Adobe indesign training – advanced

InDesign beginners often struggle with laying out their document efficiently so that items are appropriately and even spaced. This first session covers all areas of making the most of a documents layout. It also looks at tinting which is a cost effective way to make colour changes to small parts of a document as well as working with object libraries.

The key topics trained are:

• Document setup
• Tint and gradient swatches
• Object libraries and snippets
• Item spacing

Working with a document of more than one page is a more complex process. In larger documents it is often appropriate to be adding indexes, tables of contents, footnotes and the like. All of these can be very simply added in InDesign provided you have planned and set up your document correctly. This session shows you all that you need to know about working with larger documents.

The key topics trained include:

• Planning the hierarchy of an index
• Identifying index entries
• Sectioning
• Tables of contents
• Indexing
• Books
• Footnotes

Style sheets are very useful for changing the formating of all of a certain type of text in a document. For example you might want to change the style of all of your captions in a document. With style sheets you only need to change this once and you can be confident that it has changed in all of your captions and also that they are all consistent. This session explains everything that you need to know about style sheets.

The key topics trained are:

• Creating object styles
• Applying object styles
• Editing object styles
• Style palette changes
• Nested Styles
• Creating GREP Styles

Typography allows you to control the appearance of your words. Obviously font effects make a large different but spacing, justification and a host of other variables can also change the appearance of a page of text markedly. As such, ensuring that the typography of your document makes the right effect is key to creating an impactful document. This session with show you how to do that in InDesign.

The key topics trained are:

• Optical Margin Alignment
• Using Adobe Paragraph Composer
• Applying Justification Controls
• Controlling Hyphenation
• Baseline Grid
• Balancing Ragged Lines

This session will take your graphics control to the next level. InDesign makes controlling and manipulating graphics very straightforward. We’ll show you how in this session.

The key topics trained are:

• Layer composition
• Transparency
• Object styles
• Transforming objects

PDF’ing a document is something that most people do automatically. PDF is a very powerful tool when used correctly, and knowing how to use PDF well will make outputting your InDesign documents a much easier and more controllable process.

The key topics trained include:

• The PDF Presets Explained
• Creating and Customising pdf settings
• Generating low and hi res pdf documents
• PDF document and Pantone Colours
• Creating Interactive PDF’s

XML is short for Extensible Markup Language. It is a general computer language that was designed to be simple and widely used on the web. It allows text data to be both machine and human readable and to be shared between different software applications. This makes XML the best way to importing to and exporting from InDesign quickly.

The key topics trained are:

• Working with XML
• Importing XML
• Tagging content for XML
• Structuring documents for XML
• Exporting XML

InDesign allows the creation of interactive documents. Hyperlinks, sounds, movies and other interactive effects can be added to your documents for greater impact. As ever, InDesign makes adding these effects straightforward. This session will show you how.

The key topics trained are:

• Hyperlinks
• Adding sounds
• Adding Movies
• Creating Buttons
• General Button Properties
• Applying Behaviours
• Creating Page Transitions
• Exporting Interactive SWFS (CS4 only)

This short section covers a few of the most advanced text editing subjects that aren’t appropriate at beginners stage.

The key topics trained are:

• How to save Table of Contents Data
• Anchored objects
• Adding Dot Leaders to tabbed Text

Having spent time getting your document looking just right it is important to ensure that when it is printed it looks just as good. In the past colour management was a specialist area which print shops and large publishers dealt with as individual designers had no control over it. These days it is an important skill for all designers to ensure that their printed article looks exactly as it should. This session will show you how to use InDesign to get accurate, consistent colour results.

The key topics trained are:

• Choosing colour settings
• Saving and loading colour settings
• Working with profiles

InDesign is a very flexible tool and offers a number of customisation options to make it easier to use. This session will show you how to configure InDesign so that you can set it up just how you like it. It also looks at configuring plug-ins which are very small pieces of code which add to InDesign’s functionality by introducing a further very specific capability that InDesign does not offer.

The key topics trained are:

• General preferences
• Modifying shortcuts
• Configuring Plug-ins

The final section of this course allows the trainer to explain a few tips and tricks that they have picked up over their years of graphic design work.