How to Prep Your Cards in Adobe inDesign

Hey there! So your team has come up with some sweet graphics, and you are finally ready to prepare your PDF for printing... You've come to the right place. 😉

First thing you'll want to do is purchase and install Adobe inDesign. If you're trying to create a printable PDF from Photoshop alone you are going to run into problems.

Next, keep all of your PSD files in one place. It's okay to have subfolders, but try not to move the files around too much since inDesign will be keeping track of the exact file paths on your computer!

Alright so let's fire up Adobe inDesign and dive right in.

Step 1: Import your Card Template and Create a "Master" Template

The easiest thing to do is use a template provided by your print shop. Most print shops have a template available for download that shows you where the safe areas are and how far the bleed extends. If you recall from our other blog post on choosing a print shop, we went with DriveThruCards. If you head over to their website you can find a file just like this one.

So let's import this template into Adobe inDesign and see how it looks!

Fig. 1. Card Template.

Looks great! Now we need to set this as a Master template page that we can use repeatedly to import all of our cards.

Right-click anywhere inside the Pages Palette and click on "New Master." This will bring up the New Master dialog where you can set the width and height of each card. In our case we're just using standard poker size, which is 2.5" x 3.5".

Fig 2. New Master dialog.

You can change the number of pages too depending on how big your deck is. Remember that your overall page count will be double the actual number of cards in your deck, since you need a separate "Spread" for the backside of each card. Spread is a term used by inDesign to denote things like a magazine foldout or a brochure, since inDesign is used for all kinds of professional printing. For all our intents and purposes, a spread simply means a single side of a card, either the front or back.

Now if you click and select the card template from from Figure 1 above, you will see the little grappling hooks around it. What you'll want to do now is go to "File" -> "Place", OR just press ⌘D if you're on macOS.

Fig 3. File -> Place to link PSD files.

This will bring up a dialog box and you can import any PSD file! Once you do that, you're going to want to right click the image and go to "Fitting" and select the proper fitting to be inside the bleed.

Let's choose "Fill Frame Proportionally". Okay perfect!

Fig 4. New Master dialog.

Step 2: Creating Duplicates of Each Card As Needed

It's most likely the case that you'll want duplicates of some of your cards. So let's find the easiest way to do that. With the Pages palette open, you can either right-click, duplicate, and move each card around (which takes forever), OR just use the keyboard shortcut and drag.

On macOS, I like to just hold down ALT and drag the card below each template. This will duplicate the card directly below and it works super effectively!

Fig 5. Duplicating cards with ease.

If you have different backsides for some cards, you'll want to create a Master Template for each different backside using what you learned in Step 1.

Step 3: Removing Errors After Modifying Your Photoshop Files

Whenever you delete or modify any of the linked PSD files that you have, you will get hit with this popup the next time you open up inDesign:

Fig 6. Updating Missing Links.

"Missing Links" means it lost the connection to the file (you probably moved it or renamed it). "Modified Links" means it senses the file was changed and wants to confirm.

I pretty much always hit "Update Links", which automatically relinks all the PSDs you had linked previously, assuming you did not delete or rename the files. Similarly, if you modify any linked PSD files while inDesign is open, you will get hit with these warning icons:

Fig 7. Click to Re-link your PSDs.

So just double-click each icon and you'll be groovy again! Notice that inDesign intelligently captures how many duplicate cards you have pages for. In this case, we have 3, 4, and 6 copies of those cards in the whole file.

Similarly, you can quickly check the bottom bar for errors.

Fig 8. Bottom bar showing errors.

Remember: You can't print or export your work if you have working errors!

Step 4: Exporting and creating your final PDF

To start the export process, go to File -> Export, or just press ⌘E if you're on macOS. Once you choose a filename and hit "Save" you'll be taken to the PDF Export settings. You may want to double check the PDF-specific settings and make sure your print shop supports your PDF compression settings!

DriveThruCards happens to have specific settings that they care about, and they only support certain PDF/X standards. Here is a snapshot of the Marks and Bleeds settings:

You also may want to hit "Save Preset" at the bottom left so you only have to configure this once!

Finally, hit EXPORT and you're good to go. Note: This may take some time to build the actual file if you have a lot of cards so be patient!

Takeaways

There is a lot to learn in inDesign, but you just have to play around with it to get the hang of it. There was a lot to cover in this tutorial but we just tried to give you a broad overview.

I hope this was helpful! If you are struggling with figuring any of this out reach out to us through email and we'd be happy to give you some pointers. And don't forget to subscribe!