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InDesign Basics Q&A

Lesson 11 from: Create a Photo Album: Workflow and Design

Khara Plicanic

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Lesson Info

11. InDesign Basics Q&A

Lesson Info

InDesign Basics Q&A

So James K said, can the photos you move into in design be raw or DMG format? And if so, will changes from light room be incorporated when placing them in the book in design? Oh, that's a great question. I forget the answer to it. I don't know if do you know? Have you tried that Because we discussed my J. Peg Nus? Yes. Wrong. I forget usually anything? No, the preferences to when you bring Dragon image int for it to be the native either PSD or illustrator, it'll take lots of it can be tiff. But if you dio psd is is best cause then you can edit it and then it'll update whatever edits you making the PST, we'll update any file that you dragon. But do you know specifically if it'll accept a raw file? I want to say No, I I believe it's no, I believe it's no. Somebody asked me that before and I apologize for forgetting, but I want to say it was no. Do you know Sarah, I'm I'm going along with you and building yet in engagement album as well. And I almost haven't finished. Thank you. Last time...

eso Uh, okay, it put it in, but it made it horizontal. And instead of vertical as the shot was, so it didn't recognize the file. And it looks horrible. So it's like, all pixelated, so Well, that might just be a display. Just so anybody knows, if you run into this, the pixel e might be a display a day. And now I haven't under typical. And when I changed in the high, it's still Yeah, it's still pretty. Yeah, I kind of thought that. So I would say, Don't drag in your raw files, But honestly, you'll see later we'll go through my retouch process. So the images that I'm usually using when I'm designing the album are the proofs that I just exported from light room. So they are in Jay Pek format. So even if you were shooting raw, if you were following along with the rest of the workflow, if you shot raw and you exported the J pegs, that's what I'm dragging and dropping in here. Those are my high rez J pegs that I would retouch and print from, so I'm not. I don't know that there would be any advantage to importing raw and the other reason would be when you retouch the book for a print that would force you to do an extra step. And we'll see that this afternoon. But I don't think I'd recommend that. But also in this process, when you're doing an album, obviously would have done the proofs. You know, you have done the person pulling folder exactly it level the gym pics. So it's better. Yeah. So I really think whether you're in J Peg or a shooter at this point, you should really be working and dragging in your J peg proof. These are the high rise proofs I wanted, thinking it would be faster than raw. Yeah, I'm sure. So good question, though, really good question for it. So we have several questions about the backgrounds, okay. And one is from picks and Stones. If you want the book toe, have all black pages but one page to be a different new color to Subaru that yes, absolutely. That's a great question. So let's pop over to the master page really quick. Um, and let's make the book so that it has black pages so we can see this. So Oops. Got that there, I'll go to my swatches, Click the Phil and Click Black. So now all my pages air black. But let's say that I want one of these pages to be orange. Don't do that, probably, but bear with me for demo purposes. What I would dio is actually just create a new master. So with the master active, I can just let's say it will, Right Click and I'll click New Master. And this will make a new master and it'll just be called be by default. So just the letter is just a variable like X y z. So we've got a master. This will be be master. I'm just gonna click, OK, be master. Then I would come over and make another frame and let's fill that with crazy orange. There we go, and that's not going to show up anywhere in my my document yet, because by default all of the pages have the A master applied. But let's say that this particular this poor spread is just not looking good. Let's leave that this particular spread. We want to have the be master applied to it. I just dragged the be master and drop it and now you'll see the B you can zoom in. Now you see, the be master is applied, whereas this one has the A. So now if I click back over to my book Oh, and I zoom back out, Then we see that all the pages are indeed black. But this one has the be master applied. So it is now orange. Yes. So I did this with my keynote. So if you maybe you noticed yesterday the bar at the top was changing colors, depending on what section we were in. So I had a different master that I applied to each section. Yes, you may be going toe address this later on. Sometimes alums have the one right hand start. Yeah, age. And other times they have the spread. Are you going over there? Yeah. Um, we can. Well, let's do that. Maybe right after the break. So we'll come back to that first yet. Cool. If I could just ask a hopeful more that are related to this background Chloe Apple had asked about if they could have an image in the background that's transparent or with different opacity. Are there layers to show hierarchy and then similarly, expressions by Windy asked, Can you add digital papers as backgrounds? Or Grady INTs, etcetera? Yes, totally. And those are all kind of sort of the same. Good question. Yeah, it's all the same thing. So if you want to add an image to the background, it's exactly the same process. Let's just add another spread here. Let's let's apply no master to this eso. It's just nothing. I probably wouldn't do that in real life because it's harder to update. But for simplicity sake here, we'll just do that on. I'll just take a frame and draw something out like this and let's see what we've got that might make a good I don't know. I don't do a lot of this kind of set up, but let's say I've got this going on. Maybe I want to adjust the A pass ity. So as I showed you just a minute ago, it's the same thing right up here in the options bar. As long as you've got the selection tool handy, then I'm just going to come over here and I could drag that opacity down. And then if I want to put new other frames on top of this. Um, I could do that. And Dragon, I don't know something else. Does that make sense? This book is looking so hot. Let me just say I think it should be entered in some sort of competition. Is that so? That does not make sense. So you could just do it. You know that way On what kind of talk about this, I'll just tell you quickly. If you guys see when I'm, I'm shuffling between these two viewing modes so you'll see in one viewing mode. I've got this. The guides. I can see the margins here and I can see the boxes. And if I've got an empty frame like this, I can see the frame and I can see the X. But sometimes it's also distracting toe have all of that on my screen. So there's a little keyboard shortcut to switch to viewing mode, double you for wonderful w for wonderful will hide all of those things. And it will just make your album look wonderful. But you've got to be a little bit careful because that also means if you have empty frames, that you will not see them. So if you've ever drawn a frame and you're if you're drawing frames like this and then you're like, Where are they? It's because you're in wonderful mode. You just didn't see them perfect. So many good questions. I just want to ask you bring it. I don't care. We can't ask all your questions. Well, we have. We might get to them later. Many think I'm sure it will be covered. All right, I'll just ask this last question. Then, before we go to break expressions by Wendy's. And I've seen other people say this. I have a ton of Photoshopped album templates of purchased over time, and I don't want them to go toe waste. Can those templates be brought into in design and be used there? And if so, would there still be any flexibility to change colors, text, etcetera in the layers? Sure who you could. I would say he'd probably want to rebuild them. And I think ultimately that's going to be your best bet. And that shouldn't be too hard. In fact, I've done it myself because I have had some people who really wanted something specifically built for a template. Something in photo shop, which made my skin crawl, but I did it. And then for myself, I rebuilt it and designed to be able to just have all that flexibility on Bond. I will. I'll show you layers a little bit later. I'll show you something with typography. But in in design for this you honestly, you don't need layers because what we're just working with is just objects. We don't need a lot of the things and photoshopped that we use layers for and in design, just you just don't need it. So those of you that have used in design I'm going to guess You probably agree with that statement unless you're doing something really for this? Yes, for something really specific on I've used with them in the past, but very special use things certainly nothing like this. So, um yeah, but I think once you once you get over here, you won't go back. But you could rebuild them and and then just shift. Make the transition. I had the same question because I have heaps of album templates that I was like, how she spent all this money on it. And now I realized how wonderful in design is and I'm kicking myself for doing that. So what I did is I took those templates and I created each layer into a separate J. Peg and I saved that into a new folder. And so then I have all the same elements of the album, which I don't know if, like, designers really like that. But, I mean, designers should just be designing and in design. Then I wouldn't have this problem so it would become like a graphic. Yes, right Just creates a graphic, and it looks exactly the same. It's just so much easier to place my images into it. Good, have an issue. That's a very good point. And thank you for mentioning that. Yeah, that's super. And I think to it depends what kind of templates you're talking about. I guess I was I was thinking just like box layouts. I forgot about design elements. So thank you for mentioning that, and I've actually done that myself as well. I'm saving them as a JPEG or PSD or whatever you want in design. Comm place, all of it. The other thing I was going to say is depending on the type of templates that you have if your template is not so much with the individual elements that you wanna move around. But maybe your template is strictly just lay out for positioning like a dragon drop thing. You could just place the PSD, for example, if your template, if the reason you like it is because it's got some sort of digital paper background and then an image frame, you could just place the PSD and in in design, draw new frame over the one in the PSD and drop into it. But yeah, if you definitely. If you have design elements, that's perfect solution, so thank you for that.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Fast Book Actions.zip
Square Starter Templates.zip

bonus material with enrollment

Resource-Guide.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Yep, love your work Khara! I am now using Indesign to make my first wedding album thanks to you. So clearly explained and nicely presented. Such a powerful program that makes a complicated task seem easy, with as many variables in layout and design as I can imagine. I am just so excited! I would recommend this course to anyone who is running any size photography business. It will help simplify your workflow and increase your output.

1106 Imagery
 

This class is so good! I learnt so much about albums, and selling them the right way. Having never really used Indesign before, I was nervous about using it as my main platform to design albums. I'm shocked, but I really enjoy using the program! It's so simple and easy using Khara's methods of designing. I also never used bridge before too (Lightroom faithful here), and it's fantastic for sourcing images for the albums. I'm learning a few upsell methods too, so it's very exciting for my business! Thank you for such a great course :)

Adrian Farr
 

Khara's advice is so simple yet makes absolute perfect sense! She really knows how to get the best out of her albums and packages. If you want to learn things that will help you improve your business/workflow, then seriously buy this course!

Student Work

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