From the course: Photoshop-Illustrator-InDesign Powercombo for Design

Illustrator layers in InDesign

From the course: Photoshop-Illustrator-InDesign Powercombo for Design

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Illustrator layers in InDesign

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- [Instructor] Let's take a look at how you can use Adobe Illustrator layers from within Adobe InDesign. Here I am inside of Adobe InDesign, and I have some room here at the bottom of this page to use some Illustrator artwork. Now, I've prepared this artwork here inside of Adobe Illustrator. When you open up this file, notice that I'm currently viewing this in outline mode, so in case you're wondering why everything looks the way it does. So If I quickly hit the Command + Y shortcut, which is Control + Y in Windows, you'll see that I have a black version of this artwork, and I also have a white version of the artwork which you can't really see because of the white page of course. So that's why I'm quickly going to switch back to outline mode. Now, notice that I also added a white olives and a black olives text description, which is something that will just help me to figure out which is which. I'm also using layers. So when you look at the Layers panel, I have one layer which is using the black olives artwork, and I have another one which has the white olives artwork, but also includes the text. Now, I placed the text outside of the art boards specifically because everything that you place outside of an art board will not be imported when you're using this inside of Adobe InDesign. So now that we know what we want to use, let's go back to InDesign and make the proper choice. So I'll choose the File menu, and I'll choose Place to go and look for that file. I'll select a file and make sure that Show Import Options is selected before clicking Open. Now, from the following screen, look at this here at the top. It says Place PDF. And this is simply because you have to realize that an AI file is secretly just a PDF file that you're placing, which is exactly why you have a PDF reference here and why you have multiple crop boxes available as well. So I have an art box, a crop box, trim, and bleed, just like you would have when placing a PDF file. Now, I'm more interested in the second tab, which is Layers. Now, when you look at the preview on the left-hand side, you'll see that whatever I do, I do not have the black text or the white text here in this preview, which means that I will never be placing that part of the artwork. The only thing I care about is the white olives or the black olives. Now, it is really important to realize that if I deselect one of these, that this box here will represent exactly which part of the artwork I'll be placing. So if I go back to general, and if I choose something different, let's say the crop box, you will place the entire art board within the illustration itself. Now, to avoid this, I'll quickly go back, and I'll choose Bounding Box Visible Layers Only. So now I get to make my choice between the white olives or the black olives. I'll start with the white ones for now. I'll click OK, and I will click and drag to place this artwork here, and maybe I'll crop it a little bit by clicking and dragging this handle here. So now that I have the artwork I'm looking for, maybe I want to change my mind. Now, to do this, again, I'll just select this artwork, right-click, and I'll choose Object Layer Options, just like we did with Adobe Photoshop layers. And from here I can hit the Preview button, and I will activate the black olives and deselect the white olives. Now, notice that it will just replace the artwork despite the fact that these two had a completely different position inside of the original Illustrator file. So it's just retaining this original place, which is exactly what I want. I'll just hit OK, deselect, and now just enjoy the finished version of my design.

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