Synopses & Reviews
Take Control of Your Designs and Production Workflow Using InDesignAdobe's InDesign gives you more creative freedom than you've ever experienced in the world of professional layout and design. The problem is that learning how to work with this powerful software can be a difficult and frustrating process.
This comprehensive book goes beyond the basics, clearly showing you how to effectively use InDesign to meet your printing and prepress needs. It guides you through the new features and functionality of InDesign CS3 and helps you develop sophisticated solutions. With a solid focus on improving your efficiency and creative freedom, this book provides the expert guidance you need to master collaboration within workgroups; work efficiently with text, objects, and variable text; perfect your printed output; harness the power of InDesign transparency and effects tools, and much more.
Along with invaluable hands-on lessons and a healthy dose of advice from his 20 years in graphic arts, publishing, and print production, author Pariah S. Burke also provides you with numerous examples and case studies that will help you apply the skills you've learned to real-world situations.
Coverage includes:
- Setting up press-ready pages and spreads with bleed, slug, and live areas
Placing and fitting images rapidly and accurately
Working with attribute-level transparency and new Photoshop-like effects for eye-popping results
Utilizing layers, guides, grids, templates, and libraries to speed the design process
Ensuring that image color settings and proof colors match
Maximizing productivity through reusable settings and assets
Collaborating with editorial through InCopy assignments
Collaborating with design peers through the Placed Pages Workflow
Utilizing dynamic text and variables
Handling common drawing tasks without Illustrator® or Photoshop®
Trying out new design techniques using sample files from the companion Web site, www.sybex.com/go/MasteringInDesign
Learn How to Achieve Outstanding Design Results with InDesign CS3
Download Sample Files from Companion Web Site to Put Your Skills into Practice
Enhance Your Designs with Tables, Images, Objects, and More
Gain the Skills to Better Manage Color Creativity and Output
Find Answers to Your Complex Printing Challenges
Synopsis
Mastering InDesign for Print Design and Production shows how experienced professionals with deadlines and billable hours use InDesign efficiently and effectively. Through the case studies and interviews, readers will find inspired to look beyond the over-emphasized basic features and into the depths of InDesign's utility for real-world print design.
Most InDesign books are written for beginners, and experienced users are frustrated by them. When you already know how to make, fill, and thread a text box, the entire first half of most InDesign books is useless. But this one doesn't dwell on the basics. Mastering InDesign for Print Design and Production fulfills the promise of the Mastering series, to provide real-world skills to professionals and students. Like all Mastering books, this one includes:
- A "by pros for pros" approach: The author is an active professional working in the field of graphic arts, layout, and design, writing for professionals who want to improve their skills or learn new skills.
- Real-world examples: Running throughout the text are examples of how the various skills are applied in real scenarios, described throughout the book in the form of examples and case studies from the author's own design and consulting work, as well as interviews with other designers using InDesign on the job.
- Skill-based teaching and hands-on exercises
Although the book has a comprehensive glossary, page one begins right away speaking to the core market—print professionals—in industry terms about industry challenges. This immediately lets experienced InDesign users know the book is about them. The approach is humorous, making the digestion and retention of complicated information easier for the reader through quips, anecdotes, and design- and print-geek humor. But at all times the book is true to its mission: Helping a professional do their job in InDesign without frustration, confusion, or aesthetic compromise.
About the Author
Pariah S. Burke is a creative and publishing workflow consultant, trainer, publisher, writer, speaker, and freelance graphic designer. He is the former InDesign and InCopy Technical Lead to Adobe's technical support team. Burke is also the author of Adobe Illustrator CS2 @Work: Projects You Can Use On the Job and more than 250 articles covering the business of design and the tools of the trade. His Web sites, QuarkVSInDesign.com and Designorati.com, are highly acclaimed in the industry.
Table of Contents
Introduction.
Chapter 1: Customizing.
Chapter 2: Text.
Chapter 3: Characters.
Chapter 4: Drawing.
Chapter 5: Images.
Chapter 6: Objects.
Chapter 7: Pages.
Chapter 8: Stories.
Chapter 9: Documents.
Chapter 10: Output.
Chapter 11: Efficiency.
Chapter 12: Collaboration.
Appendix: The Bottom Line.
Glossary.
Index.