InDesign workshop 17.01.13 OUGD405

When we place an image into InDesign, we see on screen a low resolutions preview of the image. It is only a small part of the image that we have brought over from illustrator or photoshop.

The links panel on the right hand side it shows the different images that are in the document. The number next to it shows which page the image that you have placed is on.
When the document is sent to print, InDesign finds the original vector and will print the full high quality image.


If you save just the InDesign file and none of the images, when we go to print the document the images will all be of very low quality, so any projects must be saved in one file with all the images and documents available to InDesign.
If the images are not saved, when the document is re opened the image will appear in low quality and the missing link can be found by using the links panel.

Using the display performance option you can change the display quality of the images so that you can be more accurate with high quality display, or by sing the fast display the preview of the images disappear completely so the computer will work much faster.

When preparing photoshop files you need to make sure that the colour mode, size and resolution is correct so that everything will work well in InDesign..

To resize an image in InDesign you can select the image by clicking on the two circles in the centre of the image so that the outline is brown rather than blue, and this allows you to resize  the image, then make the frame smaller to fit the new image. However, because InDesign is linked to the original image, we have to change the original image so that the image in InDesign will always be that size.

To edit the original right click on the image and choose edit with photoshop. Then to rescale the image in photoshop open the image size in photoshop and change the percentage to the percentage that is in the links panel in In Design. Also make sure that the image is in CMYK colur for print.

Then you just have to save the image to the same file is was originally and it will be saved as that size into InDesign. Also, any changes that you make to the image in photoshop will be saved automatically to the image that is in InDesign so you don't have to re place the image onto InDesign.

All images should be saved as tiff files or photoshop files so that the quality of the image is good enough for print. 

To keep layers and transparency, save the image files as photoshop files but otherwise save the files as Tiff files.

 To see a preview of your page and see what it will look like without any of the guides or rulers etc, you can press the 'W' on the keyboard.

Once you have finished with your InDesign file and want to print, the print options are more complex than most other software. Make sure that these options are all correct to how you want them and that is all. You can also save the file as a pdf file, where press quality is the highest quality you can get for commercial print, and smallest file size creates the smallest file size but cannot be printed well and high quality print is good enough for print but not good enough for commercial print.