Tag Archive for: indesign

Essential InDesign Scripts, Part 1: Images, Layout, and Workflow

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If you’re not using scripts with InDesign, you are not being efficient. And scripts are really easy! In fact, a bunch of useful scripts even ship with InDesign—you just need to know where to look for them.

Join us in this fast-paced session to learn:

  • Where to find must-have scripts
  • The fastest and easiest way to install a script and run it
  • Free scripts for managing your layouts, building calendars, and
  • Amazing scripts you need for graphics and images

This session is Part 1 in a three-part tutorial. See Part 2 here.

Fast Fixes for MS Word and Other Text Messes

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Unless you’re the one writing the copy for the InDesign layouts you design, chances are someone else is using MS Word and handing the file off to you to flow in. And there’s the rub: Two different software companies. Two different text engines. Two different ways to format text. And it’s up to you to solve it!

In this fast-paced session, we’ll show you how to quickly fix the most common problems that you likely encounter. You’ll be amazed to see how most of the solutions are easy, free, and built right into the program.

This session includes:

  • Importing Word files the smart way: choosing the best options
  • Cleaning up formatting glitches after the first import
  • Dealing with unwanted interlopers like embedded graphics and ugly hyperlinks
  • Suspect the Word file is damaged? There’s a fix for that!

Awesome GREP Tips & Tricks

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Once you get started with GREP, you keep finding more and more uses for it! We’re picking out ten amazing GREP tricks to share with you. Note: while these are advanced tips, you don’t have to be advanced to use them — any InDesign user can copy and paste them from the handouts to achieve great results!

This session includes:

  • Using GREP with powerful Find/Change and batch scripts
  • Finding Unicode ranges
  • Powerful but simple undocumented codes

Favorite Tips from InDesignSecrets

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Anne-Marie Concepcion, Mike Rankin, and David Blatner have spent over a decade publishing tips and tutorials about our favorite page-layout app: literally thousands of blog posts, podcasts, magazine articles, videos… Watch as they battle to find the best of InDesign Secrets.

Topics include:

  • Little-used InDesign features that you really should be using
  • Obscure tricks that could literally change your life (or at least your workflow)
  • Keyboard and other shortcuts for improving your productivity
  • Using common features together in uncommon ways for maximum benefit

Turning Data into Design in InDesign

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If you think about it, all publishing is “data publishing,” but when you need to design and lay out text and graphics from a database or spreadsheet, the process can get quite tricky!

Follow along as we learn about the different tools that focus on publishing catalogs and directories, as well as those that serve variable data, personalization, and targeted market publishing. This workshop isn’t just for those publishing information from rows and columns, either. It will also give insights into automated long document and multi-channel publishing platforms.

InDesign’s Data Merge is a powerful but super simple starting point on the data publishing spectrum. Find out which tools will help you:

  • Build a 500-page directory in minutes
  • Cut your catalog page production time in half or less AND be more accurate in the process
  • Revolutionize how you produce books, reports, and other long documents
  • Incorporate personalized images AND video into your direct market, personalization, and targeted market campaigns
  • Streamline multiple language publishing

Making GREP Work for You in InDesign

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In Part 1 of this three-part tutorial, we learned the fundamentals of working with GREP in InDesign. Now, it’s time for some in-depth GREP expressions to put into your toolkit. When it comes to automating text in your InDesign documents, using GREP can give you that boost you need to improve your accuracy, consistency, and productivity.

  • Learn how to master the “lookaround”
  • Finding complex patterns, such as email addresses or phone numbers
  • Rearranging text

Jump to Part 3.

New InDesign Features You Should Be Using Now

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You’ve been using InDesign for a long time, but why are you still using it the way you did 5 or 10 years ago?! Adobe has released a ton of new features, but most InDesign users don’t take advantage of them. Take this opportunity to get up to speed again and learn what you’ve been missing!

How to Let Other People Edit Your InDesign Docs (even if they don’t have InDesign)

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You’re an InDesign user but you’re surrounded by people who aren’t: editors, bosses, clients, stakeholders… Life would be so much easier if everyone had InDesign, but that’s not realistic. So what can you do? What tools, services, techniques, and workflows can you take advantage of to ensure that the right people can edit the right stuff at the right time—and no one screws up your layout.

Introduction to GREP

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GREP is one of the most important features in InDesign, and sadly it’s one of the least used! In Part 1 of this three-session series, we’ll get you up to speed (from zero to 60!) with this amazing tool for finding, changing, and formatting text patterns.

We’ll look at some design samples and learn—among other things—how to:

  • Find a range of characters
  • Find all of specific category, such as currency
  • Automatically style fractions, figures, and recurring product names

Jump to Part 2.

RGB vs CMYK: Let’s Put This Argument to Rest Right Now

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It’s the 21st century… are you really still converting images to CMYK in Photoshop? Are you picking the right CMYK at the right time? What the heck is InDesign’s “transparency blend mode” and should you choose RGB or CMYK? This is the session that every InDesign user needs to watch—at least the ones who care about quality and productivity!

This session includes:

  • How to create a PDF that works for both onscreen viewing and printing on a desktop printer
  • Why converting images should be called “targeting” them
  • Why using the default settings will just get you boring color