Adobe InDesign Introduction

Master the essentials of Adobe InDesign and learn to create professional documents, work with text and images, and format layouts with confidence.

Course overview

Duration: 2 days (13 hours)

Objectives 

By the end of the course you will be able to:

  • Navigate confidently around the interface, selecting the appropriate tool and work with a variety of panels
  • Create new documents working with multiple pages and spreads
  • Apply basic character and paragraph formatting
  • Create and apply brand colours using the swatches panel
  • Manipulate text and graphic frames
  • Import and position image across pages, update and fix missing links
  • Draw basic shapes
  • Create and apply parent pages
  • Create, edit and apply paragraph and character styles
  • Create and edit tables
  • Reuse assets by storing them in a Creative Cloud Library
  • Explore new AI features
  • Output to PDF

Content

Getting Started

  • Introducing menus, tools, and panels.
  • Selecting and creating a Workspace.
  • Open, Close and Save files.
  • Save to the Cloud (.INDC).
  • Change zoom magnification

Preferences

  • Set the interface colour and user interface scaling.
  • File and clipboard handling.

Setting up a Document

  • Create a new document.
  • Add a document bleed and slug.
  • Use Document Set-up to amend existing settings.
  • Work with the Pages panel to add, delete, and reorganise pages.
  • Swap between Normal and Preview mode.
  • Create and edit Guides.
  • Show/hide, lock and unlock guides.

Drawing

  • Create basic shapes.
  • Adjusting the stroke width.
  • Apply a fill and stroke colour using default swatches and unnamed colours.
  • Apply a gradient to a fill or stroke.
  • Use the gradient tool to adjust the gradient angle.

Swatches

  • Create custom swatches.
  • Display swatches by type.
  • Create swatch groups.
  • Delete unused swatches.
  • Use the colour theme tool to add to your swatches.

Working with Objects

  • Align and Distribute objects with each other and across the page/spread.
  • Use the Arrange command to change the stacking order.
  • Apply Effects such as rounded corners, drop-shadows, and adjust opacity.
  • Transform and rotate objects.

Working with Text

  • Copy and paste text.
  • Place a text file.
  • Quick selection techniques.
  • Display hidden characters.
  • Essential character formatting, font family, style, size, leading, and language.
  • Working with Adobe fonts.
  • Simple paragraph formatting, alignment, indents, paragraph spacing, hyphenation.
  • Run the spelling checker.
  • Use find and change.
  • Use GREP to find extra spaces and returns.
  • Insert special characters and glyphs.

Manipulating Text Frames

  • Vertically align text within a frame.
  • Inset text.
  • Insert column rules.
  • Split a frame into multiple columns.
  • Thread and unthread text frames.

Working with Images

  • Create and edit graphic frames.
  • Place and fit images within frames.
  • Change the Display Performance.
  • Work with the Links panel to update modified and fix broken links.
  • Replace an existing image.
  • Place multiple images.
  • Apply text wrap.
  • Anchor objects to text.
  • Set Image import options for Photoshop and Illustrator files.

Working with Text Styles

  • Apply existing paragraph and character styles.
  • Edit and update styles.
  • Create text styles by example and from scratch.
  • Set and apply next paragraph style.

Creative Cloud Basics

  • Manage Adobe Fonts in the Creative Cloud application.
  • Create a Library to add reusable assets such as colours, text styles and images.
  • Use Extract from image.

Parent Pages

  • Understand the role of a parent page.
  • Insert a page number.
  • Add design elements to a parent page.
  • Create a new parent page.
  • Apply a parent page.

Tables

  • Insert a new blank table.
  • Insert a heading row.
  • Add and delete columns and rows.
  • Merge and split cells.
  • Apply text formatting to cell contents.
  • Format the table with fill and stroke options.
  • Copy and paste a table from Word.
  • Convert tabulated text into a table.
  • Adjust table options.

New Features

  • Use Text to image to create AI generated images.
  • Convert a PDF file to InDesign (Beta)

Output

  • Run the basic pre-flight setting.
  • Package a file.
  • Output to PDF

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