[marla-lesage Posts: 368 Status: Offline Write. Illustrate. Revise.]

I want to make a digital dummy, but I do all of my work the old-fashioned way.  I've read up on how to make a dummy.
But, I have no idea how to compile my artwork & text quickly and easily into one file. I don't have photoshop, or anything like that. I'm doing a trial of indesign & illustrator but just looking at it boggles my mind.  I'm not keen on watching the demos included since I don't need to know everything, I just want to know enough to get it done.

Do you know of any really good tutorials on how to compile sketches done by hand into a digital dummy?  I thought I had seen some mentioned, but now of course I can't find them.

Thanks!

[Artemesia Posts: 4,544 Status: Offline WWW]

I do all traditional art too, but scan my work to make digital dummies. I think you'd find that Photoshop would be more helpful to you than Illustrator. I've been using PS and InDesign to make dummies. And to learn InDesign (I took graphic design years ago and learned Quark) I just did a couple of the basic tutorials included in the adobe cloud. I basically scan my sketches, edit and size them in Photoshop. Create a layout in InDesign, place the sketches (you can copy and paste or drag and drop right from PS) and add the text. Then when finished you can create a PDF. I recommend doing the most basic function tutorials. It will save you time in the long run.

There is also a thread here on digital dummies that might help:

https://www.scbwi.org/boards/index.php?topic=65680.0

[Wendy Martin Posts: 490 Status: Offline Got art? WWW]

What Artemesia said. Another alternative is to use Word after scanning all the images in. But you'd still have to use Photoshop to place the text, unless there is some trick in Word that will let you lay text over an image. To create a pdf in Word you have to open the print menu and select "save as a file." I prefer InDesign, I find Word clunky and the resulting pdf doesn't look very professional. In this business it's all about how good the art looks.

I suggest trying some of the paid lessons on http://www.lynda.com/ (they have some free ones as well, but they are really only teasers for full classes) or doing a search on youtube for the parts you want to learn.

You can create a multi-page layout in Illustrator, but, with InDesign you can print out a "book" which is really helpful if you don't have a graphic design degree to layout pages imposition style. (technical term for moving pages into printers layout.) I'd print out a sample dummy for yourself to check things like gutters, bleeds and story flow. You would be amazed at how diffeernt things look once they are folded and bound.

[jlinsky Posts: 18 Status: Offline]

Before I learned to use any of the Adobe programs, I used PowerPoint to create digital dummies. It's pretty basic but also easier to use. You can change the slide size to whatever you want your page size to be, insert your scanned images and add the text where you like.

Maybe something like that would help you get started with your current project, and give you more time to get a feel for which of the other programs you'd like to learn.

[marla-lesage Posts: 368 Status: Offline Write. Illustrate. Revise.]

Thanks for the feedback!
I decided to jump right in with a photoshop trial.  I guess I learn best by trial and error.  I will check out lynda.com . Illustrator was over my head, but photoshop is similar enough to other programs i've used.
I find power point only works well on screen and prints poorly.  And while I'm very comfortable with Word - you can lay text over image - but it never saves correctly to pdf.