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One of the things I love about Adobe InDesign is that there’s usually more than one way to accomplish virtually any task. Take placing images in your document. InDesign offers a plethora of options to improve productivity in this area, thanks to keyboard shortcuts. In my Image-placing shortcuts in Adobe InDesign article at Macworld’s Creative Notes blog, I show you some handy shortcuts for placing single and multiple images into your document using InDesign.
Image-placing shortcuts in Adobe InDesign
Image-placing shortcuts in Adobe InDesign
Free InDesign style sheet template
Free InDesign style sheet template
If you have a long text document to format and aren’t quite familiar with setting up Style Sheets in Adobe InDesign, this free pre-made Style Sheet template is just for you. The template is based on an OpenType mix of two fonts fonts (Meta Serif/Sans Pro), but can easily be changed to another pair of fonts. Besides directly using modifying the styles, exploring the file will give you some great ideas of how to achieve different looks through the use of paragraph and character styles. The download includes the following styles and more:
- Semantically named paragraph and character styles
- 3 subheading levels, with and without automatic numbering
- Bullet and numbered lists in 2 levels
- Paragraph with and without indents
- Drop cap paragraph
- Quote
- Table style
- Text box styles
- Caption
- Text formatting styles
- Footnote layout
The article from InDesigning.net explains how to load and use the styles in your InDesign document, as well as provides a PDF file showing off the styles in a sample document. The document was created in InDesign CS4, and is quite handy because it saves you the time of setting up a style sheet from scratch – allowing you to simply edit an existing one.
Quickly duplicate InDesign pages
Quickly duplicate InDesign pages
You can quickly duplicate a page in Adobe InDesign by Option-dragging the page icon in your Pages panel. If you want to duplicated page one and have it appear after page four, simply option-drag the page one icon until the cursor appears after page four, then drop it. This is much easier than dragging the chosen page icon down to the Create New Page button at the bottom of the Pages panel – espcially if you have that panel stretched vertically to accommodate a long document.
Creating rounded corner boxes easily with InDesign scripts
Creating rounded corner boxes easily with InDesign scripts
I’m not talking about making all four corners of a box rounded. That’s easy to do with InDesign. I’m talking about making only a few of the corners rounded. You could draw them by hand with the Pen tool, but that’s kind of time consuming. Instead, use the built-in Script Adobe provides.
- Start by drawing a box. Make sure you leave it selected
- Next, visit the Scripts panel in InDesign by going to Window>Automation>Scripts
- In the panel that comes up, you’ll see a folder in the list called Applications. Open that folder. Now open the Samples folder, followed by the Applescript folder.
- You’ll now see a long list of Applescripts you can apply to objects in your InDesign document. Scroll down to CornerEffects.Applescript and double-click it
- In the dialog box that pops up, you’re presented with several options. Choose the Corner Type you wish to apply by clicking one of the radio buttons, as well as typing in the size of the effect (you may have to try the script a few times to get the size you want, as there is no live preview available).
- Now you simply have to decide which corners you wish to apply the corner effect to. You have several options, including odd, even, first and third, second and fourth, etc. Keep in mind that the corners of the box start at the top left-most point and run clockwise. So in the case of a simple rectangle, the first point is in the top left corner, and the fourth point is in the bottom left corner. Once you’ve made your adjustments, hit OK. That’s it. You now have an editable box with rounded corners as you see at the right.
I like that the effect is editable after the fact. It makes the box more flexible for multiple uses, and it’s much faster than drawing them by hand.
Creating flexible character styles in Adobe InDesign
Creating flexible character styles in Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign has powerful character style capabilities built-in, but sometimes they’re just a bit complicated to work with. Here’s a quick way to set up a style that will simply bold any font you choose, without having to specify a new style with the bold version of each font individually – a real time-saver.
Setting InDesign default fonts and colors
Setting InDesign default fonts and colors
Setting default fonts and colors seems trivial, but can be a considerable time-savings if you work for an in-house design department where you’re always using the same corporate font and colors for virtually everything you do. The ability to set default fonts and colors in new Adobe InDesign documents has been covered before, but I still see people asking about it, so I thought it worth mentioning here again. To set the default font:
- Open InDesign, but do NOT create or open a document
- Select the Text tool
- In the Control Bar across the top, select the Font drop-down menu and choose your default font. You could also use the Character panel if you choose.
To set the default colors:
- Open InDesign, but do NOT create or open a document
- Delete any colors from the Swatches panel you don’t want
- Create any amount of new colors in the Swatches panel
Any NEW documents you create will automatically have the new default font and colors already set. Unfortunately, existing documents will still use whatever default font and colors that were set when the document was created.
Exiting text edit mode when switching tools in Adobe InDesign
Exiting text edit mode when switching tools in Adobe InDesign
You’ve probably done this many times before if you use keyboard shortcuts. You’re editing text and want to switch to the Direct Selection tool by hitting V (the shortcut to switch to the Direct Selection tool), or maybe M (to switch to the Rectange Shape tool) – but wait, you’re in a live text box, so instead of switching tools you end up typing the letter V or M. INCREDIBLY ANNOYING! Thankfully, if you hold the Command key down and click the text box, it deactivates text edit mode so you can safely switch tools with your keyboard.
Copy color swatches from one InDesign document to another
Copy color swatches from one InDesign document to another
If you’re working on two Adobe InDesign documents and you want to pull the color swatches from one document to the other, there are two ways to do it. You could save the swatches from the first document as an .ase file from the Swatches panel flyout menu, then import them into the second document. Or, a quicker way, Command + Click to select all the swatches you want and drag them from the Swatches panel in the first document to the page of the second document. Unfortunately, the later method doesn’t work if you’re using InDesign CS4′s new tabbed window interface. You would have to drag the tab of the second document out to create a new ID window first.