Choosing Your Design Applications
| Explaining which applications to use in your design workflow would fill volumes and still not fully answer every question you might have. In some cases, however, it doesn't matter, because you are required to use the applications on which your agency chose to standardize. Instead of doing a feature-for-feature comparison of the popular design applications, let's take a general overview and look at what's going on in the page-layout, vector-graphic, image-editing, and Web design markets. InDesign vs. QuarkXPressNo battle in the design world is more heated than the debate between which is the better page-layout application: Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress. Quark ruled the market as the undisputed champion for years, but the company has been historically slow to update QuarkXPress. Adobe introduced InDesign to go head-to-head with QuarkXPress and has been winning a respectable following. InDesign integrates tightly with Adobe's other applications, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and GoLive. Let's take a look at InDesign CS2 and QuarkXPress 7, the latest version of each company's page-layout application. InDesign is compatible with native Photoshop and Illustrator files, and lets you work with individual layers in the graphic files. QuarkXPress offers much better Photoshop support than it ever has, but it still isn't as tightly integrated as InDesign's Photoshop support. Both applications offer collaborative workflows. InDesign uses InCopy to manage sections of documents and track changes. QuarkXPress uses Shared Layouts and Compositions. This feature lets you assign parts of an XPress document to other QuarkXPress 7 users so that everyone can work on the same project in real time. Although you would expect InDesign to have the upper hand on transparency, QuarkXPress wins this one hands down. InDesign's transparency handler is powerful, but QuarkXPress 7's is even more robust. InDesign applies transparency to an entire object, whereas with QuarkXPress 7 you can apply different opacity settings to an object's contents, background, frame, and drop shadow. InDesign CS2 is optimized for G4 and G5 Macs. QuarkXPress 7 is a Universal Binary application, meaning it is optimized to run natively on G4 and G5 Macs as well as Intel-based Macs. InDesign CS3, which is scheduled for the second quarter of 2007, will be a Universal Binary application as well. Both applications are powerful and capable page-layout tools. InDesign CS2 is a mature and stable product. QuarkXPress 7 is essentially a brand-new and untested product. When InDesign 2 was released, I jumped from the Quark camp to the Adobe camp. Although I am very pleased with the features that InDesign CS2 offers, I'm willing to give QuarkXPress 7 a chance to prove itself. Tip For the smallest number of headaches when moving to Illustrator from Freehand, save copies of your Freehand files in Illustrator format. The file conversion seems to go much smoother that way. Illustrator vs. FreehandIn early 2006, Adobe purchased Macromedia, the most recent owner of Freehand. Before the buyout, Macromedia pretty much stopped developing the vector-art application after releasing Freehand MX. After the buyout, Freehand has mysteriously gone missing in action. Adobe has not officially said that Freehand has been discontinued, but it sure feels that way. If you are using Freehand and are looking to upgrade, Adobe Illustrator is your only option. Looking forward, Illustrator CS3 will be a Universal Binary application, so you will see improved performance on Intel-based Macs once it ships. Freehand seems to run fine in Rosetta, the G4 and G5 emulator software that's included with Intel-based Macs, but don't expect any support from Adobe if something doesn't work right. The bottom line: Go with Illustrator. Adobe supports the application, and it will continue to receive updates. Photoshop vs ...Adobe Photoshop is, hands down, the king of image-editing applications. If you are a professional designer, you need professional tools, and Photoshop is the powerhouse tool to use. Since there really isn't another application to pit against Photoshop, let's take a look at two add-on applications that make it much easier to manage the images you work with, especially if you deal with lots of digital photographs.
Although Lightroom may ultimately have tighter integration with Photoshop because it, too, is an Adobe product, I'm happier with Aperture's performance. As both products mature, however, that could change. GoLive vs. DreamweaverBoth GoLive and Dreamweaver are excellent Web design applications, and both have devoted followers. The future of each application, however, is a little hazy since Adobe purchased Macromedia. Developing and marketing two competing products just doesn't seem to make sense for Adobe, so something has to go. The problem is that Adobe has invested quite a bit in GoLive, so it doesn't make sense to just drop it. Adobe isn't saying, but my guess is that the Adobe Creative Suite 3 will include a Web application that features a good deal of Dreamweaver influence thrown in with a healthy dose of GoLive. If you want to cover all of your bases until Adobe sorts out what to do with its applications, take a look at the Adobe Web Bundle. It includes the entire Creative Suite 2 package and the Macromedia Studio 8 package. You even get GoLive CS2 and Dreamweaver 8 in the same package. Here are the products in each package of the bundle:
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EAN: 2147483647
Pages: 107