[music] [Angelo Montilla] Hey, everyone. My name is Angelo Montilla and welcome to my Adobe MAX 2024 virtual session Techniques to Maximize Automation and AI Tools in InDesign. Over the next 30 minutes, I'll go over some neat tips and tricks on how to save time and improve your workflow by using automation tools and new AI features in Adobe InDesign. Follow along as I go over how to use Auto Style to create style variations in a layout, generate images using text prompts with Text to Image, apply subject-aware Text Wrap to artwork, and much, much more. Before we get started, let me introduce myself and talk a little bit more about today's session. So once again, welcome to this session, Techniques to maximize automation and AI tools in InDesign. My name is Angelo Montilla. I'm an Adobe Certified Professional in Print and Digital Media Publication using InDesign. I'm a visual designer and YouTube content creator based in Ontario, Canada. I specialize in editorial design, digital publishing, and marketing design. If you'd like to connect with me, there's a QR code in the bottom left-hand corner that you can scan. That'll take you to my link tree with all my social media links and my website. So once again, welcome to this session, Techniques to Maximize Automation and AI Tools in Indesign. So over the next 30 minutes, you'll learn how to use Auto Style to create style variations in a layout. We'll convert Paragraph Styles to Style Packs. We'll generate visual content with Text to Image. This is newly implemented in InDesign, and it's still in beta. I'll show you how to write and refine prompt descriptions to get the best results and the best variations. We'll also go over how to apply subject-aware Text Wrap to flow text around the subject in an image while retaining the background. This is using the powerful Select Subject Text Wrap. We'll also go over how to expand images with the AI-powered generative expand, also still in beta. This allows you to easily expand an image's information to fill space around a subject. Now, the premise of this session is to boost productivity and streamline your workflow. So whether you're creating magazines, brochures, posters, slide deck presentations much like this one, or even social media assets, InDesign workflows can be complex and repetitive in nature. Integrating automation and new AI tools can streamline your workflow and reduce tedious formatting tasks. So the idea here is to save time and improve workflow, essentially making the design process that much easier. So three advantages of using generative AI in design. So the first, save time with Generative AI. Using Generative AI and automation as a design assisting tool can save you time and allow you to focus on other creative tasks. Selecting subjects and removing backgrounds, generating images and automating text styles are just a few of the time-saving tasks AI can handle. This one's a big one. Getting Inspiration. If you're stuck on a project or unsure where to begin, GenAI can get your creative ball rolling. Use text prompts to spark ideas if you're looking to generate specific images, or Artwork for a project. Once you have the creative foundation in place, the design process becomes that much easier. And lastly, Refine And Customize Results. You're never tied to a single set of variations with Generative AI. If you're not pleased with the results, continue iterating and refining text prompts until you get a more specific result. Here are three examples of how automation and AI tools can save you time as you're working. First, reduce the time searching for photos with Text to Image. Now this may not be specific to your project, but Text to Image reduces the time spent searching for stock images. This AI-powered tool is trained to generate content from the Adobe Stock library. While this may not be the solution for your project-specific tasks, the Text to Image tool is a great way to generate generic content on the fly.
Secondly, limit the time styling and typesetting text. Styling text can become laborious in InDesign, especially if you're working with large, multi-page documents. A Style Pack is essentially a group of paragraph styles that can be applied to a group of text frames simultaneously. You could see an example of that on the right-hand side where I have the same layout but two different themes applied to it using Style Packs and Auto Style, and we'll go over that in this session. You'll also minimize the time spent editing images separately, especially when you're using Text Wrap. Applying a Text Wrap in InDesign can often require editing the image in Photoshop first, specifically ones that involve creating paths. Powered by Adobe Sensei, the Select Subject text wrap detects a subject or subjects in an image and automatically wraps text without having to edit the content first in Photoshop. These are just a few of the time-saving tips and tricks using automation and AI. Let's jump into InDesign to learn more. In this first exercise, let's look at how to use Auto Style to create style variations in a layout. Now for this, we'll need to convert paragraph styles, grouped paragraph styles into Style Packs. Now, if you look at my screen, I have a two-page document here for a slide presentation for this 2024 agriculture Report. Now the first page uses sans-serif fonts and if I open my Layers panel here, I have all the text elements on one layer and then everything else is locked on this Content layer. And if I open my Paragraph Styles, I've gone ahead and created two grouped Paragraph Styles. The first is called Layout 1 and if I click on the Main Title, you could see that it says Main Title, if I click on this text frame up top, AGRICULTURE REPORT, there it's called page label. And then you get the point here. If I click Body Copy, there's Body Copy. And alternatively, if I click on page two, it's the same thing, only it's using the Layout 2 grouped Paragraph Styles. And again, this is using a serif font theme. So if I click on Main Title, you see that that is Main Title and so on. Now what I would like to do, is contain both these themes in one layout and toggle between the two using Auto Style. But first, we have to create those Style Packs. So to create a Style Pack, I'm just going to close the paragraphs window briefly and go back to page one. And because I want to contain both of these on a single page, I'm going to click on the second spread or the second page and just delete it. Now don't worry, we're going to still have those styles in place because I've saved them as a group in the Paragraph Styles. Now there are two ways of accessing the Style Packs. If I open up my paragraph styles window again and click on the paragraph style options, you'll see it here, you can create a new Style Pack. However, there is a dedicated panel for the Style Packs. If you go up to Window and then Styles and choose Style Packs, and you'll see that there are already some preset Style Packs available that you can try out and test out for yourself. But you can also click New Style Pack in the bottom right-hand corner of this window. Now because this is a Sans Serif theme, I'll make my Style Pack name Sans Serif. And down below you can assign the paragraph styles in the Style Pack. So for example, I called mine main title. That would be your heading and you can assign them one by one. But I'm going to show you a quicker way. So once you have your Style Pack name, just go ahead and click Create. I'm just going to close this Style Pack window. You'll notice that I have a Style Pack called Sans Serif down below, and if I expand that folder, it has all the preset paragraph styles within this Style Pack. However, we're not going to use these. So I'm just going to click on the first, hold my Shift key and click the last one, which is bulleted list, and then just click on this trash can to delete it. Now before I drag these into this Style Pack, I'm going to duplicate this. So I'm going to right-click and duplicate Style Pack. And you can see I have a copy of the Sans Serif. I'm just going to double-click it and I'm going to change this to serif and then just get rid of the word copy and click OK. Now I'm just going to drag the Serif Style Pack underneath and then expand the two. So again, I'm just going to be dragging my existing paragraph styles into these Style Packs which will allow for that automation. It's also important to note that your paragraph style names in both groups should be the same. So as an example, I'm going to click on Body Copy and hold my Shift key and click on info text and then just drag all of these into the Sans Serif Style Pack folder. Let's do the same thing for the layout two grouped paragraph styles. Click on body copy, hold Shift and then click on info text and drag those into the Serif Style Pack. Now you can delete these groups, Layout 1 and Layout 2. That's optional. I'll just leave them there for now. So now I have my Sans Serif Style Pack and my serif Style Pack. So if I just zoom out a little bit and move the page to the right here or the left, I'm going to show you how this works. So I'm going to select all the text. Remember I have those on separate layers and you can see that. And I'll assign the Sans Serif style to this, which it already is applied. However, if I click on Serif, you'll see that it toggles between those two styles using the automation we set up with Auto Style. So again, this is a efficient way of toggling between the two themes without having them on separate pages. And again, it's all about improving your workflow and working more efficiently. Let's move on to the next exercise in the session where I'll go over how to use the newly integrated Text to Image feature to generate visual content. In this next part, we'll generate images and artwork using text prompts. In order to do this, we'll need to open the Text to Image panel, which can be located by going to window and then choosing Text to Image beta. Now you can see I already have mine open here and I'll just tear it off so you could see it a little bit better. If you look at my pages panel, I'm working on a digital ad campaign with two sizes. The first is 600 by 300 and the second is 300 by 250. Let's focus on the first one. And so I have a placeholder image here. I'm just going to press W on my keyboard so you could see that. I have the placeholder image. And we're going to type a text prompt to generate a generic image that goes along with this School Of Science ad that I have here. So with the image selected, I'm going to place my cursor in the Prompt text field here and start typing Prompt that I want. And in this case, I'm just going to type medical research scientist hands comma, close up. I just want the hands in this case and no face because I really want this to be generic. So close up, working in a laboratory, again. I want it to be bright and modern. And I think that's detailed enough. Let's see what it comes up with. But before we do, we have to choose the Content Type. And in this case, I do want a photo. Under the aspect ratio, if you had a specific aspect ratio, say a one-by-one, you would choose that. There are other aspect ratio dimensions here. Vertical, widescreen, 16 by nine, a one-by-one portrait, three-by-four, and then a landscape four by three. But because I created a specific image frame here, I'm going to choose frame dimensions for this custom frame that's been created here. So once you have those two settings in place, you can simply click Generate and see what the variations will look like. Now, that takes a few moments, but you could see that the Text to Image is generating three variations to look at. Let's have a look. That takes a few moments and you could see it does a pretty good job at generating what I'm looking for. Now with hands that could be tricky sometimes, but I think it's done a pretty good job. And you're presented with three variations. So there's the first, there's the second, that one does have a face. And then the third one. I do like that. However, if you're not happy with these results, you could just click generate again to generate three more. So that'll take a few minutes again, or a few moments, I should say. And let's see what the next three look like.
You can see that's just working through there. That one's a pretty good one. And we have two others to look at. I like that. And there's the third. Oh, I really like that one. I think I'm going to stick with this one for this 600 by 300 ad that I have here. Now here's the cool part. These are saved in the variation. So if I wanted to add a different image to another ad within this campaign, I would just double-click it, click on this image placeholder that I have here, this frame, and choose a different version and then just adjust accordingly. Maybe that one doesn't fit the way I want it. This one looks pretty good. So I would just click on the content grabber and adjust just the way I want it. So now I have two ads here, one that is sized differently and they have two different images placed inside. That's how you generate photos using Text to Image. Let's go over how to generate artwork using the same method. I've opened the begin travel poster, which is included in the exercise two folder. And for this, we're going to generate artwork instead of photos. Once again, I have a placeholder image frame at the top of this poster, which is for a design workshop series. And you could see down below it has some dates. And this poster, this event in particular, the series is going to be held in London, England. Now, I want to generate a cool vintage illustration of London, England, and we're going to do that using Text Prompts again. So with the image selected, once again, click inside the text Prompt field. And for this, I'm going to type in, Vintage travel illustration from London, England comma again, and I want a double decker bus, comma, I'd like cobblestone road. And I'd like this poster to have a dusk feeling to it as well, the illustration. So under the content type instead of photo, we're going to choose art. And again, because this is a custom frame, I'm going to choose Frame dimensions. Again, I have my Prompt, my Content Type and Aspect Ratio all in place. We can go ahead and click Generate. Now, this is still going to generate an image of the illustration and not a vector file that can be edited. Again, that'll take a few moments to generate three for us. And once it does, you'll see that it comes up with some really cool artwork, illustrations for us. And so there's the first, there's the second, and there's the third. I think I like the first one in this case, so I'm going to stick with that one. Now, it's also important to note that if I click on my links panel in the upper right-hand corner you'll see the link is called GenAI image_3 and if I click a different version, you'll notice that that updates in the links panel to two. So just know that whatever variation you're choosing, that is the one that will be linked when you package the InDesign document. So I'm going to go back to the first variation and you'll notice that it has the GenAI 3 here in the Links panel. So that's good. I just wanted to note that because that's important when you're exporting, when you're packaging the document. So let's say that you wanted to create another variation or another version of this poster that is going to happen in Paris then the following year. So I'm just going to right-click the page in the pages panel and I'm going to duplicate the spread. I'm going to go to page two and I'm going to click on that image, you don't necessarily have to delete the content within. And then let's create another or refine. Now, we're not creating, we're refining the existing prompt here in the prompt field. So vintage travel illustration from Paris, France.
We'll just update that. And then, we won't need a double decker bus because that's more of a London, England thing. I'll keep cobblestone road, and I'll leave dusk just so we can remain consistent with the look and feel of these posters. Now I can go ahead and click Generate to see what the variations for the new poster will look like. Now, we've changed London to Paris and kept pretty much the same look and feel as the other poster, so it should be something similar. Let's have a look. So there's our first option, our second and our third. I think I like the third one the best. So now you could just go in and update the rest of the content in the poster, the dates and whatnot. And all of a sudden, now you have two posters, one for the 2024 series and one for the 2025, and you've done that just by replacing the text in the Text to Image prompt field. That wraps up this exercise. Let's move on to the next part and learn about how the select subject Text Wrap works. On my screen, I have a business magazine with a feature story about a cafe and I'd like to add a Text Wrap around the main image in the photo. Let's bring in the photo first. I'm just going to simply drag mine and place it right into the placeholder frame that I have here. Now, the idea here is I want to retain the background, but I want the text to wrap around her right arm. So the first thing we want to do is open the Text Wrap window. To do that, click on Window and then choose Text Wrap. Again, I have mine open and I'll just tear it off, place it closer to the image so you get a better sense of how this works.
Go ahead and click on the image, and then we're going to add a Text Wrap that wraps around the object shape. So in other words, it's going to wrap around the subject's arm. Go ahead and click that. Now don't be alarmed. It's going to knock all the content, all the text away from the page and we'll fix that now. Let's go down to where it says Contour Options and the default setting here is Same as Clipping. If you drop that to expand it, you can try Detect Edges, but that's not going to work. Instead, let's choose Select Subject and InDesign will detect the subject in the image and create a wrap around it. In this case, the woman in this image. Now the text is far too close to her arm, so this is where you can increase the offset and get the desired wrap that you like. So something like that looks good. If I click away, we have a clean Text Wrap using the Select Subject, which is powered by Adobe Sensei. Now we tried this with an image, but does it work with Gen AI? I've left another space here on the second spread, pages four and five. And let's try using a text prompt to generate an image, and then apply the select subject Text Wrap to it. So again, using the same method, click on the image. Let's open the Text to Image window, and let's create the text Prompt that we want. In this case, I'm going to write, Close-up of a cappuccino mug, placed on a rustic wooden bar in a cafe, space on the left. I'm going to try to create some copy space, so some negative space or empty space. Let's see if it recognizes that. And I'd also like some coffee machines and mugs in the background. Now this is pretty descriptive, but I want it to be to generate an accurate image here. Let's change the Content Type back to Photo. And again, because this is a frame that I created, it's custom, let's choose Frame dimensions. And let's just double-check the Prompt. Close-up of a cappuccino mug, placed on a rustic wooden bar in a cafe, space on the left, coffee machines and mugs in the background. Perfect. Let's click Generate and see what it comes up with here. Again, we'll be presented with the three variations. If we're not happy with it, we can generate another three. So let's see what the three are here. Okay, so this one created space on the right instead of the left. Let's see what else we have. That one looks good. I like this because we can generate a Text Wrap around the curvature of the mug. And then we have the third, we have the last one here. Let's see how that looks. That's not bad as well. But to show you an example, I'm going to click on this one here. And in the Text Wrap, we could do the same thing. Wrap around object shape and under the Contour Type we're going to Select Subject and you can see that it automatically detects that mug. Now I can go ahead and position this the way I want to get a better wrap, something like that. And then I could go into my Text Wrap and increase the offset here. But to give you a sense of how cool this is, if I toggle between images, the generated images in the Text to Image variations, you'll see that it automatically recognizes the Text Wrap. So if I click this one, it has that and same thing. If I click this last one here, we get a Text Wrap. That one might work a little bit better. You'll notice that it automatically detects the image, the subject in your image, regardless of the one that you choose. It's just a matter of adjusting the image after it's placed and making sure that your Text Wrap looks good. Let's move on to the final exercise of the session and look at how to extend images using Generative Expand. Generative Expand is another amazing AI-powered tool, new to InDesign that allows you to expand images right in the app without having to use Photoshop. On my screen, I'm working on an Instagram post for a fictional job fair and I'm going to drop in the Main Art and it's called Job Fair.jpeg. You can see that the image is more vertical and I'd like it to fill the space in the 1080 by 1080 post size for Instagram without having to increase the size too much. So I'm going to double-click to drive into the content and I'm going to shift it to the left. And basically I want this negative space on the right for the text and all the other information for this Instagram post. Now again, I don't want to bump this up and I don't want to increase it to the point where becomes too large. That's where generative expand comes into play. And for this again, we're going to use the Text to Image window, and you'll notice that when I click on the image itself. We also have an option here for generative expand, again, this is in beta as well, and you can add a Text Prompt if you'd like. However, I'm just going to let InDesign recognize the details from the background and create an area to fill in the missing information. So I'm just going to go ahead and click generate and let's take a closer look at how InDesign recognizes the background and fills in the information accordingly. Now again, this is going to take a few more moments to generate three variations and we'll have a look at what it comes up with.
You can see InDesign does a fantastic job at recognizing what's in the background and filling out that space accordingly. Let's take a look at the three options. There's our first, there's the second, and there's the third. And we did that without having to increase the image size, so you get a nice wrap and a nice text flow around the main subject. Thanks again for joining my session, Techniques to Maximize Automation and AI Tools in InDesign. I hope you found these tips and tricks helpful and you can implement them into your own InDesign workflow soon. Feel free to connect with me if you have any questions about today's session. Thanks again and take care.
