Portland InDesign User Group

Meeting Notes Archive

Monday, August 9, 2004

There are so many great new features of InDesign®. Lisa Forrester, Business Development Manager for Adobe Systems, covered an amazing number of topics. Here are the highlights.

New Features of InDesign CS

New workspace preferences allow each user to customize the user interface.
Palettes are “pop-up,” so they hide at the edges of the workspace.
The Info palette shows detailed information about the selected item.
Double-click on a text frame to get the text cursor with the selection tool!
New Document allows you to save document presets.
Document Window also allows the user to create slug information settings (in the area outside of the live print area of a document).
Added view options allow the user to view print mode, slug mode, bleed mode, or layout.
Separations preview offers ink limit and separation modes.
Import native duotone/quadtone Photoshop® files (.psd).
Option+double-click opens an image in its original application.
Creative Suite includes “Version Cue,” which allows the user to view and organize files. Version Cue also automatically checks a file in and out when a user is editing the file, and it also saves “versions” of each file, with comments.
Colors — mixed ink group allows the designer to choose inks and create a palette of the possible combinations. Great way to combine inks for two-color jobs.
Custom glyph sets — make your own custom set using the Glyphs Palette.
Import Excel tables, and strip formatting if you choose.
Convert rows to “header rows” that display on every page on the table displays.
Convert to Footer does the same at the bottom of the page.
New strokes — Stroke Style Editor
Story Editor — brings up the word processing box for editing, with an option to choose text display in view mode.
Nested styles — paragraph styles. New styles can be created within this dialog box. The Paragraph Styles palette lists the nested styles. Using complex and multiple styles within text is good for nested styles.
Multimedia within files — create a separate layer. QuickTime movies, Flash, MP3, and audio can be embedded. Control-clicking on a movie will bring up movie options. Good presentation platform.
Export functions — PDFs: X-1a, X-3, Acrobat® 6.0 layered (new to CS). X-1a will be the lowest common denominator to export files for prepress and ads. Can now include the slug option on export.
Package for GoLive® — In GoLive, open up the page that is being worked on. Open the InDesign package. Drag and drop elements into the GoLive page. Graphics can be resized, cropped, and changed to GIF, all in GoLive.

InDesign CS PageMaker® Edition and the PageMaker Plug-in Pack

The PageMaker Plug-in Pack offers some good features from PageMaker that have been missing from InDesign previously. Highlights include data merge capabilities, the InBooklet SE (build booklet feature), and the PageMaker toolbar, including bullets and numbering. Can convert PageMaker 6.0 files to InDesign. Also features the template browser.

Prizes

We gave away several great books on InDesign and Acrobat as well as a copy of InDesign CS.

And Thanks for the Help!

Thanks to Richard, Peggy, and Douglas for their help with the meeting. We couldn’t do it without you. Anyone interested in helping out with a meeting, or anyone with an idea for a future topic, contact the chapter representative.

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