InDesign or Pagemaker

[Tim_Hanley@adobeforums.com]

I have to create some manuals and newsletters for my company. They have to look professional and they have to be done very quickly. I use Photoshop quite a bit so I'm comfortable with Adobe, but I haven't used publishing software in years. Since I need to get up to speed quickly, which is best - InDesign or Pagemaker?

[Jim_Oblak@adobeforums.com]

How about asking yourself which program will still be for sale in a year? PageMaker 7 is allegedly the last version Adobe plans to make. There is a document about this somewhere on the adobe.com site.

I would bet on InDesign.

[Bob_Levine]

It's not alleged. There will be no further development of PM.

Go with InDesign. Even if PM hadn't been discontinued, ID runs rings
around it, anyway.

Bob

[xDsrtRat]

<Jim_Oblak@adobeforums.com> wrote in message
news:3bb55ba3.0@webx.la2eafNXanI...

> How about asking yourself which program will still be for sale in a year?

PageMaker 7 is allegedly the last version Adobe plans to make. There is a
document about this somewhere on the adobe.com site.

>
> I would bet on InDesign.

I started using InDesign with no previous page layout program experience and
found it wonderfully easy to use. Without too much prior knowledge, you
should be able to create some really nice looking docs in a relatively short
time. If you stay with the program, the advanced features do take a little
time to master, and that can be said of any program, but the end result is
great.

If you need some preparation, I suggest the Classroom in a Book from Adobe
Press. That should get you up to speed quickly and you should find enough
examples to follow.

[Danny@Kendal]

<Tim_Hanley@adobeforums.com> wrote in message
news:3bb55ba3.-1@webx.la2eafNXanI...

> I have to create some manuals and newsletters for my company. They have to

look professional and they have to be done very quickly. I use Photoshop
quite a bit so I'm comfortable with Adobe, but I haven't used publishing
software in years. Since I need to get up to speed quickly, which is best -
InDesign or Pagemaker?



InDesign - it kicks sand in the face of PageMaker.

If you have broadband, there is a downloadable demo from the Adobe main
site.

[John_Hollinhurst@adobeforums.com]

And you'll get butterflies (of excitement) every time you open up InDesign!

JohnWH

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

I have to create some manuals and newsletters for my company.




My main responsibility is to create manuals for the company I work for. They used to use PageMaker when I started working here and I convinced them to switch (with the help of the users in the forum) to InDesign. I will never go back to creating manuals using PageMaker after using InDesign! When someone asks this question I post a list I saw when I was wondering the same thing. This list will show you most but not all of the benefits of using InDesign over PageMaker. (See below)

Reasons to switch to InDesign
sandy johnson - 07:23am Nov 24, 2003 Pacific
(This list was compiled from the InDesign features list from Adobe and user input on forum threads.)

REASONS TO SWITCH TO INDESIGN

Navigation

1. No more turning pages, scroll down like Acrobat or Quark
2. Supports scroll on mouse
3. Unlimited undos, redos, and everything is undoable
4. Opens Quark and PageMaker files directly, no separate converter
5. Customize keyboard shortcuts
6. Collapsible palettes dock to sides
7. Custom slug area off page to add info/approval slugs
8. Custom pasteboard size
9. Save specific palettes in custom workspaces and switch workspaces at will
10. Fast, reliable one-step PDF creation
11. Enhanced PDF support for bookmarks, buttons and embedded movie/audio files
12. Simpler scripting, supports Visual Basic and Apple Script
13. Better integration with other Adobe products, consistent quick keys

Color & Objects

1. Eyedropper tool samples color from placed tiffs
2. Deleting color swatch allows replacement of any color
3. Gradient tool works like Illustrator
4. Bezier tool draws curved and intersected paths, compound paths
5. Pathfinder tool with add, subtract, intersect, exclude
6. Freehand pencil tool, eraser
7. Place dialog box includes thumbnail previews of images
8. Info palette displays image original and effective resolution, color mode, file type, stroke and fill
9. Stroke can be applied to objects without placing into a frame or creating keyline
10. Stroke can be applied to inside, outside or center
11. Can create soft drop shadows
12. Can feather edges of images
13. Can apply transparency with Photoshop effects
14. Transparency preview allows for adjustment of transparent and rasterized objects
15. Place PSD files with transparent layers and alpha channels
16. Use any Photoshop path to clip image
17. Separation previews for each plate, including overprint and knockout info
18. Mixed ink support and mixed ink palettes for spot color jobs
19. Supports DCS files and spot channels
20. Full postscript interpreter renders EPS files clearly, even to non-ps printers

Type

1. Double-clicking text box inserts cursor
2. Control+clicking text box changes to selection movement
3. Interactively scale and distort text by control+dragging corners
4. Placing Word docs no longer imports Auto color
5. Built in table editor
6. Directly import Word or Excel tables and cells
7. Hyphenation slider gives control to amount of hyphenation in a story
8. Paragraph composer best hyphenates paragraphs as a whole, or by sentence
9. Supports custom dictionaries and hyphenation exceptions. Choose external user dictionary, word list stored in document, or both.
10. Includes and supports Open Type Pro fonts for ligatures, small caps, all fractions
11. Optical justification including punctuation, and optical baseline shift of parentheses/brackets for all caps
12. Use font metrics or optical kerning
13. Story editor added to version CS
14. Nested style sheets allow character style and strokes to portions of a paragraph
15. Removed unused styles without a script
16. Supports extended character set and Open Type fonts beyond ANSI 255
17. Create custom glyph sets from different fonts
18. Multi-column text frames
19. Can set type on a path
20. Type can be converted to outlines
21. Text wrap can follow an image’s path or detect edges, and can be overridden
22. Info palette displays character and word count
23. Map XML tags to style sheets
24. Font names include TT or T1 to avoid conflicts
25. Quark-like keyboard shortcuts to adjust leading, kerning, baseline shift
26. Assignable keyboard shortcuts for style sheets
27. No more pseudo bolds or italics
28. Gradients and strokes of any color or can be applied to type
29. Better drop cap management.

Do you need more? Search the forum and you'll probably find a thousand and one more reasons.

Feel free to check in the PageMaker forum. You're sure to get the same type of response.

Oh, and if you are already used to using PageMaker from back when you used to do it, you can also get the PM plug-in pack which makes it even easier on new users to get started on InDesign.

[graffiti]

you can also get the PM plug-in pack




Comes with it now.

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

Comes with it now.




Even better! No reason to go with anything else.

[Bob_Levine]

> Comes with it now.

Only if you buy the entire suite. Otherwise, you pay $49.00.

Bob

[graffiti]

Only if you buy the entire suite. Otherwise, you pay $49.00.




Ah! My mistake.

[rezamorshed@adobeforums.com]

thats clear.indesign is the perfect,you can used.