InDesign: Advanced Imagery, Animations, Audio and Video

Name: InDesign: Advanced Imagery, Animations, Audio and Video
Author: Patti Scully-Lane

Complete your page design journey with this Advanced InDesign course.

Preview the first lesson free — get full access to all 8 lessons.

Course: On-Demand

In this lesson, you are going to learn about the clipping path options in Adobe InDesign. I have the clipping path document open from the lesson files folder in the chapter three folder. For my workspace, I have the advanced workspace selected. If you would like to have the advanced workspace, you can go to the window menu, to workspace and change it over to the advanced workspace. That way you will also have your panels in the same spot that mine are. From the pages panel up in the top right corner, we're going to make sure we are on page number nine in our document. We're gonna go to the selection tool and we're gonna click on the image of the flowers on our page. We have an image that has a lighter gray background, and we have decided for our layout, we would like to get rid of the gray background of this image all together. So we're going to use the clipping path options that we have in Adobe InDesign. However, with this feature to work at its fullest capacity, information must be saved in the original Photoshop file. So even though we're going to apply these clipping paths in InDesign, those clipping paths have to be created initially in Adobe Photoshop. So with our photograph selected, we're going to go up to the object menu, to clipping path, to options, object menu, clipping path, options. When we open up our clipping path dialog box, up across the top, we can see that we have "None" is the default that is applied, but we have three additional options here. Now, as I mentioned, two of these features have to be performed in Photoshop and saved for them to appear in this list. "None" and "Detect Edges" are the two defaults that will work on any image in InDesign. But in order for you to have an alpha channel option and a Photoshop path option, those have to be created in Photoshop. Now, if we choose the "Detect Edges" feature and we make sure we have the preview button checked, we don't notice anything different with our photograph on the page. And that is because the default threshold for the "Detect Edges" feature is 25. So what does that mean? Well, the threshold means how light or how dark those pixels are. And our threshold goes from zero to 256. So a threshold of 25 is about 10% color. So right now, the color, the gray color that we have in the background is a little bit darker than that 25 threshold. So if we click and drag on this threshold and break it up to say about 70, in between 70 and 75, we notice in our image that, yes, it's gotten rid of some of the background, but unfortunately, it has also gotten rid of some of the can that our flowers are in. So the detect edges isn't going to work very well for us. It also got rid of some of our flowers. The "Detect edges" feature works really well when you have an image with a very light or white background. So that leaves us with two additional options. So the next option is an "Alpha Channel". So we're gonna choose that. An alpha channel is a saved selection in Adobe Photoshop. You would make a selection with the selection tools, go to the select menu and save that selection. When you name that selection, it adds an extra channel to the document. And that channel is what InDesign uses. If we click "Okay", and we click off to see our image. One of the things that you notice is that the handle of our flower pot is not there. So, just like our detect edges, the alpha channel option was not the best option. So we're going to go back to the selection tool in our tool bar. We're gonna click back on that image, that flowerpot image, we're gonna go back to our object menu to clipping path, to options. So our third option is a Photoshop path and we have a path name of flowers path. A path in Photoshop can be either a saved path or a saved clipping path. And a clipping path or saved path is created in the paths channel in Photoshop. So if we apply that we can click "Okay", and click off. And now we can see that we do have the handle of our flowerpot. In a later chapter, we will talk about how we can then take and wrap text around this graphic. So in this lesson, you learned how to apply a clipping path, that was created in Photoshop, to an image that was placed into Adobe InDesign.

Advanced Provider : Patti Scully-Lane 8 Lessons · 57m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

In these lessons, you will use clipping paths and text wrap to enhance your text layouts with graphics. You will anchor graphics and watch as they flow with your text in long documents. You will learn how to quickly create grid layouts with text and graphic frames, as well as how to manipulate the gaps between these objects.

What You'll Learn

Apply and edit graphics within InDesign layouts
Use clipping paths and text wrap to combine graphics with text
Anchor graphics so they flow with text in long documents
Build grid layouts with text and graphic frames
Adjust gaps between objects using the Gap Tool
Add videos, audio, and animations to documents

Key Takeaways

Clipping paths and text wrap let you enhance text layouts with graphics.
Anchored graphics flow with the text as it moves through long documents.
Grid tools allow you to quickly create layouts with text and graphic frames.
The Gap Tool is used to manipulate the gaps between objects.
The course covers adding videos, audio, and animations to InDesign documents.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I learn in this course?

You will learn to apply and edit graphics, work with text frames and adjust text, use clipping paths and text wrap, anchor graphics, create grid layouts, manipulate gaps between objects, and add videos, audio, and animations.

What topics do the lessons cover?

The lessons cover Clipping Paths, Text Wrap, Anchored Graphics (Parts 1 and 2), Grid Tools, the Gap Tool, Adding Videos and Audio, and Adding Animations.

What skills does this course help build?

It builds skills in Adobe InDesign, Graphic Communication, Graphic Arts, Presentation Graphics, Visual Composition, and works toward Adobe InDesign Certification.

How do anchored graphics work in InDesign?

Anchored graphics are tied to the text so they flow along with it as the text moves through long documents.