add an extra flourish.

With your page number text frame selected, go to Edit > Copy and Edit > Paste to create a second page number frame. Manouver this into a mirrored position on the right-hand page.

You may also want to mark out where you would like the Chapter Titles to sit on the page. You can pull down Guides from the top Ruler (View > Show Rulers) onto the Master to mark where a text frame should sit. This makes it extra easy to ensure you’re always placing chapter titles in the same place each time:

To apply the Start of Chapter – Master to the first page in your document, simply click and drag the right-hand page of the Master icon in the Pages Panel, dropping it on top of the Page 1 icon in the section of the panel below.

Once you’ve done that, return to the Start of Chapter – Master and select both the page number text frames at the bottom of the page. Edit > Copy and double-click the Body – Master in the Pages Panel to bring up your second Master, then simply Edit > Paste in Place to drop the page number frames onto the Master.

You may want to insert Running Headers along the top of your pages too. To do this, remain on the Start of Chapter – Master and introduce two new text frames using the Type Tool (T). Place these, with matching formatting to your page numbers, at the top of the left and right pages of the Master, as shown below. You can type the name of the book in the left frame, and the chapter number in the right frame.

To apply this Master to the remaining 9 pages in your document, you can either manually drag and drop the Master icon onto pages in the Pages Panel, or click in the top-right of the panel to open the drop-down menu, select Apply Master to Pages… and type in the page range you would like the Master to be applied to.

Step 4: A Brief Note on Numbering and Sections

You may want a very simple numbering arrangement for your book – the first page of the book will be Page 1 and so on. But you may want to have Sections, each with their own numbering system. A common example of this is a book with the introductory pages listed in Roman Numerals, with Page 1 only beginning from the first page of the first chapter.

We’ll set up an example here with our paperback document. Say we wanted to start a new section on Page 5 of the document, and number the first four pages in Roman Numerals…

In the Pages Panel, click the Page 1 icon to select it, then click on the right-hand corner of the panel to bring up the drop-down menu. Select Numbering & Section Options… to open a new window. Check the Start Page Numbering at: box, keeping the value as 1. Next to Style, pick i, ii, iii, iv… from the drop-down menu. Then click OK. The whole document has been renumbered in Roman Numerals.

Now click on the Page 5 icon in the Pages Panel. Again, bring up the Numbering & Section Options… window, and again check the Start Page Numbering at: box, keeping the value, as before, as 1. This time, for Style, select the 1, 2, 3, 4… option and click OK.

And there you have it! An easy way of creating new sections. Simply repeat the process above to create more new sections throughout your book.

Step 5: Adding Documents to your Book File

Now you’ve created your first Chapter in your book, you can add this to your Book File (see Step 1).

If the Book File isn’t already open, go to File > Open and navigate to the folder where it is saved. Open as you would a normal document file. Click the + icon in the window that appears; you will be prompted to navigate to an InDesign document. First, ensure you have saved your document with a suitable name, such as Chapter One. Then navigate to the document as prompted and click Open.

You’ve created a simple book template in hardly any time at all! Well done!

Now you can add more documents to your Book File (you don’t need to complete each document before you add it, just set it to the same size and Copy and Paste the Masters across to each new document).

The post InDesign Basics: Creating a Book appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• How to use the Info Panel to conduct a super quick and simple Word-Count
• This tutorial covers word-counting in InDesign. See here to learn how to spell-check your document.

Step 1: Open the Info Panel

Go to Window > Info to open the Info Panel.

Step 2: Conduct a Word-Count

To count words in a select area of text, highlight the text and see the Character, Word, Line and Paragraph counts appear in the Info Panel.

To count words in a whole story, stretching across a large number of text frames, click your cursor into one of the text frames, and see the relevant info appear in the Panel.

The post InDesign Basics: Word-Count your InDesign Document appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• How to set Spelling Preferences
• Check spelling in your document
• This tutorial covers spell-checking in InDesign. See here to learn how to word count.

Step 1: Set your Spelling Preferences

You can set Spelling Preferences before you begin working on a document, while you’re working, or once the document is complete. To ensure all future documents observe the same spelling rules, be sure to set your Preferences before you begin.

Go to Edit > Preferences > Spelling (Windows) or InDesign > Preferences > Spelling (Mac OS) in the top menu to open the Preferences window.

You can tell InDesign to note any Misspellings (in accordance with your chosen Language Dictionary [Preferences > Dictionary]), Repeated Words, Uncapitalised Words and Uncapitalised Sentences.

You can also choose to enable Dynamic Spelling, which underlines potential spelling mistakes as you work.

Step 2: Locate and Correct Spelling Errors

Go to Edit > Spelling > Check Spelling to view highlighted errors. The Check Spelling window will give you possible corrections for each error, and invite you to Change or Skip them. When you’re finished, click Done.

The post InDesign Basics: Spell-Check your InDesign Document appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• Learn how to create a New Document in InDesign

• Become familiar with the New Document Window

• Set Margins and Columns

• Understand Bleed and Slug

• Create Custom Page Sizes

Step 1: Overview of the New Document Window

Let’s get started. Open InDesign. From the Welcome Window, select Document from the Create New list.

The New Document Window opens on screen. This image shows everything you need to address before clicking that OK button…

There’s quite a lot going on here, but it’s really important that you set all your values correctly before creating your Document. It will be much more fiddly to make changes afterwards.

Let’s break it down bit by bit…

Step 2: Set the Intent of your Document

The first thing to tell InDesign is what your final document is intended for, i.e. is it for Print (e.g. a magazine, book, brochure, poster etc), Web (e.g. a website banner) or for Digital Publishing (e.g. a digital eBook designed for tablets or smart devices)? InDesign will be prompted to bring up recommended Page Sizes depending on your choice, and also set the Units and Increments of your document (e.g. Millimeters for Print, or Pixels for Web/Digital).

Click once on the default ‘Print’ value next to Intent to bring up a drop-down menu. Click on the three different Intent options and see how the rest of the New Document Window adapts accordingly. If you keep ‘Print’ as your Intent, you are offered a number of pre-loaded, standard Page Sizes in the drop-down Page Size Menu, and all Units will be in Millimeters.

You can see that InDesign has some preloaded Page Sizes ready to use, such as US Business Card, Letter, as well as European A5, A4, A3 etc. You can choose a preloaded size or create a Custom Page Size. Let’s keep the Intent as Print, and create a Custom Size for a paperback Book as an example…

Step 3: Set the Page Size of your Document

From the Page Size drop-down menu select Custom… (the last option) to open the Custom Page Size window.

You can set the Width and Height of each Page in your document and give the Custom Size a Name by typing in the bar at the top of the window. For example, for a standard European Paperback Book, you would set the values to Width, 132 mm and Height, 197 mm. Name your Custom Size, ‘Paperback Book’ and Click OK.

You may find back in the New Document window that InDesign has switched the Orientation of your document from Portrait to Landscape. Ensure the correct Orientation is selected by clicking the left-hand Portrait icon.

Next, you want to make sure the Facing Pages check-box is selected. If you’re creating a book, magazine or booklet, you will want to be able to view spreads (of two facing pages) while you design. When you check Facing Pages, your Document will always start on a Right-Hand single page.

If you’re creating a single-page document (e.g. a Letter or Resume), or a document which will be printed on one single ream of paper stock (e.g. a Business Card, a Folding Brochure [with no spine, unlike a Booklet], or a Book Cover), you should uncheck the Facing Pages box.

For this Book example, keep Facing Pages checked.

Step 4: Define Margins for your Document

Setting accurate Margins is a very important task before creating your Document. Adequate Margins will give your final document a professional look, and also, in the case of books in particular, ensure that text or images don’t disappear into the binding at the spine. These are recommended Margin measurements for a Paperback Book.

NOTICE that the Inside Value (i.e. the edge of the Page that sits against the spine of the Book) is Wider than the Outside Value. This allows extra white space where the page will be sucked into the binding or the folds of the book. If you’re producing a Booklet (which also has a spine, but may be bound using a Lay-Flat binding technique) you should do the same, but the Inside Margin doesn’t need to be as wide, just add 2-3 extra millimeters.

Set the Margin values to:

Top: 22.3 mm

Bottom: 22.3 mm

Inside: 19.05 mm (As this is a Book, add on an extra 5-6 mm to your Outside Margin)

Outside: 12.7 mm

Step 5: Define Columns for your Document

To help develop a uniform Grid throughout your Document, you should set the Number of Columns and the Gutter value (the space between Columns). Setting Columns does not restrict where you can place text or images, but simply provides visual guidelines.

Columns are the backbone of a number of print documents, the most obvious being a Newspaper format. Keep in mind that for some documents, such as newspapers, newsletters or magazines, you will need to set 2-3 columns in the New Document Window. This will then be applied uniformly across all the Pages and Masters in your document.

For a paperback Book, you may not want to introduce Columns as the area for text is already restricted. So, for now, leave the default Column value at 1.

Step 6: Set the Bleed for your Document

So, first a common and really important question – WHAT IS A BLEED??

A Bleed is an essential setting for Print documents (you don’t need to set one for Web or Digital Publishing).

A Bleed is a small amount of space extending beyond the very edge of the Document. When a Document is printed, it is then Trimmed, or cut along the edge of the Document. There may be a small error in the accuracy of the Trim (printers are human too, after all!). If you have not set a Bleed area, and you have created, for example, a document with color that extends to the edges of the Trim, you may see an unwanted white edge along the perimeter of the card.

You can use the Bleed to extend this color across the Trim, so when it’s cut, whatever the margin of error, you will have a seamless all-color edge.

If you are producing a document which will have elements (text, images or color) that extend up to the edges of the document, at any point in the document, you should include a Bleed.

For a Book, you can set a 3 mm Bleed (or ask your Printer for their recommended Bleed Width), on the Top, Bottom and Outside edges. As the Inside Trim edge will not normally be visible, due to being sucked into the binding of the book, you can set the Inside value at 0 mm. This also prevents a Bleed appearing in the final PDF on the Inside edge, which could overlap with the page on an opposite spread, creating an ugly look, and a very confused (and angry) Printer!

Click the Chain icon to the right of the Bleed options to allow you to set different Bleed values.

In your document this is how it will look:

For now, remain in the New Document Window. We’re going to take a look at that other confusing term, the Slug…

Step 7: Set the Slug for your Document

A second very common question – WHAT IS THE SLUG??

While a Bleed is ESSENTIAL for a print document, a Slug is not. But it can be useful.

A Slug, like a Bleed, does not appear on your final printed Document. It is simply a useful area to place information which might be required by an Editor, or a Printer. This might be the date of when the draft InDesign file was created, or the name of the creator etc.

I often find it easiest to place a single Slug area below the Bottom of the Document. So, for now, ‘break’ the chain icon to the right of the Slug values and set the Bottom value to 10 mm.

Step 8: Set the Number of Pages in your Document

Now, all you need to do is decide how many Pages your document will have. You may have a firm idea of this before you even start inserting text and images. But you may have no idea! That’s absolutely fine, you can easily add new Pages to your Document as you work on it. So for now, type in an estimate of the number and leave it at that.

Click OK.

And ta-dah! Your Document is ready for working on.

Explore further how to create a Book here…

The post InDesign Basics: Creating your First Document appeared first on InDesignSkills.