When applying the Eyedropper tool to text, you can either: a) highlight the text that has the appearance you want to copy and then apply the characteristics elsewhere, or b) select the text to which you want to apply new formatting, and then point to a piece of text that has the desired appearance. Each is done a little differently. Here’s how you do it:

To copy and paste the formatting from one area to another:

1. Click the Eyedropper tool.
2. Click or press and drag the text that is formatted with the attributes you want to copy.

   When “loaded” with attributes, the Eyedropper reverses direction and has a black tip. When you move this loaded cursor over any text, you will see an I-beam text cursor appear alongside the loaded Eyedropper.

3. Press and drag to highlight the text you want to change.

   The text changes. If you have set the options to alter the whole paragraph, it will do so. (See important things to know, below.) Note that as long as they eyedropper tool is loaded, you can continue to select more text and apply the formatting.

Note: With this method, you can copy and paste type attributes from one document to another.

To paste formatting onto selected text:

1. Click either the Type tool or the Path Type tool.
2. Select the text to which you want to apply new formatting.
3. Click the Eyedropper tool.
4. With the Eyedropper tool, click text that has the formatting which you want to apply.

The selected text takes on the attributes of the text you just clicked. If you have set the options to alter the whole paragraph, it will do so. (See important things to know, below.)

Important things to know:

– To choose which character or paragraph attributes the Eyedropper tool uses, double-click the Eyedropper tool.
– To clear formatting attributes from the Eyedropper tool, Alt (Opt) – click a non-textual area of your InDesign document.

Let’s see how InDesign handles this.

Open up an InDesign document with some text.  If you don’t have a document handy, then simply create one and place a text-heavy Word document, or even a web page. (From the menu bar File->Place, and then locate a file to place.  Double-click the file, and then click on the page to place).

Now, select the Type tool from the toolbox, and test out the following.

• One click places a cursor in the text
• Two clicks in quick succession(double-click) will select a single word
• Three clicks in quick succession(triple-click) will select a single sentence
• Four clicks in quick succession(quadruple-click) will select an entire paragraph
• Five clicks in quick succession(quintuple-click) will select all the text in the frame (the same effect as going to the menu and selecting Edit->Select All)

InDesign is far ahead in the multiple-click arms race.  Most applications will support up to three clicks, (Word, Dreamweaver, most web browsers), and three clicks in these applications will commonly select an entire paragraph.

The Opera web browser is somewhat of an oddball as it will support four clicks, in the same way that InDesign handles four clicks.

Experiment with some of your other favorite applications, and see how much time you can save with extra clicks versus pressing and dragging.

When people speak of fonts, they are typically using the word inaccurately. Here’s the truth:

• a typeface is the name of the font, also referred to as a font family. Examples are: Times New Roman, Helvetica, or Arial.
• a font is a rendition of the typeface, for example, “Arial Italic 14 pt.”

Historically, the term font is derived from the words, “fount” and “foundry,” brought forth from the printing press era when type actually came from blocks of metal or wood. At that time, each character was a physical object; therefore, each was manufactured in a specific size and shape. Print houses organized these fonts by family names. Because of this process, each typeface designer created separate versions (i.e., fonts) of his/her typeface – and they still do so today. As a result, true italic and bold typefaces are not just slanted or thicker; they have their own unique characteristics, which look completely unlike their “faked” counterparts. See: http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/typestyles/a/italics_2.htm.

In practice, the faked ones (e.g., the ones you get by clicking the Bold or Italic buttons) may not print. Although your desktop laser printer can print your slanted or fattened versions of fonts, commercially used offset printers may not understand the computer-fabricated versions. Since it is best not to risk expensive proofing, the temptation to “fudge the font” is eliminated in InDesign.

To supply further reasoning: font designers are artists, and they get royalties for their work. Generally, you purchase typefaces by individual font style; adding any of the type’s children (which may be italic, bold, etc.) is optional and involves additional cost. In this way, the font “artist” receives royalties for each purchase.

For all these reasons, in InDesign you can’t do something that seems so easy. Consequently, if you don’t find your favorite typeface in italic, you’ll just have to choose another typeface.

This whole process was known as “writing and mailing a letter”. Nowadays, of course, this antiquated technology has been surpassed by IM, texting, Twitter, and status updates on Facebook. I think we can all agree that there is nothing that needs to be said if it can’t be said in 140 characters or less! But let’s say for a minute that you wanted to “write and mail a letter, ” but didn’t want to go all the way back to 1920 to do it. How about writing a letter on the computer?  The downside is, of course, the thought of sending a personal, warm note to Granny in Times New Roman font.  Horrible!  She’ll think it’s the insurance company bothering her again.  Wouldn’t it be so much nicer to have a font made from your own handwriting?  It adds that personal touch, and can be used in Microsoft Word, or even in graphics programs to add your own caption to a funny picture of the dog with its head stuck in the peanut butter jar.

It used to be that creating computer fonts was a time- and labor-intensive process. Today, however, its really quite easy (and free!) thanks to FontCapture.com! Here’s how it works:

1. Download their template and print it out.  The template is basically a grid with spaces for all the letters in the alphabet, numbers, and punctuation like ‘!’, ‘?’, and so on.
2. Fill out the template with your handwriting.
3. Scan the completed template.
4. Upload the scanned image of the completed template.
5. Preview and download your own customized font!

In this video tutorial by Ashley Endemann, we are going to explore some of the uses of the Pen tool in InDesign. We will look at creating a clipping path for a graphic, custom frames for text, as well as modifying a font for decorative or design purposes.

If you don’t know how to use the Pen tool, don’t worry.  You can take our Pen tool class: Adobe CS4: Pen Tool Basics for Advanced Graphic Design, and get up to speed.

Using the Pen Tool in InDesign

Special Thanks to Ashley Endemann for the video.

But there’s another way we can use them.  Rather than package all the styles we need at once, we can select individual traits that we want to apply, without removing the formatting we’ve already applied.

In this video tutorial, I will show you how to create a style like this.  In this case, we will create a style that rounds the corners of a text frame, without altering any of the other formatting.  That way, you can quickly and easily round the corners of any frame. This method can be applied to anything you can control with an Object Style.  Try it out for yourself!

Creating an Object Style in InDesign

InDesign DOES have a footnote feature, and it’s easy to use. Here are the pros and cons:

The good: Footnotes and endnotes from your Microsoft Word documents can be imported into your InDesign documents.

The bad: InDesign completely disregards your own Footnote And Endnote numbering options. Instead, it reformats footnote and endnote reference numbering to regular text.

The ugly? Decide for yourself on this one: InDesign can’t convert your text to approved publication styles the way EndNote, a Word and WordPerfect plug-in does, so you’ll have to style them yourself.

As I said, it’s very easy to do. See this excellent tutorial by David Blatner of lynda.com:

http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to/video/how-to-create-footnotes-using-indesign-cs3-3785/view/

Multiple Artboards in Illustrator

In your page layout program, it might appear that you have done all you need to do by copying and pasting selections or by using a layer mask and importing it. Sometimes, even if the transparent part of the image displays correctly on your monitor, it may still come out all wrong in the printout. That’s because you need to create a clipping path in Photoshop before you import it into InDesign or Illustrator.

A clipping path is a way to keep parts of an image opaque and parts of an image transparent. A clipping path t is typically used to “knock out” the background of an image so you can surround its irregular boundaries with text or colored background. With the Photoshop Pen tool, you can create a vector path around the part of the image you want to keep, and then export the image as an EPS file – a file format which is capable of having both vector and bitmap data in the same image. The resulting EPS file can be placed directly into InDesgin, Illustrator, and others such as those created in QuarkXPress™ or Adobe® PageMaker®. The EPS file can also be distilled into a PDF file.

Want to learn how? See our video tutorial

Special thanks to Ashley Endemann for this video.

1. Launch Adobe InDesign.
2. On the Menu bar, click File, click New, and choose Document From Template…
   The available template folders appear. Note: If you have trouble finding the Templates, on a PC they are located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Templates\InDesign. On a Mac, they can be found at [hard drive] | Library | Application Support | Adobe | Templates | InDesign.
3. Examine the contents of the folders and select a design. (The Newsletters folder and the Community Newspaper folder both contain good newsletter templates.)
   
4. To save the document as an InDesign document instead of a template, click File, click Save As…
5. In the dialog box, name the file and save it.Now, you are ready to enter your own material.

How to Replace Template Text with Your Own

The layout is all ready. All you need to do is replace the template’s text and images with your own. Here’s how to replace the text.

1. To delete the current text while leaving the layout, click the Type tool . Click anywhere in the text body.
2. On the Menu bar click Edit, click Select All. Press the Delete key to remove the existing text.
3. Add your own text in one of three ways: by typing it in, by importing existing text, or by pasting existing text:
1. To type directly into the text frame, click the Type tool, click in the text frame, and start typing.
2. To insert text from an existing file:
1. Click the Type tool and click in the text frame.
2. On the Menu bar, click File, click Place. Navigate to the text file you want to insert and click the file name. Click Open. The new text will flow into the existing text frame (or set of connected frames), but it will probably not be formatted as you want. See “How to Format Text,” below.
3. To replace existing text by pasting:
   1. Copy all the text you want to insert.
   2. Click once in the body of text with the Type tool.
   3. On the Menu bar, Click Edit, Select All.
   4. Press Delete to delete the text.
   5. On the Menu bar, click Edit, Paste.

How to Format Text

If you have used Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, or a similar word processing application, you will probably be comfortable using basic formatting buttons in the Control panel at the top of the page. However, you may want to to save time by applying the easy-to-use, predefined paragraph styles that InDesign provides.

To format a heading or other piece of text using a predefined paragraph style:

1. To open the Paragraph Styles panel, on the Menu bar, click Window, and click Paragraph Styles.
   The Paragraph Styles panel appears in the panels area on the left:
   
2. Activate the Type tool and click once in any paragraph.
3. Click a desired style in the Paragraph Styles panel. Try out different styles by clicking their names in the Paragraph Styles panel.
   Note: If, after applying a style, you see the style listed with a + in the Paragraph Styles panel, hold down Alt with Shift (Windows) or Option with Shift (MacOS) as you click the name of the style. This will remove unwanted formatting.

How to Replace a Template Image with Your Own

InDesign templates come with some images already in place, but in most cases you will want to use your own. Here is how to replace the existing images with your own.

1. Click the template’s image with the Selection tool  .
2. On the Menu bar, click File, click Place. In the window, navigate to the desired Image file on your hard drive. Click the file name and click Open.
   The image appears, but it may be stretched out of proportion.
3. To fit the image proportionally within the frame, on the Menu bar, click Object, click Fitting, and click Fit Content Proportionally or Fill Frame Proportionally.

How to Make Layout Modifications

To change the size, shape, or placement of a text or image box, click the Selection tool   and click the text box you want to reshape. Use the tiny square “handles” on the borders of the text box to reshape the frame.