Class Description

With it’s well-earned reputation as the industry’s leading print layout application, InDesign is packed with a plethora of productivity tools that will absolutely revolutionize your workflow. This 2-day intensive, hands-on InDesign training digs deep into InDesign’s power-user treasure trove to take your productivity to a whole new level. You’ll use scripts and GREP to accomplish the otherwise impossible, milk paragraph, character, and object styles for everything they’re worth, and go outside the box to use libraries, snippets and tables of contents in ways you might never have imagined. This and so much more will forever transform your experience of InDesign and open wide a world of possibility. Topics include:

Course Curriculum

Customizing the Interface for Optimal Efficiency

• Customizing the Control panel
• Customizing the menus
• Creating custom keyboard shortcuts
• Customizing the Links panel
• Setting application preferences
• Automating input with Dynamic Spelling
• Customizing preflight profiles

Fancy Formatting Tricks

• Creating text frames that resize dynamically
• Building intelligent paragraph styles with GREP
• Fast formatting with nested and sequenced paragraph styles
• Using scripts for document clean-up
• Creating elegant drop caps
• Working with anchored objects
• Using Gradient Feather to fade to transparency
• Using Gridify to generate rows and columns of objects
• Placing multiple images in columns and rows
• Using the Gap tool to position page elements
• Understanding the range of Text Wrap options
• Capturing formatting with the Eyedropper tool

Working with Tables

• Converting text to a table
• Formatting table cells and cell borders
• Setting table properties
• Creating and applying cell and table styles

Limber Layout

• Working with Alternate layouts
• Mastering liquid layout with liquid guides, object anchoring, and more
• Sharing assets between documents and layouts with linked content
• Working with Primary Text Frames
• Using the Content Collector and Content Placer tools
• Updating linked content

Digging into the Drawing Tools

• Setting drawing tool preferences
• Playing with paths with the Pen and Pencil tools
• Joining paths
• Splitting paths
• Adding and removing anchor points
• Using the Pathfinder panel to build complex shapes
• Playing with effects
• Creating “clip art” from text ornaments
• Exporting artwork from InDesign

Working with Color

• Creating a rich color palette with Mixed Ink Groups
• Adding color sets with Kuler
• Creating, modifying, and applying gradients
• Synchronizing color settings in Adobe Bridge
• Specifying color settings in InDesign
• Image Color Settings
• Assigning vs Converting a profile
• Proofing colors onscreen

Working with Transparency

• Importing and colorizing a grayscale image
• Applying transparency settings
• Adding transparency effects to imported vector and bitmap graphics
• Importing and adjusting Illustrator files that use transparency
• Applying transparency settings to text
• Working with blending modes

Introduction to PDF Forms

• Adding form fields
• Setting field properties
• Naming form fields
• Setting tab order
• Exporting an interactive Adobe PDF file

Working with Long Documents

• Creating an InDesign Book
• Synchronizing book files
• Adding document intelligence with variables
• Adding footnotes
• Adding cross-references
• Generating a table of contents
• Formatting a table of contents
• Creative ways to use the table of contents feature
• Indexing

Introduction to InDesign XML

• About XML?
• Adding Structure with XML
• Exporting to XML
• Mapping Styles to Tags

Preparing for Print

• Packaging files
• Creating an Adobe PDF proof
• Previewing separations and ink amounts
• Previewing transparency flattening
• Understanding the Flattener Presets
• Understanding Transparency Blend Space
• Understanding the PDF/X output formats
• Using the Ink Manager