A new face for InDesign CS3
One of the biggest potential benefits of InDesign when it was first introduced was that, because it is part of the Adobe family, it could benefit from a high level of integration with Adobe’s other graphic arts and publishing tools such as Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat.
With the previous version, InDesign CS2, I felt this integration was quite far advanced. You could, for example, place a layered Photoshop PSD file on the page without having to first flatten the image. That, paired with the ability to edit the original from within InDesign, meant that you needed only one master image for each piece of placed artwork, not a series of variations that could become a nightmare to keep track of.
Thus, at any given time in InDesign, you can look at a graphic, and if you want to change some aspect of it, simply select “edit original.” Photoshop launches (this also works with Illustrator files), you do what you need to do on the original - maybe change the typeface on a text layer - save the file, and when you jump back into InDesign, the revised graphic is now on the page.
PDF workflow has become a central part of the pre-press workflow for many printing houses, and InDesign’s “export to PDF” is a delight to use. The first time I tried this, I was also sending files to a printer that I’d never dealt with before, so I made PDFs of just a couple of pages using InDesign’s presets for offset press and emailed them to the pre-press guy, thinking that I would have to make a lot of fine tuning adjustments before I got it right. A short email back said that the only thing I needed to change was to set the bleed to a quarter inch all around. (I’d set it at an eighth of an inch.) That done, it took just a few minutes to export the 32-page magazine supplement to PDF, and a few minutes more to FTP the PDF to the printer’s computer. Anyone who’s worked in page layout when you had to “package” the file (which meant making sure every little piece of artwork and every font was included in the files you sent to the printing house) will know what a dramatic simplification PDF workflow is, and why print houses have embraced it. And with InDesign, creating a printer-ready PDF is no more difficult than sending a copy of your pages to your laser or inkjet printer for proofing.
One of the features of InDesign that Adobe has been crowing about since the beginning is its typesetting engine. The multiline composer, as the name suggests, works on multiple lines of copy, so that you can make adjustments to create a very even text block, without the unsightly rivers of white space running though the block.
For me, the biggest improvement in InDesign CS3 is the redesigned workspace. With previous versions, your computer screen could become very cluttered with control palettes strewn all over. In this latest version, the toolset palettes are all neatly tucked away to the right of the workspace, but fly out when you need to access one of them. There are also a number of new or improved features in the program. If you work with tables, you’ll be happy to see table and cell styles, which allows you to assign a consistent style to a table or table elements just as you do with paragraph styles. There are a slew of frame and object effects (like what you have with Photoshop), such as feathered gradients that allow you to apply feathering to objects, and bevel and emboss effects. There is also a more flexible transparency control so you can apply different transparency settings to different parts of an object.
For Intel-based Mac users, perhaps the most welcome news is that InDesign CS3 (and the whole CS3 suite) is a universal binary application so it will run full tilt on Intel- as well as PowerPC-based Macs.
One of the biggest potential benefits of InDesign when it was first introduced was that, because it is part of the Adobe family, it could benefit from a high level of integration with Adobe’s other graphic arts and publishing tools such as Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat.
With the previous version, InDesign CS2, I felt this integration was quite far advanced. You could, for example, place a layered Photoshop PSD file on the page without having to first flatten the image. That, paired with the ability to edit the original from within InDesign, meant that you needed only one master image for each piece of placed artwork, not a series of variations that could become a nightmare to keep track of.
Thus, at any given time in InDesign, you can look at a graphic, and if you want to change some aspect of it, simply select “edit original.” Photoshop launches (this also works with Illustrator files), you do what you need to do on the original - maybe change the typeface on a text layer - save the file, and when you jump back into InDesign, the revised graphic is now on the page.
PDF workflow has become a central part of the pre-press workflow for many printing houses, and InDesign’s “export to PDF” is a delight to use. The first time I tried this, I was also sending files to a printer that I’d never dealt with before, so I made PDFs of just a couple of pages using InDesign’s presets for offset press and emailed them to the pre-press guy, thinking that I would have to make a lot of fine tuning adjustments before I got it right. A short email back said that the only thing I needed to change was to set the bleed to a quarter inch all around. (I’d set it at an eighth of an inch.) That done, it took just a few minutes to export the 32-page magazine supplement to PDF, and a few minutes more to FTP the PDF to the printer’s computer. Anyone who’s worked in page layout when you had to “package” the file (which meant making sure every little piece of artwork and every font was included in the files you sent to the printing house) will know what a dramatic simplification PDF workflow is, and why print houses have embraced it. And with InDesign, creating a printer-ready PDF is no more difficult than sending a copy of your pages to your laser or inkjet printer for proofing.
One of the features of InDesign that Adobe has been crowing about since the beginning is its typesetting engine. The multiline composer, as the name suggests, works on multiple lines of copy, so that you can make adjustments to create a very even text block, without the unsightly rivers of white space running though the block.
For me, the biggest improvement in InDesign CS3 is the redesigned workspace. With previous versions, your computer screen could become very cluttered with control palettes strewn all over. In this latest version, the toolset palettes are all neatly tucked away to the right of the workspace, but fly out when you need to access one of them. There are also a number of new or improved features in the program. If you work with tables, you’ll be happy to see table and cell styles, which allows you to assign a consistent style to a table or table elements just as you do with paragraph styles. There are a slew of frame and object effects (like what you have with Photoshop), such as feathered gradients that allow you to apply feathering to objects, and bevel and emboss effects. There is also a more flexible transparency control so you can apply different transparency settings to different parts of an object.
For Intel-based Mac users, perhaps the most welcome news is that InDesign CS3 (and the whole CS3 suite) is a universal binary application so it will run full tilt on Intel- as well as PowerPC-based Macs.
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