10 Adobe InDesign CC Tips & Tricks

[Music] welcome everyone welcome to Adobe InDesign Tuesday Adobe InDesign live my name's Terry White it's my pleasure to be here once again streaming InDesign content just for you so if you're watching this on the replay if you're watching this on youtube or somewhere else welcome and hope you get something out of the tips whenever I'm in my office Home Office I'm doing these streams every Tuesday on the InDesign channel same time same channel 1 p.m. Pacific at facebook.com slash InDesign so I take it that most of you are probably InDesign users and you probably come in from all different levels of InDesign so you are either you know beginner intermediate advanced you know old-timer you've been using this since day one you just started using it yesterday whatever the case may be I think you'll get something out of the tips today so with that said hello Victoria ho patty hello Igor hello Kristina let's see who else did I miss hey Thomas is in the house what's up Thomas hello Lee hello Dirk so we got a full house here today everyone wants to know ten tips or whatever the number by the way that's the secret whatever the number is people want to know what they are so that's always a attention grabber when you number things because people just want to know if they know all ten or an all seven or all sinks so I'm glad that worked and got many of you here are beyond Brianna hello as well and let's go ahead and take a look at what the Tim tip 10 tips are going to be I switched over to our computer and I'm actually gonna give you an 11 I'm gonna give you a bonus one because this one kind of ties into the first tip so you're gonna get 11 by the end of this the first one is actually going more like 12 13 but anyway the first one is it deals with how to will this be okay so Alexander is asking will this be for the latest version of InDesign yes but many of these tips work with previous versions as well matter of fact most of them probably do so the first one is a long-standing tip but it just it became a little more complicated now that we have this new new document experienced back in the old days before you had this hey show me my recents let me create from a template so forth and so on when you open up InDesign and you didn't have a document open you would see InDesign you will see your tool panel your regular panels so forth and so on so first tip is if you want to get back to a similar experience of that this is one of the bonus tip by the way just go to your preferences go to general or command key on Mac ctrl key on Windows and simply say don't show the star quirk workspace window document is open I'm going to turn that off temporarily that is a tip but that's not the main tip I want to show gonna turn that off temporarily because with that off and I get my end design with no document open that gets me to the first tip and the first tip is you never notice that whenever you start typing whenever you create text for the first time it is always in minion Pro regular 12-point so forth and so on it's always in that font and you always have to change or use a style sheet well the first one is an old tip and it's basically how to make your own default font or your own selection of your default font the default in other words I rarely use minion Pro I don't really care for minion Pro I'm not really a serif kind of guy I like myriad Pro to be my default for most things and of course I could change it along the way but I don't wanna have to change it every single time I'm changing my fonts hang on for a sec here let me put them do not disturb okay so the first tip is with no document open that's why we had to turn off the temporary workspace or the workspace I can now change this so if I change this to myriad Pro regular whatever size whatever other characteristics you want that will be the new font to default for every document I create from now on it's not retroactive meaning if you go back to an old document minion Pro or whatever will be the default still for that document if you create new documents after you make this change every text frame you create will be in whatever font you just chose now speaking of retroactive here's another bonus tip so this is like one point one let's say I have a document I created yesterday and every time I create a new frame and that document is minion Pro if you make the font change with no frame selected no text selected then that becomes the default for that document so even for your older documents if you want to make the default change just make the default change with no frame selected and then that will become the default so now if I were to create a new document and I were to get the same experience that I always get and I were to now go ahead and start creating text lo and behold it is myriad Pro 12-point because that's my default if I close this document quit InDesign come back tomorrow every new document I create will be a myriad Pro 12 all right so hey Michelle oh hey Jamie Feldman hey Elise hey Annette I so let's go on to the next one I want to turn the workspace back on this start new start workspace so I get this again and now I'm gonna give you another bonus tip so this is not tip number two this is still kind of that whole 1.1 1.2 or a or pre tip 2 well anyway tip number one was the change of default font the bonus to that was turn off your workspace first another another bonus to that is every time I click create new or command in I get this and then I have to click and make my changes and I click create you notice there's one called default well what if I just want my default document I don't have to see that second dialog box every single time on the Mac command option PC ctrl alt in for new boom you're in your new document without seeing that second dialog box whether the workspace is on or not you just want to quickly create your default document command option in or RPC control alt in and that will give you your new document without any muss any fuss whatsoever now I know what you're thinking how do I change it to what I want my new default to be maybe I always work make Y documents to begin with maybe all mine are 11 by in half how do I change that so this is tip 1.3 or wherever we are go so that we start guiding to tip number 2 but along those same lines if you were to go up to your file menu come down to document presets and choose to fine there is the one called default if you go into edit and make whatever changes you want to be your default document that's where it gets it from so for example I turned off my primary text frame I set my default document to print I turned off facing pages I turned off all the things that I don't like to be my default so that's how you set up where your default documents going to be or what it's going to be all right so now moving on the tip number two so let's do our tip number one again command option in boom we're in alright this one kind of blew my mind because it changed it used to be a different keyboard shirt or actually it used to do a different thing when you did this keyboard shortcut but now it is doing something new so for example you know that if you grab the frame tool or the shape tools you drag out you get one great you also know that maybe you don't know bonus tip if you click you can define the size so if I say I want a three and a half by two for a business card boom there's my size alright so now let's say that I need multiple frames but I don't have to draw one by one I don't have to copy paste I don't wanna have to duplicate I don't have to do any of that so if I go sorry about that I scrolled if I go and start dragging a frame a big frame for the whole margin area but I don't let go I'm still holding down the mouse I use my other hand and up arrow key up arrow key right arrow key up arrow key boom create as many additional frames as you want by dividing the frame that you start it with into whatever as many as you want so up arrow key makes them or makes horizontal frames right arrow key makes you know your columns of frames so if I needed three columns of frames I would hit the right arrow key twice so that one actually used to do something different it used to be that if you were to drag out the polygon tool and I don't know that we ever replaced this this this sorry about that I don't know if we ever replace this with a different keyboard shortcut at least I can't find it so if someone knows it that'd be great alright it used to be like if you drag out the polygon tool and you hit your up arrow key it would add the number of sides to the polygon so instead of whatever this is six I'd have seven or eight or whatever and if I down arrow key it would do less now of course it just divides so I'm not sure if we ever did replace that with something new but at least that's the way it works now okay so next up that was number two divide your frames or shapes as you create them the next one who I need to open up illustrator for this one sorry I forgot to have illustrator already open I'll look at your comments while we're out there so nice one super has this started nope Alice it has not started we're still in the pre phase of this no I'm kidding yes we started awesome cool alright so now let's go ahead and create a new document here and I don't know if it's got the same keyboard shortcut or not that would be nice doesn't matter what size we're just creating a document illustrator is a way better drawing program than InDesign is yeah InDesign can draw you can make vector shapes but illustrator is just better at it it's got better tools for making vectors so for example let me see if I can find something real quick to use let's use this let's use this symbol yeah let's scale it up there's gonna be a good example or not let's see if we can I'm making this way harder than it needs to be let's see if we can expand it yep expanding the object and feel sure do that so now basically I've converted it into just the vector shapes that we see so a circle and around it record a rectangle now if I were to select those and copy and paste not save it and then place it in design by copy and paste something from InDesign and you know what just screw it I need a better shape sorry this just won't cut it I need something like this all right let's do this one alright let's scale it first you'll understand why that one wouldn't work in just a second let's make this one bigger cool now let's go ahead and get rid of that last little piece of the other one let's do the same thing let's go to the object menu and expand it because it was a symbol yes good and do all of that now I can go ahead and manipulate the vectors themselves and so for example I can you know pull that down and pull this down I just want this to be open cool now that I've got this shape I'm gonna go ahead and select it and copy it if you copy and paste vectors from here let's go ahead and add another page while we're at it if you copy and paste vectors from Illustrator like I'm about to do now it becomes a frame so now I should be able to if I did that right I should be able to click into it maybe not oh because it's filled hold on hold on one more thing I just did it wrong hold on this is actually the shape of it so let me do this let's do that unless I'm just gonna cheat it real quick let's do something like that and something like that and then we'll change the fill and Stroke we'll just reverse it there we go so you create your or whatever and actually I don't need that get rid of it you create your shape the shape that would be easier to draw an illustrator or better to draw an illustrator or faster for you to draw an illustrator copy it head back to InDesign get rid of this one and yes I know about libraries thank you thank you and paste area and now we scale this down just so because we're gonna need that big and now if I were to click in it with my type tool he knows my type tool becomes a little circle that's because it's now using this as a frame so if I say type fill with placeholder text boom that fills that frame with text so if you need a special shaped frame that's hard for you to draw or hard for you to get done inside of InDesign head over to illustrator and either create it or trace it or use vector clipart or stop however you want to get your shape copy it once you get your shape paste it back in InDesign it comes in InDesign as a frame so it's like InDesign has no tie to the original it doesn't know anything about the original anymore this is now just a new object inside of InDesign and it's still vector so if you needed to go in and say oh I need the roof to be taller then you can make the roof taller you could still manipulate it after the fact okay tip number four and this one will be kind of cool because what I'll do is I'll use tip number two to work with it so let's make a new page and let's go back to the polygon frame tool and I'm going to draw out a big giant polygon but I'm gonna use the same tip that I used before I'm going to hit the up arrow key a couple of times the right arrow key a few times something like that and this could be any shape I'm just using the polygon it's cuz I've got them now of course those are now individual frames okay so I could delete one delete that one maybe that one these are individual frames but if I select them if I select them again all is 1 and this is tip number 4 I can go to the object menu in InDesign and I can go down to I remember where it is I can go down to nope nope there it is under paths I can say make compound path what that will now do is treat this as one giant frame of all those shapes so if I can go to my file menu now and choose place or I could even grab something from stock that I've got here in my library file place or use one of your images from your library let's say I just want to use something that'll stand out like these kids drag the kids over and then place them in the frame and they now become part of that design so without those don't have any borders when I go to preview mode we get to see them and of course they are still alive so you can click on them and move them around and maybe get them better in the faces the way you are in these shapes the way you want that would be kind of tricky so you'll have to move the shapes around so all of this is still a lot of I made it worse all of this is still alive and you can still manipulate it alright so with that said that was number four make content make compound frames so basically two or more frames of any different shapes command 8 or control eight on Windows or or find it on the menu like I just did and that will combine those frames that you have selected into one frame and then you can use it any way one and yes you could still go in even after the fact I should be able to go in and even manipulate directly manipulate the firm's themselves so if I needed that one to show more people I neither that one to be a different shape and show more people that way I could still manipulate them because the image is still there the entire time ok next up a number five number five is a simple one it's one that bugs me though isn't when people don't do it let's say you make a giant frame because you think you're gonna type something major so you go in you start typing this is cool I wish I had known these tips yesterday I'm just kidding but anyway so you did that and now your frames too big because you didn't fill it you did and here we can even make the type a little bigger you didn't fill it you didn't use up the whole frame so of course if you're practicing the document hygiene you would go in and resize it make sure that it's no bigger than it needs to be so that way it's not overlapping anything or causing unnecessary stress let's undo that because there's a button right on your control panel that does it for you be fit content two frameworks with type frames as well or text frames so you don't have to would this be in YouTube and what would it be called would what be in YouTube what would it be go anyway we're gonna say fit this fit friend the content and when we click it just automatically does that so you don't have to grab it and resize it and get it just right so when friends were too big just fit the content the frame to the content and it'll automatically shrink the frame works for images - all right numbers have been no number six use text as a frame so let's grab another page and let's say that you type a word like let's grab a type tool and let's by the way I'm going to use the page tool I'm going to show you a bonus tip let's go to the page tool which is right there and with the page tool I'm going to switch this page to landscape yes pages in your InDesign document don't all have to be the same orientation or size or any of that so I just switch that page to landscape because it'll just work better for what I'm gonna do all right so this page we're going to type the word spring I know it's coming eventually spring will be here someday maybe by the time summer starts alright buddy okay we get this nice and big by the way a bonus tip I'm holding now command shift command shift greater than to make that bigger all right next up we're gonna go in and choose a font I'm gonna make the one that's nice and thick and one I know that's nice and thick is fat Frank fat Frank heavy is nice and thick and what I want to do is I want to use the word spring as my frame so I just go to my type menu come down to create outlines that will make it no longer text but it also makes it so that it's no longer text is actually a frame so if I were to grab an image like this and drag it into that it becomes my image and I can even use my fitting commands on that to fit that down better I can also use the content grabber to move it around inside the word spring now by the way bonus tip patient user mode something of phrase I coined years ago if you just grab the content grab or anything in InDesign it's going to just give you a box it's just gonna give you an outline you're not gonna see what you're doing till you let go all that then you're just gonna have to keep clicking until you get it in the right spot or if you hold down your mouse and count to two one two you see a preview now you can know exactly where it's gonna be when you move it patient user mode brought to you first but Terry white all right how'd you just the page format after I created the page like so I grabbed the page tool which is a tool on a tool panel and then I just went up to the control panel and change it to whatever I wanted including different size different orientation whatever you want alright so next up let's talk about that was number six used text as a frame number seven use the story editor we can go back up for this one let's say that your frame is too small for your text and you don't know if you've got a single line over set or two lines of over set or three lines of over set you don't know how many lines you've got because what people tend to do is they tend to make the frame bigger and oh no still not enough and they keep making a frame bigger and you know and maybe that works but this could this means that it worked that time but maybe it won't work next time and so forth and so on so the story editor is a little mini text editor built into InDesign and the way you get to it is you just simply click any your cursor anywhere in the text and hit command Y of there's a menu option for it it's under edit I believe it is called edit and story editor so command Y on Mac ctrl or a PC control Y and that will edit the text in the story editor and it gives you this nice red line letting you know this is what's over set this is how much more stuff is not showing so you could either make the text smaller make the frame bigger edit the text down whatever it takes so you see all your text so if you are the author and you say hey I don't need this middle paragraph that's redundant then you can reduce the middle paragraph and you have now almost solved the problem I thought I was done all right let's do one more and maybe you say hey I don't need these lines either because you're the author but if not you'd have to do something else if you're not the author and you can't change what it says then you make the text smaller or the frame bigger or continue the text to another friend all right here's another one let me grab the let me select this word so I can copy it there we go and while we're here we're just going to go ahead and oh I can use this frame for it okay so I wish I had known about these tips yesterday sometimes this can be pasted inappropriate and we don't want that okay so let me go ahead and ferm bigger so I can see the rest which by the way that same tip I showed you earlier also does it for the frame in the opposite direction you need to make the frame show what's there you can fit friend content and it will make the frame big enough to show you all of the Texas missing okay next up as people were asking for an encore on spring okay we'll do that via so the problem here is the word inappropriate which I pasted in because I always spell it wrong or is miss too many peas or too many ends or whatever but anyway I got it I pasted it in and notice that it hyphenated well I could turn off hyphenation for the paragraph and that means nothing will be hyphenated or I could say you know what I just never want the word inappropriate hyphenated I never want the name of my company - ADA I never want certain things hyphenated so what we can do is put my cursor there so we'll see it happen I'm gonna go up to the edit menu come down to the spelling and user dictionary this is your dictionary this is the words that you want to add so I got the word inappropriate highlight it or at least it's there it knows it and I put a tilde character the tilde is the one above the tab key so shift tilde if you add a word with a tilde in front of it it not only adds that word to the dictionary which is already in dictionary but I need to add it again but it adds it so that it will never be hyphenated so when I add that word look it already did it it says up inappropriate can't be hyphenated that's a rule now because I added it to the dictionary with the tilde so if you want to ever have a word branding company whatever never be hyphenated add it to your user dictionary with the tilde key in front of it that's what the tilde looks like above the tab key and that way it will never get hyphenated ever again okay so next up number nine so we're gonna go back to where are those extra frames we're gonna go here ooh there's not enough space in between them so I'm gonna fake it let's start pulling these up a bit I need some more space in between them that's why I'm doing this oh you know what it's just easier to do it this way let's just get rid of these get rid of these yeah and we'll just duplicate these down well before we even do that let me get rid of this one so here's a bonus tip unlock these all at the same setting so I'm gonna go to fitting frame fitting options and set my friend fitting an option to feel content proportionally bit no fit content to the frame fit content per porcelain fill the frames porcelain I'm sorry that's the one I had a brain freeze there for a second okay so now I'm going to duplicate that across holding down my option key and dragging it then I'm going to select both of them hold down my option or Alt key and drag it down need some more space in between them and boom we'll just do that that's enough okay so now that I've got multiple frames two or more the next thing dang I learned something new tilda yeah you want something new how about that cool why is it dang that should be like hooray you don't want to learn something okay so next thing I want to do is I'm going to grab and I'm doing this from memory it's been a while since I've done this so bear with me if I screw it up I'm gonna grab the text from text frame create a text frame for that and I want to do a couple things in that text frame I want to go up to my type menu I think it's under type type type type type maybe not let's see should be under type or edits under one of these and you can't help me because you don't know what I want to do I'm gonna under type and now I know why Photoshop has a search for Photoshop because you're looking for something you don't remember where it is no no no it should be under should be under yeah it's under object I would have never guessed clearly all right so hunter object there's something called captions set up when you do captions set up you can say basically this is a two-step process it's saying what I want my caption to be if I want any text before or after it so I'm and where you want it I want it below the image uh-oh you know what I don't have to draw I don't think I have to draw a frame for that oh I don't think I need this frame like I said I'm doing this from memory all-rounder the object menu go to captions captions set up there we go and I want the caption to pull the description from the image so I have to find the word description not an alphabetical order in design team why not all right yeah the word description use whatever paragraph style you want put it below the image offset it by that much click OK and nothing's gonna happen because you just set up what you want your captions to be now I can select all these frames and I could say under the same object menu under captions generate live caption and it says nothing's there because there's no images in those frames if I were to go find some images let's go get my demo files here and let's go to my photos and let's go to my landscape photos and I were to grab a few of these like these 6 and I were to drag them into InDesign and then I were to say bam bam bam bam bam and bam I got captions it automatically pulled the description from the metadata of the images so notice the first one says a beautiful sunrise in Spain because that's what it is if I were to go back out and find a different image like this one from Hayman Island and drag it in and then hold down my option key or Alt key to replace that one now it's a Beaufort Island so it's pulling the description and it's live from the image how are you getting the captions and the images how are you going to know the descriptions in there I use Lightroom but you can use bridge or any other tool that makes metadata so for example we were to drag this folder onto Bridge River bridges I don't use it but there is there's bridge and you were to select that image if you were to scroll down and find description which it's under the oh it's here somewhere it's at the top here there it is no that's the description writer if we keep going keep going keep going keep going I can never find it it's got to be not in the ITP Secor it's being this one it should be in this one right here I don't I see description it's here I'm just scrolling feverishly and scrolling past it so let's find it real quick alright slow down it's not in the file properties it should be here but it's not I do have the one image selected good this is why I don't use bridge somewhere in here there's the word description you should oh there it is okay so there's headline sunrise in Spain and a beautiful sunrise in Spain and that is under the category of IT IPTC core so that's where you will find I just kept scrolling past it so that's where you'll find headline and description and of course you can pull any of those in and thank you anthem as I passed it all right so there it is and of course you just select the image and apply whatever description or headlines or whatever else you want and again I do that in Lightroom under title and caption so it's the same thing alright next that was number nine number ten I'm gonna create a new document for this one that was kind of cool many of you probably don't know this but by the way this is just a multi-page template and of course it has nothing filled in but anytime you have a multiple page InDesign document and this one's horizontal so imagine if you used in design to make your slide presentation and you want to deliver it in InDesign or you wanted to show a customer brief of the work you created and they're right there in front of you so you could just go down here to where you normally switch between normal and preview mode and bleed and slug at the very bottom is presentation mode so let me make sure I'm not in your way yep not your way presentation modes the very bottom when you do that boom puts everything in presentation mode you go to the next page by hitting the right arrow key or the left arrow key to go back just like you would in a slide presentation no you don't get animations and cross dissolves or any of this stuff you would get from keynote or PowerPoint but you do get the issue or you do get the ability to operate in someone's kind of you do get the ability to have a quick presentation of your InDesign document by going to presentation mode how do you get out of presentation mode you know you just have to shut down no I'm just kidding you get our presentation mode by hitting the Escape key that will take you right back to where you were so hope you got something out of this and so we'll do the spring encore for the people that needed that so here's what I did so I'll go a little slower this time and then we'll be done so let's let's do another one let's grab our type tool basically all I did was create my frame I typed my word into it so this time we'll this summer I chose a nice thick heavy font so that the image will show through nicely so I chose a fat frank heavy which is a Typekit font you guys can all have that and I made my word bigger by a command shift greater than and once I did that now of course that's just typed so at this point proofread it make sure it's the right font size or just right font and right text because once you do this next step you can't edit the text anymore so what I did was I went up to my object menu I'm sorry my type menu and I said create outlines command shift o that converts the word summer into a graphic so now if I were to grab an image place drag-and-drop anything you want if I were to grab an image let's say the girl with the long hair and I or lady with long hair and I were to click in place it places that into the word summer now this is all vector so if I were to go in and say hey I want to reshape reshape my letter M I can reshape the heck out of my letter M now because it's vector I can redesign this to do whatever I want to do so it's just as if you had drawn the word summer in Illustrator and copy and paste it and it became afraid so I hope that was slow enough if not you can watch the replay and go and pause it and go step by step so with that said I hope you got something out of my 10 tips a quick recap change your default font divide frames as you create them create friends an illustrator copy and paste them in number 4 make compound frames making multiple frames into one frame number 6 use text as a fiying which is what we just did number 7 using the story editor to edit text that you can't see number 8 never - 8 this word whatever the word is generate image captions automatically based on the description in amis that's a killer tip you got at that number 10 presentation mode to present your work so with that said everyone thanks for hanging out thanks for hanging out a little bit extra for the encore and I appreciate all of you watching this and giving it a thumbs up on Facebook and sharing it and all of those cool things all right all the way from Frankfort you're welcome and cheers everybody we'll catch you on the next one bye I know you can still hear me because I'm still trying to close the string this is your conscience talking use InDesign as much as you can go forth to now and spread your knowledge all right I'm gonna get there in a second refreshing let's in the stream now anytime it's ready I know because I'm still talking all right people are saying I can still hear you hang on here we go in live video finally I have the button yay bye everybody

Channel: Terry White

Views: 34,223

Keywords: Terry White, Adobe, InDesign, Tips and Tricks, Killer Tips, Creative Cloud, Page Layout, InDesign Tutorial, Graphic Design

Id: riqA91LRNUs

Length: 38min 32sec (2312 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 18 2018