Choosing a page size for Indesign documents is generally part of the initial setup procedure, but you can can change the size of all pages or selected pages any time within the design process. We show you how in our Adobe Indesign courses.
If you are creating a new document from scratch you first got to File > New > Document, and a dialog box will open. Here you would specify the page size, number of pages, margins and columns sizes, as well as orientation and bleed and slug.
Note the various Preset sizes in the drop-down list. You can use standard page sizes, like A4 or A3, etc. Or you can create your own custom size simply by punching in the values. Note that the 2 main types of presets are in Metric and Imperial measurements.
You can specify the number of pages here, or simply add or delete pages later in the Pages panel. You can also choose whether to have Facing Pages, ie. double-page spreads (for printing), or single tiled pages, as in a screen-based document. This you can also change later – in fact all the values can be altered as you proceed in the design.
Bleed is a guide around the edge of the page, used when printing commercially and you want the images or coloured sidebars to be printed to the edge of the paper. This is usually between 2 and 5mm, depending on your printer’s specifications. Slug is only really used by newspapers and publishing – it’s usually 10mm at the bottom of the page. Leave it at zero usually. Hit OK and your new document will open.
Page sizes can be altered later in File > Document Setup. Margins and columns can be adjusted later in the Layout drop down > Margins and Columns. Note that if you download a templte from the internet, often it’ll be in inches. Therefore you can keep the design but change the page size to Metric in File > Document Setup.
Another useful feature was added in CS4, the Page tool. This allows you to change the size of any one particular page. Just go to that page in the Pages panel and then click on the Page Tool. At the top Control Panel you’ll see various options for that one page, eg. orientation and page size. This is good for creating flyers of different sizes which share the same basic design elements. Page are set up and text or graphics simply copied form one page to another. The whole document can then be outputted as a single PDF for printing.
More tips can be found at the Sydney Indesign User Group which meets regularly in the city, and is a free forum for designers to discuss topics and the latest Indesign features. See many examples of our own clients’ work on our Facebook page.
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Indesign page size
Jul20