You can now import multiple images at once. What a time-saver.
While there's much to like about InDesign CS3, the latest incarnation of Adobe's page - layout application, overall its new features are much less awe-inspiring than in previous updates. That's not to say the new feature list is short or unimpressive. A bevy of productivity enhancements make InDesign CS3 a significantly better program than its predecessor. But as for must-have new features, there aren't many.
Let's start with the sexy stuff. Designers will like the addition of several Photoshop effects: Inner Shadow, Outer Glow, Inner Glow, Bevel and Emboss, Satin, Directional Feather, and Gradient Feather (which lets you fade an object from opaque to transparent). All of these effects are available in the new Effects panel that replaces the Transparency palette (palettes are now called panels). Also new is the ability to apply effects independently to an object or its fill, stroke, or content (text or picture). For example, you can apply a bevel effect to text and a drop shadow to its frame.
Importing text and picture files is easier and more efficient thanks to the ability to select multiple files in the Place dialog box. When you place multiple files, you can place them in whatever order you want, and instead of displaying a generic graphic or text icon, as in previous versions of InDesign, the pointer displays a thumbnail of the graphic you're placing or the first few words of a text file. You can also specify the default fitting behavior of graphic frames (for example, Fit Content to Frame), as well as a default crop amount and reference point. Double-clicking the handle of a graphics frame fits the frame snugly to the graphic within.
The ability to place InDesign files into InDesign layouts is a major addition that is helpful for placing ads, cover artwork, and the like. The feature obviates the need to save InDesign pages as EPS or PDF to use them in other layouts. You place InDesign files in the same way as other graphic files, and once placed, an InDesign file is listed with other graphics in the Links panel.
Although previous versions of InDesign offered powerful table-formatting capabilities, table styles and cell styles were conspicuously absent. Now that hole is filled. Because table and cell styles are implemented exactly like paragraph and character styles, users of previous versions of InDesign will have no problem getting up to speed with them. For convenience, the Control panel now provides more table-formatting controls.
The Find/Change feature has been beefed up with the ability to find and change object attributes such as fill color, stroke width and style, and transparency effects. The Query menu in the Find/Change dialog box includes several useful default find/change operations (such as double hypens to an em-dash, or straight quotes to typographers' quotes), and you can use GREP (General Regular Expression Parser) searches to run pattern-based find/change routines and consolidate multiple searches into a single operation. Also new is the ability to save any find/change criteria as a query for future use. On the downside, a new set of unintuitive icons and the additional options in the Find/Change dialog make a quick search-and-replace of text cumbersome.
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You can apply any of several new Photoshop effects independently to objects, fills, strokes, text, and pictures.
While we would've liked to see a cross-reference feature in InDesign CS3, long document production has been improved with the addition of text variables and additional options for bulleted and numbered lists. Text variables let you place and automatically update repeating text elements such as headers, footers, boilerplate text, and date stamps. Bulleted and numbered lists can extend across multiple stories and documents, and numbered lists can have multiple levels, as in an outline.
At first glance, InDesign CS3 doesn't look much different than its predecessor - not counting the new program icon and a revamped Welcome screen. However, the behavior of the palettes - or, rather, panels - has changed slightly, and the app includes new options for customizing the interface. We're not convinced that the new panels are an improvement over those in previous versions, but at least they're the same as the panels in Photoshop CS3 (where they're still called palettes) and Illustrator CS3. Oddly, you can open only one panel at a time from a stack of docked panels, and instead of collapsing down into thin, vertically labeled tabs, docked panels collapse into square icons that take up more space than the tabs did. The new Menu Customization dialog box (Edit > Menus) lets you show or hide individual menu commands and assign colors to commands, and you can customize the Control panel by showing or hiding various controls.
In addition to the aforementioned new features in InDesign CS3, many previously available features have been tweaked for the better. Examples include the ability to loop sequences of nested styles, the option to prevent master objects from being selected or modified on document pages, thumbnail previews in the Pages panel, the option to organize paragraph and character styles into groups, and the option to specify the resolution of exported JPEGs.
The bottom line. Although InDesign CS3 lacks the glamour of previous updates, it makes up for it with the addition of a broad range of useful features that will make users more productive - if not ecstatic. We can understand why Adobe is reluctant to cannibalize its other applications when adding features to InDesign, but given that the competition (read: QuarkXPress) has closed the feature gap, Adobe might want to reconsider for the next update and let the InDesign developers cherry-pick some of its siblings' juicier features.
COMPANY: Adobe
CONTACT: www.adobe.com
PRICE: $699 a la carte, $199 upgrade, available in three CS3 bundles ($1,199 to $2,499)
REQUIREMENTS: G4 or faster or Intel processor, Mac OS 10.4.8 or later, 256MB RAM, 1.6GB disk space
Additional Photoshop effects, table, and cell styles. Ability to import InDesign files. Variable text. Customizable interface. Universal binary.
Lacks dazzling new design and typographic features. Some features (text variables, GREP searches, nested style looping) are hard to use.
