InDesign CS4 Bible

Galen Gruman

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780470470909
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming Games
• Index: Computer Science

The soup-to-nuts guide on everything InDesign users need to know about the much-anticipated CS4 release!

• Packed with more than one thousand pages of real-world insight and valuable guidance, this authoritative resource describes the power and potential of InDesign—whose popularity as a page-layout program is growing stronger and gaining new converts every day
• No matter what your skill level, you will get everything you need to know in order to make the most of this software and take advantage of InDesign CS4's innovative architecture, functionality, and many ingenious features
• Learn how to edit Photoshop, Illustrator, and PDF files from within InDesign; export documents in HTML for publication on CD-ROM or the Web; tap the power of multiple layers and master pages; optimize InDesign for efficient project workflow; take advantage of dynamic spell-checking; and more

Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

Part I: Welcome to InDesign

In This Part

Chapter 1: What InDesign Can Do for You

Chapter 2: Inside the InDesign Interface

Chapter 3: Getting InDesign Ready to Go

Chapter 1: What InDesign Can Do for You

In This Chapter

Learning what InDesign can do

Understanding global and local control

Identifying InDesign terminology

InDesign CS4 is the sixth version of Adobe's flagship publishing tool, a product that came into its own with the third version (CS, which stands for Creative Suite). Widely regarded as the best layout tool today, InDesign CS4 continues to benefit from continued investment by its makers at Adobe Systems.

Every new version of InDesign has brought significant new capabilities to your fingertips, and CS4 is no different. This new version introduces several key additions that make it easier to produce flexible documents, such as the ability to export files for use in Flash multimedia projects, as well as enhanced capabilities for its conditional text feature that lets a document have different versions of, say, a chapter heading or copyright line. Catalog publishers, for example, will love these additions.

Adobe has also improved lots of features — some big, some small — to both simplify the product's use and to enhance its capabilities. For example, the new “smart guides” feature makes it much easier to align, resize, rotate, and place objects precisely when you're using the mouse. The Links panel has been redesigned to better match how Adobe Bridge works, as well as make it easier to substitute FPO (for position only) files quickly. And InDesign now alerts you as you're working if your document has any issues that may affect final output quality.

But if you're upgrading from InDesign CS3, what you'll notice most is a slightly cleaned-up user interface — using modern standards such as tabbed panes to hold documents, as well as simpler icons in the panels — rather than obvious new features. InDesign CS4 has many nice additions, but it's very much a continuance of what you know from CS3. Most of its enhancements are subtle, the kind you may not even notice right away.

If you want a quick overview of what's new in InDesign CS4, flip forward to Appendix B.

InDesign users fall into two camps: Recent converts from QuarkXPress or even the long-defunct PageMaker and people who've used at least one previous version of InDesign. If you're an experienced user of previous InDesign versions, you already know the InDesign approach. That's great — you're a step ahead! Feel free to skip this chapter or just skim it for a refresher. But if you're new to InDesign, please read on.

InDesign's Flexible Approach

So what can InDesign do for you? A lot. For years, layout designers had to choose between a free-form but manual approach to layout (PageMaker) and a structured but easily revised approach (QuarkXPress). For years, most chose the latter. But with InDesign, you can choose both, which is a key reason why it is now so widely acknowledged as the best publishing tool. InDesign's flexible approach is important for both novice and experienced users because there is rarely a one-size-fits-all answer for all your design challenges. Sometimes (for example, if your project is a onetime publication or an experimental effort), creating a layout from scratch — almost as if you were doing it by hand on paper — is the best approach. And sometimes using a highly formatted template that you can modify as needed is the best approach because you don't need to reinvent the wheel for common documents.

InDesign can handle sophisticated tasks such as magazine and newspaper page layout, but its simple approach to publishing also makes it a good choice for smaller projects such as flyers and newsletters. InDesign is also a good choice for corporate publishing tasks such as proposals and annual reports. Plug-in software from other vendors adds extra capabilities; for example, Virginia Systems offers several plug-ins that make InDesign a good tool for books and academic papers.

For more on plug-in software, see Chapter 36.

But that's not all. InDesign is not merely a merger of QuarkXPress and PageMaker — though it may seem that way to experienced users. It is designed from the ground up as an electronic publishing tool. That means you can easily send documents to service providers and printing presses for direct output, saving you lots of time and money. It also means you can create documents for electronic distribution, particularly using the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) or the Web's XHTML format, though the latter capability assumes that you'll redesign the content's appearance in a Web editing program such as Adobe Dreamweaver. These electronic files can include interactive features such as forms and sounds. And InDesign uses a whole bunch of automation techniques — from text variables through sharable styles and swatches — to ease the effort required to produce and maintain your documents.

For more in-depth coverage of output and electronic-document fundamentals, see Parts VII and VIII, respectively.

In this chapter, I detail the wide range of uses and features of InDesign, point out the ways in which InDesign can be useful to you, and describe the basic metaphor on which the program is based. I also provide a comprehensive list of the terms, clearly and concisely defined, that I use throughout the book. So whether you're an expert or novice, read on and prepare yourself for a great InDesign adventure.

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 letting you customize each step of the process according to your needs. This duality of structure and flexibility — implemented via the dual use of the frame-based and free-form layout metaphors — carries over to all operations, from typography to color. You can use global controls to establish general settings for layout elements and then use local controls to modify those elements to meet specific publishing 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 3)

• Master pages (see Chapter 6)

• Text styles (see Chapter 19)

• Table and cell styles (see Chapter 21)

• Object styles (see Chapter 12)

• Stroke styles (see Chapter ...