InDesign Elements? Please?

keshkesh
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Surely I can't be the only person out there who would like a sub-$100 US page-layout application? I'd love to make some brochures, newsletters and electronic documents (to be printed to PDF) for distributing things.



Does anyone know if Adobe has even mentioned doing such a program? Or can you recommend another program that works in a similar fashion, at an affordable price?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    macusersmacusers Posts: 840member
    That would be awesome but it would not be sub $99 more like sub $299
  • Reply 2 of 9
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    It would be a good idea IMO. But I also think this is how Apple could/would/should approach a fully-featured word processor for the most part. Maybe it will be a race to market. Of course, if Apple gets there first, Adobe would just take their bat and ball and go home.
  • Reply 3 of 9
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    When Adobe Photoshop Elements was released they announced plans to extend the "Elements" line to other titles..... Indesign, Premier, Go Live, and I think one other.





    I haven't heard anything since though



    I would love to have a Go Live Elements and a Indesign Elements
  • Reply 4 of 9
    pscatespscates Posts: 5,847member
    I think this is a pretty nifty idea. You gotta figure there are tons of PTA moms, Sunday school teachers, students wanting to spice up their book reports and projects, secretaries tasked with putting the company's newsletter together, etc.



    No way in hell they're going to (or should) pay 600 clams for InDesign.



    In the way that Photoshop Elements caters to consumers and hobbyists and leaves off some of the high-end features of Photoshop, InDesign Elements could do the same thing.



    And actually, there totally IS a hole right now, since PageMaker isn't OS X native (runs in Classic only). So yes, there SHOULD be a solution that is a) OS X native, b) geared for consumers/students/home users, c) costs about $99, d) isn't packed with goofy features that most pros don't use, much less Aunt Marlene, etc.







    Have some pre-built templates, make stuff like text-wrapping and importing clip-art and photos easy, allow for creation of simple background shapes (have a pen tool, in other words, in addition to the standard rectangle and circle tools), basic linear and radial gradients, nice spell checker, solid type control (kerning, tracking, baseline shifts, indents, tabs, etc.).



    Would probably sell pretty nicely. Word isn't made for this type of thing, really. And we're getting to that point where OS 9 is - thankfully - becoming completely unused and unnecessary. And other than InDesign and Quark, I'm not aware of any other serious, full-featured OS X page layout apps...and certainly not an affordable, scaled-back version aimed at the "iCrowd" and "Elements" audience.



    Of which there are MANY.



    More than there are pros!
  • Reply 5 of 9
    pepsipepsi Posts: 55member
    There is one option that I know of.

    It is called Multi-Ad Creator. It was designed originally for newspapers and magazines. The lastest release is X ready and can have multi page documents.



    There are two versions...Desktop and Professional.



    Desktop is $99 ( I think)



    www.creatorsoftware.com
  • Reply 6 of 9
    jlljll Posts: 2,713member
    http://www.ragtime-online.com/
  • Reply 7 of 9
    keshkesh Posts: 621member
    Hm. I also stumbled across http://www.stone.com/Create/Create.html , which runs $149.



    Thanks for the pointers, folks. Hopefully I can scrounge up the money and try one of these soon.
  • Reply 8 of 9
    keshkesh Posts: 621member
    Gack. Okay, don't bother trying to download RagTime Solo just yet. Apparently, they only have the Classic app avaiable in the free mode. There's a demo version of the OS X app, but it expires... and I spent hours downloading 50 megs on dialup to find this out.



    Hopefully they release an OSX Solo edition soon. In the meantime, I'll try out the demos for the other apps...
  • Reply 9 of 9
    frank777frank777 Posts: 5,839member
    I'm not sure why Adobe hasn't done this already. ID is locked in a battle with Quark and adding a few thousand users to the base can't be bad.



    So the question is: What features would be taken out to create the Elements package?



    Here are some options:



    1. Plug-in capability

    2. XML capability

    3. Table options

    4. Preflighting



    I'm not sure if that's enough to justify such a steep price break...
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