Chapter 1: What InDesign Can Do for You
Overview
Although Adobe InDesign is a relatively new desktop-publishing program, its history actually spans more than 15 years ; it succeeds the venerable Adobe PageMaker, the first popular desktop-publishing program. InDesign is an all-new program ‚ make no mistake about that ‚ but it draws on the experience and design of PageMaker, which Adobe Systems acquired in 1994 and significantly modified in the intervening years. As Adobe's entry into the professional, more-creative publishing space that has been dominated by QuarkXPress, the developers of InDesign also learned a lot of lessons from QuarkXPress, offering many comparable features in a way that fits the InDesign publishing workflow model.
Why does this history matter? Because chances are you already use PageMaker or, more likely, QuarkXPress and are switching to InDesign or adding InDesign to your software toolkit. You'll find a lot of familiar things in InDesign, but InDesign is a new product that borrows from PageMaker and other Adobe products, as well as from its chief rival, QuarkXPress. It also adds new components of its own. So draw upon your experience with PageMaker, QuarkXPress, or other Adobe software, but don't let that experience fool you into thinking you can run InDesign on autopilot. Instead, be sure to really learn InDesign's approaches.
| Cross-Reference ‚ | If you're switching to InDesign from QuarkXPress or PageMaker, be sure to check out Appendix C or Appendix D. These appendixes will help you translate your QuarkXPress and PageMaker expertise into InDesign's frame of reference. |
The release of PageMaker in 1986 launched the desktop publishing revolution, and in the following years, PageMaker and its competitors added tons of cool features. It may be hard to imagine that there's anything new to add to this publishing toolkit.
Well, InDesign's creators have managed to add a few new features. Following are the significant additions to the desktop publishing toolkit, courtesy of InDesign (note that this list doesn't include enhanced versions of features found in competitors such as QuarkXPress and Ventura Publisher, or in PageMaker):
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Multiline composer, which lets InDesign adjust the spacing and hyphenation over several lines of text at once ‚ rather than the typical one-line-in-isolation of other programs ‚ to achieve the best possible spacing and hyphenation. (See Chapter 18.)
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Optical margin alignment, which actually moves some characters past the margin of your columns to create the optical illusion that all the characters line up. This works because some characters' shapes fool the eye into thinking they begin before or after where they really do, so although technically aligned, they appear not to be. Optical margin alignment fixes that. (See Chapter 18.)
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Optical kerning , which adjusts the spacing between characters based on their shapes, for the most natural look possible without resorting to hand-tuning their spacing. (See Chapter 18.)
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A menu for inserting special characters, so you no longer have to remember codes or use separate programs like the Mac's Key Caps or the Windows Character Map to add special symbols like bullets ( ‚ ) and section indicators ( ‚ §). Your word processor has likely had this feature for a few years, but this is a first in desktop publishing. (See Chapter 15.)
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Glyph scaling, which lets InDesign stretch or compress characters to make them fit better on a line. (A glyph is a character.) This works in addition to tracking and kerning, which adjust the spacing between characters to make them fit better on a line. (See Chapter 18.)
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Custom strokes for characters, which let you change the look of characters by making their outlines thicker or thinner. You can also give the part of the characters inside the outlines a different color, to create an outline effect. (Normally, the part inside the stroke is the same color as the stroke, so the reader sees a normal, solid character.) (See Chapter 18.)
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EPS display, so you can now see the detailed contents of an EPS file rather than rely on a poor-quality preview image or, worse , see an X or gray box in place of the image. (See Chapter 22.)
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Illustrator and Photoshop file import, so you can place these graphics files directly in your layout. (See Chapter 23.)
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Multiple views of the document, so you can have several windows open for the same document, letting you see different sections at the same time. (See Chapter 3.)
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Custom drop-shadow creation, so you can create exactly the kind of drop-shadow effect you want and not be stuck with a canned option. (See Chapter 11.)
So what can InDesign do for you? A lot. For years, layout designers had to choose between a free-form but manual approach to layout (PageMaker) and a structured but easily revised approach (QuarkXPress). Most chose the latter. With InDesign, you can choose both. That's important for both novice and experienced users, because it isn't a one- size -fits-all answer. Sometimes (for example, if your project is a one-time publication or an experimental effort), creating a layout from scratch ‚ almost as if you were doing it by hand on paper ‚ is the best approach. And sometimes using a highly formatted template that you can modify as needed is the best approach, because there's no need to reinvent the wheel for common documents.
InDesign can handle sophisticated tasks like magazine and newspaper page layout, but its simple approach to publishing also makes it a good choice for smaller projects like flyers and newsletters. InDesign is also a good choice for corporate publishing tasks such as proposals and annual reports . Plug-in software from other vendors adds extra capabilities; for example, Virginia Systems offers several plug-ins that make InDesign a good tool for books and academic papers.
| Cross-Reference ‚ | For more on plug-in software, see Chapter 36 |
But that's not all. InDesign is not merely a merger of QuarkXPress and PageMaker ‚ though it will seem that way to experienced users. It is designed from the ground up as an electronic publishing tool. That means documents can easily be sent to service bureaus and printing presses for direct output, saving you lots of time and money. It also means you can create documents for electronic distribution, particularly using the Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF). These electronic files can include interactive features such as forms and sounds.
| Cross-Reference ‚ | See Part VI and Part VII for more in-depth coverage of output and interactive-document fundamentals. |
This chapter details the wide range of uses and features of InDesign, points out the ways in which InDesign can be useful to you, and describes the basic metaphor on which the program is based. I also provide a comprehensive list of the terms ‚ clearly and concisely defined ‚ that I use throughout the book. So whether you're an expert or novice, read on and prepare yourself for a great InDesign adventure.
