Gain insight into how to set up your document and import CC libraries information for Adobe InDesign. This article will guide you through the steps of creating a new library, importing assets, adjusting colors, and working with images and frames.
Key Insights
- The process begins by creating a new CC library, which allows you to utilize the different assets across Adobe platforms, including InDesign.
- Drag and drop method is used to import all the assets into the CC library from a selected folder. In this example, the assets were imported from the Domus interior design folder.
- The article also details how to work with logos and images in InDesign, including how to use the eyedropper tool to pick colors from an image, adjust the image frame, and resize images while keeping their proportion.
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In this video, we're going to be setting up our document and importing our CC Libraries information. In order to begin, let's first start by going to CC Libraries, and we're going to create a new library by clicking the drop-down and selecting Create New Library.
From here, let's title our library “Domus” and click Create. By utilizing our CC Libraries, we can access many of the different assets that we have across Adobe platforms. In this case, we can utilize it in InDesign.
So next, to import all of our assets from Domus Interior Design, we'll go to our folder and open up “Domus Interior Design.” From here, let's drag a CC Library. We can see that some of these files aren't supported such as the CSV and Excel spreadsheet, but we'll click Continue, and here we can see that we now have many of the different assets from our folder in the CC Library. Next, we want to import this green color.
In order to get the green color, let's take our logo, and by clicking and dragging it onto our page, we'll simply draw the logo about this size. Next, let's utilize our Eyedropper Tool to grab the green color. The Eyedropper Tool, found in the Toolbar here, or shortcut I on the keyboard, can be used by simply clicking the color, and we'll see that we now have this green color as our Stroke. Remember, Fill is the larger part and Stroke is on the outside—whichever one is on top is selected.
In this case, with the Stroke selected, now we're going to go to Add Content and select Stroke Color. From here, we can see it's now within our library, so let's double-click the title and we'll retitle it “Domus Green” and hit ENTER. Next, let's work with our logo. We'll hit V on the keyboard for our Selection Tool. Remember that when we're working with images, we actually have two components here.
The first is the actual image, and the second is the image frame. The image frame can be changed by clicking and dragging the edges. However, we'll notice that the image inside stays in place—this is because we're only adjusting the frame. I'll hit CTRL+Z to undo.
If we want to adjust the image, we can use the shortcut A on the keyboard for our Direct Selection Tool. From here, we can drag the image around. I'll hit CTRL+Z again and click outside. Hitting V on the keyboard now for our Selection Tool—if we want to change this image—we'll drag a selection box around it. If we want to resize it, remember the shortcut is CTRL and Shift—hold both of them together to resize both the image frame and the image.
Let's create our image about this size now, and dragging it to the top right corner, let's place it right here in the margin. If we hit W on the keyboard, we can see what this looks like, and it looks like we have a Stroke of green from when we collected the green sample. So let's hit W again to go back to our Normal view, we'll select the frame, and we simply need to remove the Stroke.
We'll go to the top here and select None for the Stroke. We'll then click outside and hit W again, and there we go—we now have our image with no Stroke. In addition, we also now have all of the materials that we'll need throughout this postcard.
Next, let's begin working on our background. I'll hold CTRL and scroll up, and let's create a rectangle utilizing our Rectangle Tool and drag all the way from the bleed (this red line) to the other end of the bleed, allowing it to snap into place. Next, we can see that we have No Fill and a black Stroke, so let's swap these for now and select our Fill so we're working with Fill.
Then we're going to go to Properties, and from here, let's change our Fill from black. Double-click the Fill, and we're going to go to Gradient. In order to make a Gradient, we'll simply click on the Gradient down here below, and we now have a Gradient from white to black. In this case, we want it to go from green to white. To do that, let's first select our color stop here on the right-hand side. In this case, rather than black, we're going to select green.
Here we now have white to green. However, let's switch them around. We could do this by typing in 180 and hitting ENTER, or we can also change it by double-clicking the Fill, going to our Gradient, and typing 0 and hitting TAB. Another way that we can do this is by simply clicking on each of these color stops and dragging them around so that green is on the left-hand side and white is on the right.
In addition, we can also change the transition by selecting the top diamond. Let's transition it so that only this third is green, and the right area is entirely white.
Utilize our Selection Tool, click outside, and if we hit W on the keyboard, we'll see what this looks like. Keep in mind, we also have the logo over here; however, it's now beneath our background layer. To fix this, let's go into Layers, and remember that objects are stacked against each other in Layer 1, so our rectangle is on top of our logo. To change this, we'll simply select the rectangle and drag it down below, and here we now have our background with our Domus logo on top.
If we hit W on the keyboard to get our Preview mode, we'll see what this looks like. I think this looks good. Let's now save our work by hitting CTRL+S on the keyboard to save. In the next video, we're going to actually start strategizing the rest of the front of our postcard.
We'll see you there!