InDesign Tutorial 2

We have a strategic plan. Its called doing things.

Herb Kelleher

Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
14
16

Introduction
Exercise 1 - Preferences
Exercise 2 - The Document
Control Panel - Objects
Control Panel - Text
Control Panel - Paragraph
Rules, Margins and Guides
Exercise 3 - Column Guides
Editing Ruler Guides
Aligning Text
Frames & Linked Files
Resolution
Exercise 4 - Front Page
Exercise 5 - Master Pages

Shaun Minahan 2014

InDesign Tutorial 2

INTRODUCTION
In this tutorial, we will be looking at more
aspects and functions of InDesign which will
increase your knowledge and allow you to
become familiar with and use a few more of the
features available.
You will be creating and using one InDesign
file for this tutorial and keeping it for use in
Tutorial 3. Building a document from scratch,
the exercises will be using the features and
functions learned in each section and Exercise
as you go.
REMEMBER: Save often and especially at the
end of an Exercise.
Action Terminology
When referring to the Menu items, they now will
be written in the order they are accessed from
the main Menu. For example:

I am always doing that

which I cannot do, in order
that I may learn how to do it
Pablo Picasso

Object > Arrange > Bring to Front

Shaun Minahan 2014

InDesign Tutorial 2

Page 1

EXERCISE 1 - PREFERENCES
Preferences include settings such as panel
positions, measurement options, and display
options for graphics and typography. Preference
settings specify how InDesign documents and
objects behave.

Select the Units & Increments pane and

make sure the box Horizontal and Vertical
measurement units are millimetres and that
the Stroke units are in points.

Launch InDesign and with no document open,

choose Edit > Preferences > General.
A window like this will appear:
Next, select Dictionary and change the
Language setting to English: UK.

On the left hand side we see a list of Preference

Panes, and to the right, the details of the pane
that is open. Not too much to do as most
preferences will not concern us.

Choose Window > Paragraph and make sure the

Hyphenate box is checked off.

Finally, to make things a bit easier for you, see if

you can set up the Panel Dock on the right hand
side of your Workspace as in the illustration
below (The Panel Dock is covered in Tutorial 1).

Check all the boxes in the Spelling and

Dynamic Spelling areas.

With the General pane selected, make sure the

box Prevent Selection of Locked Objects is
ticked.

Shaun Minahan 2014

InDesign Tutorial 2

Page 2

EXERCISE 2 - THE DOCUMENT

Create a new document using the following
specifications:
Number of pages: 4
Facing Pages: On
Page size: A4
Orientation: Portrait
Margins:
Top: 10mm
Bottom: 15mm
Inside: 15mm
Outside: 10mm
(Hint: Turn off the link box that you see in the
Margins section of the New Document window.
This will allow you to set each margin with a
different value. The link box is circled in red in
Figure 1)

Figure 1 - New Document window

Figure 2 - Pages Panel

Save this file as Recipe Flyer in your Tutorial 2

folder. You will be working on this file from now
on in all exercises that you see in this tutorial.
Click on the Pages panel in the dock. You should
see the the four pages as in Figure 2.

As a rule, conventions only become conventions if they work.

Shaun Minahan 2014

InDesign Tutorial 2

Page 3

CONTROL PANEL - OBJECTS

The Control Panel displays options for the
currently selected tool and offers quick access
to options, commands, and other panels related
to the current page item or objects you select
(this is called contextual). By default, the Control
Panel is docked to the top of the document
window.

Reference
Point

Vertical
Position

Below is an illustration of the Control Panel when

a non-text frame or object is selected.

Shaun Minahan 2014

Flip
Status

Stroke
Weight

Width

Rotate
Angle

Rotate
90

Frame Fill
Colour

Height

Skew
Angle

Flip
Horizontal/
Vertical

Frame Stroke
Colour

Width/Height
Link Toggle

Balance
Columns Align Top
Fit frame
to content

Gutter Width

Unbalance Align
Columns Centre

To the right is the right hand side of the Control

Panel when a text frame is selected.

Horizontal
Scale

Vertical
Scale

Number of
Columns

Notice that the Control Panel information reflects

such things as the position, size, and rotation of
that object.

With a document open, choose the Selection tool

from the Tools panel and then select an object in
your document.

Horizontal
Position

Align Bottom

Scale Link
Toggle

Justify
Vertically

Object
Effects
(Never
to be
used)
Text Wrap Corner
Options Radius

Transparency
Percentage

Object
Corner
Styles

Frame
Fitting
Options

Alignment
Options

Auto-fit Toggle
Makes contents resize
as frame resizes

Stroke
Style

InDesign Tutorial 2

Page 4

CONTROL PANEL - TEXT

Align
Centre

Character
Formatting
Controls

Font
Family

Font Style

All Caps
Font Size

Underline
Kerning

Vertical
Scale

Horizontal
Scale

Tracking

Baseline
Shift

Skew

Leading
Small Caps

Strikethrough

Subscript

Align Align
Left Right

Text Fill

Superscript

Align to
Spine

Character Style Menu

Character Style

Spelling
Stroke

Forced Left
Justify
Forced Centre
Justify

Left
Indent

Right
Indent

First line
Indent

Last line
Indent

Align away
from Spine

Forced Right
Justify

This is what the Control Panel looks like when

any text on the page is selected with the text tool
and the Character Formatting Controls option
has been selected. Virtually all elements of the
text can be accessed and changed with the
Control Panel.
Shaun Minahan 2014

InDesign Tutorial 2

Page 5

CONTROL PANEL - PARAGRAPH

Align
Centre

Align Align
Left Right

Forced
Left
Justify
Forced
Centre
Justify

Superscript

Bullet List

Align to
Spine
Left
Indent

First line
Align Indent
away
from
Spine

Right
Indent

Space
Before
Line

Space
After
Line

Last line Drop Cap Drop Cap

Indent number number of
of lines characters

Do not
Span
align to
Paragraph
Columns
Baseline
Style Menu
Number of
Paragraph Style
Columns

Hyphenate
Toggle

Align to Gutter
Baseline

Numbered
List

Horizontal
Cursor
Position

All Caps
Font
Family

Font Size

Font Style

Leading
Small Caps
Subscript

Underline

Strikethrough

Forced Right
Justify
Paragraph
Formatting
Controls
This is what the Control Panel looks like when
any text on the page is selected with the text tool
and the Paragraph Formatting Controls option
has been selected. Once again, virtually all
elements of the paragraph can be accessed and
changed via the Control Panel in this state.
Shaun Minahan 2014

You may notice that some elements of the

Control Panel in this state duplicate some that
are present when using the Character Formatting
Controls option. These elements are those that
are used the most and is useful having them on
both forms of the Control Panel.

InDesign Tutorial 2

Page 6

RULERS, MARGINS & GUIDES

Rulers

Margins and Column Guides

InDesign has both horizontal and vertical rulers

which can be toggled on and off with the Ctrl+R
command. These are illustrated below.

When you create a New Document in InDesign,

you are presented with the option to set Margins
and Column Guides. This was discussed in
Tutorial 1. However, you have the option of
resetting these on individual pages in your
document at a later date.

Horizontal Ruler
Vertical Ruler

Go to Layout in the Menu and choose Margins

and Columns.... A window will appear that looks
like this:

and drag a ruler guide to the desired position.

Release the mouse to drop the ruler guide into
place. You will see a blue guideline appear on
your page. Once you choose another object or
draw another guideline it will become cyan.
Existing guides
New guide

HANDY HINT
Zoom Zoom Zoom !!!
Altering the magnification of the view
of your layout is one of the most handy
tools used in InDesign, or any other layout
application for that matter.

Here they are shown in millimetres. You can

change the units used by right hand clicking on
a ruler and the unit options will appear.
Guides
Guides are lines that can be placed at any point
of the document as a reference for placing
objects, text, images and are only visible while
editing the document, that means they wont
appear at the final print.
Indesign has several classifications of guides
but for now we will focus on the two that will
concern us most.

Shaun Minahan 2014

Here, you can change the values for Margins

and Columns. If you wish the Margins to be of
different values, click off the link symbol (here
outlined in orange) as this keeps all four values
the same.
Ruler Guides
In order to set a ruler guide, click and hold
the cursor over the horizontal or vertical ruler

To activate the Zoom tool, click the Zoom

Tool icon in the Toolbox. Similarly, press the
Z key when nothing is selected.
If you need to Zoom on the fly, try pressing
Ctrl+Spacebar when you are navigating
with the mouse. This is the quickest and
easiest way as it brings the zoom tool into
play as long as those two keys are pressed.
To return to full page view, press Ctrl+Zero.

InDesign Tutorial 2

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EXERCISE 3 - COLUMN GUIDES

With the Pages panel open, double click on
Page 2. You should see Page 2 take on a blue
colour as illustrated below:

Double click on Page 3 in the Pages panel. This

time, change the Column values to:
Columns: 2

So here we can now see that Page 1 has a

single column, Page 2 has three Columns, and
Pages 3 and 4 have two columns.

Gutter: 8mm
Do the same to Page 4.

Remember to SAVE your file at this point.

Zoom out so that you can see all pages in your

workspace. Do this by pressing Control-Minus
several times. You should see something like
this:
Select Layout > Margins and Columns.
Change the Column values to:
Columns: 3
Gutter 8 mm
As in the illustration below:

You cant build on a weak

foundation.
You must have a strong
foundation if youre going
to have strong design.

If you click the Preview box, you can see the

changes as you make them.
Shaun Minahan 2014

InDesign Tutorial 2

Page 8

EDITING RULER GUIDES

HANDY HINT
Zoom with a view

Snap to Guides

Locking Guides

Using the Menu, choose View > Grids & Guides

and make sure the option Snap to Guides has a
tick next to it.

To lock guides, choose;

View > Grids & Guides > Lock Guides
This will prevent you accidently moving any
guides while you work.

Here is a list of all Zoom shortcuts that

you can use to make layout much easier.
Remember, frames and text sometimes are
small and will need to be magnified to see
what you are doing.

Smart Guides

Control-zero

View whole page

While working with InDesign you may have

noticed some green lines appear as you move
an object around the page. These are Smart
Guides that help you align the object with others.
They will appear when the object is aligned in
someway with another object close to it on the
page; top, bottom, left, right and centre on both
axis. You can toggle this feature on and off using
Ctrl-U.

Control-Alt-zero

View whole spread

Control-plus sign

Zoom in

This will ensure that when you are positioning

an object on your page, it will snap to the exact
location of the guides you have set up.
Moving Guides
Using the Selection Tool , click on a guideline.
Then, simply move it to where you want it.
However, to move it to an exact location, when
you choose the guideline you can change the
location on the Horizontal or Vertical axis in
the Control Panel. Edit the position to what you
require and the guide will move to that location.

Control-minus sign Zoom out

Control-spacebar

Allows you to zoom

to a selected area

Deleting Guides
You can delete individual Guides on a page by
selecting a guide and pressing the Del key. All
guides on a page may be removed by selecting
View > Grids & Guides> Delete All Guides on
Spread.

Shaun Minahan 2014

Smart Guide

InDesign Tutorial 2

Page 9

ALIGNING TEXT
Text can be justified within a text box in many
ways but the only ones we will be concerned
with are:

Left
Justified

Pesto is a sauce originating in northern

Italy, and traditionally consists of
garlic, basil, pine nuts, olive oil and
parmesan cheese.

Centre
Justified

Pesto is a sauce originating in northern

Italy, and traditionally consists of
garlic, basil, pine nuts, olive oil and
parmesan cheese.

Right
Justified

Pesto is a sauce originating in northern

Italy, and traditionally consists of
garlic, basil, pine nuts, olive oil and
parmesan cheese.

Good vs Bad Justification

Forced justification is sometimes used to get
rid of the ragged edges that occurs with left
justification. This is often used in one column
publications, such as books and novels, and in
newspapers in conjunction with hyphenation.
However, it can make it harder to read if
the column width is small and there is no
hyphenation.

Left Justification
Shaun Minahan 2014

In the two illustrations below, We have turned on

the View H&J Violations option (Preferences
> Composition > Highlight > H&J Violations).
This will show you, in various strengths of yellow,
where the texts tracking (distance between
words) is bigger than normal. The eleventh line
in the Forced Justification shows very large gaps
between the words.
Forced Justification can cause more problems
for people who already have reading problems
and serves no purpose whatever. It is strongly
recommended you never use it.

Forced Justification

InDesign Tutorial 2

Page 10

FRAMES & LINKED FILES

Link indicator

Graphic Frames

Placing a Picture inside a Frame

When you use one of the Frame tools (those

are the ones with an X in the middle of them),
InDesign creates a graphic frame. Choose the
appropriate frame tool and then click, drag, and
release.

With a Graphic Frame selected, press Ctrl+D or

select File > Place from the Menu. Choose a file
and press OK. Your chosen file will appear in the
frame.

Anchoring
Handle
Rounded
Corners
Handle
Sizing
Handles
Shape (Unassigned) Frames
These are used when you want a solid or
transparent colour on your page.

Linked Files
When you place a picture on your page, the
file will automatically be linked. The image that
appears in the InDesign document is a preview
of the image stored somewhere else on your
computer or network. If the file you linked to
your InDesign document is changed, it must be
updated.
When you print or export a document, InDesign
uses the linked images to generate the
information necessary to create a high-quality
printed document.

Shaun Minahan 2014

Link Panel showing link information

Copy & Paste
Never copy and paste an image or picture
from a source other than InDesign into another
InDesign document. The image will not appear
in the Link Panel and you have no control over
the printing resolution, nor can you make any
changes to the image itself. This is one of the
hard and fast rules if you want your documents
to print properly.

InDesign Tutorial 2

Page 11

RESOLUTION
Resolution, scanning, and picture size is a vast
and often confusing topic. For those new to
desktop publishing it can be overwhelming. To
help you through this, well focus on some basic,
easy to understand facts.
An image is composed of very small dots and
appear to the eye as continuous tone. Every
photograph and every image that you see
in every book, magazine, calendar and art
reproduction is comprised of dots at a resolution
typically at 300 DPI.
What is Resolution?
Resolution is one of the most important concepts
to understand in digital imaging, design and
digital photography. The term resolution
describes both pixel count and pixel density.
DPI (dots per inch) is probably a familiar term if
youve bought or used a printer, a scanner or a
digital camera. DPI is the measure of resolution
we will use.

How Many Dots?

There are two basic standards for resolution.
Screen resolution, used as the standard for web
design, is 72 DPI. Small enough to keep the file
sizes to a minimum, but large enough so that
individual dots may not be seen on the screen.
And the majority of the files that we source from
the internet are 72 DPI.
Print resolution, however, must be much larger.
Whether it be digital print, or traditional offset
printing, the pixels must be small enough so
that when a picture is printed we do not see
individual squares of colour. This is usually set at
300 DPI.
Here is an example of the same picture at both
print (300 DPI) and screen (72 DPI) resolutions.

The picture on the left is sharp, has more detail

and will print well. The one on the right, because
of its lower resolution, will not be as sharp,
has lost detail and the individual pixels are big
enough to be visible.
This pixelation will be pronounced if the picture
is increased in size.

72 dpi 100%

72 dpi 200%

The two pictures above shows what happens

when you increase the size of a picture within
your file. If you increase the size, you decrease
the resolution.

Dots and Pixels

For convenience, pixels and dots are the same
thing. Theyre just squares of colour. But as
we shall learn, it is the size of the dots that is
important when we speak of resolution.

Shaun Minahan 2014

300 dpi

72 dpi

InDesign Tutorial 2

Page 12

RESOLUTION
Most pictures you download from the internet
will be at screen (72 DPI) resolution. The trick
is to find pictures large enough that will print
well. And when you have done that, how to
manipulate them.

Once you find a picture you would like to use,

click on it to give an expanded view. Wait until
the picture reveals itself to full resolution. Right
hand click the picture and choose Save image
as from the menu.

Below is a table of a list of sizes (in millimetres)

and the corresponding pixel count you will be
searching for:

Save the picture to a relevant folder on the

system and give it a descriptive name. Some
pictures will have a name like image32.jpg
which tells you nothing about the picture itself.
Choose a unique and descriptive name and save
the file.
Place the file into your InDesign file by pressing
Ctrl+D or choose File > Place. Once you have
placed it on the page, you may notice that the
picture is very large.
Adjusting Size and Resolution
Open the Info Panel from the Panel Dock. You
will see a panel like this:

For example, if we were looking for an image to

fit a picture box measuring 100mm x 160mm,
then we would need to find a picture that was a
minimum size of 1181 x 1890 pixels.

This shows us two numbers; The Actual ppi and

the Effective ppi (ppi is another way of writing
dpi, it is the abbreviation of pixels per inch).
We need to change the Effective ppi to 300.
With the picture selected, go to the Control Panel
at the top of the workspace that looks like this;

and change the value to 24%

The picture will appear about a quarter of the

size.
Now if we look at our Info panel, we will see that
the Actual ppi is still 72, but the Effective ppi (the
resolution the picture will printed at) will now be
at the figure we require; 300 ppi.

When searching for pictures in Google, click

on Search Tools. This will reveal an expanded
search menu which includes Size. Use this
to narrow down the search of images to the
minimum size you require.

Shaun Minahan 2014

InDesign Tutorial 2

Page 13

EXERCISE 4 - FRONT PAGE

Recipe Green. Make sure the Colour Type is

set to Process and the Colour Mode is set to
CMYK.

Using the Rectangle Frame Tool

draw a
frame anywhere on Page 1 of your document.
Change the size and position of the frame using
the Control Panel with the following values

Now set the values of the new colour as follows:

Reference
Point:
Top Left

Horizontal
Position:
0 mm

Cyan: 80%
Magenta 0%
Yellow 100% Black 20%
The window should now look like this:

Width:
213 mm
Figure 1

Vertical
Position:
-3 mm

Height:
303 mm

Page 1 should look like Figure 1.

Figure 2

Defining a Colour
Click Swatches in the Panel Dock and go to
the pull down menu
Choose New Colour
Swatch. You should see this window:

With the picture frame selected, place the file

Cover picture.jpg found in the Pictures folder
found in the Tutorial 2 folder. This picture is the
exact same dimensions as the frame you have
created and will fit exactly. Your page should look
like Figure 2.
With the frame selected, choose Object > Lock
so that you dont accidently move the picture
while you work on the page.

Shaun Minahan 2014

Click OK and your new colour will appear in the

Colour Swatch list as in the first illustration on
the next page.

HANDY HINT
A bleed of its own

Click off the box Name with Colour Value.

This will open the field Swatch Name and allow
you to name the colour. Name the new colour

Bleed area is located outside the edges of a

document. By printing an image outside the
page edge, imperfections in the trimming
process go unnoticed. Weve added an extra
3mm to the top, outer and bottom of the
size of the frame to allow for bleed.

InDesign Tutorial 2

Page 14

EXERCISE 4 - FRONT PAGE

Swatch Panel
with the new
Recipe Green
colour swatch.

Setting Cover Text

Draw a text frame with the Text Tool
anywhere on the page. Move the frame with the
Selection Tool so that the top left hand corner
snaps to the top left corner of the margin guides.
Check the values in the Control Panel are
X=15mm, Y=10mm. Resize the frame using the
Control Panel to 145mm wide x 52mm high.
Select the Text Tool again and type Celebrate
then press the Enter key. Type Summer. Select
all the text you have just typed. Your Control
Panel should look something like this (although
the font and size may differ):

Change the Font Family to Book Antiqua and the

Font Style to Regular. Set the Font Size to 72 and
the Leading to 72 also. Using the Swatch Panel,
change the colour to Recipe Green. The Control
Panel should now look like this:

Press Control-Alt-I so you can see the invisibles

within the text. Select the word Summer and
right hand justify so that the word moves to the
right of the text box.
Place the file Front page text.doc (found in the
Word Files folder) anywhere on Page 1.
Using the Control panel, resize the text frame to
145mm Wide x 35 High. Move the text frame so
that the bottom right hand corner aligns with the
bottom right Margin intersection.
Select all the text within the frame and change
the font to Book Antiqua 24 point and set the
justification right. Make sure the text is Black.
Set the vertical alignment to Align Bottom.
SAVE your file now!

The finished Front Page

HANDY HINT
Leading by example
Leading is the term used for the spacing
between lines of type. When type was set
by hand with metal, strips of lead were
used to keep the lines of type apart. The
larger the value, the larger the space.
When the leading in InDesign is set to
Auto (calculated at 120% of the type size)
the value in the control panel will be in
parenthesese as in the figure below. Here it
is 14.4 point.

Align Bottom

Shaun Minahan 2014

InDesign Tutorial 2

Page 15

EXERCISE 5 - MASTER PAGES

You can use Master Pages to create layout
templates in a publication. You can include
running headers and footers, which run across
the top and bottom of the page respectively,
and to add folios which include page numbers.
Master Pages give the publication a consistent
look and feel and save you time and effort
by eliminating the need for you to create this
content on every page manually.

Draw a text frame about 50mm wide in the

bottom left hand corner of the left Master Page,
starting at the Margin intersection and extending
to the bottom of the page as in the illustration
below:

Setting Folios and Page Numbers

You can have InDesign automatically apply page
numbers, and using master pages makes it easy
to have them applied in the same location on
every page.

Choose Type > Insert Special Character >

Markers > Current Page Number.

In the Pages Panel, double-click the Left Page

icon for the A master page. This fits the left side
of your A master page in the window and the left
Master Page in the Pages Panel will appear light
blue.

Now type four spaces followed by the words

Celebrate Summer. Change the font to Book
Antiqua with a size of 11 points. Vertically justify
the text vertically so that it appears in the centre
of the text box.

The letter A should appear in the text frame.

Note that the text box does not have a solid

border but is comprised of dotted lines. This
notifies us that it is a Master Page item.

The folio should now appear like this on your left

Master Page:

Double-click the Right Page icon and draw

another text box in the bottom right corner with
the same dimensions as the first.
Type Celebrate Summer followed by four
spaces and add the page number as we did
previously. Change the font and size and centre
justify vertically as before. Right hand justify the
text so that the A lines up with the right margin.
Your folio should now look like this:

Now we can see on pages 2,3 and 4 that the

page numbers and the name of the publication
appear in the folio area. If we added or moved
any pages the folios would be added or
corrected automatically.
SAVE your file now!

Shaun Minahan 2014

InDesign Tutorial 2

Page 16