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InDesign cheat sheet & shortcuts

Okay. The first tip is converting imperial to metric or vice versa. Okay, at the moment it's set two inches but say I need something that needs to be 30 centimeters I can click out and it converts it two inches for me. Same works when you are set to se millimeters. Okay. And we need something to be four inches click out and it does the conversion for you. Cool. Now this works in the new document box like we've got open but also works when I hit close, Click on this box here, the height set to 1" but say I needed to be two cm. Okay, it will do the conversion 2.7" for me automatically. Any box anywhere that you can type in, you can also do some other cool things with these boxes. Say the width needs to be half of this. Okay, so I just type in slash 24 divided by two and it converts it to half, all sorts of maths can be done. Okay? Say I need to times that by three. Use little asterix for three. Okay, click anywhere else in these boxes and it's now three times as long you can add subtract...

divide and multiply. The next tip is the command click or control click if you're on a pc. So I need to get to this logo here. But this text boxes in the way I can move this text box and get to this guy. Okay but what I can do an easier way is I can hold down the command key on my keyboard. If I'm in a Mac or if you're on a pc it's control so hold it down using my black arrow. I'm gonna click once I get the type click again and I get the layer underneath, I can keep going, click again and I get that big washed out graphic click again and I get the gradient in the background, it's a way to select things without having to kind of like unpick them and move them all around. Alright, this next shortcut is probably the one I use the most. I'm gonna select this text and there's a couple I'm going to throw at. You hold down command and shift on a Mac or control shift on a pc and then tap the full stop key or the period key. Okay. And it will make the font bigger. Hit the comma holding those same keys and makes it smaller, bigger, smaller, really handy. Another thing you can do is you can play around with the trekking. Okay, so all you need to do with all this text selected. Hold down the key on a pc or option key on a mac and just use your left and you're right arrows. Okay, just a little keypad arrows there. The up and the down. Does the leading handy kind of ruined that though. The next tip is I've got this box in the middle. Okay, I've got it using text wrap so it's pushing the text around it away, watch this, I can kind of push it around. The problem is is when I try and put other text over the top of it, that's what I want to go here. It won't work. Okay. Because that same text wrap is pushing this text away. Now we could right click this and go to text frame options and say ignore text wrap and that will work okay for this one box. But then every single time you have any of this sort of instance, you have to go and take that box again. What if there was a way to change it forever? There is. Okay, so all we need to do is go to if you're on a Mac, it's under in design preferences, composition. If you're on a pc, go to edit and preferences down here then go to composition. So I'm gonna go here composition and here's the magical button here. Text wrap only affects the text underneath it. Okay. Which means this guy just happens to be on top So he's not going to be affected by it. Just the stuff underneath onto the next tip. Okay, every time you draw a new type box, crab type box, draw it out and it's minion pro and 12 point which I never use. So go and change it. And also my swatches panel has boring old fonts that I never use. Wish there was a way to change the defaults forever. Okay, there is, all you need to do is have nothing open in in design. Hey presto and we need to change it from start at the top here to any of these. We're gonna use essentials. Then I'm gonna grab my type tool and if I change Minion Pro now to let's say Ariel, Okay, Black. And I'm going to put 12 point and I picked the leading that I use and I add any swatches to my swatch panel. They will be there forever. Watch new document drawing, creates type to draw box, start typing aerial black. Okay, we're going backwards for Minion Pro but you get the idea right, make sure everything is closed, switch it to essentials and you can change anything. Probably the most important to change. Dun dun dun. Start essentials. Type two social paragraph and it's this guy here hyphenate. He's on by default, nobody likes you on. Turn them off. Whenever you draw type box it will not be hyphenated. You're welcome. Okay, the next one is for mac users only. Sorry pc Okay, let's say that I want to highlight this and I know I want to make a title case and you know, it's in here somewhere and you will eventually find it, but look click on help and just type in title case. There we go down. Arrow, hit return and it's done it for us. You can see even points to with a nice big blue arrow right there. You can just click on this though. It's easier. Well let's say that you've turned off smart guy at some stage you want to turn them back on but you're like where were they again type in? Smart sit down arrow, click it once and they've turned back on. Okay, remember big blue arrow to help you point and figure out where they are. Thank you Mac. The next tip is jumping pages and its command J or control J. This is one of the documents we make in our in design course. Okay. But it's quite a long document. Okay we're here we need to get to page, command J5 enter Then back down to page 30. Command J or control J on APC. That's type 30 enter. It seems quite a long but it's one of those things that I use quite a bit from jumping back from page to page easily. Another cool feature you can do is say you're trying to see two pages at once but we've only got one screen. So what we can do, let's say we're dealing with the contents page but we also want to be looking at different pages just to make sure maybe the headings are matching up this little insignificant little button down the bottom here splits the layout. It's kind of weird. You end up two versions of the exact same thing so over on this side I'm going to zoom in. Okay. Kind of Okay, I can see my contents page but on this side though. Okay I can scroll through my document. Okay. It might be good if you're working on maybe the front cover and the back cover together. Okay. But now I can kind of work through my document, find all my headings and start doing some work over here. It's even better if you've got a bigger screen. I'm working on little laptops so it's not as good. Another thing you can do is say on this side here, you can look at the big version Okay of the document. Okay. Say the page, the big overall arching thing over here. I'm going to jump to page one. Okay I'm going to work in and really fine detail. But you can see on this side here. Okay. It's adjusting so I can use it kind of two ways to turn it off, click that same little button. Alright. The next one is playing around with spreads. Okay, so I got two pages side by side we probably know command zero on my keyboard or control zero on a pc will fit the page to our view. But if you hold down command and option and hit zero. Okay or control an option on a pc. It will fit the spread. It's really handy. Okay down here, command option zero. Get the spread nicely in the middle. Now the next tip is a follow on. Okay. If I use my page down key. Okay I'm painting down for some unknown reason in design. It does go down OK. But it kinda like goes down and a little bit more so it's kind of hard to get this thing to work. So what you need to do before you click page down is hold down the option key on a Mac or old key on a pc. Do the exact same thing, but you can see the spread stay right in the middle, so much handier zooming through the document, zoom, zoom in a little side note if you're on a Macbook Pro like me and you don't have the page down key because there's just no room on the keyboard or any other sort of laptop that doesn't have the page down key, its function, the key is in the bottom left of your keyboard. Okay then hold down option and then use your up and down arrows. They become page up page down so rock on next tip. Okay, hope this one's not too obscure. I use it loads all of these documents that are open. Okay, there's three tabs. They're all not saved, I can tell they're not saved because that little asterisks next to them, but I'm ready to go. I just need to save them all and close them all. The shortcut is pretty much all the keys and s so I'm gonna max at its command option shift. S saves them all and command option shift. W closes them all. If you're on a pc. It's control shift. S for save and then all those again with W. To close them all. Sometimes I wonder how I learned these shortcuts. And is it really a shortcut when you've got to remember all those keys Anyway I hope somebody finds that one helpful. Okay this shortcut has a few different features to it. I'm going to grab the rectangle tool and I want to draw this out but by default it's given me a line around the outside and no Phil so I want to talk between my fill and my stroke. And this can be really fiddly because it's quite small especially use this teeny tiny one over there. But if you just tap the X. Key on your keyboard, tap tap can you see it brings the fill to the front and then the stroke to the front and the field to the front. So I can go and I go like this without having I can say I want to fill it with my red and then I'm gonna tap X. And then put a nun stroke. I don't have to go up and try and click it and bring it to the front. If you just got it the wrong way around and you draw something you're like oh man I wish it was just green fill and no stroke. You can hold shift X. And it just switches those two around just like this little arrow here. Okay so X. And shift X. I use them loads especially in Photoshop and illustrator. The same shortcuts go across to those. Another shortcut that lots of people use that I don't without selected. Okay black hair is selected. You've got your comma your period and your forward slash fight type in period. Okay. It adds a gradient. If I type in comma it puts in a fill and if I put in the forward slash it removes the fill so click on this forward slash the fill is gone. Which I can see is useful period though at the ingredient nobody likes you. Black to white gradient. Okay that's a bit harsh. Next tip. Okay so you need to start a new job for a new client or just a new job for an existing client and you're about to start creating a new folder when you remember the cool tip that dan said. Okay so what I've got is I've got in my documents, this folder here, it's called new job inside. New job has got all the folders that I need to get a project going. There's nothing in them. Okay They're just empty ready to go. So what I can do is back here I can copy new job copy paste and I'm going to work on new client called Green at heart. Okay And I've got the structure ready to go. I put all my in design files in the working. I put any copy that I get from the client into copy folder files is generally images, reference material. Might be the old job or PDFs that the client had sent client is PDFs that have sent to them to proof and center supplier is stuff that I've sent off to the printer site files I use when I'm doing web work. You can totally adjust this to what you need. One of the little things I do though is in files. Okay. And then working there's a hold folder and it's just old work with a Z at the front So it says at the bottom of the folder structure and I just use that for say I'm doing concepts for a client and I got a B and C. Versions in my working and the client picks version B. I chuck A and C in here. Okay. Just to hide them away. I haven't deleted them. They're just hiding is old. So I know that when I come back to this job in two years, I know which files that I'm meant to be using. All right, the last tip and it's the best one. Okay. So this is the tip on shortcut that I use the most it's called. Quick apply. There's a couple of instances where you would use it. Okay. So let's say this heading down here. I know I want it to be my subheading that I've set up a paragraph style for but instead of having to go find Windows Styles, paragraph styles and then highlighted, I can just select it and go command enter on my keyboard. If you're on a pc it's control enter. And it brings up this thing called quick apply. So what I do is I just type in sub. I'm just typing in the name of the paragraph style that I created. You can see I just hit enter becomes really good when we have to put in loads of time. So command enter and because it's already got their enter. Okay, there's another one. Another one there. You can get quicker command enter, enter and I can start banging in my paragraph style. Super quick. I can see that this thing here is a bit messed up in terms of the paragraph style. I'm gonna hit command enter and type in body and you can see there my body copy style. Hit return. But it also might do is make all these upper case. I'm going to highlight this command enter and just type upper. Okay, you can see it's gone straight to uppercase hit return to do the same thing for this one and because it's already preloaded I can start putting these things in super quick. We love you. Quick apply. That's it for the tips. Now I'll pass you over to the real version of me. Head and shoulders and all