Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing software created by publisher Adobe Systems Incorporated.
Adobe InDesign: To Use or just A Waste of Money?
Adobe InDesign Product Summary
The latest release for Adobe InDesign is the CS5 version, which promises a number of upgrades. You will find that InDesign CS5 does meet the challenge of delivering more features and improvements compared to its preceding versions. Dealing with objects on a page is more streamlined, and other improvements include more options for automation options, enhancements in productivity processes and new workflow resolutions. If you had been using the previous versions of InDesign, you may have wanted for some features to be improved, and find that your requests may have been granted in the CS5. Introduced in the newest version are features that let print designers go into the areas of document creation that were not possible in the previous releases such as animation, interactivity, and even video.
Adobe InDesign Features
If you work with text in your Adobe InDesign program, you are now allowed to manipulate text in a more convenient manner through its paragraph style feature, so that continuity and style in your documents are assured. You can direct the style of the text by manipulating different font styles, sizes and other properties. You can then save the style you made and apply it to other desired text within the document or to other documents you’ll be making in the future. The program also has a text tool that gives you more ease in moving and placing text within your document. The text tool makes text boxes and allows you to type text in different orientations, making your document look more layered and creative. Using the paragraph and text wrap tables make it easier for you to customize the alignment of your document’s text according to your preference.
For photos and other graphics, using them to your Adobe InDesign document can be done with the rectangle frame tool. Included in this tool are features that allow you to enhance and change photos though effects like corner effects, feathering, and drop shadows among others. InDesign also has a Swatches menu that allows you to change the hue and transparency of the colors in the document easily.
Lastly, InDesign CS5 also has the PreFlight feature that checks the consistency of documents about to be printed by looking onto the document’s fonts and colors, it’s almost like a spelling and grammar checker for InDesign documents.
Adobe InDesign User Interface
The InDesign CS5’s user interface may look bare and simple, but then its features can only be really utilized when the user has design know-how or has used the previous version. For example, multiple page and master page size support may be something alien if you’re new to using InDesign, and even users of the previous version may have to discover this feature as this was absent in the previous releases. The features do add a level of convenience in making any project, but of course, the person using the program would need to know what exactly they provide to take full advantage of them.
Adobe InDesign Review
The latest version of Adobe InDesign does provide more features absent in previous releases. Due to its upgraded tool boxes, you can now span- and split-column paragraphs, look at multiple pages and manipulate their sizes at once, and track the changes you have done to the text and layers via a panel that looks like the one present in another Adobe product. The newly introduced animation and interactivity features are advantageous for anyone wanting to bring a new level of sophistication to their documents.
You may notice that scalable animations is absent, there are no split column allowed in table cells, and the longstanding rotation behavior feature present in previous versions has been taken out. For Mac users, the program's Fonts feature only supports OpenType and TrueType.