Adobe InDesign 1.5

A+
A+
A+
A+
A+

blah blah blah, i might die if i see another A+, LoL iam joking but if your looking for something that beats the "FREAK" out of Quark, some thing that Makes PUBLISHER LOOK LIKE A BABYS TOY, then i suggest you get a life. Iam only joking, get this prog now. But yes, theres a hefty price to pay! but oh well, sure is worth the A+'s....... mwuahahah LoL, and guess what my teacher called my dad i was like "OH SHOOT...IAM I IN TROUBLE AGAIN" LoL...but to only find out she loved my designs...i was like go....nevermind, LoL. but yeah she was JeaLouS. Little fool. Iam joking teach. (if you ever read this) but back to my review...THIS IS A MUSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTTT buY!!!!!!!!!!


Wonderfully intuitive   October 10, 2001
samuel jessup (Fresno, CA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

After having used PageMaker and XPress for years, I can honestly say that I am very glad to have InDesign around. The old applications are happily chucked. The interface is very intuitive and in a rare case of marketing matching reality, Adobe has created an application that, if you work well with their other apps, you'll pick this up easily.
At least that was my experience.


Makes designing easier.   October 10, 2001
S Smyth (Belfast, Co Antrim United Kingdom)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

Because PageMaker 6.5 is such a useful product in comparison to the likes of Microsoft Publisher, Indesign, at first glance, appears to be nothing too fabulous given simple layouts. But try something a little more complex and Indesign quickly shows how fabulous it is. A deceptively simple layout such as the front page of a newspaper, for example, with its columned text boxes is hard going in PageMaker, but so much easier with Indesign: Sit back and let the pasted text auto-flow in the columns so easily applied.

Text placed along a curved line as an overlay directly in the document instead of trying to import an EPS from Illustrator is equally impressive. And the colour printouts / proofs from your office desk-jet are also.

The edit > preferences > etc are much better, you only having to set the image display option once instead of every time you go to create a new document.

Short cut keys such as Z and H for the zoom and hand / pan tools are now consistent with other Adobe applications, but many of the commands in PageMaker do not apply: auto-flow for text being one such discrepancy, as is the way in which placed images are resized via their sizing handles. This is a little disconcerting, but the included help-manual is of great assistance for matters such as these. ( Pity it's not a PDF one like in Acrobat. Why does Adobe not do this across their applications? ).

Indesign has a PDF export option, but I found that the file sizes were pretty large in comparison to those created via Distiller as postscript files and then distilled for a given job-option setting. The only problem with this approach was that the colour was CMYK and not RGB as with the direct export option. Perhaps this is because the try-out version I was using didn't have the full postscript driver setup. Users who don't have Acrobat will not find this an issue.

For making up complex - for print - designs, Indesign works very well. But care should be exercised if you are creating PDFs for screen viewing, since it's all too easy to create pages that are very dense and hard to manage in the Acrobat Reader.


The DTP prog for the future   September 8, 2001
Antony (Sultanate of Oman)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

I have been using InDesign 1.5 for the last one year and is constantly amazed by its features and flexibility. I have given up Quark for good. Fortunately, our printer has also been willing to change and so we are able to bring out much better stuff than what we were previously doing with QuarkXpress, especially superb typography, and excellent and precise colour.

InDesign is now to Quark as Quark was to PageMaker years ago. It may take some time for the graphic professionals to change, given the investment they have made into QXP and its xtensions, but change they will have to. Fortunately, Indesign is easy to learn, especially if you know photoshop or illustrator. So one can switch any time.


Best for DTP   August 12, 2001
Randy Sandberg (San Diego, CA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

InDesign is chock full of tools, and it integrates so well with other Adobe products. I rarely find a need to move back and forth between InDesign and image design programs. Having used PageMaker for years, I nevertheless kept a copy of Ventura on my hard disk because of some of the features it offers. I don't see the need for that anymore. I recommend InDesign for anyone who is seriously interested in desktop publishing.