Indesign
Tips
cmd + shift + c = centre text in a box, l to left align, r to right align
x = to switch stoke and fill
Notes
- The page size you choose in Indesign is the final printed, trimmed size of the completed design
- You apply colour the same as you would in illustrator
- Use the swatches to apply colour
- All colours in Indesign are global, so you can make tints of that colour (make sure you are applying the tint to the fill colour and not the stroke)
- Here are my experiments with tints, showing that the limitation of just one colour does actually mean lots of variations of that colour.
- To prepare an image on photoshop for indesign, make sure it is the actual size you want it, 300 dpi, cmyk or greyscale. Save it as the correct file format (Tiff is best). You would use a .psd file instead of a tiff if you want to use an image with transparent areas.
- To prepare an illustrator image for indesign, all you need to worry about is that the file is cmyk and saved as the right format, as you can change the size of the image without it losing quality as illustrator files are vector images.
- If you've prepared your images to the right size, you don't need to make a frame first, just go to file - place.
- The spot colours with the file are automatically added to the swatch palette.
- This image shows transparency
- When placing, if you tick show import options box, you can check/change options. This helps for when placing pdf files.
- What we're looking at on screen is a low-resolution preview of the high quality illustrator file. You are placing a link to the illustrator file, not the image. This is why the images need to be kept in the same folder as the indesign file. You can see these links on the links palette.
- This shows the quality difference between the images on illustrator and indesign.
- You can still make changes to the image in illustrator after it has been placed. You can right click image and click edit original or alt key then double click.
- You can change which programmes documents can be opened with on finder.
- Open the greyscale image, click on the image, then click the circles in the middle, and then you can change the fill colour of the image to make it monotone.
- Composite screen - what we get out of the printer is what we see
- In the pre-press stage of printing, you would print separations
- Go window -> output -> separations preview. Make sure to delete any unused spot colours from your swatch palette, or you will be charged for the making of a blank plate.
- Here are examples of how c+m+y+k+spot colour= the final image
- Here, I have created two squares, one cyan and one magenta and placed the magenta one on top. By using the separations preview and hiding the magenta colour, you can see that the magenta ink has knocked out the cyan underneath. This is to save ink when printing and stop the area getting too wet with ink. It also ensures the accuracy of the printed colour. If two inks were printed on top of each other it would be overprinting. (Black doesn't knock out other colours)
- You can change the options to allow for overprinting. Go window -> output -> attributes. Select the frame of the overlapping objects and tick overprint fill. If you don't have your separations preview turned on you won't see this overprinting.
- You should discuss that you are overprinting with your printer to avoid problems.
- When you move your mouse over a colour, the separations preview tells you the % of that colour that you are using. In this example my mouse was hovering over the overprinted area.
- The default ink limit is 300%, but this can be changed by changing the view option under separations.
- You can apply finishes by using spot colours. The selection that is to have a spot varnish would need to be overprinted, as the gloss goes on top of the image, it doesn't want to knock out the image beneath.
