Adobe InDesign CS4 Migration

Course Description:

The course will transfer your existing skills to the new InDesign environment as well as providing a comprehensive, practical understanding of the wide range of features in InDesign CS4. You will also explore InDesign's superb integration with both Illustrator and Photoshop.

This is an Adobe authorised course designed to enable you to create professional, creative and typographically excellent documentation using InDesign CS4.

This course includes the following modules:

Key terms

• Differences in terminology between InDesign and QuarkXPress

Setting defaults and preferences

• Setting application preferences
• Setting document preferences
• Customising the toolbox
• Setting tool defaults
• Creating document defaults
• Customising shortcuts

Interface differences

• Using palettes, tools and menus
• Introducing the Control panel
• Saving the workspace
• Tips for managing panels
• The N-up view

Navigation and display

• Controlling display preferences
• Using the Navigator panel
• Multiple document previews
• Dynamic graphics preview
• Dynamic text preview
• Overprint preview
• Separations preview

Creating objects and building pages

• Creating a new document
• Picture and text boxes
• Linking text boxes
• Introducing layers
• Selecting frames and contents
• Smart guides and smart spacing
• Using the Pages panel
• Creating and editing Masters
• Overriding Master Objects
• Reapplying Master Objects

Text and typography

• Placing and flowing text
• Selecting and editing text
• Handling missing fonts
• Working with glyphs
• Drag and drop text

Formatting characters

• Character-level formatting
• Introducing Open Type fonts
• Using optical kerning
• Creating character styles
• Working with Style Groups

Formatting paragraphs

• Paragraph-level formatting
• Choosing a composer
• Introducing nested styles

Working with graphics

• Placing graphics
• Scaling objects vs contents
• Introducing the Links panel
• Manipulating graphics
• Understanding Fitting options
• PSD and PDF layer options

Combining text and graphics

• Wrapping text around graphics
• Introducing snippets
• Creating inline graphics
• Converting text to outlines
• Image import options
• Images with clipping paths
• Creating a new clipping path

Laying out pages accurately

• Using rulers, grids and guides
• Using the Info panel

Finessing text content

• Threading/unthreading frames
• Document baseline grids
• Frame-based baseline grids
• Using special characters

Introducing transparency

• Creating drop shadows
• Feathering edges
• The Flattener Preview panel

Introduction to tables

• Creating basic tables
• Modifying tables
• Importing tables

Editing copy

• Using the Story Editor
• Using Find/Change

Understanding colour

• Loading swatches
• Using stroke and fill options
• Sampling colours from images

Preflight, package, PDF and printing

• Exporting as a PDF
• Using Live PreFlight to check files
• Packaging files for handoff

Opening Quark documents

• Tips for opening QuarkXPress document