Let's have a look at InDesign's work area. You have a Menu Bar on top, the tools and the palettes. Palettes are little windows which have specialized functions, e.g., you have got one that handles colours, one that handles paragraphs, one that handles pages, etc.


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The Swatches palette goes hand in hand with the Colour palette. Let's say you have just made this nice blue that you need to use throughout the whole document. Yes you can type the percentages of that blue in your Colour palette every time you need to use it, or you can make your life easier by recording that colour into a swatch which will then go to your Swatches palette.


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Let's have a look at the first two tools in the Tools Palette. The black arrow on the left is called the Selection Tool. The white arrow on the right is the Direct Selection Tool.


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Cut straight across a shape with the scissors tool in Adobe InDesign.


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Rotate, Scale, Shear, Free Transform Tools in Adobe InDesign.


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A master page is a special page which will not print, unless you tell InDesign to do so. It's a page where you can set a basic layout and then all of the other pages that you will add to your document and which are based on that master page will look the same.


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The Gradient Tool works hand in hand with the Gradient Palette. All you have to do is to select an object with the Selection tool. Then select the Gradient tool and start dragging it from the point you want the gradient to start to the point you want it to finish.


submitted: 5 years and 3698 days ago

By default InDesign will show the Rectangle Frame Tool in its Tools palette. This tool has a flyout with an Ellipse Frame Tool and a Polygon Frame Tool. They all work the same way, but they draw different shapes. Don't confuse these tools with the Rectangle, Ellipse, and Polygon Tools, also found in the Tools Palette. The Frame Tools create boxes (or frames) for graphics, while the Rectangle, Ellipse and Polygon tools are for drawing shapes to fill or outline with colour.


submitted: 5 years and 3698 days ago

By default InDesign will show you the Eyedropper Tool in the Tools Palette. However you will see that tool as another tool hidden in its flyout -- The Measure Tool. Especially if you have used Photoshop, you know that with the Eyedropper Tool you can sample and copy colours so that you can apply them to various objects.


submitted: 5 years and 3698 days ago

If you have ever dealt with a word processing application you are familiar with the document page. However, desktop publishing applications differ from word processing applications as they also have a pasteboard (among other differences). Learn more about it with this tutorial.


submitted: 5 years and 3698 days ago