Adobe Creative Cloud Design Tools All-in-One For Dummies

Chapter 4: Drawing in InDesign

In This Chapter

• Discovering the drawing tools
• Drawing and editing shapes and paths
• Introducing corner effects
• Working with fills and layers
• Creating QR Codes

Many of the tools you find in the InDesign Tools panel are used for drawing lines and shapes on a page, so you have several different ways of creating interesting drawings for your publications. You can create anything from basic shapes to intricate drawings inside InDesign, instead of having to use a drawing program such as Illustrator. Even though InDesign doesn't replace Illustrator (see Book III), which has many more versatile drawing tools and options for creating intricate drawings, InDesign is adequate for many drawing tasks. In this chapter, you discover how to use the most popular InDesign drawing tools and how to add colorful fills to illustrations.

Even if you don't think you'll be drawing using InDesign, you should still take a look at the sections “Modifying Frame Corners” and “Using Fills,” later in this chapter, before jumping ahead.

Getting Started with Drawing

When you're creating a document, you may want drawn shapes and paths to be parts of the layout. For example, you may want to have a star shape for a yearbook page about a talent show or to run text along a path. Whatever it is you need to do, you can draw shapes and paths to get the job done.

Paths and shapes

Paths can take a few different formats. They can either be open or closed and with or without a stroke:

• Path: ...