- [Instructor] Hello and welcome to this video tutorial,
brought to you by tastytuts.com.
In this tutorial,
I will be finalizing my document ready for print.
I will be reviewing my document
and covering some essential preparation techniques.
In this video, I will later be discussing
and demonstrating the importance of the Preflight tool
in InDesign, to ensure we don't have any potential errors
to compromise the quality of our final export.
So here I am, in InDesign, with my current composition.
And this is where I left off from the previous video,
where I demonstrated how to introduce objects,
color and effects into an InDesign project.
Now this composition is pretty much finished.
I won't be bringing any more text
or images into this composition.
So, all I have to focus on now,
are the four basic preparation principles,
in the following order.
Check the positioning of the artwork,
check the bleed, check the links, and check the Preflight.
By taking the time to check all four of these points,
chances are, you will not have any mistakes
or errors in your document.
So I'm going to make a start with the first point,
and I'm going to go around my document
and make sure all my artwork is in the right position.
So I'm going to start on page one,
and press W on the keyboard to toggle into normal mode.
So the first thing I can see is the header text.
And it's not aligned to the top inside margin.
So with my selection tool,
I'm going to select the text frame,
and move it up with the arrow keys
until it's nicely positioned.
I'll press W on the keyboard to get a good look
in preview mode.
Now the stroke in between the header and the paragraph
is not neatly in the middle now.
So I will click this and move it up.
Great.
Coming over to the back page,
the text frame on the top could move up a little,
and so could the racetrack graphic and the bullet points.
Now with zooming into the bullet points,
I can see that they are not looking as neatly arranged
as they could.
So I'm going to select the three circles
and align them better together,
and then I'm going to place the numbers
on top of these circles better.
Coming over to the cover page, that looks okay.
Down to the inside spread,
I'm looking at the grid of images.
The gaps between them don't look very consistent.
A good trick here is to come to your InDesign preferences
and select grid.
Let's change the document grid to magenta,
and let's change all the values,
in both horizontal and vertical
to one millimeter and one subdivision and click okay.
Now if I come up to view in window,
come down to grids and guides,
and select show document grid,
you will now see the grid in the background.
Now I'm going to zoom into my grid,
and I'm going to move each frame to the guides
to get a consistent one millimeter gap between each image.
If I now zoom out, and press W, to activate preview mode,
that's looking pretty slick.
I can get rid of the grid, by coming back up to view,
down again, and this time click hide document grid.
Over onto page five, with all the motorbike images,
this is looking okay,
but the headers are not consistently positioned.
So with the selection tool, I'm just going to select these,
and with the arrow keys, move them down,
so they are all sitting more consistently on the key lines.
And as I click the headers, I'm going to double click
on the bottom middle point of each frame,
to snap them up, so all the frames are much more neater
on my composition area.
Onto the last page, first looking at the table,
I can see that some of the information
has not pasted in correctly.
So with the text tool, I'm going to cut and paste this text
into the relevant frame on the table.
I will select the text, and with the eyedropper tool,
I'll click on some text I want it to be like,
and that should change its format.
Now I'm left with two empty rows.
With the text tool, I'm going to click into the table
and select these two rows and right click,
come up to delete and select rows.
So now the table is a little smaller.
I'm going to choose the selection tool,
click on the frame, and then I'm going to come down
and double click on the bottom middle point.
And that will snap to fit.
I'm going to neatly position the frame
on the left-hand side.
Next, I'm going to select the two bike images on the right
and move them to fit in their space better.
Lastly, I'm going to tweak the headers
with the selection tool.
I will select the top header,
double click on the bottom middle point to snap to fill,
and I'll move this down slightly to sit better on the frame
and I'm going, to do the same again to the header below.
So once I'm happy with the positioning of all my artwork,
it's time to check the bleed.
Another important thing you need to make sure is,
preparation for your bleed.
I'm going to come up to page one again.
And in normal mode, I can see all the guides.
And the one in question is the red line
around the outside of my document.
Now any artwork
that I plan on coming to the end of the page,
needs to extend into this bleed area.
This will mean that
when the printers come to trim the document,
there will be room for error.
So first I can see that my gradient background
is stretching right off this.
Well that's okay, but I want to keep it neat.
So with the selection tool,
I'm going to click on the lock icon to release the frame.
And then I'm going to drag it in
to snap with my bleed margin.
And coming to the bottom of my document, I'll do the same.
Now I can see this black baseline bar
is stretching over the margin.
So again, I will click this
and pull all the frame borders in to meet my bleed margin.
Coming to the top of my back page,
I need to click on the top image and pull the frame up
to the bleed margin.
And coming down, I need to pull the black background down.
But this frame is currently locked.
If I come up to the lock icon and try and click it,
it won't work.
And this is because the frame is set to the back.
To unlock this particular frame,
I now need to come over to the layers panel
in the top right.
If you do not see the layers panel,
you can come to window and select it here.
So in the layers panel,
you will see I currently have one layer called Layer 1.
If I drop this down, we can see every element
that exists on this layer.
If I scroll down, I can see a lock icon on one of them.
Well this is for this black background shape here.
So by clicking on the lock, I can release the frame.
So now I can come down and select the frame.
But, as it is set to the back,
I need to first click the gradient frame, then hold command,
and click again to click through the gradient background
and select my black frame.
Now I can click and drag this down to meet my margin guides.
So let's zoom out and that's looking good.
Now looking at the cover page,
I need to click on the gradient background,
and pull that into the bleed margin.
And then click on the cover image,
and pull the frame borders out to meet their bleed margin.
And that's just fine.
Coming onto the inside spread, now I need to address
the gradient background here.
I will pull all the frame borders in
to meet my bleed margin.
And I'll do the same to the bottom baseline block.
I'll make sure the black background meets the bleed margins,
and that's just great.
So now I'm happy with the bleed on the inside spread,
and the whole document.
So that's taken care of.
So now I'm going to take a look at my links,
over in the link panel.
And for this, I'm going to check the status,
the actual PPI of the resolution, and the color space.
I just need to make sure that there are no links missing,
all links are 300 dpi, and that all the images are CMYK.
And I can see that they are all just fine.
So I can now move on to the final preparation check.
And it's now time to look at my Preflight tool.
So what is the Preflight tool?
Well, in InDesign, Preflight is a live diagnostic
that is constantly looking for errors in your document.
And this tool will highlight any issues
you may have in your document
that could compromise the quality.
If you have any errors in your document,
the Preflight will tell you.
Errors such as broken links, missing fonts and overset text.
For example, I'm going to come to the Preflight panel
here in the bottom right panel group.
If you cannot see this, you can come to window,
scroll down to output and select Preflight here.
Now I also want to draw your attention to this little widget
here in the bottom left corner of your composition window.
This has been here the whole time,
and is part of the Preflight tool.
So currently, I can see that there is a gree light,
both in my widget down here, and in my Preflight panel.
And it also states no errors.
Now this is a really good sign.
This means there are no critical errors in my document.
Now, for you to understand the type of errors
the Preflight can pick up, I'm going to create one.
So I'm going to come to my paragraph text on page one,
and I'm going to select the second frame and push it up.
Now if I look in the widget at the bottom,
the green light has now turned red,
and it says one error.
So if I also turn to the Preflight panel,
I can see that it's also red here.
And now there is an item in the panel.
Looking closely, it states that it is a text error.
So if I double click on this, it will reveal it.
And it states that it is an overset text error.
If I double click on this, it states it's on a text frame.
Now, if I double click on this,
it will take me straight to the error
on the composition window.
And indeed, it has taken me straight to the text table.
So the Preflight is telling me that there is a text frame
but it is hiding some text within it.
So if I now click the text frame,
and drag it down to reveal the whole text,
the error in the Preflight window will go away.
Another example, so I will navigate to my assets folder,
and move a PSD out of the folder, and on to the desktop,
essentially breaking the link.
Back in InDesign, there is now a red light.
And double clicking on this will eventually take me
to the image that is missing.
If I put the image back, the red light will turn green.
Now, if you're making a large document,
little things like this can happen a lot.
So before you export your document for print,
you should always take a look at the Preflight tool.
There has been many occasions
where I have thought the document was absolutely ready
for print, only to find, I have missed the smallest things,
that were highlighted here in the Preflight panel.
You can use the Preflight panel
at any stage in your project,
but I always tend to use it at the end.
When I feel the document is ready, I use this tool
to make doubly sure there is nothing I have missed.
So once you are absolutely happy with your document,
and you have a green light in your Preflight panel,
it is now time to export your document
to send to your client for approval
and to send to the printers to print.
In the next video,
I will be demonstrating exactly how
to export your finished document,
ready to send to the printers for print.
See you in the next video.