Adding graphics to a document

At this point, we're now ready to start incorporating graphics into the newsletter. InDesign enables us to use a wide variety of image file formats in our layout. Once the images are placed in the document, we can perform some minor adjustments to them to make them look their best. We have a number of images to incorporate into the newsletter, including photographs and illustrations.

Understanding image file formats

There are many different types of image file formats available, and choosing the correct file format for the type of project you're working on is important. Certain file formats work better for print, while others are better for web and screen use. Depending on the output of our document, we'll want to make sure we're working with the appropriate file types in our document.

The following table lists some common image file formats, as well as whether they're best suited for print or screen use.

Additionally, InDesign supports placing both Photoshop (.psd) and Illustrator (.ai) documents into a publication.

Understanding image resolution

Every image we work with is made up of millions of dots of color - when we look at these images on our screen or on paper, our eyes resolve those dots into a picture. Resolution refers to the amount of these dots of color that are displayed per linear unit of surface, typically represented in dots per inch (dpi) in print or pixels per inch (ppi) for screens. When we print an image, the pixels we see on our screen are translated to dots of ink on the page. If the image has a high resolution, more dots of ink will be printed on a linear inch of paper, resulting in a smooth transition of color and a high-quality image. If we have too low of a resolution, fewer dots of ink are printed per linear inch, resulting in images that look grainy or blurry. When incorporating images into documents destined for print, a good rule of thumb is to use images that have a resolution of at least 150 dpi or higher, to ensure they print in high quality.

NOTE: To learn more about creating graphics for print use, consider enrolling in the IT Training courses Photoshop: The Basics and Illustrator: The Basics.

Placing an image into a document

Now that we have most of the text contents of the newsletter in place, it's time to start adding images to it. We'll start by placing a photograph of a dog and a cat snuggling on the front page of the newsletter.

Before we place the file, we'll need to switch to the Selection tool, as well as make sure nothing is currently selected in the document. This is important when placing images that we want to stand on their own and not move along with the text.

If we were to have the Type tool active and went to place an image while the type cursor was active in the text, InDesign would place the image wherever our cursor is located and the image would be treated as an inline graphic. An inline graphic is one that is anchored to the point in the text where it was inserted, and will move along with the text that it's anchored to.

While there may be instances where we'd want to include an inline graphic, for today's newsletter, we'll be placing this image as an independent graphic, which isn't anchored to a specific location in the text. We'll have the freedom to move this graphic wherever we want within the newsletter.

Let's place the first image, cat and dog.tif. We'll place it near the lower left corner of the main article on the front page. Before we do that, to help us place the image, let's switch our view mode back to Normal so the grid and frame outlines reappear.

The image has been placed, but it's rather large:

Thankfully, we can make this image a little smaller without leaving InDesign.

NOTE: When placing images in InDesign, occasionally the image may appear blurry even though it's a high-quality image. This is due to InDesign adjusting the display quality of an image in order to improve the application's performance. To switch to viewing a high-quality version of the image, Right-click the image, Point Display Performance, Click High Quality Display.

Resizing an image

Resizing an image in InDesign means working with two different elements: the image itself and the frame that holds the image. While being able to adjust both the image and its frame separately can be useful, it can also make resizing an image a frustrating task if we don't remember we need to work with both elements at the same time.

Thankfully, by pressing and holding the Control key and Shift key while pressing and dragging one of the handles of a image's frame, we can resize both the frame and the image at the same time. Holding down the Control key allows us to resize the image and its frame simultaneously, while holding down the Shift key forces the image to resize proportionally.

NOTE: While making a large image smaller in InDesign won't change the image's quality, keep in mind that enlarging an image that's too small will likely result in a low-quality, blurry-looking image when printed.

Let's resize the image and its frame so it's the same width as the column of text.

The image now fits on the page a little better. However, the article's text is flowing underneath the image. We can fix that by applying a text wrap to the image.

Applying text wrap to an image

Wrapping text around a graphic frame works just the same as it does for text frames — just like we've done with text frames, all we need to do is select the frame we want to apply the wrap to, then choose the type of wrap and apply offset spacing if desired.

Since this image is at the bottom of the column, to avoid having a single line of text trapped under the image, let's apply a jump to next column text wrap to the image.

At this point, the first page of the newsletter should look like the image in the following accordion: 

Placing additional images

Now that we've added an image to the first page, let's add some images to page 2 of the newsletter. The first image will go in the upper right corner of the page, and the second one will span the bottom of all three columns. Just like we did with the image on the first page, we'll also apply text wraps to the images.

Let's start with the image that's going in the upper right corner of page 2, dog at vet.tif.

The next image we place will be cat outdoors.tif. We want it to span all three columns at the bottom of the page. Since the image is a little larger than we need it to be, we'll use a different method of placing the image to ensure it fits without us needing to resize it afterwards — instead of clicking once to place the image, we'll press and drag to create a frame of a specific size that the image will be placed in once we let go of the mouse. Once the image is placed, we'll apply a text wrap to it like we've done with the other images.

At this point, page 2 should look like the image in the following accordion fold: 

There's one more image we need to add to the front page of the newsletter. As we add it, we'll learn a new technique for working with images.

Resizing an image's frame without resizing the image itself

As mentioned previously in the course, everything in our layout is contained inside frames. A frame and the content inside of it can be manipulated independently of each other, enabling us to resize existing frames and position the content inside however we want to.

For the sidebar article on the front page of the newsletter, we have a picture of a dog that we want to include with the article. However, the image is landscape-oriented, and the space we want to place the image into (roughly inside the guide lines for the third column) is portrait-oriented. Since we can manipulate a frame without changing it's contents, once we place the picture of the dog, we'll adjust the size of the frame so it fits better inside the sidebar article.

Let's go ahead and place the file binky.tif on the front page inside the sidebar article — we'll position the image so the left edge of the image is aligned with the left margin of the third column, at the 7.5 inch mark on the vertical ruler. This time, instead of pressing and dragging to resize a frame, we'll use the Width and Height fields on the left side of the Control panel to precisely adjust the frame's width.

The frame is resized, but now half of the dog is obscured because they're outside of the frame. This is easily fixable.

Using the Content Grabber to reposition content inside a frame

Since we resized the frame for thedog photo without resizing the image itself, half of the image is no longer visible. The full contents of the image still exist, though — in order to see all of the dog, all we need to do is reposition the image inside the frame. One way we can do this is by using the Content Grabber, which allows us to select and move images inside of a frame.

The Content Grabber looks like a small circle inside a larger circle, and is visible in the center of an image's frame when we hover the cursor over it with the Selection tool active:

Once it's visible, we can click and drag the Content Grabber to move a frame's contents to a new position inside the frame.

Let's use the Content Grabber to reposition the contents of the frame so we can see all of the dog. Once we're done, we'll apply a text wrap to the image, then save our work.

The sidebar article should now look like the following image: