Here I am going to suggest some defaults that I believe are a good idea to change in InDesign. Even though I have used InDesign for over eight years and I still do not know what all the settings do as I have not had the need to change them. I often work on different machines due to my job as a freelance artworker, and I like to change the following settings early on as in the long run they can save a lot of time and headaches – making you look more professional at your job!

You have to make these changes with no documents open if you want them to become your defaults.

1 – Type – This makes a lot of sense to keep consistent leading within a paragraph. It is always best to set type properly as an artworker. Most designers will cheat type by using leading instead of hard returns and space afters! Bad Naughty Designer People!

2 – Advanced Type – A useful setting for glyphs such as trademarks etc. The percentages are really reliant on the font being used and the look you are trying to achieve. If you have a lot of copy that uses superscript marks then it is worth setting correct figures here. However if you have several superscript styles then it may be best to set up some style sheets.

3 – Composition – I am not sure if it is true, but I feel text wrap works a little better with these checked. Text wrap in InDesign CS3 leaves a lot be desired, I am hoping for some good improvements in CS4.

4 – Units & Increments – I am constantly surprised how this is often left at the default settings. Changing these all to 1 will give better control over your type. Better still make a keyboard shortcut for this preference. I assign cmd-k, which reflects the keyboard increment preference in Illustrator. Very useful tip!!!

5 – Spelling – Not very necessary, but if you assign a keyboard shortcut it offers a quick way to double check your copy. Nothing more embarrassing than spelling mistakes!

6 – Display Performance – I personally like to change vector graphics to high resolution. However if you have a slow machine or some extremely heavy Illustrator files linked in then it may be best to knock it back a setting. Also if you have a slow machine you can vastly improve your situation by changing the Scrolling options to a lower setting.

VERY IMPORTANT SETTING!

7 – Appearance of Black – Last but not least. This is a hugely important setting for artworkers. Changing the On Screen setting and Printing/Exporting setting will give you a first heads up for any print issues. It is no good taking for granted that things ‘look okay’ on screen or on your studio laser runouts, but changing these settings will help you quite often.

Planned future tutorials will explore overprinting and checking your separations on screen.

a1 poster printing

Tags: adobe, indesign, overprint, preferences, settings, tutorial

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 5:16 pm and is filed under InDesign Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.