Adobe Indesign in a program specifically designed for publication layout and typesetting. But what’s a print publication these days without fancy, fantastic, flattering images? There are tons of options at your disposal to get an image into your publication, and knowing all the tricks can result in a higher-quality document and a much, much easier time making changes to that document.
-
Step 1
Place an image file whenever you want to display a pre-existing image in an Indesign document. There are many different file types that you can place in Indesign. “Placing” is Indesign speak for importing an image and displaying it in a document. The keyboard shortcut for placing a file is Apple-D, or you can find the “Place” command under the File menu. This will bring up a finder window. Use the finder window to determine where the image/file you want to place lives (desktop, documents folder, etc.). You can only place files that are saved to the hard drive of your computer or come from a hard input, such as a thumb drive or CD. If you want to place an image you found on the internet, you must first save that image to your computer. Select the desired image/file, then hit the “Place” button in the bottom right portion of the window. This will assign the selected image to your cursor. Simply click on the page where you want your image/file to appear. Click and drag the image around the page as necessary.
-
Step 2
Place .mov files whenever you would like to have a frame of a movie displayed in a document. You will only be able to display the first frame of the movie, however. If you would like to display a later frame, a solution is to edit out every frame of the movie up until the one you want, then either “Save as” or “Export,” depending on which editing program you are using. Be sure not to “Save,” as you may lose a ton of footage. Then simply place the new movie where you want the next frame to go. You could also simply take a screen capture of the frame you want. On a mac, push Apple-Shift-4, then drag a box around the image you want to capture. The image will show up on your desktop, ready for editing and placement.
-
Step 3
If you wish to place an unedited image as is, simply place the image. Indesign will support nearly every image, from JPEGs to PNGs to TIFFs and beyond. You won’t be able to edit the image much beyond resizing and cropping, however.
-
Step 4
Use Photoshop if you would like to edit an image before you place it in Indesign. Simply save the edited image as a Photoshop file and place the Photoshop file.
-
Step 5
Place text files like Word or TextEdit files when you have a large body of text in a separate program. The placed text will be placed in a single text box. Create new text boxes and link them to the original if you would like to display text that doesn’t fit in the original text box. It’s still in the box, it just isn’t visible. Text boxes with overflow text will have a small red “plus” symbol in the bottom right corner of the box.
-
Step 6
Place Illustrator files if you want to display the contents of an Illustrator file within an image box.
-
Step 1
Find and open the “Links” palette if you would like to edit a placed image in an external program like Photoshop, or if you want to replace a placed image with another image but would like it to remain in the same spot within your document.
-
Step 2
Use the “Relink” button to replace a placed image with another without moving the image in your document or resizing the original text box. First, select the image you would like to replace in the Links palette. Then hit the “Relink” button–it’s the far right button on the bottom of the palette. Then select the new image from the finder window.
-
Step 3
Use the “Go to link” button to go directly to that image within your document. This is useful if you have a ton of placed images within one large document and want to find a specific one very quickly. The “Go to link” button is the second button from the left on the bottom row of the Links palette.
-
Step 4
Use the “Update link” button to update an image that has been edited in an external program like Photoshop. For Indesign to recognize than an image has been edited, the edited image must be saved under the original file name of the placed image. When it is, a small yellow triangle will appear next to the edited link in the Links palette, indicating that Indesign recognizes an edited image file. Simply highlight the edited image in the Links palette and hit the “Update link” button, and the image will be automatically updated in Indesign. This is a powerful tool, since it in effect creates a copy of whatever editing software you are using within Indesign, allowing for a vast array of functionality that isn’t technically included within the program. The “Update link” button is the second button from the right on the bottom of the Links palette.
-
Step 5
Use the “Edit original” button to bring up the original image to your desktop from wherever it lives within your hard drive. If it’s a linked Photoshop file, it will bring up said image within Photoshop. This makes editing previously placed images quick and easy. The “Edit original” button is the right button on the bottom row of buttons on the Links palette.
-
Step 6
Use the “Embed image” command if you have the final version of an image placed within your Indesign document and want to include the highest quality of that image in any exported image files. This command can be found in the Links palette pullout menu.
