Finger on the button InDesign CS4 –
power and preflight to the designer By our Adobe InDesign® and Acrobat® specialist, Certified Expert and Instructor, Jon Bessant
The latest release of Adobe InDesign® includes enriched and new features to strengthen the workflow from creation to final output in what seems to be the strongest release for years. It’s thumbs up from Jon Bessant!
Live Preflight Live Preflight alerts potential problems in real-time, so users can correct any errors while still in the design process. A new Preflight icon and a dedicated preflight panel also makes suggestions to fix any issues found. InDesign gives users the option to monitor Live Preflight on a page range or for the entire document. Designers responsible for generating templates can also embed a preflight profile inside the document, so all future edits to the document can be monitored to ensure compliancy.
The different checking parameters are a vast improvement to earlier versions of InDesign and more in-tune for customisation. Earlier versions would always flag RGB images as an error whereas modern workflows are happy to use DeviceIndependent colour (e.g. RGB) right up until the point of PDF creation. At this point the colour conversion can take place, offering more accuracy and flexibility with output standards such as PDF/X-4 and PDF/X-5 which Pensord support.
InDesign® CS4 boasts a much– improved LINKS PANEL, and shows document links in a compressed tree view, which makes it much easier to manage, find and sort links. Along with file names, you now see a handy thumbnail for each link. Click on the thumbnail for a larger view along with information about the linked file. You can navigate directly to the file from the Links Panel. Information displayed in the Links Panel is customizable. An added bonus is the ability to customise the column view with items such as colour space, transparency, effective resolution and ICC profiles – a real must for people wanting a quick display of all placed object properties. Built into the link panel is the ability to locate a project image folder, so links can be updated automatically!
Smart Guides Smart Guides previously made an appearance inside Illustrator® – and now they are a fantastic help inside InDesign® CS4. The tedious part of design – the spacing and alignment of objects – is now taken care of with InDesign CS4.
Page Transitions
Designers taking layout for export for on-screen can now have Page Transitions automatically built-into the page for presentations inside Adobe Acrobat®. The transitions can be configured within InDesign® (like Powerpoint®) for much better control. Simply Export to Adobe PDF (making sure you choose ‘Acrobat 7 compatibility’ and ‘Interactive Elements’ options) and inside Acrobat® go to Window / Full Screen mode.
Interactive Buttons
The removal of the button tool has been greatly enhanced with the new Interactive Buttons feature. You can even use the pre-built buttons for that cool roll-over look whilst outputting to either Adobe PDF or Web/Flash.
Smart Text Reflow
It’s now possible to have InDesign automatically add or delete pages and text frames based on text length. So, if a story runs over, InDesign® can add a page and link the text frame to the previous style. If you cut text, InDesign auto-deletes the blank page or text frame. You can configure how it deals with reflow from within the InDesign® preferences – it takes a while to get used to it but… WOW!
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