InDesign for Beginners
Initially released in 1998, Adobe's InDesign desktop publishing software is designed to provide you with the tools needed to produce a variety of graphic- and text-rich documents. As of August 2011, InDesign is in its ninth generation of development and is part of the company's Creative Suite 5.5 package, which includes some of the company's other desktop publishing applications, such as Illustrator and Photoshop. Becoming familiar with some of its features will help you get the most out of the application.
Other People Are Reading
-
Background
-
Prior to the release of InDesign, Adobe's PageMaker software was the company's page-layout application. By the late 1990s, Quark XPress began to overtake PageMaker because of its superior functionality and features. In 1998, Quark announced its intentions to purchase the rights to PageMaker, but Adobe refused to sell. Adobe responded instead with the release of InDesign 1.0 later that same year. After releasing InDesign 2.0 in 2002, Adobe decided to offer many of its desktop publishing applications in one package known as Creative Suite. The initial version of this package was released in 2003.
Basic Features
-
InDesign provides an assortment of features designed to simplify the document-production process. For instance, the software gives you the ability to drag and drop graphic files, such as clip art and pictures, directly into the document. You can also create and apply custom-made colors to shapes and text using the program's palette feature. You can create layers within each document, a feature that helps you keep text, graphic and shape elements on different layers to hide or view while designing a document.
-
Images
-
Just because you're a beginner doesn't mean you can't jump in and take a few stabs at some of the advanced features InDesign has to offer. The program allows you to mask, crop and rotate images directly within the confines of the program itself, making it unnecessary to open other software to perform these image-editing tasks. For instance, after dropping an image into the InDesign workspace, you can adjust the picture's edges and corners to fit your desired dimensions by using the application's selection tool, represented by a black arrow on the tool palette. InDesign also makes producing documents that feature multiple identical shapes with photos, such as a yearbook or athletic game program, easier using its hand tool, also known as the direct selection tool, represented by the white arrow on the tool palette. This tool allows you to grab hold of the image and to move it around within the shape until the desired portion of the image is where you want it to be.
Text
-
InDesign's text tools enable you to perform an assortment of tasks. Using the type tool, indicated by the T symbol on the tool palette, you can create a box for adding text to your document. As with the graphics frames, you can adjust the size of text frames by adjusting their edges and corners with the selection tool.
-
