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Provides: Page layout
Developer: Adobe
Requirements: Mac OS X v10.5.7 or greater, Intel Mac, 1GB of RAM (2GB recommended), 2.6GB of space
Premium Retail Price: $699 for standalone version, $199 for upgrade, and is part of the Creative Design Suite.

InDesign (ID) is an application used to create books, magazines, newspapers, journals, posters, flyers, whatever. If you want to print it, ID is a great place to make it. For the most part, content created with ID was intended for print or PDF. But a funny thing has happened to the printed page over those past several years—more content is not being printed with ink, but rather in electrons, and people are expecting more than just a PDF. In acknowledgment of this, Adobe has created a whole new infrastructure within ID so that not only can one create standard documents for standard print jobs, but now one can easily create electronic documents meant for anything from ebooks to complex electronic publications with fully integrated Flash elements. Simply, what before would have required a seasoned Flash designer to create can now be created by you with no Flash coding. In addition to these new features, there are a host of other updates to the ID design dynamics that further enhance and improve the layout designs.

Layout Improvements/Enhancements.

While print is still the dominant mechanism to publish text, electronic printing is here to stay. While I seriously doubt it will ever be the exclusive mechanism to distribute text it will be more and more dominant from now on. As such, InDesign is no longer "just for print." The better news is it's for a whole lot more.

When you first open InDesign-CS5, if you've used previous versions you will notice that the toolbar has changed. Below, on the left is the CS4 toolbar on the right is CS5.

The Rotate and Scale tools have been moved under the Free Transform Tool. [The key commands for all have not been changed.]

This move was done to make room for the Page Tool and the Gap Tool.

The Page Tool

The Page Tool lets you select a page. Whoop-de-do you ask? Well, by selecting a page, and still maintaining the link to it's Master page, you can resize, rotate, and alter the attributes of the page to allow for fold-outs, orientation, and multi-piece projects. As shown below, once you selected the page, you can then go to the Control Panel to make ad-hoc adjustments to the page, and not throw off the master page.

The Gap Tool

The Gap Tool is an efficiency tool used when you have multiple items on a page and need to make subtle (or not so subtle) adjustments to part of the layout and thereby need to make subsequent adjustments to part of your page that didn't need an adjustment.

Below is such a page, multiple columns and multiple image boxes. The problem is that after you started laying out the boxes on the page, there was a later decision to move things around. When you select the Gap Tool and lay the cursor on the page, wherever the gap tool encounters a gap, a double-arrow shows up and you can slide in the direction of the arrows. Shown below is a close-up of the Gap Tool's cursor and on the top right shows how you could effect making one column narrow while at the same time expanding the neighboring column. The two images below show how you can effect the height of one image frame while at the same time shrinking the text boxes and the other image box at the same time. Thus, the size of the gap remains the same as you size the boxes larger or smaller.

If you press the Shift key while moving an item, only the item closest to the cursor will be effected as well as any other item that "can" change. Thus, on the lower left image above, if I had pressed the Shift key while dragging, only the middle text box and the lower right image would have been effected to change size. The image would have wrapped over the text box on the right. Similarly, if I had pressed the Command key while dragging, the boxes above and below are both pulled away (in opposite directions) so that the increases or decreases the gutter size while the boxes decrease or increase in size (respectively). (Pressing the Option key lets you slide the entire page up or down, left or right (depending on the direction of the double-arrows).)

Following on the desire to place and/or alter the content of pages quickly, easily, and efficiently, there's the Gridify.

Gridify

Gridify is easier to do than to explain, but let me give it a shot: Let's say you're needing to place a page of photos. Let's say you need to get 24 photos per page: 4 across and 6 down (whatever). As you drag out a frame, start to press the right-facing arrow. Every time you press that arrow, instead of creating one box, now it's two, three, four, etc. Then as you press the up-facing arrow, instead of seeing 4 boxes, now it's eight, sixteen, etc. If you press the left-facing or down-facing arrows, you decrease the number of boxes. Then, if you press the Command-key while pressing the right arrow, the horizontal gap between the boxes increases (likewise with the up-arrow and the vertical gap). The reverse happens with the down- and left-facing arrow keys.

The catch is that if you lift your mouse button at any time before you're done, you have to start over from scratch.

For the pour layout individual who now has to populate all of those images AND label them with their names, assistance is at hand: Metadata captions!

Metadata Captions

Metadata captions is a very cool idea that is "almost" fantastic. The idea is that if you have any content in an image's Metadata, ID can use that data in a caption. You can add, alter, and/or input data into an image's Metadata in Bridge via the Metadata panel (or in File -> File info...), or in Photoshop (in File -> File info...). Once you've set the Metadata, say the Description field, you can then define how you want the caption to be included on each image in the text. Then after creating the frame for the image(s), right-click on the frame and select Captions -> "Caption setup..." From there you can set any text before or after the Metadata field you've selected (from about 65 different Metadata fields to select from). You can set where you want the caption placed on the sides or above or below the image frame as well as selecting any Paragraph style you may have created (following the standard initiated in CS4's, you can also create a new Paragraph style initiated from within the Caption setup window, a really great little feature).

Lastly, you then place the image into that frame, again right-click and select "Generate Live Caption" and poof, it will have a caption. However, there are some caveats: For one thing, if you've selected a Live Caption, you can change the image and the caption will automatically update. (Very cool if you've been told that the image for the class president was actually the school principal.) On the other hand, if you drag the caption away from the image, the live link is broken and the caption will claim "no intersecting link" as shown in the bottom caption below. If this happens you do have two options: you can either convert the comment to a static link and move it wherever you want (but it will no longer live update), or you can group the image and the caption and the live capabilities remain (but you have to un-group if you want to change the image before regrouping to regain the link).

While the need to generate the Metadata separately seems like a lot of extra work since it would have to be done within ID regardless, the best part about this is that any image changes are updated automatically.

There are two problems with Live Caption and one limitation: The limitation is that you cannot save Live Captions setups. That is, if you want to have one Live Caption showing camera settings (that is, after all, part of an image's Metadata), another showing (say) aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, and ANOTHER Live Caption setup showing Description, you can't. You will have to re-create each one over and over.

The two problems are (1) if you decide to change the Caption setup, don't expect to see your change when you OK the dialog. Nothing will have changed. What you need to do to see your change is to delete your previous caption and then regenerate a new Live Caption. (2) Perhaps the biggest problem/limitation is that if your text is longer than fits on one line, the caption will not word-wrap. You need to either extend the length of the caption text frame or do some editing.

There is one other limitation, but this has nothing to do with InDesign: if you have many Artboards in a single Illustrator document, each drawing a potential item for placement into an InDesign document, you can't have individual comments within each Artboard. Only an Illustrator document can have Metadata, you can't subdivide comments into the Artboards Thus, you cannot effectively use Live Caption if your source are individual Artboards from within a single Illustrator document. For me, this is a real pity. Hopefully a work-around will be developed for CS6.

Text/Image Frames

Text/Image frames have also taken a leap forward: each corner of a text or image frame is now independently owned and operated. (Take that Illustrator!)

When you click on a frame, you will see a lone yellow square on the right side (see the image series below). If you click on that square, now four new yellow squares will show up on each corner. If you drag that one corner, all corners will now follow suit and all four will be rounded. However, if you press the Shift key when dragging any one of the corners, only that corner will act. Thus, you can have separate amounts of effect for each corner.

And in the proverbial "wait, there's more!," if you Option-click on the yellow corners, you will cycle through the other 5 (for a total of 6) corner appearances as shown below (rounded and no change are the other 2).

The only limitation is that all corners must have the same corner type. While the radius of the effect can vary from corner to corner, they must be all the same type. Over the next year or so, be on the lookout for these kinds of corner effects to show up in magazine, reports, and newspapers. You'll be able to spot the InDesign users at a simple glance.

As far as getting images INTO a frame, that's improved as well. If you examine and select your images over in Bridge (and if not, why?), in the past you might have had to flip back and forth from Bridge to ID and back. Either that or use Bridge's Compact mode, or some other form of switching back and forth. Now, with the infamous "MiniBridge" you can access and use Bridge from within ID.

MiniBridge

MiniBridge shows up as a Panel and can be hid, opened, re-sized, and all the other things you expect to do with a Panel. To get the best use out of MB, you have to know and understand what it can and can't do. You can't expect to use it as fully as you would BigBridge, that's not what it's for. You can navigate to any folder anywhere and by using the Clock icon on the top, you can easily find recently accessed folders.

Here's how I like to use MB: let's say I've got a large collection of images that I've gone through and found all of the images I want to use and have given them either a label or a rating (star). Let's say I've varied the ratings from 1 - 5 stars. If you look at the image below, you'll see that to the right of the word "Content," the 2nd icon to the right looks like a funnel. It is. In fact, it is a filter from which you can select to show or hide, Rejected or Unrated items, only 1, 2, (etc.) starts, 1 or more stars, (2 or more, etc.), or show labeled or unlabeled items. What this lets me do is as I use an image, I change it's rating or label. So, I may set it to Show 3 or more starts and only Unlabeled items. Then, as I use images, I can give that image a label. and it will be removed from visible images as I've used it and do not need to deal with it again.

Also note that as I drag 2 or more images from MB to my page, they are now loaded in my cursor as if I had selected "Place" from the File menu. From the MB Panel, I can directly drag, Shift-click, or Command-click all the images I want/chose. The best part is I never have to leave ID.

Image Adjustment

So, once you have the image placed in your frame, the problem that there's always been of cropping and/or placing the image within that frame. In the past there's always been the issue/problem of switching between the Selection or Direct Selection tool. Now with the donut (or bagel if you will), that's not an issue. As shown below, when you mouse over an image, a strange circular shape appears in the center of the frame. If you mousedown on that circle shape, the boundaries of your original image will appear and you can drag up/down/left/right as you chose or need to get the best part of your image to appear within the frame. If you chose to resize the image, if you click on that donut, the image's borders appear and with the standard Shift-drag (to maintain the original aspect ratio) you can resize as needed (assuming that you will not be upsampling the image egregiously).

Spanning/Joining Columns

Probably one of the most important enhancements is spanning/joining columns. Setting up columns in ID is nothing new. But let's say you want a page of 3 columns but you also want a title to span all the columns. In the past you'd have to create the three text fields separately and then add a new text field for the title.

With CS5 you can create a text field and either by bring up the Object (menu) and selected Text Frame Options or by clicking on the Control Panel you can create columns within a text frame as seen below. [Note that under the control to set the number of columns there is another control to set the gutter between each column.]

So, after entering your text you can now click into the first paragraph, go back to the Control Panel, and select how many columns you want that paragraph to span (2, 3, 4 or all). Then it's a simple matter to set the font size (as this is a title) and any other text attributes and your done. Also, Spanning columns is a Paragraph Style option so you can easily create built-in title Paragraph Styles that will automatically span columns.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest disappointments to this features is that the Gap tool has absolutely no effect. Remember that these columns appear within a text frame. The Gap Tool works on separate frames. So, at this point in time you can either take advantage of the Gap tool, OR the Spanning/Joining columns feature. Also note that you cannot create columns within the cells of a Table.

Document Installed Fonts

One of the long standing problems/issues with sending your documents out to a service bureau for printing is "do they have the font(s) I'm using in this document. In the past you had to send a copy of your font with your document and break your copyright agreement for the font, or set your document as a PDF which can create problems if your document is part of a whole that needs to be assembled later. Adobe has solved this, sort of. What they now offer when packaging a document for printing is to use the new Document Installed Fonts. In theory this is wonderful. When you package a document now, you can "install" the fonts in a special font package that installs the fonts into the receiving InDesign application and these fonts will show up ONLY in the ID document. The problem is that only Open Type fonts are viable. True Type and Postscript fonts just do not work. While this may not effect more recent printing bureaus and users, those who've been in business for some time and have collected an extensive collection of TT or PS fonts are out of luck for this feature.

Interactive Documents

As we all know, print is dead. Has been for what, 10 years, 20 years? So what good is an application, say InDesign, that only prepares documents for printing? From the beginning, ID has been capable of preparing PDF document and even in CS4 ID provided the ability to create buttons for interactive PDF with links and other dynamics within the document. Acrobat 9 included the ability to imbed swf video files in PDF documents. So, the beginnings of printing to electronic documents has been around for some time.

Now you can do more, much more. To assist the user, Adobe has created two default workspaces for electronic documents. one called "Interactive for PDF" which is pretty much what ID brought forward with CS4. The 2nd one is called "Interactive" and gives the user the ability to implement Flash based interactive features that prior to this release would have required an experienced Flash designer. The good news is that you do not have to know any Flash to provide the same end result.

Interactive layouts are special enough for Adobe to have created two new pre-made workspaces. One is called "Interactive for PDF" and is mostly what was offered with CS4. All new is "Interactive." When you select this Workspace, the new Panels shown below (in their closed state) are displayed.

The Animation panel provides the ability to select an item on a page (text, image, whatever) and have it move it/out, fade in/out, bounce in/out etc. (a full total of 51 different options) based on entry into a page, a click, even action triggers (if "this" happens than "that" will happen). You can adjust the speed of the action and even have it loop. I believe the exciting thing about all this is if you've ever played with Flash, all of this is done without using a timeline. There is no timeline in InDesign. Overall, I found this Panel providing options not too dissimilar to what one can find in PowerPoint or Keynote for moving items around the visible region, albeit adapted for InDesign documents.

Because to have only one item doing something on a page would be lame, coordinating anything more than one item might be a challenge. That's why there is a Timing Panel. Here you can order and set all of your events, even organizing multiple items to occur at the same time. Again, there is no timeline, only logical placement by placement above or below other items. If you want to objects to do something at the same time, you group them.

To see what you've done (and to verify that it's what you want it to be), the Preview Panel is provided. From the Preview Panel, you can turn pages within your document, view only selected items, and view your full spreads.

The Object States is probably my favorite one of the bunch because with it you can do things like apply a number of images to one image frame, provide buttons to go back and forth, and then the user can open a page with multiple images all within one image frame. We see things like this all the time on the web, now we can do it within our electronic documents.

Perhaps my biggest question with all this is much of the functionality is Flash based. To be honest, I'm not all that sure what the Flash future is with HTML 5 looming more and more all over the place. Even Adobe Illustrator has recently released an HTML 5 plugin. Nonetheless, for your non-apple tablets or phones that can use Flash, all this concern and hand wrangling is a non-issue.

Yet, with the premise of using ID to create documents for Print, Computers, smartphones, tablets, etc., one of the surprising limitations is if you place a swf file within an ID document and resize the ID document, the swf file does not scale. Hopefully this will be fixed before CS6.

However, I just do not know how many of these Interactive features work on an iPad. I have a hunch that most of them do because Wired Magazine has done a version of their magazine for the iPad USING INDESIGN that is supposed to be jaw-dropping amazing. Unfortunately I do not own an iPad and am simply not able to test, verify, or cross-check any of this on such a device.

Despite the unknown of how these features work on tablets of any kind, there is one aspect of publishing electronic documents that do provide a host of wonderful potential. Not all that long ago, if you wanted an interactive document that you could click on links to take you to other regions of the document, add video, sound, even roll-overs, your best bet was to make a website and place the "site" into a folder. Starting with Acrobat 9 one could place Flash video into a PDF, but the full interactively was still somewhat limited. Now, with ID-CS5, there are very few limitations for making a fully interactive Flash document without any coding.

Needless to say, the features I've mentioned do not come near to fully disclosing and elaborating on much of what ID-CS5 has to offer. There's lots more.

But unfortunately, there are a number of other issues that didn't get any attention in CS5. For example, Footnotes have not been fixed, Endnotes still do not exists, and GREP is still limited to the geeks who can crank out the expressions one character at a time.

In short this is a great release, a four "A"+ in fact, but there was so much that's waiting from CS4 that I do feel I have to hold back despite the great features that have been presented to us in this release.

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___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.