- [Instructor] My copy of InDesign might not look exactly like yours, and that's okay, don't panic. It's just because Adobe lets people customize the user interface in various ways. That is all the panels, tools, and so on. In particular, you can adjust the lightness or darkness of the screen. A lot of designers like dark charcoal gray. It's soothing to the eye and, most importantly, it doesn't distract your eye from the more important stuff, the graphics and text on your page. Now, other designers are more used to a lighter interface.
Partly because that's the way Adobe software looked for many years. You can change InDesign's appearance in the preferences dialog box. To find that, you look at the top of the InDesign menu on the Mac, or the bottom of the Edit menu on Windows. The location of this menu item is one of the very few differences between the Mac and Windows versions of the program. Inside this sub-menu, choose Interface. There are a lot of things you can change in here, but I'm going to look at the Appearance section right here at the top.
Specifically, I'm going to look at the Color Theme popup menu. Right now it's set to Medium Dark, but you can come in here and change it to make it darker if you want. Some people like that. Or, you could come in here and make it much lighter. Now, the other feature that you'll notice here is Match Pasteboard to Theme Color, but I don't usually turn that on and off here. I use the View menu instead. I'll show you. I'll click OK, and then I'll come up to the View menu. You can see that the same feature is here. Match Pasteboard to Theme Color.
Right now it's turned on, which means the Pasteboard, which is the area around the page, is kind of a gray color. If I turn this off, now it goes to plain white. Sometimes I have the Pasteboard set to UI color. 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 here is that if my screen sometimes looks different than yours, now you know why, and what you can do about it.
Author
Released
11/11/2016- Learning InDesign in just 30 minutes
- Creating new documents
- Adding, editing, and formatting text
- Managing pages
- Applying master pages
- Threading text frames
- Importing and editing graphics
- Working with color, transparency, and gradients
- Drawing and editing paths and frame shapes
- Scaling and transforming objects
- Applying paragraph and character styles
- Creating tables
- Building interactive documents such as interactive PDFs and EPUBS
- Packaging InDesign documents for output
- Printing and exporting
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
Views
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Introduction
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Welcome49s
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Using the exercise files2m 17s
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How this course is updated1m 21s
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1. Learn InDesign in 30 Minutes
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Getting started2m 50s
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Adding or editing text5m 6s
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Moving objects around3m 52s
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Printing and creating a PDF6m 10s
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2. Creating a Document
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New documents8m 16s
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Adding text frames5m 36s
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Typing and editing text3m 13s
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Importing graphics9m 35s
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3. Managing Pages
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Overriding master page items3m 44s
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Changing page size6m 13s
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Adding page numbering2m 43s
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4. Text
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Importing text4m 39s
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Threading text frames4m 13s
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Text Frame Attributes6m 46s
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Inserting special characters4m 47s
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Using the Story Editor5m 51s
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Checking spelling4m 56s
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Using Find/Change6m 56s
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Setting text on a path6m 17s
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5. Graphics
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Using the Links panel8m 1s
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6. Color and Transparency
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Creating color swatches6m 44s
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7. Frames and Paths
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Creating text outlines5m 17s
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8. Managing Objects
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Using anchored objects5m 40s
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9. Text Formatting
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Using Find Font5m 18s
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Using drop caps2m 42s
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Setting tabs and tab stops6m 47s
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Shading paragraphs and boxes2m 31s
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10. Styles
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Using character styles6m 33s
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Using object styles3m 55s
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11. Tables
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Creating a table5m 30s
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Adjusting rows and columns6m 46s
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Formatting a table4m 55s
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Formatting cells5m 3s
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12. Interactive Documents
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Adding hyperlinks5m 16s
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Creating an interactive PDF5m 28s
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Exporting an EPUB document8m 47s
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13. Package, Print, and Exporting
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Packaging for output6m 42s
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Using the Print dialog box6m 11s
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Exporting a PDF7m 45s
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Conclusion
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Next steps1m 50s
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Video: Adjusting the interface: dark and light