Review – Adobe Indesign CS5
Wednesday, 07 July 2010
To look at, this new version of InDesign looks like the CS4 version, which is good in that if you’re a busy producer of page layouts, the new one won’t through you or interrupt your workflow.
Increasingly, though, people (like me with my MagBytes newsletter) are creating forms and spreads that will be emailed out, and these increasingly have interactive elements. Or spreads are designed for print, then repurposed for web so the same design elements and graphics can be used.
With that in mind, among the changes in this new version (technically, it’s Adobe InDesign v7) FLV video and MP3 audio files can be added to InDesign documents, and these documents can be exported in SWF format, layouts handed off to Adobe Flash Professional CS5 software, or made into EPUB documents for use with popular eBook readers and devices, including iPhone/iPad.
I looked in what I thought was an obvious place for the new Animation palette but it wasn’t there. It was almost there – it actually falls under Interactive in the Window menu, and Interactive is a pop-out that includes a lot more – Animation, Bookmarks, Buttons, Hyperlinks, Media, Object States, Page Transitions, Preview and Timing – all the blue items in this screenshot are additions.
The point of this is that you can create many Flash animations now right within Indesign, without recourse to Flash or a Flash developer, for that matter. Many of the presets from Flash Professional CS5 are ready to go – fly from left, fly from right, bounce, pause …
A new Preview panel (it’s also under Interactive) lets you see the effect you set up, helpful as some trial and error will be required to get things right.
I’m not sure how useful this feature is, though. For example, I could build my MagBytes magazine (it’s emailed out in PDF format to hundreds of subscribers) with a logo that swoops left to right while fading in. Neat, but to end up with interactive files, you need to export SWF files. I am not likely to want to export a PDF magazine in SWF format just for one swooshing logo, and if I was building a little SWF for some interactivity on a website, why would I do it in InDesign, which is a page layout program? I’d surely go into Illustrator (as a designer) and then maybe Flash? Both are included in this Master Collection of CS5 anyway. Because these interactive features are ignored when you export as a PDF, even if it’s an ‘interactive’ PDF.
It seems the real purpose is, once again, the repurposing of an existing spread (say, a magazine) for online distribution or viewing.
Multi-state objects
In the pursuit of your typical paper product, designed in InDesign, this CS5 version introduces a new type of object called the multi-state object – these are page items that have multiple appearances, depending on the Object State. You use the Object States panel (again, under Interactive) to create and control multi-state objects. New button actions give the SWF viewer a way to change the states (appearances) of the objects.
The Timing panel is for controlling the playing order (timing) of animations on a spread, and the Media Panel is for managing placed audio and video. If you’re working with FLV or H.264 video files, you can even pick appearance skins for the playback controller, and create navigation points that determine which part of the video plays when you click a button or trigger an action.
Further to this cause of handing off traditional-style projects for interactive web, InDesign typography and threaded text frames, multi-state objects, and placed video and audio files all carries over into Flash Professional. An object you animate with the motion presets is automatically added to the Flash Professional timeline as a motion object, and the original layer structure of an InDesign CS5 document is recreated in the Flash Professional timeline, so a Flash developer can easily understand how the pages were built.
So even if you don’t want to turn into a Flash developer yourself, handing your project off to one now means a lot more of the features you designed into a project will be carried over. So that’s good.
ePub is another format which gas been boosted a little – in the Apple world, this makes an electronic ‘book’ that is, essentially, the iBook format and readable on iPads, iPhone and iPod touch, You can now use CSS (cascading style sheets) to create consistent styling throughout the piece, but once again, what traditional print designers know anything about CSS, or want to?
Because unfortunately, exporting an existing document as an ePub is no simple matter. The project has to be completely redesigned as a one-after-the-other spread, otherwise you’ll get a bizarre arbitrary mishmash of elements strung downwards. This hasn’t changed – I’d love to see some tools that would make this easier.
Print
But most people by InDesign for print projects and PDF design. A big advantage to the VCS suite is that Adobe can keep the interface consistent from one application to another, making it easier to switch jobs between Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator etc. With that in mind, any little interface differences between them seem the more frustrating.
With that in mind, thankfully the Layers panels works more like Illustrator’s – you can change the stacking order in it by dragging, and grouped objects show up with a disclosure triangle that lets you open them up in the panel so you can rearrange objects within the group – beats all that Command-clicking to select objects, which was never easy if they were aligned in any way.
While Adobe keeps adding features we need to come to grips with, simplification is also occurring – with the standard selection tool in InDesign 7, you can now align (guides appear and disappear as you move things), distribute, rotate, resize, reposition, crop, and scale frames and frame content. The cursor changes to suit depending on its proximity to the object. You can apply colour to an object straight from the top, horizontal Control panel as well as the Swatches panel. These measures are so practical, you might find yourself using them without noticing the behaviours weren’t there before.
A big ask (and some small ones)Finally, InDesign has the ability to include multiple page sizes in one document. This has been requested for some time. This will make it much easier to maintain formatting across various items in a project – brochures to ads to business cards, for example.
This ability appears in the Pages panel – it’s just to the left of the Add New Page icon you’d be used to from older versions. Rather than set up a multi-format document from the start, it appears you begin with, say, a four-page A4 spread in landscape (or whatever), then add the other-sized pages as described above.
A really practical and cool new feature is the circle that appears when you put your cursor over a placed image. This is called the ‘Content Indicator’ (below), and if you click in it, you can move the image inside the frame.
If you select multiple items, you’ll see a bounding box appear around all of them. Holding down the Command key while you drag lets you scale them all together – previously, they’d have to be grouped.
Another new tool is the Gap tool, which is the fourth down in the main left-hand-side Tool Bar. It lets you adjust the white space between multiple objects while maintaining the overall space ratios the objects occupy. It’s easy to use – select it then drag in the space between objects. It’s also surprising how intuitive it is to reposition the gaps instead of the objects.
It’s not just for text columns – it works for all placed objects, and horizontally and vertically. And try doing it with the Shift key held down as a modifier.
It’s even more useful if you turn on Auto Fit. This took me a while to find – it’s actually a little option checkbox in the top control panel. But it aint there … OK, it is, but it only appears if you select several objects. Logical, but not much use if you don’t know. With that on, dragging the gaps actually scales the selected objects in proportion to each other at the same time.
For example, with Autofit on, drag the gap left to right, and the images on one side grow while the others shrink. This means you can design by eye really fast.
Just scaling an object with Autofit checked scales the content along with the bounding frame. Autofit honours fitting settings like Centre to Frame.
Another cool new feature is the instant corner editing: click on any placed object and you’ll notice a new tiny yellow square appears about two thirds the way up on the right-hand-side. Clicking once on that activates corner editing – little yellow draggable diamonds (left) appear on each corner and yeah – you just drag them to change the corner curves. Sure beats typing in numbers a là InDesign CS4 and before. Once again, the modifier key is Shift – hold that down to only modify the corner you drag instead of all four.
When placing multiple files, simply start dragging, and then use the arrow keys to change the number of columns and rows of the placed images. While dragging, hold down the Command key and press arrow keys to change the gutter space on the fly. And it even works on fancy corner options like Bevel.
Editing and type
With the new Track Changes enabled (above), InDesign will keep track of additions, revisions, and deletions in a document. The page layout remains uncluttered; to see the changes, you have to open the word processor-like Story Editor.
Now you can accept or reject changes using options similar to those in Microsoft Word. InDesign automatically assigns a different colour for changes made by each user, so you can easily see who’s made the edits.
Your collaborative group will all need to be using Adobe InDesign CS5, of course. (This new feature does actually appear in the Type menu.)
In previous versions of InDesign, all text in a frame conformed to the column width. To span a headline across multiple columns, you had to cut the headline out of the story, then paste it into a separate text frame.
But now you can apply settings to a paragraph, specifying whether the text should span some or all columns, or split columns, so that InDesign automatically reflows what was one column into two or more columns. This feature is available in the Paragraph Styles dialogue (Command-F11).
Production
Production flows should benefit from the enhanced integration with Bridge, plus the new Mini Bridge. Now you can preview individual pages in an InDesign document in Bridge without even opening InDesign, for example. You can also check thumbnail previews of the images placed in an InDesign document in Bridge without having to open the InDesign file first.
You can locate InDesign files, images, videos, and other assets using Mini Bridge, then drag them directly into position in your document. (Of course, you can choose Open or Place and type a search into the OS X search window, too.)
A new document-installed fonts feature helps avoid the inconvenience of missing fonts during production and printing.
When you package a document, InDesign CS5 includes fonts used in that document. When that document is opened on another system, InDesign looks for a document fonts folder and automatically installs those fonts – for use only in that document. It then uninstalls them when the document is closed. This should help avoid costly design and print errors. (The appropriate font licenses are still required for any party creating or printing the document.)
Another newbie is Print Booklet, which appears underneath Print in the File menu. It’s not perfect, though – Adobe should add the option to print only odd or even pages to the Print Booklet option.
CS ReviewA new Adobe CS Live online service called CS Review integrates with InDesign CS5. You can create and share documents for online review within InDesign. Colleagues and clients (who must also have InDesign CS5) can view a document online and add comments with annotation tools directly in their browsers.
The comments are automatically displayed in InDesign CS5, within the context of the page layouts. Clicking a comment shows you the content it references, to easily match comments to the appropriate areas of design. Simple sharing, easy access to reviews, and centralised comments speed up the review process to help you finish your project on time and within budget.
This requires a high speed internet connection, and I could not test whether NZ was one of the supported countries or not.
And there’s another catch – CS Live online services are complimentary for a limited time, and then, when you can’t live without it, there’ll be a charge, suckerlucker. There’s more info online about that.
There’s also a new Balance Columns feature – once again, this is kinda hidden. It’s in the Text Frame Options dialogue box which is in the Objects menu (and not in the Type menu) – the shortcut is Command B.
Balance Columns lets you automatically balance text across columns in a multiple-column layout. It keeps the length of all the columns balanced, even as you edit the text.
The new Live Captions feature generates either static or live captions for an image using its metadata, such as the photographer’s name and copyright information. Once again, you set this up in the Object menu – but if you can get your photographer to caption inside iPhoto, Aperture or Lightroom, for example, these will automatically appear under the placed images, which is really cool as magazine designers have a constant struggle, in the busy prepress stage, to get the captions both in, then correct before print.
Performance
One thing I did notice is that InDesign 7 exports PDFs at lightning speed compared to InDesign 6 (aka CS4). This is actually due to the new ability to export PDF documents in the background, though. But it means you can keep working.
Every now and again, though (keep in mind my files were on a different hard drive to the application, but this would be a common scenario in many production houses) I got the spinning beach ball when I saved or went to place a file in a spread.
This always resolved if I was patient, but worse was that whenever I left my computer for any length of time and the external HD spun down with an InDesign document open, when I came back, InDesign said it had lost connection to the linked files. Then it crashed.
I could forestall this by closing the document every time I walked away from my computer or took a phone call – but what a pain! Then I had to OK InDesign’s data recovery which, thankfully, did work every time to reopen the crashed file – I remember once upon a time, and even up the the CS4 version at times, documents could die and be nonrecoverable.
Also – and this is a Mac OS X thing, nothing to do with Adobe – have you noticed that when you Force Quit an application, it doesn’t show up in your Recent Applications in the Apple menu? That’s annoying.
ConclusionAt first I thought InDesign CS5 was pretty much the same – but I’m wrong. I forecast that designers will love the changes. While you might imagine it’s irksome having columns balance themselves and InDesign take over more of the designers’ art, that combined with instantly accessible image rotation, instantly accessible corner manipulation and all the other new features like the brilliant Gap tool (above) will speed up workflow and, at the other end, improve production with even more hassles being eliminated. Good effort, I say!
What's Great: Much more powerful pointer-editing of objects and text columns, very intuitive to use
What's Not: Woe betide if your computer goes to sleep with a file open on another volume (in my case, anyway). I don't understand why some of the new Interactive features don't work in 'Interactive PDFs'.
Needs: Those serious about print production and those very busy in pp who like great time savers
What: Adobe InDesign 7 (CS5) $1528. CS5 Master Collection $5326, upgrade from any previous CS version to MC $2717.
System: visit Adobe for the lengthy list.
More info: Adobe Pacific (30 day trial available). Available from NZ Apple resellers and IT providers (make sure you get the Macintosh version!)
