Toronto InDesign User Group Home Meeting Summary Archive

Meeting Summary

InDesign CS4!
Mon, Oct 6th, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Ryerson University
Event Details

If you were able to make it out to the meeting on Monday, October 6, I hope you found it as informative and, quite frankly, amazing as I did. Once again Adobe has stepped up to the plate in offering some amazing tools that we can use. Judging by the reactions of the user group members in the audience on Monday, it seems there is a lot to like in InDesign CS4!

For those of you who were not able to make it to the meeting, I can give a little bit of a summary of what we discussed; however, I don’t think my summary will come close to doing justices to the amazing this Sebastian showed.

Sebastian began the evening by discussing some of the enhanced features of Bridge. For those of you who know Sebastian, you know that he is a long-time endorser of this Adobe product. While I have been slow to adopt Bridge in the past, after seeing what it can do in CS4, I think Sebastian may have finally won me over! First of all, it is so much faster! The previews, especially in the new carousel mode, are fantastic. Adobe has made key things (like workspaces) easier to access, making the product overall more user-friendly. Add to this some great automation now built into the program (PDF contact sheets and web galleries can be made inside Bridge without external apps or scripts), and full Spotlight integration for the Mac, and you have a really functional, awesome interface for all your CS4 products.

After the Bridge discussions, Sebastian wasted no time in getting into the details of InDesign CS4. There were so many new features to show that we went almost non-stop for the entire evening. Perhaps the biggest change for users to adjust to is the new user interface – not just for InDesign, but for the entire suite. Adobe has adopted an application frame architecture for the apps, similar to that found already on the PC. While it may take some getting used to on the Mac side, I can tell you that the way the interface allows you to open tabs, and have different files from different apps running beside each other is worth the learning curve, especially if you are running two monitors! Some cool new features for CS4 include a lot of “smart tools” to help you design quickly and accurately, dynamic pan and zoom, continuous preflighting (“inflighting”), a much more functional and interactive Links palette, smart text reflow, and cross referencing. One of the biggest reactions from the audience came when Sebastian showed the new conditional text feature in InDesign, and explained how this can help publishers who have multi-version documents. There was a ton of applause for that one!

In grand style, Sebastian left the biggest InDesign CS4 change for last: multimedia support. You can now export Flash SWF files directly out of CS4, easily turning your print layout into a fully functioning Flash file for electronic distribution, without having to open or use Flash. Of course, if you want to use Flash, you can also save your InDesign file as an XFL file (XML Flash File), to open and edit natively inside Flash CS4.

To wrap up the evening, Sebastian introduced Adobe AIR to the members present. AIR stands for Adobe Integrated Run Time. If you haven’t had a chance to see this technology in action, I recommend you look into it. This may change the way we view online content forever.

Last but not least, Sebastian did a Photoshop CS4 teaser, showing off the raw horsepower of the app, as well as some really cool features. If you haven’t seen a demo of the content-aware scaling feature, I recommend you look into it. It is so cool that I can’t even begin to describe it. You have to see it to believe it!

The evening wrapped up with a draw for some Adobe shirts, and a lot of Q&A at the end. The feedback I received at the end of the evening was fantastic. It seems many people enjoyed the new room, and we will definitely try to book it again.

Thank you

Once again, I would like to thank the volunteers that work hard to make this event happen. Monday’s meeting would not have gone smoothly if it were not for the help of Stephen and Amy, Carol and Voula. Thanks guys!

Upcoming Industry Events

Look for information about an exciting event coming in November, hosted by Loop Enterprise Inc. and Adobe on the whole CS4 Master collection. All Toronto InDesign User Group members will be sent information about this exciting event shortly.

Next Meeting

While it is not yet official, we are trying to plan another meeting before the new year. As soon as Sebastian and I can confirm schedules, we will post a date.

Thank you to everyone that could make it out. I look forward to seeing you at the next one!

Jason

Photos From This Meeting
Photos are available from this user group meeting.
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