Tips and Techniques

The tips here rotate randomly, so be sure to come back often for more tips. You can also reload the page to get new tips. Note that we show both Macintosh and Windows keyboard shortcuts, Macintosh first.

Send your favorite trips to tips@indesigncentral.com.

InDesign CS3 | InDesign CS2 | InDesign CS

InDesign CS3

Revenge of the Butterflies

The new iconography for Creative Suite is fairly boring, though many people disliked the previous versions' nature subjects. But if you miss the old InDesign butterflies, open the About box (choose InDesignAbout on the Mac, or HelpAbout in Windows) and type butterfly. Watch what happens. And the longer you let it go, the more interesting it gets! (Also see what happens when you click a butterfly.)

Interface and Operation Tips

Tip #46: InDesign offers a nice option to quickly find all unused colors in the Swatches panel — the flyout menu's Select All Unused option. Then you can just delete them in one fell swoop.

Layout, Typography, Graphics, and Output Tips

Tip #172: Object creation order determines what is "previous" or "next" in a group.

What's New in Version 5 (InDesign CS3)

New #99: InDesign CS3 lets you rearrange the order of style names in the Object Styles, Character Styles, Paragraph Styles, Table Styles, and Cell Styles panels, by dragging them within the list.

Notes for QuarkXPress Users

Note #30: InDesign tables and QuarkXPress tables have several differences. Although both treat tables as collections of cells, InDesign offers more formatting options for cell strokes than QuarkXPress does. InDesign has more controls for text and row placement than QuarkXPress offers. InDesign also imports Word and RTF tables, while QuarkXPress does not. InDesign also imports Excel soreadsheets as tables, something that only QuarkXPress 6.1 and later can do (in a convoluted way). But QuarkXPress offers more control over the flow of text among cells in a table — InDesign doesn't let you flow text from one cell to another, for example, much less control the order of that flow.

InDesign CS3 | InDesign CS2 | InDesign CS

InDesign CS2

Interface and Operation Tips

Tip #156: The InDesign Defaults file cannot be shared across platforms, so if you want to have a master copy on a network server, you'll need to maintain two masters — one for Macintosh and one for Windows. Because the files have the same name on both platforms (there is no filename extension for this file in Windows), you'll need to store them in separate directories or add something to the name such as "Mac" and "Windows." If you do change the name, note that the alias and shortcut on each user's system must simply be named InDesign Defaults.

Layout, Typography, and Graphics Tips

Tip #391: Don't confuse InDesign's CMS capabilities with color matching. It is impossible to match colors produced in an illustration or paint program, or through a scanner, with what a printer or other output device can produce. The underlying differences in color models (which actually determine how a color is defined) and the physics of the media (screen phosphors that emit light versus different types of papers with different types of inks that reflect light) make color matching impossible. But a calibration tool like a CMS can minimize differences.

What's New in Version 4 (InDesign CS2)

New #13: You can now set the baseline grid to start at the top of the page or at the top margin.

Notes for QuarkXPress Users

Note #2: Like other layout programs, QuarkXPress rightfully treats leading as a paragraph attribute, so be sure to check the Apply Leading to Entire Paragraph option in InDesign to make it work like it should. Also note that InDesign does not support QuarkXPress's additive leading capability (where you enter "+2 pt" to make the leading two points more than whatever the current point size is), so leading in InDesign will never exactly match the QuarkXPress approach.

InDesign CS3 | InDesign CS2 | InDesign CS

InDesign CS

Interface and Operation Tips

Tip #30: When you open a document, it's displayed in the last window you used before you last saved it. Any other windows that were open when you saved the document are not saved.

Layout, Typography, and Graphics Tips

Tip #248: Using a tab or spaces to indent the first line of a paragraph, which is what was done in the age of typewriters, is usually not a good idea. You're better off specifying a First-Line Indent. Similarly, you can indent an entire paragraph by inserting a tab or multiple word spaces at the beginning of every line, but both are typographic no-nos. Use the indent controls instead.

What's New in Version 3 (InDesign CS)

New #63: Adding arrowheads to a line no longer increases its length to make room for the arrowhead.

Notes for QuarkXPress Users

Note #35: Note that InDesign does not have any options to change image contrast or line-screen element for gray-scale and black-and-white images, as QuarkXPress does. You'll need to apply such effects in an image editor.

InDesign CS3 | InDesign CS2 | InDesign CS

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