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

Working with type

In this section, you’ll explore the excellent typographic tools that InDesign provides when working with type. InDesign provides complete control over the formatting and placement of type on a page and allows you to save formatting in the form of a style to give your project consistency throughout a document or multiple documents. To see the type capabilities, you’ll open a new file that is partially completed, then apply text and formatting to complete it.

Entering and formatting type

When working with type in InDesign, it’s important to remember that type can only exist inside a frame. A frame is a container that holds text or a graphic that will appear on a page. There are three different types of frames in InDesign: text frames, graphic frames, and unassigned frames. In this exercise, you’ll be working with text frames.

1 Choose File > Open. In the Open dialog box, navigate to the id02lessons folder and select the id0201.indd file. Press Open. You will use this partially completed project for the remainder of the lesson.

2 Choose File > Save As. In the Save As dialog box, navigate to the id02lessons folder. In the Name text field, type id0201_work.indd, then press Save.

3 Press the Pages button () in the dock to the right of the workspace to open the Pages panel. In the Pages panel, double-click on page 1 to center the page in the workspace.

4 Select the Type tool () from the Tools panel, then click and drag from the left side of the page where the left margin and the first horizontal guide meet, to where the right margin and the second horizontal guide meet. Release the mouse button. You should now see the cursor blinking in the top-left corner of the frame.

5 Type Fending off the winter blues with cross-training. The text appears in the font and size that InDesign uses by default.

6 In the dock, press the Paragraph Styles button () to open the Paragraph Styles panel. Select Heading from the list in the Paragraph Styles panel to apply that paragraph style to the type in the frame.

7 Notice that the top line of the sentence is much longer than the bottom line. To balance the lines, press the panel menu button () in the Control panel and choose Balance Ragged Lines from the submenu. InDesign automatically balances the lines within the frame.

Placing and formatting type

You can add text to an InDesign document by either entering it directly within InDesign, or by placing it into the document from an external file. InDesign accepts several forms of text files including Microsoft Word, ASCII, Rich Text, and InDesign Tagged Text.

1 Press the Pages button () in the dock to open the Pages panel. Double-click on page 2 in the Pages panel. Using the Type tool (), click inside the empty frame below the headline Caring for Those Wheels to insert your cursor within the frame.

2 Choose File > Place. In the Place dialog box, navigate to the Links folder inside the id02lessons folder and choose the file Wheels.txt. Press Open. The text of the file should appear inside the active frame.

3 Make sure your cursor is at the beginning of the first paragraph, and choose Body from the Paragraph Styles panel to apply the correct formatting to the text.

Note that only the first paragraph of text has been formatted using the style. This is because a Paragraph style only applies formatting to a single paragraph. To apply formatting to multiple paragraphs, several paragraphs must be selected.

4 Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac OS) to select all the type within the current frame. From the Paragraph Styles panel, choose Body. All the selected paragraphs are formatted using the Body style.

Flowing type

It is often necessary for text to span multiple text frames and pages in InDesign. In the following steps, you will learn how to flow text into several columns in a layout.

1 Double-click on page 3 in the Pages panel to display page 3 in the document window.

2 Using the Type tool, click inside the first frame on the left side of the page underneath the heading Race Calendar.

3 Choose File > Place. In the Place dialog box, navigate to the Links folder inside the id02lessons folder. Select the file Calendar.txt and press Open to place the text from the file into the frame.

4 Activate the Selection tool () from the Tools panel, then select the text frame if it is not already selected.

Every text frame in InDesign contains an in port located in the upper-left corner of the frame and an out port located in the lower right corner of the frame. Currently, the outer edge of the active frame contains a red plus sign. This red plus sign indicates that there is overset text, which is text that doesn’t fit into the current frame. Overset text can be fixed by deleting text until there isn’t any text that is overset, making the frame bigger, or linking the current frame to another frame.

5 Using the Selection tool, click once on the red plus sign on the outer edge of the frame. A loaded text icon appears.

6 Move your cursor on top of the second frame to the right of the first frame. Notice that the loaded text icon changes to a thread icon.

7 Click inside the second frame to link the first and second frames.

8 Click once on the red plus sign on the outer edge of the second frame, then click inside the third frame to link the second and third frames together.

9 Choose File > Save to save your work.

Using styles

There are several different types of styles in InDesign. Styles provide a method of applying consistent formatting to various aspects of your document, including type, frames, and tables. In this section, you’ll use some predefined styles to apply formatting to text and objects in a consistent and efficient manner.

Applying paragraph styles

Paragraph styles apply formatting to an entire paragraph of text. You can’t apply a Paragraph Style to a single word unless it is the only word in the paragraph. This is an important distinction to make within InDesign, as it determines how you will create and apply styles to your text.

1 Select the Type tool () from the Tools panel and click anywhere inside the word January on the first line of the first frame on page 3.

2 In the Paragraph Styles panel, choose Calendar Month to apply the correct formatting to the word January. Click within the words February, in the second column, then March, in the third column and apply the Calendar Month Paragraph Style to these month names as well.

3 Using the Type tool, select all the text between the January and February headings and select Calendar Event from the Paragraph Styles panel. Repeat this step for the remainder of unformatted text in the calendar text on page 3.

The Calendar Event text includes a nested style, which automatically applies formatting to text within a Paragraph Style. The nested style formats the text based on triggers such as periods and commas that appear within the paragraph. To learn more about nested styles, refer to Lesson 5, “Working with Styles.”

Applying character styles

Unlike paragraph styles, character styles can be applied to a word or even a single character. This is useful when applying common formatting, such as bold and italic, to text. You won’t find a button anywhere in InDesign to apply bold and italic formatting to text. To properly apply any type of styling to text, you need to either select it from one of the font menus or create a character style to do the work for you.

1 Double-click on page 2 in the Pages panel to display page 2 within the workspace.

2 Using the Zoom tool (), zoom in on the first paragraph of text that starts with Your wheels.

3 Select the Type tool () from the Tools panel and select the word wheels at the top of the first paragraph by double-clicking it.

4 Press the Character Styles button () in the dock to open the Character Styles panel. Choose Italic from the Character Styles panel to apply that style to the selected word.

Apply styles using Find/Change

Character Styles make easy work of applying formatting to selected areas of text. In the current story, we want every instance of wheels to be italicized. Finding each of them individually would be very time-consuming, so let’s speed up the process a bit.

1 Using the Type tool, right click (Windows) or Ctrl+click (Mac OS) anywhere within the text frame on page 2 and choose Find/Change from the contextual menu.

2 In the resulting Find/Change dialog box, make sure that the Text tab at the top of the dialog box is selected and type wheels in the Find what text field.

3 Press the Specify attributes to change button () in the Change Format section of the dialog box.

4 In the resulting Change Format Settings dialog box, choose Italic from the Character Style menu and press OK.

5 Press the Change All button. A dialog box should appear indicating that five replacements have been made.

6 Press Done.

Applying object styles

Object styles provide a method by which you can consistently apply formatting to frames in your InDesign document. Properties such as effects, fill color, stroke color, and many more can be easily applied to elements on a page. In addition, an object style can automatically apply formatting to type that is contained within a frame. In the following section, you’ll place some text into a text frame and then apply an object style to the frame to format it as a sidebar.

1 Double-click on page 1 in the Pages panel. You may need to zoom out a bit to see the full page. Choose the Hand tool () from the Tools panel, then press the Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) key and click within the workspace to zoom out until you are able to see the text frame in the pasteboard to the right of the page.

2 Select the Type tool () from the Tools panel and click to insert your cursor inside the text frame.

3 Choose File > Place. In the Place dialog box, navigate to the Links folder within the id02lessons folder and select the file Sidebar.txt. Press Open.

4 Choose the Selection tool () from the Tools panel and make sure the text frame is selected.

5 Press the Object Styles button () in the dock to open the Object Styles panel. In the Object Styles panel, choose Sidebar from the list. The entire frame, including the text inside, is automatically formatted.

6 Using the Selection tool, click and drag the frame to the lower-right portion of page 1 aligning the lower right corner to the margin guides.

Working with graphics

Graphics are an integral part of any design, regardless of what program you use. InDesign provides excellent graphics capabilities and puts the user in complete control of cropping, sizing, and other aspects of the graphic’s appearance. InDesign also supports a wide variety of graphic formats to use when placing images on a page, saving you time during the design process. These files include: .pdf, .tif, .jpg, .ai, and .eps. You can even place an .indd file inside an .indd file.

Placing graphics

Just as with text, graphics can only appear within a frame in InDesign. Fortunately, InDesign is flexible when it comes to placing images. If you don’t define a frame to begin with, InDesign will create one for you.

1 Double-click on page 4 in the Pages panel to display page 4 within the workspace.

2 Choose File > Place. When the Place dialog box appears, navigate to the Links folder within the id02lessons folder and select the file cyclist.psd. Press Open. Because there was no frame selected, InDesign presents you with a loaded cursor indicating that it has an image that is ready to be placed in the active document.

3 Click once in the upper-left corner of the page where the red bleed guides intersect. This places the image at 100% beginning at the location where you clicked.

4 If the upper-left corner of the image is not in the correct location, simply click and drag the image using the Selection tool ().

5 Hold down Shift+Ctrl (Windows) or Shift+Command (Mac OS), then click and drag the lower-right handle of the frame. This scales the frame and the image inside the frame proportionately. Scale the frame until the bottom of the frame touches the bleed guide at the right side of the page.

6 The image is slightly taller than desired, so with the Selection tool, simply click and drag the middle handle at the bottom of the frame upwards until it snaps to the guide in the middle of the page.

Moving the handles of a frame using the Selection tool without any modifier keys simply changes the size of the frame that contains the image, it only adjusts the cropping of the image and doesn’t scale the image in any way.

7 If the text is hidden beneath the image, right-click (Windows) or Ctrl+click (Mac OS) the image and choose Arrange > Send to Back. This places the image behind the text.

Positioning graphics within a frame

When placing graphics in InDesign, the image is not always used at its original size. Usually there is a certain amount of cropping and scaling that is required to create the visual appearance that is desired. InDesign provides some visual tools that help when positioning and scaling graphics within a frame.

1 Double-click on page 1 in the Pages panel.

2 Using the Selection tool (), select the graphic frame at the bottom-left corner of page 1. InDesign displays graphic frames with an X inside an empty frame.

3 Choose File > Place. In the Place dialog box, navigate to the Links folder within the id02lessons folder and select the snowshoe.psd image. Press Open. The image is placed inside the selected frame.

4 The image is obviously much larger than the frame into which it was placed. But how much larger? Choose the Direct Selection tool () in the Tools panel and select the snowshoe image. The content is displayed with a light brown border. This shows the actual size of the graphic within the frame. Select the Hand tool () from the Tools panel and reposition the page within the document window so that the image’s entire border is visible.

5 Using the Direct Selection tool, hold down Shift+Ctrl (Windows) or Shift+Command (Mac OS) and drag the bottom-right corner of the image to scale it proportionately. Scale the image until the width of the image is slightly larger than the width of the frame, and release the mouse button.

6 Move your cursor into the middle of the frame and you’ll notice that the cursor changes to a hand (not to be confused with the Hand tool). Click with your mouse and drag to reposition the graphic within the frame. Continue adjusting the position until the graphic is cropped as desired.

With your Direct Selection tool active, click with your mouse on an image and hold for a second, then begin moving the image. You’ll get a dynamic preview of the image as you are moving it, which is extremely useful when positioning a graphic within a frame.

7 Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+0 (Windows) or Command+0 (Mac OS) to fit page 1 within the document window.

8 Choose File > Save to save your work.

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