Digital Home Thoughts: Adobe's Creative Suite 2 Premium Reviewed

Design It
InDesign (Figure 19) is Adobe's answer for an integrated (somewhat) page-layout application. I say somewhat because the application doesn't seem quite on par with the rest of the CS2 suite in the respect that it doesn't support Smart Objects at all (which surprises me considering the value of such a tool in page design). Its tools are plentiful (Figure 20) and customizable, but it has some shortcomings. That is not to say that InDesign doesn't have some strengths.


Figure 19: InDesign is Adobe's answer for an integrated page-layout application.


Figure 20: The default InDesign toolset.

For example, because of the advanced integration with Adobe Bridge, we are able to take and swap images to customize the built-in templates with little effort at all (Figure 21). This also means that you can quickly build layouts with comps and quickly replace the images with your finished art. You can also set Alternate images (say if you decided not to use a comp, or to give the client options). When in your preflight process, Adobe will even notify you of things such as unpurchased comp images and color spots (both of which can be fixed with a few mouse clicks).


Figure 21: Taking a newsletter template, we are able to easily customize the images by simply dragging in replacements from Adobe Bridge.

Decided to change the color scheme or font for the layout? Rather than having to tediously replace each element, you can quickly modify just about any format for anything in the design using Object styles (Figure 22). Or save your styles for future layouts.


Figure 22: Easily change styles and colors throughout your layout.

New Anchored Objects take in-line graphics to the next level (Figure 23). Even if you move your text to the opposite page, with the proper anchor settings, the graphics will follow and format themselves accordingly.


Figure 23: By using object anchors, even if your layout changes, the object will still connect to the proper spot.

As mentioned before, while the toolset is expansive, Adobe just didn't seem to give as much detail to matching what is available in other applications within CS2. Perhaps this is to allow for sales of the individual apps, but personally, since this is all one package, if I want to make a vertical text path (such as those in Illustrator), it should be available. But only standard text paths are available within InDesign (Figure 24). Same with Smart Objects - why leave this feature out of an application that could use it the most?


Figure 24: Text paths are available within InDesign, but not to the extent they are in Illustrator.

Prior to InDesign, I was generally using either Publisher or Word. Both of which have an even more limited toolset, and don't have nearly the functionality. But I am disappointed with the lack of Smart Object capabilities. Yes you can still link the art to the base file, and even take advantage of Photoshop layers within those files, but it still feels like things are missing.