Sep. 9, 2009
Eliminate the annoyance of text turning into grey bars when zooming out…
Ask me what my number one annoyance is in InDesign and I’ll probably give you a different answer every time. But this one is up there. Have you noticed when you zoom out a few times that all the text within your document turns into grey bars? How are you supposed to get a good feel for your design when this happens?
I find this problem really distracting, and if you do too you can turn it off via your preferences. Choose, InDesign > Preferences (Mac) or Edit > Preferences (PC) and select the Display Performance tab, under Adjust View Settings you will see by default Typical. Below are all the settings relevant to that Typical display setting. If you change Greek Type Below from 7pt to 1pt you won’t have to worry about the problem of text turning to grey bars again when zooming out.
I would also recommend changing the Greek Type Below option for the Fast and High Quality settings. This can be done by changing the Adjust View Settings drop down menu to Fast or High Quality and entering 1pt in the Greek Type Below field.
For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.
[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]
Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.
Posted by Neil Oliver in Preferences, Text | No Comments
Jul. 28, 2009
Maximise your control when copying and pasting from MS Word to InDesign…
I continually cross paths with InDesign users who run into the problem of copying text from MS Word, and then pasting into InDesign, finding that they have retained MS Words formatting attributes. Or people who want to retain MS Words formatting and can’t.
There is a quick fix to this problem; it all comes down to one preference. If you go to your preferences, InDesign > Preferences > Clipboard Handling (Mac), Edit > Preferences > Clipboard Handling (PC), under the “When placing text and table from other applications” section you will find two options. All Information or Text Only. All Information means all formatting from MS Word will be retained when you paste into InDesign. Text Only means all formatting will be removed when you paste. That’s it.
If you want to set this preference permanently you may want to check out the differences between local and global preferences in InDesign here.
For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.
[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]
Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.
Posted by Neil Oliver in Preferences, Text | 1 Comment
Jun. 16, 2009
As promised…
Thanks for joining me today! Below you will find the links to the working files…
Dynamic SWF after interactivity was applied
PDF document explaining interactivity
You might also want to check out this link for more info on InDesign’s interacitve capabilitites from Adobe Support.
Posted by Neil Oliver in News, Preferences | No Comments
Aug. 27, 2008
When managing your assets in Bridge you get a high quality preview, InDesign files included…
In this post I want to bring your attention to an often dismissed preference in InDesign that makes viewing InDesign files in Bridge seem a little more practical. I often hear people complaining that they really like sorting images in Bridge, however when it comes to InDesign files there is an element of frustration. It would seem that when you preview an InDesign file in Bridge you get nothing more than a medium 256 x 256 pixel preview of your file. Well there is a preference available to make this preview as large as 1024 pixels, let’s take a look.
You need be be aware that when you preview your InDesign file in Bridge you need to be looking at your file preferably in the “Horizontal Filmstrip” or “Vertical Filmstrip” workspaces to get the largest possible view of your InDesign file. The workspaces are found in Bridge by going to Window > Workspace.
To change the preview size of your InDesign files, make sure you have no files open and choose InDesign > Preferences > File Handling (Mac OS) or Edit > Preferences > File Handling (Windows). Once you’ve located the “File Handling” tab find the “Saving InDesign Files” section and change the “Preview Size” to “Extra Large 1024 x 1024″. All files saved from now on will have a preview of 1024 pixels when previewed in Bridge. It’s important to note you only get a preview of the first spread in the document, unfortunately there’s no option to toggle through the other pages within the document.
If you would prefer to leave this preference off by default you can save a preview of your file at your discretion. Choose File > Save As. In the lower left of the Save As dialogue that appears you will see the option “Always Save Preview Images with Documents”, choose this and a preview will be saved within this file for viewing in Bridge. The size of the preview is determined by the current preference setting.
Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.
Posted by Neil Oliver in Preferences | No Comments
Aug. 6, 2008
Resetting your preferences can eliminate the little demons…
It’s surprising when talking with people, to find that many don’t know they can reset their InDesign preferences back to the default out of the box configuration. One person told me they had printed out screen grabs of each individual tab in the preferences dialogue, and when they wanted to revert back to InDesign’s defaults they used their printout as a reference.
There is a way to revert to the default out of the box preferences in InDesign, but before I show you how to do that, let’s talk about why you might want to do this. One reason would be to eliminate any of the weird and quirky things that sometimes happen in the InDesign environment. For instance, I have had a document that for some reason or another the links panel wouldn’t display the links that were obviously on the page. My options at that stage were either exporting the doc as an InDesign Interchange (.inx) file or resetting the preferences back to their default out of the box configuration. I decided to try resetting the preferences first because I noticed some weirdness on another doc I was working on the day before. I went with the hunch and bingo!
Resetting these preferences can sometimes go a long way to eliminating all sorts of technical quirks, so the next time InDesign goes AWOL give it a go, you may be surprised. Oh, make sure you know what your old preferences were so you can go through and set them up just the way you like. Enough of all that, lets look at how to reset them.
Well first of all make sure you have quit InDesign. Mac Users, while pressing Shift+Option+Command+Control, start InDesign. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files, this dialogue will appear twice. Once you choose Yes to both dialogues you can release your fingers from the keyboard. Windows users, start InDesign, and then press Shift+Ctrl+Alt. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files, this dialogue will appear twice, once you choose Yes to both dialogues you can release your fingers from the keyboard.
Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.
Posted by Neil Oliver in Preferences, Troubleshoot | 6 Comments
Jun. 11, 2008
Have you ever changed an Indesign preference to find that the next document you open your preference has reverted back to its original setting?
Thats because Indesign in theory lets you save preferences in two specific ways. What I call local and global preferences. If you have no documents open and change preference settings from the Indesign preferences dialogue, all new documents will maintain the settings you chose. This is what I call a global setting.
According to Adobe if you have a document open and change preference settings, the preferences will be assigned to that document only. This would be a local setting. So the next document you create or open, the preference settings will have reverted back to their global states because Indesign didn’t recognise your preference settings to be permanent due to the document you had open at the time. That’s what they say in theory, however its just not that straight forward.
There are many instances when you will have a document open, make a preference change and find it’s still current next time you create or open a new document. For my sanity and for the sake of being too technical I’m not going to dive into that right now. Just remember if your wanting to change settings permanently (globally), make sure all your documents are closed beforehand, this way you can be certain you’ll get the result you’re expecting.
Similar rules apply when working with objects, text and panels. If you were working with objects on your page and decide you want your default fill to be magenta and the stroke cyan for all new objects (smashing I know), change these settings when no objects are selected. Your changes will be set as the default fill and stroke for all new objects drawn on that page. Once you close that page all these changes will revert back to their global states, they are specific to the document you had open at the time.
Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.
Posted by Neil Oliver in Preferences | 1 Comment
Jun. 9, 2008
Place text on your page, make changes to the original text file and it updates in Indesign automatically.
Did you know you can place your text files and spreadsheets on your page and maintain a link back to the original text file, so that any revisions to the original text file or spreadsheet are automatically updated in Indesign?
By default, when you place text into your layout there is no live link between the text on your layout and your original text that lives on your hard drive. So any changes you then make to the original text file when you are outside the Indesign layout and back in the native text editing program, MS Word or Text Edit for instance, aren’t displayed within your layout. You would have to go and re-place the text, or copy and paste and reformat the new text to get it looking the way you want on your page.
There’s an easy solution to this problem. Go in to your Indesign preferences, select the “Type” tab and you will see under the “Links” section the “Create Links When Placing Text and Spreadsheet Files” option. Choose this option. Now every time you place a text or spreadsheet file on your page you will get a live link in the links panel back to your original text file. Any changes you make to that original text file will be updated on your page.
Note: If when you go back into your Indesign page you don’t automatically see the revisions you made to your original text file, go to the links panel and choose “Update Link” from the fly out menu (top right of the panel) or select the “Update Link” icon from the bottom of the links panel and your text will update.
Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.
Posted by Neil Oliver in Preferences | 2 Comments
Jun. 5, 2008
Displaying the scaling percentage accurately
Have you noticed that by default when you scale an object up or down in Indesign from either, the control panel or the transform panel its scaling percentage is reset to 100%? This means the objects scaled percentage, let’s say you choose 50%, doesn’t actually reflect 50%, instead it shows as 100% even though the object has been scaled down to 50%.
There’s an easy way to change this behaviour, and it’s one of the first things (among many) that I change when working in Indesign on a foreign computer for the first time. If you go to the Indesign preferences dialogue (MAC: Command+K / PC: Control+K) in the first tab “General” you will see under the “When Scaling” section two options.
1. Apply to content - This is the default setting that causes objects to be displayed at 100% no matter what scaling percentage has been applied to them.
2. Adjust Scaling Percentage - This is the preference that allows the scaling percentage to be represented in accordance with the actual transformation that just took place.
If you want your scaling to be represented accurately, go ahead and choose the second option Adjust Scaling Percentage.
Now all scaling transformations you do will be represented in accordance with the actual transformation that just took place.
Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au Podcast through iTunes (not yet available).
