Who Should Attend: This 2 day course is aimed at new and novice users of InDesign.

Pre-requisites: No previous InDesign knowledge is required. However some experience of a word processing or desk top publishing package will be an advantage.

Course Objectives: At the end of this course the user will be able to confidently begin creating new, or modifying existing InDesign documents.

Course Content: Introducing InDesign: An introduction to InDesign and its features is followed by a tour around the work area looking at the toolbox and palettes, opening files and navigation techniques, saving and closing files and file export.

Setting up a New Document: Document creation, working with Guides, Grids and Master pages.

Shapes, Frames and Placeholders: Drawing and editing shapes, frames and placeholders, filling objects with colour and gradients, stroking shapes and lines, creating text and graphic frames and transforming objects. Using the Pen tool to create and edit free-form shapes.

Textual Content: Creating text frames, entering and placing text and special characters, text editing, specifying text frame options, using Find/Change and the Spell checker.

Formatting Text: Using the character and paragraph palettes to format text, using tabs, leaders and indents, drop caps and optical margin alignment.

Working with Styles: Defining and applying character and paragraph styles, removing styles from selected text, assigning keyboard shortcuts, nested styles, importing and deleting styles.

Working with Images: Adding images, modifying graphic frames and their contents, creating in-line frames, wrapping text around objects and managing links.

Layers: Using layers to group and separate objects, working with the layers palette, creating layers, moving and copying objects between layers, merging and deleting layers.

Special Effects: Creating and handling transparency, using feathering, drop shadows and adding corner effects to frames.

Tables: Creating tables and adding content, inserting and deleting rows and columns, making selections in tables, formatting tables, breaking tables across frames, adding strokes and fills.

Object Libraries: Working with an object library, changing the library display, cataloging objects.

Preflighting, Packaging and Printing: Using the preflight command and options to check the integrity of a document, using the package command and the print menu.

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