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InDesign CS5 graphicAdobe InDesign Essentials Course: $895 $795 Book course

Course Description

This introductory class is instructor led with students learning how to use Adobe InDesign to it’s full potential by completing exercises producing stationery, brochures, magazine layouts and forms. Best practices relating to design and typography, as well as shortcuts, are emphasised.

What you will learn

During the 2 day InDesign Essentials course, the following topics are covered.

  • - InDesign's Interface & Preferences
  • - Document Setup & Navigation
  • - Document Shortcuts
  • - Working with Text including Styles
  • - Working with Objects, including images
  • - Working with Colour
  • - Designing Forms
  • - Creating Tables
  • - Importing Graphics
  • - Automation & Troubleshooting including Master Pages
  • - Preparing for Print & Exporting PDFs

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 1

Get up to speed quickly with InDesign’s interface, investigating the many panels used to format and arrange your artwork ie. Control, Info, Links, Layers, Align, Pages, Stroke, Swatches, Text Wrap, Tabs and Character and Paragraph Styles. Automation is also a focus, with key ways to set up and edit your documents for global changes and changing both document and application preferences.

Navigating your page(s) effectively and learning to use the appropriate tools is part of the first session. Other techniques learnt on day one include the following: creating, reshaping and positioning frames. Entering, editing and formatting text, importing images, resizing and manipulating. As part of the brochure exercise, a form is completed, using tabs and tab leaders.

Design consideratons

The course also explains terminology and methods relating to good design habits relevant to page layout and typesetting.

Areas such as the importance of leading, tracking, kerning, correct typesetting (ie en, em dashes) and baseline shift controls, proportional spacing relating to margin and columns, line weights and using gradients and reversals, etc, are covered.

Day Two

Day two of the InDesign course, students produce a multiple page document which demonstrates the features that replace repetitive tasks, and are a must for effective editing, such as Master Pages, Auto Page Numbering, Character and Paragraph Styles, Find/ Change, Spell checking, Paragraph Rules, Hyphenation, Defining and applying colours and Text Frame options, etc.

The last session looks at preparing your document to send to your printer using the Preflight and Package commands, managing your fonts and linked images and exporting your document to various types of PDFs.

Adobe InDesign Course Outline

Using Help

  • - Online Adobe InDesign Help

The Interface

  • - Using panels & new improved workspaces
  • - Customising and saving workspaces
  • - Application bar
  • - Smart Guides
  • - Smart Cursor
  • - Tools overview
  • - Setting application & document preferences
  • - Tabbed windows / multiple documents
  • - Screen modes
  • - Zooming, panning and document navigation
  • - Viewing defaults / fit in window / 100%
  • - Display performance
  • - Contextual menus
  • - New and improved status bar
  • - Keyboard shortcuts and assigning shortcuts

Documents

  • - Creating and setting up documents
  • - Facing pages
  • - Bleed & Slug
  • - Saving document presets
  • - Inserting and deleting pages
  • - Pages panel
  • - Ruler guides, margin and column guides
  • - Gutter
  • - Reverting, undo and re-do
  • - Saving and opening documents
  • - Rotating page spreads

Selections

  • - Shift selection, Marqueeing, Select all
  • - Group and ungroup
  • - Shift to constrain horizontally and vertically
  • - Alt/Opt for duplicating objects
  • - Paste in place
  • - Arrow keys to nudge
  • - Eye dropper tool to sample

Fames and objects

  • - Creating frames - Rectangle / Ellipse / Polygon
  • - Rectangle Frame tool vs Rectangle tool
  • - Creating and customing starbursts
  • - Unassigned frames / Text frames
  • - Strokes and fills
  • - Shift to constrain
  • - Alt/Opt to create from centre out
  • - Moving & resizing objects
  • - Locking and unlocking objects
  • - Rotating objects
  • - Scaling & Transforming objects
  • - Selecting reference point on control panel
  • - Positioning items using X & Y
  • - Arrangement Order / Send to back or front
  • - Step and Repeat
  • - Aligning objects / using Smart Guides
  • - Distributing objects / using Smart Guides
  • - Creating Lines
  • - Adding arrow heads

Working with Text

  • - Frames and text frames
  • - Entering text
  • - Selection processes - word / line / paragraph
  • - Editing and formatting text
  • - Kerning and Tracking
  • - Leading
  • - Character Formating - font, size, bold, italic,
    - superscript, subscript etc
  • - Paragraph Formatting - alignment, space before/ after,
    - indents, etc
  • - Vertical Text
  • - Hyphenation
  • - Fonts - serif & sans serif
  • - Ascenders, descenders and X height of types
  • - Special characters - en & em dashes, non breaking spaces
  • - Using the Glyphs panel
  • - Check boxes
  • - Importing text

Working with Text (continued)

  • - Paragraph styles
  • - Character styles
  • - Basing a style on an existing style
  • - Redefining a style
  • - Clearing local formatting overrides (+)
  • - Assigning keyboard shortcuts for styles
  • - Find / Change panel
  • - Spell Check
  • - Dynamic Spelling
  • - Drag and drop text editing (Preference)
  • - Story Editor
  • - Hanging Indents - Bulleted or Numbered Lists
  • - Displaying hidden characters
  • - Working with tabs and tab leaders
  • - Linking text frames
  • - Text frame options
  • - Working with text flow - manual / auto / semi-auto
  • - Text wrapping around images and objects
  • - Paragraph Rules

Master Pages

  • - Setting up master pages
  • - Applying master pages
  • - Releasing master page elements in document
  • - Duplicating master pages
  • - Automatic page numbering

Tables

  • - Creating a table
  • - Converting Text to Table
  • - Formatting Rows, Columns & Cells
  • - Adding a border to a table
  • - Header and Footer Rows
  • - Merging and unmerging cells
  • - Adding diagonal lines to a cell
  • - Inserting Graphics into tables
  • - Table styles
  • - Selecting cells, rows, columns and entire table
  • - Context menu to edit table

Working with Colour

  • - Swatches Panel
  • - Spot colour
  • - Process colour CMYK
  • - Colour modes
  • - Adding colour swatches to swatches panel
  • - Using eyedropper to sample colour
  • - Strokes and Fills
  • - Applying a tint and creating tint swatches
  • - Gradient swatches
  • - Transparency
  • - Effects

Working with Images

  • - Placing Images
  • - Placing multiple images
  • - Using Adobe Bridge to import images
  • - Image file formats - EPS, tifs & native image files
  • - Links panel
  • - Relinking & embedding graphics
  • - Info panel
  • - RGB & CMYK
  • - Modifying placed images
  • - Fitting and resizing images proportionally
  • - Display performance

Exporting and Printing

 

SYDNEY September October November December January
Adobe InDesign CS5 / CS4 / CS3
InDesign Essentials
 8 & 9
16 & 17
23 & 24
27 & 28
 5 & 6
18 & 19
 4 & 5
15 & 16
25 & 26 		6 & 7
15 & 16		 6 & 7
10 & 11
18 & 19
27 & 28
InDesign Lite 30 25 22 14 21
InDesign Advanced
 22 & 23 - 15 & 16 - -
InDesign CS5 Interactivity
& Animation		 - 11 - 1 -
MELBOURNE September October November December January
Adobe InDesign CS5 / CS4
Indesign Lite - 27 24 - -
InDesign Essentials 13 & 14 11 & 12 11 & 12 6 & 7 17 & 18
InDesign Advanced - 21 & 22 - 8 & 9 -
InDesign CS5 Interactivity
& Animation		 - - Please Call - -
BRISBANE September October November December January
Adobe InDesign CS5 / CS4
Indesign Lite 6 8 1 3 -
InDesign Essentials 28 & 29 -
 11 & 12 6 & 7 -
InDesign Advanced - 12 & 13 - - -
InDesign CS5 Interactivity
& Animation		 - - Please Call - -
ONLINE COURSES September October November December January
Adobe InDesign CS5 / CS4
InDesign Essentials -
 - 8 & 9 - -
InDesign CS5 Interactivity
& Animation		 28 - - - -