More InDesign Basics
Khara Plicanic
Lessons
Workflow Philosophy
13:18 2Four Main Goals for Workflow Management
1:14:40 3Pricing and Packages
1:02:19 4Set for Success - Gear
27:19 5Software Workflow
41:43 6Slideshow Prep
28:09 7Fast Book Production
58:10What is InDesign?
09:40 9Setting InDesign Preferences
21:26 10InDesign Basics
48:04 11InDesign Basics Q&A
11:56 12More InDesign Basics
11:14 13Image Management, Retouching, and Exporting
24:00 14InDesign for Flip Books and Blogging
24:16 15Creating a Marketing Piece
32:50 16Design Principles
27:17 17Typography
29:13 18Thanks + Credits
07:12 19Start to Finish Album Design
35:59 20Workshop Recap
10:30Lesson Info
More InDesign Basics
Hannah asked earlier. How do we deal with albums that maybe start on the left or the right, meaning that they well, on the left, we have a friend, but if they start on the right, then the first page of the album truly is a page and not a spread. So there's two ways you could deal with that when you set up your document under when you go to file new documents or, in this case, to edit it after the fact you goto file documents set up. If you dio design for an album that starts that way, you could turn on facing pages that would make the first page of your album be a single page right? And even if your album vendor wants spreads, you can design with facing pages. But when you goto export as I'll show you here shortly, you can export spreads and that first page and that last page would then still be half spreads. Does that make sense? So that's one way so you could go and use facing pages instead of what I'm doing here, which is just designing the whole spreads of one option. If that warps...
your mind or somehow it just doesn't work for you. Another thing that's really great and this is unique. Teoh in design, CS five and newer. What's really great about that is that you actually have the ability to change the page size. You can make custom page sizes over here. So that means, for example, of I'm on page one here spread one and I need that to be half the size. I can actually click this button at the bottom of the layer or layers palette, the pages palette. The bottom of the page is palette. If I click right here, I can come down to custom and I can actually just make this particular page half of a spread. So I'll change it and we'll just call it half, half of a spread, whatever. And then when I click OK, do you see what happened? This page and the pages panel is now half. We don't see it here necessarily because we have this master applied, which still has this big old box on it. So what I would want to do then is come back over here is the the which they say the image. So it's right here. The master still applied, so I can't edit this. But if I come up and dragged in the nun page to it like this, there we go. So the black is gone, and maybe I delete this. And now if I move, the image you see here is the page. Does that make sense? So we've just edited that page to be half of its normal spread size, thereby it would start now on the right. Does that make sense? Hannah Got it. So there's those two ways you can edit the page size specifically over here in the pages panel. If you have CS five or newer or you could just go back and set up your document from file documents set up, you would just build it with facing pages, right? Simple enough. Let's talk quickly about Oh, we had a couple of things come up. I wanted to also say we had that great question about the layered PSD. S and Sarah brought up the fabulous solution of sexually went into photo shop and sliced apart basically her PSD and saved each element as a day peg or as a separate PST. And that's a super great solution. And that's that's wonderful because it's good for a long term. If you've got a template set that you want to convert for long term, that's really great. My husband reminded me my husband is so great, so shut out to him for this. But he reminded me that you can also. Actually, when you place files, if you just need for one instance, let's say you've got I don't know, a logo file or something. It's a marketing piece, like somehow is a PSD and photo shop, and you just want a place like one part of it. Ah, long term solution would be, but what Sarah suggested, if you just need to do it, maybe once you can actually place the file. So instead of dragging and dropping from Bridge and I'm gonna try to demo this, I'm not sure that I really have the best PSD to demo it with. But if I draw a frame and instead of dragging and dropping from bridge instead, I come up to file place and then I navigate to wherever I saved this. Let's look in here and let's look, um, we'll go this route and I'm just all I'm looking for right now is a PSD that has, um good. Here's the UN tour T. I don't know what layers this is. This has been a wild card here, so I've got a PSD selected down here. There's an option to show import options. And when I do this, it's gonna with layer one. That was the best example. Great. But in your world of you've got in the layered PSD template or something like maybe you've got some really great peace and may be one of the layers is a cute little bird or something. And you just just for now, just this once you just want to grab the bird layer out of the PST. If you place the file instead of dragging and dropping, you can show import options. And here you would see the list of layers and you would just simply turn on the ones that you want to see. And then when you click OK, you'll have that particular layer. It doesn't mean you can go in and just you know, you can't work with those layers. What you're essentially doing is taking the PSD, and instead of placing the whole PSD. You're just placing that layer, and you could repeat that process and place different layers from that PST over and over again if you need Teoh. But that's that's one other solution. So I guess it just kind of depends what you want to do with it. But Sarah's solution is great, too, because that way you've got them separated forever. And it's maybe easier long term to do it that way. But I wanted to show show everyone that option is well, so is this like good? Don't look good. It's like losing the kind of Yeah, it's still a PSD, but you're placing it just the one layer of the PST. So, yes, I just wanted to show folks that a couple of other things I can try to point out quickly. Let's say you've got a Siris of frames here. You can also come over here and select multiple images, and when you drag over into in design, what you'll notice here is my cursor have a little brush, and it has the number three in parentheses. So what I've done is I've selected three images in bridge, so I clicked and shift clicked to get a Siri's selected, and now my cursor is what's known as a loaded cursor. So the little three means that I've got three images loaded, and now I can just go click, click, click, and I can place three. It may be hard to tell here, but these are actually three different images, and I just place them all at once. So that might be another happy dance. Pee your pants moment? I'm not sure, but that's pretty sweet. If you've got a grid or something and you just want to take nine images and drag over and then just click, click, click, click, they will just pop in. And because of our preset, our preferences, they should all snap right into size and and a pretty good position, at least for a starting point. So that's loaded cursor. So this is all good stuff. Ah, let's talk quickly. Also about, oh, question the bottom picture. I don't think it did snap in size, and I'm wondering why I think it did. I drew a bigger frame. They're not the same by three frames that I drew are different life. Okay, Perfect. E was sloppy there. That was a fluffy SLA be framed drawing job, but good, Good. I you are observant. Yes. So let's talk about links really quickly, and then we'll address the cover situation. But I want to point out links because this is what's happening in the background here. Okay, so in your previous life, when you were doing your album with voters up, uh, you were not placing links at all. You were actually placing pixel information, right? You were taking, like, the actual pixels and basically pasting them into photo shop. And that presents so many problems. One enormous file. So now you've got all of these layered huge PSC's. But also, um, the problem is, when you are, let's say, ready to retouch. Maybe the album design is now finalized, and you are now ready to retouch that book before it goes to print. You basically have two choices. You can retouch the actual albums spreads, which means that later, if they want a canvas of one of those images you've retouched, you have to re retouch it for the campus. Or you could retouch all those images and then you'd have to rebuild the spread using the retouched images. Okay, so that kind of is not advantageous about kind of stinks right In design, you avoid all of that, and your actual in design files are actually pretty small because there's not pixel data in it. All we're doing is we have a frame, and then we're dragging in an image. But it's really just a preview and the images actually linked to the actual file on your hard drive, and that is all managed in your links panel. So this is another biggie that I have on my screen all the time. And this just keeps track of all of the images in your document. It keeps track of where they are on your hard drive, what they're called, what page they appear on. So here you can see that this image, for example, appears on page four. I can highlight it if I want to find it quickly in my document, I can click this button here, and it jumps straight through straight to it in my document. And this is what makes the retouching process a breeze. Okay, breathe. So let's let's just show you and I'm gonna just Oh, man, this poor book e want to cry a little bit when I look at this. Well, just, you know, can we just get rid of this black box on the master? Thank you. So now all the spreads that have the A master are we'll leave the orange there for illustration purposes. But now all of our pages that have the master applied are back now toe white. So that's kinda nice.
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
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 :)
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.
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!