Adobe InDesign is a clean page layout program. You can combine all your graphics from Illustrator and Photoshop to create multiple page breaks and layouts. Newer versions of Adobe InDesign at crackplease have more interactive output options. You can create e-books for devices like a Kindle. You can also create schemas for viewing on tablets such as the iPad.
I won't need to upgrade from InDesign CS6 until I need a 64bit app, after macOS 10.15 comes out next year. By then Affinity Publisher will be out of beta. If it can handle my InDesign files, I will be switching. Assuming Serif follows the pricing policy they use with Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, it will cost $50 for a single standalone license—no subscription necessary. I've used InDesign for years but cannot afford the Adobe tax. Though the blurb above says you can get InDesign for $9.99 a month if you're a previous InDesign customer, there is no way on their purchase page to get that discount. Maybe they'll lower the price once Publisher has stolen some of their customers, but I'm not holding my breath.
The new Quark $400 competitive update looks like a pretty good deal to me. It is certainly better then sticking with an old copy of InDesign CS6 I think.
I can't find it here at MU (which is weird), but feel I should post a link to VivaDesigner for all those who are getting fed up with the Adobe subscription model that simply isn't delivering its money worth of updates and improvements. At this stage I have no experience with VivaDesigner, but the info on their website sounds promising.
http://www.viva.us/en/products/desktop-publishing/vivadesigner-desktop-version
One star for one bug fix out of dozens!
From CS6 Adobe introduced a range of bugs to torment book designers! The bug that is fixed at flaming last is the fatal error InDesign Must shut down if you dare to change the page size with anything locked on the page, but they have introduced an extra level to the main bug, as a book designer a mechanical is made by making the document the page width + page width + spine! the height is the height, to change the spine you add or take away from the default spine width, but whereas anything in the slug used to move randomly, the get around was to group the items, not bless their cotton socks they have made the App randomly move thing regardless of if they are grouped or not! This is a major BUG as far as book cover designers are concerned we have to change spines all the time, so this breaks every workflow out there, to have these bugs present for so long is a disgrace! But at least we do not have the fatal error now, instead if the folds are locked InDesign just moves them anyway - IDIOTS!
I despise Adobe on many levels. Their shitty application frame implementation and subsequent Houdini interface disappearing act is so aggravating over time. Will those corporate monopolistic thieves ever get in line with Apple's windowing system? I've wasted so much time fixing this issue over and over, year after year. I really hope Serif's desktop publishing offering (makers of Affinity Photo and Designer) will allow me to FINALLY FORGET ABOUT ADOBE ALTOGETHER. InDesign is really the only app left I cannot yet replace.
So CC 2017. A few miserable tweaks and this is a 'new and improved' version for all us suckers who are paying $100s a year for the pleasure. For now I'm stuck with it due to workflow and industry expectations, but I can't wait for Affinity Publisher to give Adobe a run for their (our!) money next year.
Crashing on launch for me on new 5K iMac running Sierra. I would recommended not upgrading to Sierra if InDesign is part of your workflow.
I've submitted bug reports to Adobe but no fixes yet, which is unacceptable considering they had access to the new macOS beta for months, just like every other developer.
I would give it 10 stars if I could... if for no other reason than to offset all the wining babies in here who probably don't even own a legal copy to begin with.
Software has lots of features, if only they would behave the way they should. The bugs that were in CS6 are still present and introduced a whole slew of new ones. This program crashes constantly, to the point were I'm considering going back to Quark. Even when the program is working it feels like it's not. Indesign doesn't seem to like large documents which is ironic since thats what it's for. Redraw is slow, changes are slow, everything about this program is slow. Did anybody at Adobe even test this program before they released it? I'm trying to do a document that's 100 pages but can't because of a span bug. Come on Adobe, if you want my money build something I can use.
Our PlugIn-Developer:
Unfortunately, we have run some tests, and our latest version of the inDesign Plugin is not compatible with ADOBE InDesign CC 2015. The reason for this incompatibility is that ADOBE has not released yet the SDKs corresponding to this CC 2015 version, and we need these SDKs to build our inDesign plugin.
As of now, no schedule has been provided by ADOBE. In the past, it took several weeks for ADOBE to release these SDKs after the release of a new version of ADOBE inDesign.
Once we have these SDKs, we will upgrade our inDesign plugin.
Until then, the only thing you can do is to revert to the former version of ADOBE inDesign (if possible), or to use another computer where the ADOBE inDesign version has not been upgraded to CC 2015.
Thank you ADOBE that we can always have a new version...that can't be used for weeks in the beginning.
A serious crashing bug exists with this version (and perhaps others) that has been widely reported in the Adobe Forums and elsewhere, where InDesign reports that "the connection to the server has been lost" and then shuts down completely, generating a crash report. It will happen even if you are working locally and not using a remote server. It can happen at any time and happens fairly frequently for many people. In an 8 hour day it could easily crash a dozen times. Nobody seems to know the cause and least of all Adobe, which can't seem to fix the issue if it's even trying. I personally suspect that the server it is trying to connect to is Adobe's own validation server, which would explain why it happens even when not opening a document locally.
This is VERY shoddy for high-end software, but I guess this is what we can expect from an arrogant manufacturer that enjoys a dominant position in the market.
Shameful effort, Adobe. Just shameful. If ever there was a application what was ripe for serious competition (Quark dropped that ball long ago) it's InDesign.
Use to be a big fan of InDesign over QuarkXpress, myself. But this CC licensing is a ridiculous insult to consumers' intelligence. It's the licensing, stupid.
Listen to what the experts say:
"Adobe’s abysmal Creative Cloud license policy has really shown the company's true colors when it comes to exploiting monopoly." - Dave Girard
Dave has worked with major publishers for decades and has been a huge supporter of InDesign, but he knows a monopolistic cash grab when he sees one.
From the update notes:
"Shortcuts and preferences are retained when you update to the latest version of InDesign, ensuring that you can easily and quickly get to work with the latest version."
In other words, updating doesn't screw up your workflow. Now that's a fantastic new feature worth the monthly subscription price.
InDesign still "IS" the best DTP tool available. Even though a lot of people complaining on the Adobe CC subscriptions I think this is all worth the money. I just hope they simplify the program and not over bloat it with worthless tools.
Overall it works best with PS, AI, BR and Acrobat seamlessly. Love the dark menus.
InDesign is by far the best DTP available. It still misses some long-text tools, as endnotes, and needs improvements on features like cross-references, variables and vertical alignment. Since version CS5 Adobe included several tools to eBook production, but the way they chose is somewhat bloated and confuse. There are several panels and some learning curve on this. Finally, the huge amount of panels (aka as palettes) must be reduced, with better management of design room. Anyway, the app is still great, with wonderful typographic controls, wide range of printing and color adjusts and nice drawing tools. InDesign works great with Photoshop and Illustrator and is very stable.
Hmm, at the time of writing the 'What's New' notes for v9.1 don't show anything but the generic sales spiel for CC (ie stuff that was 'new' when CC was first released) and the 'complete release notes' link is no better.
So what's new in v9.1?
I've noticed some subtle UI improvements with InDesign CC, like scrollbar arrows (a la Illustrator). But every time I quit, I get an error message that InDesign has 'quit unexpecedly'. Same problem with separate installs on two computers (latest gen iMacs). I tried deleting the program (using the Adobe program deleter) and reinstalling it, and I get the same crash window.
I need more than one app like Photoshop but not the rest of the crap which is the only other option.
In the US the monthly cost is $49.99, in the UK £46.88 & in France €61.49.
At the current exchange rate using the US price as a base UK should be £31.90 & France €37.28 give or take.
The concept is fine but the pricing & structure will force a lot of small business to either not upgrade or as I suspect find a way around it unless they stop ripping us off, especially in Europe.
Quark went downhill in customer service over the years back in the day, but now that Adobe is trying this horrible RENTAL model for its software, it's time to switch back to QuarkXPress.
Goodbye, Adobe. You suck.
Like most other longtime Adobe customers, I am sickened by Adobe's greed with their Creative Cloud subscription model.
The petition is over 30,000 signatures so far...
https://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model
Well, just when I go to know thee InDesign, and have finally bowed to your greatness, you have left me for another. I cannot follow thee. Be gone ye Adobe.
The latest update show itself as version 8.0.1x5 in Macupdate Desktop, where the latest version as stated by Macupdate Desktop is version 8.0.1
This is a bad match. Fix please Chad and Misha
After the Mountain Lion upgrade opening palettes in InDesign CS6 took an extremely long time, not evident in Lion. I even tried uninstalling and reinstalling InDesign, to no avail.
I usually wait for Adobe Application Manager to alert me for an update but I was desperate for a fix to the problem so I downloaded and installed this update (8.0.1) anyway. Unfortunately it did not fix the problem.
It's true that this was not on the list of bugs that the update addressed, but I'm wondering if others are experiencing a similar problem since the Mountain Lion upgrade.
Interesting new features. But is far too unstable for practical work. Time and time again when opening flies that CS5 or CS5.5 handle with no problem it breach-balls and must be forced to quit to use again.
Adobe InDesign CS6:
It’s a multi-screen world with your audience accessing content from various devices. InDesign now helps you create multiple versions (not multiple layouts) of your layout to adapt it to different screen sizes AND all this, from a single InDesign file. With all new Liquid Layouts, forget spending time on fitting your content into different sizes based on orientation. See these new features in action ->
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/cs6-creative-cloud-feature-tour-for-design/getting-started-with-the-new-liquid-layout-and-alternate-layout-features-in-indesign-cs6/?sdid=JUMNA
To know more http://cs6-adobe.blogspot.in/2012/06/what-is-indesign.html
Wow, it's quite a pain to work with InDesign. So not Mac-like. And then those constant UI glitches, I always fear the app isn't working correctly and might screw up my work.
To think we all thought that Indesign would save us from Quark!
Now Quark looks the trim, fast option and Indesign looks like the grossly overweight nerd in the electric cart.
Indesign is almost as bloated as the price!
Adobe has crusted on feature after half thought through feature and buried it in the graveyard that is the current Indesign UI.
I want just one more feature! A search tool for the UI!
Adobe floated its new pay as you use option at a recent Indesign User Group and it went down like a lead balloon which is when all the other gripes about Indesign rapidly surfaced. I've never seen an Adobe representative backpedal so fast in my life, especially when I suggested they could be doing a Quark.
Table styles are completely effed up in this version. When creating an empty table, all the cell styles are set as "none", but the footer row style is set to "none+". Even though in the table style everything is set up to have its own cell style and each cell style is set to have its own paragraph style.
Handling is complicated and not Mac-like at all, the UI is pretty bad and it's overpriced. Basically I think the same about InDesign as @Twisted below.
I'm forced to use inDesign since the lack of alternatives. Adobe clearly takes advantage of its monopoly by selling overpriced low-quality software. Like every Adobe software, the user interface is unusable and the learning curve is really high. inDesign misses features we asked since years. It's slow and unstable. Keep your nerves, start inDesign and be ready to lose a lot of times just for doing basic stuff.
I haven't installed it yet, but came across this at InDesignSecrets.com
“We’re hearing a number of reports that there may be some significant problems with third-party plug-ins after you update InDesign CS5.5 to version 7.5.1.”
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/4524/adobe-indesign-cs5
There's also a update for ID CS4 to 6.0.6:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4878
Installed it but ID now doesn't launch anymore. Anyone else having trouble with it?
The cost to upgrade InDesign from CS4 is ridiculous. The new features just don't warrant it. InDesign CS5 is quirky at best. I have a top-of-the-line Mac Pro with a kick-ass video card, and the screen redraws are painfully slow. I actually went back to using InDesign CS4 because of this. I'm so tired of Adobe sending products out of the gate not ready just to keep some magical time-line they created at HQ. The new feature set is ridiculously tiny and improved features are barely noticeable. But the worst part: Having to keep Display Performance on the lowest setting just to make the product usable.
Finally you still can't save it to an earlier version of InDesign! This is unacceptable. Not all print shops (in fact, most) can afford to upgrade to CS5. The inability to save it as CS4 or CS3 is utterly unacceptable. Having to export it as an .idml file, re-open it in CS4, export again to a CS3 .idml file is ludicrous. Shame on Adobe for not even allowing users this simple functionality AT THIS PRICE!.
I'm just an average guy who is not a professional so I do not neet all the bells and whistles of many of Adobe's products. I purchased CS2 a couple of years ago and have really only used InDesign. This is a good product and has been instrumental in some of my workflow.
That said: I will not be giving any more money to Adobe Systems. I am not allowed to upgrade just the InDesign app from the suite. I either have to purchase an upgrade to the whole suite of apps--most of which I do not use--or do a complete separate purchase of InDesign as a stand-alone (at a much higher price than the simple upgrade to the one app.). Add to this a customer service department that is antedated and ridiculous to navigate through and very customer un-friendly.
Unfortunately, what this means is that I will have to trash all my Adobe apps when I upgrade to Leopard, since nothing before CS3 works with Leopard.
Long story short: If you are a design professional and need to keep on top of the current app upgrades (and can use each purchase as a tax write-off) of if you are loaded with lots of money and don't mind spending hundreds of dollars on each upgrade, knock yourself out. But if you are not wealthy and do not need all the bells and whistles, forget Adobe and go with something else--Pages comes to mind.
I'm cheesed off with the updater. I downloaded this to update InDesign 5.0.3 to 5.0.4 and ran the updater application. After giving it my password, it just sat there with the spinning blue/white barber's pole icon, not saying what it was doing, and that's how it remained for hours and hours. I left it doing this overnight in case it was actually doing something useful. But after maybe 16 hours of just sitting there with the twirling pole icon, I just quit it. (Note that pressing the Cancel button didn't work; I had to quit it from the Dock menu.) At that point (on quit) it popped up a box saying that the update had been completed successfully, which I don't believe.
Now, InDesign identifies itself in the Finder and in its start-up banner as version 5.0.3, but once it's loaded and I open its Info window, it says it's version 5.0.4. So, what to believe? It's probably a partial installation of 5.0.4 with some components not updated, but it's impossible to tell because there's no log file, and there wasn't even any indication whatsoever of progress from the updater, or even any sign of what it was doing.
I suppose I should be grateful that my copy of InDesign does at least still work (a previous updater once rendered it incapable of launching), but this is far from impressive. In fact, I've had no end of trouble with the CS3 installers in general. When I first installed CS3 on my brand-new 2.8GHz Mac Pro a few months ago, it took literally days to get everything installed successfully, with many forced restarts of the system, because the Adobe installers were so hopeless and just got stuck at different stages (and indeed locked up my computer - hence the forced restarts); I had to try most of them several times before they worked. And that was on a brand-new, 'vanilla' Mac Pro with no other software installed that might have interfered with Adobe's installer. (Oddly enough, I had no problems at all with installing on my previous G5, which died and forced the purchase of the new Mac Pro.)
The software's great once it's installed and working, but I can't believe how much hassle I've had from Adobe's installers and updaters. They're an absolute nightmare, and who wants to risk their working installations being ruined by dodgy installer software? I remember having problems with Adobe installers before (e.g. with the original CS applications). Installers shouldn't be rocket science, and it's high time that Adobe made its installers much more robust and foolproof. There's thousands of pounds of software at stake, per user, in the Creative Suites, and it's mission-critical for the majority of its users. The last thing the customer needs is to have their system messed up by an unreliable updater application.
Once again, Adobe had become a pathetic excuse of a Mac developer living on past credit. As usual, the Adobe Updater program does not recognize these updates on either Intel or PPC machines. You have to use these links to manually download and install the updates (Don't even get me started on how the Updater continues to say I need the Adobe AIR update for Flash but craps outs every time it tries to install!!).
Add to this the long running yet still unresolved Adobe bug in InDesign that prevents keystroke Hide (Command + H) to work until you restart the program. It's just pathetic!! I really have no idea what, if any, improvements have been made. Just seems the same...still crashes on half our print jobs the first run.
Overall, I like the Adobe products; Photoshop and Illustrator are indispensable. But let's be honest, there has been little truly advance development in these products for about 2 or 3 iterations, unless you want to count OS X & Mac Intel compatibility as advances. Adobe seems content to simply suck on the teet of its cash cows!
/
I had trouble installing this update, but worked it out in the end. Way back when, after installing CS3 for the first time, I changed the name of the folder containing the Suite from 'Applications' to a more descriptive 'Adobe CS3'. I was finally able to install this update by renaming the folder back to 'Applications'.
