Adobe InDesign CS/CS2 Breakthroughs [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Herding Pages

Mix Page Sizes in the Same Document

The one feature I wish InDesign had of QuarkXPress 6.x's is the ability to combine different page sizes and orientations in the same document. In InDesign, I have to maintain a separate file for the tabloid landscape documents that will be folded and bound into my letter-size, portrait-oriented engineering reports. It's hard to keep style sheets consistent among the files, and it's a pain having to repeat every Print, Preflight, and Export to PDF command for each document.

Don't feel like you're missing out, because you wouldn't be able to do much of that in QuarkXPress 6.X anyway. While you can create multiple layouts with different page sizes and orientation in the same XPress project file, you can't run a Print or Export to PDF command on all of them at the same time, you have to do them one-by-one. And of course you can't run a single Preflight on all the layouts, since XPress doesn't offer a Preflight command.

However, you can get what you want in InDesign. Just take a trip to the File menu and create a new Book document (File > New > Book). After you name the Book file and choose a location to save it, the book opens in InDesign looking just like a palette. Use the commands in its palette menu or the "plus" icon at the bottom of the palette to add two or more InDesign documents to it each file can have a different page size or orientation.

And here's the money shot for you, bub: By using the Book palette menu commands, you can Print, Package, Preflight, or Export to PDF the entire "book" (all the files you added) at once. Bingo! And if your paragraph or character styles change, you can propagate those changes to all the documents in the book using the palette's Synchronize button (Figure 2-5).

The "Book" name for this feature is unfortunate. As you can see, it's useful for lots of different kinds of projects, not just chapters of books. A better name would be something like "Collection" or "Group" (of documents).

Fit More Page Icons in the Palette

When I'm working on a long documentanything beyond, say, six pagesthe amount of scrolling I have to do in the Pages palette becomes ridiculous. I'm seeing a lot of wasted space here!

Open the Pages palette menu and choose Palette Options. To fit the most number of icons into the space allotted, opt for Small icons and turn off the "Show Vertically" checkbox. When you click OK, you'll find that the palette real estate is being used far more efficiently, though it takes some getting used to.

TIP

Modify your Pages palette options with no documents open, then quit InDesign to save your modifications as an application default. The next time you work in InDesign, the Pages palette will look the way you want it to look, by default.

Add a Page to the Right Spot Quickly

When I click the Create New Page icon at the bottom of the Pages palette, it gets added after the last page in my document. I want the new page to go elsewhere, but I can't figure out how to tell InDesign.

By default, the new page is inserted directly after the current, active spread. That means that you need to double-click the spread immediately preceding the spot where you want the pages to go before you click the New Page icon. (Or, use the keyboard shortcut for adding a new page: Command-Shift-P/Ctrl-Shift-P.)

Alternatively, you could drag a master page icon to the spot you want the page in the Pages palette. Or Option/Alt-click the New Page icon, which is a shortcut to the palette menu's Insert Pages dialog which lets you choose not only the location of the new page (regardless of which page is currently active), but also which master page it should be based on.

Also, in InDesign CS2, you can use the Layout > Pages > Insert Pages menu item. Many users miss this submenu.

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In InDesign CS, to move one or more pages to a different location in your document you have to drag icons around the Pages palette. In CS2, it's easier: Just choose Move Pages from the Pages palette menu or the Pages submenu (under the Layout menu).

Add Multiple Pages Quickly

Where's the Pages menu? How am I supposed to add multiple pages, by clicking on the little icon at the bottom of the Pages palette a hundred times?

You're right; there is no Pages menu in the main menu bar, which is disconcerting if you're coming from QuarkXPress. You have to remember that InDesign is palette-driven. A lot of powerful InDesign commands are buried in palette menus.

Guess which palette menu contains the Insert Pages command?

Bingo. Use the Pages palette menu's Insert Pages dialog box (Figure 2-6) to tell InDesign how many pages you'd like to add. You can specify which master page it should base them on, and where they should be added, as well. As we mentioned above, you can also get to this same dialog box by Option/Alt-clicking on the palette's New Page button.

Alternatively, a quick, "back door" way to add a bunch of pages is by increasing the number in the Number of Pages field in File > Document Setup. But you don't get to specify where the pages should be added (they get added after the last page) nor which master they should be based upon (they're based on the same master as the current, active page). Of course, this might be exactly what you're looking for.

Make a Gatefold Spread

I'm trying to make a three-page spread in my facing pages document because the third page will be a gatefold advertisement. No matter what I do in the Pages palette, I can't get a third page to "stick" to the left or right of this spread. When I drag the page icon near the spread, it looks like it's going to go in the right place (I see the vertical bar), but when I release the mouse button, the page icon ends up someplace else.

What we have here, my friend, is a-feature-not-a-bug. InDesign usually considers 2-page document spreads to be sacrosanct: Nothing may defile their pure 2-page spreadness. Because of that, a facing pages document will always be made up of 2-page spreads (except for the first right-facing page and perhaps a final left-facing page), regardless of how many odd number of pages the user adds or deletes. It's protecting you from your wicked ways, and from the extra fees your printer will charge when they need to fix your weirdly-imposed file.

But you can tell InDesign to mind its own business. To override a spread's 2-page nature, target it in the Pages palette (double-click its page numbers under the spread icon) and choose Keep Spread Together from the palette menu. Now you can drag and drop page icons to the left or right of the spread and they'll stick there.

Trivia Quiz

After selecting a spread and turning on Keep Spread Together, what's the maximum number of pages it can hold in a single spread?

Answer:
10. Master pages can have up to 10 pages in a spread too. You'll need a mighty big printer to print those spreads, though.

Start with a 2-Page Spread

It would make my life so much easier if I could arrange the simple 4-page newsletter I do into two 2-page spreads: One spread for the outside (back cover/front cover), one spread for the inside (page 2 and 3). But InDesign won't let me put page 4 to the left of page 1! I targeted the first page's icon and turned on Keep Spread Together from the Pages palette menu, but it still refuses to let me do what I want. (Keep Spread Together does allow me to hang page 4 to the right of page 1, which just makes no sense to me whatsoever.)

In addition to turning on Keep Spread Together for your first spread, turn off Allow Pages to Shuffle from the Pages palette menu. That tells InDesign to follow your lead when you insert and rearrange pages, and stop trying to help you so much.

Now when you drag page 4 up to the left side of page 1, let go of it when you see the black bar with the little right-arrow sticking out. Page 4 will sit to the left of page 1. Of course, you'll have to manually number your pages because your page 4 has now become the first page in the document.

Here's another way to get the first page to be a left page, even if you're working with facing pages. Don't turn off Allow Pages to Shuffle, as we mentioned above. Instead:

1.

Use the Numbering & Section Options feature (in the Pages palette menu) to make the first page an even number (like 2).

2.

Now select all the pages in the Pages palette (click on the first page and then Shift-click on the last one) and turn on Keep Spreads Together from the palette mneu.

3.

Finally, select just the first page again and change its page number back to page one.

Identify the Active Page

There's something screwy about the way InDesign lets you know what page you're on. For example, why is it that sometimes when I paste an object onto my document, it appears on the wrong page? According to my Pages palette, the correct page is selected. I can't figure it out.

If you make a page active by double-clicking its icon (or its page number) in the Pages palette, your Edit > Paste actions should work as expected. To tell which is the active (or "targeted") page or spread, find the icon whose page numbers are highlighted (reversed out of black) in the Pages palette.

For more information about this topic, see the sidebar "Active Pages vs. Selected Pages," on the next page.

Split Facing Pages for Inside Bleeds

My document is set up as facing pages and will ultimately be spiral-bound. On a few of these pages I want to set up a graphic to bleed into the inside edge, into the "binding." To make the bleed I obviously have to overlap the image into the pasteboard, but in a facing pages document, the inside edges have no pasteboard!

Open the Pages palette menu and turn off Allow Pages to Shuffle. Now, drag one of your right-facing pages a little bit to the right until you see a large vertical bar appear to its right, then release the mouse button. (Or drag a left-facing page a little to the left until a vertical bar appears to its left, and drop it. Figure 2-7) That splits the page into its own spreadbut still maintains its "facing page-ness" so you can make either of these split pages active and create an inside bleed.

Active Pages vs. Selected Pages

Watch out! InDesign makes a distinction between the page you're looking at, the selected page, and the active (or "targeted") page. It's confusing at first, but you get used to it (or you go mad). The active page is the page that you're working on. When you press Command-A/Ctrl-A with the Selection tool (to Select All), it's the objects on the active page (or spread) that InDesign selects. When you Paste, the object on the clipboard shows up on the active page.

However, if you're working on page 3 and you use the scroll bars or Hand tool to navigate to page 5, you'll be looking at page 5 but the active page will still be page 3. To make page 5 the active page, just click anywhere on the page. You can also double-click on any page or spread in the Pages palette to make it active and bring the page into view. You can always tell which page or spread is selected by looking at the Pages palette: the page numbers under the icon are reversed out of black.

(If you're zoomed way out and can see multiple spreads in your window, there's no clue which is the active page. Even the Current Page Number field at the lower left can give you a false reading. Trust in the Pages palette, it's always accurate.)

Selecting a page is different. When you duplicate, move, or delete a page, or change the page's margins or columns, InDesign changes the selected page, which may not be the active one. To select a page, click once on its page icon or its page number in the Pages palette. Note that the page icon highlights but its page number does not. To select additional pages, Shift-click (or Command-click/Ctrl-click for a discontiguous selection) each icon or icon's page number in turn.

Of course, any page or spread can be selected, active, and viewed at the same time. But understanding the distinctions among these is key to avoiding some truly heinous headaches.