Expert: Scott Valentine - 11/22/2007

Question
Hi Scott! I am in desperate need of help! I have a copy of photoshop 7.0 and
indesign cs3 and I am wanting to use them to create a small A5 magazine for
my English degree project. sadly for me, we have to work out how to use our
chosen software ourselves, lucky for those who are going to use publisher!!

I really want to work it out but it is just so complicated. I was wondering if
you could just clear a few things up for me? I have a Mac running tiger.

1.When I have used the pen tool in photoshop to get an outline of an image I
have obtained, how do I then put that image in indesign without the white
background showing?

2. How do I get a background? Just colours will do, and do you recommend
lighter or darker colours for better quality when printing?

3.can i preview what i have done how it will be printed? There are so many
boxes i don't know what is there and what isn't!

Any other tips you can give me I will be so grateful for!

Answer
Hi Ellie - congratulations on getting your degree!

There are many solutions to your first two questions, and each depends on where you start, and what you want to accomplish. Your best bet is to find a book to help you narrow down your possibilities (a few minutes in a bookstore may solve your issues). A great online resource is InDesignSecrets:

http://indesignsecrets.com/

As for choosing a background, you need to make sure you are not making the text difficult to read. Color value will depend on the process and printer, but I'd stay at very low opacities or brightness values. If you are printing on a home inkjet, consider avoiding anything more than a very faint color or image, as things can get ugly very quickly.

You can create a background by creating a new layer below all of your content layers, then adding a simple rectangle and filling with your choice of color or image. You can also adjust opacity using the tool options for the rectangle tool.

There is a preview option for InDesign. Look under the View menu for options, and choose High Quality and Print for options (I don't have ID installed on this machine, so I can't give you the exact menu settings). I do not recommend leaving this mode on while working as everything will get very slow, and you won't have the benefit of guides or visual indicators for layers or boundaries.

In general, keep your designs sparse, and stick to box layouts for most articles and features. Unless you are or have access to a good graphic designer, this will be your safest bet. Choose a narrow range of colors, and pay attention to the visual balance on your pages. And always keep an eye on your white space - the parts of your page that don't have any graphics or text. These areas can be the most important, so consider taking some time to look up a few design tutorials on the web.

As for the software itself, consider using the Place command to put Photoshop graphics into your InDesign documents.
Use layers whenever you need to group content or keep organized.
Learn some of the image editing features available in InDesign so you can make changes there instead of going back to Photoshop for every small edit.
Make good use of the story/copy editor function in InDesign - it will really help you keep organized and format your text.
Finally, use styles in InDesign to create consistent looks to your text (fonts, sizes, capitals, paragraph formats, etc.)

You have quite a challenge ahead of you! Please feel free to follow up or ask additional questions if you need to.

Best of luck!

-Scott