Lucidpress Day 1

Objectives

  • Students will be able to understand how to set-up a document from a template and also with custom settings
  • Students will be comfortable navigating the interface
  • Students will be able to understand the use of text and text frames
  • Students will be able to understand uploading images to Lucidpress
  • Students will be able to place and resize images in their Lucidpress documents

Lesson Plan

Introduction

  • Make sure everyone has signed up for a Lucidpress account before class
    • Tell them to sign up using their byu.edu email
  • Download Day 1 files from files.learnsoftware.org/indesign
  • What kinds of projects would you like to be able to do in Lucidpress?

Initial Document Setup

  • Start by going to My Documents → New → Blank Document
    • You are only allowed 3 documents in the free version of Lucidpress
  • Pages, Dimensions, Orientation
    • There are preset page sizes
    • Under that menu is also “Custom” and there you can input your own Height and Width
      • Have them change the size to a longer height to match a newspaper length
    • If you want “facing pages” change the spreads to two pages
    • Can change the background page color
    • Don’t really need to pay attention to the headers/footers
    • Change size of margins
    • Bleed 
      • Anyone know what this is?
      • Bleed = extra space around the document. If you want images to be printed right to the edge of the page, you actually have to print them past the document dimensions on a larger piece of paper and then trim the extra off because printers can’t print to the edge of the paper.
  • Can always change document settings in the Document panel

Navigating the Interface

  • Right Toolbar/Contextual Toolbar
    • This toolbar will change when you use one of the tools on the left side
    • When you’re not adjusting something, it will default to Document and Layers
  • Left Toolbar
    • Here you have several tools: pages, text, shapes, images, and tables
    • When you select each one, a new panel pops out
  • Top Toolbar
    • This will normally stay exactly how it is with options for text

Text

  • Text Boxes
    • Grab the “T” tool → choose “Body Text” → draw a text box on the page and start typing
    • Lucidpress automatically adds a black stroke to your textbox so to get rid of it you will have to go to the Right Toolbar, choose the Border color, and then choose the checkers (which means non)
  • Placing Documents
    • If you have a Word document that you want to insert, you will have to copy and paste it
    • If you have a document in your Google Drive you can put it in your document by going Insert → Import Text from Drive
  • Basic Formatting
    • Stay in the right toolbar today. Show them how to find the options for both paragraph and character formatting. Stick with the basics (color, font, size, justification, indentation) and don’t worry about tracking, leading, kerning, etc. Those are for a different day.
  • Overset Text
    • Just the basics. Clicking the red + sign will make the text box bigger.

Graphics

  • To place images in Lucidpress, you first need to upload all of them
    • Go to Images Tool → Manage → Upload
  • Once you’ve uploaded your images to the Images Tool, you can drag and drop them onto your project
  • Adjusting the size of your image is easy, just click and drag on the square around the picture
  • If you want to crop a picture, select “Crop & Mask” in the Right Toolbar
  • Text Wrapping
    • Select an image, not the text. If you can’t do that, you might have to move your Image above your Text in the Layers panel.
    • With the Image selected, choose the “Layout” panel in the Right Toolbar, then click the circle next to Text Wrapping to turn it on
    • If you have a png, you should be able to check the box “Wrap Tight to Shape Boundary” to get it to wrap right to the image.

Save and Export

  • To save, go File → Save
    • This will just save your Lucidpress file to your Lucidpress account
  • Once you are ready to export, go File → Save As
    • From there you can choose your format and save settings

Discuss

  • Ask students to share (1) what challenges they had during class today, and (2) how Lucidpress could make doing projects like a resume or poster easier than doing it in Word or PowerPoint

Conclusion

  • Tell them when the next class is and what you will be learning
  • Tell them where to find us in the library and on library chat