Adobe InDesign

[officeglenn]

Well, in about two weeks, the newspaper I work at will make the switch from Quark XPress to Adobe InDesign for all our layout and ad building.

I've worked with InDesign a little bit before, but that was maybe five years ago and I don't remember much of it. And I've been working my way through the video tutorials that came with CS3.

Anyone have any tips or tricks? What's been your experience with InDesign compared to Quark? Anything I need to watch out for as we make the switch?

[slapshot]

I had been using Quark for 10 years before switching to InDesign, and let me tell you InDesign is much, much better.

I don't know if my company purchased a plug-in that allowed InDesign to open Quark files or if it's built into the program. We run CS2 at work, and I know that we have to down-save Quark files to version 4 to open them. For the most part, they covert fine, but sometimes text loses its formatting.

The only thing I found easier in Quark than InDesign was Style Sheet formatting. InDesign has a lot more options and menus to go through to get it to format correctly.

[gordie_delini]

I love InDesign - I wish I had more projects with which to use it.

[STL FANATIC]

I'm a student using InDesign in classes and also at both of my jobs (one at a newspaper and one just for some projects), and I love it. Very powerful and it integrates so well with the other programs in the Creative Suit. I've used both CS2 and CS3.

I can't compare it to Quark, a program I never used, but one of my bosses loves it and thinks it much better than Quark, if for no other reason (and I believe he has others) than how easy it is to use with the other Adobe programs.

One of my professors quipped that Quark was the better program but InDesign is the industry standard anyways, but I get the impression from him that he's just bitter (not old) that he grew up learning and working with Quark and now has to switch over and doesn't want to admit the benefits that come from InDesign.

[andrewharrington]

All good points. You'll always have the people who are die-hard Quarksters and like it much better because they get frustrated and don't feel like it should take any time to learn a new program that does the same thing as one they already use, and they bash it accordingly, saying it's 'difficult to learn' or something. There are a wealth of things you can do in InDesign, and it will take time to learn them, as well as your standard layout practices, but it's well worth it. Overall, I like InDesign a lot better than Quark; it's like the design student that graduated and became ten times better than his teacher in a short period of time. Being a user of other Adobe products, the toolset and menu options are very easy for me to use since they are identical to the other programs, and the program functions themselves are pretty self-explanatory if you're familiar with other Adobe products. I am self-taught in all my graphics applications and am more well-versed than 95% percent of the people I meet (including veteran designers and art directors) after only three years of working with them. The best part about InDesign is its compatibility and integration with the other programs and popular formats, like its ability to easily create flawless .pdfs that are suitable to send to a printer or platemaker.

It might take a while to get in a rhythm with it, but InDesign really is a great tool, and once you get through all the growing pains, you will really begin to reap the rewards.

[andrewharrington]

Now that I think about it, here are some of the best parts of InDesign that it took me a long time to learn:

1. Master Pages: If you're setting up a multi-page document that has any common margins or grid elements, use master pages to apply those items to all the affected pages at once.

2. Story Palette: Allows you to use hanging punctuation for body text. This optically aligns the edges of text columns by hanging odd items like quotes or dashes slightly outside the text box. Use a measurement equal to or just a little larger than your text size.

3. Character Palette: Speaking of optical alignment, after you set any text, go to the character palette and select 'optical' instead of 'metrics' for your text spacing. InDesign does a pretty good job of optically kerning letters so the spacing appears more uniform and allows you to make fewer spacing adjustments.

4. Glyphs Palette: InDesign is great with the opentype features, allowing you to change the numbers in your text to old style or change acronyms to small caps, etc. Also, look for the alternate characters in many of the big font families, like the Adobe fonts marked 'Pro' et al. You'll find great swashes, ornaments and alternate letters with tails and what have you in script fonts like Bickham Script Pro, and you'll find alternate Ws, ornaments and other goodies in text fonts like Garamond Premier Pro.

Just go through whenever you have free time and acquaint yourself with the menus and experiment with the functions to see what they do. If you can't figure them out, look them up in the help section.

[SDX]

I've only been using InDesign since November and love it, makes thinks a hell of a lot easier (though i was using Corel Draw 10 previously.) It is much more time efficient and every time i use it i find out something new. Only think i am not liking is the print layout options, though that may be down to me not looking at the right places.

[RedEye]

We also have issues opening newer versions of Quark in our CS3 version of InDesign. As far as UI... MUCH better and the logic behind the software is so much more intuitive than Quark... I always hated quark it was clunky and just hated it. I absolutely LOVE this version of InDesign, makes life MUCH easier when sending things to the printer. Our printer prefers InDesign files over Quark. They have used it for a long time and are well versed... I would check with your individual printer and see which they feel most comfortable with... my guess is it is InDesign.

[Jimmy!]

I was a Quark user for a long time. The conversion from Quark to InDesign is very easy. If you're familiar with Adobe Illustrator, you should have nothing to worry about.

[the glass house]

TO WHOM IT MY CONCERN

I DO STAINED GLASS ARTWORK, ALL NFL, COLLEGE, NASCAR LOGO'S OF ALL TYPES OF TEAMS

IS THIS A GOOD SITE TO LIST MY ARTWORK FOR SALE, OR DOES ANYONE HAVE ANYOTHER IDEAS

THANK YOU

THE GLASS HOUSE

[Captain Poncho]

I'm making the switch myself, as I should have done a year ago. I'm not going to complain about InDesign being hard or some such, but with quick keys and the like, I'd be able to zip through a page layout in Quark in half the time it'll take me in InDesign. But I know that's just initially.

I'm also aware that Quark will be dying a slow, painful death, and I don't want to go down with the ship.

I'm a little irritated that I'll be learning a new program that does essentially the same job, but I've done it before with the Freehand to Illustrator switch.

And then I'll have to learn Flash.

[MVP]

InDesign CS3 is much simpler to learn than QuarkXPress IMO. I've had some projects where we were asked to do the exact same with both programs. The first time we basically completed the entire book/magazine (forgot what it was) in InDesign, and tried to duplicate it in Quark, but had a tremendously difficult time doing so. The functions were much more time consuming, and many times we literally couldn't even figure out how to create some things that we very easily did with InDesign.

[Shumway]

I still use Illustrator for page layout half the time, to be honest, but I've used both Quark and InDesign, and I'd choose InDesign any day of the week. The Adobe compatibility's a huge plus, not that Quark didn't respond to illustrator or photoshop work. I found them both to be very similar, although I haven't used Quark enough to really learn a whole lot more than style sheets and simple layout techniques.

[Drew22]

TO WHOM IT MY CONCERN

I DO STAINED GLASS ARTWORK, ALL NFL, COLLEGE, NASCAR LOGO'S OF ALL TYPES OF TEAMS

IS THIS A GOOD SITE TO LIST MY ARTWORK FOR SALE, OR DOES ANYONE HAVE ANYOTHER IDEAS

THANK YOU

THE GLASS HOUSE

eBay. Don't spam here, and don't yell.