DESIGN SUITE: Adobe Creative Suite

Adobe has combined all products in its print arena under a single umbrella, called the Adobe Creative Suite. The products in the suite cater to different parts of design, publishing and the Web. Photoshop for graphic design, In Design for print and publishing, GoLive for Web development, Illustrator for vector design, Acrobat for creating and managing PDF documents and, finally, a new member of the team, Version Cue, which is a file-versioning utility.

Since all the big Adobe products have been put under one name, we decided to carry the review in parts to do justice to the individual products. Last month, we covered just the Photoshop part of the package. This month, we'll look at InDesign and Illustrator. 

All the products in the Creative Suite are compatible with each other. So, you will not have to work out the compatibilities between the different versions of software-for example, you don't need to remember that Adobe Photoshop 7 is compatible with Illustrator 11. From Adobe's side, it will be able to push its lesser-used products into the designer's machine. For example, Adobe In Design and GoLive, though good products, are not as popular as QuarkXpress, PageMaker and Dreamweaver. This is also the reason why PageMaker does not find a place in the suite. 

InDesign CS



Let's make InDesign the starting point of the suite. Why? Because though InDesign is the least used of all these products (barring Version Cue) it is the product that is being added with features that can change the print workflow. As a matter of fact it has caught up with QuarkXpress and gone beyond in certain areas.

Page layout view in composite color

Whether people using print software are ready to change their workflow is a different question altogether. It requires training all the typesetting professionals working in an organization to a new workflow on new software. For instance, if you are an organization with more than 150 licenses of Quark running, with deliverables lined up till the end of a year and a half ahead, it is not less than a nightmare. 

Through this version of InDesign, Adobe has tried to overcome the performance issues faced in its earlier versions, added some of the things that were desired by professionals shifting from Quark and, last but not the least, they have got some very handy features from PageMaker. 

Page layout view in cyan

Let's start with the star feature of product, something that is not present in any other print design solution. Sporting a look similar to the Photoshop channels palette comes the Separations Preview Palette. This palette helps designers in previewing the separations before they are sent to print, thus, saving a lot of time, effort and money. The palette shows all the spot color and process color plates with all their permutations and combinations. It works in a similar manner as the channels palette-you can switch a color on or off by clicking on the toggle eye button beside the color. Adding to this functionality is the transparency flattener preview palette. Without going into much detail it would give you the preview of the transparency aspects in a page, which are a nightmare while outputting a document. It gives a clear picture on what parts of the document would be

rasterized. 

A designer always wants to view the whole document that is being edited and wants the tools to be easily accessible or, better still, be visible on the screen. How do you do this with limited screen space? InDesign does this very smartly by using collapsible palettes that dock smartly at the side of the screen space when not in use. 

For those who have migrated from PageMaker, it brings the much loved story editor. This is a feature that allows you to edit text in a faster manner like a word processor inside

InDesign. 

Page layout view in magenta

While the above listed are productivity enhancements, there are some additional features that make the learning curve of the software smaller and migration easier. These include shortcut mapping with QuarkXpress 4.0 and a stroke style editor similar to

QuarkXpress. 

Another important feature that was missing in the software and has been present in Quark since long is the option of mixing process swatches and spot colors to make new colors. This helps in saving a lot on ink costs.

And, if your computer has a habit of crashing every 15 days, you better switch to InDesign. It has good crash-recovery features. If your application crashes because of any reason, it would be restored to the last edited state, somewhat like your word document.

Thus, it is definitly a good upgrade if you are using Pagemaker. On the other hand, if you are in an organization using QuarkXpress, you may have to look at workflow issues when considering a switch.

Illustrator CS



Illustrator CS brings the biggest upgrade to the de-facto in vector design, in the form of a new text engine, 3D support, advanced PDF controls and the ability to save to Microsoft Office formats. 

Page layout view in yellow

The new text engine, borrowed from InDesign, gives many more options to the designer. The new options include character and paragraph styles, optical kerning and open type fonts. Open type fonts include a lot more glyphs and advanced layout features. Also, these types of fonts are compatible with both the Mac and the PC. This would be a big time saver for the designer. Though the advantages of Open Type Fonts are many, there aren't many fonts available that offer full Open Type functionality.

If you wanted to give a 3D edge to your designs, you would be happy after looking at the product. It gives you basic 3D functionality in the form of 3D extrudes, rotation and bevels etc. Since all these tools are dependent on the original 2D shape, they change in real-time if you change the basic 2D shape. 

This option is enhanced by the option of mapping a 2D object on the top of a 3D object that has been created. For example, if you make a soft-drink can, you can map the logo of the manufacturer on that can.

To give a realistic look to this 3D artwork, it gives you various lighting options, too.

All these 3D features have been borrowed from Adobe Dimensions. Though pseudo 3D they would give makeshift 3D

functionality to the 2D user. 

Last but not the least, Illustrator now comes with a good set of layout for brochures, CD covers, etc. They may not be fully functional designs, but they may still be used as sample layouts. Though it still lacks multi-page support, all other features just about manage to outshine that glitch.

Next month, we'll look Adobe GoLive and Adobe Version Cue.

Geetaj Channana