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Adobe Reveals New Technologies for InDesign
Ordinarily features planned for future versions of software are closely guarded secrets. Just remember the arsenal of lawyers who swooped down on several Web sites last summer when screen shots of Photoshop 6 were posted.
Written by Sandee Cohen on February 5, 2001
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Ordinarily features planned for future versions of software are closely guarded secrets. Just remember the arsenal of lawyers who swooped down on several Web sites last summer when screen shots of Photoshop 6 were posted.
However, in a move that has raised eyebrows, the InDesign team has begun revealing technologies that may or may not appear in future versions of Adobe Systems' page layout program InDesign.
On February 3, 2001 a message appeared on the InDesign list hosted by blueworld.com that directs people to a report located here.
The site shows new transparency technologies that are planned for future versions of Adobe InDesign. For those who do not speak French, the site shows the following:
The first image (MONTENEGRO) simulates how text in InDesign will have transparency assigned as well as blending modes to make the text react with InDesign elements as well as imported graphics. The image also shows how text can also have drop shadows and glows applied while retaining full editability.
The second image (airplane) simulates how transparency and shadows can be applied to InDesign objects as well as EPS vector objects imported from Adobe Illustrator or bitmap files (TIFF, EPS, PSD).
IMPORTANT NOTE: The third and fourth images DO NOT show features planned for the next version of InDesign. Rather they show a suggestion for further enhancements to transparency--to add a layer mask or opacity mask to the transparency features. This would allow gradients applied to text to fade along the gradient. These two images should not be taken as showing features planned for InDesign 2.0.
Shortly after the message appeared on the Blueworld list, David Evans of Adobe Systems posted the following explanation: "Starting last week, we began publicly demonstrating some new technologies that we are working on for InDesign around support for transparency. We haven't made any product announcements of any kind, especially in terms of specific features, version numbers, or dates of availability."
"Adobe is very committed to the development of InDesign, and our engineering team is hard at work to incorporate a number of innovative capabilities for the future. So, we thought it would be fun to 'open the kimono' just a crack to give our customers some idea about some of the things we're considering," Evans went on to say.
"We're paying very close attention to what our customers are telling us, as is evidenced by the release of InDesign 1.5.2 last month. In short, we're committed to make InDesign work the way you want it to, and we're committed to bringing sorely needed innovation to the capabilities of software used in professional publishing."
"Again, we haven't made any sort of announcement concerning availability of this technology, nor have we announced a version 2.0 (nor 1.6, or 1.5.3, or 6.5). We'll keep you posted on new developments as they happen, but I thought this clarification was important."
In conclusion, Evans added "yes, we are paying attention to this list, our forums, and various "wish lists" to help us drive development."
Read more by Sandee Cohen.
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InDesign's future
Although I can't fully disagree with Mark Willis' comment that transparency features should stay the domain of Photoshop, I strongly disagree with his assessment that InDesign is "clunky, non-intuitive, and awkward to use." In fact, as a longtime Adobe products user, I find the InDesign interface and workflow a natural progression from their other excellent products. (BTW, to brand Illustrator as having "only gotten worse" is, again, to miss out on many of its great new features). Yes, no software is perfect--we all have our gripes--but to quickly dismiss InDesign as he does is proof of his lack of familiarity. As Mr. Willis says, he's been using Quark since version 1.0. Naturally he feels more comfortable in Quark; he's been using it for years. I suspect if Mr. Willis dropped his preconceptions and gave InDesign an honest try he'd discover, as I have, that this is an excellent tool despite its current shortcomings. Stay tuned, Mark, InDesign will only get better.
Re: Transparency effects...
After reading the message from gyuen on problems at Service Bureaus with the new features of text transparencies of InDesign, there's something that needs to be said of it. The RIP has to be of Postscript level 3 to be able to render accurately this new features. That would possibly explain the problems experienced by service bureaus. Hope this helps!...
-Jerome
Fancy/schmancy
I agree with previous verbiage - get InDesign right, then start playing with the fancy stuff. I've got fancy now with Canvas and functionality with QXP.
Keep at it, tho'!
InDesign
I wish Adobe would spend a whole lot more time making InDesign an efficient production tool instead of adding fancy capabilities that I would be doing in Photoshop anyway.
InDesign has never fulfilled its pre-release hype of being a "Quark killer." It is clunky, non-intuitive, and awkward to use. In fact, it is a multi-page version of Illustrator, which I might add, has the same problems I've just attributed to InDesign.
What Adobe needs to do is left the Photoshop user interface team redo the user interfaces for both InDesign and Illustrator. THEN maybe we'd have some products worth using in a production environment.
I qualify as an expert in these issues: I've been professionally using Quark since v1.04, Illustrator since v1.0, and Photoshop since v2.05. Photoshop has had its ups and downs, but has generally improved overall. Illustrator has steadily gone downhill. Now that Photoshop handles text properly, my uses for Illustrator are steadily diminishing and my uses for InDesign almost non-existent.
Quark still has its problems, but has steadily improved, though their customer support still sucks. I'd abandon QXP in a New York minute if Adobe would ever get their InDesign act together.
transparency effects
After Adobe added transparency effects to the last verion of Illustrator my prepress house told me of the myriad problems they encountered when designers used this feature. He actually heard from an Adobe rep that the feature was a "loaded gun".