Prepress
Adobe Debuts Powerful InDesign CS4 Release
Wednesday 24. September 2008 - Enables Publishers To Create and Deliver Refined Layouts in Print, Interactive PDFs or Flash Files
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced Adobe InDesign CS4 software, a major upgrade to its leading professional page layout program. InDesign CS4 delivers powerful new features and enhancements that help increase productivity and efficiency, streamline and automate long document creation and expand output to new media, such as interactive PDFs or Adobe Flash files. With innovative and integrated collaboration services, InDesign CS4 enables users to design more in less time, avoid costly production errors, efficiently create unique content for multiple media, and work effectively with clients and peers. InDesign CS4 will be available as a stand-alone application or as a component of Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium and Standard editions (see separate release) and Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection.
“The advances and features central to InDesign CS4 enable customers to produce inventive and high-impact layouts for online and offline publishing,” said David Burkett, vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe. “As a result, InDesign CS4 allows publishers, design agencies and other organizations to remain competitive through design, enable business growth and attract new audiences through multi-channel publishing, all while streamlining costs as a result of productivity gains.”
Increase Productivity with Fluid Workflows
Adobe InDesign CS4 introduces new features that enable smoother workflows, productive collaboration, and reliable delivery of interactive documents for online or offline publishing. The new Live Preflight feature highlights potential production problems in real-time from within the layout and directs users to the problem area to resolve the issue, saving time and lowering production costs. A customizable Links panel enables users to find, sort, and manage placed files in a document, view attributes such as scale, resolution and rotation and identify files faster using thumbnails.
Create Rich Interactive Documents
With this release, designers can combine the page layout strength of InDesign with the interactive authoring power of Adobe Flash CS4 Professional to create rich, dynamic documents. Designers can export an InDesign document as an XFL file and then open it in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional to add sophisticated interactivity, animation, and navigation for a more engaging online reading experience. Or, designers can create interactive brochures, dynamic presentations, and other online materials by adding page transitions, interactive buttons, and hyperlinks to documents and then exporting them as SWF files for playback by the Adobe Flash Player or interactive PDF files.
“With Adobe InDesign CS4, exporting our layouts from InDesign CS4 to Adobe Flash CS4 Professional is the feature weve been waiting for,” said Eduardo Danilo Ruiz, president and CEO of Danilo Black, Inc., a design firm specializing in rich media production, editorial design and Web development for media companies, with clients such as Washington Times, Houston Chronicle, New York Sun, and Bloomberg. “Instead of exporting layouts as JPEGs, which currently requires overlaying our animation on top of static pages, our InDesign content can now be modified and animated directly in Flash. This allows us to take advantage of the typography and layout features we love in InDesign and dramatically increases our dynamic media workflow efficiency.”
Simplify Writing and Production of Long Documents
InDesign CS4 includes new productivity enhancing features that make it easier to create and manage long documents such as manuals and textbooks. The new Conditional Text feature enables users to quickly produce multiple versions of a document for different uses such as multi-lingual documents or Teacher/Student materials. Designers can apply conditions to selected paragraphs, words or characters and then hide or show that text depending on the required context. Offering further time-saving advances, the Cross-References feature simplifies the writing, production and management of long form documents by dynamically updating referenced text as content is changed or moved within a document.
Enable Customized Publishing Workflow Solutions with InDesign Publishing Family and IDML
Adobe InDesign CS4 is at the center of the InDesign publishing family that also includes Adobe InCopy CS4 and InDesign CS4 Server. This line of products can be customized, scaled and extended to meet evolving needs. As a stand-alone publishing platform or integrated with an existing publishing system or content management tools, the InDesign publishing family offers faster, more reliable performance day in and day out than Creative Suite 3.
To solve specific workflow challenges, Adobe is introducing IDML (InDesign Markup Language), an open, extensible XML representation of InDesign documents that allows third-party developers and systems integrators to programmatically create, modify and deconstruct InDesign documents outside InDesign or InDesign Server using standard XML editing tools. The InDesign publishing family allows traditional publishers, design agencies, and printers to add new services and products to their portfolio of offerings, expanding accessibility to professional looking print and digital materials.
Pricing and Availability
Adobe InDesign CS4 and Adobe InCopy CS4 for Mac OS X on Intel based and PowerPC based systems and for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista platforms are scheduled to ship in October 2008 with availability through Adobe Authorized Resellers and the Adobe Store at www.adobe.com/go/gn_store . Estimated street price for the Adobe InDesign CS4 is US$699 and US$249 for Adobe InCopy CS4. Adobe InDesign CS4 Server will also be available to qualified Adobe developer partners in the fourth quarter of 2008 with pricing information available through qualified systems integrators.