- My copy of InDesign might not look exactly like yours. That's okay, don't panic. It's just because Adobe let's people customize the user interface in various ways. That is all the tools, the panels, and so on. In particular, you can adjust the lightness or darkness of the screen. Now a lot of designers like this dark charcoaled gray. It's soothing to the eye, and most importantly it doesn't distract your eye from the important stuff. The graphics and text on your page. Other designers are more used to a lighter interface, partly because that's the way Adobe's software looked for many years.
You can InDesign's appearance in the preferences dialogue box. To find that, you look in the InDesign CC menu on the Mac and the edit menu on Windows. The location of this menu item is actually one of the only differences between the Mac and Windows versions of the program. Inside the Preferences sub menu, choose Interface. Now there are a lot of things we can change here, but I'm going to focus on the appearance. Right up here at the top, as specifically the Color Theme popup menu. Right now I have this set to Medium Dark, but you can change this popup menu to something else.
You can make it darker if you want, or you can make it much lighter. You can even fine tune the control by changing the slider over on the right. Now the other feature you'll notice here is the Match Pasteboard to Theme Color check box, but I actually don't usually turn that on and off here. I use the view menu. Here, let me show you. I'll click OK and open a new document by going to the File menu, choosing New, and then choosing Document. I'm just going to use the default settings in the New Document dialogue box, and you can see the gray area out here is the pasteboard.
Now let's look in the view menu. Down here you can see a feature called Match Pasteboard to Theme Color. That's exactly the same feature as we saw in the preferences dialogue box, and as you can see it's turned on. That means the pasteboard, that area around the page is kind of a gray color, but if I turn this off, it goes to plain white. Sometimes I have the pasteboard set to the UI color, and sometimes I have it turned off. It really depends on what I'm doing and what kind of document I'm working on. Anyway, the important thing is that if my screen sometimes looks different than yours, now you know why and what you can do about it.
Author
Updated
1/12/2016Released
6/19/2015Want to learn InDesign in just 20 minutes? Watch the first chapter, which concentrates on the most essential skills: editing text, adding graphics, moving objects, and creating PDFs. Once you're ready to move on, InDesign insider David Blatner will show you the rest of what InDesign has to offer. Learn how to navigate and customize the workspace, manage documents and pages, format text and graphics, experiment with color and gradients, draw and transform shapes, create interactive documents, package your designs for print, and much more.
- Getting started with InDesign in just 30 minutes
- Setting up a new document
- Inserting text
- Placing graphics
- Formatting objects
- Creating color and gradient swatches
- Organizing InDesign projects with layers
- Transforming objects
- Incorporating drop caps, bullets, and numbering
- Applying character and object styles
- Building tables
- Creating an interactive PDF and exporting to EPUB
- Printing and exporting
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
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Q: This course was updated on 01/12/2016. What changed?
A: We added one new movie covering the revised InDesign CC interface, including the new Start workspace, released in November 2015.
Related Courses
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InDesign Secrets
with David Blatner38h 45m Intermediate -
InDesign: Beyond the Essentials
with David Blatner4h 54m Intermediate
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Introduction
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Welcome1m 4s
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Using the exercise files2m 21s
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How this course is updated1m 20s
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1. Learn InDesign in 30 Minutes
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Getting started2m 44s
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Adding or editing text3m 47s
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Adding or replacing graphics4m 22s
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Moving objects around4m 43s
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Printing and creating a PDF5m 45s
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2. Working with InDesign Documents
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Navigating and zooming8m 35s
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Selecting objects6m 50s
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Working with panels7m 24s
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3. Creating a Document
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New documents10m 40s
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Adding text frames5m 30s
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Typing and editing text3m 11s
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Importing graphics8m 51s
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4. Managing Pages
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Overriding master page items3m 52s
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Changing page size6m 43s
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Adding page numbering2m 45s
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5. Text
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Inserting special characters5m 40s
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Importing text4m 46s
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Threading text frames5m 1s
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Setting text frame columns5m 33s
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Putting text on a path7m 29s
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Using the Story Editor6m 42s
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Checking spelling6m 18s
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Using Find/Change7m 59s
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6. Graphics
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Using the Links panel9m 47s
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Inserting QR codes3m 48s
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7. Formatting Objects
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Colorizing images2m 35s
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Adjusting transparency4m 53s
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Adding drop shadows4m 31s
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8. Color
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Creating color swatches6m 2s
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Creating gradient swatches5m 10s
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Applying gradients6m 48s
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9. Frames and Paths
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Creating text outlines5m 10s
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10. Managing Objects
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Stacking objects2m 13s
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Grouping and locking objects3m 38s
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Nesting objects4m 53s
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Aligning and distributing5m 16s
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Understanding text wrap6m 41s
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Using anchored objects5m 37s
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11. Transforming Objects
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Duplicating objects6m 56s
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Rotating objects3m 3s
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Scaling objects5m 53s
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Skewing objects1m 55s
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Mirroring objects3m 35s
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12. Character Formatting
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Changing case4m 28s
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Using Find Font5m 43s
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13. Paragraph Formatting
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Using drop caps2m 50s
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Shading paragraphs and boxes2m 47s
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Setting tabs9m 7s
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Adding automatic bullets5m 45s
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Numbering paragraphs7m 12s
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14. Styles
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Using character styles6m 16s
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Using object styles4m 28s
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15. Tables
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Creating a table5m 33s
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Adjusting rows and columns4m 11s
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Formatting a table5m 31s
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Formatting cells7m 46s
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16. Interactive Documents
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Adding hyperlinks5m 17s
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Creating an interactive PDF7m 38s
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Exporting a reflowable EPUB8m 37s
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17. Packaging, Printing, and Exporting
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Packaging for output7m 11s
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Using the Print dialog box6m 28s
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Exporting a PDF10m 5s
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Exporting text4m 2s
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Conclusion
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Next steps1m 59s
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Video: Adjusting the interface: Dark and light