ThinkCreation » InDesign

Converting Text to Outlines in InDesign

Elisabetta Bruno — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:02:34 +0000

Recently my studio changed printer, and this new firm wants us to convert all text to outlines when sending PDFs to them. While for flyers it’s fairly straight forward, when dealing with magazines, i.e. long multipage documents, using the Convert to Outlines option from InDesign can be quite daunting.

Luckily I came across a handy article about how to convert text to outlines in InDesign on InDesign Secrets. As David Blatner says:

Here’s the whole tip in a nutshell: Don’t use Convert to Outlines at all. Instead, use InDesign’s transparency flattener to convert the text automatically for you when you export a PDF.

I encourage you to read the rest of the article to see how to go about that. It’s a very nice tip that will make you save a lot of time!

Adobe CS3 Overview

Elisabetta Bruno — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 20:06:35 +0000

Adobe released Creative Suite 3 today, which is probably their biggest release ever. Since the merge with Macromedia a lot of speculation has gone on about which programs were to make it into the Suite and which ones were to be ditched. For the web designers who were wondering, GoLive has been replaced by Dreamweaver, for starters. You will find Acrobat 8 in CS 3 Design Standard Edition (finally!) and Flash in the Premium Edition. Yet talking about CS 3 as 1 suite is a mistake. There are 6 different suites, which address the needs of print designers, web designers and video editors.

Sue Chastain of About Graphics Software presents us a comprehensive and very hard to beat overview of the Suite, so I am not going to repeat what she has one, and, without any more delay, I encourage you to see the overview for yourself.

InDesign Tutorials, an Overview

Elisabetta Bruno — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 19:52:09 +0000

While there will be InDesign tutorials on ThinkCreation soon, you can already have a look at those I have written on other sites. Following is the list of tutorials as of February 2006 and where to find them.

InDesign Work Area
Familiarize yourself with InDesign CS’ workspace, its palettes and menus. Published also on About Desktop Publishing.

Unexpected White Outlines Around Graphics in InDesign
Graphics look fine in InDesign, but they donâ€™t when you make a PDF. This is often a problem with transparencies. Published also on About Desktop Publishing

Threaded Text in InDesign CS
Find out how to flow text into two or more text frames.

How to Set Up a Document in InDesign CS (multipart tutorial)
This lesson will introduce InDesign’s document area… where the later design magic takes place. Also on About Desktop Publishing.

InDesign CS’ Advanced Typographical Controls
Find out about the Paragraph Composer and Single Line Composer, control hyphenation and more.

Working With Colour in InDesign CS (multipart tutorial)
Here’s how to use the Colour palette, Swatches palette and also brief explanation the Gradients palette. Published also on About Desktop Publishing.

Importing Spot Colours
Working with spot colours and the Swatches Palette.

InDesign CS’ Tools Palette (multipart tutorial)
A fairly in-depth view of the tools palette. Published also on About Desktop Publishing.

The Paragraph Palette
You will find that as an InDesign user the Paragraph palette is one of the most needed tools.

Design with Characterâ€”InDesign Character Style Sheets
Character Style Sheets can be real time savers for designers especially in the creation of long or multi-page documents. Also published on About Desktop Publishing.

Add Style and Save Time with Paragraph Style Sheets
Paragraph styles allow designers to achieve and keep consistency throughout documents.

InDesign CS and CS2 How-to: Typographer Quotes, Bulleted Lists & Dot Leaders
This tutorial will cover three amongst the most common typographical tasks as they are handled with InDesign CS & CS2.

[tags]Adobe, Creative Suite, InDesign, software, typography, tutorial, how-to, layout, design, graphic design, desktop publishing, document [/tags]

A Site Full of InDesign Resources

Elisabetta Bruno — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 14:36:26 +0000

There is a very interesting site all about InDesign: the InDesign User Group. It’s full of resources, tutorials and tips. Have got a question about InDesign? You are very likely to find it here. To access all the resources of the site, it is necessary to become part of one of the InDesign User groups but many are available also for non-members.

Cannot Delete InDesign Swatch?

Elisabetta Bruno — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 16:21:00 +0000

If you are using InDesign, you might have encountered a problem which is actually all too common: No matter what you do, you cannot delete that darn colour from your Swatches Palette. Here are a couple of tips on how to handle this problem.

Export your document to an InDesign Interchange format, using File>Export. This will save with an .inx extention. Close your original document and open the .inx version from InDesign. If your unused colors haven’t already disappeared already, you should be able to remove them and save your document in .indd format over the original.
If the above fix doesn’t remove the ghost colors, try this: create a new blank 1 page document. Set up your margins and columns to match your original document. In the original document, select all the page icons on your page pallet. Drag the pages onto the new blank document page (not the Pages Palette). Delete the 1st page (this is the blank page). Your document should have copied over minus the colors. Save your new document under a new name so you can refer to the original for any tweaking.

This tip is actually from one of the About forum members, Jael B.

Adobe InDesign Basics

Elisabetta Bruno — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 16:48:05 +0000

A Free Class for Those Who Want to Learn InDesign

Here is the InDesign Class I have put together. You can find it on About Desktop Publishing and soon you will see tutorials from that class in Designorati.

This is a free Adobe InDesign course for those who do not have much experience with InDesign and want to learn how to use this program. The Adobe InDesign Basics course will give you the basics on which you can then develop further skills and become proficient at using this powerful layout program.

The InDesign course combines basic desktop publishing skills and graphics design principles with the specifics of how to use Adobe InDesign CS to create visual communications.

Learn the Terminology
In studying this course make sure you don’t pass any word you do not fully understand. If there is a word you don’t know or you are unsure of, make sure you fully clear it up.

Have you ever read through a whole page and then at the end of it you are totally blank about what you just read? That is because you have encountered a word that you did not fully understand and you didn’t clear it up. If you were interested in a subject and all of a sudden your interest on that subject dropped, you most likely passed a word you did not fully understand. Read this article to understand the barriers to study.

The First Lesson.
I will post each lesson one at the time. In the first lesson of the Adobe InDesign Basics class, I review the Work Area, Tools, and Palettes that make up the main screen. Read the full lesson on About Desktop Publishing.

Special thanks to Jacci Howard Bear for her numerous contributions to this class.

Technorati tag: InDesign