When Adobe announced their new "Creative Suite", my first reaction was (of course) to immediately purchase the new upgrade for Photoshop. I did and it is fantastic, if for nothing other than improvements on existing functions, but the new features were absolutely perfect for my new direction: DIGITAL CAPTURE & WEB WORK.

My business had traditionally been photography done for reproduction in magazines, catalogs, flyers, etc. Mostly print work, and sometimes images ended up on the web, but I wasn't putting any sites together, not even my own.

My capture medium was film, and then this was digitized, either drum scans or flatbed scans in my studio. The difference in quality of the scans was noticeable on the screen and high end printing, but sometimes lost in poor printing.

Then I would design and layout the ad or catalog using Quark. Quark has been the mainstay in the print world, mainly because every printer in the world had their workflow set up through Quark's products and they DEMAND A QUARK DOCUMENT! Photoshop would handle all the imagery requirements and Illustrator 9 seemed more than enough for my needs.

Ad concept. Maybe a sketch, maybe a full fledged color comp with ten versions. This gets approved.


Photographic capture, let's say digital raw.



Conversion of image to usable appropriate color space.



Graphics for logos, embellishments.



Page Layouts




Final composite file to be rasterized and printed.

All statements made in this review are my opinion and only my opinion. I have chosen to express my opinion so possibly others may benefit from my experience.

My opinions are subjective and are based on my understanding or misunderstandings regarding this technology. I am not a software developer, I am a software user, therefore my evaluation is based on my user experience and not on any evaluation of underlying software codes.

I may be wrong in my assumptions about software technology, please use your own judgement when making a choice about software.

Please feel free to discuss these issues with me via emails in a constructive manner, but do not send communications you would not be proud to have possibly displayed on this web page.

I endorse the Adobe Creative Suite because I feel it is the finest system for the graphics and photographic artist that exists!

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For the graphics designer, Quark has been the program of choice in the past, but I feel the graphic print designer has been taken for granted by Quark in the last two upgrades.

They have made strides in what they refer to as a "Project", or the coordination of elements of a bigger "project", which may cover both print and web exposure. And their expansion to integrate web and print work into one program is a great plus. But, this may be the issue that has irked print designers.

The print design working interface and functionality has basically been the same in Quark for versions 4 through 6. What has been developed has been the web design functions. In the meantime, InDesign has overwhelmingly surpassed Quark as a designers tool for the print medium.

Quark's web tools are quite easy to use and their built in Javascript Cascading Menu building interface is the best I've seen, but they have no support for external CSS styles, which is a major issue. So, to sum this up, Quark has fallen behind for the print designer, and for the web designer they are not at the top of the heap or even close.

It all ends up here, guys, a Postscript file!

All of these other software packages just provide an interface for you, the consumer, to produce, arrange and calibrate the elements for the final package, the Postscript file. So, the obvious glaring issue is one of MAKING THE PATH TO POSTSCRIPT a predictable and manageable one.

In my estimation the most LOGICAL way to do this is use the ADOBE CS software package THROUGHOUT the process! Why introduce all these proprietary confusing elements into the mix?

Your job is about getting your concepts and images on a page in the most efficient and logical fashion, not about heralding one interface vs another interface. The same thing on the web, it's about making the html code, using the logical and useful interface.

Adobe InDesign CS

First of all, I like the title, InDesign, because that's what this is all about. It is about taking all kinds of existing elements, placing them together, for the page or web, and sending it into the world for review. The beauty of this software is that it is a designers environment. I would say this is the main reason for using InDesign.

How many Quark users out there can see what the colors really look like, or how they look side by side with another color. Only the latest version of Quark offers anything other than "NEON COLOR" for CMYK images. The Color Management System used across all the Adobe CS products is the industry standard, developed by Adobe in association with the ICC (International Color Consortium). of which Adobe, Kodak, Apple, Sun, and Agfa are the founding members! Why introduce unknown factors into the particle flow?

When I design something, and this is one of the greatest features, I can just export a PDF directly from InDesign, email it (color managed) to my client for evaluation. Try this with Publisher, oh that's right, you can "print to PDF" if you have Acrobat on your computer. You can do that with Quark also, if you have Acrobat. Or, you could export to EPS (postscript again) then use Adobe Distiller, or open the EPS in Illustrator and "save for the web". Get the picture?

Then, your client can view the work proof on their computer using Acrobat viewer, which is distributed free. If your client has the full Acrobat Professional, they could open your proof document and "MARK UP" the document with all kinds of tools that could include "post its", notes, arrows, etc, just like marking up a printed proof. Then when they are done commenting, they just email this marked up doc back to you for your next round of revisions.

How about PC users that have to listen to the PCPhobes at their Service Bureau about PC fonts, PC this, PC whatever? Well, InDesign can convert fonts to outlines, then your PC InDesign file can be opened on a Mac with no font issues. In Quark I guess you could export to EPS, open it in Illustrator, then convert the fonts to outlines, then send out a very large EPS file. Or, you could create an Illustrator EPS file of just the text, convert the text, then import it into your Quark page (preview is horrible) then send your Quark page out with an EPS overlay. This is all wasteful workarounds that take time and money and provide many opportunities for mistakes.

Here's one feature that may make the difference, InDesign can open Quark files. That's right. I have opened easily over a hundred old files, flawlessly. The only problems may be finding the old links to images, but that is my image storage issue and not the software conversion.

Another great thing about the CS product group is that InDesign has an export function (Package for GoLive) that will group and convert (per your specs) all the elements in a page design for use in GoLive for the web presentation. This function will "Optimize" automatically all images and elements for web use, then put them in a special folder for easy and organized access in GoLive. Very powerful time saver.

The inter operational functions between the different programs in the suite are unparalleled in the graphics industry. The only other suite with this level of inter-program functioning is the Microsoft Office Suite, which for it's purposes is phenomenal. The "soul" of this Creative Suite (subjective opinion) is Acrobat Professional. Ultimately, all the software components are preparing elements for the final composite PDF file, which is essentially a "cross-universe" format. Everyone can view or use a PDF document, bound only by the the original file saving parameters.

I would not be surprised if the first human-alien communication is with a form of the PDF document.

There are many designer functions built into InDesign that are just too numerous to discuss in depth here, so I will list a few:

Object drop shadows. Try to get drop shadows in a large document consistent for both bitmaps and vectors (text or EPS graphics) any other way! You cannot do it without hours of extra work and extra programs. Bitmaps with clipping paths can easily have a drop shadow that looks exactly like the drop shadow on the text headline above it!

Object feathering, again bitmaps or vectors. Easy to use, very effective on text backgraounds.

Path editing tools that function just like illustrator and photoshop.

Sophisticated table editing features.

Color Management support for not only high end printers, but desktop thermal and ink jets. Also, this color management system is easily calibrated for your printer and your scanner.

EPS and CMYK high rez display. See what those EPS files really look like on your page next to your CMYK files that are displayed correctly! There are many Quark 4 & 5 users who cannot experience this important feature.

Ability to change color space on the fly for different output destinations, such as change a high rez CMYK image to print correctly to your desktop inkjet in RGB, without changing the source file!

GoLive CS

GoLive is the HTML editing program that is an integral part of the Creative Suite. I won't talk a lot about HTML editing, but more on why GoLive as opposed to the program I started out with, Dreamweaver.

GoLive is comparable in function to Dreamweaver, that is to say it functions as an interface for the production of HTML code. You can write HTML code in a simple word processing program if you like, but GoLive offers so much more. The reason one chooses any interface over another is based on functionality and purpose. I would hate to produce web sites for a living using a word processor, but there are people who do this. In the beginning that was all there was for editing HTML.

The main reason I like GoLive over Dreamweaver is the CS package that gives GoLive a powerful interface with InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat. All of the programs can create a PDF file that GoLive can use in so many ways on the web. Downloadable, printable, animation, slide shows, interactive elements in the PDF, all usable directly in GoLive.

Illustrator can create SVG files which are the next generation of elements for the web. Vector based graphics that can be scaled interactively with no resolution loss. Scale a jpg larger than 100% and watch the image come apart very quickly. Scale an SVG and it will not lose any detail. But the great thing about SVG graphics is the use of "VARIABLES".

Create a graphic banner in Illustrator, with color backgrounds, gradients, boxes, text, or whatever. Then say you want the Logo text to stay the same, but you want subheads that are different for every page. Such as "contacts", "services", "products", "goals", "links". With VARIABLES, you create only one graphic file with all the elements, then indicate within that one main file the "variable" which can be text or graphic (in this case the subheads). Save this file as an ".SVG" file (not eps). When this file is linked to your GoLive document and placed through the "Smart Objects" function (explained next), you can CHANGE THE VARIABLE WITHIN GoLive. One master file used on multiple pages, with multiple subheads that are easily changed within GoLive.

SMART OBJECTS

This is why I choose GoLive. Objects created by other programs in the Creative Suite package can be used through an import system called "SMART OBJECTS". When they are placed on a GoLive web page, this becomes a Master File that can be changed or redefined in any place within the document using the original file for a link. Any changes made to the original Smart Object will be reflected throughout the document automatically.

For example, say you have a Photoshop PSD file with layers. Text is on the top layer, with an image on the bottom layer. This is a CMYK image that was used in a brochure for your client. He likes the image and wants it on his site in 20 pages! When you place the image on your web page in GoLive as a "Smart Object", GoLive will open a "save for the web" interface to format the linked file for your web page. Great!

Let's say on the home page the graphic is used at 200x300 pixels, but on 3 other pages you want the graphic at 400x600, and on ten pages you want the graphic at 100x150. Traditionally, you could just scale the graphic differently for each use, which would look very bad in the upscale, and be wasteful in the downscale, or you could go back to Photoshop and re-export the graphic specifically for each size. This is very time consuming especially on a big project.

By using Smart Objects, the GoLive interface would automatically optimize the graphic for each separate placement. Now, here is the beauty of this system. Say your client wants to change the font weight on the text within the original graphic. This would normally make a web designer lose sleep, but with GoLive and Photoshop, you make ONE FILE CHANGE and it is updated automatically throughout the web site on all uses and sizes of the graphic.

Plus, and this goes back to "Variables", the Photoshop layered document top layer is a variable (or whatever you may designate a variable). So when you bring in the PSD file as a Smart Object, like an Illustrator variable) you can make specific changes without altering the original PSD file.

Smart Objects are extensive and include Photoshop files, Illustrator files, PDF files, component (explained next) and "generic files" which can be non-Adobe files.

COMPONENTS

These are web elements the are constructed, then saved for re-use on various pages as needed. This could be a menu, graphic, footer, header, or virtually anything that could be used on HTML pages. When they are placed on a web page, they are dynamically linked. I mean that changes made to the original will be reflected through the site.

If you spend hours developing a menu, you save this as a separate HTML page as a component. Then, say you have 20 pages that need this menu, you place this "component" as needed on the 20 pages.

These 20 pages are dynamically linked to that component, so if your client wants to add one more link to that menu, you make ONE CHANGE to the COMPONENT and it will be reflected to all the pages using that component! Dreamweaver does not offer anything like this, other than a template page (also in GoLive), which is a little different!

CSS SUPPORT

GoLive supports CSS external style sheets, but with some reservations. ID styles have to be added manually through the Source Code editing or Visual Tag editor, while other things like element style and class styles can be applied directly through the CSS interface. Why this ID style application has to be manual I can't begin to understand. Someone may have an answer, so if you do let me know! This is the only shortcoming I can see to GoLive's support of CSS styles, while Dreamweaver offers greater support and application within the document for external style sheets.

The CSS editing (create a new div, class, element) is top notch. This function offers real-time displays of what a paragraph or block or element would look like when applied. This is unmatched anywhere as far as I know.

To sum this up GoLive is my choice for HTML web design because of the CS package. This along with some nifty unique functions that would take a 400 page manual to explain, is why I have used GoLive to build my own site!

VERY IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ THIS!

DON'T SEND MAGAZINES OR PRINTERS EPS FILES! 

Here is what I do now:

WHY XA1?

In the world of $10,000 and up (way up) ad placements, do you want the responsibility of a major mistake?