InDesign Advanced Course
Elevate Your InDesign Skills with the
Advanced InDesign Course
Ready to take your InDesign proficiency to the next level? Our Advanced InDesign Course is designed for those who have mastered the basics and are eager to explore the more sophisticated functionalities of this powerful tool. Whether you’ve completed our beginners course or already feel comfortable with foundational topics, this course is tailored to enhance your expertise.
Over 2 days, you’ll delve into advanced styling techniques such as nested styles, object styles, and table styles. Discover how to effortlessly create automated table of contents and leverage the liquid layout and alternate layout functions for streamlined design processes. Learn to generate captions automatically from image metadata, and explore interactive features like creating PDF forms directly within InDesign.
With our comprehensive training, you’ll master the art of adding hyperlinks, page transitions, and other interactive elements to your designs. Unleash your creativity as you incorporate buttons to dynamically show and hide content on your pages. Elevate your design capabilities with our Advanced InDesign Course and stay ahead in the competitive digital landscape.
Secure Online Booking
£495.00
Scheduled Live Online Course Dates
Prices ex VAT. Highlander standard terms and conditions apply to all bookings.
Please contact us if you would like to arrange a private or onsite course.
About the Instructor
Andy Gardiner is an Adobe Certified Design Master, and CompTIA Certified Technical Trainer with over 20 years experience teaching the Adobe product range including over a decade working as an Adobe Certified Instructor.
He is the author of Designing the Adobe InDesign Way published by Packt Publishing, and as a specialist in the Adobe CC product range has amassed a total of 20 Adobe Certified Expert accreditations.
The InDesign Advanced course covers a wide range of more advanced topics and our instructors work hard to accommodate questions outside the topics listed. The standard topics we cover are listed below.
InDesign Advanced
Using Stylesheets
- Setting up character and paragraph styles
- Style override highlighter
- Adding styles to CC libraries
- Styling bullets
- Using next paragraph style
- Advanced nested styles
Object Styles
- What are object styles
- Creating an object style
- Applying paragraph styles within an object style
- Setting default object styles
- Reusing object styles
- Using quick apply
Styling Tables
- Table styles
- Cell styles
- Paragraph styles in cells
- Cell styles in tables
- Creating table styles
- Applying table styles
- When table styles can be used
Page Numbering
- Automated table of contents
- Formatting the TOC
- Updating the TOC
- Styling table of contents
- Interactive links
- Dynamic story jumps
Advanced Layout Options
- Gridify
- Live distribute
- Liquid layout
- Liquid page rules
- Alternate layout
- Alignment tips
Pen tool, Paths and Pathfinder
- Creating paths
- Creating custom frames
- Combining different shapes
- Type on a path
- Formatting type on a path
- Placing text in a custom frame
- Merging frames
- Compound frames
Working with Objects
- Grouping and ungrouping
- Change object shape
- Rotating a spread
- Arranging objects
- Layers Panel
Interactivity
- Export to interactive pdf
- Buttons
- Hyperlinks
- Transitions
- Animation
- Video
- Overview of other document formats
Forms
- Overview of pdf forms
- Text and signature fields
- List and combo boxes
- Checkboxes and radio buttons
- Setting tab order for pdf forms
- Submit, print and clear actions
- Outputting a form
- Testing in Acrobat
Adobe Bridge
- Bridge Workspaces
- Image Metadata in Bridge
- Metadata Templates
- Live image captions
- Colour Management via Bridge
Working with images
- Using PDF files in InDesign
- Using Illustrator files
- Embedding images
- Using alpha channels and clipping paths for text wrap
- Image layers within InDesign
- Preflighting and images
Colour and Colour themes
- Mixed ink colours and groups
- Separations preview panel
- The ink manager
- Adobe colour themes
- Creating a colour theme
- Managing colour themes
- Using .ASE files
- Setting default colours in InDesign
Importing
- Word and Excel content
- Import options
- Importing styles
- Handling style conflicts
- Import presets
- Importing text
- Handling threading
Exporting
- Export interactive PDFs
- Export as HTML5 with in5
- Export as ePub 3
- Using Adobe Publish Online
Working with text
- Using conditional text
- Convert text to frames
- Tracking text changes
- Custom autocorrect
- Custom spell check
- Link content between documents
GREP
- What is GREP
- Find and replace with GREP
- Using GREP styles
- Some sample GREP styles
Snippets
- Saving as snippets
- Previewing snippets in Bridge
- Reuse snippets on document
CC Libraries
- The CC libraries panel
- What can be saved in CC libraries
- Which Adobe apps use libraries
- Adding items to a library
- Sharing CC library items
- Collaborating on CC library items
Data Merge
- How to setup a merge source
- Add merge fields
- Styling
- Output
The InDesign Advanced course introduces more advanced skills which are designed to save you time and speed up your workflow.
You will learn to
- Use a variety of styles to automate formatting of content
- Automatically generate tables of contents from document
- Easily create and maintain interactive pdf forms
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Add interactive features to your digital documents including
- Video
- Audio
- Buttons
- Links
- Animation
- Hotspots and more
- Generate image captions from image metadata
- Make use of Photoshop channels and clipping paths in InDesign (no PS experience needed)
- Export to a variety of formats such as PDF, HTML5, ePub and more.
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Localise a single InDesign document to handle multiple versions of content eg:
- A catalogue that has pricing in dollars, pounds and euros.
- A company that brochure has office in different areas.
- Reuse content across and within documents
- Format text based on common "patterns" in the text, eg: format all email addresses
- Use content from a spreadsheet or database to generate a document, eg: a product catalogue
Who should attend this course
This InDesign course is suitable for people who have already attended the InDesign Getting Started course or have equivalent experience.
You should be comfortable creating new documents, adding and formatting text, placing images, applying basic paragraph styles and resizing and positioning frames within InDesign.
If you are unsure whether this is the right course just call us and we can arrange for you to have a quick chat with one of our instructors. You can reach us on 0800 156 0777.
Comments from delegates that attended
"He is a great instructor. He has a clear passion for teaching. He makes the course interesting and easy to understand. I have learned more in this class than any other class I have every taken. The course covered very interesting topics."
Digital Creative Support, The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising
"This is my second course with this instructor and he always has time to answer any questions and manage any challenges that any of the learners have and walks us through the solution. I always leave with some really handy ways of working."
Internal Comms, Caffe Nero
"He was a fantastic teacher, friendly, approachable, knowledgeable and really made sure that I understood everything and went the extra mile. All brilliant, thank you."
Marcom Events Coordinator, Arthrocare
"Very pleasant and helpful - feel like I have learned so much in only one day! Kept providing opportunity to ask questions, even if it was something that hadn't been covered. Found out a lot of useful information which I can now combine into my job role."
Communications Co-ordinator, Tesco
"He was extremely helpful, encouraging and personable, and always made sure that the pace and content of the training were suited to all the class members."
Administrator, NHS
"I found the him very knowledgeable and helpful as an instructor. We covered a lot in a short amount of time but I feel we went through each topic in detail and had the opportunity to make sure we understood before we moved on to the next topic"
Marketing Officer, East Surrey College
