Tuesday 27 Mar 2007 - 05:10
InDesign CS2’s interface was the nearest to the new overarching Creative Suite front end and it introduced collapsing palettes versions ago, but the clean way that panels resize together is a welcome boost.
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Varies... from vector artwork to photo manips. I add them to my portfolio and/or my DA account & then provide links.RT @MrRyanDee
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Adobe has pushed the efficiency of the interface further by offering customizable menus and workspaces, so you can move between interface layouts based on particular tasks – which is especially useful on cramped screens such as laptops – and remove tools that you have no need for, such as dynamic publishing if you never work with data.
The interface has also been given a polish in smaller areas, such as thumbnails in the Pages panel to make navigating through long documents easier.
One issue to be aware of if you’re thinking of upgrading from InDesign CS is that CS3’s INX interchange format can only be opened by version CS2 – so opening a CS3 document in CS requires two conversions and access to all three versions.
Fade to black
Effects such as Drop Shadow and Feather were added in InDesign CS2, adds seven more: Gradient Feather, Directional Feather, Bevel and Emboss, Satin, Inner Shadow, Inner Glow and Outer Glow.
Most provide a way to add highlights and shadows inside and outside an object or text for a faux-3D effect. All offer a wide range of controls over the object itself, stroke, fill or text with choices over angle, smoothness, style, depth, shading and opacity. They’re undeniably useful tools, though as with Drop Shadow and Feather, it’s very easy to go overboard and end up with a cheesy result.
Another feature we’re going to hate in six months when we see it over- and badly-used around us are the feather tools. These use a linear or radial gradient to mask off an image gradually, fading it off at one or more edges – and are easier to use subtly than effects such as bevel.
Transparency can also be used more creatively in InDesign CS3, as it can be applied independently to an object’s fill, stroke and content.
Slap ‘em in
InDesign CS3 makes bringing multiple images into a template or layout much swifter by allowing to bring in more than one at once. A thumbnail of the first image sits by your cursor, and you click on a frame to place it, at which point a thumbnail of the second image appears and you repeat the process.
If you prefer, you can use the arrow keys to scroll through the image thumbnails, and press Escape to ignore an image.
It’s a very fast way of working and soon you’ll wonder how you ever did without it. And it also works with text and InDesign documents – which for the first time can be used directly inside other InDesign documents. This can either been as a clumsy version of QuarkXPress 7’s Composition Zones feature, or just a simple way to include pages as images on other documents that are automatically updated.
Adding images to frames when laying out from your templates has also been made quicker – as you can now give settings to frames for fit method, alignment and cropping. When you place images into these frames, they are automatically styled so you can get on with laying out the rest of the page.
Cell yourself
InDesign CS2’s Table tools are powerful, but formatting them isn’t as quick as working with text. The new Table and Cells Styles system, which includes panels and dialogs for both tables and cells that work using a dialog box and one-style-based-on-another approach familiar from Paragraph and Characters Styles.
The system includes formatting settings for headers, footers, left- and right- columns – with support for alternating styles for strokes and column shading/colours.
Quick specs boxes
If you have more complex sequences of text styles such as the Specifications box in our Reviews section, you’ll appreciate the new nested style looping options. This enables you to create a style that applies text formatting (including colour, font, and weight) to a series of words based on spaces, punctuation and symbols – and apply them with a single click.
Keep it together
The new Text Variables system helps keep consistency across page elements, so page furniture such as headers and footers – or anything else you wish – will automatically reflect changes made to core copy. This is especially of interest to creatives producing catalog or guide pages, where only changes to the underlying variable will be automatically replicated throughout a whole page or spread – and you don’t have to worry so much about whether you’ve remember to change everything.
You can also automatically create InDesign documents from XML data for dynamic publishing without using expensive systems. Creating the rules to do this requires a working knowledge of JavaScript, AppleScript or VBScript – or access to a geek with it – but the layout process is swift and simple once these are created.
Neil Bennett
For more information see the Adobe Web site.
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Neil Bennett
Editor
Do you share your creations online?