Adobe InDesign CS5 - Manual (Page 381)

375 USING INDESIGN
Graphics
Last updated 11/16/2011
Add pages in your document to hold the pages you want to import. After you choose File > Place and select an INDD
file, you can choose Show Import Options and then choose which pages to import, which layers to make visible, and
how to crop the imported pages. You can scroll in the Preview window to examine the thumbnail pages closely. The
page or pages you select are loaded in the graphics icon. If you place multiple pages, InDesign loads the graphics icon
with the following page so you can import pages one after the other.
Note: The Links panel lists the names of each page you imported. If a page you imported contains a graphic or other item
that was imported into it, this item is listed as well in the Links panel. The names of these secondary imported items are
listed under a disclosure triangle in the Links panel to distinguish them from imported pages.
More Help topics
“ Place (import) graphics ” on page 378
“ Control layer visibility in imported images ” on page 384
Importing other graphics formats
InDesign supports a variety of graphics formats, including bitmap formats such as TIFF, GIF, JPEG, and BMP, and
vector formats such as EPS. Other supported formats include DCS, PICT, WMF, EMF, PCX, PNG, and Scitex CT
(.sct). You can import an SWF file as a movie file.
More Help topics
“ Place (import) graphics ” on page 378
“ Import options for graphics ” on page 379
“ Exporting ” on page 114
“ Import swatches ” on page 474
“ Movies and sounds ” on page 548
TIFF (.tif) files
TIFF is a flexible bitmap image format supported by virtually all painting, image-editing, and page-layout applications.
Also, virtually all desktop scanners can produce TIFF images.
The TIFF format supports CMYK, RGB, grayscale, Lab, indexed-color, and bitmap files with alpha and spot-color
channels. You can select an alpha channel when you place a TIFF file. Spot-color channels appear in InDesign as spot
colors in the Swatches panel.
You can use an image-editing program such as Photoshop to create a clipping path to create a transparent background
for a TIFF image. InDesign supports clipping paths in TIFF images and recognizes encoded OPI comments.
Graphics Interchange Format (.gif) files
Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is a standard for displaying graphics on the World Wide Web and other online
services. Because it compresses image data without losing detail, its compression method is called lossless. Such
compression works well with graphics that use a limited number of solid colors such as logos and charts; however, GIF
cannot display more than 256 colors. For this reason it is less effective for displaying photographs online (use JPEG
instead) and is not recommended for commercial printing. If an imported GIF file contains transparency, the graphic
interacts only where the background is transparent.