InDesign is a DTP. Adobe's answer to Quark. (which I believe is still the standard) Would be kinda clunky to do web work with. Adobe has Dreamweaver for the web. They bought it and dropped GoLive.
But something is being phased out. Forget which. CS4 is supposed to be the end of the line for it. Could very well be InDesign.

quote:

Originally posted by buildersent:

quote:

Originally posted by D&L:
The only program missing was In Design, which I've heard is also being fazed out.

InDesign is not being phased out. It is the standard for professional page design.

Forgive me. With my brain the way it is, I have no doubt that I totally dreamed that piece of unwarranted gossip. Or possibly I heard it through the grapevine. When I had a copy of In Design, in an earlier version of CS, I didn't use it. My primary usage came from Illustrator and Dreamweaver.

If the original poster of this thread uses In Design, then she'd certainly be better off with the Design Premium version. I'm pretty sure that Discount Mountain has Design Premium for less, as well.

Best of luck.


Donna

*Edit: Oops! I posted before I saw garyoa1's post. The person I think told me this is a mac, and I think In Design has had most of it's problems on the mac platform. Maybe this was something 'mac' had heard about Apple's version? Still, I could have dreamed the whole thing.

quote:

Originally posted by garyoa1:
InDesign is a DTP. Adobe's answer to Quark. (which I believe is still the standard) Would be kinda clunky to do web work with. Adobe has Dreamweaver for the web. They bought it and dropped GoLive.
But something is being phased out. Forget which. CS4 is supposed to be the end of the line for it. Could very well be InDesign.

You are confused. CS4 is the standard (Quark was the standard when ID came out) and it is not going anywhere after CS4. Dreamweaver may be morphed into a new program as PageMaker ceased and was replaced with InDesign.

Kinda funny - IMO Adobe overvalues their stuff waaay too much.

Photoshop was hammered for taking steps to block purchasers from using the actions they bought that were not from Adobe. Other programs that cost waaay less will do as much as 99% of people will ever need. And some (Corel for example - will use the Photoshop actions.)

Acrobat is now in way too many versions, and you can get much cheaper programs that will do as much as 99% of people will ever need (but many do not know how to use it properly anyway). And you can buy PDF programs that are MUCH more expensive than Acrobat too.

Dreamweaver is the only program I've ever seen the W3 attack by name for its' horrible mis-use of HTML. I am currently working with a gov agency to pare down the size of pages in their online 'book' created in Dreamweaver. I've been able to get the same screen appearance and make the file from 75% to 96% smaller than they now display.

Quark (at the time was $1400) was scored lower than Serif's PagePlus $100.

Etcetera

There are a lot of programs out there that will do all the vast majority of people need to get done. Adobe is only better at promotion and propaganda. If you 'need' the abilities of Adobe products - get them. Just be aware there are alternatives for nearly every thing they do that are far easier to learn, cost much less, and tax the system less.

Once you get hooked into a program you will likely defend it whether it makes sense to do so or not - and are (understandably) unlikely to want to just learn a whole new program.

quote:

Originally posted by barryk:
Once you get hooked into a program you will likely defend it whether it makes sense to do so or not - and are (understandably) unlikely to want to just learn a whole new program.

Also understand that if you are a professional, there are certain programs that are must-haves because they are the industry standard. If you are only making designs for Cafe, the smaller/open source/etc applications will work great for you, industry standard does not mean anything. If however you have designs on Cafe and are a creative professional in real life, you most likely need to use one of the accepted professional applications.

Are they good applications, generally yes.

Are they bloatware, over priced and have a steep learning curve to truly grasp the application, generally yes.

quote:

Originally posted by Sherry:
Thanks, Gary, that helps a bit! I use ImageReady mostly for crunching images for the web or for emailing thumbs to clients. I do a lot of Logo work (which is why I need to do vector images)so I send a lot of thumbs via email. And I maintain a bunch of websites, so I need to make quick loading images for those. I only use it for animation once in a blue moon. I'm wondering if there is any way to keep my current PS7 installed so I can still use ImageReady after I install CS3 - if that is what I end up buying. Or maybe I should just get the latest version of Illustrator (CS4?) and stick with my Photoshop 7, since it does everything I need?

Good questions. I know most people would like their logos created in Illustrator. I'm trying to learn this, and wow, it's so different then Photoshop. God Bless Us......LOL

Here's another opinion LOL! I only used Photoshop CS2 for years. Then I bought CS4 Design Suite (education discount - really BIG discount, so why not).

At first, I hated it - couldn't find anything, stuff didn't seem to work the same, blah blah blah.

But then I started watching Adobe TV video tutorials as well as other video tutorials. I also found other tutorials about CS4. Now I'm using Illustrator and Photoshop both, plus playing around with Flash and I LOVE the whole suite.

Check out some tutorials before trying the trial versions. You will be able to tell if CS4 has anything you might enjoy using. Take notes when you go through the tutorials, too, so that if you get the trial version you'll know what to experiment with

Yup, PS has a pretty high learning curve. And illustrator is the same, if not higher. Personally I think you need both to do yourself justice. But even having the art of PS down to a science... it still doesn't help "much" with the illustrator learning curve. Kind of like it's the same thing but different. Really different!

I can only assume that if you started with illustrator you'd have "close" to the same problem with PS. But from what I've heard from folks who take a full PS class, they start you off with illustrator. I think it's quite a bit more complicated but once you have that down you should have an easier time with PS.

To a novice, IMHO, it seems that PS is the more powerful program and they usually pick it over illustrator. But the more you get into PS, the more you begin to see the power of Illustrator. I wish I started with illustrator! Then again, the learning curve may have turned me off graphics programs all together! LOL

With PS, you can kind of piddle thru and get things done as you learn the shortcuts and work arounds. You begin to think like PS does to manipulate your designs. But illustrator... seems to me you need to know it almost before you can work with it. And there isn't really much out there in tutorials for illustrator. Even books are far and few between.

It's funny, because I started on CorelDRAW and then wanted to move on to Photoshop. It was like working in another world! After giving up on Photoshop, a few months later I decided to try Illustrator. THIS was the product closest to CorelDRAW, so to me, Illustrator was a breeze. What Illustrator and CorelDRAW have in common is the mesh tool. It's what I use the most to start a design's shapes, plus it can result in some very interesting and fun ways to blend and color.

I do think it's best to learn Illustrator first, because of it's advanced properties in shaping objects and 3D, more so than Photoshop. To me, Photoshop is the finisher, the polish.


Donna



www.techatfirstsite.com
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Yup. Played with Corel eons ago. Seems it's half Illustrator and half PS. Problem is, it's half the power of Illustrator and half the power of PS. It can essentially do both but it's quite limited, IMHO.
As far as illustrator first. Agreed. Trouble is, you don't know you need it til your pretty proficient in PS.

quote:

Originally posted by garyoa1:
it's half the power of Illustrator and half the power of PS.

Yup! Mapping images on 3D objects in Illustrator is something Corel can only dream about!

quote:

As far as illustrator first. Agreed. Trouble is, you don't know you need it til your pretty proficient in PS.

Exactly! There are certain things in Illustrator that cannot be achieved in Photoshop, but for those who are satisfied with Photoshop only, they don't know what their missing (and won't know unless they give it a shot).

quote:

And there isn't really much out there in tutorials for illustrator. Even books are far and few between.

Lynda.com has awesome tutorials on Illustrator, as wells as a bunch of other products and subjects (that link goes to a list of all courses - it's HUGE). We've been premium members for a few years - it's been well worth the investment, IMO. I was able to jump right into Illustrator after just a few days of watching videos and haven't looked back since.

Most designs I do these days are probably 90-100% Illustrator. There are some things I just can't do in Illustrator, so I am glad I know both.

Umm... not "too" sure of that. PS can do just about anything. BUT!! Problem is, some things may be tedious and take literally days in PS. Where Illustrator can do the same thing in minutes, if not seconds. (And vice versa in some cases)

For instance, try and get a sharp "outer" stroke in PS. Can't be done. Well, yeah it can but it wouldn't really be a stroke. Pretty much (one way) would be to create a triangle, square, line or whatever then hack at it to fit what you need, cut, crop, twist, rotate, make another for another section, cut, crop etc.. Could take forever! (And yes, you could use an inside stroke but there are times when that won't work either, especially with text, so it must be outside)

In Illustrator.. don't blink, you'll miss it.

Who are you replying to?

D&L, Jen. I was writing as you posted. But it's just a general "what I think" post.