From the course: InDesign 2024 Essential Training

Editing graphics in their original app - InDesign Tutorial

From the course: InDesign 2024 Essential Training

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Editing graphics in their original app

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- [Instructor] What if you put an image on your page and then realize you need to edit the image somehow? For example, I'd like to change the color of this graphic down here. Well, I could switch to Illustrator and then open the logo, assuming I know where it's saved on disk. But since I'm looking at it here in InDesign, it's far easier to use a feature in InDesign called Edit Original. Like so many other features in InDesign, you can find Edit Original in several different places. You could select the image and then go to the Edit menu and choose Edit Original down here. Or you could open the Links panel and then click on the Edit Original button, the one that looks like a little pencil. But the fastest way to get to Edit Original is just to Option + Double Click or Alt + Double Click on your image. That's all you need to do. When I Option or Alt Double Click on this image, it suddenly launches Illustrator and opens that graphic. Let's go ahead and change this color. This is inside a group, so I'll double click on it to go into Isolation mode. And now I can select it and Shift + Click this graphic down here, and I'll change the color to, say, this orange. I could fix those other colors too later, but for right now, all I'm going to do is save this document by pressing Command or Control + S. Then I'll close the document, go back to InDesign, and you can see that immediately the image updates. I don't have to go to the Links panel and choose Update. Why? Because when you choose Edit Original, InDesign knows that you're going to be editing it. It's just watching the graphic, just sitting there waiting for you to make a change. And as soon as you save and come back to InDesign, it updates automatically. Now, the funny thing is that InDesign actually has no idea what the original application is for these images. It depends entirely on the Mac or Windows operating system for this information. Basically, Edit Original is the same thing as double clicking on the image in a folder. And that means that sometimes it opens in the wrong program. For example, let's go ahead and change this image back here, behind that graphic. I'll select it, and then Option or Alt + Double Click on it. You can see that it opens in the Preview application on the Mac. That's not what I wanted. I wanted it in Photoshop. The same thing can happen in Windows. It opens in a completely wrong program. Fortunately, you can force InDesign to open it in a particular app, so I'm going to close that and go back to InDesign. This time, instead of using Edit Original, I'll go to the Edit menu and choose Edit With. Edit With lets me choose exactly which program I want to open the image with. In this case, it's Adobe Photoshop. I'll choose that, and now it's easy to make a change. For example, I'll just go to the Image menu and choose Adjustments, Brightness/Contrast. Let's make this a little bit brighter and click OK. Once again, I'll save with a Command or Control + S, switch back to InDesign, and InDesign updates it automatically. I'll close the links panel, and you can see there's the brighter version. Getting efficient with InDesign isn't just about InDesign, it's also about getting all these programs working together as smoothly as possible. The Edit Original and Edit With features are a big part of making that happen.

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