Chicago InDesign User Group

Meeting Notes Archive

May 15, 2007

The excitement of getting our first look at CS3 brought so many member registrations that the meeting had to be moved to a larger venue! For the first time, Columbia College hosted the InDesign User Group meeting in their Ferguson Theater on Michigan Avenue, offering seating for over 100.

We were very lucky to have several representatives from Adobe at our User Group meeting. Special guest speaker Noha Edell of Adobe Systems–New York was in town, preparing for the huge CS3 Chicago launch the next day. A little creative scheduling got Noha to give us a preview of the new Adobe tools before the rest of the city. The local Chicago Adobe rep, Tom Petrillo, was also at our meeting to sing the praises of CS3.

The meeting began by polling the audience; whether to focus only on new features of InDesign CS3 or to show off the entire new Creative Suite 3? Of course, the Chicago members wanted it all, so Noha agreed to take us on a tour of the whole CS3 package, including InDesign.

Noha got started with Bridge, the hub of Creative Suite, by showing quick new ways to manage files and easy methods to preview images without even opening them! From the Bridge she launched Photoshop CS3, showing off personal family snapshots of her son as the main image ingredients for the magic that followed. Lots of applause from the crowd as Quick Select and Refine Edges made fast work of previously tedious tasks. Aligning multiple images is a new command, making it simple for accurate retouching and compositing between several image layers. To demonstrate this, three quick snapshots of the audience were easily combined into a panorama that had automatic alignment and smooth blending using the new Photoshop CS3 features. The nondestructive Smart Filters made the biggest impact, offering new ways to work by allowing edits and adjustments while keeping the original image quality.

Moving on to Illustrator CS3, Noha did a quick review of the Live Trace and Live Paint features added in CS2. She then expanded on that with a demo of CS3’s Live Color. Using an exquisite and complex graphic example, Live Color was able to shift and change hundreds of colors across the artwork in moments. The Eraser tool was a definite breakthrough—the way we always thought that vectors should work in one intuitive step.

That led us to InDesign, where there are so many new CS3 features that we could easily spend several meetings on those topics. Noha gave us the highlights, showing off the detailed Transparency controls that separately apply to an object’s stroke, fill, and content. The creative Effects like gradient feathers are live and nondestructive, letting you edit and change the settings at will. There are lots of different options for placed images, including new Frame Fitting controls, Multi-Image Place, and even placing InDesign files as a graphic within an InDesign file! It seems as though InDesign CS3 offers previews everywhere… on the Pages panel icons, and on the Place cursor for both text and graphics. We were barely able to touch on Table/Cell Styles and the mega-super-powered Find/Change... so we promised to schedule additional meetings to cover many more of the InDesign CS3 new features in detail.

Tom Petrillo of Adobe Systems–Chicago answered questions about the different editions of Creative Suite for different applications. There are lots of new configurations for the several Creative Suite 3 editions that now include many of the former Macromedia applications.

Even Photoshop comes in several versions now; in addition to the regular version of Photoshop for image editing and Photoshop Elements for basic users, Adobe has added Photoshop Lightroom for professional photographers and Photoshop Extended for video, multimedia, medical, and scientific uses. Then there’s the deluxe-all-inclusive Master Collection, not out yet but available soon for the extremely wealthy multi-skilled designer to have one-of-each Adobe tool that they make.

After we were introduced to the many new Adobe releases, there were announcements from Chapter Rep Jim Maivald, and plenty of raffle prizes from sponsors Chicago Press Corporation, Peachpit Press, and Adobe Systems. Everyone enjoyed the new meeting location and seeing the new Adobe software.

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