Adobe InDesign is the industry standard for creating documents of all kinds: from brochures and catalogs to manuals, just to name a few. While InDesign offers creative professionals so many powerful features, it can be a little overwhelming at times.
Oftentimes, we do the same InDesign tasks using the same tools and steps over and over, without the time to explore or learn if there are more efficient or more effective ways to accomplish a task.
But we’re here to help. In an upcoming webinar, Adobe Tips and Tricks, hosted by Walsworth on March 23 at 10:30 a.m. Central, we will show you how to use some of InDesign’s features to help you save time and work more efficiently when creating various documents.
This is poised to be the first of many webinars on InDesign, as part of our newly launched Words of Wisdom – Walsworth Webinar Series. Overall, the series will shine a spotlight on our subject matter experts, as they provide valuable insights on everything from Adobe products to mailing best practices.
Below are just some of the topics we’ll cover; we hope you join us!
Page Tool
The Page Tool helps when creating letter fold brochures, perfect bound covers and many other documents; it makes them so much easier to modify. This tool also allows you to change the orientation of one or more pages. For example, if you are creating a spiral bound document with full bleeds, the Page Tool lets you separate “Facing Pages,” allowing for full bleed. We will also look at how to change the size of one or more pages in the Pages panel. In addition, we will talk about how Preflight can help you determine if all the pages in your document are the same size, since the Document Setup dialog box will not indicate if pages vary in size.
Scripts
There are many useful scripts for InDesign. Scripts are rather easy to find and even easier to use. In fact, Adobe InDesign ships with some very useful scripts. Learn where to find Scripts and how to help them increase your efficiency. They can save you a lot of time without having to learn JavaScript.
GREP
GREP allows you to use code to find and edit or to style text through the Find/Change dialog box or Paragraph Styles. Although GREP is complex and can be intimidating, it’s not terribly difficult to learn the basics, and InDesign offers tools to make using GREP easy. It can be found in the Find/Change dialog box and in Paragraph Styles. Learn how GREP can help you without having to learn a whole new language.
Table of Contents (TOC)
Creating a Table of Contents is easy with InDesign, but did you know you can have multiple TOC in one document? You can use one for the actual TOC, and another to create simplified bookmarks for Adobe Acrobat.
Placing an InDesign document
When placing an InDesign document into another InDesign document, it appears in the Links panel. You can then modify it just like any other linked file. Learn why you would want to do this and how to avoid common problems.
