Getting Started with Adobe InDesign

Name: Getting Started with Adobe InDesign
Author: Patti Scully-Lane

Gone are the days when you needed a dedicated team of professional typesetters and pressmen to prepare a poster, brochure, magazine, or newspaper for print. We…

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Course: On-Demand

In this video, you will learn how to start InDesign from the Creative Cloud desktop app. Now I'm working on a Windows machine, but I will also walk you through how to open up InDesign from the desktop app on a Mac as well. So one of the first things that you can do is go down to the Start menu. And from the Start menu, you can look for the Creative Cloud app. And if you have it there, then you can click on it. However, I'm gonna click off of here, I have a shortcut on my desktop, so I'm just gonna double-click on the Creative Cloud app. If you are on a Mac, you can go to the Go menu from your finder window. And from the Go menu, you can click on the applications. And then from the applications folder, you can select the Creative Cloud desktop app if you don't have a shortcut on your desktop. Once you open up the Creative Cloud desktop app, there are a couple of things that you're going to want to check. First of all, over on the left, you want to make sure that you click on the Apps menu, and that will give you the apps as well as the categories of apps that you can look at. Under the All apps category, we want to look at the apps that we have installed. And you want to make sure that InDesign is actually installed on your Creative Cloud. If it is not installed, you can scroll down to the bottom of the All apps area, and you can find InDesign from the apps that are available in your subscription. All you'd have to do is click on the Install button, and then InDesign will install. The second thing you want to make sure of is that all of your updates are done. So if we click on this Updates button, here it will let you know whether or not any of your apps need updating. So if InDesign does need updating, make sure to click on the update button so that you have the latest install of Adobe InDesign. Now going back to the All apps area, I'm just going to double-click on the InDesign Open button. And now one of the things that you do want to be aware is the fact that the first time you open up InDesign on any given day, it will take a little bit longer to open up because of the fact that Adobe is checking for your license. So I'm going to just minimize this, and InDesign is opening up in the background, and there it is. So in this lesson, you learned how to start InDesign from the Adobe Creative Cloud desktop app.

Beginner Provider : Patti Scully-Lane 7 Lessons · 35m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

Gone are the days when you needed a dedicated team of professional typesetters and pressmen to prepare a poster, brochure, magazine, or newspaper for print. We have dedicated apps for all that now, but none quite so prominent as Adobe InDesign, which has come to dominate the desktop publishing industry, making it an essential tool for modern-day communication. In this Beginner Adobe InDesign course, you will learn the basics of working with InDesign and how it fits in with the Creative Cloud desktop app. From there, you will learn how to open existing documents and create new documents from scratch using Adobe’s templates. Then you will progress to adding text and graphics to the page, as well as exploring and applying basic character and paragraph formatting, including a primer on working with Adobe fonts. You will understand how to analyze graphics to determine if they are vector or raster, RGB or CMYK, and if they have the correct resolution for your output. Finally, you will both link and embed graphics to figure out which is best for your situation; then you will see how to crop and modify those graphics to better fit your available page space.

In these lessons, you will learn the basics of Adobe InDesign, from downloading the software itself to navigating the interface. You will open and explore documents, getting them ready for when they create their own. Different screen modes and options will also be explored, as well as the basics on how to print your file.

What You'll Learn

Download Adobe InDesign from the Creative Cloud desktop app
Open existing documents and create new documents using Adobe's templates
Navigate the InDesign interface, including panels and workspaces
Add text and graphics to the page and apply basic character and paragraph formatting
Analyze graphics to determine if they are vector or raster, RGB or CMYK, and whether they have the correct resolution
Link and embed graphics, then crop and modify them to fit the available page space

Key Takeaways

Adobe InDesign has come to dominate the desktop publishing industry, making it an essential tool for modern-day communication.
InDesign is downloaded and managed through the Creative Cloud desktop app, where it fits alongside other Adobe applications.
Working with documents covers opening existing files, creating new ones from Adobe's templates, navigating, and printing.
Basic formatting in InDesign includes character and paragraph formatting along with working with Adobe fonts.
Graphics can be both linked and embedded, and learners determine which approach is best for a given situation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is this Adobe InDesign course for?

It is a beginner course that teaches the basics of working with InDesign, from downloading the software to navigating the interface, making it suitable for those new to the application.

What topics does the course cover?

It covers starting from Creative Cloud, opening and navigating documents, exploring the interface, panels and workspaces, screen modes and options, and printing a file, along with adding text and graphics, basic character and paragraph formatting, working with Adobe fonts, and linking, embedding, cropping, and modifying graphics.

What will I learn about working with graphics?

You will learn to analyze graphics to determine if they are vector or raster, RGB or CMYK, and whether they have the correct resolution for your output, as well as how to link and embed graphics and crop and modify them to fit your available page space.

What are the main learning objectives?

The stated learning objectives are downloading InDesign from the Creative Cloud, opening and navigating documents, and understanding the interface.

What skills does this course relate to?

The course relates to Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, and Adobe InDesign Certification.