Don't create an A4 page and then put a 12x12cm square in the middle as the shape that you want to cut out of the page.
Columns, margins, bleed and slug will assist in the layout of the document. They help to guide your design whilst on screen; once printed out they will not be visible.
Bleed margin should always be applied to help stop inaccuracies being noticed when the document is trimmed. Bleed is how far the image will go over the edge of the page, if when the document is trimmed it is slightly inaccurate the bleed will allow this to happen without a white edge of the unprinted paper to show. The standard amount of bleed is 3mm.
Facing pages allow you to view two pages at the same time. For example when making a book facing pages will help to see opposite pages.
Press 'w' on the keyboard to show and hide guides (preview)
Everything you make has to be contained within a frame. Once you have a frame you can apply colour, text or image.
You apply colour using the swatches panel. With a choice to colour the inside or add a edge colour.
When adding text you can chose the same as above but also have the option to fill and stroke the text.
To add a new CMYK swatch colour chose from the drop down menu on the swatch tab. Chose the colour you want and click add; the colour will them appear on the swatch palette and is available and saved to use.
To change the tint percentage of colour select the object and go into the colour tab...
You can also create a new spot swatch colour by using the new colour swatch menu found under the swatches menu. Pantone referencing numbers are available.
To save a swatch chose from the drop down menu on the swatches tab.
To add spot colour to a black and white image select the image and click a swatch colour...
Conciderations of Photoshop and Illustrator files to import into InDesign...
Photoshop:
Resolution - 300dpi
Colour mode - CMYK, greyscale, duotone, monotone
File format - PSD, TIFF (never copy and paste)
Actual size - If you stretch an image in InDesign it will lose quality, if you shrink it, you will be working with and unnecessarily large file.
Illustrator
CMYK
File format - .ai or select artwork and copy and paste into InDesign
Illustrator artwork is vector so it doesn't need to be rescaled because it has infinite sizing.
When placing an image from Photoshop to InDesign the image is not embedded into the document is it just linked between the programmes. Hovering over the image icon on InDesign will show you where the image is being stored and uploaded from, therefore the Photoshop image file needs to be available in a file when working in InDesign. If the file is not present then the preview will still show the image however when it prints out it will be very low quality.
If you change the location of the image the image will still show on the page, however on the image tab there will be a red question mark to alert you of the problem. If you double click on the image on the tab you can then manually find the image in your files to resolve the problem.
Like images you also will need to save your fonts to be sure that they are available when printing.
5 Colour Printing
Colour Separations
This helps to show and confirm how many colour will be needed for the said print job.
Then go into VIEW...SEPARATIONS... and select the colour layers to show which/ how many colours will be used. The eye shows which layers are visible. Here the spot colour layer is highlighted.
When printing make sure the size of the paper is correct. Put the image in the centre of the page so that if there is any bleed there is a margin for it to be printed. If there is bleed you should always print with crop marks.
To print each colour out separately go into PRINT...OUTPUT...COLOUR...SEPARATIONS. Then you can select which colour you wish to print.
When colour overlay they 'knock' the other one out. This means that where the colours overlay only one colour will be printed (the one which is on top) because the inks are slightly transparent you would be able to see through the top colour creating a blend of the two. Black is never knocked out because it is such an opaque colour it will print on top of any other colour.
If you go into WINDOW...OUTPUT...ATTRIBUTES... you can then chose if you want to over print the colours.
If you chose to overprint colours the amount of ink will be increased. If there is too much ink going on the page the stock may start to get too wet and disintegrate.
View the overprint preview to show how it will print.
You can then see the Ink Limit on the Separations Preview to see what percentage of ink will be printed... in this case it is 300%
When printing alignment can be slightly out...
Then you can see the white space behind where the colour has been 'knocked out'. To prevent this we add a stroke. The lightest colour is used as a stroke. This allows for an extra bit of tolerance when printing.
The stroke will be like so...
Then view the Overprint Stroke in Attributes by first highlighting the text...
Then if the two colours dis-align then there is room for unnoticeable error.