Package InDesign projects for printing & sharing

This video is excerpted from the Learn by Video Series Learnbyvideo.com

When it comes time to send your files to a printer for output or simply to another person so that they can work on a project, it's very important to include all of the fonts and linked graphics that are necessary to display your project properly.

The package command in InDesign makes quick work of this process. Let's take a look at this feature.

Now I'm beginning this video with the Package.indd file already open on my computer. And the scenario here is that I want to send this out to get printed or I need to send it to somebody else.

So to package this file, I'm going to go to the File Menu and I'm going to choose the Package command. Now the Package command by default is going to display a dialogue box. And it's essentially gonna run a quick pre-flight of the project.

So what we could do is, right now, it's displaying the summary. And it looks like we do have a message here about links. So what we could do is we can go into each one of these categories. So if I click on Fonts, it's gonna show me all the Fonts that are used in my project. And any of these categories, I can always click on the Show Problems Only checkbox. So that it only displays things that it considers a problem.

So I can go to the Links and Images category and we can see there if I choose Show Problems Only, the main issue here is that we have 20 images that use the RGB colors space. Now if you're not sure if that's acceptable or not, you might want to check with your printer or whoever you are sending this file to. But that may or may not actually be a serious problem.

Just keep in mind that InDesign is gonna notify you that they are RGB images. What I like about this dialogue is that I can at a glance, click on any of these images to see the Actual resolution versus the Effective resolution. So I can click on any one of these to see what I'm dealing with. So that is not in my opinion a problem for our particular project.

So I'll go ahead and move on to Colors and Inks. And we can see that we're using Four color process, and we are using an additional spot color. So keep that in mind that it may or may not be a problem. But just note that if you are getting this project printed, that would be an additional cost because that's an additional ink added to your job.

So the Print Settings is just going to find the current Print Settings that are defined in this project. Whoever you send this to is gonna utilize their own print settings anyway. And then, external plug-ins is gonna let you know if there's any external plug-ins that InDesign requires to display your content.

So once you've gone through this and everything looks okay, we can go ahead and click the Package button. And the first thing is going to happen is you're gonna get a little Printing Instructions window, where you can fill out your contact information and any additional instructions.

I'm going to go ahead and click Continue. And then it asks you where do you want to put this package. So this is gonna be the name of your folder. So we can call this whatever we want. I'll just leave it set to Package Folder. And down here, you can see that it's gonna copy your fonts, it's gonna copy any linked Graphics, and this third option is gonna update the Graphic Links to the link of this, InDesign document that we're putting in the Package Folder.

You can also, if you created any Hyphenation exceptions, you can turn that on as well. And if you have any fonts or links in Hidden and Non-Printing Content, so like a hidden layer or an item is flagged as non-printing, you can have the package command include those items as well. And then if you wish, you can also view the report that was generated with the package. In addition, you can always click on this Instructions button again to add some last minute details on the project.

I'm going to cancel all of that, and I'll save this to my Chapter 14 folder, and I'm just gonna click the Package command. And we do get a Warning just instructing you that Fonts are software and you should be careful who you send these to, comply with the copyright law of the font license. So we'll go ahead and click OK.

And now, InDesign is gonna package all of the components of this project. So I'm gonna go ahead and go to my Finder, and I'll just navigate to my Exercise Files folder to the Chapter 14 folder in the Package Folder. And we can see that all of the components for my project have been included. We have our InDesign document, we have all of the links that had been used inside of the project. And you also have your Fonts Folder as well. So this is the perfect way to make sure that all of your components are included.

And you can now zip this folder up, you can put it on a piece of media, and send it to the person. Or you can email it if it's small enough or send it via server. As you can see, when you need to send your document to someone else to work on, the package command ensures that all of the required elements for the project are included.