Adobe DPS How To: Part One

Welcome to my first ever tutorial! I'm sure if we're all patient with each other we'll all learn some stuff and have some fun!

So, without further ado, welcome to Part One of my beginners guide to Adobe DPS!

First things first, what is Adobe DPS?

DPS stands for Digital Publishing Suite. You know all those sweet digital magazines sitting in Apple Newsstand? Most of those were made using this little baby. It's actually a plugin that comes with the new version of inDesign. Great news for primarily paper designers like me that aren't used to coding and the like. If you can already use inDesign then you're home and dry with this program, aside from the odd piece of HTML wizardry there's no need to move out of inDesign at all. 

Today I'll be talking through the very basics such as setting up the correct document size and a quick look at the new tools. We'll move on to building publications and functionality in another post. 

So here we go, if you're a designer you'll likely be familiar with the classic inDesign set up. To pull in the new palettes that hold the DPS controls, you'll need to hit up Workspace, and select 'Digital Publishing'. This will bring up all the shiny new tools we'll be using to build your publication. 

You'll notice a lot of new things have popped up such as Media, Liquid Layout, Folio Overlays etc. This is where all the magic happens. Theses are the things that mean we don't really have to leave inDesign. Pretty much any functionality you can think of happens here, but more about those later.

Next you'll want to set up your document. Adobe have thoughtfully set up all of the device sizes for us as presets, we just have to select the one we want. The only thing to bare in mind is that every time you want to switch devices, it will include a total redesign. 

To set your document up, follow what you'd normally do (File > New > Document) then where it says intent, select Digital Publishing. This will load the presets. Then just select the device you're after and your ready to go!

One last thing for today. I've you're designing for a pad, obviously you'll know that it can either be viewed in Portrait or Landscape. You'll have to redesign every page to suit the second layout but once it's done it's worth it!
To set up the second layout, select pages from the palette and then click the icon in the top right corner. From there select 'Create Alternate Layout'. You'll need to name the new layout (inDesign does this automatically but you can name them anything you like. Now you've done this, you can choose which pages have an alternate layouts - just in case you want to only have the rotation on certain spreads. I'll show you how to make the alternate layout work in the next post.

So there you have it, you've set up your first digital publication using Adobe DPS!

I hope you've found this first look into DPS helpful, next week we'll cover how to set up a publication and preview it on a device, and how to make the liquid layouts work. Then we'll move on to building and functionality. Sound good?

Talk to you soon!

Svea xo