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Output & Print in InDesign

Lesson 23 from: Basics of Adobe CC: Photoshop, Illustrator & InDesign

Jason Hoppe

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Lesson Info

23. Output & Print in InDesign

Lesson Info

Output & Print in InDesign

Now, when you're done with your file what do you do with it? Well, I can go into the file menu and I can choose print. Go right to the printer here, set it up fit it to my page, do whatever, hit print, great. But, I want to send this off as a PDF. So a lot of applications out there you go into your print menu and say make this a PDF. And then I say, what kind of quality and they're like, I don't know. I just hit print and the PDF came out. This is an Adobe product, Adobe makes Adobe Acrobat. So, I want to export this as a PDF file. I never print to a PDF, using InDesign. So I choose file, but I choose export and I have many different ways that I can export this file for mobile, web, everything. In this case, I just want to send this to be a print PDF. I want it to look good. I want all the colors to represent nicely. I want all my logos and graphics to look good. I don't want to rasterize the type. All that I want it to be, absolutely beautiful. So I choose Adobe PDF for print and I'm ...

going to save this to my desktop and I click save, but only after you click the save button do you get your options. So I get to my Adobe PDF dialog box. Which one do I use? Never use smallest file size, ever. Because if you take a picture of grapes it will give you raisins, okay. Plums gives you prunes, it totally strips the file. The worst part of smallest file size is all those nice fonts that I used in there, it will substitute different fonts in the other end. Don't use smallest file size. You will not get what you want. So, a high quality print, or a press quality print are going to be just fine. If I have to send this off for a publication, the PDF/X is the graphic standard for any type of print around the world. For anything that you're going to print at the local print shop, or quick print place or at your office, or whatever you can't go wrong with any of these. I'm just going to choose press quality. And then I'm going to click on the View PDF after Exporting, here, and I click export. And, it tells me that I have a font missing and I know because this came from my machine at home. But, it's also going to tell me oh you've got some missing or modified files and it's like oh, like it told you with the okay button if I hit okay then everything's okay. When these are missing or modified that means that I don't have the most current ones in there. So, if I go ahead and do this, I am not going to get the images or the image quality that I expect, it doesn't happen. If I go over to my links panel here it tells me, oh my gosh, what's wrong and it's like well guess what, these have changed. You need to make sure you have the most current version. If you don't that's exactly how you're file is going to look, 'cause it doesn't have the most current version. You can't ignore it. So I go over here, I double click it says okay, bring it in, and it does the whole thing and it's like oh, it's missing these images too. I need to make sure I have those. So I need to hunt those down, you've got to have all these files taken care of, or else I'm not going to be able to do what I need to do. It goes in and it brings them all in. And it says hey, you know what, we found all the other missing files in this folder, and it's like oh right, I moved them to a different folder and I renamed them and I forgot and InDesign is like, uh huh, I know, and I reminded you. You can't go and ignore these dialog boxes and expect that you're going to get good quality. So not only did I have modified and missing ones which is a real bad thing, I could have completely ignored it. Now I can export this as a PDF and actually get a good quality one, PDF for print, save, choose my press quality, click export, click okay. It doesn't warn me about any missing or modified items there, which is great. It takes a few seconds, it processes everything puts it all together, and in the end all my type is still vector type. All my vector logos are still vector. All of my raster files, all my Photoshop files are still raster. So if you look, and you zoom in, and you zoom in all that is totally crisp, totally clean, beautiful everything looks great, the type reads great the images look good, everything's good, everything's done. I'm ready to go. Now, I can't really edit a PDF. So this is great for viewing, or putting up on a website or portfolio, or printing directly from here but it isn't the actual InDesign file, okay. So so editing this, you can't really do it. If I want to go and I want to get this entire file and have everything together, this is exactly what you're going to get when you get the files. Is, I want to go in, and I want to package this file. Which means, I want all the links, the graphics the logos, the fonts, everything all together. I know I have a missing font. This is something you may run into, as well. Under the type menu, this is where you can hunt down your missing fonts. Because we can have missing graphics use that for the links. Under the type menu, we can have missing fonts and anything that has that little warning I use that, and you need to just change it to a different font and be done with it so that I don't have to worry about that missing font. Now, I'm going to save this file and I now want to bring this all together. This file will do you no good, if I just send you the InDesign file you have non of the graphics, none of the links and none of the type which means you can look at it, and that's about it. You can do that with a piece of toast. You know, you need everything with this file. So that's where I'm going to go, and I want to package this file. So I go under and I package the file and when I click package, I can put printing instructions in here. And then I'm going to save this and here's everything I'm going to copy all the fonts I want to copy all the linked graphics update them there, so it doesn't go hunting them down in some other location, anything else just check every single box right there. It'll also include Adobe PDF for print plus, if you are not using the most current version of InDesign, you will not be able to open this file. I know, well what good is it, well that's why we include this IDML file which is a file that's saved now so if you're way back on CS4, which was right around the turn of the... you know Second World War... is when it came out. This allows you to have and older version of InDesign but still open this, because I'm always on the newest version of InDesign, so if you try to open it and you have an older version, and you try to open it it'll just say, can't open it, sorry, done. And it'll like that's not good. This is going to put this all together in a package. So I package the whole thing, take that all, wait for it, there was some big disclaimer but since there was an okay button, when you click on it everything is okay. So it goes in, collects all the fonts, all the graphics that it can find, if it can't find them it won't collect them. That just doesn't exist, puts it all together creates a copy of them all, doesn't move anything and then creates a PDF, so that when you look at this on your desktop here, you're going to have your packaged file, which looks just like this. There's my file, my IDML file, so if you have CS4, 5, 5.5, or any of the older versions of Creative Cloud, you can open this. You wont' be able to open this, which is the actual file but you will be able to open the PDF, which you can see, very quickly, there is it, great. There are all the fonts that I used with this. And these are all the links that are in there. Now, yeah but I.. no, I can't install fonts on my machine because of IT. Wonderful solution to this folks you don't need to, here's why as long as you take this package folder and you open your InDesign file from this package folder it will automatically, and temporarily go ahead and load these fonts, while you have that file open. So if you have trouble with your fonts, on your computer you do not need to install the fonts. You open up your InDesign file from this package folder it activates the fonts, when your done and save and close, it deactivates the fonts. What more could you ask for? Pretty sweet huh? I'd say so. And that my friends, is the fastest overview I could possibly give you, of what InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator really does.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Color in InDesign
InDesign Basics
InDesign Images and links
Photoshop Basics Shortcuts
Photoshop Color Correction
Photoshop Layers
Photoshop Selections Basics
Photoshop Terminology
Shapes Paths Guides InDesign
Type in InDesign
Illustrator Shortcuts
Shapes & Pathfinder in Illustrator
Photoshop Assets
Illustrator Assets
InDesign Assets
Infographic

Ratings and Reviews

user 1398976626171314
 

Such an important overview that clarifies and simplifies each piece of software and its role in achieving a beautiful and organized end result. Love Jason's brilliant and funny style and I appreciate his going into the "whys" of the software design evolution so it's not just memorizing methods but truly understanding what you can do even with a eye to the future changes. Fascinating, fun and empowering! My first Creative Live purchase!

Renee Hamilton
 

Enjoying this class immensely. Havent used illustrator properly for a while but this class is refreshing my memory. Its so awesome and it makes illustrator seem so easy! Wow wow wow! Thank you Jason and Creative live

Corrine Radergraham
 

WOW!! Jason is a very engaging instructor. It's obvious that he knows the programs inside and out. He imparts a tremendous amount of excellent material in a very short time, he makes sense and he is well-spoken with a sense of humor and he doesn't get lost in the materials and have to bungle his way out, very well prepared. I've been using PS and IA for the past several years on and off and currently have 6 on my computer but looking at going to CC in the near future. Even with that experience, he provided tips and tricks for both that were very enlightening in using them more productively. I'm not so familiar with ID and I now feel that I have a working knowledge of all three programs. I've taken Adobe classes taught by other instructors and found them rather boring to drag myself through. Jason is not boring in the least! So if you aren't familiar with these programs or are even curious about them and want an excellent overview, I totally recommend that you take this class. You will definitely not be sorry and will get your money's worth. I took this when it was offered on air free of charge. The only down of taking it free is that there are downloadable materials that are only available by purchase which sound excellent and I would like to have them, but I want to take one of Jason's other classes and can't justify the expense of this class only for the downloads, because I am familiar with the programs and would be unlikely to actually watch the class again, and there is his interactive pdf class that I am really looking forward to......5 stars and all thumbs up for Jason's instruction!

Student Work

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