Lessons
Class Introduction
01:51 2Document Set-Up
15:39 3Panels
11:46 4Toolbox
08:22 5The Adobe® Workspace
05:17 6Shortcuts
05:33 7Saving Files
05:37 8Guides
12:42Text Frames
08:13 10Shapes, Fill and Stoke
07:43 11Arranging and Modifying Shapes
08:31 12The Pen Tool: Drawing, Stroke and Fill
06:52 13The Pen Tool: Handles and Anchor Points
08:27 14Pencil, Smooth and Erase Tools
05:46 15Strokes and Arrows
13:33 16Importing Shapes from Adobe® Illustrator®
08:57 17Placing Graphics
08:05 18Placing PDFs
04:22 19Placing Multiple Files
06:14 20Frames: Fitting and Manipulating
07:28 21Specialty Frames
05:52 22The Links Panel
21:34 23High Quality Display
06:48 24Clipping Paths
13:08 25Transparency
09:41 26The Gap Tool
03:55 27Color & Swatches Panels Basics
16:38 28Eyedropper Tool
10:03 29Gradient Swatches
05:31 30Character Panel
23:38 31Paragraph Panel
15:09 32Spelling & Autocorrect
06:42 33Text Frame Options
08:10 34Printing and Exporting
16:16Lesson Info
Saving Files
Alright so let's actually save this file. So I'm gonna go ahead and we have nothing in here I realize that, let's just put something just so we have something in there, we don't wanna save a completely empty document and we're gonna start working with page elements in just a minute. But I wanted to save this now because at some point, you do wanna save it. It does have auto-save which is nice. Once you've saved it once, it does actually keep track of where you are in case it crashes; don't rely on it. Still remember to hit that Command or Control + S to save as you go along, and we have some options the first time we save it as well. So I'm gonna do File + Save As or Save, the first time it goes to the same place anyway; it goes to the Save As dialog box. And again there's our .indd so I know that it's going to be saved as an InDesign document; that should be on by default. I'm gonna tell it, let's save it to the Desktop, and I'm gonna come down here and I have a couple different optio...
ns. One of them is Save the Preview Images with Documents. That's really super handy because you can actually take InDesign files and place them in other InDesign files, so having a preview for that is nice. On your desktop you're still going to see just a plain icon unfortunately. So under the Format, by default it says oh you must wanna do an InDesign document. You also have two other options and we'll do those in just a second. So right now we're gonna do a document that gives us the INDD document. Right, so I'm just gonna click Save to that, and then we'll look at what that looks like. Come out here and I can see that that's what that document looks like. The other thing we have sitting off to the side here is sort of this, this locked file that looks similar in name to this one, but with some other letters appended after that, and it's an IDLK file. That's an InDesign locked file. That's the file that's keeping track of everything you're doing so if you crash, it should pull from that. Occasionally, you will close this document and that lock file doesn't go away, but what should happen when we close this file, and I go back to the desktop, that lock file went away; because it's not open, it doesn't need to keep track of it. Just know that you have, if you have that file there but the file itself isn't open, you might need to trash that, but don't trash it otherwise because it is keeping track of everything for you. Let's go back to this InDesign document that we have here and I'm gonna do File + Save As, and look at a couple of the other options. One of the other options is a template and we're not gonna cover templates in this course, but if you're doing something over and over again say a newsletter that you're going to do every month, you might wanna save it as a template so that it knows that you're going to use everything over, and you're going to strip out all the actual content, you'll leave things like the guides we just set up, and the bleeds, and if we've created text frames, or image frames, those will also be in there but empty. We'll take out the pictures, leave the frames, take out the text, leave the frames so we don't have to do this over and over again, and we'd save that as an INDT file. So that's an InDesign template file, gives us the INDT extension. Let me show you what that looks like, it looks slightly different; similar but different. And again, depending on what version you have of InDesign, this mostly works the same, it's just your icons will look a little different. This is the document, this is the template. The template looks more like a pad of paper cause you're going to keep pulling off a sheet, and making it look the same, and we're gonna start with that as a base. The nice thing about that is when I double-click to open the INDT file, it doesn't open Untitled-1.indt, it opens a new untitled document, in this case Untitled-2, and that way when I hit save, it doesn't overwrite what you just did with the template, it creates a whole new file. So you start with that it automatically opens up a new one and your original template is saved just exactly as it was. Alright, so that's the difference between those two, and the last one, you may or may not use, is an IDML file. So it comes here, it shows IDML, and basically that let's you save to older versions, in fact, it tells you down below here what you can do with that. So it says that it saves for CS4 or later. So if you have CS4 or a later version, you can open up this document, this IDML file in those particular versions of the software. So that may be something you need to do. You've put 2018 on, you've just started, you're working in 2018 and somebody has InDesign CC which I know is kind of confusing; there was CC, then 2014 and 15, and 17 I believe. So they have an older version or even CS6, you can save backwards. Maybe you shouldn't very often because if you save backwards, sometimes some of the newer things get stripped out and so if you're going backwards once that's fine, but I wouldn't send it backwards, have them make changes in CS6, send it back to you which you can open directly, and then you'd have to save it back as an IDML file again, but it is a good thing to be able to save backwards with this IDML file. Also, here's a little tip, if your file starts to get a little wonky and just weird things are happening, save as an IDML file and that sometimes strips out some of that weirdness that happens in files. It sort of just clears out that cache that's been keeping track of everything you're doing, it clears it out, and let's you start from scratch. So IDML file. So that's how we save it out, that's what the documents look like, there's our locked file because I do have that particular one open.
Ratings and Reviews
Susan
Fantastic course. I have used Illustrator and photoshop, but learned when under tight deadlines. We are going to begin using inDesign to publish a more extensive multipage newsletter, and I wanted to build a better knowledge foundation of this tool, rather than just diving in. The course was comprehensive and I feel that I'll be able to make a better product after taking the course.
Terri
Have loved Erica since I was a baby designer. She is a great educator, and even though I have been using ID for about 8 years, I just changed from CS6 to CC. This was a great refresher as well as a mental upgrade to new options and effects.
Gilbert Beltran
I enjoyed these classes. Learned the Indesign toolbox and picked up a few smart tricks. Erica is great at keeping up the pace and being very clear and easy to follow.
Student Work
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Adobe InDesign