What we are going to do now is in the Pages palette jump across to the second spread, pages 3 and 4 by double-clicking the numbers over here on the right-hand side and we are going to generate a frame to bring an image in, in the background and then we will build some elements on top of it later on.
Now before we do that, we should make sure we have a layer reserved for all background images. So come back over to the Layers palette, hold down the Option key or the Alt key and click to create a brand new layer and this one we will be simply called Background Images. Now the selection Color here is set to Yellow, that's the next default color. You will notice that Blue, Red, Green, and Blue have already been used. Yellow comes next.
Now Yellow is one of those lighter colors that makes it slightly difficult to see a selected element when it's on a white background. So feel free to go down and choose something slightly darker maybe the Orange down here, so we can see the elements a bit more clearly as we draw them especially as this image frame will be transparent when we begin with.
So the color and the name is chosen. Let's go ahead and click OK. Then you will notice that the layer gets created at the very top of the list. Well, its name does suggest it's supposed to be in the background. So we change that by simply clicking-and-dragging that layer down in the list and you will notice this black line appears wherever it's going to be dropped. Make sure that appears at the very bottom behind Guides and let go, we are now set in the right place, the layer is selected. So anything we draw now will appear in the right place.
Now the next thing we need to do is draw a frame which can hold the image when it's imported and don't forget it doesn't really matter which one of these frame tools that we use because either one will be converted when we place an image into it. But just to keep things simple, let's use the Rectangle Frame Tool, the one with the diagonal line through it and anywhere on the page simply click-and-drag just to draw a single frame.
Now again you'll see it comes up with an orange border, very easy to locate. The next thing we want to do is get the Selection Tool back so we can highlight the corners and pull the shape around. Well, instead of going back to the Selection Tool every time and clicking it, instead hit the V key on the keyboard and that will access the tool for you. In fact, all of these tools are accessible by a keyboard shortcut, but V is the one of the most popular ones we will use and the reason for that is the same in Photoshop and the same in Illustrator. So another one that's very much worth learning.
Now we can grab the top center point here of the frame and drag it up, so it snaps into the top 20 millimeter guide. Let's do the same at the bottom and drag that down to the 170. Scroll the page over here again using the Spacebar, because we are not inside the type frame at this point. Drag that right-hand side over to the bleed, off the right-hand side of the spread and on the left-hand side let's do the same. Make sure we go five millimeters off the left-hand side of the page.
Now if we look in the Control palette at the top here, we can see the X and Y values like we've seen before showing that it is indeed 20 millimeters down the page. But this is the important thing, the Width is round about 315 millimeters, the Height is 115 millimeters. This is important, because we can use those figures to scale the Photoshop file that we are placing here to the right size before we bring it in and that ultimately saves the file size and speed both in working and printing at the end of the day. So a small enhancement to your workflow there.
Now, I said we are going to bring in the Photoshop file, but this file isn't actually a Photoshop document as yet. It's a Camera Raw file and we need to figure out a way that we can access it. We are going to use a brand new feature here of the Creative Suite 2.0 called Adobe Bridge and this is a wonderful new file browser and asset manager for any document on your computer, not just Adobe files and every CS2 program has access to it, usually from the Control palette like the one we have here in InDesign.
So in fact, if you go up to the upper right-hand size of the Control palette, you will see a small icon here as a folder with what looks like a shell graphic and the small magnifying glass in the corner. This is the icon that will take you to Bridge. Go ahead and click that and Adobe Bridge will launch into the foreground. Now, on the left-hand side here, we have a list of what's called the Favorites and this shows up with things like your Computer, access to Adobe Stock Photo so we can purchase and download images online. We have Version Cue access but we also have access to our main hard drive and the Desktop of the computer.
Now if you are on the PC, you may not be seeing your Desktop there depending on how the Preferences is set up. So just to show you how you can affect that, simply use the same keyboard shortcuts for Preferences here that we did inside of InDesign. Command+K or Ctrl+K on the PC will bring up the Bridge Preferences and in the General tab, the very first one, there is a list of Favorites down here at the bottom and Desktop is one of them. If I disable that, you will see Desktop does disappear on the left-hand side over here.
So make sure Desktop is turned on, then click OK and if you are on the Desktop here on and have it selected, you should see your Project Files for the Creative Suite 2. Now before we go into that, we want to make this a davorite as well. So it appears in this list, so we don't always have to navigate back to the Desktop. All you have to do is, any folder that you want to have as a favorite, simply click it and drag it over here on to the left-hand side. Now when you select that, it immediately goes into the contents of that folder. Now we can see all of our Project Files.
Now let's go into the Photoshop Files folder down here, just double-click to open that and you can see a series of preview icons for any of the images we have in this folder and also subfolders that you can navigate to as well.
Now one of the coolest things about Bridge is the ability to scale up the previews of the images, so you can see them a bit more clearly. Now as done down here on the lower right using this Slider Tool. So you can drag up and drag down to see more or less images, depends on how many you have in that folder, but it's very, very quick and fast. Again, it makes your workflow more efficient.
Now on the other side of things, we are currently looking an Icon View down in the lower right-hand side you have three more icons as to how these images are displayed. We can click on the second one which turns on what's called the Filmstrip View. Any image you click on now appears very large at the top with its file name and you can scroll through the list here at the bottom to look at the other images again in almost a full screen view.
So very cool indeed, and feel free to play around with those to discover which view you like the best.
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