InDesign training - basics & tricks (free)

Anyone who wants to get started with Adobe InDesign should first familiarize themselves with the program interface and its various tools and panels. Understanding the structure will help you navigate InDesign layouts quickly and confidently.

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In this video training, I will show you how the presets of InDesign affect. A distinction is made between the program preferences and the document preferences.

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Color management ensures on the one hand in the Creative Suite a color-binding screen view of the expected print result. In addition, the stored settings for converting RGB image data to the planned printing process as well as to the desired material such as coated or uncoated paper are crucial.

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With the selection tool (Shortcut V) you select individual objects on the page to, for example, reposition them, scale them, apply effects, or edit them as desired.

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With the Direct Selection tool, you can move and scale the content of an object frame, such as an image or a graphic, as well as change the frame shape itself.

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With the page tool, you can adjust the layout of the print sheet afterwards and add, for example, a floater. Using liquid layout, you can quickly intuitively adjust to a different layout.

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With the gapping tool (Shortcut U), you can change the distance between adjacent objects on the print sheet without touching the object frames.

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With the content grabbing and content placing tool, InDesign CS6 provides a new function that allows you to copy any objects and place them elsewhere or in another document with just one click of the mouse. Part of this tool is a window called "Transfer" where the copied objects are visible and can be equipped with various properties via small buttons. Download for free now - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

With the text tool (shortcut T) you can drag text boxes with the mouse button pressed and start typing immediately after releasing it.
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Working with the line drawing tool (including shortcut). Download now for free – a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

The path tools appear in a flyout menu when you click on the symbol marked above in the toolbar and hold down the left mouse button. They consist of:

• the pen tool
• the add anchor point tool
• the delete anchor point tool and

the convert direction point tool

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The colored pencil tools appear in a flyout menu when you click on the symbol highlighted at the top in the toolbar and hold down the left mouse button. They consist of:

• the colored pencil
• a smoothing tool
• and an eraser tool.
  
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The placeholder frame tools are used to draw frames for later placement of images. They appear in a flyout menu when you click on the symbol highlighted above in the toolbar and hold down the left mouse button. The shape of

• a rectangular frame
• an elliptical frame or
• a polygonal frame
  
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The graphic frame tools are used to create frames in different shapes. They appear in a flyout menu when you click on the symbol highlighted above in the toolbar and hold down the left mouse button. The following can be selected:

• Rectangle Tool
• Ellipse Tool
• Polygon Tool

Clicking on one of them selects the corresponding tool. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

With the scissor tool (Shortcut C), you can split previously drawn paths or existing vector graphics into two or more pieces. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

The Free Transform tools appear in a flyout menu when you click on the symbol marked above in the toolbar and hold down the left mouse button. They consist of a tool for

• Free Transform (E)
• Rotate (R)
• Scale (S)
• Shear (O)

Clicking on one of these selects the corresponding tool. This will transform a previously selected object depending on the reference point set, according to the tool chosen. The transformation affects both the frame and the content of the frame equally. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

With the Gradient Tool (Shortcut G) you can set the starting and ending points of a gradient for the outline or the fill of a selected object. Download for free now - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

With the Gradient Mesh Tool (Shortcut Shift+G) you can achieve a gradient from solid to transparent. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

With the note tool, you can insert information and comments for later corrections or changes at precise positions within texts. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

With the dropper tool (Shortcut I) you can capture the properties of an object and transfer them to another object. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

With the hand tool, you can intuitively move the workspace on the monitor. With the zoom tool, you can zoom in on or out of the details on the print sheet. Download for free now - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I show how you navigate in a document, get to different pages, switch between multiple open ID documents, and which viewing modes are available for working and presenting. Download now for free – a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I present the control panel, where you can see at a glance the information related to the selected tool and object and make relevant settings directly. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show some of the diverse possibilities of working with the context menu, through which you, depending on the selected tool and object, can quickly access the relevant editing options. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to use keyboard commands or so-called shortcuts, with which you can significantly speed up your work with InDesign. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos in recent years.

In this video training, I will show you how to set up and save your own workspace with your preferred workspaces and customized menus. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show the different options for adjusting the display quality on the monitor. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to create a new document and specify the settings for the type area and page margins. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training I will show you how to create and design master pages as consistent templates for all other pages of the document. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to set up a baseline grid, a document grid, and guides for precise alignment of layout elements. Download now for free - a thank you from our instructors to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to create different layout variations within a document for display on mobile devices such as tablet computers or smartphones in portrait and landscape format – depending on the orientation of the device. Download now for free – a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to work with the text tool, format text and paragraphs, utilize the possibilities of OpenType fonts, position the text in the text frame with precisely defined distances and alignments, and make it run along freely created paths. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos in recent years.

In this video training, I show how you insert texts into a layout or place text files. When importing Word or RTF files, there is the possibility to adopt paragraph formats created in the source files. Here you will also learn how the text flow is controlled over multiple pages. Download for free now - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos in recent years.

In this video training, I will show you how to perform a spell check, set up dictionaries, new terms, and their syllable separations, and work with search and replace. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos in recent years.

In this video training, I show how to insert and format footnotes into the text. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to create formatting styles for paragraphs to uniformly style larger sections of text. Download for free now - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

To individually emphasize specific characters or words, or even entire lines within a paragraph, character and line formats can be set up and utilized. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past few years.

Longer documents are structured by chapters. How to create a table of contents that can be updated when changes are made is explained in this video training. In addition to a chapter overview, the method can also be used, for example, to create lists of illustrations. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

When you copy a table, for example from Excel, and paste it into InDesign, the text is separated with tabulators. By using the tabulator ruler, it can quickly be organized into a structured and clear format. If you want to create a table, you will learn here how to format and design it in a visually appealing way. Download for free now - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I show how to create vector graphics from rectangles, ellipses, and polygons, assign them contour, filling, and corner effects, and combine them into new shapes using the Pathfinder and drawing tools. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos in recent years.

In this video training, I will show you how to create and save colors in different color spaces and different color tones, how to create color gradients, how to later summarize selected colors into color libraries, and how to use them in other documents. Download for free now - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to place images in your document in different ways, fit them into picture frames, scale them, and give interesting effects to grayscale images by coloring both the foreground and background. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past few years.

In this video training, I will show you how to let text flow around image frames. Additionally, I will demonstrate how you can let the text flow along the contour of the object in cut-out images. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to equip objects with effects like drop shadows, transparencies, soft edges, or embossments, or make them glow against a dark background. Download now for free - a thank you from our instructors to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to create templates for designing objects, frequently used objects yourself and design templates that not only save the shape but also the position on the print sheet in the form of object formats, snippets, and object libraries and how to use them. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I show how you can structure your documents into layout, image, and text areas using the layers function, and also how to organize multilingual projects in one document on different layers. Download for free now - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I show how you can use the book function to organize and consolidate multiple InDesign documents, sequentially number all documents uniformly, and generate a final print file. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to place InDesign files in a document, set the pages to be placed during import, and in this way create a new document from different pages in different documents that is linked to the source files. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past few years.

In this video training, I will show you how to work with so-called variables and read and use text dynamically from other frames with "live column headings". Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to generate captions from the metadata stored in the images or the file information. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to convert objects into buttons in InDesign, add mouseover effects to them, and define an action such as jumping to the previous or next page for navigation in PDF documents. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to link text and objects with hyperlinks in InDesign, so that after the PDF export, clicking on them will open the linked website or jump to a specific page or text location in the document. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to animate objects entering the document in InDesign. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I show how to create entire galleries in image frames in InDesign and finally export animated Flash files. Download now for free – a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to embed videos into an InDesign file and export it as a PDF file.
Additionally, I will show you how to create page transition effects for the PDF file. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to create forms in InDesign with text input, combo, option, and list fields, as well as buttons for printing, resetting the entries made, and sending the completed PDF file to a pre-set email address. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I will show you how to check your document for errors regarding linked images or missing fonts before printing, and package the entire document including all elements contained therein for transfer to another user. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training you will learn how to simulate the expected print result as a soft proof on a calibrated monitor, reduce transparencies for printing, and control overprint settings. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, you will learn which settings in the export dialog of InDesign are required for a printable PDF file. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I want to show you how easy it can be to create a complete magazine. The current Commag issue (August 2012) serves as an example here. In the first part, I will say a few words about issue 1 of the Commag and then also flip through the current one. Furthermore, I will open the magazine in Adobe InDesign and give some tips and tricks on missing image links and much more. This video training is a must for everyone who wants to create their own magazine or brochure. Download it now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I want to show you how easy it can be to create a complete magazine. As an example, we will be using the current Commag issue (August 2012). In the second part, I will create the cover. Here I will show you how easy it is to work with columns and to give rectangles rounded corners with a click. Of course, there will be no shortage of tips and tricks during the video training. This video training is a must for anyone who wants to create a magazine or brochure themselves. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I want to show you how easy it can be to create a complete magazine. The current Commag issue (August 2012) serves as an example here. In the third part, I create an interview. I show how master pages are created, including the current page count. In addition, I create paragraph styles, making creating the interview questions and answers a breeze. Of course, no tips and tricks are spared during the video training. This video training is a must for everyone who wants to create a magazine or brochure themselves. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I want to show you how easy it can be to create a complete magazine. As an example, I use the current Commag issue (August 2012). In the fourth part, the focus is on completing the interview, which was halfway done in part 3. Here, I discuss the baseline grid, which is important to have texts in a three-column layout that are aligned on the same line in all columns, because this is more visually appealing. I also demonstrate how to use images effectively. This video training is a must for everyone who wants to create a magazine or brochure themselves. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.

In this video training, I want to show you how easy it can be to create a complete magazine. The current Commag issue (August 2012) serves as an example here. In the last part, I will show how easy it is to insert links that allow you to jump back and forth within the magazine (important for the table of contents). In addition, there are tips & tricks such as minimizing file size, handling double pages, filling multiple pages smartly with text in one click. This video training is a must for anyone who wants to create a magazine or brochure themselves. Download now for free - a thank you from our trainers to the many viewers of their videos over the past years.