Learn InDesign CS3 Tutorial

This site provides you with a foundation for working with Adobe InDeisgn. Follow along with the tutorial, download the lesson files, and view the videos. For more Adobe InDesign training options, visit AGI’s InDesign training classes.

Excerpt from Dynamic Learning - InDesign CS3

What you’ll learn in this lesson: Managing the workspace Placing and formatting text Repositioning images Applying paragraph and character styles Using object styles and effects

Essential Skills

In this lesson, you will learn some of the most essential skills for working efficiently inside an InDesign document. To start, you’ll learn how to navigate within InDesign and customize its appearance. Later on in the lesson, you will place graphics and add formatting to text to create a finished product. All the topics in this lesson are covered in detail later in this book, so this lesson serves to get you up-and-running quickly, and to preview some of InDesign CS3’s amazing features.

Starting up

Before starting, make sure that your tools and panels are consistent by resetting your preferences. See “Resetting the InDesign workspace and preferences” on page 3.

You will work with several files from the id02lessons folder in this lesson. Make sure that you have loaded the idlessons folder onto your hard drive. See “Loading lesson files” on page 3.

InDesign’s tools

InDesign is built around the Tools panel. Located in the upper-left corner of your screen by default, the Tools panel provides everything you need to design and edit within InDesign. Every tool in the Tools panel has its own keyboard shortcut that allows you to quickly switch between different tools. If you hover your cursor over one of the tools in the Tools panel, a tooltip appears, displaying the tool’s name and keyboard shortcut.

The InDesign workspace

When you open a document in InDesign, the file opens into a window that displays the page(s) contained within the document. In the same window are many panels that perform specific tasks on the document. Managing these panels allows you to easily and more efficiently work with your InDesign documents. The combination of windows and panels is referred to as the InDesign workspace. Let’s take a closer look.

The document window

Most of the content in your document window is located within the page area, denoted by a black border. Anything positioned within this area appears on the final printed page. The area outside of the black border is referred to as the pasteboard. Anything that is placed completely outside the black border onto the pasteboard does not print on the final page.

You can place elements on the pasteboard while designing your project, and then move the elements on or off the page to try different variations of layout design. The pasteboard can also be a useful area to put notes to yourself or coworkers working on the same project. To get a better understanding of the InDesign workspace, you’ll open up the completed project and reset the workspace.

1 Choose File > Open. In the Open dialog box, navigate to the id02lessons folder and select the id02_done.indd file. Press Open.

2 Choose Window > Workspace > Default Workspace to reset your panels to their InDesign default positions. This ensures that your panels are in position for easy referencing during this lesson.

With your document open in InDesign, your screen should now resemble the figure below.

Showing and hiding guides

There are elements on the page, called guides, which are non-printing elements used to align and lay objects out on the page. Though useful, they can be distracting when you want to see only the elements on the page that will print.

1 Choose View > Grids & Guides > Hide Guides or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+; (Windows) or Command+; (Mac OS) to hide all the guides in the open document.

2 Choose View > Grids & Guides > Show Guides or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+; (Windows) or Command+; (Mac OS) to show all the guides in the open document.

By hiding the guides in your document, you can more clearly see the printable parts of your layout. When you need to make adjustments to elements on the page, simply show guides. Now you have the references that the guides provide for laying out elements on the page.

Viewing modes

Content on the pasteboard can be distracting when trying to view only what will print on the final page. Fortunately, in addition to the ability to hide guides, InDesign provides viewing modes that hide all non-printing elements on a page. That includes elements that are on the pasteboard. With one click of a button, you can see your document exactly as it will appear in its final printed form.

1 Click and hold the Mode button () at the bottom of the Tools panel, and choose Preview from the submenu. Notice that the entire pasteboard is now gray and hides any elements located on the pasteboard.

2 Click and hold the Mode button again and choose Bleed from the menu. This shows the allowable bleed area that was specified when the document was created. This is very useful when you need to make sure that all the elements on your page extend to the bleed line.

3 Finally, click and hold the Mode button again and return to Normal.

You can also use the shortcut key W to toggle between Preview and Normal Modes in InDesign. Keep in mind that it will not work if you have the Type tool active and your cursor inside a text frame.

Working with panels

Now that you understand the different pieces of a document, it’s time to begin working with the interface and become acquainted with the program’s panels.

The Tools panel

The Tools panel is located on the left side of your screen and contains all the tools necessary to draw, set type, modify, and change elements in your document. By default, the Tools panel appears in a single-column strip docked to the left side of your screen. You can modify the appearance and location of the Tools panel to accommodate your needs.

1 Click on the double-arrow icon at the top of the Tools panel to switch from the single-column layout to a double-column layout.

2 Click on the gray bar at the top of the Tools panel and drag to the right. When you release the mouse button, the Tools panel is repositioned at a different area of your screen. You can position and dock this panel anywhere within your document window.

3 Click on the gray bar at the top of the Tools panel and drag the panel to the right so that it is just to the left of the panels. A blue vertical bar appears. Release the mouse button and the Tools panel is docked to the right of your screen.

Managing panels

InDesign contains numerous other panels that perform different tasks. By default, you have several panels that are in a dock at the right side of the document window. InDesign CS3 treats panels differently than in previous versions. For instance, by default, all the panels that are docked at the right of your document window are in collapsed mode, saving you valuable screen space when working on a document. Let’s explore how these panels work.

1 Press the double-arrow icon () at the top of the docked panels at the right side of the document window. This expands the dock of panels to reveal the contents of every panel. This is similar to what you may have seen in previous versions of InDesign.

2 Press the double-arrow icon again to collapse the dock and return the panels to their previous state.

3 Press the Info button () in the dock. This reveals the entire contents of the Info panel.

4 Press the Info button again, and the panel closes to its basic button appearance.

5 Click and drag the Info button to the far left side of the document window until the blue vertical bar appears again. Release the mouse button. The info panel is now docked to the left side of the document window.

You are in no way limited by the appearance of the panels that display when you first launch InDesign. You can customize the panels however you like. Go ahead and experiment a little further. Move them to different areas on your screen to see how you may like them positioned as you work. You can always get back to the defaults, as you’ll see later in this lesson.

Customizing the Control panel

The Control panel is the panel that appears across the top of the document window. The Control panel is contextual, meaning its contents change depending on what tool you have chosen in the Tools panel. The options available for each tool can vary from computer to computer, depending on your monitor’s size and resolution. The larger your monitor and the higher the resolution, the more options you’ll see in the Control panel. With smaller monitors, InDesign simply truncates the number of available options that you see. Fortunately, even if you don’t have a large monitor, you can control which options will appear in the Control panel for each type of tool.

1 Choose the Selection tool () in the Tools panel so that its options display in the Control panel. Note that the Text Wrap options are available as shown in the figure below.

2 Press the panel menu button () in the far right side of the Control panel and choose Customize.

3 In the Customize Control panel dialog box, click the triangle next to Object and uncheck Text Wrap.

4 Press OK.

The Text Wrap options are no longer displayed in the Control panel because they have been disabled. Any of the options you see in the Customize Control panel dialog box can be enabled or disabled to make room for other options that you would like to appear in the Control panel.

Saving your workspace

Once you have adjusted the panels to display in a way that you prefer, and have customized the Control panel to your liking, you can save those settings as a new workspace. This allows you to switch back to it if you ever make changes to the panels, or if you want to experiment with other panel configurations.

1 Choose Window > Workspace > Save Workspace.

2 In the Save Workspace dialog box, enter Lesson 2 in the name field and press OK.

You’ve now saved the locations of your panels and the Control panel customization as a workspace that you can always revert to if needed. Let’s see how.

3 Choose Window > Workspace > Default workspace. All the panels are restored to InDesign’s default workspace.

4 Choose Window > Workspace > Lesson 2. All the panels are restored to the Workspace that you saved earlier in step 1.

InDesign allows you to have multiple workspaces that are not document-specific, and can be used in any document that you have open. Before proceeding to the next section, reset your workspace to the default so that the panels match the rest of the lesson.

Navigating an InDesign document

In this exercise, you’ll continue working with the id02_done.indd file, which is the completed newsletter that you opened at the beginning of the lesson. You’ll explore the tools used to navigate to different pages in an InDesign document, as well as change the document’s magnification.

Using the Pages panel

The Pages panel provides a quick glimpse inside an InDesign document by displaying small thumbnails of each page and summarizing how many pages are in a document.

1 Press the Pages button () in the dock at the right of the workspace to display the Pages panel. The bottom left of the Pages panel indicates that there are four pages in three spreads within this document.

2 Double-click on page 2 in the Pages panel to display page 2 of your document within the workspace. The left page of the inside spread (page 2) appears on the document window.

3 Double-click on page 4 in the Pages panel to display page 4 of your document within the workspace.

If you are unable to see all the pages in the Pages panel, you can make the panel larger by clicking and dragging on the bottom-right corner of the panel to enlarge it. In addition, InDesign allows you to scroll through the pages in the Pages panel by using the scroll bar, the scroll wheel on your mouse, or you can click to the side of the page thumbnails and drag up or down to navigate through the pages.

Changing the magnification of your document

So far, you’ve been viewing this document at the default magnification at which the document was last saved. It is often necessary to get a closer look at components of your document to check things such as alignment, kerning of type, legibility, etc. InDesign provides the tools necessary to do this quickly and easily.

1 Double-click on page 1 in the Pages panel to return to the first page of the document.

2 Select the Zoom tool (), then click in the upper-left area of the Spinnews logo and drag down to the lower-right corner of the logo and release the mouse. InDesign enlarges the area that you just selected.

3 You may find that you enlarged the document too much or not enough. To fine-tune the magnification, you can click with the Zoom tool to increase the magnification incrementally or hold down the Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) key while you click with the Zoom tool to decrease the magnification incrementally.

You can quickly zoom in and out of the document incrementally by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+plus sign (Windows) or Command+plus sign (Mac OS) to zoom in on a document, or Ctrl+minus sign (Windows) or Command+minus sign (Mac OS) to zoom out.

4 When you are zoomed in on a document, it’s often necessary to fine-tune the position of the page within the document window. This can be done easily by selecting the Hand tool () from the Tools panel, then clicking and dragging on your page. This will move the page within the document window, allowing you to focus on specific areas of your page.

You can also access the Hand tool without selecting it from the Tools panel. Simply hold down the spacebar on your keyboard and your cursor changes to the Hand tool. If you have the Type tool selected, you will also need to hold down the Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) key to access the Hand tool.

5 To make your page fit within the document window again, choose View > Fit Page in Window or press Ctrl+0 (Windows) or Command+0 (Mac OS). The currently selected page now fits inside the document window.

6 Choose File > Close to close the document. If asked to save, choose No (Windows) or Don’t Save (Mac OS).

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