Product: InDesign 1.5
Company: Adobe Systems
Website: http://www.adobe.com
Estimated Street Price: $699.00
Upgrade Price from InDesign 1: $99.00
Review By: Julien JAY

Introduction

A few months after unleashing to the world its long awaited Quark Xpress Killer, formerly named InDesign 1.0, Adobe is now back with a brand new version 1.5 of InDesign. This new release comes with several enhancements based on customers' feedback, new features and the full support of the high end brand new Microsoft Windows 2000. One of the most interesting things is that this update is practically free for InDesign 1.0 users with a cheap price of $99.00. Adobe InDesign is professional publishing software created principally for prepress professionals and graphic designers. InDesign provides powerful & flexible tools to create graphically intensive layouts such as flyers, ads, brochures, catalogs, packaging and more.

Installation

Installing InDesign 1.5 is very easy and takes a few minutes: insert the CD, type your serial number, choose the dictionaries' languages you want to install and relax while the setup does its job. We regret that InDesign 1.5 still doesn't use the Windows Installer based setup technology. Once the program is installed you're invited to register it and to read the release notes. To launch the program you'll have to locate InDesign in the root of the start menu since it doesn't create a new Adobe InDesign program folder.

Graphic User Interface

One of the top reasons InDesign is such a great and appreciated software by more & more prepress professionals is that it uses the award winning Adobe Interface known by every graphic artist that uses PhotoShop or Illustrator. So if you know PhotoShop or Illustrator you'll know how to use InDesign in a few seconds. The InDesign shortcuts, palettes & tools are the same like other Adobe software. Also InDesign 1.5 is now better integrated with other Adobe software as it uses exactly the same Adobe common tools including the eyedropper, pen, pencil, smooth, erase, type, type on a path, hand, zoom, free transform and gradient tools. It's an appreciable enhancement. One of the new features of InDesign 1.5 is that the toolbox can now be displayed in a single or double column as well as in an horizontal row. It's useful to have more workspace on your screen. The palettes can now be docked to each other in order to move, show, or hide them with a single click. Finally the text properties toolbox was totally redesigned for a better efficiency. However we regret that it can be sometimes very hard to display advanced options for specific objects as they are very well hidden in the software. The lack of context-sensitive help doesn't make advanced features easier to use. Globally the sobriety of the InDesign GUI helps users to concentrate on creativity and not on buttons and/or palettes.

Adobe InDesign 1.5 top new features:

• Text on a path - Align text to paths and apply typographical and special effects.
• Built-in trapping - Trap text, InDesign objects, and images with built-in trapping options.
• Vertical Justification - Align text vertically within a frame for quick copyfitting.
• Improved color interface - Drag and drop colors; display small or large color swatches.
• Print & PDF export styles - Save time with printer and PDF styles that remember your output settings
• Eyedropper tool - Quickly copy attributes between objects and text with the Adobe-standard eyedropper tool
• Binding Spine Control - Easily keep track of binding spine locations for multi-fold jobs.
• Alpha channel clipping paths & enhanced text wrap - Import alpha channel information in Photoshop images and use as a clipping path. Wrap text around EPS and PDF objects.
• Dozens of new editorial features - Fill threaded text with placeholder text; insert special characters for hanging indents; force copy to the next column, frame or page.
• Streamlined production features - Quickly identify missing fonts; view the actual point size of scaled text; fix broken links on opening a document.