Both Quark and InDesign can import native PSD files. But which one is better at supporting PSD features? Find out at usingindesign.blogspot.com.

Labels: InDesign, Photoshop, PSD, QuarkXPress

Strange things are going on in the Quark camp. Find out what's happening.

Labels: InDesign, QuarkXPress

Looking to make the leap from the QuarkXPress dinosaur to the snappy InDesign? Check out this conversion guide.

Labels: Conversion Guide, InDesign, QuarkXPress

Find out about a cool feature for placing multiple images in InDesign.

Labels: Contact Sheet Cascade, css-web, InDesign, InDesign CS4

CS4 Backward Compatibility

CS4 has been around about nine months now and so everyone should’ve upgraded, right? Well, not exactly. The adoption rate has been a little slow this time ‘round, given the economy and for some, a lack of compelling reasons to upgrade. Adobe has been on a spree lately, getting the CS4 word out there and working with their evangelists to create compelling reasons to upgrade.

So let’s say that you did upgrade and now you’re in a situation where you are working with a client that is still in CS3 land. Inevitably, you’ll run into compatibility issues. This article will help you navigate that particular topic.

InDesign

InDesign has had a built-in, cross-product file format since CS2. An INX file is basically an XML file that describes how an InDesign document has been created and all of its linked assets.

In InDesign, when you go to File > Save As, you won’t be able to save down to CS3, you can only save as a CS4 document or template. However, if you go to File > Export, you’ll find the InDesign CS3 Interchange (INX) file format. Export as this file format to send to anyone who’s on CS3.

A word of warning, linked assets and fonts are not bundled with the INX file, so you’ll have to send those along as well. In InDesign CS3, simply go to File > Open and open the InDesign file.

Illustrator

Illustrator has also always featured a cross-compatibility file format in the Illustrator Save Options dialog. You won’t find a Illustrator CS3 option under File > Save As, but you will find multiple formats in the Options dialog.

As you can see, you can go back as far as Illustrator 3.

A little warning here is that some of the transparency effects and the new gradient transparency feature will not be backward-compatible. Also, since Illustrator CS4 supports multiple artboards, opening a file like that in CS3 will be problematic. You may have to save each artboard as a separate file.

Photoshop

Photoshop backward-compatibility is also built-in to the current version of the program. When you save a Photoshop file, you might see this dialog:

You can enable file compatibility options in the File Handling preferences. All you need to do to save the file is choose the Photoshop format from the file format drop-down:

Again, certain features will not be supported in CS3, but a majority of the file will be useable.

Flash

Flash actually does allow you to save down to the CS3 format. Just choose File > Save As and you can use the CS3 file format.

What you’ll lose here is the Motion Tweens you create in CS4 will be translated into Classic Tweens in CS3. ActionScript hasn’t changed much (Flash is still using AS3), so there’s not much to worry about there. Your easing values might be different, since CS4’s Motion Editor is more robust than simple easing in CS3.

Summary

You may find people still on CS2 or on other versions of the Creative Suite. At that point, backward-compatibility becomes more difficult. There may be other approaches of working with older documents. For example, InDesign allows you to place InDesign files and PDF documents. So you may be able to import older files into CS4 as a starting point. Going backwards though, not so easy.

Labels: Creative Suite, Flash, Flash CS4, Illustrator CS4, InDesign, InDesign CS4, Photoshop CS4

There's a great script for InDesign called Layout Zones, which offers functionality similar to that of QuarkXPress's Composition Zones feature. Layout Zones can also do more than Composition Zones. Check it out!

Labels: Composition Zones, InDesign, Layout Zones, QuarkXPress

Application program Help is all over the place on the Mac platform. Sometimes, you'll see the standard OS interface, other times, it will be a proprietary interface, and in Adobe's case (for CS4 that is), it's all web-based.

Yes, that's right, CS4 help is web-based. Now at first glance, that may sound ideal and when you first try it, you might be impressed to find that any search will return results not only from the Adobe website, but anywhere on the web.

However, this can be a hindrance and not help. If you use a focused search on something like "Knife Tool", in Adobe Illustrator CS4, you may get some results that are directly about CS4 and some that aren't. In earlier versions of Adobe products, the Help file would be only about that particular product. It becomes more frustrating in Flash, when you're doing searches on ActionScript particulars. I thought the earlier help tools were much more helpful, though maybe not as broad, than the current version.

The most frustrating thing about the new help system is that, if you don't have an internet connection, you can't get help! That just doesn't seem right.

What are your thoughts?

On another note, it's been a while since I've posted here. I've been posting at my other blogs:
http://usingflash.blogspot.com
http://usingillustrator.blogspot.com
http://usingindesign.blogspot.com
http://usingphotoshop.blogspot.com

I'm also feature in another blog from the school where I'm currently teaching:
http://www.cdiabu.com/blog

Finally, I'm also blogging for my place of work at:
http://boggse-learningchronicle.typepad.com/the_online_conte/
in the Tricks and Tips for CSS, Flash, XHMTL Category.

Labels: Adobe, Flash, Help, Illustrator, InDesign

Quark has released a free book on using Quark with the Creative Suite.

Labels: CS3, InDesign, Quark

An interesting article, on IT-Enquirer, reveals that Quark performs better than InDesign in a variety of tasks. The result is that for speed in performance, Quark was faster in 79% of tasks, leaving a paltry 21% for InDesign.

We found that QuarkXPress 7 has better support for design departments where more than one person must be able to control and manage the layout process by offering support for Job Jackets, Composition Zones and sharing colour management elements. In many areas, QuarkXPress 7 also is just faster, supporting the creative process better by including –right within the application– Web and Flash layouts, and the most often needed creative tools and effects.

So just remember, that Quark isn't going away.

Labels: Adobe, InDesign, InDesign CS3, Quark, Quark 7, QuarkXPress

Adobe insider, Tim Cole seems to have started a firestorm about InDesign's new transparency effects, in this blog post. He crosses the line between technology and design usability. Anyway, it's a very interesting read.

Labels: CS3, InDesign

I went to the Adobe CS3 Creative License conference yesterday at the Hynes convention center in Boston and was splendidly surprised at all the whiz bang of it. Aside from the presentations, they gave us a whole month's worth of training from Lynda.com. Plus, the people at On1 software gave us $400 worth of plug-in software for Photoshop CS3! In our little Adobe bags they also included a DVD version of the video workshop which includes video tutorials for all of the products in the creative suite. Well worth the $79 price for attendance.

First up, Terry White gave us an overview of the entire suite. He got a lot of oohs and ahhs from the audience by showing the new Quick Select tool in Photoshop, Smart Filters, and the ability to load and play video files. There were some cool new features in Contribute that allow you to edit and update a blog. Terry took a couple of snapshots of the audience and then posted live to his own blog. I was impressed with the new version of Premiere and the ability to drag and drop After Effects comps directly into Premiere.

Terry and the next presenter Sebastian, spent a lot of time extolling the goods of Bridge. The new Bridge home has some video tutorials that you can view online. Sebastian then went into all of the cool new features of Camera Raw 4.1 like, parametric curves, clarity and vibrance, and split toning. The wildest thing that he showed though was the Auto Align and Auto Blend features in Photoshop. You can align images on multiple layers. The Auto Blend features works well when stitching together panoramas.

Sebastian then went into Kuler and talked about how you can use it with the Live Color feature in Illustrator. The ability to manipulate colors in a smarter way with color groups in the Swatches palette and the new color guide are going to improve the non-color savvy designers creations. InDesign has some great new transparency and effects. Now you can have transparency for fills, stroke, type, and object. InDesign CS2 only allows object transparency, so this is big.

The web portion of the presentation was particularly weak. The presenter (Kyle) had a lot of difficulty getting anything to work and within a few minutes he had blown his demo completely. It was hard for me to pay any more attention to him because he kept mucking things up so badly. People in the audience had to help him remember things and Terry white had to help him through his demo on FireWorks. He fumbled through the Spry Framework in Dreamweaver, which was a particular bummer. He was able to recoup though, during the Flash portion, showing us the new primitive objects and native Illustrator/Photoshop support. Copying and pasting motion tweens from one object to the next is really great and, of course, copying a tween as ActionScript is even cooler.

Towards the end of the day, it was all about video and Kevan showed us some awesome features in Photoshop. Yes, that's right, I said Photoshop. You can now export from Vanishing Point an image in a special 3D for After Effects VP Exchange format. Once in After Effects, you can treat the object as a 3-D element and do pans and motion. There's an awesome and hilarious new feature in AE called the puppet tool. Kevan took a live action shot of a person doing kung-fu and rearranged the kick of the person to reach out to different locations, kicking away a piece of text. Finally, he showed us some very cool features of SoundBooth, which has some really remarkable audio clean up tools.

All in all, it was a great day of learning and I am very excited about the possibilities. I'm really excited about Flash and After Effects especially.

Labels: Adobe, After Effects, CS3, Flash, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop