(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Hello, and welcome to this video tutorial
brought to you by tastytuts.com.
In this tutorial, I will be doing a brief overview
of the Adobe InDesign interface, and later I'll demonstrate
an effective and useful workspace setup.
So for this tutorial, I have here a finished composition,
so I can demonstrate how the interface works
around a document.
Now, if you have InDesign open and wish to follow along,
you will need to first come up to Window,
scroll down to Workspace,
then scroll down and select Essentials.
Then, to make sure you end up with the same setup
you see here, we must again go to Window, Workspace,
and then scroll down and select Reset Essentials.
This will then set the interface
to Essentials default layout
and you should have something that looks like this.
Okay, so on the left I have the familiar Tools menu,
and across the top I have the Control panel.
Now this Control panel is really useful as this will contain
all the properties of a particular tool you will use
or object frame you have selected.
For example, if I select the Type tool,
I can now see the Control panel has changed,
and I have all the editable properties for our text,
from font choice, font size, leading, formatting, and so on.
If I activate the Selection tool in the menu
and select an object frame, I can see the Control panel
change again to reveal properties for this text box.
To name a few, I can edit such things as rotation,
fill and stroke color, stroke size,
I can apply some effects,
I can toggle text wrap and toggle alignment.
So the Control panel is one of the main panels in InDesign
and is usually kept at the top in plain sight.
So just under this panel, and to the right,
I have a number of other panels.
These panels have been arranged like so for quick access,
and these contain various tools and information
regarding my current document.
If I come and move my mouse cursor over these
and start to click, I will then expand that panel
to reveal its contents.
And if I click again, this will hide it.
Now, if I come up to Window, Workspace,
you can currently see that I have
the Essentials workspace active,
and we can see this as we have a tick on it.
Now, notice at the top I have a workspace called TastyT.
Well, let me come up to this and select it.
Now you will see that my panel layout has changed.
In CS5 the arrangement of your panels and interface
is called your workspace.
Earlier we chose one of the default workspaces, Essentials.
In CS5, you are able to customize your workspace layout
and save it.
This enables you to toggle between workspace layouts,
perhaps, multiple people use your computer
and like different workspace layouts,
so it's good to have the option to save them.
So what you're seeing here
is a workspace I prepared earlier.
And this one I will be recommending to you later,
but before that, I'm going to quickly show you
how you can customize your workspace and save it.
So to begin, I'm going to come back to Window, Workspace,
and click the default Essentials.
So now yours should look just like this.
In CS5, you have a lot of flexibility with panels.
For example, first, I'm going to click and drag each panel
out of the group so they are separate.
Then, with the Pages panel, I'm going to come
to the top right in the dark gray strip,
and click the Expand Panel button.
This will expand the panel like so.
Now, I'm just going to click and drag on the bottom right
of the panel to pull it out so I can see more clearly
the Pages' panel content.
Next, I'm going to come into my Layers panel
and click and drag this into my Pages panel.
And upon doing this, you will see a blue line
around the inside of the Pages panel.
This is InDesign asking you, are you ready
to place this panel inside the Pages panel?
So, upon release, the Layers panel will merge
into the Pages panel and you will now have a new panel group
and a tab system on the top in order to select
through the panels.
So we are going to do the same with the Links panel,
click and drag this in like so.
Now, you can also have the flexibility
to toggle the order of these tabs.
So I'm going to click and hold on the Links tab
and drag it to the left to appear after the Pages tab.
And in the Links panel, we have this midline.
So I'm just going to click and drag this down
to reveal more content.
So with this new panel group, I'm going to move this across
to the top right hand side of my screen
just under the Control panel like so.
And now you can see we have three panels left.
Well, this time I'm going to take the Stroke panel
by the top bar and drag it under my top panel group,
but I'm going to click and drag just under the panel
until I see a blue line.
Upon release, you will snap this new panel
to the bottom of the panel group above.
Next, I'm going to take my Color panel by the button
and like earlier, drag it into the panel to create a group.
And the same I will do with the Swatches panel.
So now I have taken the default layout and created something
that is going to be far more intuitive for my workflow.
Once I am happy, I can come to Window, choose Workspace,
then come down and select New Workspace.
I will then be asked to name this workspace.
Let's call this TastyT work 2,
and click OK.
Now, if I choose another workspace,
I can easily come back to my workspace
by selecting it in the Workspace menu, perfect.
Now before I am done, I want to add some further panels
to my workspace for quick access.
So I'm going to come up to Window, scroll down to Styles,
and select Character Style,
and then you will see the panel appear.
Next, I'm going to come to Window,
scroll down to Type & Table and select Paragraph.
Again, Window,
down to Output, then select Preflight,
and finally, Background Tasks.
So now you will have a new bunch of panels floating around.
Now I'm just going to drag each one into the panel group
on the bottom like so.
So now I have a nice setup of panels,
which I will be using later in the course, and don't worry,
this will automatically save in the workspace.
So I recommend you set up your panels in this way,
and you will see how useful this setup can be
later in the course.
Now, I want to demonstrate a few common hotkeys
which you will find get used a lot in this program.
You can also refer to these in the PDF,
and in the description, so keep these in mind.
In InDesign at any point in time,
if you wish to see more of your artwork
and toggle the visibility of your panels,
you can do this by simply pressing Shift.
If I press W, I can toggle between Normal and Preview mode.
In Normal mode, I can see the pasteboard area
and all visible guides.
And in Preview mode, I can get a more realistic,
realtime look at my composition.
If I press Command + R, this will toggle the visibility
of the rulers and you can see these coming in
around the top left edge of our composition window.
This will enable us to click and drag in guides
to help us align creative elements on our composition.
If I press V on the keyboard,
this will activate the Selection tool.
With this I can easily click on object frames.
If I press A, this will activate the Direct Selection tool,
and this will enable me to click images
within object frames.
With nothing selected, if I press and hold the Space Bar
on the keyboard, my cursor will change to a hand
and I will be able to click and drag
to move around my composition like so.
And if I press T on the keyboard,
this will activate the Type tool,
which I can quickly click in a text box
to edit or select text.
So that's a few useful shortcuts in InDesign.
So now I'm ready to begin my document.
In the next video, I'm going to talk a lot more in depth
about the Links panel, as you will come to realize
this is a huge focus in InDesign.
It is important you understand this panel as it will ensure
you have a nice, organized, and accurate document.
I strongly recommend you watch this,
though, if you wish to skip this video
and get started building our composition, you can.
Links are in the description and PDF.
So, I'll see you in the next video.