217 Choosing which layout objects get packaged for the printer

- Sometimes you want to keep items on the document page, but you don't want them to be included when you export this whole thing to a Package, a Package that you create for a printer or that you're going to give to a freelancer, in other words, what happens when you go to File, Package. So just to review really quickly for the newbies out there, packaging creates a copy of the entire publication, along with fonts, links, and images, and puts them into a folder on the desktop or wherever you save it to.

Now, one way that you can avoid things being included in the Package is to move them to the pasteboard, but as I said, that's not the situation I'm talking about. I'm talking about when you want something to stay in the layout, but you don't want it included in the Package. For example, let's say, for whatever reason, this carrot is fine right here in the layout, but when you export to a Package, you don't want the carrot included. One thing you might do would be to hide it. If we go to the Layers panel, and the carrot is selected, the little red square, and we hide it, then when I export to a Package, let's go ahead and do that.

We'll click Package and save the publication, and just click Continue at this Instructions file that nobody uses. We're going to save it on the desktop, and for this purpose, I don't need to include the IDML or PDF. If you don't see these options, it's because they're only in CC 2014 and 2015. But it will copy the fonts used and any linked graphics that are in the document pages, and it'll update the graphic links in the Package. So I'm going to export.

We get the warning about the fonts that we can ignore, because we do have the licensing for all these fonts. Now, the carrot's file name was carrot.jpg. Let's take a look at the package in a new window. So here are all the links, and there's carrot, so even though we hid it, it included it in the Package. Well, that's not going to work. Let's come back here and show the carrot again. The answer is to put it into a non-printing Layer. So if I create a new Layer, and we'll call this, let's just say non-printing, to be clear.

You need to make sure and turn off Print Layer, which is turned on by default, and when you do that and click OK, then the name of the Layer turns italic, which I think is interesting. If you have any italic Layers in your Layers panel, then you know that's why. Now we can take this carrot, and we'll move it to the non-printing. Select it to get the little proxy icon, drag and drop it to non-printing. So it's not like a locked layer. You can still see it. You can still edit it while you're here.

But if you go to Print Preview, I'll tap the W key to look, you'll see that it's not there, because Print Preview shows you what's going to print. But even better than that, when we export to another Package, and we'll put this on the desktop again with a new name, we'll call it two, and all those settings remain the same, and choose Package. Let's jump to the finder and take a look at two, and go to Links, and carrot is not there.

There's other files called carrots1 and so on, but our actual carrot file, called carrot.jpg. does not appear, so that's one way to avoid including things. Now, you might say, "Why would you ever want to do that?" Well, sometimes you want a non-printing Layer, to be able to do things like, say, add notes. So over here, if we said, replace this carrot with an eggplant, we can drag these two things right on top. That's a note to somebody that you're working with.

And we'll go to the Layers panel and we'll move eggplant to non-printing, and we'll move the note right there to non-printing, so we just drag and drop the proxy icons, and that way there's no way that this will ever make it into the Package that you're going to send to a commercial printer. So it's kind of like a little guarantee for yourself. Well, here's another use of this non-printing Layer, in the file called My book. You can put instructions for people, like, say, in a template for your company, in a non-printing Layer.

So here in instructions, I have little guidelines for people. I have large gray squares to help my users know where to put content. This is actually adapted from a real life template used by blurb.com, and the idea is that instructions, or this stuff, but you create a new Layer for people's actual items that are going to go into the design, so I can just hide the instructions Layer, so you get a quick preview of what this is going to look like.

This is a great help for new InDesign users or for staff who are not designers, just to create a non-printing Layer with instructions and guidelines for them. So there you go. So when hiding an item or sticking an item on a pasteboard isn't working for you, don't forget the great method of creating a non-printing Layer to put items in your document that will not appear in print or in a Package.