To Buy or Not to Buy

[spencer33]

InDesign has a lot of bells and whistles, you just can't use all of them because they crash the RIP at printers and prepress shops. So its great for printing to your desktop printer. We would have to have a list of what will not work from our printers and prepress shops. Then make sure that the designers did not use features that crash the RIPs. Trial and error would be very time consuming.

Can not use OPI workflow. We currently do not use this anyway. This would limit the use of future possibilies of a in-house prepress operation.

The artistic effects that the designer makes to a image using InDesign, must be the same file you plan to print with (high res file). The designer will have more effects for the printer or prepress shop to recreate. This would be very time consuming and come with a lot of revisions trying to recreate a elaborate effect.

Adobe sells InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator as a package, however your can not place files that you create from Illustrator into InDesign with our problems at the RIP.

At this time I think the software should still be in BETA testing. I think Adobe put it on the market to help pay for the much needed research and development.

InDesign will make PageMaker fans happy because it looks like PageMaker on steriods.

 

[jimoblak]

I use several printers that have no problem using our InDesign creations. I use so many bells and whistles that it is deafening.

InDesign has been stable for most designers and print service providers. Adobe.com has a directory of print service providers that support InDesign so that you can outsource your InDesign jobs if needed.

Getting any software to talk to another is a challenge. Your RIP may need to learn how to make friends. There are plenty of RIPs that successfully support InDesign and transparency. Can you describe what RIP you are using so that someone might help?

Caution: labelling a popular software as beta and unusable is a certain way to drive business away. One of the printers that I deal with cannot update to IDCS because they are still in OS9. They have no problem printing PDFs that I create from InDesign. If you have trouble with the newer CS software, you might investigate accepting PDF files from customers. Ideally, it should not matter what program creates a design as long as a standards-compliant PDF is supplied to a print service provider.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[AdobeTim]

Spencer, your post is contradicted by innumerable user experiences. Major magazine publishers around the world do 6 and 7 color magazine colors with transparency galore every day. They dramatically cut their prepress costs and they equally dramatically improve their productivity and creative capabilities. The same thing is happening in newspapers and ad agencies...and mom and pop shops. It's just a matter of finding vendors who have up to date tools and who understand how to use the product features.

Most who switch from BrandX say that ID is more stable and more reliable (read LESS beta) than what they used before. I'm sure you can get help figuring these things out for yourself if you'd like to.

Cheers.

 

[spencer33]

Thanks for all the positive suggestions. Sorry for the typo when I typed our problems at the RIP I meant the problems (Illustrator printing from InDesign) from another persons rip and I will get more specific when I find out if his problems were solved or not.

I am not currently using either Quark 6 or InDesign but up against deciding which product will serve us the best in our workflow.

Everything I stated in my earlier email was not meant to harm or to label "a popular software as beta" but is only an observation of a company that is using InDesign.

I realize that getting new software to talk to another is a challenge, this I have done plenty of times over and can add that it is a great accomplishment knowing that all is working well.

In our workflow we can not provide the art directors a high resolution scan. They will use all the bells and whistles on a low res scan of a Polaroid for design and hand it to prepress and expect it to be a perfect match to their design. If we had the capability of providing a high resolution scan and let them do all the bells and whistles to a file that we print with, we would be better off. As it is we do not get everything marked up on a color copy that comes with the file to reproduce.

Also my prepress provider had minor problems using InDesign from one of their customers. Loading ID on system 10.2 had some issues that was fixed by using 10.3.
This one customer uses a square box for picture with plain type layout.

 

[tad1952]

Spencer. I think I must be missing something here. Have you actually talked to anyone who has successfully used InDesign in their workflow?

I have been in the industry over 25 years & have used pretty much every page layout & drawing package available on the Mac since our first SE. InDesign is by far the most advanced and versatile progam I have worked with. Its type handling package surpasses anything else available - it is a truly professional program.

I have used InDesign since the first Beta version was introduced and regularly use the bells & whistle it offers. I place Illustrator, Freehand and photoshop files into InDesign with no problems whatsoever. Our RIPs are pretty fussy but as long as I convert all the type to paths and export the file as an eps, I can do pretty much anything I want and the file will print perfectly. I do the majority of my drawing & special effects right in inDesign so I don't have to constantly go into other programs, revise & import - a wonderful timesaver.

I don't know of any program which will let you make extensive changes to a low resolution image & magically appy them to the high resolution version. Certainly not Quark Xpress, Pagemaker, Illustrator or Freehand - and those are pretty much the only other professional programs available. So I don't quite understand why you are making this out to be specifically an InDesign problem.

I produce magazines and other material for other print houses and also accept files from a wide variety of customers for our large fomat printers. Working together with the other houses & desigers & running a few tests to determine if eps or pdf is the way to go has ironed out the minor inconveniences which have arisen whenever new software is introduced into the industry. A little experimentation will solve any RIP problems - and they ARE RIP problems, not InDesign problems. In my opinion, anyone slamming InDesign has not learned to use it to its greatest extent or taken the time to adapt its features to the rest of their production flow.

It almost sounds as if you are complaining that InDesign is too good for your type of operation. Indeed, the problem seems to be the fact that your designers need to be working with high resolution files & has really nothing to do with the tremendous features available in InDesign.