(upbeat techno music)
- [Instructor] Hello and welcome to this video tutorial.
Brought to you by garethdavidstudio.com.
In this tutorial, I'll be talking in some depth
about the links panel in Adobe InDesign.
The links panel in InDesign is one of the biggest panels
and it has great focus in the program.
This panel represents all the image elements
that you will have within your document
and you're going to need to pay close attention
to this panel.
This panel is pretty crucial to your workflow.
So in this tutorial I'm going to explain
exactly how this works and how you can customize this panel
so you can get more detailed information about your images
to get complete control of your images in your document.
To demonstrate this I'm going to use
the complete project document, so I can see it in action.
In the last video, I recommended an InDesign workspace
and demonstrated how to set it up in this way.
In this tutorial we are going to focus on the links panel,
located here in the top panel group.
If you don't have your workspace set up like this,
you can either watch the previous video,
Adobe InDesign interface introduction.
Or simply you can come up to window,
scroll down and activate the links panel here.
So here is the links panel and I can currently see
this contains a list.
This is a list of all the image elements
within my document.
Every time you place an image into a document,
place it in the pasteboard area,
or in the composition area,
it will show up in this panel.
Now what you are seeing is the default setup
of the links panel when you start InDesign.
The links panel can be customized.
For example, I'm going to come to window,
come down to workspace and here I have a workspace
I have prepared earlier, called TastyT.
So I'm just going to click on this
and my workspace will change.
Though it has not changed massively,
what you can see now are these extra properties
visible here in the links panel.
So starting from the left I have name, status, page number,
color space, actual PPI, and size.
Now these are additional properties columns
that can be activated in the links panel.
These are here to clearly display information
about an image in the document at a glance.
And these are pretty crucial to help you
keep on top of your project and maintain the quality
you will later need in order to get the document printed.
Now I highly recommend you have these
extra properties columns in your links panel like this.
But before I explain why and the benefits,
I will quickly show you how to get them here.
So first I'm going to come back to my previous workspace
with the default links panel.
Back up to window, down to workspace
and click on my TastyT work 2 workspace.
So now I have back to the default links panel
and we no longer see the properties columns.
Now I'm going to simply come to top right of my links panel,
click the menu and activate your panel options.
And here you can choose from a vast variety of properties.
For now all I'm going to need is the properties
mentioned previously.
So I'm going to go ahead and click to activate
the ones I want.
So I will on size,
click on color space,
and lastly click on actual PPI,
and then click ok.
Once you have these loaded, it's up to you
what order you have them.
But you can actually click and drag the tabs
left and right to change the order.
So I'm going to order them like so.
So let's go through what each column is
and why I need these.
First I have name, this will show the file name
of an image item and a little thumbnail to the left.
You'll also be able to see the file extension.
Next I have page number, this basically states
which page the image is on.
Now for example, if I drag an image off a page
and onto the pasteboard, you will notice the page number
change to PB.
This stands for pasteboard.
Next I have status, this will tell me
the status of the image.
If any image links are broken
or if any image needs refreshing,
you will see the warning icon clearly here
in this column.
Next I have actual PPI, this will tell me
the resolution of the image.
I cannot stress how useful this is.
If you're composing a document that is going to print,
then you will need at least 300 DPI.
So if you place an image that is 72 or lower for example,
then you will be able to see it here
and address the image straight away
before finding out later.
I can see here that all my images are 300 DPI.
Next I have the color space, again very useful.
As you may already know, images can either be RGB or CMYK.
If you're creating a document ready for print,
all images will need to be CMYK.
So again, this will be very useful to keep your eye on.
And I can see that all my images here are CMYK.
So I have size, this will tell me the document size
of the image.
This is for convenience.
There's nothing particularly important about this
other than peace of mind.
So these are the key properties columns
you should have open to keep on top of your images.
Now I want to draw your attention to the bottom
of the links panel.
With an image selected above I can see
some extra information about the image
such as the name, file path on your computer, and so on.
Now if I look just above this link info area
to the right I have see four buttons.
These are pretty important and you will need
to familiarize yourself with these.
Starting from the left I have the relink button,
then the go to link,
then refresh, and edit original.
The relink button will enable you to change the image.
If I have an image placed in my composition area
but I want to replace it with another one
I can easily do this using this button.
Simply click the image you wish to replace
then hit this button and navigate to the new image
on your computer.
Next to this you have the go to button.
This is convenient if you have a large document
with a lot of images.
Or perhaps an image that is sitting
in the pasteboard somewhere.
With the image in question selected above,
you can click this button and it will take you
straight to the image in your composition like so.
The next button if the update link button.
Now let's say you had to make changes to an image,
let's say you were working on some document images
while your InDesign document was open
but you did not have it on screen.
So I'm going to minimize InDesign and come to an image
in my document's asset folder and just open an image.
Let's say this motorbike image here.
In Photoshop I'll just duplicate the layer
and take the saturation right down
so it looks almost grayscale.
Then I will close and save the file.
Now let's open up my InDesign document
and take a look in the links panel.
Now we can see a warning icon in the status column.
And if I click on the image and press the go to button,
we can see that the image we just change to grayscale
is still in color.
Now in the links panel, this is InDesign telling me
that this image has been changed or modified
and that I need to refresh the image.
So if I now press the update link button,
the bike will now change to the up to date state.
And we can see that it's now grayscale
and the warning icon has disappeared.
So looking back at the icons on the bottom of the panel,
on the far right I have the edit original button.
Now you may find yourself using this button a lot.
So once an image is placed in your InDesign composition,
there may be times you wish to make modifications
to that image.
Change the color, create transparency, or just make
simple photo manipulations.
So let's come back to the image
I just changed into grayscale.
If I want to change it back to the color version
I can use the selection tool to select the image frame,
now the image will also become selected in the links panel.
If I come down to the edit original button and click that,
InDesign will then open the image in Adobe Photoshop.
So I'm going to go ahead and change my image.
This time I'm going to remove the grayscale layer
I created earlier by simply toggling the visibility.
Then if I save and close the image,
then come back into InDesign,
you will then notice the image automatically updates
and I can see the changes I just made.
So that's the links panel in InDesign
and some of its functionality.
This is one of the important panels in InDesign.
And I find myself keeping an eye on this one regularly.
So it may now come as no surprise
why I keep it visible in the large top panel group
on my workspace like this.
So now I'm confident I know about the interface
and I'm happy with my workspace setup.
I'm ready to start my document.
In the next video I'm going to start to build my composition
with placeholder frame boxes, ready to introduce
my images and text.
So I'll see you in the next video.