Chapter One. Getting Started with InDesign

InDesign is a powerful page layout program renowned for its ease of use, precision, and integration with other applications in the Adobe Creative Suite. Hallmark features of InDesign include professional type and graphics handling, drawing tools, transparency, and reliable print and PDF output. With powerful creative tools and flexible workflow features at their fingertips, graphic designers around the globe are using InDesign to produce all types of print and electronic publications. From magazines, books, and newsletters to posters, CD covers, and bumper stickers, many of the publications you see are produced with InDesignoften in concert with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

InDesign is a mature program with many features. It's possible, after all, to use InDesign to do everything from creating a one-color business card or a five-color magazine to exporting XML tags for an automated catalog system. That's why this book breaks down the software into the 100 most essential tasks you need to know to hit the ground running with InDesign. Whether you're new to page layout software or you're switching from QuarkXPress or PageMaker to InDesign, you can use this book to learn InDesign's most important features and start producing your own high-quality publications.

A few notes about this book may help you understand its approach. Although keyboard shortcuts can really streamline tasks, we did not include them. Almost every feature has a keyboard shortcut, so including them for both Mac OS and Windows adds a significant amount of clutter. For the complete keyboard shortcut list, see the InDesign Help file. In addition, InDesign offers several ways to perform almost every task. Rather than attempt to include every method, we tried to present the easiest and most obvious methods.

In this chapter, you'll learn how to get information about InDesign through the Welcome Screen and Adobe Help Center; customize the software by modifying preferences, keyboard shortcuts, and plug-in sets; and work with InDesign's many palettes.