Friday, April 20, 2012

What Are the Top 5 Things You Should Learn About Adobe InDesign?

Adobe InDesign isn't the kind of program that you can learn overnight. If you have some experience with basic design software, you might be able to do some things in InDesign like adding text or drawing shapes right away. But if you check out the software's Help and Tutorials section in their website, you will find tons of tutorials covering all sorts of areas. While learning all of these things will help you create highly professional publications independently, you should focus on these top 5 areas if you ever decide to undergo Adobe InDesign training.

User Interface

Familiarizing yourself with the user interface of the latest Adobe InDesign version is a must so you know exactly what menu to go to or toolbar to check out when you need to perform a specific task. If you ever have to design a publication which has a very tight deadline, you can carry on with the task smoothly if you know the user interface. Recent versions of the software let you customize your workspace so you can add the sidebar panels and toolbars that matter. Even if you are already used to the interface, you can get even more work done if you design a custom workspace that is optimized for your projects.

Layouting

Adobe InDesign is all about layouting so you can expect any Adobe InDesign training program to provide a lot of tutorials on the layouting subject. Knowing the different kinds of layouts that are good for certain publications like E-books, magazines and brochures can speed up your production. For instance, designing your very first E-book would take some time but once you take on a new E-book project, you can apply the same layouting techniques that you learned from this training so the work is completed sooner. Of course, there are so many creative possibilities thanks to the vast number of layouting tools in the software package so you have to tackle more projects to gain experience and expand your creativity.

File and Resource Management

Keeping your project organized is a great way to keep your work comfortable. By having an organized project, you should be able to easily add, edit or replace certain files or resources that are involved in your project. Resource management can include the management of master pages so you can easily apply layouts to different pages. It also involves indexing and pagination to keep all the pages organized. Packaging also helps with your resource management because it gathers all of the files used in the project in one location.

Integration with Other Adobe Software

Your Adobe InDesign training sessions will focus on the software and the many features it offers. But remember that InDesign is just one component of the entire Adobe Creative Suite. While you are not required to master other Adobe applications like Photoshop and Illustrator, familiarizing yourself with those applications can improve your ability to tackle bigger projects more efficiently. For instance, InDesign is a great program for designing posters but Adobe Photoshop offers more image editing features. You can do some of the necessary edits in Photoshop and then import the image into InDesign to finalize the graphic design.