InDesign CS5 For Dummies

Galen Gruman

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780470614495
• eBook ISBN: 9780470646755
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Desktop Applications
• Index: Computer Science

Get up to speed on the latest features and enhancements to InDesign CS5

As the industry standard in professional layout and design, InDesign delivers powerful publishing solutions for magazine, newspaper, and other publishing fields. This introductory book is an easy-to-understand reference for anyone migrating from another software application or those with little-to-no desktop publishing experience. You'll explore InDesign basics and examine the enhancements to InDesign CS5, while you also discover how pages work, build templates, create frames and shapes, manage styles, and much more.

• InDesign is proving to be an increasingly popular layout and design application; InDesign CS5 includes new functionality and enhanced tools
• Teaches all the basics for first-time users, including how to open and save your work, arrange objects, work with color, edit text, manage styles, finesse character details, add special type, import and size graphics, set paths, work with tabs, create indices, and more
• Demonstrates how to calibrate colors, export PDF files, fine-tune paragraph details, create frames and shapes, manipulate objects, and work with automated text

InDesign CS5 For Dummies offers a straightforward but fun approach to discovering how to get the most from your desktop publishing experience when using InDesign.

Part I

Before You Begin

In this part . . .

You have your copy of InDesign, and you’d like some basic information on how to get started, right? Well, you’ve come to the right place. This part helps you sail smoothly through InDesign and gives you a general idea of what InDesign can do. I explain the layout approaches you can take, as well as how to set up InDesign to work the way you work.

Along the way, you find out how to navigate the plethora of panels, menus, tools, and shortcuts that can seem overwhelming at first, but which soon become second nature as you gain experience using the program. Welcome aboard!

Chapter 1

Understanding InDesign Ingredients

In This Chapter

Getting acquainted with the InDesign approach

Figuring out global versus local control

Exploring the document window

Surveying the top tools

Becoming familiar with tools and panels

Discovering what’s in the menus

Starting to use a new software application is not unlike meeting a new friend for the first time. You take a long look at the person, maybe ask a few questions, and begin the process of becoming acquainted. (If you’re not new to InDesign but are new to the CS5 version, it’s like seeing a friend you haven’t seen in a while — you observe any changes and catch up on what’s happened in the meantime.)

Just as it’s worthwhile to find out the likes and dislikes of a new friend, it’s also worth your time to wrap your head around InDesign’s unique style and approaches. When you do so, you’ll find it much easier to start using InDesign to get work done.

This chapter explains where to look in InDesign for the features and capabilities you need to master. (For a quick look at what’s new to version CS5, check out Chapter 26.) I introduce you to the process that InDesign assumes you use when laying out documents, describe the unique interface elements in the document window, survey the most commonly used tools, and explain how InDesign packages much of its functionality through an interface element called a panel.

Understanding Global and Local Control

The power of desktop publishing in general, and InDesign in particular, is that it lets you automate time-consuming layout and typesetting tasks while at the same time letting you customize each step of the process according to your needs.

What does that mean in practice? That you can use global controls to establish general settings for layout elements, and then use local controls to modify those elements to meet specific requirements. The key to using global and local tools effectively is to know when each is appropriate.

Global tools include

General preferences and application preferences (see Chapter 2)

Master pages and libraries (see Chapter 5)

Character and paragraph styles (see Chapter 13)

Table and cell styles (see Chapter 18)

Object styles (see Chapter 9)

Sections and page numbers (see Chapter 4)

Color definitions (see Chapter 6)

Hyphenation and justification (see Chapter 14)

Styles and master pages are the two main global settings that you can expect to override locally throughout a document. You shouldn’t be surprised to make such changes often because although the layout and typographic functions that styles and master pages automate are the fundamental components of any document’s look, they don’t always work for all the specific content within a publication. (If they did, who’d need human designers?!)

Local tools include

Frame tools (see Part III, as well as Chapter 16)

Character and paragraph tools (see Chapters 14 and 15)

Graphics tools (see Part V)

Keep your bearings straight

A powerful but confusing capability in InDesign is something called a control point. InDesign lets you work with objects from nine different reference points — any of the four corners, the middle of any of the four sides, or the center — such as when positioning the object precisely or rotating the object. You choose the active reference point, or control point, in the Control panel or Transform panel, using the grid of nine points arranged in a square.

By default, InDesign uses the central reference point as the control point, which is great for rotating an object, but can lead to confusion when you enter in the X and Y coordinates to place it precisely. That’s because most people use the upper-left corner of an object when specifying its coordinates, not the center of the object. Be sure to change the control point to the upper-left reference point whenever entering X and Y coordinates in the Control or Transform panels.

How do you change the control point? That’s easy: Just click the desired reference point in that preview grid. The control point will be black, whereas the other reference points will be white.

Choosing the right tools for the job

Depending on what you’re trying to do with InDesign at any given moment, you may or may not immediately know which tool to use. If, for example, you maintain fairly precise layout standards throughout a document, using master pages is the way to keep your work in order. Using styles is the best solution if you want to apply standard character and paragraph formatting throughout a document. When you work with one-of-a-kind documents, on the other hand, designing master pages and styles doesn’t make much sense — it’s easier just to format elements as you create them.

For example, you can create drop caps (large initial letters set into a paragraph of type, such as the drop cap that starts each chapter in this book) as a character option in the Character panel, or you can create a paragraph style (formatting that you can apply to whole par...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Introduction
• Part I: Before You Begin
• Part II: Document Essentials
• Part III: Object Essentials
• Part IV: Text Essentials
• Part V: Graphics Essentials
• Part VI: Getting Down to Business
• Part VII: Printing, Presentation, and Web Essentials
• Part VIII: The Part of Tens