As we can see the image is pixelated even though its a vector image, when the image is placed in indesign it establishes a link with the original file. The links palette on the left gives us information about the placed images (links). Hovering over the link gives us information about the files original location.
links palette
Indesign does this so the software doesn't slow down, if we were working on a full publication the file size would be huge which would have an effect on the speed of the computer. It means that specialist equipment isn't needed to make publications etc...
The display performance can be changed by going to view, diplay performance. This brings up several options,; high quality improves the quality and fast quality creates just a blank grey box meaning the images can't be previewed but they still print fine. This was used more in the past for slower computers.
Fast quality image
When placing a linked image on indesign and it is too large we can scale the image down to the prefered size, we can then view the scale on the link palette. This means we can edit the image size on photoshop and it'll change on indesign because it's a linked file.
To open an image the image in photoshop we can simply rightclick, edit with and select photoshop. An even simpler way is the shortcut which is 'Alt and double click' It's then just a simple case of editing the image size to the percentage the image is scaled to on indesign, save the image and should automatically change on indesign.
image size %
Pressing 'W' is a shortcut for previewing what the document will look like if printed.
Text wrap
To open text wrap tool palette go to window and tick text wrap. This will make a little box appear;
Text wrap box
It allows us to position text around an image with a white gutter around the image. We can also apply this so the text wraps around transparent images by choosing the text wrap object tool and alpha channel;
We can also draw a frame using the pen tool and fill that shape with text by going to object, content and assign to text;
Colour
To add new colour swatch click on the edit menu of the swatch;
Print
We can change the PDF quality by going file, adobe PDF presets. Press quality is the highest quality is for final prints and publications, where as smallest file size is more for screen because when it's printed it'll print poor. High quality is the middle and is reasonably good for our work print outs but not for professional prints.
