Adobe InDesign f/x and Design: A Straight-Shooting Lesson Plan for Professional Publishers to Hit the Ground Running with Adobe's Hot New Page-Layout Program - Softcover

Betts, Elaine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1576105180 ISBN 13: 9781576105184

Publisher: Coriolis Group, 1999

Synopsis

Demonstrates the features and functions of the page layout program, including integration with other applications, color management, layout adjustment, text refinement, and basic design principles

About this title

About the Author

Elaine Betts (Denver, CO) has produced and researched the desktop publishing industry since 1984, the dawning of the industry. She has used and trained others to use nearly every program on the market. She is an accomplished author, trainer, Web developer, and print and film stylist whose writing credits include QuarkXPress 4 In Depth.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1
A Brave New
DTP World
Scan the vistas that InDesign opens to print and on-screen designers. Discover its integrated workflow and accessibility to developers, and see how it stacks up in comparison to other DTP applications.
Skills Covered In This Chapter

Prepare to use the Adobe workflow effectively

Assess InDesign s features

Learn about InDesign s scriptability During the 15 years from 1984 to 1999, a revolutionary concept, desktop publishing, evolved and expanded to touch every aspect of visual communication. The computerized tools of desktop publishing remained few, but they bore such promise and smoothed so many production paths that even applications that were less than perfect won our hearts. Some applications attempted to be all things to all users. Others narrowed their focus to graphics or page design. Often these improvements came at the price of a daunting learning curve. Finally, an application called InDesign steps beyond all that to meet the sophisticated requirements of graphics and publishing, both electronic and print. Why InDesign Is The Hot Choice If you ve been in the graphics and publishing business for any stretch of time at all, you ve no doubt used a desktop publishing program of some sort. Because Adobe s InDesign is brand new, there must be some reason you re reading this book! Either you re the voraciously curious sort with book budget dollars to burn, or, like many others, you were vaguely unhappy with other desktop publishing applications and bought InDesign with a list of wishes. You yearn to learn that those wishes have been fulfilled by InDesign. Analysis Of The DTP Industry Every publication, regardless of its destination and purpose, is a multifaceted production. Visual components, text, and page geometry combine to make a powerful statement. Each element adds to the strength of the statement, but is fraught with an equal potential for disaster. The more that tools of publishing are made readily accessible to large numbers of people, the greater the potential for creative use of those tools, and the more likely you are to encounter problems, particularly with output. The dramas of missing printer fonts, graphics that won t print because they ve been manipulated in the page layout or saved in a volatile format, quirky text flow, and myriad other output bugaboos are eliminated when completed files are converted to PDF. Adobe, with the release of Acrobat 4, has resolved many of those dilemmas. Version 4 embeds the CMS data, giving you more reliable color printout, and the problem with fuzzy EPS graphics in version 3 has gone away, to name but two improvements. Using a feature preprogrammed into InDesign, documents can be converted to PDF without purchasing an additional application. The original InDesign file remains intact, fully editable, and ready to be converted again to any format other than InDesign s. The PDF version is editable up to a point, ready for proof printing or final output with as little room for error as is presently possible in the world of printed material. PDF is probably the most revolutionary development since the inception of desktop publishing. InDesign s Concept My first question was, Why does Adobe want another desktop publishing application? Face it. It has two already: PageMaker and FrameMaker, and Illustrator has lots of desktop publishing capabilities. What s up? The official Adobe word is: PageMaker continues to enjoy high demand among business customers, particularly on the Windows platform. These customers want more professional-looking output than entry-level desktop publishing tools can provide, and they view PageMaker as the natural next step. Hmmm. What s this really saying? The company PR continues, Adobe Systems plans to continue developing, marketing and supporting PageMaker as a page-layout program with professional-level features for business publishers. Reading between the lines, I presume they are positioning PageMaker to meet demands from big businesses who must produce all manner of publications using a work force that isn t necessarily trained in the visual arts or page layout design. PageMaker now comes with lots of predesigned templates and less challenging, albeit less rich, layout capabilities. So where s InDesign going? Adobe InDesign is more than just a new page-layout program. It s a key component in an integrated, business solution (at this point I had to jerk myself up by the collar to keep from snoring) that includes Acrobat and its composite PDF workflow, PostScript, Illustrator, and Photoshop. And this brought me to full attention: Together these Adobe programs deliver the best solution for the future of professional publishing because of their tight integration, powerful productivity and design tools, and high-quality output . I might add that the Adobe product support has consistently been prompt, courteous, and thorough! So, now I see the point. Moving On In the coming chapter you ll become acquainted with the InDesign environment. Each of the screen components is briefly but concisely covered, and you ll learn about the features that make using InDesign more efficient.

Edition details

• Publisher: Coriolis Group
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1576105180
• ISBN 13: 9781576105184
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312