SETTING THE PREFERENCES

If you launch InDesign and open the preferences panels before creating a new document, you’ll change the default preferences for the program “permanently.” That is, once you’ve set them, every time you create a new document, your preferences will be the active ones.

You can change preferences any time: changing them with no documents open will change the defaults, and changing them after creating a new project will affect only that document.

GENERAL

The general prefs pane is where you establish a few parameters that don’t fit in any of the preferences other categories. If you’re creating a multiple page document, you can choose to have your page numbers reflect either the absolute number of pages in the file, or, if you’re dividing the document into separate sections, selecting “section numbering” will display the page numbers from X to Y for each section you create. (This could create several page 1‘s for instance.) This isn’t about putting page numbers in your layout: it’s about how the pages palette displays page numbers.

Once you become comfortable with which tools perform which function, turn off “tool tips;” it slows down the program.

“Overprint” refers to whether you want anything black to print on top of any color that may be beneath it. While there’s no need to uncheck this at this point, remember that you have to come back to this panel to change it; you can’t override this pref in the print dialog box.

InDesign creates two files as you work. One records your preferences, and the other tracks what you do and any changes you make while working. The second one is what enables InDesign to “undo” and “redo” steps. You can change the default location of that file by clicking on the “choose” button and locating or creating a different folder.

The clipboard remembers the last thing you copied or pasted. This preference determines how that information is translated from one program to another. I’d recommend leaving “prefer PDF when pasting” if you want to retain the ability to edit something you’re bringing in from another program (like Illustrator): the “copy PDF to clipboard creates an uneditable image that most other programs can deal with.

text

The text preferences panel is where you can change the defaults for superscript, subscript and small caps sizes.

More important, however, are the type options: always leave “use typographer’s quotes” selected, unless your text will include a lot of feet and inch marks.

Using the correct optical size refers to multiple master fonts that have a defined optical size axis. You can safely uncheck this if you don’t have any multiple master fonts.

Selecting a word takes a double click. If you want to select an entire line, make sure “triple click to select a line” is checked. (Clicking four times will select an entire paragraph. And if you have a really quick click finger, five clicks selects all linked text.)

I’d never check “adjust text attributes...” because whenever you resize a text frame using the transform palette, you’ll also be scaling whatever text may be in it—not a good thing!

“Apply leading to entire paragraphs” is an interesting option. InDesign lets you specify leading to one line at a time. If you’re not careful, you can end up with a paragraph of type that looks like it has the hiccups. Check this if you’re not comfortable with that possibility.

COMPOSITION

The composition preferences is where you determine whether InDesign warns you when you’ve created bad typography, or simply lets you do it.

“Keeps” are established as part of the paragraph formatting options. If InDesign has to override your settings for some reason (which I understand is rare), selecting “keep violations” will highlight any area where that’s happened.

H & J’s refers to hyphenation and justification styles attached to your document. This option refers to justified type. If you check “h & j violations,” any areas of text that have been set using more space than you specified between characters and words will be highlighted. Since we don’t justify type in advertising, there’s no need to worry about this one.

Checking “custom tracking/kerning” will highlight any areas of text where you’ve applied tracking or kerning.

Font problems are the bane of a designer’s digital life. You may have fonts installed on your machine at home that we don’t have on the machines in the cluster. Keep the “fonts” option checked so you can tell immediately whether InDesign is using the font you specified, or something else because the one you want isn’t available.

A “glyph” is a character within a font. There are a multitude of special characters hiding behind each letter on your keyboard, but finding one can be a huge chore. The glyph panel is where you can locate the special character you need without typing the whole alphabet 3 times, using shift, option, and option shift. If you’ve used any glyphs in your document, checking the “substituted glyphs” option will highlight wherever you’ve used one.

Text wrap is another term for “runaround.” When you have type you want to follow the contour of a shape, you may want to justify the type to align along the left edge of that shape. If so, check this option. Remember, however, that anytime you justify type, you’re asking for letter and word spacing issues. 

UNITS & INCREMENTS

Establish your ruler preferences in the Units and Increments panel. If you want the ruler to measure across facing pages, choose “spread” for your origin. If you want to measure each page separately, select “page.”

Back in the day, even though a page was always created using inches, most measurements made within the page used picas (there are 6 picas in an inch). Choose whichever unit of measure makes the most sense to you. I use picas for my vertical measure frequently, since type is measured in points (there are 12 points in one pica, and 72 points in one inch).

The arrow keys are a wonderful shortcut to moving things from text and picture frames, to adjusting tracking/kerning and leading, as well at the point size of your type. These options let you set the increments the arrow keys use, depending on what you’re nudging. “Cursor key” refers to nudging objects—the smaller the number, the more precise you can be. Adjust type size or leading in the increments you specify in the “size/leading” field, and the amount of baseline shift and kerning that occurs in the next two fields. (See the section on Type for the cool shortcuts that make this happen.)

Grids can be incredibly useful for aligning objects. I prefer creating guides when I need them, but there are occasions when you might want to see a baseline grid for positioning several text frames, or a grid over your entire document. Turn these on and off from the View menu. Establish their appearance here.

Check “grids in back” if you don’t want these lines in front of everything in your document (very disconcerting!).

Like grids, guides are used for positioning elements in your layout.

Margin guides are established when you create a new document. Decide on their color here.

Column guides show you where columns start and stop (left and right). This is nice! You can create your own grid using column guides, without having to assign columns to a text frame.

Bleed refers to elements that extend off the edge(s) of a page.

The “slug” area of a layout is where crop and registration marks live.

DICTIONARY

The dictionary pane is used to select the dictionary you’re using in your document. Typically, there will be no choices here.

You can also select which characters to use for double and single quote marks.

The “compose using” feature is used for creating hyphenation exception / options.

The user dictionary is whether you add words that you use a lot that InDesign’s dictionary doesn’t recognize. If you choose to “merge used dictionary into document” every time you open a document, spelling and hyphenation options you’ve added to your dictionary will be copied to it. If it’s someone else’s work, you could mess it up.

If you’ve modified your dictionary (added words) since working on a document, “recompose all stories” will update it to reflect these changes. 

DISPLAY

The display performance pane determines how InDesign displays the text and images in your document. What you choose here can dramatically improve what you see, but it can also slow down the program a lot.

The view settings option includes “high quality,” “typical,” and “optimized.”

Adjusting the view settings redefines “high quality”, “optimized,” and “typical” rendering of text and images. I’d suggest you don’t mess with these. Changing them can make you crazy, and can slow down InDesign’s performance.

Check “enable anti aliasing” to ensure smoother text and lines created with the drawing tools.

Definitely specify a point size for greeking. The larger the point size you choose, the faster InDesign can render a page for you. I’d suggest 7 points.