Minneapolis InDesign User Group

Meeting Notes Archive

September 27, 2006

Adobe Stock Photos, Adobe Acrobat® 8, and Adobe InDesign®…a great combination!

On a beautiful Minnesota fall evening, 95 InDesign users converged on the Minneapolis College of Art & Design auditorium to learn more about Adobe Stock Photos, Acrobat 8, and, of course, InDesign.

James Alexander, Director of Adobe Stock Photos, began the evening with an overview of the stock photography market. He explained the different types of stock photography (rights Managed, royalty-free, etc.) and why and how Adobe entered the stock photography business. After a brief demonstration of Adobe Bridge®, (the “home” for Adobe Stock Photos and other fantastic features), he showed some of the unique aspects of the Adobe Stock Photos service. Next, he demonstrated how seamlessly Adobe Stock Photos works with Adobe InDesign. Adobe Stock Photos really makes the stock photography searching, comping, and purchasing process painless. For more information about Adobe Stock Photos, visit the site:

Adobe Stock Photos
www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/adobestockphotos/

James also demonstrated and explained how the new Acrobat Connect service (formerly Macromedia Breeze), which will be part of the upcoming Adobe Acrobat 8, can enhance collaboration between designer and client.

Noha Edell, Adobe Business Development Manager, took to the podium next. Noha gave the audience a fun preview of some of the upcoming features of Acrobat 8, such as the improved interface, the new combine files feature, PDF packages, new forms creation and distribution features, Preflight enhancements, the improved crop marks feature, and more. Noha ended her presentation by explaining some eye-popping techniques in InDesign CS2 for adding interactivity to InDesign documents, how to use the apply next style feature, and more. For more information about Acrobat 8, visit the site:

Adobe Acrobat 8
www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/

There were many questions regarding upgrade prices. Here’s a quick summary:

Upgrade to Acrobat 8.0: $159
Upgrade from Creative Suite 2 Premium to CS2.3 with Acrobat 8 and Dreamweaver: $159
Upgrade from Creative Suite 1.x Premium or Standard: $549

Many positive comments were received at the end of the evening, such as:

“Great presenters; very lively and informative.”

“Presenter was highly entertaining. Seems like the preflight tools [of Acrobat 8] are worth the price of admission.”

“Noha showed a LOT of good tips/tricks/features that I wasn’t aware of — both in Acrobat 8 and InDesign.”

“I like getting the ‘sneak peak’ at what Adobe’s coming out with.”

“I learned so much!”

The evening concluded with some major giveaways. One lucky attendee walked away with a full copy of the Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium. Two copies of Adobe InDesign CS2 were also given away, along with the usual stack of books, T-shirts, and mice, provided by Adobe, Peachpit Press, and Central Coast Consulting.

Interesting random Twin Cities InDesign user group factoid: of the 91 evaluations received at the end of the meeting, 35 users ranked themselves as InDesign beginners, 40 ranked themselves as intermediate-level users, and 13 called themselves expert users. (Three people were undeclared.)

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