InDesign 2.0

[Gargoyle]

Hi folks,

We've got some cash to invest in software and I wanted to know what you thought of Adobe InDesign 2.0, or if you could recommend a good "printer friendly" layout package. We're still going to produce PDF's but we're moving toward the print market.

We're PC users with lots of experience with Word, Fireworks, and Acrobat, but can learn most anything. We don't have enough cash to go buy Macs or time to learn how to use them.

Thanks,

 

[Mynex]

Hi folks,

We've got some cash to invest in software and I wanted to know what you thought of Adobe InDesign 2.0, or if you could recommend a good "printer friendly" layout package. We're still going to produce PDF's but we're moving toward the print market.

We're PC users with lots of experience with Word, Fireworks, and Acrobat, but can learn most anything. We don't have enough cash to go buy Macs or time to learn how to use them.

Thanks,

FWIW, we're using InDesign 2.0 at CMP for our stuff.. it has some really excellent features that make it pretty simple to convert from a pdf format to a ready for print format...

There's a lot to learn with the program, but it's pretty powerful and well worth learning all the 'little features' it has.

 

[annadobritt]

I use InDesign 2.0 and found it easy to learn to use and love how it imports tables from Word. I think that's one of its strong points.

 

[Gargoyle]

I use InDesign 2.0 and found it easy to learn to use and love how it imports tables from Word. I think that's one of its strong points.

That's a big plus for us, since we have a lot of Word documents with tables to convert.

Thanks for the advice so far...and we appreciate any other tips for making the jump to producing ready-to-print documents that anyone may have for us.

 

[Abulia]

I've been using InDesign for a number of years now and really like it. Version 2 is a vast improvement. InDesign has three major strengths for me:

1. Interoperability with other Adobe products. You use Illustrator, Photoshop, or Acrobat? Of course you do--InDesign works seamlessly with these products. I was amazed the first time I dropped an Illustrator file into InDesign how easy it was to manipulate and alter. Built-in support for exporting PDFs.
2. Strong import and preservation. As others have said, InDeisgn has a wealth of import options, such as tables, that minimizes the amount of time you spend working on "little stuff." (Provided you've put your template together correctly.)
3. Imports Quark files with astounding accuracy. Okay, so you've got an old Quark file that you want to import? You do so expecting that you'll have to make wholesale changes and reflow the text? Not so. I've taken 128 page sourcebooks from Quark on the Mac and imported them into InDesign 2.0 on the PC and they did so flawlessly. I was utterly shocked.

Two big "thumbs up" from me on InDesign.

Don Mappin
Freelancer for Hire

 

[Cergorach]

I've been working with Indesign since it's first release, there have been many improvements since and i think it's a top notch product. Indesign 2.0 and Quark 5.0 are on roughly equal footing, the only difference is price and ease of integration with other software packages (Indesign wins on both accounts).

I would suggest that you'll download the demo and play around with it a bit, see whether you like the style or not...

Oh, and take a look at the design collection, great value!
Adobe Indesign 2.0 $699
Adobe Design Collection $999 (contains Photoshop 7, Illustrator 10, Acrobat 5, and Indesign 2)

It's not cheap software (although the Design collection is mightily attractive), but it gets the job done with some of the best tools available...

 

[HellHound]

I have to say InDesign is probably your better choice.

I use Quark, but that has a lot to do with the fact I was using Quark before inDesign 2.0 came out.

And the times I've tried inDesign to do work, it wouldn't actually format my MSWord tables correctly... at all.

But it still does things better, and if you haven't any experience with other professional desktop publishing software, then you might as well learn with inDesign instead of Quark.

 

[mythusmage]

When using a layout program such as Indesign it's best to do the document as straight text, with no formatting. Use tabs instead of tables, that sort of thing.

BTW, I don't know about Word, but AppleWorks has a Drawing app you can use as a bare-bones layout program.