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Adobe InDesign Course - Class 02 (Workspace) - read the full article about web design errors, Web design and from Creativity Garage on Qualified.One
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Hi there! In this lesson youre going to learn the different panels, and navigating through the layout of Adobe InDesign, so lets get started.
So lets hit ‘create new’, and since our objective is to learn more about the workspace, we wont pay heed to the settings of the document here, so just hit create.
InDesigns workspace is divided into six segments.
On top, youll find the menu, which is a pretty common occurrence, in any software, through which you can access the different features InDesign offers.
On the left, is the toolbar to help you achieve the maximum, from your document, so you find tools like, the text tool, the shape tool in the form of rectangle, and ellipse tool.
You find the pen tool, the gradient tool, and much more that youll learn in days to come.
All these tools will help you in designing those lovely layouts, drawings, books, posters, and much more.
You see this button with arrows facing to the right, once you click it, it will expand the toolbar for a better view.
Click the button again, and it will retract to one column.
Right below the button, youll find a line, more like a divider. Click, hold, and drag it out to the paste board, so yes, you can detach the toolbar, and this gray area around the document is called the paste board.
You can put objects, that you might need while you design, on the paste board, but that will not be printed.
Lets plug the toolbar back to its original position.
On the right, youll find panels, and much like the toolbar, these panels can be expanded and retracted, using a similar button, that we used for our toolbar.
For specific reasons, these panels take more space, because the information they help you with, is much more than what you get with the toolbars, hence, there arent as many different panels, as the tools in the toolbar.
You see this layers panel! I can always drag it out to the paste board, and at this point, it is not even plugged to the panel area.
Right now there are two columns of panels, but you can have more, should you want to, but then its going to take the document space, so ideally, it should be kept to one, or a maximum of two columns.
To plug this layers panel to one of the columns, Im going to take it to the column, and wait for this blue strip to appear. It means, the column is ready to take the panel, and when you release the mouse button, it will plug itself to the column.
To take one of the panels out, click, and hold the divider line, and pull it out, and it will be out, and all these panels that you see here, can be accessed, or shown, using the window menu.
There are many more panels that are not showing at the moment, because you wont need all of them, all the time. It is always best, to only have the panels that youll often use, like the pages panel, or layers, or colors, or swatches.
Let me take you to window, and lets bring a panel thats not out already. Lets go to styles, and then paragraph styles, and you shall find it popping out here.
To plug it to the column, just drag it to the column, wait for the blue strip to appear, and release, and there you go! Its plugged, and ready to serve you.
This panel on top is the options bar. If you click this small cog on the right, a pop-up will appear, with check boxes. From here, you can uncheck the options you dont want, and they will disappear from the screen.
When you click the burger menu, its the small icon with three stacked lines, it will show you different options, and let me tell you that these options will change, depending upon the options on top. Confused! Let me explain.
The options that you see on top are not fixed, which means they will change, depending upon the tool I pick from the toolbar on the left, so when I pick the page tool, you see the options on top have changed to different options, pertaining to the selected tool.
Similarly, when I pick the gap tool here, a different set of options appear on top. When I click the text tool, I get a wide variety of options on top, and with the text tool, the options are also divided into two parts here, so this one is the character formatting controls. Anything to do with the text, can be customized using the options here, and the other one is the paragraph formatting controls, that deals with alignments and leading, and columns etc.
At the bottom of the screen, is the status bar, from where you can even change the view options.
At this point, the screen is at 72.55 percent view. Click it, and change it to 75 percent, or to 400 percent, and its gonna zoom-in to that view.
Lets bring it to 100. This is particularly good for people with smaller screens, or the ones with eyesight issues. They can have it zoomed-in to their requirement.
The status bar also tells you details about the pages, so at the moment I have just one page in the document, and the A-master.
This bar also tells you, if the document has been saved or not.
You see, we created this document only a few minutes ago, for this lesson. I havent saved it, because I dont really need to, and it gives me that information here. It also gives me this workspace information here, basis my actions on the document, so it understands, that it is digital publishing, that Im most likely working on, and it reflects that here.
Lastly, it shows the pre-flight info. Preflight is a feature that checks for errors, as you work. Displaying errors in real time. Enabling the designer to fix problems throughout the design process.
All right, lets move on to the menu options on top. The menu options are very self-explanatory. The first one is the file menu, that includes some of the basic commands to create, open, and save documents.
It also includes the place command, to import new content, and many options to control document settings, exporting documents, and printing.
Then we have the edit menu. You can access many commands for editing, and controlling selections, such as, copying, and keyboard shortcuts, the dictionary and spell checker are also on this menu.
Layout is used to create guides. These options help you lay elements on the page accurately, and properly align them. You can even use this menu to navigate the documents, pages and spreads.
Then we have the type menu, that lets you select fonts, and control characters in the layout. You can access many settings, related to text, from this menu, which opens the associated panel, where you make the changes.
Object helps you modifying the look, and placement of objects, on the page. Which options are available on this menu, depends on which element youve selected in the workspace, such as a text field, or an image.
Now we have the table menu, which is used to create setup, modify, and control tables, on the page.
View can assist you in modifying the view of the page, from this menu, including zooming-in, and out, as well as work with guides, rulers, or grids, to help you lay out elements.
Window menu is used to open, and close panels, or switch between open documents, and then we have the last one, which is the help menu.
This menu is where you can access the help documents for InDesign, and configure any plugins you have installed. There is one feature of help menu, that I really love.
Suppose you want to go to cross references option, but you just cant seem to find it in the menu, so what you can do is, in the search bar, under help menu, type in cross references, and it will throw a list of the occurrences of cross references.
Now, the moment you take your cursor to any one option from the list, you see what happens! It highlights, where in the menu, you can find it.
Lets test another one here. Lets type in liquid layout. You see there are two occurrences of liquid layout. Just hover your cursor to one of them, and it will show you where the option is sitting under menu, so its a very powerful tool, particularly, for the ones who are new to InDesign, and also for the forgetful ones.
When you go to window, and workspace, you will find different workspaces that are divided, and preset, as per the needs of that work, and not just that, you can have your own workspace as well, depending upon your needs.
Lets say, how I see my document right now, in which I have CC libraries, and pages and paragraph styles on the right, and the rest of the panels on the left. I want to always work with these panels, ready for me, so what Im going to do is, go to window, and then workspace, and new workspace, and lets give it a name, demo workspace, and Ill have the workspace to capture both, the panel locations, and the menus, and hit okay.
My demo workspace is now saved, so lets switch to another workspace here. Lets go to typography. You see, typography has just one column of panels on the right, and it has these panels that I did not have on my workspace, because I never used them, so let me switch back to my beloved demo workspace, and there you go! All my settings are intact, like I saved them.
Im always at liberty to delete this workspace, should I not want it, and to do that, I need to go to window, and then workspace, and click delete workspace. From the drop down, lets select demo workspace, and hit delete. The moment I delete it, my workspace switches to the default one, which is essentials. Lets switch our workspace to essential classic, because Im never happy without my options panel on top.
Another thing to note is that all our documents are tabulated, so when I go to the tab of this document, and right click, I have these many options to choose from. Lets select new document, and from the new document window, lets hit create, and youll find the new document appearing in another tab, so switching between document becomes very easy.
Lets close the new document, without saving it, and lastly, Id like to talk about split windows feature. It sits at the bottom right of the status bar. It is useful, but often ignored, which gives two views of the same document.
Let me grab the text tool, and type in something here, and you can see the typing happening in both screens, so it works really well for people with eyesight issues, and another big reason why this is useful is, when highlighting the text, to change the text color.
Let me highlight the text, and change its color to pink. You see its difficult to see the new shade, without turning off the highlighter, thats because all colors are inverted, when selected, as can be seen here.
The text looks green on the highlighted screen, but in actuality, its pink. Youll be forced to deselect, to view the new color, which can be time consuming, if you want to skim through a number of different shades, to find the right one.
All right guys! That concludes our lesson. In the next one, well learn about pages, so stay tuned, and Ill see you there, in just a moment.
Creativity Garage: Adobe InDesign Course - Class 02 (Workspace) - Web design