We’re all used to working with style sheets (or least we should be). With each new version of InDesign, there seems to be a new way to style your content. We started with paragraph and character styles, then we got nested styles, followed by object styles, and finally table styles in InDesign CS3. As you can see, nested styles is not really new but it’s something that you should be taking advantage of, so let’s get to it.

submitted: 5 years and 3506 days ago

Every now and then an app gets an update that really impacts your daily routine, and I’m happy to say that InDesign CS4 has some new-and-improved features that will do just that. InDesign is a page layout app, so anything that helps that process is a welcome addition, so let’s take a look at how CS4 will speed up your day-to-day work.

submitted: 5 years and 3506 days ago

Going from print to Web just got a lot easier with Adobe InDesign CS4. In the past, we concentrated on going from InDesign to HTML or PDF. While the interactive features in InDesign still work nicely for PDF, they also now work for going to Flash. There are two ways to turn your InDesign document into Flash content. Let’s take a look at both of them.

submitted: 5 years and 3506 days ago

InDesign has always supported the use of layers, but layers don’t always cut it when working with text. You can put a text frame on a layer and turn that layer on and off as needed, but it’s an all or nothing approach. What if you want to show and hide individual words or paragraphs and have the text automatically rewrap when you show or hide those words? With conditional text, it’s a breeze.

submitted: 5 years and 3506 days ago

One of our favorite little text tricks is how you can load an entire story into your cursor by clicking on the in port of the first text frame. You can then link to an existing frame (making it the new first frame in the story), draw a new first frame, or delete all the old frames and draw an entirely new home for the text. Pretty cool.

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Ebooks are hot. They’re just about the only part of the book industry that’s growing.

submitted: 5 years and 3506 days ago

Let's have a look at InDesign's work area. You have a Menu Bar on top, the tools and the palettes. Palettes are little windows which have specialized functions, e.g., you have got one that handles colours, one that handles paragraphs, one that handles pages, etc.

submitted: 5 years and 3506 days ago

The Swatches palette goes hand in hand with the Colour palette. Let's say you have just made this nice blue that you need to use throughout the whole document. Yes you can type the percentages of that blue in your Colour palette every time you need to use it, or you can make your life easier by recording that colour into a swatch which will then go to your Swatches palette.

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Let's have a look at the first two tools in the Tools Palette. The black arrow on the left is called the Selection Tool. The white arrow on the right is the Direct Selection Tool.

submitted: 5 years and 3506 days ago

Cut straight across a shape with the scissors tool in Adobe InDesign.

submitted: 5 years and 3506 days ago