my only warning to you about indesign... i love version 2, but i am really incredulous that they have made indesign cs files incompatible with version 2. macworld makes a good point that, while adobe did the same thing with version 2 not down-saving to version 1, no one BOUGHT version 1, so it wasn't a huge issue. but this essentially means that any studio who wants to test the waters first with indesign cs has to basically "test in a bubble", and then do a full-scale rollout, rather than a machine-by-machine implementation. that's a lot to ask your consumers to commit to.
i hate quark these days, but at least they have been able to save back one version prior with all their latest releases. so keep in mind, if you learn indesign cs, you better have someone else ready to take those files, or else you're building a ship in a bottle. i hope macworld's comments were right that adobe "is working on a fix for this issue."
well, yeah. but you won't be able to open that pdf back up in indesign 2 (again, i don't know why adobe doesn't give all of acrobat's pdf editing tools into indesign)
interesting, i didn't know that about indesign cs. what are the major advancements from 2 to cs (3)? i was giving feedback to adobe like mad on id2 because we were a beta site for them.
Now that it looks like the order is about to be placed, I'll probably start asking as few more specific questions. Here are a few to start...
1. Can InDesign export files as quite high quality PDFs without having the full Acrobat installed (unless I'm missing something, it looks like I can)?
2. Does InDesign play nice with FireWorks and Freehand? Looks like they don't want to pay up for all the Creative Suite, so I'll be playing around with graphics in Studio MX since I happen to own it. Looks like everything will be ok. Just want to avoid any potential problems.
3. Does Adobe provide any cheap way of upgrading from just InDesign to the full Creative Suite? This will be with the academic version.
1. Can InDesign export files as quite high quality PDFs without having the full Acrobat installed (unless I'm missing something, it looks like I can)?
yes. acrobat allows you to be a lot more fussy about your settings and color profiles, but for learning and beginner purposes, you should be fine.
Quote:
2. Does InDesign play nice with FireWorks and Freehand? Looks like they don't want to pay up for all the Creative Suite, so I'll be playing around with graphics in Studio MX since I happen to own it. Looks like everything will be ok. Just want to avoid any potential problems.
well, it "plays nice" in the fact that you can save standard TIFF and generic EPS files out of each and place them in indesign. of course, the round-trip integration is better with all-adobe app setup.
Quote:
3. Does Adobe provide any cheap way of upgrading from just InDesign to the full Creative Suite? This will be with the academic version.
not from the academic license, for two reasons.
1. adobe figures you're already saving a whackload of money off the academic discount, and they don't want to encourage student friends helping their freelance partners out (though adobe knows it happens all the time) and
2. it's to persuade you to eventually get off the academic pricing into the commercial vein, where the upgrades are cheaper than buying full academic versions over the long haul.
also, the only app they are offering a full studio upgrade from right now is photoshop, simply because most everyone HAS photoshop if they have any adobe apps at all. this is to encourage as quick a market penetration for the new cs suite as possible.
yes. acrobat allows you to be a lot more fussy about your settings and color profiles, but for learning and beginner purposes, you should be fine.
Sorry to keep up with all these questions, but...if I export my work as a PDF with the highest quality settings from InDesign can I then open it up in Acrobat on a Windows machine and play around with these more fussy settings, or once you do that initial export is your file stripped of all the more detailed capabilities?
Sorry to keep up with all these questions, but...if I export my work as a PDF with the highest quality settings from InDesign can I then open it up in Acrobat on a Windows machine and play around with these more fussy settings, or once you do that initial export is your file stripped of all the more detailed capabilities?
That should be all for tonight
sorry for the delay... didn't mean to leave you hanging like that.
re: acrobat and indesign
well, i wouldn't exactly call a PDF "stripped" -- more like "sealed and locked up tight". remember, the pdf format was really one of the first ways people could transfer files that could contain everything it needed, such as color profiles and fonts, and not worry about anything getting lost along the way.
so similar to an eps, a pdf has quite a bit embedded into it at the time of creation. now, i haven't actually played with acrobat 6 yet, so this knowledge may be a bit dated, but the only way to really "edit" a pdf are:
1.) use the tools in the full acrobat package. these have typically been limited to text editing and such. in acrobat 5, you could edit text in a block, but in acrobat 4 and earlier, you were limited to a per-line edit system only (meaning if you needed to add text in a pdf somewhere, you had better hope it didn't exceed the current line, or it wouldn't rewrap...ugh...the good ol' days).
2.) you can use higher-end plug-in tools like pit stop pro for acrobat. if you've never used acrobat plug-ins before, man are they cool. stuff like pit stop can literally allow acrobat to edit almost anything about a pdf. but it's typically priced too high for the average consumer to want to mess with but it's crucial for a typesetter who receives pdfs, and needs to make changes on the fly.
3.) you can take the pdf, and re-distill it. basically, open the pdf, and print to file, then run that file back through distiller to make another pdf. this can sometimes be handy if there is some wonky color profile stuff happening that you need stripped, or if you are trying to eek out a little more file size in your pdf. just keep in mind that your images will probably be downsampled each time to redistill a pdf, and they will look progressively worse the more you try. there are far better tools out there for squeezing file size out of a pdf than acrobat (ironic, i know)
Quark is a dying "platform"; don't waste your money on it, or the company which makes it. Aside from a shoddy product, they have bar-none the worst customer service in the software industry that I can recall. Truly awful.
Comments
Originally posted by rok
my only warning to you about indesign... i love version 2, but i am really incredulous that they have made indesign cs files incompatible with version 2. macworld makes a good point that, while adobe did the same thing with version 2 not down-saving to version 1, no one BOUGHT version 1, so it wasn't a huge issue. but this essentially means that any studio who wants to test the waters first with indesign cs has to basically "test in a bubble", and then do a full-scale rollout, rather than a machine-by-machine implementation. that's a lot to ask your consumers to commit to.
i hate quark these days, but at least they have been able to save back one version prior with all their latest releases. so keep in mind, if you learn indesign cs, you better have someone else ready to take those files, or else you're building a ship in a bottle. i hope macworld's comments were right that adobe "is working on a fix for this issue."
But I can always save as PDF, right?
Originally posted by Gabid
But I can always save as PDF, right?
well, yeah. but you won't be able to open that pdf back up in indesign 2 (again, i don't know why adobe doesn't give all of acrobat's pdf editing tools into indesign)
1. Can InDesign export files as quite high quality PDFs without having the full Acrobat installed (unless I'm missing something, it looks like I can)?
2. Does InDesign play nice with FireWorks and Freehand? Looks like they don't want to pay up for all the Creative Suite, so I'll be playing around with graphics in Studio MX since I happen to own it. Looks like everything will be ok. Just want to avoid any potential problems.
3. Does Adobe provide any cheap way of upgrading from just InDesign to the full Creative Suite? This will be with the academic version.
Originally posted by Gabid
1. Can InDesign export files as quite high quality PDFs without having the full Acrobat installed (unless I'm missing something, it looks like I can)?
yes. acrobat allows you to be a lot more fussy about your settings and color profiles, but for learning and beginner purposes, you should be fine.
2. Does InDesign play nice with FireWorks and Freehand? Looks like they don't want to pay up for all the Creative Suite, so I'll be playing around with graphics in Studio MX since I happen to own it. Looks like everything will be ok. Just want to avoid any potential problems.
well, it "plays nice" in the fact that you can save standard TIFF and generic EPS files out of each and place them in indesign. of course, the round-trip integration is better with all-adobe app setup.
3. Does Adobe provide any cheap way of upgrading from just InDesign to the full Creative Suite? This will be with the academic version.
not from the academic license, for two reasons.
1. adobe figures you're already saving a whackload of money off the academic discount, and they don't want to encourage student friends helping their freelance partners out (though adobe knows it happens all the time) and
2. it's to persuade you to eventually get off the academic pricing into the commercial vein, where the upgrades are cheaper than buying full academic versions over the long haul.
also, the only app they are offering a full studio upgrade from right now is photoshop, simply because most everyone HAS photoshop if they have any adobe apps at all. this is to encourage as quick a market penetration for the new cs suite as possible.
Originally posted by rok
yes. acrobat allows you to be a lot more fussy about your settings and color profiles, but for learning and beginner purposes, you should be fine.
Sorry to keep up with all these questions, but...if I export my work as a PDF with the highest quality settings from InDesign can I then open it up in Acrobat on a Windows machine and play around with these more fussy settings, or once you do that initial export is your file stripped of all the more detailed capabilities?
That should be all for tonight
Originally posted by Gabid
Sorry to keep up with all these questions, but...if I export my work as a PDF with the highest quality settings from InDesign can I then open it up in Acrobat on a Windows machine and play around with these more fussy settings, or once you do that initial export is your file stripped of all the more detailed capabilities?
That should be all for tonight
sorry for the delay... didn't mean to leave you hanging like that.
re: acrobat and indesign
well, i wouldn't exactly call a PDF "stripped" -- more like "sealed and locked up tight". remember, the pdf format was really one of the first ways people could transfer files that could contain everything it needed, such as color profiles and fonts, and not worry about anything getting lost along the way.
so similar to an eps, a pdf has quite a bit embedded into it at the time of creation. now, i haven't actually played with acrobat 6 yet, so this knowledge may be a bit dated, but the only way to really "edit" a pdf are:
1.) use the tools in the full acrobat package. these have typically been limited to text editing and such. in acrobat 5, you could edit text in a block, but in acrobat 4 and earlier, you were limited to a per-line edit system only (meaning if you needed to add text in a pdf somewhere, you had better hope it didn't exceed the current line, or it wouldn't rewrap...ugh...the good ol' days).
2.) you can use higher-end plug-in tools like pit stop pro for acrobat. if you've never used acrobat plug-ins before, man are they cool. stuff like pit stop can literally allow acrobat to edit almost anything about a pdf. but it's typically priced too high for the average consumer to want to mess with but it's crucial for a typesetter who receives pdfs, and needs to make changes on the fly.
3.) you can take the pdf, and re-distill it. basically, open the pdf, and print to file, then run that file back through distiller to make another pdf. this can sometimes be handy if there is some wonky color profile stuff happening that you need stripped, or if you are trying to eek out a little more file size in your pdf. just keep in mind that your images will probably be downsampled each time to redistill a pdf, and they will look progressively worse the more you try. there are far better tools out there for squeezing file size out of a pdf than acrobat (ironic, i know)
hope that helps.