InDesign CS5 For Dummies E-Book

Galen Gruman

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 668

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Get up to speed on the latest features and enhancements to InDesign CS5 As the industry standard in professional layout and design, InDesign delivers powerful publishing solutions for magazine, newspaper, and other publishing fields. This introductory book is an easy-to-understand reference for anyone migrating from another software application or those with little-to-no desktop publishing experience. You'll explore InDesign basics and examine the enhancements to InDesign CS5, while you also discover how pages work, build templates, create frames and shapes, manage styles, and much more. * InDesign is proving to be an increasingly popular layout and design application; InDesign CS5 includes new functionality and enhanced tools * Teaches all the basics for first-time users, including how to open and save your work, arrange objects, work with color, edit text, manage styles, finesse character details, add special type, import and size graphics, set paths, work with tabs, create indices, and more * Demonstrates how to calibrate colors, export PDF files, fine-tune paragraph details, create frames and shapes, manipulate objects, and work with automated text InDesign CS5 For Dummies offers a straightforward but fun approach to discovering how to get the most from your desktop publishing experience when using InDesign.

Leseprobe

InDesign®CS5 For Dummies®

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: Before You Begin

Part II: Document Essentials

Part III: Object Essentials

Part IV: Text Essentials

Part V: Graphics Essentials

Part VI: Getting Down to Business

Part VII: Printing, Presentation, and Web Essentials

Part VIII: The Part of Tens

Conventions Used in This Book

Icons Used in This Book

What You’re Not to Read

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Before You Begin

Chapter 1: Understanding InDesign Ingredients

Understanding Global and Local Control

Choosing the right tools for the job

Specifying measurement values

Discovering the Document Window

Rulers

Zero point

Pasteboard

Application frame and bar

Pages and guides

Page controls

Opening Multiple Document Windows

Tooling around the Tools Panel

Using the Selection tools

Using the Type tool

Using the object-creation tools

Using the navigation tools

Working with Panels, Docks, and Workspaces

Working with panels

Working with docks

Working with workspaces

Working with the Mini Bridge

Surveying the Menus

Chapter 2: Making InDesign Work Your Way

Setting Document Preferences

Type preferences

Composition preferences

Measurement preferences

Document defaults

Modifying Defaults for Text and Objects

Text defaults

Object defaults

Modifying Defaults for Views

Adding Default Colors and Styles

Part II: Document Essentials

Chapter 3: Opening and Saving Your Work

Setting Up a New Publication

Opening documents

Saving documents

Exporting document content

Recovering from Disaster

Chapter 4: Discovering How Pages and Layers Work

Understanding the Pages Panel

Adding pages

Selecting pages

Copying pages

Deleting pages

Moving pages within documents

Moving pages among documents

Applying custom page sizes

Working with Page Numbers

Working with starting pages

Dividing a document into sections

Removing a section start

Navigating Documents and Pages

Navigating with the Pages panel

Navigating with the menus and shortcuts

Using the navigator

Adjusting Page Layouts and Objects

Using the Layout Adjustment command

Using the Page tool

Using Layers

Layer basics

Working with layers

Customizing layers

Working with objects on layers

Manipulating entire layers

Chapter 5: The Joys of Reuse

Building and Using Templates

Creating templates

Modifying templates

Creating documents from templates

Building and Using Master Pages

Creating a new master page

Importing a master page

Deleting a master page

Applying a master page to document pages

Changing master items on document pages

Building and Using Libraries

Creating a library

Putting items into a library

Copying library items onto document pages

Managing library panels

Chapter 6 : Working with Color

Working with Colors

Creating color swatches

Using Kuler colors

Creating mixed colors

Defining Tints

Working with Gradients

Creating gradient swatches

Understanding the Gradient panel

Managing Swatches

Editing swatches

Copying swatches

Deleting swatches

Importing swatches

Exporting swatches

Applying Swatches

Part III: Object Essentials

Chapter 7: Adding Essential Elements

Working with Frames and Shapes

Creating frames and shapes

Reshaping frames and shapes

Creating Lines and Paths

Drawing a straight line

Understanding paths

Drawing your own paths

Blurring the Lines between Text and Graphics

Converting text to shapes

Making text follow a path

Applying Strokes

Setting stroke appearance

Creating stroke styles

Chapter 8: Manipulating Objects

Selecting Objects

Resizing and Scaling Objects

Resizing objects

Scaling objects

Moving Objects

Deleting Objects

Preventing Objects from Printing

Hiding Objects

Transforming Objects

Rotating objects

Shearing objects

Flipping objects

Repeating transformations

Replacing Object Attributes

Making Fancy Corners

Using Transparency and Lighting Effects

Basic transparency

Drop shadows and inner shadows

Feathering and other lighting effects

Chapter 9: Organizing Objects

Combining Objects into a Group

Locking and Unlocking Objects

Working with Object Styles

Creating object styles

Managing object styles

Applying object styles

Managing object styles

Managing Links

Adding Metadata Captions

Chapter 10: Aligning and Arranging Objects

Positioning Precisely with Coordinates

Lining Up Objects with Guidelines and Grids

Using ruler guides

Working with column guides

Working with smart guides

Using document grids

Using baseline grids

Aligning Objects to Each Other

Using the Align panel

Working with live distribution

Using the Gap tool

Stacking Objects

Creating Inline and Anchored Frames

Working with inline frames

Working with anchored frames

Part IV: Text Essentials

Chapter 11: Putting Words on the Page

Working with Text Frames

Creating master text frames

Creating individual text frames

Setting up automatic page creation

Making changes to text frames

Importing Text

Import options for Microsoft Word and RTF files

Import options for Microsoft Excel files

Pasting text into an InDesign document

Dragging and dropping text

Threading Text Frames

Breaking and rerouting threads

Working with Columns

Specifying columns in master frames

Changing columns in text frames

Wrapping Text around Objects

The Text Wrap panel

Setting text-wrap preferences

Chapter 12: The Ins and Outs of Text Editing

Editing Text

Controlling text view

Navigating through text

Highlighting text

Undoing text edits

Using the Story Editor

Tracking text changes

Searching and Replacing Text

Replacing text

Replacing formatting

Changing special characters

Working with saved queries

Checking Spelling

Checking spelling as you type

Correcting mistakes on the fly

Using the Check Spelling dialog box

Changing the spelling and hyphenation dictionaries

Chapter 13: The Styles of Text

Creating Styles

Getting Fancy with Nested Styles

Managing Styles

Updating styles

Sharing styles with others

Using style groups

Other management options

Applying Styles to Text

Paragraph particulars

Character characteristics

Chapter 14: Fine-Tuning Paragraph Details

Applying Paragraph Formats

Specifying Alignment and Indents

Adjusting indent controls

Inserting space between paragraphs

Controlling space between lines

Controlling where paragraphs break

Spanning paragraphs across text columns

Adding Drop Caps

Controlling Hyphenation and Justification

Manual hyphenation

Automatic hyphenation

Controlling justification

Composing text

Ruling Your Paragraphs

Chapter 15: Finessing Character Details

Specifying Character Formats

Modifying Font, Type Style, and Size

Changing font family and font style

Changing type size

Using Other Character Formats

Horizontal Scale and Vertical Scale options

Baseline shift

Skew (false italic)

Capitalization options

Superscript and Subscript

Underline and Strikethrough

Ligatures

Turning off hyphenation and other breaks

Controlling Space between Characters and Lines

Kerning

Tracking

Leading

Part V: Graphics Essentials

Chapter 16: Importing Graphics

Preparing Graphics Files

Importing and Placing Graphics

Specifying Import Options

Import options for bitmap graphics

Import options for vector file formats

Import options for placed InDesign files

Working with Image Layers

Working with layers during import

Working with layers after import

Chapter 17: Fitting Graphics and Setting Paths

Cropping Graphics

Figuring out the Fitting Commands

Working with Graphics in Irregular Shapes

Using a graphic’s own clipping path

Creating a clipping path in InDesign

Part VI: Getting Down to Business

Chapter 18: Working with Tabs and Tables

Setting Tabs

Setting Up Tables

Adjusting tables

Formatting tables

Using table and cell styles

Modifying and managing table and cell styles

Converting Tabs to Tables (and Back)

Chapter 19: Working with Footnotes, Indexes, and TOCs

Adding Footnotes

Creating Indexes

Choosing an indexing style

Inside the Index panel

Adding index items via the Index panel

Polishing and generating the index

Creating Tables of Contents

Chapter 20: Working with Automatic Text

Automating Page Numbers

Using Section Markers

Using Cross-References

Using Text Variables

Editing and managing text variables

Inserting text variables

Using Conditional Text

Chapter 21: Publishing Books

Creating a Book

Working with Book Chapters

Finding out about chapter status

Taking advantage of style sources

Synchronizing formatting

Printing Chapters and Books

Working with Sections in Chapters

Numbering pages consecutively

Numbering pages with sections

Setting chapter numbers

Part VII: Printing, Presentation, and Web Essentials

Chapter 22: Printing and PDF’ing Your Work

Checking Your Document before Printing

Identifying and fixing errors

Telling InDesign what to check for

Setting Up Booklets

Calibrating Color

Choosing Print Options

The General pane

The Setup pane

The Marks and Bleed pane

The Output pane

The Graphics pane

The Color Management pane

The Advanced pane

The Summary pane

Exporting PDF Files

The General pane

The Security pane

Exporting to E-Book Format

Creating a Document Package

Chapter 23: Web Project Basics

Understanding InDesign’s Web Intent

Using Hyperlinks

Creating hyperlinks

Converting hyperlinks in text automatically

Importing hyperlinks

Applying hyperlinks

Modifying and deleting hyperlinks

Exporting to the Web

Chapter 24: Presentation Project Basics

Working with Video and Sound

Settings for animations

Settings for audio

Settings for video

Giving Readers Pushbutton Control

Creating buttons

Creating button states

Setting button actions

Applying Page Transition Effects

Animating Objects

Setting animation effects

Sharing and managing animation effects

Creating and adjusting motion paths

Timing animation sequences

Exporting to Interactive PDFs and Flash Files

Exporting interactive PDFs

Exporting Flash files

Part VIII: The Part of Tens

Chapter 25: Top Ten New Features in InDesign CS5

Easier Selection and Manipulation

Column Spanning

The Gap Tool

Gridified Frame Creation

Tracked Changes

Animation

Interactivity Preview

Local Document Fonts

Autofit

Live Object Redistribution

Two Annoying Bugs No More

Chapter 26: Top Ten Resources for InDesign Users

Web Sites

InDesignCentral

The Adobe Web site

InDesign User Group

Creativepro

Magazine Resources

InDesign Magazine

Layers magazine

Macworld magazine

Recommended Books

InDesign®CS5 For DUMMIES®

by Galen Gruman

InDesign® CS5 For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone]. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. InDesign is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

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For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax [phone].

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2010925693

ISBN: 978-0-470-61449-5

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Author

Galen Gruman is the principal at The Zango Group, an editorial and book production firm. As such, he has produced several books for Wiley Publishing and is a regular contributor to Macworld. He is author or coauthor of 24 other books on desktop publishing.

Gruman led one of the first successful conversions of a national magazine to desktop publishing in 1986 and has covered publishing technology since then for several publications, including Layers Magazine; the trade weekly InfoWorld, for which he began writing in 1986 and of which he is now executive editor; and Macworld, whose staff he was a member of from 1991 to 1998.

Dedication

To Ingall, who gives me the space as needed to write books such as this.

Author’s Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to several people for making this book the best guide possible for InDesign beginners and those wanting a quick tour of the program: Jonathan Woolson was tech reviewer on previous versions of this book, and several how-to suggestions based on his production savvy also remain for your benefit. Thanks are also due to the current edition’s editor, Pat O’Brien, for making the book as clear and direct as possible. The photographs you see in this book’s example layouts were taken by Ingall W. Bull III (and used with permission). Last, thanks are due to the many talented people at Adobe who continue to refine InDesign to the advantage of us all.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax [phone].

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development

Project Editor: Pat O’Brien

Acquisitions Editor: Bob Woerner

Copy Editor: Debbye Butler

Technical Editor: Jonathan Woolson

Editorial Manager: Kevin Kirschner

Media Development Project Manager: Laura Moss-Hollister

Media Development Assistant Project Manager: Jenny Swisher

Media Development Associate Producers: Josh Frank, Marilyn Hummel, Douglas Kuhn, and Shawn Patrick

Editorial Assistant: Amanda Graham

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Patrick Redmond

Layout and Graphics: Ashley Chamberlain, Joyce Haughey

Proofreaders: Laura Albert, Susan Hobbs

Indexer: BIM Indexing & Proofreading Services

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher

Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director

Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director

Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher

Composition Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Introduction

What is Adobe InDesign, and what can it do for you? In its more than a decade in existence, InDesign has become the most powerful publishing application, one that lets you work the way you want to work. You can use InDesign as a free-form but manual approach to layout, or as a structured but easily revised approach. The fact that you can choose which way to work is important for both novice and experienced users because there is no single, correct way to lay out pages. Sometimes (for example, if your project is a one-time publication, such as an ad), creating a layout from scratch — almost as if you were doing it by hand on paper — is the best approach. And sometimes using a highly formatted template that you can modify as needed is the way to go. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel for documents that have a structured and repeatable format, such as books and magazines.

InDesign can handle sophisticated tasks, such as glossy magazines and high-impact ads, but its structured approach to publishing also makes it a good choice for newspapers, newsletters, and books. InDesign is also a good choice for corporate publishing tasks, such as proposals and annual reports. In all cases, you can design for printing on paper or electronic distribution as Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Plug-in software from other vendors adds extra capabilities.

Plus, you can use InDesign for interactive PDF and Flash documents that can play movies and sounds, and let users click buttons to invoke actions such as changing pages, opening files, and animating objects on the page either automatically or in response to user actions. You can also use InDesign as a starting point to create Web pages, though you’ll more likely use its Web-export capabilities to convert your print documents into files that you can refine in your favorite Web editor. This support for electronic media and distribution is the new frontier for publishing, and Adobe is provisioning the first wave of settlers.

About This Book

After you get the hang of it, InDesign is quite easy to use. At the same time, it’s a powerful publishing program with a strong following among the ranks of professional publishers — and the latest InDesign CS5 version is certain to reinforce that position given its many refinements, including its newfound animation capabilities and other features that make working with objects easier. Part of its success is due to the fact that its interface is like that of its sister applications, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop, which are also components of the Adobe Creative Suite.

If you’re new to InDesign, welcome! I hope you find the information in these pages exactly what you need as you get started.

Foolish Assumptions

Although this book has information that any level of layout artist or production editor needs to know to use InDesign, this book is primarily for those of you who are fairly new to the field, or who are just becoming familiar with the program. I try to take the mystery out of InDesign and give you guidance on how to create a bunch of different types of documents.

I don’t assume that you’ve ever used InDesign (or any publishing program). But I do assume that you have a basic knowledge of Macintosh or Windows — enough to work with files and applications. And I assume that you have basic familiarity with layout design, such as knowing what pages, margins, and fonts are. But I don’t expect you to be an expert in any of these areas —nor do you have to be!

How This Book Is Organized

This book contains eight parts. I also include some bonus content on the InDesignCentral Web site (www.InDesignCentral.com).

Part I: Before You Begin

Designing a document is a combination of science and art. The science is in setting up the structure of the page: How many places will hold text, and how many will hold graphics? How wide will the margins be? Where will the page numbers appear? You get the idea. The art is in coming up with creative ways of filling the structure to please your eyes and the eyes of the people who will be looking at your document.

In this part, I tell you how to navigate your way around InDesign using the program’s menus, dialog boxes, panels, and panes. I also explain how to customize the preferences to your needs.

Part II: Document Essentials

Good publishing technique is about more than just getting the words down on paper. It’s also about opening, saving, adding, deleting, numbering, and setting layout guidelines for documents. This part shows you how to do all that and a lot more, including tips on setting up master pages that you can use over and over again. You also find out how to create color swatches for easy reuse in your documents.

Part III: Object Essentials

This part of the book shows you how to work with objects: the lines, text frames, graphics frames, and other odds and ends that make up a publication. If you’ve used previous versions of InDesign, pay extra attention to the CS5 version’s (good) changes in how to select objects and do things like rotate them. You also discover how to apply some really neat special effects to them.

Part IV: Text Essentials

When you think about it, text is a big deal when it comes to publishing documents. After all, how many people would want to read a book with nothing but pictures? In this part, I show you how to create and manipulate text, in more ways than you can even imagine.

Part V: Graphics Essentials

Very few people would want to read a book with nothing but text, so this part is where I show you how to handle graphics in InDesign — both importing them from the outside and creating your own within InDesign.

Part VI: Getting Down to Business

InDesign is really good at handling the many kinds of documents that tend to be used in businesses, such as manuals, annual reports, and catalogs. This part shows you how to create tables, handle footnotes, create indexes, manage page numbering across multiple chapters in a book, and use text variables and cross-references to make InDesign update text as needed based on the document’s current context.

Part VII: Printing, Presentation, and Web Essentials

Publishing is no longer about just the printed page. Now you can create PDF files, Web pages, and Flash files from InDesign — and each supports different kinds of interactive capabilities and media files. This part starts with the skinny on how to set up your output files, manage color, and work with service bureaus. Then it explains how to use hyperlinks in your document for both Web and PDF pages. Finally, it explains InDesign’s interactive push-button, page transition effects, and animation capabilities that bring page layout into new dimensions, and then shows you how to export these interactive files to PDF and Flash formats.

Part VIII: The Part of Tens

This part of the book is like the chips in the chocolate chip cookies; you can eat the cookies without them, but you’d be missing a really good part. It’s a part that shows you some important resources that can help you make the most of InDesign, as well as highlights what I think are the best of InDesign’s new features.

Conventions Used in This Book

This book covers InDesign on both Macintosh and Windows. Because the application is almost identical on both platforms, I point out platform-specific information only when it’s different — and that’s very rare. I’ve used Macintosh screen shots throughout; Windows screen shots are usually identical, except for the dialog boxes to open, save, and export files — these are arranged differently on Macs and PCs (for all programs, not just InDesign), but the relevant options to InDesign are the same. If you’re a Windows user, a quick look at Adobe’s documentation, which shows Windows screens, can show you how the interfaces are nearly identical. So don’t worry about them.

Here are some other conventions used in this book:

Menu commands: They’re listed like this: Window⇒Pages. That means go to the Window menu and choose the Pages option from it. In almost every case, the menu command sequences are the same for Mac and Windows users; in very few cases, they differ (such as the Preferences menu option and the Configure Plug-ins menu option), so I note these differences where they exist by putting the Mac menu sequence first and then the Windows one.

Key combinations: If you’re supposed to press several keys together, I indicate that by placing a plus sign (+) between them. Thus, Shift+Ô+A means press and hold the Shift and Ô keys and then press A. After you’ve pressed the A key, let go of all the keys. I also use the plus sign to join keys to mouse movements. For example, Alt+drag means to hold the Alt key when dragging the mouse.

Note that the Macintosh sequence comes first, followed by the Windows equivalent.

Pointer: The small graphic icon that moves on the screen as you move your mouse is a pointer (also called a cursor when you’re working with text). The pointer takes on different shapes depending on the tool you select, the current location of the mouse, and the function you are performing.

Click: This means to quickly press and release the mouse button once. Many Mac mice have only one button, but some have two or more. All PC mice have at least two buttons. If you have a multibutton mouse, click the leftmost button when I say to click the mouse.

Double-click: This tells you to quickly press and release the mouse button twice. On some multibutton mice, one of the buttons can function as a double-click. (You click it once, but the computer acts as if you clicked twice.) If your mouse has this feature, use it; it saves strain on your hand.

Right-click: A feature first implemented on Windows, but present on Macs since the late 1990s, this means to click the right-hand mouse button. If your Mac has only one button, hold the Control key when clicking the mouse button to do the equivalent of right-clicking in programs that support it. Mac OS X automatically assigns the right-hand button on a multibutton mouse to the Control+click combination; if your mouse came with its own system preference, you can often further customize the button actions.

Dragging: Dragging is used for moving and sizing items in an InDesign document. To drag an item, position the mouse pointer on the item, press and hold down the mouse button, and then slide the mouse across a flat surface.

Icons Used in This Book

So that you can pick out parts that you really need to pay attention to (or, depending on your taste, to avoid), I use some symbols, or icons, in this book.

When you see this icon, it means I am pointing out a feature that’s new to InDesign CS5.

If you see this icon, it means that I’m mentioning some really nifty point or idea that you may want to keep in mind as you use the program.

This icon lets you know something you’ll want to keep in mind. If you forget it later, that’s fine; but if you remember it, it will make your InDesign life a little easier.

Even if you skip all the other icons, pay attention to this one. Why? Because ignoring it can cause something really, really bad or embarrassing to happen, like when you were sitting in your second-grade classroom waiting for the teacher to call on you to answer a question, and you noticed that you still had your pajama shirt on. I don’t want that to happen to you!

This icon tells you that I am about to pontificate on some remote technical bit of information that may help explain a feature in InDesign. The technical info will definitely make you sound impressive if you memorize it and recite it to your friends.

What You’re Not to Read

If you see any text in this book that has this icon next to it, feel free to skip right over to the next paragraph. This icon alerts you to geeky information that you don’t need to know to use InDesign. I just couldn’t help giving you a little extra-credit information in case you were a budding geek like me.

Where to Go from Here

If you’re a complete beginner, I suggest you read the book’s parts in the order I present them. If you haven’t used InDesign before but you have used other layout programs, do read Part I first to get in the InDesign frame of mind, and then explore other parts in any order you want. If you have used InDesign before, peruse them in any order you want, to see what’s changed.

As you gain comfort with InDesign, you’ll be surprised how much you can do with it. And when you’re ready to discover more, take advantage of the wealth of resources out there to go the next level. The InDesignCentral Web site (www.InDesignCentral.com) can help you do that.

Part I

Before You Begin

In this part . . .

You have your copy of InDesign, and you’d like some basic information on how to get started, right? Well, you’ve come to the right place. This part helps you sail smoothly through InDesign and gives you a general idea of what InDesign can do. I explain the layout approaches you can take, as well as how to set up InDesign to work the way you work.

Along the way, you find out how to navigate the plethora of panels, menus, tools, and shortcuts that can seem overwhelming at first, but which soon become second nature as you gain experience using the program. Welcome aboard!

Chapter 1

Understanding InDesign Ingredients

In This Chapter

Getting acquainted with the InDesign approach

Figuring out global versus local control

Exploring the document window

Surveying the top tools

Becoming familiar with tools and panels

Discovering what’s in the menus

Starting to use a new software application is not unlike meeting a new friend for the first time. You take a long look at the person, maybe ask a few questions, and begin the process of becoming acquainted. (If you’re not new to InDesign but are new to the CS5 version, it’s like seeing a friend you haven’t seen in a while — you observe any changes and catch up on what’s happened in the meantime.)

Just as it’s worthwhile to find out the likes and dislikes of a new friend, it’s also worth your time to wrap your head around InDesign’s unique style and approaches. When you do so, you’ll find it much easier to start using InDesign to get work done.

This chapter explains where to look in InDesign for the features and capabilities you need to master. (For a quick look at what’s new to version CS5, check out Chapter 26.) I introduce you to the process that InDesign assumes you use when laying out documents, describe the unique interface elements in the document window, survey the most commonly used tools, and explain how InDesign packages much of its functionality through an interface element called a panel.

Understanding Global and Local Control

The power of desktop publishing in general, and InDesign in particular, is that it lets you automate time-consuming layout and typesetting tasks while at the same time letting you customize each step of the process according to your needs.

What does that mean in practice? That you can use