Placing Content

As we discussed extensively in Part I, "The Creative Suite 2," InDesign is built to incorporate content from multiple sources into a single layout. Overall, you'll be placing two main categories of content into your layouts: text and graphics. Let's explore how this works.

To Frame or Not to Frame?

All content on an InDesign page must reside within a frame, which is a container for the content. Think of this frame as a plate for your food. You don't place food directly on your table (which would be rather messy); you first put a plate (the container) on your table and then place your food on the plate. Whether your "food" is a block of text or some kind of graphic, it must reside within a frame. InDesign has basically three types of frames: one that holds text, one that holds graphics, and one that is unassigned (see Figure 8.10). This last type is actually just a regular vector shape. In fact, try not to even focus too much on what kind of frame something is because all that InDesign cares about is that you have some kind of frame, which, under the hood, is simply a vector object. Any shape can be a frame for content. You can copy and paste a shape from Illustrator, and it can be a frame in an InDesign layout.

Figure 8.10. The three kinds of frames in InDesign: from the left, a graphic frame, a text frame, and an unassigned frame.

The reason I say not to focus on the frame type is that an InDesign frame is like a chameleon: It changes to match its environment. If you select the Type tool and click on an existing graphic frame, InDesign automatically switches the frame to a text frame so that you place text in it. Because InDesign just needs an underlying vector frame to hold content, it can change the type of frame to whatever it needs. If you think about it, InDesign is simply helping you by dynamically changing things as you work, keeping you from having to manually convert a frame from one type to another. The danger in this, of course, is that, at all times, InDesign assumes you know what you're doing.

Rather than be forced to create frames every time you want to place text or a graphic, InDesign can sometimes create the frame for you so you don't have to. Instead of trying to explain it, let's explore how you actually place content into an InDesign document, and everything will become clear.

Placing Text

Placing text is basically a two-step process. You start by first choosing File, Place and picking the file you want to place. Then you specify where and how the text should appear in your document. When you've chosen a file to place from the Place dialog box, InDesign shows you a loaded cursor, indicating that text is ready to be placed (see Figure 8.11).

Figure 8.11. The loaded text cursor.

At the bottom of the Place dialog box is an option called Show Import Options. With the option turned on, InDesign looks at the file type and presents additional options that you can apply to the text before you actually import it. For example, if the file that you're placing is a Microsoft Word or Excel file, InDesign has specific filters (see Figure 8.12) that enable you to strip formatting out of the files or even to map Word styles to InDesign styles (so that text is styled to your specifications automatically as it is imported).

Figure 8.12. When you place a Microsoft Word file, you can choose to have InDesign perform specific formatting or styling to the text as it is imported.

Did you Know?

Instead of checking the Show Import Options button when placing files, you can have InDesign display the Import Options dialog box by pressing the Shift key while clicking on the Open button.

Next, you specify how and where the text will appear in your document, using any of the following techniques:

• Click on any empty area in your document window. This places your text into a text frame that InDesign automatically creates for you. The width of the frame matches the width of your column width.

• Click and drag in any empty area in your document window to draw a text frame. When you release the mouse button, InDesign immediately places your text into the frame.

• Click on an existing text frame or any empty frame (graphic or unassigned).

Did you Know?

If you have a text frame already selected when you choose File, Place, InDesign automatically fills that selected frame with your text as soon as you click the Open button.

Text Threading

InDesign attempts to place all of your text into a frame, but if the frame isn't big enough to hold all of the text, you'll see an icon with a red plus sign on the lower right of the text frame, which indicates text overflow. You can either enlarge your text frame or have the overflow text spill into another text frame. Having text flow from one frame to another is called threading, and InDesign makes it quite simple to do.

When you click on a text frame with the Selection tool, you see the standard eight handles that enable you to scale the frame, but you also see a larger box on the upper left and lower right of the frame. These boxes are called the in-port and out-port, respectively. Text flows into a frame through the in-port and flows out via the out-port. An empty in-port indicates the beginning of a story, and an empty out-port indicates the end of a story. As we mentioned earlier, a red plus sign in the out-port of a text frame indicates overflow text, meaning that there is more text in the story that isn't currently visible (see Figure 8.13).

Figure 8.13. The empty in-port indicates the beginning of the story, and the out-port indicates overflow text.

When you click on an out-port, your icon changes to the loaded text icon, and you can use any of the three techniques listed earlier to create a thread across text frames. A text thread is indicated by a blue arrow that appears in the inor out-ports. If you choose View, Show Text Threads, InDesign shows a visible line connecting the ports, making it easier to identify how a thread of text flows (see Figure 8.14), which can be especially helpful if you have several different text threads on a single page, as in a newsletter or newspaper layout.

Figure 8.14. Viewing text with the Show Text Threads view setting turned on.

Later in the chapter, we talk about editing the text inside of the frames. Next, we explore how to place images into your layout.

Did you Know?

You can save a lot of time when placing text by either Shift+clicking or Option+clicking (Alt-clicking). Shift+clicking places all incoming text at once, flowing from one column or page to the next until all the text is placed. If necessary, InDesign will even add pages to your document to make room for all the text. Option+clicking (Alt+clicking) places the text into the current column (just like clicking without a modifier key held down), but it loads any overflow text back into the cursor for further placement, saving you the step of clicking on the overflow indicator.

Placing Images

InDesign can place many different kinds of image formats, including EPS, TIFF, and JPEG. However, because you're using InDesign as a part of Adobe Creative Suite, you also have the capability to place native Photoshop (.psd), native Illustrator (.ai), and PDF files. InDesign offers rich import options and features to support these native files.

As with text, placing images is basically a two-step process. You start by first choosing File, Place and picking the file you want to place; then you specify where and how the image should appear in your document. When you've chosen a file to place from the Place dialog box, InDesign shows you a loaded cursor, indicating that a graphic is ready to be placed (see Figure 8.15).

Figure 8.15. The loaded icon on the left indicates a raster Photoshop file; the loaded icon on the right indicates a PDF file (which could be from either a PDF file directly or a native Illustrator file, which is PDF as well).

At the bottom of the Place dialog box is an option called Show Import Options. With the option turned on, InDesign looks at the file type and presents additional options that you can apply to the graphic before you actually import it. For example, if the file that you're placing is a PDF file, InDesign's PDF filter enables you to specify which page you want to place, or even to place all the pages in the PDF file at once (see Figure 8.16).

Figure 8.16. Placing a multipage PDF file into an InDesign layout.

Did you Know?

When placing native Illustrator files, you'll notice that using Show Import Options brings up the PDF dialog box. That's because native Illustrator files are actually PDF files.

Next, you'll specify how and where the graphic will appear in your document, using any of the following techniques:

• Click on any empty area in your document window. This places your graphic into a frame that InDesign automatically creates for you. The size of the frame matches the size of the graphic.

• Click and drag in any empty area in your document window to draw a graphic frame. When you release the mouse button, InDesign immediately places your graphic into the frame. The graphic might be cropped (not fully visible) if the frame that you created isn't large enough to display the entire graphic. Don't worry, though; you can correct this later (see "Cropping and Scaling Images," later in this chapter).

• Click on an existing empty graphic or unassigned frame.

Did you Know?

If you have an empty graphic frame already selected when you choose File, Place, InDesign automatically fills that selected frame with your graphic as soon as you click the Place button.

Did you Know?

By default, InDesign has the Replace Selected Item option turned on in the Place dialog box, which enables you to select and fill a frame that already has a graphic in it. To prevent this from happening, you can uncheck this option, which will remain off until you turn it back on again.

Cropping and Scaling Images

I'm sure you're breezing along, telling yourself how easy this InDesign thing is. But in my experience, what you're about to learn is the one thing that most people struggle with initially: cropping and scaling images. If you were able to grasp the concept of the two selection tools in Illustrator (the Selection tool and the Direct Selection tool), this will be easier to digest, but in any case, with a little bit of practice, you'll do just fine.

From a conceptual point of view, a graphic that has been placed into an InDesign document is composed of two things: the image itselfwhich we'll call the contentand the frame that holds the imagewhich we'll call the container. When working with images, you must always be aware of when you want to make adjustments to the content individually, the container individually, or both the content and the container simultaneously. That's where the two selection tools come into play. For the most part, when you want to edit the container, you'll be using the Selection tool. When you want to edit the content, you'll be using the Direct Selection tool. Let's take a closer look.

When you click on a placed graphic with the Selection tool, you'll see a blue outline and the eight scale handles. What you currently have selected is actually the container, not the content. If you drag on any of the scale handles, you'll notice that the size of the container changes, but the content inside the frame does not. If you resize the container to be smaller than the image inside of it, you effectively crop the image because you will be able to see only a portion of the image (see Figure 8.17).

Figure 8.17. Resizing the container to be smaller than the content effectively crops the image.

Switch to the Direct Selection tool and click on the graphic (don't click on the path of the frameclick on the image itself). You'll notice that the blue outline is gone and is now replaced with a red outline, with handles of the same scale. Depending on the size of the frame, the red outline might be smaller or larger than the actual frame. This red outline is the content of the frame. Click and drag on any of the scale handles to resize the image, and you'll see that the image is being scaled, but the container is not changing size at all. When the content is selected, you can change the size of only the actual placed graphic. If you click and wait a second before you start dragging the mouse to scale, you'll see a ghost image appear that will make it easier for you to resize your image (see Figure 8.18). If you place your cursor within the frame, the cursor changes to the hand tool, and you can click and drag to position the content inside the container. Again, waiting a second before dragging enables InDesign to generate a preview to view the entire image.

Figure 8.18. Scaling the content with cropped areas visible.

When you select an image with the Selection tool, the size information in the Control palette or Transform palette reflects the size of the container. If you want to see how much an image was scaled, you have to first click on the image with the Direct Selection tool. The palettes will then show the size information for the content of the frame.

InDesign CS2 does have a few additions to the Control palette that make this process a bit easier to manage. When you have an image selected, there are buttons that allow for the resizing of content within a container (or resizing the container to match the size of the content) and for toggling between selecting the container and the content (see Figure 8.19).

Figure 8.19. The Control palette has a button to fit content proportionally.

Managing Placed Content

All placed content is tracked in the Links palette. When you place an image, a new listing appears in the Links palette (see Figure 8.20). This listing contains information about the placed image, such as file type, color space, and, most important, the actual location of the original file (which could be somewhere on your computer, on a CD or DVD, on a server, and so on). You can view this information by double-clicking on the filename in the Links palette (see Figure 8.21). InDesign can generate high-resolution previews when it can find the original of a linked file (when the High Quality view setting is used); otherwise InDesign stores a low-resolution preview in the InDesign document.

Figure 8.20. Viewing placed files in the Links palette.

Figure 8.21. Double-clicking on an item in the Links palette reveals additional information about the linked file.

By the Way

If you're using Adobe's text-editing application, InCopy CS2, you'll see that linked stories also appear in the Links palette. If you turn on the Create Links When Placing Text and Spreadsheet Files option in the Type panel of Preferences, the Links palette will also display placed Word and Excel files.

Several buttons along the bottom of the Links palette offer extended functionality for working with placed content. Relink enables you to either update a missing link or replace a current file with a completely different one (perfect for replacing low-resolution images with final high-resolution files). The Go To Link button navigates to the selected linked image in your file, which is helpful especially in larger publications or in files that were created by others. The Update Link button enables you to update linked files that have been modified outside of InDesign.

The last button at the lower right of the paletteEdit Originalis probably the most important. If you need to make modifications to a placed file, choosing Edit Original opens the linked file in the application that created the file so that you can edit it (see Figure 8.22). After you've made the required changes, you can save and close the file; upon returning to InDesign, the file will be updated automatically to reflect the changes you made.

Figure 8.22. Choosing Edit Original from the Links palette.

Did you Know?

Option+double-click (Alt+double-click) on a placed graphic in your layout to invoke the Edit Original function more efficiently.

From the Links palette menu, you can choose Link File Info to view the metadata of the linked file; if you're using Adobe Stock Photos comps in your layout, you can choose Purchase This Image to access your shopping cart to buy the high-resolution version of the comp image.

Layers in Placed Photoshop Files

If you place layered Photoshop (PSD) files into an InDesign document, you can actually choose which layers of that file are visible in your layout. Select the graphic frame with the PSD and choose Object, Object Layer Options. You can then choose which layers you want to be visible and which ones you want to be hidden (see Figure 8.23). You can also choose from different layer comps if the Photoshop file was saved with layer comps in it.

Figure 8.23. Choosing the visibility of layers for a placed Photoshop file.