Chapter 22: Preparing Picture Files for Import

You can import graphics into your InDesign documents in several ways. InDesign is particularly adept at importing documents created in popular Macintosh and Windows formats. And through the Mac and Windows clipboards (copy and paste), you can import file formats ‚ to a limited degree ‚ that are not directly supported by InDesign.

Determining Where to Format Documents

Because InDesign has some built-in graphics features, as described in Chapters 26 through 28, you may be tempted to use InDesign as your graphics program. Don't. Its tools are fine for some work, such as creating shapes that text wraps around, borders, and gradations of color ‚ but InDesign is not meant to be a professional graphics-creation tool. In fact, it's designed to work closely with such professional tools, especially Adobe's Illustrator and Photoshop.

Particularly for bitmap images such as scanned files and photographs, InDesign has few capabilities to apply special effects or otherwise manipulate the image's content, so you should do as much work as possible in your image editor, before bringing the file into InDesign. For example, you can resize, crop, rotate, and slant an imported image in InDesign, but you can't convert it from a full-color image into a duotone or change its line screen or brightness and contrast.

The bottom line is this: Use your graphics program for creating and editing original images and photos. Use InDesign's graphics features to embellish your layout, rather than create original artwork.

New Feature ‚  

InDesign CS lets you easily open a graphics program to edit placed images from within InDesign. Hold Option or Alt and then double-click the image. InDesign will then launch the program that created the graphic; if you don't own that program, InDesign will launch a compatible program if you have one. For example, if you Option+double-click or Alt+double-click an EPS file in your layout that was created in Adobe Illustrator, but you use Macromedia FreeHand instead, InDesign will launch FreeHand on your system.