Publishing Tools: InDesign - article

It’s always a little daunting to take a stab at new software, when you’re already fast and furious with the applications you know. For a writer or illustrator, however, InDesign is a great tool with many desirable features to enhance your workflow. The combination of editing choices is endless. Even if you tried to master the full range of services, you probably wouldn’t discover them all.

On the author end, InDesign is convenient, as it allows you easily to paste your work onto its blank sheets. If you don’t want to use a word processor, this program allows you to type your work right onto a new page. It has all the standard features you’re accustomed to like choosing font color and size. The text can be positioned on the page, as left-justified, centered, or in other configurations. The program enables you to create a table of contents page, and countless other typical features you simply can’t live without. You can add captions, headers, and footers as well. You can create and edit your whole book right there on the InDesign program, making the illustration portion of your project an easy next step.

For the illustrator, this program replaces the use of a separate photo-editing program to add pictures to documents. You can add your pictures within the program, and manipulate them with the ease of clicking a few buttons. The program allows you to edit the photos for size, positioning, and focus. You can change their coloring and use other techniques, such as fading and shadowing. Even the angle of the picture can be altered. They have a nifty feature that gives you the exact degree of the angle, so there’s no need to guess. Layers can be added. There is even a scissors tool for cropping. In offering all this, within a document that already contains your text, you effectively cut out the middle man. There is no need to go back and forth between applications, and in turn your workflow becomes both simplified and far more organized. It makes it easy to illustrate your own book. If you’re a freelance artist, you can illustrate someone else’s book, with a much cleaner process for sharing information with your writer.

With all these benefits, what are the drawbacks? It’s possible you shouldn’t completely dismiss word processors and photo-editing software. This is where assessing your needs comes in. Is learning new software worth the effort? InDesign is sometimes a bit tricky to figure out. You may find it hard to create new pages and layers. With some practice, however, you should become reasonably comfortable using it. Once you master InDesign, it could become a great tool for an illustrator or author.