2007

South Sound Adobe Users' Group

formerly Greater Puget Sound Macromedia User Group
including formerly Macromedia Products

With InDesign the first thing I noticed were all of the layout options for professional results. Most of my efforts are semi-professional, as my needs are for one, maybe two color printed brochures and materials. The InDesign program offers the professional the ability to work with all their color separations easily and throughout the project to coordinate colors/registration, etc. These features are not ones I use regularly, but can see their benefit and would keep them in mind for a project if it comes along.

The tools that I used the most were the layout and type tools. The tools that help give a document a put together look. The tools that make uniform headings, subheadings, body, and captions all uniform were wonderful. Previously you had to just hand select and change things. I know it has not been that way for awhile, but I have been resisting purchasing the newer application. I am now glad that I have it. I recently did a 24-page yearbook project using InDesign. I was able to specify the various parts of the booklet and at one point needed to change the font. I just changed the font in the type>character styles> selection. Just changing the font there corrected the space issue and I was happy. I also used the paragraph styles option to make the document format the way I wanted.

I had about seven pages of meeting information which includes the date of the meeting, place, topic and names of co-hostesses. By creating a paragraph style I was able to easily format this section. Then I made another paragraph style for the members. This style had name, address, city, zip, phone, email and year they joined. I was able to create a style I was happy with and could then apply it to all the data. What a time saver!

Note my pages are not standard. They are a legal size paper folded in quarters. So they are 7 x 4.25

This gives you an idea of how the application put the pages together for a booklet. It really saved giving me a headache!

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There were elements that I just formated as needed, but by and large the best part was yet to come. Changing it from a layout into a booklet with all the pages laid out in the correct order for printing a saddle stitched booklet. I had some trial and error here, but figured it out quite handily and was saved the hours of paste up I used to do. (Yes, some people STILL do it the old fashion way!) But probably not much any more, as I saved the whole document to a disk and took that to the printer. Where it was downloaded and printed quickly without having to use hard copies laid out on top of the copier. This made margins much more accurate.

The pre-flight check part of the application came into play in the last step. It helped me to make sure I had everything that was needed for the document to be printed by a third party, including fonts.

The ability to make the booklet was accomplished by a plug-in. So that is another area to explore. Plug-ins can make many tasks easier. I will be looking for more of them. I suggest you do that, too. For a professional layout designer I'd give this application 5-stars. It seems to be able to do it all, from setting gutters, to color separations to prepress for the printer. For semi-professional or folks who want flexibility in layout with "power under the hood, if it's needed"; I'd give it 5-stars; If you rarely need to use the power it is capable of you would be better off to use one of the shareware applications that can do word processing like you'd find in Neo Office or even in TextEdit or NotePad. This program is expensive and for people who rarely need the power it is, in my opinion, too expensive. Mean time if you do a lot of page layout, writing and formatting this application is THE one.

Kathryn Whitacre

Post Script:
I wrote this review before CS3 came out. Everything I say is still true, so with CS3 out you may be able to find a less expensive copy of CS2 and enjoy it!

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This group is platform neutral. Windows and Macintosh OS's are both supported, as this is about the software and not the computers, per se. We will actively support all software: former Macromedia products: Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, Contribute, , and Adobe products: Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and Acrobat. If you have expertise with any of the Adobe software we hope you will want to share some of it with the group. As a new group we will need officers and members willing to help with various tasks: from membership lists to program chairman to website admin.We look forward to meeting you at our next meeting!

Sincerely,