InDesign workshop session. A reminder of how to set up and make use of the programme, plus some more advanced features useful for getting printing correct.
Open up a new document, standard. Even if it is a book we are creating it is still worth just creating a new document unless it is a massive book.
Standard features, only check 'facing pages' if it is a book that is being made.
Woohoo, a new page. fresh.
So we add a textbox, like so:
And a coloured rectangle.
The two tiny boxes, one behind the other, in the swatches panel, allow you to mess with the fill or stroke, as you can see. Similarly with the text box, it is possible to alter the background or the text colour:
Do this by selecting the 'T' button:
Et voila.
We can also create new swatches, much like the other Adobe programmes.
And mess around with the percentages until we have a nice colour:
And there we have it, a fresh new swatch.
The grey box to the right of this signifies a GLOBAL COLOUR which means if the CMYK percentages are changed, this will affect EVERYTHING that has that colour swatch applied to it. Very useful. This is demonstrated below:
If we change the swatch...
Both the text and the rectangle change to the different colour.
We can also create tints of swatches:
Like so:
And, magically, if we change the original swatch percentage, this also changes the tints accordingly!
And we also have colour books which are very useful for printing referencing:
If we are happy with our swatches then we can save them for another project.
DEALING WITH IMAGES:
ALWAYS PLACE THE IMAGE rather than copy and paste. It is important to ensure the image is the correct size before placing. This will avoid any errors later on.
By using a photoshopped image, the swatches will be carried over and placed into the swatches panel.
Like so:
Vectored images can also be placed, with proper transparency
In the links panel we find a link back to the original image. double clicking this will open the original file, in whatever programme it was created in.
We can edit the image in its original programme, and upon saving it, the InDesign copy will update itself.
Placing a monochrome image into InDesign means we can edit it at a very basic level, which of course avoids all the hassle of going into other programmes.
PRINTING:
Say we want to print this image below. As you can see we have CMYK and the SPOT colour. Therefore we would need FIVE printing plates to print this image, no more, no less.
By going to the print box, and selecting 'output', we can see the plates needed. CMYK and Pantone Orange 021U. If there are any more, there will be a waste of ink and money. If there are any less, the image will not print properly.
Before printing, we can go to 'output' in the 'window' drop-down menu to view the separations.
This will bring up a new window, where we can view where the individual inks will be dropped. Below we can see where Magenta, Black and Spot Orange will be dropped.
Another important thing to note is 'knockout', which, on the image below, involves removing part of the yellow rectangle to make space for the blue rectangle. Doing this means that the inks won't combine and produce another colour. This is done automatically but can operated manually to achieve other effects.
By selecting only the Yellow channel on the Separations Preview box, the area where yellow will be printed will appear black, demonstrating this 'knockout' effect.
By switching off this knockout, the following effect happens:
Which of course means if you are using a limited number of printing plates you can achieve new colours like so:
It is also worth checking the Ink Limitations. The stock to be printed on to will determine the amount of ink that should be applied to it. For example, on a thin stock, too much ink will cause a bad quality print. By setting an ink limit, the red area indicates where too much ink will be dropped. And henceforth the ink limitation will have to be reduced until the red area dissapears, ensuring a top quality print.
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