Course outline

Introduction

• What is Desktop Publishing?
• Typical DTP workflow
• Printing options
• DTP Applications

The InDesign Environment

• Tools and menus
• Palettes and options
• Navigating a document
• Zooming in/out
• Setting preferences
• Showing rulers
• Getting help

Setting up the Document

• Create a new document
• Set up the page
• Modify columns and margins
• View and edit Master pages
• Create new master pages
• Use Guides and Grids
• Insert page numbers
• Apply Masters to pages
• Editing Master elements from within a page

Importing Text

• Types of source files
• Placing text
• Selecting text
• Constraining text
• Stripping formats from Word documents
• Threading text manually
• Threading text automatically
• Changing threading order
• Delete threads
• The story editor
• Spell-check, find and replace

Typography

• Typographic terms
• Selecting font and size
• Adjusting kerning and tracking
• Leading and baseline shift
• Rotating text
• Using special characters
• Glyphs and Opentype fonts
• Paragraph formatting
• Keep options
• Hyphenation
• Tab stops and leaders
• Paragraph rules
• Defining character styles
• Defining paragraph styles

Colours, Swatches and Gradients

• Colour spaces and gamuts
• The swatches palette
• Mixing CMYK colours
• Selecting Pantone colours
• Using tint swatches
• Creating gradients
• Applying fills and strokes

Graphics and Layout

• Graphic types and resolutions
• Placing graphics
• Fitting and resizing graphics
• Rectangular text wrapping
• Irregular text wrapping

Transparency and Blend Modes

• Applying transparency
• Using transparent objects
• Blend modes
• Printing with transparency
• Transparency flattener styles

Using Tables

• Creating tables
• Adjusting tables
• Formatting tables
• Converting text to tables
• Importing Word tables

Preparing for Handoff

• Commercial printing overview
• Preflighting
• The Links palette
• Packaging files for handoff
• Printing from InDesign

Creating PDF Files

• About Portable Document Format
• Creating PDFs for websites
• PDF for print
• PDF styles