InDesign: Beyond the Essentials

Course details

In this course David Blatner builds on his Essential Training series, bringing his knowledge of and passion for Adobe InDesign to lessons that show you how to harness its power and functionality. This installment covers a wide range of advanced topics from interface customization to cutting-edge layout and text-formatting techniques. Learn how to set key application and document preferences, format long documents, match swatches, use GREP styles, and much more.

Learning objectives
Setting preferences
Working with parent and child master pages
Adding alternate layouts
Exporting and importing page snippets
Tracking text changes
Choosing other languages
Aligning to a baseline grid
Applying styles automatically with nested and line styles
Embedding links
Turning image layers on and off
Using the Pathfinder and compound paths
Power scaling and spacing

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Welcome
02 - What you should know before watching this course
03 - Using the exercise files

1. Managing Your Document Window

04 - Managing more than one document window
05 - Positioning your panels
06 - Setting up Mini Bridge
07 - Saving a workspace
08 - Displaying a new window or split screen
09 - Rotating pages and spreads

2. Setting Up InDesign and Your New Document

10 - Setting application and document preferences
11 - Learning and editing keyboard shortcuts
12 - Customizing InDesign menus

3. Layout Techniques

13 - Parent child master pages
14 - Starting a document on a left page
15 - Adding alternate layouts
16 - Saving objects in libraries
17 - Exporting and importing page snippets

4. Advanced Text and Typography

18 - Filling with placeholder text
19 - Tracking text changes
20 - Choosing other languages
21 - Adjusting text hyphenation and justification
22 - Adding hanging punctuation with Optical Margin Alignment
23 - Controlling orphans and widows with Keep Options
24 - Aligning to a baseline grid
25 - Setting vertical justification and first baseline position

5. Paragraph and Character Styles

26 - Applying styles automatically with nested and line styles
27 - The basics of GREP styles
28 - Using Break Link to Style
29 - Exploring style groups

6. Long-Document Text Techniques

30 - Including footnotes
31 - Working with cross-references
32 - Indexing a document
33 - Exploring conditional text

7. Advanced Graphic Techniques

34 - Importing InDesign files
35 - Advanced Links panel features
36 - Embedding links
37 - Adding live and static captions
38 - Turning image layers on and off

8. Paths

39 - Using advanced strokes
40 - Using Pathfinder and compound paths
41 - Using InDesign and Illustrator together

9. Advanced Layout

42 - Power scaling techniques
43 - Making grids
44 - Power spacing
45 - Making objects nonprinting
46 - Default graphics and text frame styles

Conclusion

47 - Going ever deeper with InDesign