Lessons
Class Introduction
01:51 2Document Set-Up
15:39 3Panels
11:46 4Toolbox
08:22 5The Adobe® Workspace
05:17 6Shortcuts
05:33 7Saving Files
05:37 8Guides
12:42Text Frames
08:13 10Shapes, Fill and Stoke
07:43 11Arranging and Modifying Shapes
08:31 12The Pen Tool: Drawing, Stroke and Fill
06:52 13The Pen Tool: Handles and Anchor Points
08:27 14Pencil, Smooth and Erase Tools
05:46 15Strokes and Arrows
13:33 16Importing Shapes from Adobe® Illustrator®
08:57 17Placing Graphics
08:05 18Placing PDFs
04:22 19Placing Multiple Files
06:14 20Frames: Fitting and Manipulating
07:28 21Specialty Frames
05:52 22The Links Panel
21:34 23High Quality Display
06:48 24Clipping Paths
13:08 25Transparency
09:41 26The Gap Tool
03:55 27Color & Swatches Panels Basics
16:38 28Eyedropper Tool
10:03 29Gradient Swatches
05:31 30Character Panel
23:38 31Paragraph Panel
15:09 32Spelling & Autocorrect
06:42 33Text Frame Options
08:10 34Printing and Exporting
16:16Lesson Info
The Gap Tool
We're gonna come back to this grid that I made in earlier section. I actually filled in a couple more images, we only had four images before. But what I want to do is I wanna show you what we can do after we've created a grid of images, we can also play with what's called the gap tool. And that lives over in your tool panel. Over here. This says gap tool. And it basically can identify wherever gaps live in your design. Hopefully you can see that on your screen, it's a very light gray, but what you should see when I roll over this item, is all the way across, this line is gray. And then this is gray. So it's basically finding gaps that live in your document. So between the pages, or between page elements. And what I want to do is I want to make changes to these items that live on either side of this gap. So I can grab using the gap tool, I can just click and grab this gap at the top here, and pull this item down, and as I do that, that is not what that is supposed to look like. We maybe...
having an error, this is not working at all. It should actually be moving my images with it. Let me... I'm gonna set this up ahead of time, I was going to show you afterwards, but I don't know if it's the gap tool that's having trouble or if it's the images, the way they're set up. So what I'm going to do, and we've already done this in a previous section, go up under the object menu, and come down to Fitting, Frame-Fitting Options, and I'm going to turn on Auto-Fit, and the reason I did that is that I've told it to fill the frame proportionally. This might be because I have the high-resolution display on. Let's turn that off. 'Cause it's having to refocus every time. So let's turn that to Typical. And now I'm going to grab the gap tool again, and I'm going to pull down the gap tool, there we go, as I pull that down, I'm changing the size of my frame, and because I have the auto-fit turned on, it's continually drawing that image for me to that size. So I'm just grabbing it with the gap tool, and I'm changing where the gap is actually sitting. So I can actually shorten that one up, and I'll just grab this one and shorten that up as well. Now, because I have that auto-fit turned on, it's continually filling that frame proportionally. Now what I want to do in this case, I want the one on the left to be shorter, but I don't want all of them to be shorter. I just want the ones on the top to be shorter. So I'm gonna undo that. I'm going to hold down the shift key, and now when I slide, it's only changing the two that live directly on either side of where the gap tool is sitting. So I'm gonna choose that, and I'm gonna hold down the Shift key and do the same thing on the bottom. And I'm using my smart guides, I can see when the edges of each of those gaps line up as well, using the smart guides. Again, holding down the Shift key, it only moves the two on either side of the particular tool that's there. So now, I've created a nice little grid of frames. Again, it didn't matter if placed those using gridify, or if I placed those images individually, and lined them up with smart guides. It didn't matter how they got there, so long as it sees a gap that is constant across the entire page, the gap tool will be able to recognize that. So the gap tool is a great way to throw things in here really quickly. And again they're individual files, we can do whatever we want with them. We could add individual drop-shadows to each of those if we wanted to as well. There's nothing special about them as a whole, that's just how we created them was all together, but now I can actually individually manipulate each of those.
Ratings and Reviews
Susan
Fantastic course. I have used Illustrator and photoshop, but learned when under tight deadlines. We are going to begin using inDesign to publish a more extensive multipage newsletter, and I wanted to build a better knowledge foundation of this tool, rather than just diving in. The course was comprehensive and I feel that I'll be able to make a better product after taking the course.
Terri
Have loved Erica since I was a baby designer. She is a great educator, and even though I have been using ID for about 8 years, I just changed from CS6 to CC. This was a great refresher as well as a mental upgrade to new options and effects.
Gilbert Beltran
I enjoyed these classes. Learned the Indesign toolbox and picked up a few smart tricks. Erica is great at keeping up the pace and being very clear and easy to follow.