Adobe InDesign CS4 Upgrade [Mac]

Create your layout, export as XFL, and then open in Flash CS4 Professional to deliver dynamic documents with fidelity to the original page layout. Click to enlarge.

Upgrade to Adobe InDesign CS4

Owners of Adobe PageMaker 6, 6.5, or 7 can also switch to InDesign CS4.

Top reasons to upgrade to Adobe InDesign CS4

Live Preflight
Preflight while you design. Continuous preflighting alerts you to potential production problems in real time so you can quickly navigate to a problem, fix it directly in layout, and keep working.

Customizable Links panel
Find, sort, and manage all of your document's placed files in the customizable Links panel. View attributes that are most critical to your workflow such as scale, rotation, and resolution.

Conditional text
Deliver multiple versions of a document for different users, all from a single InDesign source file. Hide text at paragraph, word, and even character level without relying on layers. The remaining text and anchored objects automatically reflow in the layout.

Cross-references
Simplify the writing, production, and management of long documents with flexible and powerful cross-references that dynamically update as content is changed or moved within a document.

Interactive document design with SWF file export
Transform page layouts into dynamic SWF files without working in the Adobe Flash authoring environment. Create digital documents with interactive buttons, hyperlinks, and unique page transitions for playback in the Adobe Flash Player runtime.

Page transitions in SWF and PDF files
Apply page transitions such as curl, wipe, dissolve, fade, and more to individual pages or all spreads, and output to SWF or PDF. Preview a page transition before it is applied, and experiment with speed and direction for greater design control.

Export to Adobe Flash CS4 Professional (XFL)
Export documents to the XFL format and open them in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional with the visual fidelity of your original InDesign layout maintained. Use Flash to add sophisticated interactivity, animation, and navigation to complex layouts for an engaging reading experience.

Smart Guides
Quickly align, space, rotate, and resize single or multiple objects with the help of dynamic guides. The guides, object dimensions, rotation angles, and x and y coordinates appear dynamically so you can quickly snap an object's edge or its vertical or horizontal center to another object or page edge in the layout.

See at a glance whether you have errors in your document. The Preflight panel shows overset text, which you can fix by enlarging your text frame. See that your error number decreases; when you have no errors in your document, the red error indicator will turn to green. Click to enlarge.

Customize the Links panel to display only the attributes and metadata that are important to you and your work. Click any thumbnail and see all information related to the linked object. Double-click the page number to quickly jump to the placed file in your document. Click to enlarge.

Create two versions of a document within a single source file, each with unique pricing. Define conditions, apply them to the appropriate price copy, and simply click the eye icon to hide or show text. Click to enlarge.

Easily create new hyperlinks and verify them without having to export your document. Click to enlarge.

Spread rotation
Temporarily rotate the spread view without physically turning your monitor. Enjoy full editing capability at 90- and 180-degree angles so that you can easily include nonhorizontal elements in your designs.

Smart Text Reflow
Automatically add pages at the end of a story, selection, or document when text is overset using this new preference. Smart Text Reflow works hand-in-hand with conditional text as pages are automatically deleted or added when conditional text is hidden or shown in the document.

Top new features of Adobe InDesign CS4

Live Preflight
The new Live Preflight feature alerts you to potential production problems in real time--directly within your layout. Preflighting while you design helps you achieve better results, greater time savings, and lower production costs. Immediately identify and correct errors during the design phase of your project instead of waiting until the document is ready for print. When an error is detected, quickly navigate to the problem area, fix the problem, and keep working on your document.

The Preflight panel shows you exactly what's going on in your layout, such as instances of low image resolution or overset text. The panel suggests what's required to make the correction, and provides a link directly to the problem area. You can monitor errors across an entire document or constrain monitoring to a specific page range.

Custom preflight profiles take the power of continuous preflighting even further. Define a profile that checks bleed and slug parameters, transparency blending space, overprinting, minimum stroke weight, and much more. You can even share preflight profiles with members of your production or design team to further achieve consistent outputs.

With InDesign CS4, real-time preflighting is an integral part of your design process and no longer a separate activity right before you package your files for print. The result? You save time and lower production costs from start to finish of your project.

Customizable Links panel
When you produce complex documents, managing linked content effectively is critical. With the redesigned Links panel, you can find, sort, and manage all of your document's placed files. Link attributes and metadata displayed in a single, customizable panel means that information about your linked files is readily available just the way you want it.

The Links panel displays your placed files in a collapsible tree view. When your document contains multiple instances of the same file, the Links panel displays the filename once, with an expandible list so you can view all other instances. Update the parent file, and all instances with that filename are also updated automatically.

Each object in the Links panel is visually represented with a thumbnail image, so no more guessing by filename. Click on any thumbnail and view additional information about that link, such as scale, rotation, and resolution. And your Links panel is fully customizable, with preferences for choosing exactly which link details you wish to see.

Conditional text
Quickly deliver multiple versions of a document for different users and channels--print or screen. Build unique variants of technical manuals, student/teacher textbook editions, or multi-language publications within a single InDesign source file.

Simply select text you wish to show for a particular version of your document, and apply a condition to the selection. Then you can quickly choose to hide or show all text with this condition applied, throughout your document. For example, if you're building a file for publishing both in print and online, apply conditions to content that's appropriate only for the print version. When you want to edit or export content for print, click to show all text with print conditions applied. When you work on the online version, hide the print content.

Conditional text enables hiding text at the paragraph, word, and character levels without relying on layers. The visible text and anchored objects automatically reflow for smooth changes to layout. InDesign even removes blank pages that result from hiding conditional text. And if overset text is created as a result of a condition, a new page is automatically added so that the number of pages in your document is always correct for the content that's showing. Only the content that currently appears in your document will be exported and printed. Conditional text streamlines document updates, reduces the number of source files, minimizes review cycles, and allows you to deliver powerful custom content.

Choose from a variety of transitions with animated previews; then edit settings for direction and speed. Click to enlarge.

Add interactive buttons to your document with easy-to-set-up actions and events. Choose sample buttons from a quickly accessed library. Click to enlarge.

After you add interactive elements to your document, export as a SWF file and play it in Adobe Flash Player. Click to enlarge.

Cross-references
Improve technical accuracy and streamline production with cross-references that update when you change content or rearrange text within a document.

Manual updates have until now eaten up a great deal of time, especially when you have cross-references such as figure numbers or headings that are linked to multiple locations in a long document. Now your cross-references will follow your edits automatically.

Cross-reference updates also work for online documents. Hyperlinks to another section in your document, or to a section of text in any external document, can be set up just as easily as any other cross-reference.

You'll find the panel options for cross-references easy to use, flexible, and powerful. Spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time being creative while helping to ensure that your readers will be able to navigate through your print and online documents with ease.

Interactive document design with SWF file export
Transform page layouts into dynamic SWF files directly within InDesign. Insert hyperlinks, page transitions, and interactive buttons--all in the design tool you know best. When your document is finished, just export it as a SWF file and play it in Adobe Flash Player.

Build hyperlinks that quickly navigate to external URLs, launch an e-mail client, or jump to a section within the same or even a different document. The enhanced Hyperlinks panel enables quick creation of new hyperlinks and verification directly in InDesign.

Choose from a rich set of page transitions that include curl, wipe, dissolve, fade, and many more, using the Page Transitions panel. Experiment with speeds and direction.

Quickly create interactive buttons by using the new, intuitive Buttons panel. Design your own custom button--or drag a finished button, complete with effects such as gradient feathering and drop shadows--directly into your document from the Sample Buttons panel. Easily create an appearance for each button state, add predefined actions such as "Go to Next Page" or "Go to URL," and then apply that action to an event such as clicking or rolling over the button.

Adding rich and engaging playback options breathes life into all your online publications--digital magazines, digital brochures, digital catalogs, presentations, and more. Deliver high-impact, interactive SWF documents that leverage all the power of InDesign.

Export to Adobe Flash CS4 Professional (XFL)
One of the most exciting features in InDesign CS4 is its new integration with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional. Combine the page layout strengths of InDesign with the power of Flash authoring to create rich, interactive documents.

Export an InDesign document as an XFL file (an interchange format) which can be opened in Flash, where visual fidelity to each original InDesign page is maintained, with support for editing text and graphics.

Thanks to XFL, designers and developers can easily exchange data and collaborate. And if you're an InDesign user venturing into the world of interactive documents, you can now use your existing skills and the capabilities of InDesign to create complex layouts, and then take advantage of the tools in Flash to add animation and navigation for engaging online reading.

The new integration of InDesign CS4 with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional provides an ideal combination of the fundamental strengths of each tool for creating highly sophisticated digital publications in a straightforward, streamlined workflow.

Smart Guides and Smart Spacing
Smart Guides turn aligning and resizing objects into a fluid process. It is no longer necessary to open multiple panels, manually apply numerous grids or guides to a layout, or rely on the Control panel to accurately align and resize objects.

Quickly align, space, rotate, and resize multiple objects or align to the horizontal, vertical, or center of your page edges--in fewer steps. And quickly snap your selected object's edge to other objects in the layout, thanks to the visibility of Smart Guide readouts.

Smart Guides are dynamically drawn when you transform an object and then they disappear automatically. You can see dimensions, rotation, and X-Y coordinates of your selection as you work. When you stop, the guides vanish, leaving an uncluttered layout.

In addition, new Smart Spacing evenly spaces multiple items on your page by snapping objects into position without having to use the Align panel. Together, Smart Guides and its options that include Smart Spacing, Smart Dimensions, and more, enable ultra precise positioning with immediate feedback, right where you work.

Use InDesign CS4 as a layout tool for interactive documents as well as print. Simply export an XFL file from InDesign, and then open it in Flash to add interactivity, animation, and video. Click to enlarge.

Smart Guides show width and height as you scale, dynamically indicating size matches with adjacent objects. Smart Spacing indicators appear as you move your selection, so you can quickly and accurately align it with other objects. And when you use the Rotation tool, Smart Guides show your selection's angle as you adjust the degree of rotation. Click to enlarge.

Work smoothly and swiftly within InDesign using several elegant interface enhancements that make it particularly easy to work among multiple InDesign documents at once. Click to enlarge.

Spread rotation
Tired of rotating your monitor (or your head) when working on a publication with vertical text elements? The new Rotate Spread View allows you to temporarily turn your document in 90 degree increments. Develop your layout in a more natural and comfortable position and reduce the time it takes to produce your best work. Spread rotation makes it easier to lay out calendars, packaging, annual reports, and other content types that requires vertical placement of text and images in your document.

Smart text reflow
Add text without interrupting your creative process, thanks to automatic addition of pages at the end of a story, selection, or document when text is overset. You will observe smart text reflow when implementing conditional text as well--conditional text becomes even more efficient because pages are automatically deleted or added when text is hidden or shown.

Additional productivity features in Adobe InDesign CS4

Interface enhancements
Work smoothly and swiftly within InDesign using several elegant interface enhancements that make it particularly easy to work among multiple InDesign documents at once. Explore the new N-up view, an application bar, an application frame, tabbed documents, and task-based workspaces.

Inline notes supported in tables
Add inline notes in tables to collaborate more effectively. Store alternate text, designers' comments, and other annotations in notes linked to specific text in a table.

Edit tables in Story Editor
You can now edit text in table cells in Story Editor. Editing your table content directly within the text flow allows you to quickly correct overset text without impacting table design.

Contact-sheet placement
Quickly create a contact sheet by placing multiple images in a grid arrangement, with a single click. As you drag to create the frame for placing your images, you can use your arrow keys to control the number of rows and columns in the grid. Multi-file placement. Speed document creation by importing multiple files at once or by dragging them from the desktop or Adobe Bridge CS4. Preview and place files in any order within your layout.

Proportional file placement
Drag to create a frame with the Place cursor loaded; files automatically fit to a proportionally sized frame, or according to the frame-fitting options you have chosen.

Power zoom
Use the Hand tool in to zoom out by holding down your mouse button (patient user mode). Continue to hold, and you can move the zoom area indicator across pages. Release, and the view returns to your original zoom level in your new location. Increase or decrease the zoom percentage using the Up and Down arrow keys.

Placed InDesign files
When you place one InDesign file into another, the source file remains an editable link. Now, when you initiate an edit, the linked source file opens to the exact point where you wish to make your edits, even if that source file is multipage or a complex, long document.

GREP support for character styles
Apply character styles to text using a GREP expression to find instances of a character or string of characters that occur in a specific context. Quickly apply your style to just those characters.

Nested styles
Use nested styles to dynamically apply complex character formatting to ranges of text within a paragraph. Now apply nested styles through the end of a line for even greater flexibility. Formatting remains unchanged when text is edited.

InDesign Markup Language (IDML)
InDesign Markup Language, an XML-based file format, allows developers to programmatically assemble and disassemble InDesign documents using standard XML tools and without having to open INDD files. Realize increases in performance, convenience, and flexibility when building applications based on InDesign CS4 page layouts.

Creative Pro Online Services

Adobe Community Help
Get the power of an online search engine within your Adobe InDesign CS4 software, but with more targeted results, thanks to Adobe Community Help. Searchable content includes the in-depth, product-specific Help that Adobe has always delivered, plus additional Adobe and third-party content chosen by experts at Adobe and in the design and production communities. With Adobe Community Help, you can find the focused answers you need, fast. (Internet connection required for extended content.)

Adobe Kuler
Explore, create, and share color themes with Adobe Kuler. Kick start your creative projects with color inspiration from the online Kuler community. Browse thousands of themes by newest, most popular, or highest rated; or search themes by tag word, title, or creator. Themes can be downloaded and moved to your Swatches panel with a single click. Or use an interactive color wheel that supports standard harmony rules to develop your own color themes that you can save, move to your Swatches panel, and upload to share with others. (Internet connection required for community functionality.)

Acrobat.com
Acrobat.com is a set of online services--file sharing and storage, PDF converter, online word processor, and web conferencing--that you can use to create and share documents, communicate in real time, and simplify working with others. Thanks to the connection between one of the Acrobat.com services, Adobe ConnectNow, and InDesign CS4, you can meet live over the web to share your screen, present creative concepts and ideas, and brainstorm with up to two online guests for no additional service charge. To share your screen with colleagues and clients, choose File > Share My Screen. Guests can then see your desktop on their screens as you work. You can exchange ideasusing the chat pod, add a live video or audio feed, or use the Whiteboard feature to enable guests to comment on content. You can even temporarily hand over control of the screen to a guest to collaborate on a file. Additional Acrobat.com services, such as Share, Create PDF, My Files, and Adobe Buzzword, are accessible via your web browser. (Internet connection required.)

Adobe Bridge Home
Visit Adobe Bridge Home--an online channel available in Adobe Bridge CS4--and keep up with what's new from Adobe and the design, web development, and video and audio production communities at large. Watch the latest video tutorials for your Adobe InDesign CS4 software, listen to a podcast interview with a leading designer, or learn about the next training event in your community. Discover tips and resources that can help you work smarter and faster, making the most of the new InDesign CS4. (Internet connection required.)

Part of the Adobe Creative Suite 4 family