Making Fujix with InDesign
Quick Tips
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InDesign is licensed for use on the N.Y.U. Med.
Ctr. campus on PCs and Macs.
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InDesign opens Quark documents.
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InDesign reliably handles files pasted from Adobe
Photoshop or Illustrator.
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InDesign imports tables from Excel and Word.
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InDesign imports pdf files.
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InDesign fujix templates are located at the bottom
of this page.
About InDesign
Adobe's publishing tool InDesign can be used with
Media Services' Pictrography
3000 to produce beautiful digital photographs. The cost, listed
on our ratesheet,
is payable by cash, credit card, check or by authorized charge
to a valid NYUMC account.
InDesign is a page layout tool created by Adobe Systems
and licensed to NYU Medical Center for use on any Macintosh or
Widoz computer on campus. The program's features far exceed those
required to create a figure. This webpage will teach you only to
assemble a typical document, in this case a miniature poster, to
be printed at Media Services on our digital photograhic printer.
For a more detailed explaination of the ins and outs of InDesign
we recommend, Visual Quickstart Guide - InDesign 2 For Macintosh
and Windows by Sandee Cohen.
Getting InDesign
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To download InDesign on a machine running Windows,
install the keyserving software then install the keyserved
software. Click here.
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To download InDesign on a Macintosh on the NYU
Medical Center campus click
here.
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If you are in the Skirball Institute using a
Macintosh click here.
InDesign's Parts
An InDesign document is merely a structured collection
of images and texts. The process of creating a figure with InDesign
is the virtual equivalent of the old process of glueing photographs,
charts and sheets of text to a piece of gridpaper for photographic
reproduction.
You may notice similarities between InDesign and
other Adobe applications, such as Photoshop.
Begin by opening the (most) appropriately shaped
template at the bottom of this page.
On the template you'll find placed text and picture
boxes that you can duplicate and modify to create your own figure.
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The toolbar contains
most of the tools needed to build and edit an InDesign document.
On the top of the tool bar note the two arrows.
The solid black arrow is the select tool.
The select tool is used to select a box or other object
such as a line in the document.
The outlined one next to it is the direct
select tool. The direct select tool selects a specific
part of an object to modify, such as the image within an
image box or the length of a line.
With these two selection tools you will be
able to select the properties of any object in an InDesign
document. |
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In this case, the image and
the box that contains it are two different properties of
the same object (the image box) and each of these properties
can be specifically selected for modification. |
Making a Fujix print with InDesign
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On a Media Services template, use the box tool to create a box.
Choose the box tool then click and hold the
mouse button down while you drag a diagonal to form the
box. |
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Next, define what kind of container this box will be.
In this example we have a text box. Use the
select tool to choose the box you have just created. Next,
under the object menu select text. |
Text can be placed within the text box in three ways.
First, as you expect, by clicking the text tool placing the cursor
in the desired text box and typing. Second, after selecting the
text box using the select tool, click the type tool to activate
it, then switch to another application and copy the text, after
switching back to InDesign, click in the active box with the text
tool and use paste under the edit menu to paste the text. And lastly,
we can use the Place command to import text into the selected text
box by navigating to a text file.
Once the text is placed it can be modified using
the character and color palletes.
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Click the text tool(1) and highlight the
text to be modified(2). Change the font(3) and size(4)
in the character palette. The triangle(5) on the right
side of the palette displays options for that palette,
such as the image color space*. The T
icon(6) indicates that the text color is selected. Click
the text fill(7) or text border(8) icon to choose the part
of the text to be edited. |
*(Media Services works in RGB color space).
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Boxes can also hold images.
Make a new box but this time use the Content
command to select graphic content. Next, use the Place
command and navigate to an image. |
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Choose the image
and it will appear in the image box. Image files work most
reliably when they are in tiff, eps or
pdf format. Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator files are
the only files consistently reproduced when pasted – rather
than Placed – into InDesign.
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Choose the image with the direct select tool
to modify the the contents of the box. Click the image
and use the handles to drag and resize the image. Or, after
direct selecting the image use the transform pallette to
resize it numerically. |
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Tables may be placed from Word and Excel using the
Place command. Make a text box and then select it using the select
tool. Next use the Place command and navigate to a Word or Excel
file that contains a table. Choose it. You can use all of the commands
under the Table command, text tool, select tool and direct select
tool to adjust the placed tables appearance.
Excel charts should not be pasted into InDesign.
Save the chart as a tiff image from Photoshop or produce a pdf
file of the chart and place the chart in the fujix as an image.
A property common to most of the objects in an InDesign
fujix print is color. Boxes may have colored borders and fills
and as demonstrated text may be colors other than black. To change
the color of a box pick it with the select tool. Next use the color
palatte to change the fill color.
To add a border click the border on the color palette
and choose a color. Then use the stroke tab to change the border
size.
Adding Arrows using InDesign |
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Arrows in InDesign are controlled using the
stroke pallette. Lines, no matter how many pixels wide, are
considered stroked and not filled(1). On the end or beginning
of a line an arrow head may be added(2). In this example
a white(3) arrow 5 pixels wide(4) is added over a figure.
If you don't have these options click the show options triangle(5).
Click the mouse and (without releasing) drag in a direction.
The added arrow is put in a text box automatically and may
be altered like any other object in the program. |
Linked Images and the Links Palette
When an image is placed in an image box InDesign
displays a low resolution proxy image for editing. The application
also registers the location of the file as a path in the filesystem.
This information is displayed in the links pallate. The
full resolution image is only created when a Print command is issued
for the document. For this reason, any caution or stop
symbols must be eliminated from the links palette before exporting
the final fujix print. Select the Relink command in the
link pallette by clicking on the drop down menu triangle on the
top right.
Then re-navagate to the missing or modified file.
This stratagy offers an advantage over embedding
the image data in the document as other applications do. An image
that gives unsatisfactory printed results can be modified in the
application that created it without ever having to alter the InDesign
document. If a file is lost or modified the links pallate offers
a convenient way to relink or update the image in a fujix print
dcument.
Exporting a PDF file from
InDesign |
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Under the file menu, use the export command
to create a pdf format file to upload for Fujix prints. Performing
the next steps will insure accurate reproduction of your
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Select the general tab and make the pdf file
acrobat 5 compatable. |
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PDF format files are compressed unless this
feature is switched off. Turn off all compression. |
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These selections insure correct color and
text display when Media Services open the pdf file for Fujix
production. Finally click export noting where the pdf file
is placed on your computer. All that is left is to upload
the file to Media Services and send notification. |
Getting your file to Media Services.
Find your pdf file in the file system and enter
a new file name of the form "lastname.image.pdf" where "lastname" is
your last name; "image" is a short term enabling you to distinguish
one file from another and "pdf" is "pdf". The
file names must be less than 27 characters long and contain no
spaces or non-alphanumeric characters such as slashes, colons,
parentheses, etc.
Submit your file for imaging. Send your pdf to the
makefujix directory using Media Services' File
Upload followed by an email (media@med.nyu.edu)
detailing the size, quantity and payment method.
If you are a member of the Skirball Institute using
a Macintosh computer, log on to Saturn, the institute file
server, and mount the volume "DMC"; it contains
a folder named "makefujix". Copy your file to
this directory followed by an email (media@med.nyu.edu)
detailing the size, quantity and payment method.
Mac Fujix Templates to
Download |
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Landscape |
Portrait |
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PC Fujix Templates to
Download |
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Landscape |
Portrait |
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