Adobe Indesign CS4 – Adding a stroke to the frame
Now you’ll change the color of the text frame so that the stroke, which appears as a border, matches the color of the red star. The Swatches panel lets you efficiently apply, edit, and update colors for all objects in a document.
This magazine article is intended for printing at a commercial press, so it uses CMYK process colors. The necessary colors have already been added to the Swatches panel.
- Choose Window > Swatches.
- With the text frame still selected, click the Stroke box at the top of the Swatches panel.
- Select PANTONE Warm Red CVC. You may need to scroll down to see it.
- To change the weight of the stroke, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the frame, and select Stroke Weight > 0.5 pt from the context menu. The context menus provide an easy way to change many attributes of a selected object, including the stroke weight.
- Click the pasteboard to deselect all objects, and then close the Swatches panel.
- Choose File > Save.
Selecting the Stroke box causes the selected text frame’s border to be affected by the color you select.
Adobe Indesign CS4 – Threading text in frames
Now that you’ve formatted the text, you’ll add a travel article to the document. Because it’s long, not all of the article will fit on the page. You’ll thread the text so that it flows correctly throughout the document.
Placing and flowing text
You’ll start by selecting an article describing the trip of travelers Judith and Clyde to Oaxaca that was saved as a Microsoft Word file. You’ll place this file on page 3 and then thread the text throughout your document.
- Make sure that no objects are selected by choosing Edit > Deselect All, and then choose File > Place. In the Place dialog box, make sure that Show Import Options is deselected.
- The pointer changes to a loaded text icon. With a loaded text icon, you have several choices. You can drag to create a new text frame, click inside an existing frame, or click to create a new text frame within a column. You’ll add this text to a column in the lower half of page 3.
- Position the loaded text icon just below the fourth guide from the bottom margin and just to the right of the left margin, and click.
NOTE: If the text frame is not placed properly in the left column, use the Selection tool to drag the frame handles to move the frame to the proper location.
- Select the Selection tool, and click the out port in the selected frame. The pointer becomes a loaded text icon. Now you’ll add a column of text to the lower half of the second column.
- Position the loaded text icon immediately below the fourth guide from the bottom margin and just to the right of the second column guide (be sure not to click the previously created text frame above), and click. Text now fills the lower portion of the right column.
- Choose File > Save.
The text flows into a new frame in the lower half of the first column on page 3. When a text frame has more text than it can fit, the frame is said to have overset text. Overset text is indicated by a red plus sign in the out port of the frame, which is the small square just above the lower-right corner of the frame. You can link overset text to another frame, create a new frame into which the overset text flows, or expand the size of the frame so that the text is no longer overset.
Threading text
You’ll continue to thread text to the next page, because the article is long. First you will click the out port and then link to a text frame—a technique called manual threading. You can also thread text using semi-automatic and automatic threading.
- Using the Selection tool, click the out port in the frame that is in the second column.
- In the Pages panel, double-click the page 4 icon to center page 4 in the document window.
- Hold down the Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) key and click the loaded text icon in the upper-left corner of the first column.
- Position the loaded text icon in the upper-left corner of the second column, and click.
- Click the out port in the text frame on the second column.
TIP: Whenever the pointer displays a loaded text icon, you can click any tool in the Tools panel to stop flowing text. No text is lost, and any overset text remains intact.
- In the Pages panel, double-click the page 7 icon, centering page 7 in the document window.
- Hold down the Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) key, position the loaded text icon in the left column, just below the guide on page 7, and click. Release the Alt or Option key.
- Position the loaded text icon in the second column below the guide, and click. Any remaining text from the story flows into the second column.
- Choose File > Save.
This prepares InDesign CS4 to flow the overset text from this text frame to another frame.
The text flows into the left column. Since you held down the Alt or Option key, the pointer remains a loaded text icon, and you do not need to click in the out port before flowing text from this frame. This is called semi-automatic threading.
Now you’ll flow the remaining text into the two columns.
Depending on where you click to create the frame and the version of the fonts in use, text may fit exactly or be slightly overset. Either way, you will create a frame in the column at right to contain text as it reflows.
You have finished threading text frames in this document. A threaded set of frames is called a story.
Adobe Indesign CS4 – Adding text
With Adobe InDesign CS4, text is always contained by a frame or flows along a path. You can either add text to a frame that has already been created, or you can create the frame while you import text.
You’re ready to start working on the magazine layout and its copy. First, you’ll add a secondary headline to page 3. To add text, you can use InDesign CS4 or import text created in separate word-processing programs.
- Select the Type tool. Align the pointer with the vertical guide that runs through the “x” in “Mexico” and the horizontal guide under the word.
- Drag to create a text frame for a headline as shown.
- Type Adobe Indesign CS4 in the text frame.
- With an insertion point still in the text, choose Edit > Select All.
TIP: You can select individual words and characters using the Type tool to format text, as you would with traditional word-processing software.
- In the Control panel, click the Character Formatting Controls icon (A) and do the following:
- From the Font Family menu, select Adobe Garamond Pro. (Adobe Garamond Pro is alphabetized on the list under G, not A.)
- Select Semibold from the Font Family submenu or from the Type Style menu below the Font Family menu.
- Select 18 pt from the Font Size menu to the right of the Font Family menu.
- Choose File > Save to save your work.
When creating a frame with the Type tool, InDesign CS4 places the insertion point in the frame. If the text frame is not aligned exactly to the guides, use the Selection tool to click the corners of the box and enlarge or reduce them as necessary. Then, select the Type tool and click inside the text frame.
Adobe Indesign CS4 – Preflighting as you work
New to Adobe InDesign CS4, Live Preflight lets you monitor documents as you create them to prevent potential printing problems from occurring. In publishing, preflighting is the process of ensuring that a document is created properly for its intended output. For example, preflighting can ensure that a document has all the font and graphic files it needs and that no RGB graphics are used in a CMYK workflow. In the past, preflighting was considered a post-production process.
You can create or import production rules (called profiles) against which to check your documents.
- Choose Window > Output > Preflight to open the Preflight panel. You can also click the Preflight button in the lower-left corner of the document window.
- Select B&W Job (embedded) from the Profile menu.
- In the Error column, click the arrow next to COLOR. Then, click the arrow next to Cyan, Magenta, or Yellow Plate.
TIP: If InDesign detects any preflighting issues as you work—for example, if text is overset or you import an RGB graphic—the error is reported in the lower-left corner of the document window. To continually check your work, you can leave the Preflight panel open.
- Select [Basic] from the Profile menu again.
- Click the Preflight panel’s close button.
- Choose File > Save to save your work so far.
Using the [Basic] or default preflight profile, InDesign finds no errors, as indicated by the green Preflight icon in the lower-left corner of the Preflight panel.
Since the profile specifies black-and-white output, 33 errors related to color plates are reported.
Getting Started with Adobe InDesign CS4
You’ll start the tour by opening a partially completed document. You’ll add the finishing touches to this six-page article on Mexican folk art, written for an imaginary travel magazine. In the process, you’ll organize your work and try different techniques for creating a layout and adjusting its design.
- To ensure that the preferences and default settings of your Adobe InDesign CS4 program match those used in this lesson, move the InDesign Defaults file to a different folder following the procedure in “Saving and restoring the InDesign Defaults file.”
- When the Welcome Screen appears, close it.
- Start Adobe InDesign CS4. To ensure that the panels and menu commands match those used in this lesson, choose Window > Workspace > [Advanced], and then choose Window > Workspace > Reset Advanced.
- Click the Go To Bridge button in the Control panel. By default, the Control panel is docked to the top of the document window.
- In the Folders panel in Adobe Bridge, locate and click the Lesson_02 folder, located inside the Lessons folder within the InDesignCIB folder on your hard drive.
- In the Content panel, in the middle of the Adobe Bridge window, click the 02_End.indd file. The Metadata panel, on the right side of the Adobe Bridge window, displays information about the 02End.indd file.
- Double-click the 02_End.indd file in Adobe Bridge to open it. This is what the document will look like when you complete this lesson.
- Scroll through the document to see all the pages. You can leave this file open to act as a guide or choose File > Close to close it.
By scrolling through the Metadata panel, you can view information about the document, including colors, fonts, version of InDesign used to create it, and more. You can scale the preview thumbnails in the Content panel by using the Thumbnail slider at the bottom of the Adobe Bridge window.