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Adobe InDesign 2.0

Adobe InDesign 2.0

List Price: $699.00
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wow!
Review: This is thousand times better than QuarkXpress! Easy to use and very efficient. Get this!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wow!
Review: This is thousand times better than QuarkXpress! Easy to use and very efficient. Get this!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The new king of DTP
Review: This product has to be the most amazing page layout program ever created.
The features literally overflow and present you with virtually unlimited options for complete creative freedom. The new transparency effects are unbelievable for a dedicated page layout application. This cuts down dramatically the need to switch between photoshop for applying effects such as drop shadows, feathering etc.
Adobe has really outdone themselves with this one, and anyone who believes QuarkXpress is still the best needs to take a serious look at this. Quark 5 is better than quark 4.1 but still doesnt come close to this level of brilliance.
The PDF output is absolutely first class, and preserves every aspect of the document from finely graduated transparency effects to the brilliant typography.
This is a major bonus for users who publish detailed PDF files, and this makes proofing before printing an absolute pleasure.
For such brilliance you would expect to pay a lot more than $699 and at this price this product is an absolute bargain for any self respecting creative professional.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Reworked Pagemaker
Review: This software is nothing more than a Pagemaker upgraded to be a copy of Quark. There is nothing in it worth making the switch from Quark. I bought a copy, but only in order to open files from the people who skimped and bought this rather than Quark. Quark 5 is still much more efficient at printing. I've noticed that files from InDesign take almost double the time to rip as the same files from Quark.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Reworked Pagemaker
Review: This software is nothing more than a Pagemaker upgraded to be a copy of Quark. There is nothing in it worth making the switch from Quark. I bought a copy, but only in order to open files from the people who skimped and bought this rather than Quark. Quark 5 is still much more efficient at printing. I've noticed that files from InDesign take almost double the time to rip as the same files from Quark.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Definitely not a Quark replacement...
Review: Yes, InDesign incorporates some Photoshop and Illustrator features, but it doesn't do many things that Quark does:

NO TYPE STYLES. You cannot apply italic, outline or shadow type styles. If you want italic type, you must choose the italic font from the type menu. If you don't have the italic font, well... I guess you'll have to buy it from Adobe.

NO IMAGE RESIZING. When you place an image in a frame, you can size it to fit the frame, or you can enlarge or crop it by adjusting the frame handles. However, you cannot resize the image within the frame. This is a big problem if you work with, let's say, headshots, where you want all of the faces to be approximately the same size.

LINKED TEXT FILES. When you place a text file, InDesign links to it. If you move the text file, InDesign asks you to update the link. If you do, you will lose all of your InDesign formatting. You can embed a text file, thereby breaking the link, but you must do this manually. Collecting for output must be a nightmare: Does InDesign look for the text files as well as the image files? I haven't tried yet.

TOO MANY PALETTES. Over a dozen palettes open when you open an InDesign file, and all of them utilize icons, meaning a steep learning curve. Furthermore, character and paragraph styles are kept in different palettes. You have to switch back and forth between them, and since they look identical, it is very easy to get confused.

OPTICAL KERNING. This sounds like a good idea, but InDesign seems to have trouble translating this function to printer drivers. What I see on screen is not what I get from my Cannon inkjet printer: Certain letter pairs are irregularly offset from other letters. This may be a plug-in problem.

P.S. Despite what web sites have claimed, Quark does support hanging punctuation. You just need to know the key combination.

I'm sure there are other missing Quark functions that I haven't come across yet.

InDesign may be useful for putting together gimmicky CD and book covers; otherwise, graphic designers should wait for Quark OS X.


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