Preferences

Document-Specific and Global

A scary truth: many preferences that you may set are specific to the document that is open at the time. Other preferences are application-wide, or global. How do you tell the difference? There is no way to know other than through experience and testing! So, heed the following.

Warning: To ensure preferences are set consistently for all future documents you create, set those preferences with no documents open at all.

In the following sections, I will not define those preferences that are peripheral to the vast majority of users. It’s easy to get to the Preferences: ⌘-K/Ctrl-K. To get to the first nine pages of your preferences, use the ⌘/Ctrl key and the numbers 1 through 9. For example, to get to my Type preferences, I hold the ⌘/Ctrl key and type “K 3.”

General

The General section contains the preferences that don’t fit neatly in the other categories These are all global preferences.

Show “Start” Workspace When No Documents Are Open

If you like that large “welcome” screen—with a list of recent files, links to videos, etc.—to appear when you start InDesign, keep this checked.

Page Numbering

Larger documents can be broken up into sections. Often, we restart page numbering in each section (a book’s front matter may have lowercase Roman numerals, whereas the main content has Arabic numerals). The Pages panel will show this when you choose Section Numbering. When you choose Absolute Numbering, the Pages panel will be sequential. Of course, the pages themselves will show the numbering you’ve established. Absolute Numbering makes it easier to print the first, say, 20 pages of a document regardless of what number appears on each page.

Prevent Selection of Locked Objects

Locking objects prevents them from being moved or resized. However, they can still be altered (e.g., you could change their color) unless they are not selectable.

Apply to Content/Adjust Scaling Percentage

When you’re scaling an object, the object can “remember” how much it was enlarged or reduced. That is, with Adjust Scaling Percentage, a text frame enlarged by 50% will show a scaling of 150% in the Control panel ever after, making it easy to set it back to 100% if necessary. However, if the text size started at 12 points, for example, it will now read “12 pt (18 pt),” which can be confusing. If you liked the new frame size but you wanted the text to be 12 points again, you might have to set it to 8 points (1.5 x 8 = 12)! Headaches ensue. I recommend using Apply to Content to show only the current, actual size.

When Include Stroke Weight is checked, stroke weights increase or decrease when an object is scaled up or down. Sometimes you want that, sometimes you don’t. Thus, this is checked and unchecked often! There is a similar concern with Effects (such as drop shadows), which you can also check or uncheck here.

Interface

This is where you adjust the look and feel of InDesign. These are global preferences.

Appearance

How much light do you want shining at you?

Color Theme

This doesn’t actually have to do with colors at all; rather, it allows you to adjust the lightness of the panels that surround your document window.

Match Pasteboard to Theme Color

If this is unchecked, the pasteboard will be white.

Cursor and Gesture Options

Where you put your cursor makes a difference. These options determine what happens when you place your cursor in specific locations.

Tool Tips

These are the small identifying notes that appear when you hover your cursor over tools and other elements. Useful for new users, these impact performance.

Show Thumbnails on Place

This provides the small pictures of images you’re placing. This is most useful when you’re placing multiple images at once so you can decide which image to place where.

Enable Multi-Touch Gestures

If you use a trackpad, you can use touch gestures to scroll, for example.

Highlight Object Under Selection Tool

As you move your cursor, you will see indicators on the object that would be selected if you were to click where the cursor is located at that moment.

Panels

InDesign’s panel display is very customizable. We’ll cover more on this later in this chapter.

Floating Tools Panel

The Tools panel can be horizontal, vertical, or two tools wide and vertical. I like the space savings of the single column.

Auto-Collapse Icon Panels/Auto-Show Hidden Panels

If you use your Tab key to hide all your panels, and perhaps also collapse some panels to icons, moving your cursor to the sides of the document window will cause the panels to appear when Auto-Show Hidden Panels is selected. With Auto-Collapse Icon Panels selected, the panels will recollapse after you’ve moved on.

Options

When using the Hand tool or resizing objects, I prefer an accurate view of my layout. Thus:

Hand Tool

Choose No Greeking.

Live Screen Drawing

Choose Immediate, which is especially great when you’re resizing text frames.

Type

This section controls most text behavior. For some of these options, it’s as simple as “set and forget.” Other items you’ll return to many times during larger projects. Many of these options are document-specific.

Use Typographer’s Quotes

That is, “ or ”, rather than ". If you need the latter, use control-shift-’/Alt-Shift-’.

Type Tool Converts Frames to Text Frames

This global default allows you to click in any frame to convert it to a text frame.

Triple Click to Select a Line

I can think of no reason to disable this global default. It’s useful, and fun, to double-click to select a word, triple-click to select a line, quadruple-click to select a paragraph, and quintuple-click to select an entire story.

Apply Leading to Entire Paragraphs

I can think of very few times when I need to adjust leading on a character-by-character basis. This preference is document-specific, so I recommend setting it with no document open so it’s in effect for all future documents.

Drag and Drop Text Editing

This allows you to drag selected text to some other position. It is a global preference.

Smart Text Reflow

This allows you to control the automatic addition or deletion of pages when the content warrants it. The documents in which I use this feature are usually the ones in which I am using primary text frames. Thus, I leave a check mark in the box for Limit to Primary Text Frames. Most often, I choose to add or delete pages at the end of a story. If I predict that the addition or deletion of a page would disrupt subsequent spreads in the document that I need to keep intact, I will check the box for Preserve Facing-Page Spreads.

Advanced Type

I would suggest changing very little here unless you have a strong need for it.

Character Settings

Unless you are using OpenType fonts—in which the designer has likely included the size and position of superscripts, subscripts, and small caps—these settings establish those characteristics.

Input Method Options

Use Inline Input for Non-Latin Text

This is so you can simply enter non-Latin text (Asian characters, for example) more easily.

Missing Glyph Protection

These are more settings for Asian or Arabic text. If you type or have typed a specific glyph, InDesign will use a font that contains that character.

Type Contextual Controls

These are great ways to make yourself aware of advanced typographic features for individual letters or whole text frames.

Composition

These settings alert you to issues in your text and adjust the behavior of text wrap.

Highlight

Text that deviates from the settings you’ve chosen (in style definitions, for example) is highlighted, so you can quickly find, judge, and, if necessary, squash them.

Set these on a document-by-document basis.

Keep Violations

You will never incur a violation of your “keeps” settings, thus you’ll never see this highlighting.

H&J Violations

Text is highlighted when InDesign uses more than your maximum or less than your minimum word spacing, or when it uses more hyphens. The greater the violation, the yellower the highlighting.

Custom Tracking/Kerning

Kerning and tracking are facts of life. If you need to see where you made these adjustments, this preference will highlight them in green.

Substituted Fonts

When you have specified a font that is not installed for your text, InDesign will highlight it in pink.

Substituted Glyphs

When InDesign substitutes two or more letters with a ligature, for example, this choice will highlight that occurrence in gold.

Text Wrap

Justify Text Next to an Object

This option comes into play only when an object with text wrap divides lines of text—something you should never allow to happen.

Skip by Leading

When text wrap interrupts the flow of text in a column (for example, when using the Jump Object text wrap), this option ensures that when the text resumes, it will flow along the baseline grid. This presumes, of course, that you have set up your baseline grid to correspond to the leading of your text.

Text Wrap Only Affects Text Beneath

There are many good reasons to keep images below text frames, but you may still wish to have those images possess text wrap. Leave this unchecked.

Units & Increments

Here we decide how things measure up. There are enough units of measurement from which to choose to please just about everyone.

Ruler Units

To set the point from which things are measured (zero on the ruler), choose an Origin. The Origin can be the upper-left corner of a spread or an individual page. If you choose Spine, the values increase with distance from the spine. Note that your horizontal and vertical units of measurement can be different, and can be changed at any time by right-clicking on either ruler in your layout. You can even use custom increments. For example, I often set my vertical increment equal to my base leading.

Keyboard Increments

Cursor Key

The arrow keys can be used to move objects. If you select an object, the Cursor Key value is how far the object will be “nudged” when you press an arrow key.

Baseline Shift

To raise and lower selected text from its initial position, press option-Shift-↑ or ↓/Alt-Shift-↑
or ↓. Baseline Shift is the increment by which the text is moved.

Size/Leading

A keyboard shortcut can be used to adjust the size and leading of selected text according to the increment specified here. Press ⌘-shift-< or >/Ctrl-Shift-< or > to decrease or increase the size (respectively). To adjust the leading, press option-↑ or ↓/Alt-↑ or ↓.

Kerning/Tracking

Tapping the left or right arrow keys while holding the option/Alt key adjusts kerning (if your cursor is blinking between two letters) or tracking (if you have a range of text selected). As your eye attunes to these attributes, you may lower this value.

Grids

These document-specific preferences control the look and behavior of these grids. Grids are similar in behavior to guides (up next).

Baseline Grid

Horizontal lines are best incremented in a value equal to your document’s body copy leading. Here you specify the color and starting point of these horizontal lines, as well as the level of magnification at which they become visible (View Threshold). Although paragraph styles can be defined to make text snap to this baseline grid, I more often carefully set leading and spacing instead. For more on using baseline grids, see “Baseline Grid” (page 205).

Document Grid

This is a true grid for which you can choose the color and frequency. You can set a somewhat coarse grid with finer subdivisions that are displayed more faintly.

Guides & Pasteboard

These options provide you with even more ways to give structure to your layout. Here you set the appearance of your guides, when you are shown “Smart Guides,” and how much pasteboard there is around your spreads.

Guide Options

Choose how close (in screen pixels) an object should be to a guide for it to snap onto it. Also choose whether guides appear behind objects or not.

Smart Guide Options

Mysteriously, these are the only options in the Guides & Pasteboard section that are global. Smart Guides are the lines that appear as you drag objects around the page when those objects align either to other objects on the page or to landmarks of the page, spread, or margins.

Pasteboard Options

Set the amount of space you would like to have beyond the edge of your spread where you might place objects that you are not quite sure you wish to be without. Reminder: Objects on the pasteboard do not print nor export in a PDF.

Dictionary

Because we don’t always spell well.

Note: The dictionary is Hunspell, an open source dictionary used in many applications.

Language

This is where you select the language associated with the dictionary seen in the window below this menu (this is the only global dictionary setting). The window shows the location of the dictionary file(s). If you can make or procure a plain text file containing a list of words or phrases you commonly use, you can quickly add that list by clicking on the + below the small window. This is handy if you work in a specialized industry with a specialized vocabulary, and if you have time to create or find such a list.

Double Quotes and Single Quotes

Choose the style for quotation marks.

Hyphenation Exceptions

Over time, you may correct InDesign’s placement of hyphens. These corrections, or “Exceptions,” are typically stored in the User Dictionary. To be sure that all of the exceptions you have defined are used, choose User Dictionary and Document in the menu labeled Compose Using.

User Dictionary

To make your User Dictionary more portable, I suggest choosing to Merge User Dictionary into Document. This is especially valuable for templates.

Spelling

What’s your problem?

Find

Choose what commonly ails your text. These are the items that will be flagged when doing a spell check. Edit > Spelling > Check Spelling… or ⌘-I/Ctrl-I starts the process.

Dynamic Spelling

This is an ongoing spell check that colorfully underlines the problems above. This feature (and Autocorrect) can also be enabled by going to Edit > Spelling.

Autocorrect

As you write or edit in InDesign, Autocorrect will fix your most common errors. This is great for people like me, who type “t-e-h” instead of “the.” Add your most common gaffs here.

Notes

These options allow for the exchange of editorial information among users of a document. When writing or editing in InDesign, a user can right-click and choose New Note. Each user can have a unique, identifying color. We can include notes in spell check or find/change operations.

See Track Changes (next!) for how to configure a user.

Track Changes

Make clear what’s changed and by whom.

These global preferences control the look and feel of changes that are shown when editing in the Story Editor. Decide which changes are shown, and how to identify who made them.

Show

To define your user name and color, choose File > User…. The name and color you choose will be used for notes and tracked changes. When you exchange a document with someone else and they edit text in the Story Editor, their changes will appear with their color behind them. You can prevent clashes with the checkbox Prevent Duplicate User Colors.

Change Bars

Change Bars (which appear in the left margin of the Story Editor by default) make it easy to find changes quickly while scanning text.

Finally, I check the box labeled Include Deleted Text When Spellchecking in case I later reject those deletions and the text makes its way back into my publication.

Story Editor Display

Just you and the words.

Text Display Options and Cursor Options

To see your text without the distractions of the layout, turn to the Story Editor. You can also view notes and tracked changes there. Since the Story Editor is only an editorial tool, and is not visible in the final published piece, you can choose how to display it. Sometimes, I use the old computer terminal theme­—it reminds me of when I was young.

Display Performance

Control how hard InDesign works to make its content look good. Note the word “performance.” These settings can enhance or degrade the speed with which InDesign displays text and images. The print quality of your document is not affected by these settings at all.

Default View

There are three choices: Fast, Typical, and High Quality. Fast doesn’t display images at all, but instead shows gray boxes or shapes—rather brutal. By default, Typical shows a “proxy” that InDesign generates for each image, the quality of which could be startling, especially to the supervisor looking over your shoulder. High Quality renders images, graphics, and anything transparent without compromise. For small documents, you may use High Quality without much penalty. Larger and more graphically rich documents will become sluggish unless you reduce the Display Performance view.

Adjust View Settings

You may tweak each of the view settings to better tune the performance of InDesign. For example, you may want to adjust Typical to have low-quality Transparency but high-quality Vector Graphics (AI and PDF files, for example) so your company’s logo will look splendid when your boss sees it, and leave Raster Images (those made of pixels) as a proxy.

GPU Performance

If your computer supports it, use it! Although using the computer’s graphics processor for some functions does speed things up, I still prefer to use a non-animated zoom. Holding down the Z key and drawing a box around what I wish to view closely is faster and more precise (unless I’m editing text, in which case I hold down ⌘-spacebar/Ctrl-spacebar). Oddly, as of this writing, the GPU will not appear supported unless you’re also taxing it with a “high dpi” display.

Appearance of Black

A needlessly confusing choice of the appearance of black!

On Screen

I choose to display all blacks accurately on-screen. This means that items that use the pure black (100% K) swatch will look slightly lighter (more gray) than a rich black, which is made from black ink plus a bit of others, too.

Printing/Exporting

This is the confusing one. Choose Output All Blacks as Rich Black, then hover your cursor over that choice and note the description below that attempts—but fails—to clarify. What it means is that on a device that has only black ink or toner, both rich blacks and pure blacks will print as dark as possible. The phrase “RGB devices” refers to common desktop inkjet printers! However, with this choice, full color laser printers and printing presses (true CMYK devices) will still produce blacks accurately: pure black will use black ink or toner only, and rich black will be output as designed. Since I output to all of these devices, I choose the confusing Output All Blacks as Rich Black setting. It works!

File Handling

Crash recovery and link juggling are the main fare here.

Document Recovery Data

Unlimited undo and the ability to resume work after a crash is made possible by a recovery file InDesign creates for you. When working on an existing InDesign file, the recovery file will be in the same folder. Until a new document is saved, the location shown in this preference is where the file is stored.

Saving InDesign Files

A favorite way to open ongoing projects is by going to File > Open Recent. You can alter how many (if any) files are listed there. Also in the File menu is Browse in Bridge…. Bridge is an Adobe application for browsing the files on your computer. Its thumbnails are usually more helpful than the operating system’s, and if you click on one, you can use Bridge’s preview panel to flip through as many pages of an InDesign document as you specify here in the Pages menu of this preference. This is useful when the file is named “untitled 14.indd.”

Snippet Import

InDesign offers numerous ways to save and reuse bits of your layouts: CC Libraries, library documents (.indl file), and snippets. You can select a text frame, for example, and choose File > Export… to export it as an InDesign Snippet (.idms file). These files are lightweight and can be emailed and later placed into other InDesign documents, bringing along any styles they use. This preference determines where the placed snippet will land: where you click with your loaded cursor (Cursor Location) or in the same relative position the object had on its oringal page (Original Location).

Links

The mysterious connections between our linked files and the InDesign documents in which they appear can be made a little clearer here.

Check Links Before Opening Document

The key word here is “Before.” With this option disabled, InDesign will still check your links’ status, but will do so after the document is opened, which makes the opening of files more rapid.

Find Missing Links Before Opening Document

When opening a document, it can be helpful to get a heads-up when something is wrong. If you have images linked to your InDesign document and some of them have gone missing, you likely want to know that sooner rather than later. However, there may be times when you willingly work on a document whose images you know to be missing, and you would prefer not to have the annoyance of a message telling you so. When that is the case, I enable this preference so InDesign may find the image in a recently used folder, for example. It’s also possible, however, that in an attempt to find a missing link in folders you’ve recently linked to, InDesign will link to the wrong version of an image. If you experience this behavior, disable this preference and manually locate the correct missing linked file.

Create Links When Placing Text and Spreadsheet Files

As with images, you can place text files and maintain a link to the original. However, without the help of a third-party plug-in like WordsFlow by Em Software, the formatting you may have done in InDesign is lost when you update those links.

Preserve Image Dimensions When Relinking

Typically, when you swap the content of an image frame with another image, InDesign will attempt to make the proportions of the new image match those of the previous image. For example, if the frame has been resized to show only a third of the original image, InDesign will attempt to show only a third of the new image in that frame. This is fine for images with similar subject matter and/or proportions, but when the new image has little connection to the original, you may wish to decide for yourself how that image will fit its frame by disabling this setting.

Hide New Layers When Updating or Relinking

Images produced in Photoshop or graphics created in Illustrator typically have layers. When you place these kinds of documents (.psd or .ai), you can choose which layers are visible in InDesign. If you subsequently edit a document, and those edits introduce new layers to the structure of the document, this setting determines whether those new layers are visible when you update the link.

Clipboard Handling

Material that is copied or cut lives in the system clipboard. Here, we determine what InDesign reads from or writes to that clipboard.

Clipboard

Whether it’s inbound or outbound, you can choose to preserve the structure or appearance of what you put on your clipboard.

Prefer PDF When Pasting

I sometimes generate objects in other applications such as Illustrator. Most often, I simply place that Illustrator document as a link into my InDesign publication. However, sometimes I need the shape I have drawn in Illustrator as an editable shape in InDesign. Since Illustrator provides both the path data and the PDF data to the clipboard, I disable this setting to get the path data into InDesign.

Copy PDF to Clipboard

When I need to provide something I have created in InDesign to another application, and I need to preserve its appearance, my odds of success are better if what I copy to the clipboard is PDF data. If I suspect I will be pasting this data after I quit InDesign, I enable the option just below this one.

Preserve PDF Data at Quit

This allows me to paste copied PDF data after InDesign has quit.

When Pasting Text and Tables from Other Applications Paste

Content you have copied from Microsoft Word or Apple Pages (for example) can be pasted as rich text (All Information) or as plain text (Text Only). Pasted plain text inherits the formatting that is active at the insertion point in InDesign.

Publish Online

A fixed-layout ePub, which is readable in a browser and hosted by Adobe, is the product of this feature.

Disable Publish Online

If you do not wish to be tempted by this feature, disable it! Otherwise, you can experiment with InDesign’s interactive and animation features and share the results with colleagues or friends.