Click on any phrase to play the video from that point.
[What's new in Adobe® InDesign® CS5.5]
Hi, I'm Colin Fleming and we're going to take a look at some of the new features
in InDesign CS5.5 for building EPUBs.
Now, one of the cool challenges that we faced in the past about building an EPUB
has to do with some of the presentation.
This comes in two different ways for me.
On the one hand, there's the idea of that first image,
that title page in your publication,
and I try to call these title pages.
It's a collection of text and graphics.
It's a look and a feel which introduces the book.
I'm going to talk about how I build title pages.
But the other thing, which is new CS5.5, is building covers,
and a cover is important because that's what's visible in certain e-book readers.
I'll see that on the shelf in iBooks, for instance, on the iPad.
So this is a two-topic tip.
One is having to do with title pages,
the other is covers, so let's take a look at the new features
and how I address these.
So I'm taking a look at my InDesign document here
and what I want to do is take this group of elements
and I want to turn these into a title page.
Now, in a previous video, I had these pieces.
It's a combination of vector objects, text, images, and drawn objects.
I simply grouped them and I added them to the article panel
so that they'll be exported as the first thing.
Now, what I need to do is make sure that all of these elements go out
the way they look right now.
The challenge here is these are discrete objects
and if I just plain export, I'll get those objects in the order in which they show up
as the group.
It's not what I want as a title page.
So what I need to do is tell InDesign I want to take this group
and I want to do something special with it.
What I'm going to do is rasterize it on output,
so let's take a look at a new command in InDesign CS5.5
and this is Object Export Options
and this is the key to some really cool features.
What I'm doing is looking at the EPUB in HTML options.
I'm going to take this group and I'm going to rasterize it.
I'm going to keep the size relative to the width of the page
and I'll choose a resolution: 150 PPI ought to do it for me.
Now, this is simply a matter of going out as a JPG.
I like the quality, and so I've now said take the group and rasterize it as output.
Since the group is in the article panel and it's the first thing,
now it shows up as a title page.
This rocks. I've got great representation in my reader.
But what about that cover?
That thing that shows up on the bookshelf, not when I open the book?
So the way I address this is I might consider building some custom artwork.
For instance, here's a JPG that I want to have show up as the object on the shelf.
This is maybe the dust jacket.
So I've built a special piece of artwork that's really going to stand out
and represent my document on a bookshelf.
Now it's a matter of injecting it into the EPUB.
So let's take a look at the new EPUB Export command.
So one thing we're going to notice is we now just plain use the Export command.
EPUB has been rewritten; I choose it as a format here.
Let's go to the desktop on my machine
and let's take a look at some of the new options.
The ones we're going to really focus on right here, right now
is the second group here in the General Settings
where it talks about the cover.
Now, I could choose No Cover Image. The title page still goes out.
But with no cover page, I do not add a custom image to the bookshelf.
I get a generic representation of the book.
On the other hand, I could choose to rasterize that first page.
Now, this is different than the title page, but by rasterizing the first page
and generating a cover, we now write the code inside of the EPUB
which is the cover works differently.
It's part of a metadata, it's part of the code.
Now, the third option, which is what I'm going to use here,
is Use an Existing Image,
and I simply choose and then navigate to that piece of content
and select my custom image, and now it will be inserted as the cover.
So let's take a look at this publication on the iPad.
So here I am looking at iBooks.
We can see in the upper left-hand corner, there's my custom cover.
When I open it up, here's my title page.
It's looking really nice and good.
I can simply flip through and move into the content and into the publication
anywhere that I want.
I can change the size of the font and everything reflows,
and that's one of the beauties of an EPUB.
So there you go.
A couple of new features, a couple twists on how I do things.
I really like building the title page using native elements in InDesign,
a mix of graphics and text, grouping them, adding them to the article panel
and then doing a custom rasterization so it goes out as a single object
instead of breaking it into separate pieces
and then building the custom cover to look really good on the shelf.
There you go--new ideas, new tools, all inside of InDesign CS5.5
Have fun.
