Ryerson University
Event DetailsThank you to all the members that came out to Monday's meeting! We were very lucky to have both Casey D'Andrea and Sebastian Distefano there to show us some of the amazing enhancements to InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator.
The evening started with Casey demonstrating some of the amazing media enhancements that have been added to InDesign CS5. Adobe has made it very easy to create rich multimedia effects right in InDesign. The ability to create multi-state objects and assign actions to them is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons! Perhaps the most impressive thing that Casey showed was the ability to preview animation live right in InDesign using the preview panel. What an amazing feature. Flash doesn’t even let you do that! I thought InDesignCS4 brought media rich publishing to a new level, but I am just blown away at what CS5 can do!
Of course the product enhancements don't stop at media rich publishing. The team at Adobe has refined and introduced so many useful, productive, and powerful tools into the software that there are just too many to list. Like the amazing overhaul to the layers palette that brings much of the functionality of Illustrator layers into InDesign. Selecting, grouping and interacting with objects via the layers palette has never been easier. And what about the ability to dynamically load fonts for a packaged file without having to load them on your system or font management software, so that those fonts are only active for that document and are unavailable as soon as that document is closed? Multiple page sizes and the ability to adjust pages in a creative and meaningful way make creative designs so much easier to manage.
One of the neat new features that I really like is Mini Bridge. If you are still one of those people that is not taking advantage of the power of Bridge, this may be the dealbreaker that changes that. In today's design world, metadata is so important, and the ability to draw on that metadata is so diverse with the use of Bridge. It just makes it so much easier to intelligently interact with your documents. It is amazing!
Speaking of productivity enhancements, the Autofit tool and enhanced grid settings for placing multiple objects make it easy to design and change the design in real-time. And don't even get me started on the gap tool! Like Sebastian said, it is magic! You can adjust your design based on the space between objects! If you are like so many of us that send out endless PDFs for approvals, then you really need to check out CS Review, and how it publishes your document to Acrobat.com and feeds live information and comments back into your document. Document review has never been easier!
The evening wrapped up with Sebastian showing us some of the cool new features of Photoshop, like the enhanced Refine Edge Tool and content aware fill, as well as Illustrator tools like the variable width tool and perspective drawing feature.
I could go on all day about the amazing features of CS5, but you really need to see them to truly appreciate them. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to visit tv.adobe.com to see all the features mentioned (and more!) in action.
On a slightly different note, I announced that Monday's meeting was my last meeting as the Chapter Rep for the Toronto InDesign User Group. I can't believe it has been 4 years and 14 meetings since I began with Adobe to start the group. The Toronto InDesign User Group was the first InDesign User Group to start in Canada, and since our humble beginnings, membership has grown to over 1000, and our meetings continue to be well attended! I will truly miss being a part of all of that, but I will still look forward to coming to meetings and seeing all of you. Having said this, I am absolutely delighted to announce that Casey D'Andrea, two-time presenter and long-time supporter of the group will be taking over as the Chapter Rep.
Casey has been involved in the print industry for 17 years. He started off in traditional fine arts, moving on to graphic design working for a marketing communications firm where he learned the tools of the trade. His first experience with Illustrator, Photoshop, PageMaker and QuarkXPress had begun. It was there that he gained knowledge of the film process, including shooting contacts, developing film, building four-colour proofs with acetate, Following that, he moved on to a prepress role, working in the newly created production department of a web offset printer. Manual trapping, working the rubylith, letraset, gumming plates, paste-up were added to establish a foundation and better understanding of print work. As the trade has evolved, so have the tools. Constantly learning, it became apparent that Casey enjoyed educating others. He eventually transitioned into more of a teaching role, become a trainer, presenter, and consultant. Today, he provides training on the core print-based Adobe applications to companies throughout Canada and even the US. He still enjoys design work, especially typography, as he always looks for opportunities to incorporate his own flavour into his presentations and training. Casey has an amazing passion for InDesign, and I know that he will do an amazing job managing the group! I look forward to watching the group evolve and grow. And with our recent additions of Facebook and Twitter presence, I'm sure that process will continue. We encourage you to join us in those venues as well!
Thank you so much to all of you for being a part of all of this, and making the last four years so amazing. A user group is only as good as its members, and our user group is beyond great!
All the best,
Jason
Canada