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Summary: InDesign is the wave of the future
Review: Aptly called the Quark-Killer, InDesign rocked my world the first time I used it (version 1.5). There was almost no learning curve for me, because of the familiar Adobe interface. My only complaint at that time was that it was a bit sluggish (this was improved greatly with version 2.0).I would like to address some negative features I have seen reviewed with InDesign. 1. Type styles. In a Postscript workflow, menu styling of fonts (such as used in Quark and Pagemaker) is an abomination. If there is no italic variant available for a font, then the last thing you want is for your DTP software to "fake it". It produces horrible results in a professional workflow, such as font defaulting. The fact that InDesign only lets you use italic or bold if the font is designed to do so is a blessing, not a curse, and will hopefully bring to an end years of agony for pre-press professionals. 2. Optical kerning. This (again) is designed to function properly in a postscript printing environment. If you are proofing with a non-postscript printer, it would probably be better to create/export a PDF file from your InDesign document, and try printing from that. Keep in mind that InDesign is professional software and is designed with a professional (postscript) workflow in mind. 3. Image resizing. Images can easily be resized within a text frame by using the white selection arrow (similar in function to Illustrator). If you click a placed image in an object frame, it will select the stuff INSIDE the box. You may then apply any sort of transformation or scaling that is necessary. The black selector arrow is for selecting page objects and containers. 4. Collecting for output. This is FAR more advanced than anything Quark (or Pagemaker) has been able to do. This neatly collects ALL linked files/images and fonts and puts them in an organized folder. Quark often collects incorrect fonts (if it gets them at all) and occasionally misses links. I work at a university that specializes in the professional arts (such as graphic and multimedia design). Usually when I demonstrate to a student (or teacher) the features and ease-of-use of InDesign, they usually pick it up very quickly and eagerly. After they get used to using it, most complain about having to use Quark thereafter. Overall, fantastic software for graphics professionals.
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Summary: My page layout tool of choice
Review: As a professional graphic designer, I am quite familiar with Adobe software. For page layout, I have never been happy with PageMaker or Quark. When a client asked me to design and layout a 72-page brochure/directory, I decided to try InDesign. Being familiar with Adobe tools, it was quite intuitive for me to use and you can't beat its flexibility. It handles raster and vector graphics with ease, and it makes tables quite simple. It does have a few quirks: It's far too complex to underline text. Sometimes it handles tables (partularly imported tables) strangely, but that's easy enough to fix. From now on, InDesign will be the only page layout software I will use. I look forward to it maturing further in future versions.
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Summary: The Pain is GONE for Pagemaker users!
Review: I admit, I'm one of those terrible, hated Mac users.... the type that adopted only AFTER OS X came into existence because OS 9 could not compete with what was available for PC.... Still, when I switched (and I'll never go back), a lot of products weren't yet available for X, including InDesign. Since my primary occupation is copy-editing, that meant I had to have PageMaker 7.0 for OS9.... I hated it. At the end of my last PM project, I downloaded the evaluation version of InDesign 2.0 and promptly fell in love. If Pagemaker seems kludgy, slow, buggy.... switch. Eat ramen and Mac and Cheese for a month if that's what it takes, but switch. You won't regret it if you have to do any type of editing or layout!
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Summary: brilliant and easy to use
Review: I find this so easy to use and powerful for all the publishing I have to do, print & Web. Highly recommended!
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Summary: Reliable and well working with Microsoft office
Review: I'm a beginner at layout programs and even though the interface is very similar with Illustrator and Photoshop it took me quite a while before I understood that in order to change the color of the gradient slider from greyscale I had to mix the gradient swatch in the swatches palette and that I needed to add colors that I wanted to use in that palette and not on the color palette...a few of the learning tasks took a bit longer, cause I was used to finding them elsewhere! We're getting along better now and I am amazed at the way that ID works with type, Open Type in particular - all these things that you can do with OT, wow! Then being able to use transparency is great and not needing to go back & change the original files is great...and when you do need to do that you just choose in Id to open the file in PS or Illustrator - very fast, you edit them, you save and they update automatically in ID! And not only is ID easy to use with Adobe products but also with Microsofts office products - being able to bring in tables from word or excel and keep the formatting. Because ID happens to use all these "Heading 1" etc, that we are used to seeing in the office products as well, they are exactly the same in both ID as they are in Word and the rest of the office suit!
There has been an update to ID as well (2.0.1) that solves some printing issues. Keeping that in mind and that Adobe listens to their customers I think it is well worth the switch from Quark. However I am a PC user, so I've never had to consider Quark. And comparing ID to Pagemaker...na they are not meant for the same thing and ID has a lot more control.
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Summary: InDesign vs. Quark (a beginner's perspective)
Review: I'm currently studying graphic design and have learned InDesign before learning Quark, and the differences amaze me. InDesign is by far the better product: Photoshop and Illustrator files can be dragged and dropped into an InDesign document; frames work for either text or graphics; onscreen viewing has several options from proxy to high-resolution; the list goes on. It has the same Adobe interface as their other products and has a far more advanced drawing tool than Quark. It doesn't offer the character attributes that Quark does - you have to have the bold/italic version of a font to print it that way, unlike Quark's forced attributes ability - but it really does seem to be miles ahead in its details and options. Plus, as a student, it's a much more affordable program than Quark, and it interacts with the other Adobe products so well that I found I was already ahead of the game. I heard that the first version of InDesign was really buggy, but the same people and instructors have had nothing but unbridled praise for version 2.0 .
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Summary: InDesign vs. Quark (a beginner's perspective)
Review: I'm currently studying graphic design and have learned InDesign before learning Quark, and the differences amaze me. InDesign is by far the better product: Photoshop and Illustrator files can be dragged and dropped into an InDesign document; frames work for either text or graphics; onscreen viewing has several options from proxy to high-resolution; the list goes on. It has the same Adobe interface as their other products and has a far more advanced drawing tool than Quark. It doesn't offer the character attributes that Quark does - you have to have the bold/italic version of a font to print it that way, unlike Quark's forced attributes ability - but it really does seem to be miles ahead in its details and options. Plus, as a student, it's a much more affordable program than Quark, and it interacts with the other Adobe products so well that I found I was already ahead of the game. I heard that the first version of InDesign was really buggy, but the same people and instructors have had nothing but unbridled praise for version 2.0 .
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Summary: Don't people read the manual any more?
Review: InDesign doesn't need any help from me, but the negative review below was a little annoying. The writer doesn't seem to have tried very hard to learn the program. A) ID does support bold and italic for fonts that have the style -- that's what "character styles" are for. Those who prefer "fake fonts" shouldn't be using a high-end typesetting program. B) Image resizing is done by percentages (context menu in Windows, not sure about Mac). It takes a bit of math, but it allows you to size images _precisely_. C) If you insist on using EPS output, the "Package" command sends all the linked files to CD, but PDF is a better option most of the time. D) Who leaves all the palettes turned on? Merge or hide them and save your setup.
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Summary: Don't people read the manual any more?
Review: InDesign doesn't need any help from me, but the negative review below was a little annoying. The writer doesn't seem to have tried very hard to learn the program. A) ID does support bold and italic for fonts that have the style -- that's what "character styles" are for. Those who prefer "fake fonts" shouldn't be using a high-end typesetting program. B) Image resizing is done by percentages (context menu in Windows, not sure about Mac). It takes a bit of math, but it allows you to size images _precisely_. C) If you insist on using EPS output, the "Package" command sends all the linked files to CD, but PDF is a better option most of the time. D) Who leaves all the palettes turned on? Merge or hide them and save your setup.
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Summary: Incredible functionality
Review: Previous negative reviews mentioned linked text files--I ran into this once, asked on Adobe Forums how to fix it, and someone provided me almost instantly with a little script that "embeds" all my text files instantly with one click. Another way to avoid it is to copy and paste your text rather than placing it. Resizing images? Easy! You can resize the frame and fit to the frame, resize the image and fit the frame to the image, you can resize both simulatenously, you can even create a star-shaped frame and place an image into it! Your frame can have a feathered or rounded edge if you want, etc. I've never had a problem resizing images quickly and easily. Type styles: The workarounds for this are much more printer friendly. Want a bold? Make a character style that "strokes" the outline of the font with a .1 or .25 point stroke. You can just eyedropper it in place where you need it or create a paragraph or character style to place it. Need a faux italic? Same thing...just "slant" the text in the character box. Of course the character and paragraph styles are separate! They'd be too big otherwise! Most of the time I'm just using paragraph styles--I don't need to see the character styles. If I need to do both, I just undock the character style palette and then both are visible at once. I can even dock them together "stacked" without difficulty so they're not floating separate but both are visible. Too many palettes? Close the ones you don't use. Minimize the ones you infrequently use. Note that the upcoming version, InDesign Creative Suite will allow for even more docking options, so you can choose how it looks. Optical Kerning? Works great on my printer, I don't know what's wrong with yours. When I look at similar documents pre and post InDesign, I'm blown away by how much BETTER the ID documents always look. Underline text? What's wrong with ctrl alt U? You can also set a character style for underlining, and eyedropper from one place to the next. Gimmicky CD covers? We do a trade journal, myriad ads, newsletters, marketing in InDesign and they've never looked better or gone together faster. I've used PageMaker. This program is to PageMaker what PageMaker was to the older versions of Publisher. It is so much faster, easier and more intuitive. No more repetitive stress injuries for me from doing the same key combos over and over and over again. I use about 1/8th the number of clicks I needed before to accomplish the same task. There are tasks I never would have bothered trying in PageMaker. And those who've used both Quark and InDesign by and large say ID has far more features and is much better to use.
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