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Table of contents is one of the most popular features of InDesign. In the post you’ll find also two pro tips that can literally save you hours of work.
 
 

 

Adobe indesign cc user guide free

 
*FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Adobe InDesign CC User Guide ( Release): A Quick Reference Guide to Adobe InDesign Creative Cloud for Designing. Tutorials for beginners. OG Basic InDesign tutorial. Here are some of the first things you’ll be looking into learning if you are just starting. Because having a digital manual is much in any instruction book in paper format.

 
 

Amazon Best Sellers: Best Adobe InDesign Guides – Craft elegant layouts at your desk or on the go.

 
 

Set up spanning heads over any number of columns or split a group of columns into additional columns to save vertical space. In InDesign CS5. You can also add CSS class names and type n your own custom tags. Track text changes video Michael Ninness Jan.

Use Object Export Options to customize how objects and images are exported to EPUB to ensure best viewing results on any screen – no matter what size. Take advantage of Smart Guides when creating, moving, rotating, and aligning objects. Learn how to avoid clutter in your layout.

Page design begins with the basics: starting a new document, setting up pages, and positioning margins and columns or changing grid settings.

The New Document dialog box combines the Document Setup and the Margins And Columns dialog boxes, so that you can set up the page size, margins, and page columns all in one place. You can change these settings at any time. Specify document setup options. See New Document options.

To specify the dimensions of the bleed and slug areas, click the Arrow button before the Bleed and Slug label. The bleed and slug areas extend out from the edges of the defined Page Size. To make the bleed or slug areas extend evenly on all sides, click the Make All Settings The Same icon. Make necessary changes if required. Click OK to open the new document with the settings you specified. Document Preset Choose a preset that you have saved earlier. Intent If you are creating a document to be output to PDF or SWF for the web, choosing the Web option changes several options in the dialog box, such as turning off Facing Pages, changing the orientation from portrait to landscape, and using a page size based on monitor resolution.

You can edit any of these settings after the document is created. CS6 and later : Digital publishing intent has been added for publications aimed for the Digital Publishing Suite.

You can also change the intent of the document after it is created. Number of pages Specify the number of pages to create in the new document. Start Page Specify which number the document starts on. If you specify an even number such as 2 with Facing Pages selected, the first spread in the document begins with a two-page spread. See Start a document with a two-page spread.

Facing Pages Select this option to make left and right pages face each other in a double-page spread , such as for books and magazines. See Control spread pagination. Master Text Frame CS5. The master text frame is added to the A Master. See Using text frames on master pages. Primary Text Frame CS6 and later : select this option to add a primary text frame on the master page. When you apply a new master page, the story in the primary text frame automatically flows into the primary text frame of the new master page.

Page Size Choose a page size from the menu, or type values for Width and Height. Page size represents the final size you want after bleeds or other marks outside the page are trimmed. Orientation Click Portrait tall or Landscape wide. These icons interact dynamically with the dimensions you enter in Page Size.

When Height is the larger value, the portrait icon is selected. When Width is the larger value, the landscape icon is selected. Clicking the deselected icon switches the Height and Width values. Tip : To specify the dimensions of the bleed and slug areas, click the Arrow button before the Bleed and Slug label in the New Document dialog box.

Bleed The Bleed area allows you to print objects that are arranged at the outer edge of the defined page size. For a page of the required dimensions, if an object is positioned at its edge, some white may appear at the edge of the printed area due to slight misalignment during printing or trimming. For this reason, you should position an object that is at the edge of the page of the required dimensions a little beyond the edge, and trim after printing. Bleed area is shown by a red line on the document.

You can set bleed area settings from Bleed in the Print dialog box. Slug The slug area is discarded when the document is trimmed to its final page size. The slug area holds printing information, customized color bar information, or displays other instructions and descriptions for other information in the document. Objects including text frames positioned in the slug area are printed but will disappear when the document is trimmed to its final page size.

Objects outside the bleed or slug area whichever extends farther do not print. Make necessary changes to the options if the preview is not as desired.

Note: You can also click the Save Document Preset icon to save document settings for future use. Each page or spread in your document has its own pasteboard and guides, which are visible in Normal View mode. The pasteboard is replaced with a gray background when the document is viewed using one of the Preview modes. See Preview documents.

Spread black lines B. Page black lines C. Margin guides magenta lines D. Column guides violet lines E. Bleed area red lines F.

Slug area blue lines. Lines of other colors are ruler guides which, when present, appear in the layer color when selected. See Layers. Column guides appear in front of margin guides. When a column guide is exactly in front of a margin guide, it hides the margin guide. You can create custom page sizes that appear in the Page Size menu in the New Document dialog box. Type a name for the page size, specify page size settings, and then click Add.

The New Doc Sizes. You can save document settings for page size, columns, margins, and bleed and slug areas in a preset to save time and ensure consistency when creating similar documents. Click New in the dialog box that appears. Specify a name for the preset and select basic layout options in the New Document Preset dialog box. See New Document options for a description of each option.

You can save a document preset to a separate file and distribute it to other users. To save and load document preset files, use the Save and Load buttons in the Document Presets dialog box.

Hold down Shift while choosing the preset to create a new document based on the preset without opening the New Document dialog box. Welcome to ManualMachine. We have sent a verification link to to complete your registration. Log In Sign Up. Forgot password? Enter your email address and check your inbox. Please check your email for further instructions. Enter a new password. What’s new in InDesign CC version 9. With this seamless integration, you can now easily do the following from within InDesign: Find missing Typekit fonts in your documents and sync those fonts from Typekit.

Typekit font indicator icon Caution: Typekit fonts cannot be packaged with other fonts while creating an InDesign package file. Hyperlinks enhancements Enhanced in InDesign CC The major pain points around creating, editing, and managing hyperlinks have been addressed in this release of InDesign.

Creating hyperlinks simplified Creating a hyperlink in InDesign is now incredibly simple. To create a hyperlink: 1. Character style applied to text links The character style is added to the document character style list. Visual identifier applied to object links. Also, Hyperlink and CrossReferences panel are now separated. Create reflowable interactive books.

We have improved support for Nested Styles and Dropcaps by resolving important issues around them: Nested Styles are now fully supported. Improved CSS handling of native InDesign objects, images, and groups Transforms applied on objects, such as rotation on an object containing a graphic, are now successfully mapped to CSS. Example: Transforms applied on a graphic and how it maps to CSS. Cross-references performance improvement In the previous versions of InDesign, if you had a document with multiple cross-references to other documents, you would notice a lag in typing text in your document.

Text selection or highlight behavior restored The text selection or highlight behavior has been reverted to how it was in ID CS6. Legal Notices Online Privacy Policy. To the top User interface modernization Enhanced in InDesign CC InDesign, by default, is now available with a dark theme, which is in line with recent changes in other products such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro.

To the top Font menu enhancements Enhanced in InDesign CC Several enhancements have been made to the Font menu, including the way fonts are displayed, searched, and selected.

Major enhancements Search fonts by any part of the name Show fonts with families in a sub-menu Apply font selection by arrow keys to the selected text Manage your favorite fonts New Fonts menu widget The new fonts widget has been added in the Character panel and the Control panel. Button control to toggle between the two available search modes 2. Text field to display selected font name or enter the search keyword 3. Clear search icon; appears only when some text is entered in the search field 4.

Drop-down arrow button to display the font list — all fonts or search results Clicking the drop-down arrow button without entering any search string displays a pop-up list of all installed fonts. Search fonts made easy You can now easily search for the fonts you are looking for. Using the new search As you clear the font name and start typing, the search results start appearing in the popup. Browse and apply fonts You can browse the fonts list with the Arrow keys.

Manage your favorite fonts You can add or remove a font from the Favorite list by clicking the Favorite icon star in the font list. Object style to export tag mapping. To the top Alternate layouts Use Alternate Layouts if you require different page sizes for print or digital publishing within the same document.

Alternate layouts and the updated Pages panel Used in combination with Liquid Layout, you can significantly reduce the amount of manual work required to re-layout content for every new page size and orientation. See also Content Placer tools video Custom style mapping Text styles paragraph, character, table, cell or style groups can be mapped to different styles while linking. For more information, see Content Placer tools Article.

Preserve local edits Use Preserve Local Edits option to modify linked content. For more information, see Custom style mapping. Primary text frame You can now designate a text frame on the master page as the primary text frame. If you’ve placed links from other InDesign documents, they are included as well. Digital publishing workspace Use the Digital Publishing workspace to display all the tools and panels required for working on digital publications.

Additional inline and anchored text frame attributes are translated to the CSS: Size, border style and width, fill color, padding inset on text frame , and margin on text wrap Specify different values for each margins in an EPUB Link to multiple custom CSS files Split an EPUB into smaller files based on export tags specified in paragraph styles. Buttons and Forms panel with PDF form components 1. For more information on adding form fields and specifying tab order, see Forms.

To the top Productivity enhancements Split window To compare two different layouts in the same document, you can split the active window. Align to key object An additional option is available for distributing objects in the Align panel.

Complex calculations in panels and dialog boxes You can now perform complex calculations within the text fields in panels and dialog boxes. To the top Language support Adobe World-Ready composers and support for open-source HunSpell dictionaries enable you to use several additional languages using InDesign.

Placeholder text with specified alphabet You can enter placeholder text Roman, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese among others. See Working with Arabic and Hebrew for more details. Prerequisites for this feature to work : Computers should be connected to the Internet. You have signed into your Adobe Creative Cloud account on both computers. To the top Sync settings at first launch After installation, when you launch the application and create a document or open an existing document for the first time, you will see a prompt asking whether you want to start the sync.

Click Sync Settings Now to initiate the sync. Click Disable Sync Settings to disable the feature. To the top Using the sync settings feature. Do any one of the following: [ Recommended ] Click the Sync Settings icon at the lower-left corner of the InDesign active document window, and then click Sync Settings Now.

To the top Sync settings on successive launches When you launch InDesign with prior sync information available, and create a document or open an existing document for the first time, you will see a prompt asking whether you would like to sync the setting from the cloud. To the top Style class ownership – handling of CSS class name collisions If you map two styles to the same class name, it results in a conflict when you decide to generate the CSS for the associated document.

To the top Improved heuristic for determining bullet and numbering structure. For bullets: InDesign treats two paragraphs which share ALL the same bullet related attributes, including left indent, as being part of the same list.

For correct numbering, export to EPUB 3. To the top New export warning or error message dialog The new dialog makes it easier to read multiple warning or error messages from the export. Break characters remain unsupported at this time. Create new documents Creating new documents Create a new document New Document options Document window overview Create custom page sizes Define document presets Create a document using a preset Page design begins with the basics: starting a new document, setting up pages, and positioning margins and columns or changing grid settings.

To the top Create a new document 1. To the top Document window overview Each page or spread in your document has its own pasteboard and guides, which are visible in Normal View mode.

Document and guides in Normal View Mode A. Document window notes: Lines of other colors are ruler guides which, when present, appear in the layer color when selected. To the top Create custom page sizes You can create custom page sizes that appear in the Page Size menu in the New Document dialog box. To the top Define document presets You can save document settings for page size, columns, margins, and bleed and slug areas in a preset to save time and ensure consistency when creating similar documents.

Click OK twice. To the top Create a document using a preset 1. Do one of the following:. You can only view or download manuals with. Sign Up and get 5 for free. Upload your files to the site. The Mobile option sometimes called Digital Publishing in older versions of InDesign , lets you prepare documents as independent apps or eBooks targeting specific device form factors.

When you choose Mobile , the Page Size now gives you an option of directly choosing from popular devices and populates the Width and Height fields accordingly by changing the units of measurement to pixels. If you are comfortable with other scales of measurement, you can change them by going to the Edit menu, Preferences and selecting Units and Increments.

InDesign gives you a whole range of units to choose from. The Facing Pages option should only be selected if your document has left and right pages that face each other like in a book. If you are only going to create a single page document or a document that has different information in different pages such as a brochure, it is better to turn the option off.

The Primary Text Frame adds a text frame to your Master Page which is useful if the text flows from chapter to chapter like in a book. This can be left off by default. You can also set the number of pages the document will contain. This can also be left at 1 and additional pages added later. If you are working on a multi-chapter book, you can choose to select from which page of the book you want to start from.

Again, this can also be set later. The Page Size field is important to determine how this document will be printed. Selecting the right page size is important so that the printer knows the exact measurements of the printed page.

You can choose from a set of default page sizes or define your own. Notice that the Width and Height will change automatically based on the chosen option. When you select the Custom option, you get to input your own values in the Width and Height boxes. You can input the values in a measurement of your choice and InDesign will automatically convert that into the current measurement used in the document as defined in the Units and Measurements preferences.

Say, for example, you input a value of 10 inches in the Width field by entering 10in and pressing the TAB key. InDesign will automatically convert that value to 60p0 60 picas which is the default measurement unit for this document. You can also toggle the Orientation between landscape or portrait which essentially swaps the Width and Height values.

The Columns area helps you define how many columns are to be created in the document. The default is 1.

The Gutter helps in defining the separation space between these columns. The Margins area helps in defining the margins of the page. You can obviously go outside the margins with your content but defining the margins helps in providing a perspective to your document.

Notice that there is a chain icon in the middle, which means that the values are linked. If you change a value for the Top margin, then the other values will also change. You can also toggle the chain icon to decouple the values of the margins if you want custom margins on each side. There is a Bleed and Slug option that is usually collapsed but can be revealed by clicking the arrow beside it.

Slug is the space where you enter information for the printer to understand such as the color space used or the number of pages, etc.

Again, these options can be linked or set alone and generally need to be set only when sending the page to an actual printing press. As one works with a lot of document types and dimensions, you may find the need to recall the settings in a click for each of the document types you work with. You can save each of your settings as a custom preset and recall them whenever necessary. Click the Save Document Preset icon right next to the Document Preset field and give a name that you can remember so that it becomes easy to recall the settings later.

You can also delete the preset by clicking the Delete Document Preset icon right next to the Save Document Preset icon. The final two-column document looks like this and you can start adding your assets to this document. Your workspace may vary a bit but that can be easily customized too. It is imperative to get the right document settings in order to get the most out of InDesign.

Page management is important if you are dealing with a document having multiple pages. InDesign provides a lot of easy ways to insert, remove, or duplicate pages. Most of these functions are accessed from the Pages menu under the Layout main menu. However, we will use the Pages panel in the Panel Bar as it is much easier and intuitive. We see that this document has two pages in two spreads.

Clicking the Pages button on the Panel Bar opens the flyout showing various options that are possible with this document. Let us explore some of the options available in this panel. The bottom of the Pages panel has three buttons. The first button is called Edit page size. The second button is called Create new page. This allows you to create a page right next to the page currently selected in the Pages panel.

The third button is called Delete selected pages and allows you to delete the selected pages. You can create pages and re-arrange them simply by dragging and dropping them as desired within the Pages panel. You can also select multiple pages by pressing Ctrl on Windows or Command on Mac and selecting the desired pages. You can also make use of some more options to work with pages. Clicking the menu button on the Pages panel opens up a menu, which allows you to have more control over page management.

If you want to insert more than 1 page in the document, click the Insert Pages… command in the menu. This opens up a dialog box wherein you can specify exactly how many pages you want to insert and where you want them to be inserted. Say, for example, you want to insert a page after page number 2, specify them in this box to insert the page.

You can also choose to insert the pages before, after, at the start, or at the end of the document. If you want to move a page after a particular page number, you can use the Move Pages… command in the same menu.

You can specify the page number that you want to move and the page number that you want to either move after, before, or at the start or end of the document. Of course, you can also click and drag the pages to the desired position. You can change the page dimensions of the pages in your document by going to the File menu and selecting Document Setup… You can then specify your new Width and Height values here. Do keep in mind that all the pages in the document will be affected by this.

What if you wanted to change the dimensions of only a single page? The Page tool on the toolbar is your answer. You might want to change the dimensions of a specific page if you are preparing flyers or brochures that fold at specific pages. Using the Page tool is simple and straightforward but you must remember to set the correct reference point.

The above screenshot shows a two-page spread. If you look carefully, the first page on the left-hand side has some handles along its four sides.

This is the indication that the Page tool is active on this particular page. Now, on the Control Panel at the top, you can specify your desired dimensions. Remember the reference point, we discussed earlier? That is the left most button with the 9 small spheres. Each sphere is a reference from which the rest of the adjustments to the dimensions are made. Say, for example, you want to reduce the page size towards the right, you would put a reference point in any of the left most spheres to ensure that the left part of the page is kept constant, while the right side is adjusted.

This helps to avoid gaps in the page which can look out of place in the finished document. A master page, like the name suggests, defines the overall layout of the document. Any changes to the size or number of pages on the master page affects the whole document. You can have any number of master pages, but the first master is called the A-Master. There is also a None master page which is devoid of the schema of the other master pages.

Master pages are very essential when working with books or magazines where the content flows from one page to the other. Clicking the Pages panel opens the flyout where you can select the A-Master and None master pages. Double-clicking on the A-Master opens the two-page spread master page which is basically blank.

Notice that the individual pages in the panel show an A symbol. That means that the A-Master master page is applied to them. You can specify items on the master page such as header, footer, page numbers, or design layouts that would apply to all the other pages to which this master page is applied. No problem. Simply drag the None master page in the Pages panel onto your desired page to remove any master page defined layouts.

Creating page numbers in InDesign is easy. Since you would want the page numbers to appear on every page, you need to specify the location of page numbers in the master page.

Say, for example, you want to number the pages in a book. Open the master page as described earlier, and select a location for the display of your page numbers. Let us select the bottom of the page for this example and draw a text bar at the bottom by clicking the Type icon in the toolbar and dragging the textbox to the bottom of the page. What you do is, tell InDesign that you want page numbers to appear in that position.

This will insert a symbol A in the textbox referring to the master page, A. In the above document, it can be seen that InDesign has automatically designated page number 6 to the 6 th page. Page number assignment is dynamic. As you add or delete pages, the numbers are adjusted automatically saving you the trouble of manually verifying them. In InDesign, it is possible to segregate the document into sections to specify different types of page numbers for different types of content.

The section and numbering options can be accessed from the menu of the Pages panel. You can also choose the style of numbering. The pages will follow the numbering system that you have chosen till you select another page and repeat the same process. The new section will start from the new selected page and this time you can select another page numbering scheme. InDesign makes it easy to work with text.

Like with every object in InDesign, text is composed in frames called text frames. You can use the Type tool to create a text frame in which you can write the text. This frame can be adjusted on the fly or even later. It is also possible to convert a shape into a text frame. Simply draw the shape on to the document, select the Type tool from the toolbar and click inside the shape.

Note that the cursor changes indicating that the shape is now being converted into a text frame. You can enter text into the shape. Go to the File menu and click on Place This opens the Place dialog box. Select any Word, RTF or text document that you want to insert into the document. InDesign will analyze the document and show you a cursor with the text attached which you can click on a desired area to directly place on the document or drag the cursor to place it in a desired frame size.

If your document has multiple pages of text and you want everything to be imported into InDesign, press and hold the Shift key while using the Place command. You will notice that all the required pages are populated with your imported content.

InDesign has a nifty feature that allows you to edit text without any distractions or the need to zoom in and zoom out of text frames. The Story Editor presents an easy to read, alternative layout for editing text. The default font in the Story Editor may put off a lot of people but it can be changed in the Story Editor Display section in Preferences.

In this section, you can change the font, line spacing, text color, background, and the theme. Changes made in the Story Editor reflect immediately in the text frame. The Story Editor also shows the entire text even if the actual text frame has only limited text in it.

Another ease of using the Story Editor can be seen by opening the Info panel, going to the Window menu, and selecting Info. The Info panel shows precisely the number of words and characters selected and can be very useful when working with large amounts of text. Spellchecking is often an important part of making the document look professional and error-free.

Just like your regular word processor, InDesign also has integrated spellchecking capabilities with a few tricks up its sleeve. This will open the Check Spelling dialog box. The Check Spelling dialog box scans the entire document and lists all the potential corrections for a wrongly spelled word. You can either explore the corrections or skip the word or if you know it to be correct, you can add the word to the dictionary. InDesign also has a feature called Dynamic Spelling , which shows all the misspelt words as you type.

You can enable this by going to the Edit menu and selecting Dynamic Spelling. Sometimes, you might need to use words from a different language to enhance the vocabulary, which InDesign might interpret as a mistake.

For example, something like Merci , which means thanks in French. Fortunately, you can tell InDesign that this is a different language by first selecting the word, then going to the Control Panel on the top and selecting the desired language.

You can find and change literally anything — even obscure stuff such as finding multiple spaces and converting them to a single space or even changing frames from one type to the other. The most important part of this dialog box is defining the search criteria, which is highlighted in yellow.

You can confine your search using these options to locked layers, hidden objects, footnotes, or even master pages. You can also limit your search to case sensitive words or search only for specific words. The most important of all is using GREP. GREP in itself, requires a separate tutorial but in short, GREP is a standard for finding patterns in text and is derived from a UNIX command line utility called grep which stands for g lobally search a r egular e xpression and p rint.

InDesign makes it easy to use GREP to find expression patterns in text such as special characters or spaces or simply to apply character styles. In this example, we want to find all dashes within the text and convert them into endashes. An en-dash is slightly longer than a hyphen but shorter than an em-dash.

It is not possible to type an en-dash using a regular computer keyboard as it is a special character. Most word processors convert a double hyphen into an em-dash but not an endash. Now just press the Change All button. In this case, InDesign has scanned the entire document and made 31 replacements, i. This can be very useful when working with large bodies of text where it is practically impossible to scan each and every line of text to make changes.

InDesign offers more than a few ways to import images into your document. Of course, you can copy paste between image programs and InDesign but it is better to use the Place function instead, which offers more flexibility. Go to the Place command in the File menu and select the image or images you want. Then click anywhere inside the document where you want to insert the image or drag the frame to insert the image within the frame dimensions. Note, that the aspect ratio is maintained while dragging the frame.

You can directly drop an image into a frame, like a shape frame, if you already have one in the document. You can also select multiple images and cycle through them. Selecting multiple images can be especially useful if you want to stack them up vertically or horizontally.

Select the required number of images and click Open in the Place dialog box to see the Place cursor. Now, while holding down the left mouse button, draw a frame and press the Up Arrow key to create a vertical stack or the Right Arrow key to create a column. You can keep doing this till you are able to accommodate all your objects together.

When you leave the mouse button, the images will be stacked in the columns you have chosen. Sometimes, when you try opening an InDesign file from another computer or online, you will most likely encounter an error that says there are missing or modified links.

What does that mean? Whenever you import or place an image or object into InDesign, you are not actually placing the entire object or image but only a reference to it. InDesign assumes that the original image or object is located separately on the disk. In most cases, you can just press Update Links and InDesign will update any references of the modified links provided you have them.

It cannot however update the missing links — that has to be done by ourselves. However, if you want to know which are the exact objects that have gone missing or modified, you need to use the Links panel. In this example, we have 3 modified links. These are seen collapsed under a single link which when expanded, shows us the modified links the ones with an exclamation mark in a yellow triangle icon and the corresponding page numbers.

Clicking on the page numbers directly takes us to the link that is modified. The Links panel has functions to relink the files or create new ones. It also shows information about the link such as the resolution, ICC profile, size, etc.

InDesign is not an image editor per se but that should not stop you from making changes to your images. InDesign gives you two options to edit your images — Edit original and Edit with , both available in the Edit menu. This enables a lot of flexibility when it comes to editing images. When you choose Edit original , InDesign opens the image in an image editor.

Just make the required changes, save and close the image editor and the changes will instantly reflect in your document because it is linked. No need to even relink the images. Now, InDesign does not know that you have an editor such as Photoshop or Illustrator installed. It merely relies on the file associations defined in your OS.

Therefore, the Edit original does not always open the right program, which is why we have Edit with. Edit with enables you to select the editing program of your choice.

Simply, open the file, save the changes and close it. InDesign offers tools to ensure that you are able to fit the images exactly within the frames you want. To do this, go to the Objects menu and then to the Fitting submenu. You will see that there are a few fitting options for you.

The Fill Frame Proportionally command adjusts the image in the frame so that it fills the frame completely. However, this can result in some of the image being cropped off as shown in the following example. The Fit Content Proportionally command fills the whole content within the frame without cropping the image. Fit Content to Frame scales the image to fit in the frame.

However, use this only when needed as the scaling can be disproportionate. Image transparency or if you are an image editor, the alpha channel, is very important to ensure that the image you are inserting into the document blends with it instead of appearing like an amateur cut-and-paste job. There are two ways to get the separate image or the alpha channel from the background and for both of these, we need to switch over to Photoshop.

One of the ways is to use the Clipping tool in Photoshop to draw a path around the object we want to isolate from the background. This method, although useful, can result in sharp edges and might not look professional especially when the clipped image is inserted into the document. Hence, we will focus on the other way which is to isolate the alpha layer from within Photoshop to get a better anti-aliased object that blends with the document.

In this example, let us say that you want to isolate the bird from the background. Place the image into InDesign and go to the Edit menu and select Edit with and in the submenu, choose Adobe Photoshop. You can also choose any other image editor you are accustomed to, if it shows up in the Edit with menu. In this case, the selection of the bird has been made using the Magnetic Lasso tool you can also use the Pen tool if you need more precise cut outs and loaded the selected part of the image as a new Alpha channel called Alpha1.

Now, click the Channels tab and drag this Alpha1 channel onto the Load channel as selection icon, which is the first icon from the left in the bottom of the panel.

Next, go the Layers tab and click on Add layer mask icon to create a layer mask with the transparency be sure to unlock the layer if its locked. Since the image is linked, any change that you do in Photoshop will reflect automatically in InDesign.

If you zoom into the image, you will find less of sharp edges and a much more refined outline. You can now fit the image into the frame by applying the image fitting commands discussed in the previous chapter. Select the attributes in the Fill Settings and Stroke Settings sections that you want to copy with the Eyedropper tool, and then click OK. To pick up only the fill or stroke color of an object and no other attributes, Shift-click the object with the Eyedropper tool.

When you apply the color to another object, only the fill or stroke color is applied, depending on whether the stroke or fill is on top in the toolbar. Click the Content Grabber, or use the Direct Selection tool to select the image. An image in PSD format can contain multiple layers, but the bottom layer must be opaque. In addition, the grayscale image cannot contain alpha or spot channels. Color groups enable you to organize your color schemes better and to exchange frequently used color swatches across applications.

Color groups help you to:. To create a color group, click the Color Group icon on the Swatches panel. Alternatively, you can also create a color group from the flyout and context menu. To give a name to the color group at the time of creation, you can use any of the options or hold the Alt key Win or Option Key Mac when you click the new color group button.

You can drag-and-drop multiple swatches from the root as well as from other color groups into the created color group. Right-click on a color swatch to explore other options. You can switch to a Color Group view and work extensively with color groups.

Click the filter icon at the bottom of the panel and select Show Color Groups. This enables you to work with color groups extensively. Root swatches and gradients are not visible in this view. You can select a page item s artwork in the document and create a color group from the swatches present in the page item s. You can add swatches from the page item s into the color group.

In case more than one swatches are selected in the swatches panel, then the default selection is Selected Swatches. Color groups work in all list views name, small name as well as grid views small swatch, large swatch. All the operations like creation, dragging swatches, color groups can be performed across all the different views inside the swatches panel.

ASE files help import and export color swatches across applications like Adobe Illustrator. You can import. Color groups can also be saved as. Similarly, if the color groups are saved from Illustrator, they can be loaded inside InDesign. You can add themes from the Color panel into the Swatches panel as color groups in InDesign. These themes are created as a color group with the theme’s name.

You can also go to the Create tab in Color, select a rule from Select Rule , and click the Add this theme to swatches icon. If you open a. Legal Notices Online Privacy Policy. Buy now. User Guide Cancel. Select the object you want to color by doing one of the following:.

For a path or frame, use the Selection tool or the Direct Selection tool , as necessary. You can apply only two colors to a grayscale or monochrome image.

For text characters, use the Type tool to change the text color of a single word or the entire text within a frame. To change the color of gaps in a dashed, dotted, or striped stroke, use the Stroke panel.

In the Toolbox or in the Color or Swatches panel, select the Fill box or the Stroke box to specify the fill or stroke of the object. If you selected an image, the Stroke box has no effect. Do one of the following:. Select a color, tint, or gradient using the Swatches or Gradient panel. Select a color, tint, or gradient from the Fill or Stroke menu in the Control panel.

Select the desired color, and click OK. Select a color with the Color Picker. To define a color, do any of the following:. Click or drag inside the color field. Drag the color slider triangles along the color spectrum or click inside the color spectrum. Enter values in any of the text boxes. Click OK.

Apply the last used color. Select the object or text you want to color. In the Toolbox, click the Fill button or Stroke button depending on which portion of the text or object you want to color. In the Toolbox, do one of the following:.

Click the Color button to apply the last selected solid color in the Swatches or Color panel. Click the Gradient button to apply the last selected gradient in the Swatches or Gradient panel. Remove fill or stroke color. Buy now. What you’ll need. Get files. Create a new document. Learn how to make a new document. What you learned: Make a new document The Start screen appears when there are no documents open in InDesign.

In the New Document dialog box, start by choosing a preset. For example, the Print category shows various sizes and document options you can set for a new document.

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